New Left and Social Movements (Europe)

The New Left and the social movements that were born out of it changed for good the way in which movements were conceptualized in Europe. The New Left began in the US as the intellectual offspring of critical sociology, French existentialism, Beat literature, and participatory democracy principles deriving from the civil rights movement. The New Left in Europe shared some of these premises but mainly had to overcome the experiences and expectations of the Old Left. On one hand, the advent of a postindustrial age in post-World War II Europe put into question the centrality of the capital–labor conflict. On the other, the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 exacerbated the disillusionment of certain left-wing circles with old-style communism due to the harshness of repression of the 1956 revolts in Eastern Europe that took place in its aftermath.

References and Suggested Readings

Anderson, P. (2000). Renewals. New Left Review 1 (Jan–Feb).
Google Scholar
Boltanski, B. and Chiapello, E. (2007). The Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso.
Web of Science® Google Scholar
Bracke, M. (2007). Which Socialism? Whose Detente? West European Communism and the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1968. Budapest: Central European University Press.
10.1515/9786155211263
Google Scholar
Dworkin, D. (1997). Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies. Durham: Duke University Press.
Google Scholar
Eley, G. (2002). Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
10.1093/oso/9780195037845.001.0001
Google Scholar
Horn, G.H. (2008). The Spirit of '68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956–1976. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Inglehart, R. (1977). The Silent Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
E. Laraña, H. Johnston, and J.R. Gusfield (eds.) (1994). New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Google Scholar
Oglesby, C. (1970). The New Left: A Documentary History. London: Jonathan Cape.
Google Scholar
A. Schildt and S. Detlef (eds.) (2005). Between Marx and Coca-Cola: Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies, 1960–1980. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Google Scholar
Tarrow, S. (1989). Struggle, Politics, and Reform: Collective Action, Social Movements, and Cycles of Protest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
Taylor, R. (1988). Against the Bomb: The British Peace Movement, 1958–1965. New York: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Thompson, D. (2007). Pessimism of the Intellect? A History of New Left Review. London: Merlin Press.
Google Scholar
Varon, J. (2003). Between revolution 9 and thesis 11: Or, will we learn (again) to start worrying and change the world? In: The New Left Revisited (ed. J. McMillian and P. Buhle), 214 – 240. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Google Scholar
Zizek, S. (2009). First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. London: Verso.
Google Scholar

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements

Browse other articles of this reference work: