The Left and Democracy

Forging Democracy: The History of The Left in Europe, 1850-2000 by Geoff Eley

Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000
by Geoff Eley
Oxford University Press, 2002, 720 pp., $35.00

“Democracy,” Eduard Bernstein once said, “is both a means and end. It is a weapon in the struggle for socialism, and it is the form in which socialism will be realized.” Although not quoted, this argument lies at the heart of Geoff Eley’s massive new book Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000.

The main goal of Eley’s book is to remind us of the centrality of the left in the struggle for democracy. He takes aim in particular at two views that continue to characterize much popular rhetoric and thinking about democratization: that liberalism and the bourgeoisie have historically been the “carriers” of democracy, and that it has generally emerged naturally alongside modern capitalism. In contrast, Eley argues that f...