Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe (review)

Geoff Eley's history of the European left in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can truly be called a magnum opus. Forging Democracy is structured around the idea that the left is best understood in terms of advancing the boundaries of democracy. Eley identifies four crucial phases of that history. The first part of his book deals with the period from the 1860s to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. During these years, centralized mass socialist parties emerged in a liberal system of consolidated European nation-states and aimed for a thorough democratization of the political sphere. Part two of the book deals with the period from 1914 to the 1930s. The combined forces of the First World War and the Russian Revolution produced revolutionary crises all over Europe, but the left ultimately was defeated everywhere. Eley highlights the major democratic gains that were achieved after 1918 but equally emphasizes how the fateful division between social democracy and Communism often sidetracked theleft from pursuing a more coherent and systematic campaign for democracy in key social, economic, and political areas.

The third part of the book covers the period from the 1930s to the 1960s. The horrors of war and genocide had led to widespread hopes that a better world could be recreated from Europe's ashes. Reflecting this new optimism, the left was searching invain for cultural hegemony. In Eastern Europe, socialism became Stalinized. In Western Europe, under the impact of the Pax Americana, Communism became marginalized and social democracy ceased to be a radical force for change. Initial hopes faded that a socialist Europe could point the way to an alternative beyond the polar opposites of American free-market capitalism and Soviet Communism. In the final part of the book Eley deals with the period from the 1960s onward. Today, for the first time since the 1860s, he argues, the left is not necessarily synonymous with the labor movement—that is, with trade unions and left-of-center political parties. Instead, the traditions of the left are kept alive by a vigorous extra-parliamentary movement that takes its cue from the 1968 student rebellions. The latter failed to achieve their immediate objectives, but they did introduce a lasting reinterpretation of what constitutes the political sphere. By making the personal political, they pursued new agendas, especially in the realm of environmental politics, feminist concerns, anti- racism, and lesbian-gay rights.

It is one of the major strengths of this book that Eley pays due attention throughout to the gendered nature of left-wing movements. He also provides compelling analyses of the left's attitudes toward racism, nationalism, and sexuality/family matters. These topics are often neglected by historians of the left, who tend to focus on the development of working-class organizations and their struggles. Another admirable feature of this volume is its treatment of both Western and Eastern Europe. Not only did the Cold War partition Europe geographically, it also divided Europe's historiography. In the West, far too many historians, including this reviewer, have one-sidedly concentrated on the history of Western Europe. Eley goes some way toward bridging this divide and reinserting Eastern Europe into the center of European affairs where it belongs. In addition, Eley deals with the Communist and social democratic traditions as well as with a great many minority socialist traditions that do not fit the two grand narratives of the left. He discusses parties, unions, and extra-parliamentary movements; he comments on intellectuals and their impact on the left; and he lucidly analyzes a great number of key campaigns and discussions surrounding the European left.Eley convincingly uses the notion of political generations to explain key points inthe history of the left and emphasizes the impact of generational experiences in hisnarrations of life histories that encapsulate the experiences of more than just one individual life.

Eley's book is a tour de force covering approximately 150 years of socialism in Europe. It is written...