This work analyses the role the Left has played in establishing democracy in modern Europe. Geoff Eley looks at socialist, labour, feminist, Communist, and other organisations in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe. He considers how the Left has been a part of key moments of change in European history.

"Shaped by the ideals of equality, liberty and solidarity, the idea of the left was represented by the democratic movementof the nineteenth century and later by socialist and communist movements. Recent histories of the left have not added anything new to this vision. By contrast, Geoff Eley's book has the merit ofhaving enriched both the conceptualization and the historical narrative of this key aspect of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."- Slavic Review "Combining the learning and analysis of the historian with the commitment of the student radical of 1968,Geoff Eley has written a manifesto of hope in democracy, and a long, regretful good-bye to the movements of the Left which, for 150 years, gave it its reality. Those who want to understand the history of Europe since 1848 will do well to read this wide-ranging and multinational survey, written with both thoght and feeling."--Eric Hobsbawm ""A remarkable feat--a clear, balanced history of left politics which includes social and cultural movements from women's liberation to proletarian nudism, from Bolshevik street theater to New Age travellers. Geoff Eley covers the well-known international events along with the suppressed and marginalized. His long view defies forgetfulness and suggest that what will be found relevant in the future is always unexpected."--Sheila Rowbotham "Ranging over a century and a half and the entire continent of Europe, and with a cast of characters including unionists, feminists, radical intellectuals, political radicals, and many others, this remarkable book offers a much-needed account of the history of European radicalism. And it provides essential historical background for the rethinking of purposes and intellectual premises in which the European -- and American -- Left is now engaged."--Eric Foner

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.