What is happening to the Left? It seems to be dying a slow death. While many commentors 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 the
Diggers and Levellers of 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 over centuries
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 analysing how they were confronted by its material reality and the
lessons that they did - or did not - draw from this. This concise and magisterial history of
the Left will be of interest to anyone interested in the idea of equality and the fate of one
of the most important movements that has shaped the modern world.
