A set of overlapping currents
There was no single European New Left. The phrase describes several overlapping currents which, by the mid-1960s, shared a dissatisfaction with both Western capitalism and the Soviet-style communism of the Eastern bloc, as well as with the older social democratic and communist parties of Western Europe. They differed in organisation, theory and tactics. This article describes the main strands and separates what happened in 1967 from what happened in 1968.
Where the New Left came from
The roots lie in the late 1950s. The Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the revelations about Stalin led many intellectuals to leave or question the communist parties. At the same time, colonial wars, nuclear weapons and consumer society produced fresh causes. The result was a political space between the established parties, filled by journals, discussion groups and student organisations. The American movement, with its own New Left origins and its Students for a Democratic Society, offered a model that Europeans watched, although the European groups followed their own histories.
West Germany: the SDS
The Socialist German Student League (SDS) had been the student organisation associated with the Social Democratic Party until the party expelled it in 1961. Freed from party discipline, it became a home for independent left-wing thinking, drawing on Marxist theory and on the Frankfurt School. By 1966-67 its leading figures included Rudi Dutschke in Berlin. The formation of a grand coalition between the main parties in December 1966 convinced many radicals that parliamentary opposition had disappeared.
The decisive 1967 flashpoint was 2 June, when the student Benno Ohnesorg was killed during a demonstration against the Shah of Iran’s visit. This radicalised a wider group of students. The shooting of Dutschke in April 1968 and the protests against the Springer press that followed are 1968 events. A fuller account of the West Berlin protests is separate.
The Netherlands: Provo
The Dutch Provos, active in Amsterdam from 1965, combined anarchism with street theatre. They were less a theoretical school than a style of political prank. Their most visible work, including the white bicycle proposal and the disturbances at the 1966 royal wedding, came before 1967. The group announced its dissolution in May 1967. Its importance for the New Left lies in the idea that culture and everyday life could be arenas of politics, an idea that spread to other countries.
Italy: operaismo
Italian operaismo, or workerism, grew out of journals such as Quaderni Rossi, founded in 1961, and later groups. Its thinkers, including Raniero Panzieri and Mario Tronti, argued that the working class should be studied in the factory, not only through party doctrine, and that workers’ struggles could be a source of political initiative. This made it different from the student-centred movements elsewhere. In Italy, students and workers were later to meet, particularly in 1968-69. In 1967, the student occupations were the visible edge, while operaismo remained mainly an intellectual and organisational current.
France: the Situationists
The Situationist International, founded in 1957, was a small group of artists and theorists with a sharp critique of modern capitalism as a society of images and passive consumption. Its writing reached a wider public in 1967 with Guy Debord’s book The Society of the Spectacle, published in Paris in late 1967, and Raoul Vaneigem’s Revolution of Everyday Life. Earlier, in November 1966, Situationist-influenced members of the student union in Strasbourg produced a provocative pamphlet attacking student life. The group’s slogans later became associated with May 1968 in Paris, but its direct organisational influence should not be exaggerated.
Britain: New Left Review and its neighbours
In Britain the New Left emerged from the merger of two journals into New Left Review in 1960, with figures such as Stuart Hall and E. P. Thompson prominent in the early years and Perry Anderson leading the journal from 1962. British radicals were involved in the campaign against the Vietnam War, and the London arts and counterculture scene overlapped with political activity in places like the London underground scene. A major gathering in London in July 1967, the Dialectics of Liberation congress, brought together thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse and R. D. Laing with Black Power figures including Stokely Carmichael. In early 1967 there were also sit-ins at the London School of Economics, concerning the appointment of a new director. British events in 1968, notably the large Grosvenor Square march against the war in March and October, are later.
What belongs to 1967 and what to 1968
A rough sorting helps. To 1967 belong the killing of Ohnesorg on 2 June, the dissolution of Provo in May, the Italian occupations in early 1967 and November 1967, the publication of key Situationist texts, the Dialectics of Liberation congress, and the death of Che Guevara in October, which turned him into a global symbol for young radicals. To 1968 belong the Vietnam Congress in Berlin in February, the Valle Giulia clash in March, the Polish student protests in March, the Prague Spring and its suppression, and the May 1968 strikes.
Limits of the label
The label New Left can mislead. It suggests unity where there was rivalry, and it suggests organisation where there was often only a mood. Some groups looked to the Cultural Revolution in China as a model, while others rejected both Moscow and Beijing. What they shared was a belief that politics should include students, culture and daily experience as well as parties and unions, and a certain suspicion of authority in all forms. The movements differed in strength from one country to another, and 1967 was the year in which they began to notice one another.