17 Facts About New Left

New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms.

Some who self-identified as "New Left" rejected involvement with the labor movement and Marxism's historical theory of class struggle, although others gravitated to their own takes on established forms of Marxism and Marxism–Leninism, such as the New Communist movement in the United States or the K-Gruppen in the German-speaking world.

New Left rejected the theory of class struggle and the Marxist concern with labor.

New Left regarded the realization of man's erotic nature, or Eros, as the true liberation of humanity, which inspired the utopias of Jerry Rubin and others.

Under the long-standing editorial leadership of Perry Anderson, the New Left Review popularised the Frankfurt School, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser and other forms of Marxism.

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Some within the British New Left joined the International Socialists, which later became Socialist Workers Party while others became involved with groups such as the International Marxist Group.

The politics of the British New Left can be contrasted with Solidarity, which continued to focus primarily on industrial issues.

Term "New Left" was popularised in the United States in an open letter written in 1960 by sociologist C Wright Mills entitled Letter to the New Left.

New Left opposed what it saw as the prevailing authority structures in society, which it termed "The Establishment", and those who rejected this authority became known as "anti-Establishment".

The New Left focused on social activists and their approach to organization, convinced that they could be the source for a better kind of social revolution.

Some in the US New Left argued that since the Soviet Union could no longer be considered the world center for proletarian revolution, new revolutionary Communist thinkers had to be substituted in its place, such as Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro.

Isserman reports that the New Left "came to use the word 'liberal' as a political epithet".

US New Left drew inspiration first from the civil disobedience of the civil rights movement, particularly the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and then from black radicalism, particularly the Black Power movement and the more explicitly Maoist and militant Black Panther Party.

The New Left was marked by the invention of the modern environmentalist movement, which clashed with the Old Left's disregard for the environment in favor of preserving the jobs of union workers.

Port Huron Statement participant Jack Newfield wrote in 1971 that "in its Weathermen, Panther and Yippee incarnations, [the New Left] seems anti-democratic, terroristic, dogmatic, stoned on rhetoric and badly disconnected from everyday reality".

In contrast, the more moderate groups associated with the New Left increasingly became central players in the Democratic Party and thus in mainstream American politics.

European New Left appeared first in West Germany and West Berlin, which became a prototype for European student radicals.