What is happening to the Left? It seems to be dying a slow death. While many commentors have predicted its demise, the Left has always defied these bleak prognoses and risen from the ashes in the most unexpected ways. Nevertheless, we are witnessing today a global decline in organized movements on the Left, and while social struggles and rebellious citizens continue to challenge dominant political regimes, these efforts do not translate into support for traditional left parties or into the creation of dynamic movements on the left.

Bestselling historian Shlomo Sand argues that the global decline of the Left is linked to the waning of the idea of equality that has united citizens in the past and inspired them to engage in collective action.  Sand retraces the evolution of this idea in a wide-ranging account that includes the Diggers and Levellers of seventeenth-century England, the French Revolution, the birth of anarchism and Marxism, the decolonial, feminist and civil rights revolts, and the left populism of our time. In piecing together the thinkers and movements that built the Left over centuries, Sand illuminates the global and transnational dynamics which pushed them forward, often picking up the gauntlets their predecessors had laid down. He outlines how they shaped the notion of equality, while also analysing how they were confronted by its material reality, and the lessons that they did – or did not – draw from this. 

This concise and magisterial history of the Left will be of interest to anyone interested in the idea of equality and the fate of one of the most important movements that has shaped the modern world.

Shlomo Sand is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Tel Aviv.

Introduction: Equality as the Great Modern Myth


    
1.   From the Levellers to the Enigma of Rousseau

2.   The Revolution, the Terror and the Conspiracy of Equals

3.   Utopia as Refuge, from Politics to Chartism

4.   Springtime of the Peoples: Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century

5.   Proudhon, Bakunin and Anarchism as Freedom

6.   Marx, Engels and ‘Scientific’ Socialism

7.   The Fourth Estate, Between Liberalism and Democracy

8.   Confronting Colonialism: The White Socialist’s Burden

9.   Nation and Internationalism: Dying for Your Country

10.  Lenin and the State: Next to the Spinning Wheel and the Bronze Axe

11.  Blackshirts and Brownshirts: Right or Left?

12.  Mao and Chinese Communism: ‘A Hundred Flowers’?

13.  The Socialist Imaginary in Postcolonial Countries

14.  The Welfare State, a Working-Class Triumph?

15.  Latin America and Opposition to the ‘Big Stick’

16.  From the Civil Rights Movement to the May ’67 Uprising

17.  The Struggle for Gender Equality: The Feminine Mystique

18.  The Rust-Belt Proletariat and the Return of Populism

19.  Consumption and Ecology: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie


A Melancholy Conclusion: Inequality and the Pandemic