Cette thèse de doctorat est une biographie politique de Paul Levi, militant marxiste qui a fait carrière en Allemagne durant la période de l’entre-deux-guerres. Dès 1914, Levi incarne un courant radical à l’intérieur du Parti social-démocrate d’Allemagne (SPD). Il dénonce, entre autres, aux côtés de Rosa Luxemburg l’appui du parti à l’effort militaire national. Levi s’inspire également de Lénine qu’il rencontre pour la première fois en Suisse en 1916-1917. Lorsqu’il prend les commandes du Parti communiste d’Allemagne (KPD) en 1919, Levi dirige celui-ci d’une main de fer, selon le concept du « centralisme démocratique ». Il fait également tout en son pouvoir pour faire éclater la révolution ouvrière en Allemagne afin d’installer une dictature du prolétariat qui exclurait toutes les classes non ouvrières du pouvoir. En ce sens, Levi imagine un État socialiste semblable à celui fondé par Lénine en Russie en 1917. Contrairement à l’historiographie traditionnelle, notre thèse montre conséquemment que Levi n’était guère un « socialiste démocrate ». Il était plutôt un militant marxiste qui, par son radicalisme, a contribué à diviser le mouvement ouvrier allemand ce qui, en revanche, a fragilisé la république de Weimar. Cette thèse fait également ressortir le caractère résolument rebelle de Paul Levi. Partout où il passe, Levi dénonce les politiques bourgeoises des partis non-ouvriers, mais aussi celles de la majorité des organisations dont il fait partie, c’est-à-dire les partis ouvriers de la république de Weimar et le Reichstag. Son tempérament impulsif fait de lui un homme politique isolé qui, d’ailleurs, se fait de nombreux ennemis. En 1921, à titre d’exemple, il se brouille avec d’importants bolcheviques, ce qui met fin à sa carrière au sein du KPD. Les communistes voient désormais en lui un ennemi de la classe ouvrière et mènent contre lui de nombreuses campagnes diffamatoires. Levi, de son côté, dénonce ouvertement la terreur stalinienne qui, selon lui, est en train de contaminer le mouvement communiste européen. Notre travail montre également que Levi, cette fois en tant qu’avocat juif, lutte corps et âme contre les nazis. En 1926, dans le cadre d’une commission d’enquête publique du Reichstag chargée de faire la lumière sur des meurtres politiques commis en Bavière, il tente par tous les moyens d’inculper certains criminels nazis. Levi est conséquemment la cible de la presse antisémite allemande. Il refuse toutefois de céder à l’intimidation et choisit plutôt de poursuivre en justice quelques-uns des plus importants membres du Parti nazi, dont Alfred Rosenberg et Hitler lui-même, en plus de forcer de nombreux autres nazis à comparaître devant la commission d’enquête du Reichstag. Bref, si ce travail se veut critique envers la pensée révolutionnaire de Levi, il souligne aussi l’intégrité politique de cet homme dont les convictions sont demeurées inébranlables face aux dérives criminelles des extrêmes idéologiques de son époque. / This Ph.D. thesis is a political biography of Paul Levi, a German Marxist of the interwar period. Already in 1914, Levi embodied a radical faction within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Alongside Rosa Luxemburg, the leader of this same left wing, he is contesting, above all, the party’s participation in the national war effort. But Levi is also inspired by Lenin, who he met in Switzerland in 1916-1917. In fact, when taking over the leadership of the German Communist Party (KPD) in March 1919, Levi ruled with an iron fist according to the theory of “democratic centralism”. As Lenin has done in Russia in October 1917, Levi also did everything in his power to promote a workers’ revolution in Germany in order to set in power a dictatorship of the proletariat, which would exclude all other social classes from sitting in the government. Consequently, in opposition to traditional historiography, this thesis shows that Levi was not a “democratic Socialist” of the Luxemburg school, but rather a Marxist whose political thought resembled that of the Bolsheviks. In fact, his action contributed to further weaken an already frail Weimar Republic and all its democratic institutions. This study also shows that Levi’s outstanding career was in large part the result of his rebellious character. Throughout his life, Levi consistently denounced the bourgeois politics of the non-workers’ parties, but he also systematically went against the majority within the political organizations in which he took part: the workers’ parties and the Reichstag. His impulsive nature set him apart as a solitary politician. In fact, Levi had many enemies. In 1921, he ran afoul of major Bolshevik leaders, which caused him to lose the leadership of the KPD. The Communists subsequently saw him as an enemy of the working class, slandering him in the press and in the Reichstag. Levi denounced, for his part, the Stalinist terror and made a mockery of the KPD, which had become, according to him, no more than a Soviet puppet. But this thesis also reveals that Levi, as a Jewish lawyer, led a major political campaign against the Nazis. In 1926, for example, as he served on a Reichstag public commission investigating Bavarian political assassinations, he tried by all possible means to charge important Nazis with murder. The Nazi press replied with a vicious anti-Semitic press campaign against him. Levi, however, refused to kneel before such intimidation and rather chose to sue important Nazi leaders, such as Alfred Rosenberg and Hitler himself before the court, in addition to summoning many others before the above-mentioned Reichstag commission. In the end, despite the fact that this study very critically evaluates Levi’s ideology, it praises his political integrity, which remained unshakable though faced with adversity and the criminal drift of the political extremes of the interwar period.

The thesis concentrates on Hofors and a local trade union environment between 1917 and 1946, where important parts of the trade union’s power were held by parties to the left of the social democrats. The overall aim is to problemize and discuss the issue of what characterised and made possible this deviation from the usual picture of a trade union movement dominated by social democracy. What characterised the conditions in such a local trade union environment and to what extent can local norms and political culture be linked to the conditions and the development in the trade union movement in Hofors? The factors behind the radicalism in Hofors can be found in the local union and political context. The investigation points out the following main reasons: the left-wing local council of the Social Democratic Party and its successors’ organisational lead, the local labour council’s working method being close to what has been considered “social democratic”, their representatives being highly trusted in the local community, and the growth of a local radical tradition. The political culture and the norms that gradually developed were based on a left-wing social democratic tradition. The local council of the Social Democratic Party that left the party in 1917 to join the left-wing social democratic faction was the same local council, despite their names and change of parties in the 1920s and 1930s. It became the local labour movement’s bearer of traditions and represented the continuity in the local trade union environment, which contributed to the leftwing socialist project being long-lived in Hofors. The central aspects were the trade union work and the practical-concrete tradition that developed. Primarily through successful trade union work, the local labour council and its trade union representatives gained strong and long-term support from a large proportion of the local trade union movement’s members and the population of Hofors. Against this background it may be stated that, even though it was often impossible for the parties to the left of social democracy to maintain a local trade union and political power position that was stronger than that of the social democrats for a lengthy period of time, it was not entirely impossible. It may also be stated that for the trade union member as such, a communist or socialist party affiliation was not a real obstacle in the election of shop stewards. Their focus was primarily put on the would-be representatives’ personal qualities and ability to live up to the demands and expectations placed on them by the members, and not so much on their ideological persuasion.

This paper examines how the eight parties in the Swedish parliament pit different social groups against each other, in the 2015 Almedalstal compared to the 2016 Almedalstal, when using the Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde’s definition of populism. The speeches are analysed using a qualitative content analysis. The results show that several parties are more populist in the 2016 speech than the 2015 speech and that the parties have shifted focus from solutions to blaming as well as elevating their own core electorate and their primary areas of confidence with the electorate. The analysis shows that some parties have tendencies to use some populist discourse. The paper identifies that the Swedish Democrats continues to use a populist discourse while the Left party has become more populist in their discourse in the 2016 speech. The Christian Democrats and the two major political parties, the Moderate party and the Social Democrats, tend to accentuate more of a populist discourse in the 2016 speeches but not to the extent to say that they use a populist discourse as defined by Mudde.

La thèse vise à appréhender la situation de la social-démocratie européenne et son évolution au cours des deux dernières décennies. Adoptant une approche comparatiste, elle repose sur l’étude du Parti socialiste français, du Parti social-démocrate allemand et du Parti travailliste britannique. En partant du projet de Troisième voie proposé par Tony Blair et les modernisateurs du New Labour, il s’agit de montrer la mutation doctrinale et programmatique de ces partis. Ceux-ci, avec des divergences et des spécificités nationales, ont, dans les programmes adoptés et les politiques gouvernementales menées, convergé vers une même orientation d’ensemble, marquée par un accueil beaucoup plus favorable aux thèses libérales. Cette prise de distance par rapport au modèle traditionnel pour tendre vers un paradigme social-libéral ne signifie pas pour autant l’abandon des valeurs propres à la social-démocratie. Les partis concernés ont essayé de s’adapter au nouveau contexte économique et social tout en préservant les principes et les idéaux sociaux sur lesquels ils se sont construits. Le socle identitaire de cette famille politique demeure ainsi largement préservé. Cette évolution idéologique s’accompagne d’une mutation des organisations partisanes qui l’accomplissent. Celles-ci ont connu à la fois une modification de leur sociologie, électorale et militante(caractérisée par une désaffection des soutiens traditionnels), et une diminution de leur ancrage dans la société liée à la baisse du nombre d’adhérents et à l’éloignement par rapport aux syndicats. Leur place au sein des systèmes partisans nationaux est également remise en cause : dans la recherche du bon positionnement sur l’échiquier politique, la question des alliances avec les autres partis constitue alors un enjeu essentiel. Le mode de fonctionnement de ces organisations a enfin lui aussi connu des modifications significatives. Les réformes internes menées par les dirigeants tendent à valoriser l’adhérent et accroître son rôle ; de nouvelles pratiques militantes, plus individualistes, apparaissent. La fonction et la spécificité de ces partis s’en trouvent diminuées. / The thesis aims to understand the situation of european social democracy and its evolution over the last two decades. Taking a comparative approach, it is based on the study of French Socialist Party, the German Social Democratic Party and the British Labour Party. Beginning from the Third Way project proposed by Tony Blair and New Labour modernizers, the matter is to show the doctrinal and programmatic transformation of these parties. These, with some differences and national characteristics, in the programs and policies undertaken, have converged towards the same overall direction, marked by a much more favorable reception to liberal theories. This distancing from the traditional model to move towards a social-liberal paradigm does not necessary mean the abandonment of values belonging to the Social Democrats. The parties involved have tried to adapt to new economic and social context while preserving the principles and social ideals on which they are built. The base of this political family’s identity remains largely well preserved. The ideological evolution goes with a mutation of partisan organizations who realize it. These have experienced both a change in their sociology, electoral and activist (characterized by a dis like of traditional supporters), and a decrease from their roots in society related to the decline in membership and distance against unions. Their position within the party systems is also questionned : in search of good positioning on the political spectrum, the question of alliances with other parties is then a key issue. The modus operandi of these organizations has finally also experienced significant changes. Internal reforms undertaken by the leaders tend to enhance the member and increase its role and new militant practices, more individualistic, appear. The function and specificity of these parties have diminished.

The Swedish ecological breakthrough of the late 1960’s and the early 1970’s entailed a rapid proliferation of competing perspectives on the environment, on man’s relation to it, and on the possible – dystopian or utopian – futures that lay ahead. By drawing on the theoretical concept of sociotechnical imaginaries as defined by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, this thesis aims to explore the critical role played by these perspectives, and by these visions of the future, during this formative period of the emerging environmental consciousness and of early Swedish environmental politics. With this purpose in mind, the thesis examines the sociotechnical imaginaries mobilized in three Swedish books on environmental politics written by politically concerned scientists, as well as the two first environmental manifests published by the ruling Social Democratic Party in 1968 and 1972. By comparing the imaginaries mobilized in each text, the thesis then argues that the party incorporated certain elements of the critical perspectives into the dominant paradigm, but that they never wavered in their commitment to industrial development. The thesis also shows how these environmental imaginaries were used to legitimize political power, as well as the social democratic hegemony.