Introduction

The first part of the introduction explains the background and motivation of the book: the context and the formation of new left politics and expertise in Eastern Europe in the last two decades, the challenges of communicating new left perspectives regionally and globally in the context of established communication and research infrastructures; and the book’s place within ongoing efforts to make such dialogues possible. The second part of the introduction outlines common baselines and lessons offered by the perspectives presented in the book. On the one hand, these are made up by common threads in the various left research traditions authors subscribe to—like a critical political economy perspective and a materialist approach to the history of politics and political ideas—and their consequences in terms of similarities of local diagnoses—like the claim that the political level of the regime change in 1989–1991 is preceded by a transformation of socio-economic structures and world-economic integration similar to the neoliberalization of other semi-peripheries from the 1970’s. On the other hand, some common elements are specific to the context and history of East European socio-political constellations and the position of new left thought within them—like the issue of anticommunist or anticorruption campaigns. The third part of the introduction explains the structure of the book, the selection of authors and their relation to respective local new left scenes, and provides an outline of each chapter.