Global Histories of the Left During the 1970s
University of Oxford, Friday 2 October 2026, 11am-5pm
Balliol College, Broad St, Oxford OX1 3BJ
Please email labournetwork@torch.ac.uk if you would like to attend
This day conference aims to rethink the global history of the Left and its unrealized trajectories during the global crises of the 1970s. That decade has long been associated with the long-term decline of the global Left and labour movements and the rise of alternative ideologies on the other side of politics and society. In this view, three interlocking structural, political, and cultural shifts undermined the former and strengthened the latter. De-industrialisation undermined the labour perspective in the West, political fragmentation weakened the quest for liberation in the Global South, and the rise of individualism, ‘new social movements’, and ‘neoliberalism’ challenged the solidarity and power of subaltern movements worldwide. This conference seeks to understand those years in a different light. It analyses those years as a period of paradox rather than decline for the global Left. Contrary to received wisdom, movements across the world grew in strength and confidence this period in the context of economic restructuring and crisis, setbacks for popular sovereignty, and countervailing ideologies and elite strategies. What do the real and imagined trajectories of the global Left in that decade tell us about the history of the twentieth century?
The conference perspective is comparative and multidisciplinary and incorporates history, political economy, sociology, international relations, and other methodologies. Contributions address the thought and practice of mass political organizations, attempts at planning on the scale of the state, and various forms of oppositional movement across continents from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. Speakers pose the question of political and movement strategy at national, regional, international levels through the narratives, strategies, and contexts of party, state, and movement actors. The primary political parties and political movements associated with the Left and organised labour, subaltern groups, and popular forces in their respective regions, territories, and states are the primary focus. Papers address opportunities and highlight contexts and choices of the major socialist, communist, and social democratic parties and movements in interlocking crises, where conditions of possibility were dialectically articulated at the political, social, economic, and cultural levels. Contributors concern themselves with a case within one or more countries within Europe, North America, South America, South Asia, South East Asia, and the Middle East:
- Antonio Ciccone, ‘The Italian Communist Party and social struggles in the 1970s. The case of Naples’ (University Roma Tre)
- Ettore Costa, ‘Socialist Exits from Crisis: Swedish Social Democratic and Italian Communist Strategies for Investment and Innovation (1968–1975)’ (Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Naples)
- Gautham Shiralagi, ‘A Prose of Counter-Autonomy? Organised and Surplus Labour at the End of Development in the Indian 1970s’ (Columbia University)
- Gerard Serralabós Ferré, ‘Property contested: the global dimension of the Chilean way to socialism (1970- 1973)’ (GREECS, University of Barcelona)
- Guadalupe Seia, ‘Rethinking Student Movements in the 1970s: The Latin American Continental Organisation of Students (OCLAE) and the Continuity of Left-Wing Activism’ (Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana "Dr. Emilio Ravignani" Universidad de Buenos Aires) (Online)
- Jorge Fontes, ‘Three Lefts in a Revolutionary Crisis: Socialist, Communist and Radical-Left Strategies in Portugal’s Long 1970s’ (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, Lisbon)
- Martín Cortés, ‘The Long Way Round: Eurocommunism and the Disavowed Latin American Roots of a European Debate’ (University of Buenos Aires/Princeton) (Online)
- Nathanial George, ‘Confronting Zionism, Imperialism, and Arab Reaction: Debates on the Arab Left in the Long 1970s’ (SOAS)
- Neil Warner, ‘“Like a pancake on wet pavement”: Everyday resonance, asymmetric mobilisation, and the failure of alternatives to neoliberalism in Western Europe, 1973-83’ (LSE)
- Yueran Zhang, ‘The Eastern European Inspiration in the Reenvisioning of Socialism in China’ (University of Chicago) (Online)
Please email labournetwork@torch.ac.uk if you would like to attend. We have a small fund to support the travel expenses for those coming from outside Oxford.
