Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 (Paperback)

~ (Author) "DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE has been a fragile, contested, unfinished, and relatively recent growth..." (more)
Key Phrases: social democratic core, civil truce, antifascist war, Cold War, West Germany, Popular Front (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The central thesis of this massive historical study is that an assortment of radical and leftist movements were chiefly responsible for the triumph of democracy in Europe. Eley (history, Univ. of Michigan; Reshaping the German Right) provides a chronological and country-by-country examination of the emergence of democracy and the factors that promoted and hindered its development. Beginning with the growth of liberal constitutionalism in the 1860s, he writes eloquently about the influence of the labor movement, Socialists, Communists, and feminists throughout Europe. This history covers all the expected names Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Gramsci, Brandt, Gorbachev, et al. and the major political events and upheavals. Eley began working on this book 20 years ago and changed his focus as the political landscape of Europe changed, especially after 1989. The rapid democratization of the East-bloc nations led him to consider the future of democratic socialism within the politics of globalization. This is an impressive work of scholarship, with over 90 pages of notes and a bibliography of equal size. Eley has produced a worthy successor to David Caute's seminal study The Left in Europe Since 1789. Highly recommended for all academic libraries. Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A tour de force written with panache and commitment will keep the reader spellbound throughout its almost 700 pages. it is surely a sign of a truly great book that its readers will want to take issue with it, argue with it and engage with it in manifold ways."-- Journal of Cold War Studies
"Overall, Eley has written a remarkable book that recounts a sweeping history."--Journal of Modern History
"There is nothing, to my knowledge, in the scholarly literature on the history of the Left to compare with it in comprehensiveness, forceful interpretation, and historiographical mastery. It is a noble achievement."--Central European History
Geoff Eley is to be commended for bringing together in one volume a wealth of information on the history of Europe's "Left."--Science & Society
"A magisterial overview...sweeping no just in its chronological but also its geographic scope. Forging Democracy will certainly rank with Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes as one of the lasting political histories of the (very) long twentieth century."--Contemporary Sociology
"Displays formidable erudition. A college library must."--CHOICE
"[A]dmirable tome....scholars and graduate students will find Eley's work a welcome addition to their reference shelf of standard works on European history....A genuinely pan-European dimension befitting both the nature of the subject and the times in which it was written....Ely's book is essential reading."--American Historical Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 11, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195044797
• ISBN-13: 978-0195044799
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #936,347 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An important contribution to European history, July 29, 2002

By	[e-mail] (Edmonton, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 (Hardcover)

Geoff Eley, one of the leading historians of modern Germany, and a prominent academic radical, has produced a large volume on the history of the European left... Eley...pays greater attention to the pre-1945 situation, and more attention to Eastern and Central Europe. His style is more repetitive, and it flows less easily than his colleague David Blackbourn, his co-author on the seminal "The Peculiarities of German History."

Notwithstanding that, Eley's message is well worthy of repetition and study. On the basic point he is right. The Socialist Movement that grew in the aftermath of the constitutional struggles of the 1860s and 1870s was vital to the growth of European democracy. Here the democratic policies of Marx were crucial in contrast to the flaws of anarchism, which fluctuated between terrorist vanguardism and ineffective apoliticalism. Socialists helped organize the first modern democratic political parties, and they took the lead in supporting universal suffrage for both men and women against elitist liberals and reactionary conservatives. Communists took the lead in opposing colonialism, in contrast to many socialists, let alone many liberals or the self-serving cant of a Woodrow Wilson. This does not mean that Eley is uncritical of his protagonists. Aside from the obvious flaws of Stalinism, the Socialists and Communists fatally underestimated the role of women and encouraged a politics that depoliticized them and discouraged their political activism. This was bad not simply on principled grounds but because women in the 1870s and afterwards played an important part of the industrial and employment world and they could vigorously engage in political activities. Moreover, in doing so, the Left legitimized conservative and commonplace views on sexuality, the birth rate and the family that solidified the views of the Right. The Left's other major weakness is that while it usually, and understandably, avoided putschist talk, it failed to develop an extra-parlimentary strategy to compliment its electoral one. Again and again, in 1918, 1936, 1945, 1968 and onwards, its deliberately narrow strategies limited its options and its strength.

What are the strengths of this book? It is well documented, and the 93 pages of secondary sources are exhaustive on most topics. Eley makes a real effort to cover all of Europe. Some of the setpieces are very good, including a brief account of the Spanish Civil War and the 1968 Paris Spring. The chapter on 1960s and 70s feminism is very useful, and records a number of spectacularly condescending anti-feminist comments (when one Labour party official is told that some women want to set up a feminist study group he wonders why, what's there to learn about Lenin's views on lingerie?). He reminds us that Communists were not the sole obstacle of Left Unity in the thirties and that social democrats had their own sectarian tendencies. Thousands of Communists were interned or dismissed in the last days of the Third Republic, while Petain and Laval were at complete liberty. Occasionally, Eley draws a sharp portrait of his widely assorted cast of characters. On Ernest Bevin: "Incorrigibly authoritarian and anti-intellectual to a fault, Bevin was the archetypal labor bureaucarat, incurably hostile to rank and file activists and socialist thinkers alike, belligerently intolerant of democracy, whether on the shopfloor, in the general meeting, or in the committee room, let alone on the streets." On Francisco Largo Caballero: "Largo was a disaster for the [Spanish] Republic, strutting on the stage of history while its real chances were missed. A Johnny-come-lately of revolution...[he] struck the pose of revolutionary tribune after 1933, urging the masses into confrontations he had no strategy for winning."

Some disagreements. The fate of the Russian Revolution is not systematically concentrated anywhere; its degeneration is more or less diffused throughout the book. The 1936 French Popular Front gets much less space than the 1968 revolt or the Greater London Council. Moreover, Eley is not altogether fair to Leon Blum (devaluation appears as a betrayal, when in fact it should have been done earlier). Nor later to Alexander Dubcek. Oddly enough for such a European work, Russia seems to disappear from the book after 1991. Admittedly the nineties are not covered in much detail, but this seems to unconciously represent Russia's exorcism from Europe. At times Eley criticizes the Left for its condescending attitude towards popular culture and its somewhat unimaginative concentration on the classics. But the radical effloresence of 1917-20 and 1936, while often showing great artistic merit, such as in Eisenstein and Brecht, also had a limited popular attraction. Eley does not make clear how the Left could have competed with Hollywood or television, nor does he fully confront masscult's ultimately meretricious character. Notwithstanding all that, this is important book, which deserves considerable study and reflection.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An important history, February 3, 2008

By	Rodent - See all my reviews

First of all, I should say that I am not part of 'the Left', whatever qualifies a person to be called by that epithet. However, unlike the reviewer who gave this book 1-star, I am willing to approach the facts in this book (as well as the opinion of the author) for what they are.

The reviewer who gave this book 1-star cautions that the reader "should not expect much balance in his [the writer's] writing." This criticism certainly applies to a greater extent to the reviewer, who is not reviewing the book, but his own disgust with 'the Left.'

With regard to the book, the author has an interesting thesies; he argues that the Left was crucial in forging modern democracy. To a large extent I was convinced, although I do not share all the author's observations. His facts, however, are hard to dispute.

If you are interested in the subject, you will not be disappointed by this book.

1 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Synonym/antonym: Socialism and Democracy, December 16, 2004

By	John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

We are so conditioned to the fix put on the left by the Leninist tradition that we forget the crucial role of the left in the 'forging of democracy' as recounted in this history in a 'slow but steady' account that accumulates telling detail. Once there were liberals who weren't democrats and then the left, in the wake of the failures of 1848, proceeded to the course corrections we now take for granted, no thanks to the liberals who weren't democrats, now democrats, by name at least, denouncing socialism by a Leninist standard where the term was a demand for real democracy.