Transformations and Crises: The Left and the Nation in Denmark and Sweden, 1956-1980

The Left in the 1960s and 1970s has a powerful, almost mythical, place in the history of the 20th century. It was during these decades that the radical Left managed to renew the language of socialism as an alternative to communism and liberalism alike, but also when radicalism often led to extremism and social movements turned into political sects. Focusing on the Left in Denmark and Sweden during those turbulent decades, this study pays close attention to the political language in the two countries and shows the constant challenge to the concepts of the Left in the face of rapid social, cultural and political changes. The precarious relationship between the Left and the nation serves as a starting point for the exploration of the development of the New Left after the break with communism, the subsequent student revolts and radicalization of the late 1960s until the movement’s apparent collapse at the end of the 1970s. This book illustrates the challenges the Left was facing in its attempt to articulate a credible political language at a time of social, cultural and political transformation.

Thomas Ekman Jørgensen received his PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, in 2004. He has published a number of articles on the left in the 1960s and 1970s, on comparative European history and on youth movements around the Great War. In 2008, he published 1968 – og det der fulgte (1968 – and that which came after) together with Steven L. B. Jensen. He presently lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.