Capitalism, Sovereignty, and Planning in Hugh Dalton’s Interwar International Thought

This article analyses the international thought of Hugh Dalton during the interwar period. Perhaps best known as Clement Attlee’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1945–47, Dalton was a thirty year veteran of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and influential member of the Party’s National Executive Council. Dalton’s influence on the conceptualisation of foreign policy and international order has been underappreciated, and thus remains underdeveloped in the literature. This article argues that while initially agreeing with his liberal internationalist colleagues on the need to prevent international disorder through international institutions, Dalton’s evolving understanding of his own social democratic political philosophy ultimately led to a change in emphasis. Liberal internationalists failed to consider the causes of disorder in the first place, namely the excesses of capitalism and national sovereignty, Dalton argued. Only by addressing these fundamentals, and reconstructing societies along social democratic lines at home, could inter- and eventually supranational institutions and organisations be created to build a functioning order internationally. Filling this gap in the literature vis-a-vis Dalton’s intellectual contribution to the problems of international order further develops the idea of an interwar ‘British social democratic internationalism’ that while previously hinted at it in the literature, has not been fully developed.