University of Oxford, Monday 21st September 2025
This conference aims to rethink the global history of the Left and its unrealized trajectories during the global crises of the long 1970s. The perspective is comparative and multidisciplinary and incorporates history, political economy, sociology, and international relations approaches. Contributions will address the strategy of mass political organizations, attempts at planning on the scale of ‘really existing’ socialist states, and various forms of oppositional movement across all inhabited continents from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. It will pose the question of the scalar 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/or with organised labour, subaltern groups, and popular forces in their respective regions, territories, and states is the primary focus of the conference. It will address opportunities—real, imagined, and unrealized—and highlight contexts and choices of the major socialist, communist, and social democratic parties and movements in the interlocking crises of the ‘long’ 1970s, where conditions of possibility were dialectically articulated at the social, economic, and cultural levels. We ask that papers concern themselves with a case within one (or more) countries within the following spatial arenas: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, the Middle East, Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and Australasia.
If you would like to participate, please submit a paper abstract of 300 words and a short note about yourself by 31 March to labournetwork@torch.ox.ac.uk. Pre-circulated papers are to be submitted to the organisers by 1 September 2025. This is primarily an in-person conference; if you would need to participate via video link, please specify with your abstract. There are no conference fees. Travel and accommodation support can be provided on request.