Forging Democracy The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000

by Eley, Geoff

• ISBN13: 9780195037845
• ISBN10: 0195037847
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-04-11
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Neither given nor granted, democracy requires conflict, often violent confrontations, and challenges to the established political order. In Europe, Geoff Eley convincingly shows, democracy did not evolve orgainically out of a natural consensus, the achievement of prosperity, or the negative cement of the Cold War. Rather, it was painstakingly crafted, continually expanded, and doggedly defended by varying constellations of socialist, feminist, Communist, and other radical movements that originally blossomed in the later nineteenth century. Parties of the Left championed democracy in the revolutionary crisis after World War I, salvaged it against the threat of fascism, and renewed its growth after 1945. They organized civil societies rooted in egalitarian ideals which came from the very fiber of Europe's current democratic traditions. The trajectories of European democracy and the history of the European Left are thus inextricably bound together.

Author Biography

Geoff Eley is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is the author and editor of many books on British and German history, including Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	xix
Introduction Democracy in Europe	3	(14)
I MAKING DEMOCRACY SOCIAL
Defining the Left: Socialism, Democracy, and the People	17	(16)
Marxism and the Left: Laying the Foundations	33	(14)
Industrialization and the Making of the Working Class	47	(15)
The Rise of Labor Movements: History's Forward March	62	(23)
Challenges beyond Socialism: Other Fronts of Democracy	85	(24)
The Permanence of Capitalism?	109	(14)
II WAR AND REVOLUTION, 1914-1923
The Rupture of War: Crisis and Reconstruction of the Left, 1914-1917	123	(16)
The Russian Revolution	139	(13)
Breaking the Mold of Socialism: Left-Wing Communism, 1917-1923	152	(13)
Germany and Italy: Two Cases	165	(11)
Remolding Militancy: The Foundation of Communist Parties	176	(9)
The Politics of Gender: Women and the Left	185	(16)
Living the Future: The Left in Culture	201	(19)
Broadening The Boundaries Of Democracy	220	(15)
III STABILIZATION AND THE ``WAR OF POSITION''
Capitalist Stabilities: Future Deferred	235	(14)
Stalinism and Western Marxism: Socialism in One Country	249	(12)
Fascism and Popular Front: The Politics of Retreat, 1930-1938	261	(17)
People's War and People's Peace: Remaking the Nation, 1939-1947	278	(21)
Closure: Stalinism, Welfare Capitalism, and Cold War, 1945-1956	299	(30)
1956	329	(12)
IV FUTURE IMPERFECT
1968: It Moves After All	341	(25)
Feminism: Regendering the Left	366	(18)
Class and the Politics of Labor	384	(21)
New Politics, New Times: Remaking Socialism and Democracy	405	(24)
Gorbachev, the End of Communism, and the 1989 Revolutions	429	(28)
New Social Movements: Politics Out of Doors	457	(13)
The Center and the Margins: Decline or Renewal?	470	(21)
Conclusion	491	(14)
Notes	505	(88)
Bibliography	593	(94)
Index	687