Information on the thesis

The evolution of left-wing political parties during the 20th and 21st centuries provided a quantity of interesting empirical materials which require complex scientific comprehension. Here author means how the changes taking place in the external socio-political and socio-economic environment forced socialist, social democratic and communist parties to resort to significant ideological and organizational transformations, which allowed them to successfully adapt to these changes and, consequently, survive politically. Besides, the mentioned parties have not yet completed the search for effective strategies for ideological modernization and organizational development.

Considering the mentioned necessity of complex scientific comprehension of ideological and institutional evolution of left-wing political parties, including in Ukraine, and on the basis of fundamental approaches to the conceptualization of organizational and ideological development of parties, the thesis has developed a complex methodological author’s conception for the research of ideological and organizational evolution of political parties. In the framework of methodological logic of the author’s research strategy on the study of the ideological and institutional evolution of political parties, the thesis has investigated the main directions of ideological and organizational development of the left-wing parties. In particular, the main stages of the formation of basic ideological principles and party institutionalization of the left political forces in the second half of the 19th century have been determined. The peculiarities of the formation of the socialist (social democratic) and communist parties have been established. The specificity of anarcho-syndicalism as an ideological and institutional alternative to the development of the left-wing movement in the format of political parties has been explored. The basic trajectories of ideological and organizational evolution of the communist and socialist (social democratic) parties in the 20th and 21st centuries have been established.

It has been substantiated that the collapse of “real socialism” and the collapse of the USSR resulted in the global crisis of the communist movement and, therefore, forced communist parties to search for a new ideological identity and organizational modernization strategies for effective adaptation to a new socio-political and socio-economic reality. The range of the results of ideological renovation, which is directly included in the new (post-communist) context of the development of the international left-wing movement, is placed in an interval that on the one hand is limited by the preservation of orthodox identity of communist parties, from which they address the new challenges of social evolution, and on the other – the complete transition of the former communist parties to the ideological foundations of social democracy. Organizational modernization of communist parties after the collapse of the USSR correlated with their search for a new ideological identity. Therefore, the range of the results of this modernization is placed in an interval that on the one hand is limited by the preservation of loyalty to the Leninist organizational principles of democratic centralism, and, on the other, by the full transition to the organizational foundations of the social democratic parties.

It has been substantiated that today the promising direction of ideological evolution of socialist and social democratic parties is the creation of an ideological platform that will effectively combine traditional and modern ideological attitudes of social democrats and, partially, of their ideological opponents. In addition, it has been proved that the organizational transformations of socialist and social democratic parties that accompany their ideological searches are aimed only at the formation of intraparty dominant coalitions in support of a particular vector of ideological modernization. That is, they are related to an attempt to minimize the influence of their internal opponents on the development of party politics, but at the same time, they absolutely do not mean the elimination of the intraparty democracy. It has been substantiated that the preservation of the importance of the ideological component both at the level of party activity and in the social dimension (for ordinary voters) has not created favorable opportunities for full adaptation of the organizational model of the “catch-all” party by the left-wing parties. Therefore, the most optimal variant of organizational development for these parties is the adoption of a hybrid model of the “modern cadre party”.

Keywords: political party, ideology, organizational structure of political party, party changes, the left, social democracy, communism, anarcho-syndicalism, “new left”, “third way”.