The Crisis of the German Left: The PDS, Stalinism and the Global Economy

by Peter Thompson

Thompson (German, U. of Sheffield, Britain) investigates the development of identify and opinion in the former East Germany since 1990 within the context of long waves and trends in 20th-century Germany. He focuses on the shift from politics to economics as the dominant concern beginning in the middle 1970s, seeing there the seed of the push to create finance capital and neo-liberal short-termism—glibbed as globalism—that has replaced the productivist imperative. The PDS, the successor to the Communist Party, he finds to be enjoying considerable popularity as a regional party, but unable to expand its success to the national level. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

144 pages, Library Binding

First published January 5, 2005

About the author

Peter Thompson is Sydney Mayer Lecturer in Early American History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. Cross College.