Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780195037845)

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: Geoff Eley
ISBN-10: 0195037847
ISBN-13: 9780195037845
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language: English
Published: 04/11/2002
Pages: 720
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.59lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 1.50d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 07/01/2002 pg. 95
Choice 12/01/2002 pg. 698
Library Journal 07/15/2002