This book explores the relationship between diverse social movements and Marxist historical cultures during the second half of the twentieth century in Western Europe, with special emphasis on the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy. During the Cold War, Marxist ideas and understandings of history informed not only the traditional Communist Parties in Western Europe, but also influenced a range of new social movements that emerged in the 1970s in the wake of the 1968 student rebellions. The generation of 1968 was strongly influenced by neo-Marxist ideas that they subsequently carried into the new social movements. The volume asks how Marxist historical cultures influenced third world movements, anti-fascist movements, the peace movement and a whole host of other new social movements that signaled a new vibrancy of civil society in Western Europe from the 1970s onwards.
Author(s): Stefan Berger, Christoph Cornelissen
Series: Palgrave Studies In The History Of Social Movements
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 333
Tags: European History, Social Movements, Cold War
Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii
Marxism and Social Movements: A Forgotten History? (Stefan Berger, Christoph Cornelissen)....Pages 1-32
Marxist Historical Cultures, ‘Antifascism’ and the Legacy of the Past: Western Europe, 1945–1990 (Arnd Bauerkämper)....Pages 33-64
Marxist Historians, Communist Historical Cultures and Transnational Relations in Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s (Thomas Kroll)....Pages 65-87
Left-Wing Historiography in Italy During the 1950s (Gilda Zazzara)....Pages 89-113
Remembering the Revolution: Neo-Marxist Interpretations of the German Revolution 1918/1919—A Challenge for Cold War Historiography (Ralf Hoffrogge)....Pages 115-139
Politically Engaged Scholarship in Social Movement Studies (Dieter Rucht)....Pages 141-162
‘…Two Monstrous Antagonistic Structures’: E. P. Thompson’s Marxist Historical Philosophy and Peace Activism During the Cold War (Stefan Berger, Christian Wicke)....Pages 163-185
The Historical Cultures of the 1960s’ West German Peace Movement: A Learning Process? (Alrun Berger)....Pages 187-216
Fugacious Marxisms: Some Thoughts on the Aesthetics of Marxism in the West German Student Movement (1961–1972) (Benedikt Sepp)....Pages 217-234
Dispersion and Synchronization: Surge and Crises of the New Left in West German Leftist Periodicals in 1959 and 1976 (David Bebnowski)....Pages 235-255
The Hour of the Gun: Anti-imperialist Struggle as the New Left’s Hope of Salvation in Germany and Italy (Petra Terhoeven)....Pages 257-287
Third Worldism in Italy (Guido Panvini)....Pages 289-308
Back Matter ....Pages 309-322
