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Presentation with the title "Bread, Peace and Suffrage: The Role of the Political Left in the Swedish Protest Cycles of 1917-1918" at the Conference Crisis and Mobilization Since 1789 organized by International Scholars' Network History of Societies and Socialisms (HOSAS) in Amsterdam February 22-24, 2013.

This article is an attempt to analyse the emerging relationship between the political Left and new social movements and NGOs in the contemporary time. The relationship between Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad and CPI (M) is a case in point. The example shows that the cooperation between the political left and NGOs changes the policies of the former, which makes it more capable for fruitful intervention in civil society based on a 'discursive strategy'. Historical explanation of the relationship between the Left and Parishad proves that both have been benefited from this. It is widely acknowledged that the KSSP has been recognized by the CPM as a stake holder in the implementation of public policies since the Total Literacy Campaign in the late 1980s. However, the cooperation invited criticism from the orthodox Marxists and the political opponents of CPI M) recently. The sensitive debate on the cooperation between the two organisations in the People's Plan Campaign, a programme for decentralised development and planning at the local level during the Left Democratic Front in 1997-2001 became an issue in the group-war within the party recently. The debate gives reflections on the challenges and prospects of the political left to establish tie-up with civil society organisations. Adapted from the source document.

We report evidence that individual-level variation in people's physiological and attentional responses to aversive and appetitive stimuli are correlated with broad political orientations. Specifically, we find that greater orientation to aversive stimuli tends to be associated with right-of-centre and greater orientation to appetitive (pleasing) stimuli with left-of-centre political inclinations. These findings are consistent with recent evidence that political views are connected to physiological predispositions but are unique in incorporating findings on variation in directed attention that make it possible to understand additional aspects of the link between the physiological and the political.

This article presents a new approach to the comparison of the meaning of social or political key terms in different national contexts. Instead of relying on classical statistical instruments such as t-tests of the mean attitudes, the author proposes to analyze value conflicts between the mentioned groups. In international surveys like the European Values Study (EVS) the related conflict data are not directly available but can be generated by microsimulation: for this purpose the article proposes to look at the value differences of randomly matched artificial pairs of respondents. The resulting dyadic data-records correspond to simulated virtual encounters of persons with the same or different opinions about a political issue. In this way it becomes possible to measure the amount and the thematic focus of the value conflicts between the protagonists of a key term in different countries: the absence of conflicts between these groups points to the same meaning of the key term, whereas dissent about its attributes is an indicator of semantic differences. The benchmark for assessing these international inter-group conflicts are the national intra-group conflicts, which are generally underestimated. Consequently, an application of the proposed method to an artificial dataset with systematically varying statistical properties suggests that the traditional t-tests of mean attitudes overestimate the international group differences. By considering the internal ideological variation of the compared groups we probably get a more realistic assessment of their international similarities and differences. Thus we dare to tackle with the proposed virtual encounter method a real world problem: the comparative analysis of the values of the political left in Sweden, France, and the UK on the basis of attitudes gathered in the European Values Study (2008). A major result is that income equality is revealed to be an important common value of the political left in the three countries mentioned. Finally, the article points to the possibility of comparing different intra-national groups with regard to their ideologies. By the virtual encounter method it is possible to focus the analysis on a particular country and compare e.g. its national parties or different generations of partisans.

This article presents a new approach to the comparison of the meaning of social or political key terms in different national contexts. Instead of relying on classical statistical instruments such as t-tests of the mean attitudes, the author proposes to analyze value conflicts between the mentioned groups. In international surveys like the European Values Study (EVS) the related conflict data are not directly available but can be generated by microsimulation: for this purpose the article proposes to look at the value differences of randomly matched artificial pairs of respondents. The resulting dyadic data-records correspond to simulated virtual encounters of persons with the same or different opinions about a political issue. In this way it becomes possible to measure the amount and the thematic focus of the value conflicts between the protagonists of a key term in different countries: the absence of conflicts between these groups points to the same meaning of the key term, whereas dissent about its attributes is an indicator of semantic differences. The benchmark for assessing these international inter-group conflicts are the national intra-group conflicts, which are generally underestimated. Consequently, an application of the proposed method to an artificial dataset with systematically varying statistical properties suggests that the traditional t-tests of mean attitudes overestimate the international group differences. By considering the internal ideological variation of the compared groups we probably get a more realistic assessment of their international similarities and differences. Thus we dare to tackle with the proposed virtual encounter method a real world problem: the comparative analysis of the values of the political left in Sweden, France, and the UK on the basis of attitudes gathered in the European Values Study (2008). A major result is that income equality is revealed to be an important common value of the political left in the three countries mentioned. Finally, the article points to the possibility of comparing different intra-national groups with regard to their ideologies. By the virtual encounter method it is possible to focus the analysis on a particular country and compare e.g. its national parties or different generations of partisans.

I examine why contemporary social scientists on the political left are relatively pessimistic about the public arena and its trajectory. To develop an answer, I explore subsidiary questions: What is the evidence of social scientists' left pessimism? Why is left pessimism not the only plausible stance? Why is left pessimism problematic, and surprising? Why does it nonetheless occur? How can social scientists counter left pessimism?My evidence comes mainly from research on American racial and ethnic politics, and on the societal use of genomic science. I explain left pessimism as a result largely of the trajectory of social science research since the 1960s, and of the loss of faith in revolutionary inspiration after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I call on social scientists to reinvigorate optimistic visions, perhaps especially in a political era fraught with dangers to liberal democracy.

Tras los pasos del éxito de la izquierda latinoamericana, en Europa dos partidos políticos, Podemos y Syriza, claramente de izquierdas, pueden tomar el poder. Sus métodos, símbolos y estrategias comunicativas son muy novedosos en el panorama clásico de la izquierda europea. Nos acercaremos a ellos desde un punto de vista semiológico.

Active participation in political parties is an important condition for the functioning of political democracy. On the political Left, however, the role of the party activist is under pressure from both internal and external changes in the political culture. Catching up with continental European socialist parties, the leadership of the British Labour Party has progressively changed policy priorities and now its socialist ideology. Externally, `new social movements' are said to be promoting new political aims and new forms of activism. A case-study of the influence of these factors on the commitment and participation of members, and ex-members, of a typical southern constituency Labour Party suggests that `new social movements' do not constitute a rival attraction to these members, ex-members, and activists. Their commitment is, however, being reduced by personal economic and social pressures and their dissonant adherence to traditional values of British socialism. To the extent that political involvement depends on motivation by values or ideological principles this study suggests a decline in party political activism, and a possible obstacle to a `grass roots' recovery by Labour in Southern England.

The current status of the political Left is examined. Belief in socialism stems from outrage over social injustice. Zeal & moral outrage do not in themselves produce a socialist; a true socialist must act on this zeal, following a coherent political philosophy that identifies not only symptoms but also causes of social injustice. Though the collapse of Eastern European regimes suggests the end of socialism, it will remain as long as power is concentrated in the hands of the few & social injustice persists. The content & form of socialism may change with changing social & political conditions, but socialism is founded in the commonsense proposition that the world is a better place if each individual is allowed to make his or her full contribution to society. D. Generoli