The Greek Left has had a decisive influence on some periods of Greek history in the 20th and 21st centuries. While the resistance in the Second World War still offered the chance to build a Greece with less clientelism, the British intervention, which aimed to restore the monarchy, soon re-established the pre-war patronage system that still exists today.

In his study, Heinz A. Richter examines the development of the Greek Left from 1900 to the present within the respective general historical background. The description begins with the formation of the trade unions and follows the path of the emergence of Greece's first socialist party through its transformation into the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) until the beginning of World War II. After the end of the civil war, the United Democratic Left (EDA) was formed, whose relations with the KKE are analyzed in detail. A chapter on the period of the military dictatorship shows how the KKE split into an orthodox party in exile (KKEex.) and a Eurocommunist KKEesoterikou. The new left-wing parties that emerged after the fall of the military junta are presented in the last part of the book. Until today, there was no democratic left that governed the country. Richter anchors the reasons for this in the patronage-based political culture, which is not only largely responsible for Greece's debt crisis but is also incompatible with a socialist party program.