A Brief Global History of the Left

Shlomo Sand

ian. 2024 · Tantor Media Inc · Carte narată de Peter Lerman

Despre această carte audio

The Left seems to be dying a slow death. While many commenters 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 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, 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 analyzing how they were confronted by its material reality, and the lessons that they did-or did not-draw from this.

Despre autor

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

Peter Lerman is a narrator from the heart of New York City: Brooklyn born and raised. He has appeared onstage as Horace Vandergelder in Hello Dolly, Bobby Gould in Speed-the-Plow, the Governor of Texas in Best Little Whorehouse..., Jonathan Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace, and Lenny in Rumors.