A Brief Global History of the Left

by Shlomo Sand, Robin Mackay (Translator)

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Audiobook

271 pages, Paperback

Published January 31, 2024

About the author

Shlomo Sand is professor of history at Tel Aviv University and author of the controversial book The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso Books, 2009). His main areas of teaching are nationalism, film as history and French intellectual history.

Sand was born to Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. His parents had Communist and anti-imperialist views and refused to receive compensations from Germany for their suffering during the Second World War. Sand spent his early years in a displaced persons camp, and moved with the family to Jaffa in 1948. He was expelled from high school at the age of sixteen, and only completed his bagrut following his military service. He eventually left the Union of Israeli Communist Youth (Banki) and joined the more radical, and anti-Zionist, Matzpen in 1968. Sand resigned from Matzpen in 1970 due to his disillusionment with the organisation.

He declined an offer by the Israeli Communist Party Rakah to be sent to do cinema studies in Poland, and in 1975 Sand graduated with a BA in History from Tel Aviv University. From 1975 to 1985, after winning a scholarship, he studied and later taught in Paris, receiving an MA in French History and a PhD for his thesis on "George Sorel and Marxism". Since 1982, Sand has taught at Tel Aviv University as well as at the University of California, Berkeley and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.

Reviews

[Cristian Cristea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incomplete but necessary and fairly unbiased.

This is a history of the left mouvement with its various shapes and forms. After going through this essay it is confirmed that this left and right dichotomy has no basis other than theoretical. This movement started from the ideas of equality (Rousseau and, as Greaber showed in his The Dawn of Everything, from the interactions with colonial civilizations) but it changed to the horrific Stalinist or Maoist dictatorships. And then, diluted into Blair and Clinton neoliberalism. Now it lives in various populist linked to eco movements.

If there is anything to learn, is that the left is never unitary in terms of principles. Everyone has a different idea (it is a movement shaped by intellectuals) and principles shift according to short term objectives.

I agree with Varoufakis when he states that the left is to blame for the fact that it never managed to be a credible political alternative. Such a waste of such noble ideals. The western world is still far away from the Wendat Kandiaronk so beautifully explored by
Graeber and Wengrow.

[João Carmo · Rating 3 out of 5]

É bom para ter umas luzes sobre alguns acontecimentos históricos dos últimos três séculos. Ao mesmo tempo é confuso e muitas coisas são contadas fora de ordem cronológica o que para mim torna a leitura/memorização mais difícil.
Vale a pena ler pelos últimos capítulos.

[R.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

À medida que me aproximava do fim do livro, notava como este mudava lentamente do tom narrativo para inquisitivo. E crescia simultaneamente comigo um sentimento de desconforto. Desconforto essencialmente com o rumo dessa inquisição espiritual. É que até esse ponto Shlomo Sand havia descrito com grande detalhe o que separa a "esquerda" do que não é esquerda. Havia-o feito sem fugir a dissenções intrínsecas na esquerda. E no final com essa sucessão de perguntas introspectivas o que ele nos conduz a perguntar é a ideia de igualdade está morta.

Não se pode dizer que seja um final de viagem anti-climático. É que esta Breve História começa com uma sucessão de revoluções falhadas na procura da igualdade. Igualdade essa que desde cedo o autor assume como o fiel do que é esquerda e do que é outra coisa. E é com este princípio da igualdade que o autor vai descorrer sobre a Esquerda ao longo dos tempos.

É uma obra equilibrada, sem querer ser neutra. É uma obra para fazer pensar todos os que se dizem de esquerda. Pensar donde se vem, e para onde se quer ir. Pensar em como tantos sonhos lindos falharam por implodirem, e lembrar as utopias que cederam ao peso do Mundo exterior. Relembrar que igualdade não é para uns, tem de ser para todos, e ficar a pensar que face ao egoísmo Humano a igualdade é capaz de ser uma coisa linda para almejar, mas impossível de alcançar.

[Manuel Pinto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um Resumo brilhante sobre as origens e fundamentos dos movimentos políticos designados de "Esquerda", com todas as suas virtudes e pontos fortes, assim como os seus problemas.

Desde a Revolução Francesa, Rousseau, Proudhon e Marx, Colonialismo, URSS, Fascismos, Estado Providência até ao Imperialismo americano e a luta pela igualdade racial.


"A Igualdade não é mais, portanto, do que a proporcionalidade, e ela só existirá verdadeiramente quando cada um produzir de acordo com as suas capacidades e consumir de acordo com as suas necessidades."

[Daniel Clemence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shlomo Sand and I are alike; we are both pessimists. Well, I am wouldn’t say I am entirely pessimistic. I think of myself as a pessimistic optimist in that I side myself on the side of caution but like to be positive. I am an empirical optimist in that I am optimistic with data; pessimistic without. Shlomo Sand’s history as being an Israeli Leftist isn’t lost on the book. Being from an Israeli viewpoint, a country whose Left has been made virtually extinct will shape the narrative of the book. A Brief Global History of the Left is written as a global history of the Left which suggests that the Left faces demise over the coming years, as people shift away from the ideas of equality. Whilst such a grand narrative sounds pessimistic and yet insightful, the book largely fails to deliver the key thesis of global demise of the Left.

A Brief Global History of The Left is a grand theory book of history and reminds me of the fellow Israeli thinker Yuval Harari who wrote Homo Sapiens which falls in the same camp as being a grand history book. The left is traced back to the Levellers as Sand’s first identification of a Leftist movement. I will come back to my analysis of this later but Sand argues that the Levellers were the first truly leftist movement in history, one that advocated for the equality of man as part of Christian doctrines that they believed in. They were the first to advocate for universal suffrage of men and for equality. The first man identifiable thinker of the Left was as Sand argues is Rousseau. As a man who advocated for the principles of the General Will being used in governance and against the unjust inequality of society, Sand argues that Rousseau is the first true Leftist thinker.

The Revolution of France is looked at as being the first spark of Leftist revolutions and this makes some sense as the term Leftism is generated at that point. There is a look at the Jacobins and how Napoleon crushed the revolutionary spirit in Europe with his autocratic militarism and the backlash against him. Utopian socialism is looked at as one of the first ideals of socialism put into action. The Chartists were looked at as Leftists who wanted to extend the vote to all. William Godwin, who was influenced by Calvinism and Robert Owen are investigated. Owen was analysed as being an originator of the first utopian socialist projects. Likewise Saint Simon was identified as an early socialist.

The real start of Leftism was the 1848 revolutions that exploded across Europe. It was when the Communist Manifesto was launched and multiple revolutions spread across Europe due to bad harvests. Europe in context was still in the mini–Ice Age. Anarchism is contrasted with “Scientific socialism” of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The inherent contradictions of Leftism is analysed in detail. One the oneside, Leftism throughout history is viewed as being democratic and yet is highly dictatorial. In the chapter “Confronting Colonialism”, the Left represented the working classes of the industrialising world and yet called for colonialism throughout the world. In the chapter Nation and Internationalism, Leftism was supposed to bring about socialism internationally and yet the socialist parties were highly pro-war. Indeed, it is out of these pro-war socialists you have Benito Mussolini creating the Fascists.

There is a look as to whether Fascism is a Leftist cause, which I think is rather ridiculous to consider but rather that Fascism did have some Leftist roots but was highly mutated into something that is completely antithetical to Leftist ideas given its staunch ideological commitment to hierarchy making it clearly a Right-wing force. Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution are looked at, alongside Mao in China as being key parts to the arrival of socialism. Sand mentions about the “letting hundred flowers” bloom as part of Mao’s ideology in the 1956 policy that is rowed back quickly. Goes to great lengths tying authoritarian Leftism to the Leftist ideology overall. Throughout the post-colonial world, many countries switch to socialist governments including Syria, Iraq and Egypt under Arab-socialism plus various election successes for socialism. There is also the argument that the USA did well at opposing socialists with coups.

The welfare state is looked at as the beginning of the end for socialism in the Western world. Much of the achievements of the welfare state gradually ended the need for socialism. The end of the proletariat, specifically the end of the working class was identified by Sand as the end of social democracy as people being no longer attached to a working-class industrial job feel less attached to Leftist parties. As a result, working classes have swung to the Right and have started voting for Nationalist Populist parties. Sand argues that they are different to Fascism but that they have eroded the Left’s ability to gain votes. The Environmentalist movement is looked at as a threat to socialism as it opposes the ideas of the welfare state and the working classes and represents a middle-class socialist alternative.
The book concludes with the argument that the pandemic finished off the Left. As inequality rose from the pandemic, there was a rise of need for government support but that helped increase inequality and that it led to an erosion of the Left further. His concluding arguments is that people over time have come to reject the sole argument that equality is desirable and would rather support inequality. This has helped end the Left as a viable political position.

One thing I have liked about the book is that the book is an attempt to map the Left over a grand history and yet be able to ask questions throughout the book. In this regard, it has satisfied one genuine desire that I have had that there should have been a book written about the history of the Left. I also think Sand gives a good representation at the genuine contradictions that have always existed among the Left and that has helped shape its history.

Despite that positive, I have multiple issues with this book. The biggest criticism is that it is poorly referenced. Now, I suspect the book is supposed to be a sort of grand essay about the state of the world and so doesn’t need referencing. I am surprised that a professor from a university in Israel write something that lacks references. There are no end notes or bibliography and footnotes amount to the odd book referenced. Grand sections of the text amount to the sort of grand-narrative of history that his has created. But without referencing, there is no way to define whether this is pure a’ priori reasoning that is usually reserved for philosophy and political philosophy or whether this based on research. A professor of a university could have done better than this.

The second thing, which relates to this criticism is there is no empirical data to back up his claims. For example, he claims that the Communists of Italy and the Socialists of France, alongside the SPD of Germany and Labour of Britain have all lost power, but there is no datapoints compared with and so nothing to reference back to. There could have been a look at the decline of voting patterns for Social Democratic parties but then again, centre-right conservative and Christian Democratic parties have lost support over the last 30 years. The lack of data on other factors such as the decline in the working classes would also have been useful but this book is more theory based and so lacks empirical data to back up his arguments.

The third point of contention is that Sand is highly selective in his argument of global leftist decline. Whilst it is true the Leftist parties on the broad have been struggling of late, there have been some success stories. For example, the 2024 Mexican election had a landslide for the Leftist Claudia Sheinbaum and the UK Labour Party was also elected in the 2024 general election despite the uphill battle that it faced from 2019. There was a brief Left-turn across the world from 2020-2024 as countries shifted to Left because of the pandemic. Admittedly, they have shifted back to the Right due to the rapid inflation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the argument that the Left is dead is at times overstated. Sure, there is a Right-wing shift globally to the National-Populist Right but Covid shows that these trends come in waves and are not entirely permanently.

One of the big trends ignored by Sand is the rise of China. Three-pages are dedicated to the turn of China to capitalism but this ignores the vast apparatus of Chinese-state support of capitalism. Chinese capitalism is highly state interventionism and Xi Jinping is turning China to the Left, not Right! Under Xi Jinping, China has had greater amounts of state intervention, a crack down on capitalists and greater emphasis on planning and control with state enterprises, China hardly has become a beacon of free-market capitalism. Instead, China opened its economy to capitalism to now become largely built-up and is started to exercise greater state-control over the economy. And it is clearly successful as it has become the largest manufacturing economy of the world. Now, this is built on the backs of the proletariat becoming a mass-exporting country but that is the history of socialism, with the USSR using a vast industrial work force in gruelling conditions modernise itself. Thanks to its state-backed Keynesian capitalism, China looks to become a global tech leader and has successfully positioned itself as the global manufacturer of electronics including electric cars. All because of its industrial strategy. China might not be a selling point for the return to Leftism. However, given that Sand adds the likes of Stalin, Mao and Sadam Hussien to the annals of historic Leftism, to ignore its success because of unique flavour of Leftist state-interventionist capitalism really pours cold water on the claim that Leftism is in decline.

In many ways the book doesn’t really give the history of the Left justice. The book claims that socialism starts with the Levellers in England but I wouldn’t be too sure. There have been many attempts of socialism and Leftism throughout history, whether it be the Gracchi brothers and grain dole in Ancient Rome being the first welfarist policies, to Essenes and Early-Christian anarchist communities. Being from an Israeli Leftist tradition, there is no mention of the Jewish prophetic scriptures as being examples of early Leftism. There were examples of Communist communities in medieval Europe and monastics practiced communist communal tendencies under St Benedict with a complete ban on private property. Heck, even Jan Huss or the peasant revolts in late Mediaeval Europe were examples of Leftism. The selection of the Levellers appears arbitrarily selected, perhaps because of its early modernism but fails to give a significant justification as to why Leftism started then.

Likewise, there is no reasons to suggest why the future for Leftism. The end of the industrial working class sure marks a significant issue for the Left as the collapse of its voter base. But new opportunities arise to present themselves. For example, in the UK my home country, Labour has certainly lost its votes from the working-classes of the UK. But the Labour party now gains most of its votes from the under 50s, who struggle to buy a house. Indeed, some kind of peculiar class-voting has emerged in that one of the biggest predictors of voting alignment alongside education and age is home-ownership versus renting. Renters are now one of Labour’s core demographics in the UK. It might not hold true for the next election but it suggests that Left in the UK at least is no longer defined by employment but by declining homeownership which dooms the Right over the future given that Millennials seem to not drift Right as they age.

To this end, I think the book seems to ignore future trends such as AI, automation, population decline, inequality, climate change and technology changes as trends that make it hard to predict the future. The rise of ever greater inequality ends the hope of meritocracy and whilst Trumpism is dark day for the environment, there is no clear sign as which direction we will end up. Perhaps Sand is so pessimistic that the Left cannot hope to succeed in such a miserable world. I do believe that the collapse of the global environment will cause horrendous circumstances to emerge. But I hardly think this marks the end of the Left. If anything, the collapse of global civilisation is as likely as the collapse of the Left. I.e. it is possible that the Left collapses but so is it a possibility that civilisation collapses this century as it fails to deal with its many convoluted crises. In conclusion, A Brief History of Leftism is a good overview of the rise of the Left and as such should be seen as a good argument for how Leftism emerged. However, there are better books to read for more analysis. A satisfactory, if pessimistic overview of Leftist history.

[Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another entry in the school of one damned thing after another histories.
I had expected something better.

[Rita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dois factos que não sabia e passei a saber:
- a esquerda era maioritariamente a favor dos movimentos colonialistas (depois passou a não ser, mas nos inícios era)
- a política ecologista nasceu na direita mais radical...lool...nos alemães saudosistas pelo antigamente em que as coisas eram simples e a ruralidade e o contacto com a natureza é que era. Por uns momentos imaginei o Trump, o Bolsonaro, o Orban e o Ventura presos às grades da navigator e foi giro.

Achei os primeiros capítulos mais chatos, porque condensou muita coisa em pouco espaço. Cada linha correspondia a uma década, ao que aconteceu, quem eram os protagonistas. Cansativo de ler, porque foi demasiada informação condensada. À medida que entrámos no século XX e o autor começou a fazer divisões mais claras sobre o que aconteceu em cada parte do mundo ficou mais tolerável de ler, mas mesmo assim é difícil aprender coisas relevantes quando nos tentam ensinar tudo muito depressa.


"o requiem da esquerda já foi entoado anteriormente dezenas de vezes, mas, tal como uma fénix, ela continuou a renascer em tempos e lugares inesperados. Neste início do século XXI, porém, a esquerda parece cada vez mais envelhecida e cansada: os seus braços ideológicos apresentam-se trémulos e tacteiam o futuro."

[samsam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of the left that was brief indeed. Shlomo Sand, that I discovered with the very interesting The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland, has elected here to set a starting point to "the left" as a political trend with organisations promoting equality, precisely the Levellers (love the band!) and the Diggers of XVIIth century England.

Going through pilosophical developments - from Rousseau and other thinkers of the XVIIIth and XIXth century, all the way to Marx, Engels, Proudhon and Bakunin - and the beginning of mass worker organisations - union and anarchist/communist/socialist organisations of the XIXth century and the birth of socialist/communist political parties at the turn of the XIX/XXth centuries - the author then looks at what happened when the left actually came to influence politics in the XXth century - social democracy, the socialist block, and then the transformation of the working class and the disillusion of the "new left" at the start of the XXIst century.

The book is an interesting read, the author alternates between being optimist and pessimist, however there are some questionable details on non-violence and some dates are wrong, and the focus is quite strong on Western politics (though to be fair that's where the "left"'s movement has historically been the most documented). It is a good entry point, but then I would strongly recommend to up the ante with Graeber's and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though they are often made to function in that way, the terms ‘the Left’ and ‘Socialism’ are not fully interchangeable. Shlomo Sands argues that the Left emerged out of the struggle against the unequal treatment of human beings which took conscious form at the onset of the modern period of history.

The accident of the seating arrangements in the National Constituent Assembly of France on 28 August 1789 gave rise to the use of ‘the Left’ as the descriptor for the deputies who voted against the right of the king to veto decisions of the nation’s elected representatives and who just happened to be sitting on that side of the room. But Sand points to a longer gestation for the idea, tracing it to the advocacy of equality on the part of the Leveller and Digger currents during the English Civil War and then, in a more articulated form, in the political work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in mid-eighteen century Geneva.

Seeing in inequality “the first source of evil” as Rousseau proclaimed, marked out something which went beyond abstract philosophy and became, by the time of the French Revolution, the programme of action of the Jacobin party. Its further evolution in the early nineteenth century led to its incorporation into the work of the socialist movement as it worked through its utopian and scientific phases. As it moved in this direction, however, the centrality of fighting inequality became diminished as the influence of Marxism urged higher consideration being given to the struggle against exploitation.

Sand’s history to this point is in danger of being branded Eurocentric in its conception and by the time he gets to chapter 8 he moves on to consider inequality as it took form in the struggles against colonialism and fascism. By chapters 12 and 13 he moves on Maoism and Chinese communism and the ‘Socialist Imaginary in Post-colonial countries.’ Later on Leftism is considered in contexts as varied as Latin America, the civil rights movement in the US, and gender oppression and women’s liberation.

By the time we get to these points the coherence of the argument has broken down somewhat and it is difficult to trace the importance of his earlier insights into inequality as the wellspring of Leftism and, for example, what was going on during the ‘Hundred Blooming Flowers’ period in the People’s Republic of China. This is a shame because Sand’s complaint that the wanning of the ‘modern myth of equality’ is the reason why the Left (and by extension, socialism in all its forms) has been drained of so much vitality in the early decades of the current century. Is he pleading for a way to revive it as a new foundational myth with the potential for inspiriting the mass of humanity across the globe? Maybe, but it will the work of other books and perhaps other authors to move us beyond the gloomy point where the history finishes.

[Jamie Molea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shlomo Sand does a great job summarising the history of the left in this. He goes back to the origins socialism, from Jean Jaqués Rousseau in the sixteenth century, to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and their works the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.

The book also touches on its application: from the Russian revolution and Lenin and the Bolsheviks, to Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, and then to the rise of fascism and national socialism (which has nothing to do with socialism at all) in twentieth century Europe.

It’s challenging to put thoughts down on ideals of socialism. On the one hand, I empathise with the somewhat benevolent ideas of Marx, that workers must have some right or ownership over the means of production. This has led to many great initiatives over time including trade unions, minimum wages and general workers rights. On the other hand, the application of socialist ideas has been nothing further from it, and in many ways the exact opposite of the intentions of socialism. Notable examples include Stalin’s initiatives of rapid industrialization, and forced collectivization of agriculture; Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ and ‘Cultural Revolution’ - initiatives which led to the mass famines in both societies and the death of millions.

I think it’s also easy to criticise Marx’s general assumptions on class structure and his call to revolt against the bourgeoisie and for this to be actioned through unification of workers worldwide. Of course now, this is not the best way to go about change. But the context of Marx’s time must have been strong for him and so many of his followers to come to that conclusion. Looking back now, it is easy to overlook that class structure must have been an inherent part of society from 1800s and preceding centuries, and that the working class must have been subject to much exploitation by higher classes.

Notwithstanding, unsure where I’ve landed on conclusion. The left haven’t really gotten to a fixed position on where they ideally think society should be, and this has handicapped them a little, and played into the hands of their opposition. And I understand this has much to do with what they see the ideal outcomes for society to be. Could go on, but let’s leave it there.

[João Costa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Não foram nem a burocracia opressiva do estalinismo , nem os crimes do maoismo, nem a complacência da social-democracia com o colonialismo que conduziram ao atual descrédito da esquerda no mundo, ainda que todos estes elementos tenham contribuído para o seu enfraquecimento e para a desvalorização da própria palavra «socialismo». A desilusão nunca deixou de lhe fazer companhia desde a origem, mas isso não a impediu de renascer repetidamente e de conseguir manter um certo grau de conflitualidade social, ao mesmo tempo que contribuía para melhorar a situação de milhões de pessoas em todo o mundo."

Um apanhado histórico muito completo sobre a esquerda mundial. Aborda as suas origens, o seu papel nas Revoluções, as diferenças face a outros movimentos e ideologias, as especificidades da esquerda nos vários países e continentes, a sua posição face às guerras, ao colonialismo ou ao feminismo. Termina com o estado atual da esquerda, confuso e perdido, à procura do seu lugar num mundo em rápida mudança, repleto de desafios e perigos.

Ideal para qualquer pessoa que goste de política e/ou história, independentemente da sua cor política.

[César · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um excelente ensaio sobre a esquerda ou esquerdas, a sua origem e identificação com a igualdade. O surgimento das ideias de igualdade a par da esquerda, revisitando a Gloriosa Revolução de 1688, a Revolução Francesa como determinante de toda uma nova visão do homem e, claro, o materialismo de Marx e Engels.
Muito mais que isso, mostra a desilusão do autor com a esquerda. Gostei muito, esclarecedor e muoto bem feito . Nota-se que é o resultado de muita reflexão sobre o assunto.

[Jorge Pinto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um bom resumo da história da esquerda. Poderia ganhar com um pequeno capítulo sobre a ligação entre a esquerda e a defesa dos animais.

[Mario · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simplón y superficial.

[Francisco Spinoza · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Breve historia mundial de la izquierda”
Francisco Spinoza

Esta es una reseña de “Breve historia mundial de la izquierda” (2023), un libro escrito por Shlomo Sand, que es profesor de historia en la Universidad de Tel Aviv y conocido por “La invención del pueblo judío” (2008), “La invención de la tierra de Israel” (2012) y “¿El fin del intelectual francés? De Zola a Houellebecq” (2016), los cuatro publicados por la editorial Akal.

Sand parte de una crisis que identifica en los movimientos de la izquierda y que se origina en lo que denomina el borrado del “imaginario de la igualdad”, la principal fuerza motriz de la izquierda desde su nacimiento. Izquierda que, por otra parte, el autor no propone definir, porque considera que a pesar de que ha sido conceptualizada de forma distinta a lo largo de la historia, esta no debe ser entendida como una esencia, sino como “un fenómeno cuyo significado es siempre relativo”. Remata: “Toda izquierda tiene un ala derecha y [...] toda derecha tiene un ala izquierda” (p. 8), dinámica que piensa ha evolucionado a lo largo de los dos últimos siglos.

El interés de Sand es revisar lo que llama “el mito de la igualdad” en la historia de los movimientos de izquierda, que da inicio con la movilidad social en el siglo XVI. Sostiene que el concepto de “izquierda” debe correlacionar su aparición con la del concepto de “igualdad”, el cual se fue imponiendo en la conciencia humana y se trata de una noción que siempre se ha asociado a “cosas” diferentes entre sí y no a una “cosa” en sí misma.

¿Pero por qué lo llama “el mito de la igualdad”? Sand parte del uso que le da Georges Sorel, para quien un mito no se trata de “un imaginario engañoso o ilusorio del pasado o del presente, sino un conjunto de representaciones que une a un grupo humano y lo incita a la acción colectiva” (p. 12). Es precisamente esta idea con la que introduce e intenta revisarla desde la antigüedad con las ideas de Aristóteles y Platón, pasando por Rousseau, Marx, Engels, Nietzsche, e incluso las provenientes del cristianismo, para llegar a concluir: “Conviene precisar que, entre los diversos ejemplos históricos evocados, figuran críticas de la propiedad privada o de la injusticia social y económica, invocaciones a la generosidad para con los pobres y exaltadas proclamas en favor de la libertad, pero en todos ellos está completamente ausente la idea de igualdad universal” (p. 12).

Al contar esta historia es costumbre iniciar con la aparición de los términos “izquierda” y “derecha” en la asamblea constituyente francesa de 1789, cuando se tuvo que determinar si se mantenía o no el derecho a veto del rey sobre las decisiones de los representantes de la nación: los que se oponían a mantenerlo se agruparon en el lado izquierdo de la sala, mientras que los partidarios de conservarlo se concentraron en el lado derecho. No obstante, Sand decide partir de la Revolución inglesa de mediados del siglo XVII y la filosofía de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, la cual cobrará forma un siglo más tarde.

En el curso de esta historia se abordan tanto las figuras del comunismo utópico como las aportaciones de las figuras principales del anarquismo y anarcosindicalismo, los eventos que rodean la aparición del Manifiesto comunista de Marx y Engels y los caminos que toma el socialismo en Europa y el comunismo en China o Vietnam. Asimismo desarrolla cómo surge el “estado de bienestar” y culmina con el modelo nórdico. Dedica solamente un capítulo a América Latina.

Si bien Sand pretende ofrecer un balance histórico (“demasiado corto e incompleto”), de los éxitos y de los fracasos de la izquierda, se concentra mucho en mostrar las contradicciones y desatinos de la izquierda y en enfatizar la incoherencia entre los autores y su ideario político. Característico de esta época que no puede distinguir al autor de la obra, para cada pensador mencionado nos recordará que era xenófobo, judeófobo o misógino. Del mismo modo, suele refutar a lo largo del libro muchas de las predicciones que elaboraron Marx y Engels.

Para los enterados, los eventos y personajes citados en el libro pueden resultar en una ruta ya conocida de la historia de la izquierda; pero para quienes quieran introducirse en el tema puede convertirse en un texto muy interesante de iniciación, que si bien se percibe escrito desde la decepción del contexto pandémico en que se produjo, impulsa a pensar que la izquierda, como concluyó Galileo, “sin embargo ¡se mueve!”.