For the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution conservative parties of the EU organised a whole series of events dealing with the heritage of communist regimes. The Estonian Presidency of the EU issued invitations to an August 2017 conference titled ‘The Legacy of the Crimes of Communist Regimes...
The challenge facing European political democracy is reflected in the fragmentation of its historical consciousness. With a new monetary system (1944), the Marshall Plan (1947), and NATO (1950) a solid supranational network was erected under US leadership that coexisted peacefully with the...
The revision of the history – European and worldwide – of what Hobsbawm called ‘The Short Twentieth Century’ (1914-1991) by means of equating Communism to Nazism has an impact on European integration in terms of fuelling nationalisms and the geostrategic conflict between the West – mainly the US –...
The Balkan Peninsula has played a special role in Europe’s political imagination. For the greater part of contemporary history this region figured as a kind of barbaric wasteland. Barbaric in the original sense of the word, that is, of people speaking incomprehensible languages. Beyond this...
What is ecosocialism?
Ecosocialism is a political current based on an essential insight: that the preservation of the ecological equilibrium of the planet and therefore of an environment favourable to living species – including our own – is incompatible with the expansive and destructive logic of...
Contemporary assumptions about democracy are still darkly shadowed by the whole process of post-Communist transition since 1989. In that Eastern European context, the prospects for democracy were thought to rest not on popular participation, but on two types of restructuring: one affecting the...
Globalisation is increasingly influencing us. On the one side, it opens up new forms of a networked internet civilisation; on the other side, it entails irresolvable contradictions. The events of the recent period show that today, both for the West and for Russian society, it is not the challenge of...
At the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century, the left in Europe is in such a state that it seems to have come to the end of a long history. Split up between different components, it appears to be headed for extinction. Not only observers but also some governmental representatives...
The undermining of commodity production began one hundred years ago with a qualitative leap in the manipulation of market and consumption by corporations. No anti-cartel legislation can touch the market power of the largest capitals. Today the market does not primarily stimulate effectiveness but...
I.
Preparing for the year 2014 gave historians a lot of work to do. The centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 called forth many books on the character, origins, and consequences of this explosion of violence when the ‘lamps were going out all over Europe’. The war put an...
On 24 March transform!europe organised a debate on the ‘European House of History’ (HEH) project in order to elaborate critical approaches to the public use of history and particularly the creation of HEH decided on and funded by the European Parliament in 2009 with the explicit aim of constituting...
The following text is taken from the manuscript of Eric Hobsbawm’s opening address to the international conference organised by Espaces Marx on the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto and held at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 1998. The text was subsequently included in slightly revised versions in books published in France, Germany and the UK. We thank Hinrich Kuhl for his support.
In the discussion of an alternative economic order the terms “producers’ democracy” and “workers’ self-management” are inseparably bound up with the “Yugoslav experiment”. The “Third Way” of Yugoslav socialism acted as an important point of reference in the debates of the international left. When...
In autumn 2008 the world experienced a financial crash, which brought the financial markets to the outer edge of collapse. Then peace returned (or more accurately: organised pacification), until another issue gave new cause for worry. Now it was the nation-states – because they (allegedly or really)...
Between the end of feudalism and a future society, the bourgeois epoch is spread out like a battlefield on which everything is civic and cosy so long as the countries, between military wars, can revel in mere financial wars and economic crises.
Happily, the much vaunted bourgeoisie has lost its...
Find here a non-exhaustive list of the most recent publications on Rosa Luxemburg's life and work - all released in 2019, the year of the 100th anniversary of her murder.
On Saturday, 19 October, transform! europe’s member organisation Fundació l’Alternativa celebrated the XII edition of the Race and Walk Lluís Companys – an event that bundles historical memory, giving voice to republican values, sports and culture. An active and festive way of claiming peace culture and solidarity between peoples and nations.
The board of transform! europe launches the following open letter regarding the resolution 'Europe must remember its past to build its future', adopted by the majority of the European Parliament – rejected by the GUE/NGL group.
On left silence and the foreign-policy motivation behind the revision of history contained in the European Parliament's resolution. Read Luciana Castellina's comment.
Last Thursday the European Parliament adopted by majority the resolution on the Importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe. Read the statement of the International Federation of Resistance Fighters Association of Anti-fascists on this "ideological relapse into the worst times of the cold war".
For the third time already, present:history and transform! europe organize a history study trip to Greece. This time, we focused on Athens and the history of the Greek left since the 1940s for our main questions: Which role does history play for current political struggles? How can we talk about the...
Walter Baier on Austro-Marxism at the International Conference ‘The Left Alternatives in the 20th Century: Drama of Ideas and Personal Stories' in Moscow.
To mark the 100th anniversary of the Austrian Republic, transform! europe and the Jahoda-Bauer Institute held a conference about the prospects for a common strategy for the Danube region and Central Europe. The event was supported financially by the Republic of Austria’s Fund for the Future and the Party of the European Left.
The 55th ITH Conference (5-7 September 2019, Linz/ Upper Austria) investigates the topic of “Working on the Land”, aiming to strengthen the links between labour history and rural history.
On 10 November, 1,200 people came together at the Klagenfurt exhibition space for an impressive event to mark the 70th anniversary of the ‘Association of Carinthian Partisans and Friends of the Anti-Fascist Resistance’/Zveza koroških partizanov in prijateljev antifašističnega odpora.
Both bourgeois and left historiographies contain many gaps and alienating views regarding women. Especially since 1968, Feminists have begun to fill these gaps. Following Frigga Haug, I’d like to connect Marxist and feminist historiography.
We proudly present the book “Historical Memory of Central and East European Communism”, published by Routledge in the series “Routledge Studies in Cultural History”.
transform.at organised together with others on 10 March, in Vienna, a symposium entitled “Austria 1938-2018. The victim/perpetrator discourse and the Austrian resistance”.
On the background of this year’s 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution Jiří Dolejš contemplates the role of revolutionary turmoil and its impact on the human society as well as the requirements under which a real change can be achieved.
After a long quarantine, “revolution” is back as a topic of historiographical debate. The upcoming anniversary of 1917 – arguably one of, if not the most momentous event of the 20th century – has further fuelled this renewed interest.
Geoff Eley, Professor for Contemporary History at the University of Michigan, speaks of the crisis of hegemony and the crisis of representation, produced by the dislocations and de-legitimisations of the processes of capitalist restructuring and class recomposition. He also analyses the Left's challenges and the right's responses in addressing this dual crisis.
The 51st ITH Conference (24-26 September 2015) investigates the topic of “work and non-work” in an interdisciplinary perspective, in particular, from the point of view of the political construction of work and non-work.
On Friday, 14 February 2014, the AKADEMIA Network of transform! europe organised a workshop about the history of Europe. This workshop was a follow-up to the founding meeting organised in April 2013, which brought together historians working with various member organisations of our network and was supported by MEP Marie-Christine Vergiat from the GUE/NGL Group (Front de Gauche, France).
On 24 March 2013, transform! europe organised a workshop with historians who collaborate with the member foundations of the network. The central question was how to elaborate critical approaches to the public usages of history and, more particular, vis-à-vis the creation of the House of European History (HEH), established by the European Parliament in 2009 with the explicit aim to constitute a public European identity.
He survived the “short 20th century” by more than two decades. Eric J. Hobsbawm had been one of the great thinkers that past century gave birth to. By profession a historian, he was a story-teller and historical philosopher at the same time who practised historiography as social history. In the...
In recent years Europe has experienced an unexpected rise in the power and influence of the far-right. At the same time, some of the traditionally most important left-wing parties experienced their demise. To shed a light on the interconnectedness of these two processes, transform! europe offers this eDossier.