New left

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New Left is a collective term for various individuals, groups , political movements, parties and party wings , especially in Western Europe and North America , which since the mid / late 1960s have in part represented different ideas about socialism or anarchist and other politically left -oriented concepts with revolutionary claims and represent. Most of the time, it focuses on emancipatory- socialist and internationalist ideals.

Despite all the differences between its supporters, the New Left distinguishes itself from classic left parties, both from the established social democracy and from the Marxism-Leninism of the real socialist countries of Eastern Europe that existed until 1990 .

Sections of the New Left also refer to older, partly pre-Stalinist communist theories and concepts that played a role in the first half of the 20th century and, as a result of the Stalinist policy of the CPSU , especially between 1924 and 1954, suppressed or historically only briefly Time had come. These include the concept of a socialist council democracy advocated by Rosa Luxemburg or the communist ideology of Trotskyism based on Leon Trotsky . The New Left's conceptions of content range up to anarchist plans for society.

Some groups of the dogmatic new (“ orthodox ”) left, including a large part of the German K groups , were (and still are in some cases today) critical of the development of the Soviet Union after 1956. They reject the policy of de-Stalinization begun under Khrushchev as revisionist . They mostly refer to Maoism , but also Stalinism or related concepts.

In the late 1960s, especially in the student movement, the philosophies of the Frankfurt School of Theodor W. Adorno , Herbert Marcuse , Jürgen Habermas and Ernst Bloch with the critical theory and the French existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre and André Gorz had an important influence on the New left out. Representatives of operaism such as the Italian ethicist and political philosopher Antonio Negri and later John Holloway influenced the New Left and continue to work with globalization critics to the present day.

Roots and Emergence of the New Left

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

The New Left emerged from processes of detachment by Western European intellectuals around 1956 in the course of the de-Stalinization of communist parties, the latter being particularly important for the “New Left” in Great Britain. In West Germany and West Berlin, the re-education policy of the American occupying power also played a role, in which left-wing socialist remigrants got into academic positions - for example Wolfgang Abendroth in Marburg, the Frankfurt School and Franz Leopold Neumann at the Otto Suhr Institute Free University of Berlin. This first generation of the New Left encountered a politicizing student body in the mid-1960s - which not infrequently led to conflicts, both between students and lecturers, but also between older and younger university professors. Nevertheless, in the course of 1968 there was an update and the first mass effect of undogmatic-left ideas. New political groups emerged in the key years 1966–1967, a political awakening that was felt in North America and Western Europe alike. The relationship to the “old left” of the labor movement remained charged with tension. Attempts by some groups of the New Left to gain a foothold in the trade unions and the labor movement through agitation in various industrial establishments had little overall success.

An exception was the Paris May Riots in France in 1968, during which the insurgent students temporarily managed to allies themselves with the left unions and the labor movement, which led to an almost revolutionary situation in Paris and, as a result, to a state crisis with mass strikes across the country escalated. The Situationist International was involved in and involved in the riots, and newspapers made its theories partly responsible for the riot . Furthermore, the confrontation with the foreign policy of the USA ensured a strengthening of the consciousness in the New Left in the Federal Republic of Germany (see Vietnam War # war opposition in other states ).

The influence of the New Left in the student bodies of the universities and from the 1970s to the present in the new social movements was more lasting .

Spectra and developments of the German New Left: APO, K groups, Greens, Spontis, Autonome

The New Left is often divided into dogmatic New Left and undogmatic New Left (also anti-authoritarian left). The term democratic left is occasionally used for left-wing social democratic groups and is also used by different sides to exclude opposing groups as non-democratic .

As a rule, the K groups are counted on the dogmatic left, including the Trotskyists. The undogmatic left includes anarchists, spontaneous people and theoretically and ideologically relatively inconsistent groups from the spectrum that is considered to be radical left, such as the autonomists .

Overall, however, the New Left does not have a common organizational structure. It spreads across societies in many different groups and alliances. Apart from a few common contents and the political labeling on the left , it is a diversified socio-political phenomenon and ranges from standpoints that recognize the democratic pluralism of bourgeois stamps to militant- revolutionary positions, from Marxist to anarchist views.

Dogmatic New Left: K-Groups, Divisions and Mergers

Especially with the K-groups (Mao and Stalinists) the dogmatically hardened positions often led to splits, new foundations, renaming, mergers and other organizational changes. Various groups perceived the ideological conflicts as self-tearing and began in the early 1980s to intensify discussions about how to overcome them.

In 1986 the Communist Party of Germany / Marxist-Leninists (KPD / ML) and the International Marxists (GIM) group merged to form the United Socialist Party (VSP), when both groups broke away from many of their original positions and brought commonalities to the fore. However, further unification efforts failed with the SPD split off Democratic Socialists and the Bund West German Communists (BWK).

Former members of the groups Kommunistischer Bund Westdeutschland (KBW), Kommunistischer Bund (KB), and KPD-AO , which were also part of the dogmatic New Left , organized themselves increasingly, partly as co-founders, with the Greens and thus joined a party in which many individuals who came from the undogmatic New Left had organized .

Since 1990 and until today only a few groups of the dogmatic New Left have been organized nationwide, such as the MLPD , which emerged from the KABD in 1982 . Remnants of KPD / ML , KPD (AB) and regionally active K groups still exist.

Undogmatic New Left: Spontaneous and Revolutionary Cells

Many consider the term undogmatic to be more appropriate for groupings of the New Left that did not gather in parties or organizations and could not be assigned to a specific communist or socialist ideology that could be clearly defined. These groups included the spontaneous movement and spontaneous scene from around 1970. For example, the pioneers of the spontaneous movement were Fritz Teufel , Dieter Kunzelmann , Rainer Langhans and others from the area around West Berlin Commune I , who responded to their socially critical happenings through provocative and imaginative political happenings Draw attention to points of view.

From the spontaneous scene, in turn, to which the future German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer temporarily belonged in the early 1970s , the autonomous groups that still exist today emerged. The groupings Revolutionary Cells (RZ), which belonged to the left-wing terrorist spectrum and active in the late 1970s and 1980s, and their feminist offshoot, the Rote Zora , also belong to the series of the undogmatic New Left.

Extreme left-wing terrorism; Red Army Fraction

In many cases, some prominent leaders of the left-wing terrorist movement on June 2nd and the Red Army Faction (RAF) are also counted among the New Left, such as Ulrike Meinhof , who made a name for herself as a publicist and journalist for the magazine concrete and other publications at the end of the 1960s would have. In 1970 she joined the RAF to Andreas Baader , as their intellectual head she was considered. The terrorists , initially also known as the "Baader Meinhof gang", saw themselves as communist urban guerrillas modeled on the Tupamaros in Uruguay and carried out several bomb and murder attacks on banks, state and US military facilities until their leading members were captured in 1972 and 1977 sentenced to life imprisonment. They committed suicide when the attempt at liberation by means of blackmail failed after the kidnapping and subsequent murder of the employer-president Hanns-Martin Schleyer by the "second RAF generation" and the hijacking of the "Landshut" plane by an allied Palestinian terrorist squad (cf. also German Autumn ).

Eurocommunism

Eurocommunist positions could not gain any greater influence in the FRG. The Working Group for Western European Workers' Movement (AWA), founded in 1976, was an association of students and scientists who originally came primarily from the DKP and SEW environment. The AWA discussed documents of Eurocommunism and published them in German. Members published in the magazine Das Argument . The group disbanded as early as 1980 when no agreement could be found on whether the AWA should also be a political group in addition to its research activities.

March through the institutions; New left in the SPD and the party "The Greens"

Since the 1970s, many activists in the German student movement have been considered to be representatives of the New Left, sometimes under the catchphrase '68 movement . In part, they followed the slogan, coined by Rudi Dutschke in 1967, of “ marching through the institutions ” in order to achieve political changes in their spirit through parliamentary participation. Some protagonists of the New Left in the FRG, after the founding of various communist groups had not brought the desired success, reached parliaments through other, also established parties such as the SPD or their young socialists .

Many supporters of the New Left, including Dutschke himself (shortly before his death), joined the newly founded party DIE GRÜNEN in 1979/80, which was able to move into the Bundestag in 1983 . The new parliamentary party had the grassroots democratic claim to be the parliamentary leg of the extra-parliamentary social movements (for example the women's movement , the peace movement or the ecological movement ). The New Left held a strong position with the Greens in the first few years of its existence. However, after various wing battles with the resignation of many even prominent eco-socialists such as Thomas Ebermann , Rainer Trampert or Jutta Ditfurth, it was clearly weakened again until 1991 - in favor of the so-called “realpolitical” faction in the party, which is more open to compromises ( cf.Fundi contra Realo and merger with Bündnis 90 to "Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen").

The New Left after 1989

The New Left still exists to this day, at least in its basic features, in the forms described above, with the number of activists and supporters of left- wing terrorism and K-groups having declined significantly compared to the 1970s and 1980s.

After German reunification in 1990, some West German supporters of the New Left tried to gain a foothold in the Democratic Socialist Party (PDS) that had emerged from the former GDR state party, the SED . They are recruited from a number of disappointed former supporters and members of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen or from former K groups. For example, Winfried Wolf - a former member of the International Marxists and the VSP - became a member of the Bundestag for the PDS in 1994. He was a member of the undogmatic left wing of the PDS parliamentary group and in the German Bundestag until 2002 .

The departure of the PDS from the German Bundestag after the lost election in 2002 was also seen as the defeat of the New Left against neoliberalism as a whole. Only two members of the Bundestag remained represented by direct mandates.

Partly because of this vacuum on the left, a new party to the left of the SPD came into being in 2005 with the election alternative Work and Social Justice (WASG), in which former SPD supporters gathered who were disappointed by the government policy of Gerhard Schröder (Federal Chancellor 1998-2005) were, but also people from different spectrums of the New Left. The WASG did not stand independently for the 2005 Bundestag election , but instead sent prominent members such as Oskar Lafontaine to the PDS lists. The latter called itself from then on Die Linkspartei.PDS until finally both parties were united in 2007 to form the party " Die Linke ". They received 8.7% of the vote and 54 seats. This entry into the 16th German Bundestag initially implied a clear resurgence of the parliamentary left beyond the SPD, which was increasingly accused of anti-social politics. The result was even exceeded when the Left won 11.9% in the 2009 Bundestag election , equivalent to 76 seats.

Main focus of the New Left in terms of content and action

One of the common denominators of the New Left is the substantive delimitation from the communist system of so-called real existing socialism , which existed until 1989/1991 and which was dominated by the policies of the CPSU in the states of the European Eastern Bloc . The “ people's democratic ” governing parties there (cf. Communist Party ) were accused of degenerating communism, for example through over-bureaucratisation and the abolition of the council system .

In some cases, the expansion of democratic- civil rights is also part of the political argument, but mostly for different motives than the Christian Democratic or liberal movements. Since around 1980 the struggle for social minorities and against right-wing extremism has been gaining in importance, while that against imperialism - often identical to the language used in the Eastern Bloc - is one of the "long-running hits".

A unifying main topic of the New Left was in the 1960s and early 1970s, the protest against the Vietnam War , in Southeast Asia by the United States and the Government of South Vietnam against the Viet Cong - guerillas of the FNL and their supporting army of North Vietnam was conducted. Beyond this protest, the New Left showed solidarity with left-wing socialist and democratic liberation movements in the so-called third world against right- wing dictatorial systems, often supported by industrialized countries . They accused and accused the industrial nations of neocolonialism and the economic and social exploitation of the countries of the Tricontium .

The New Left supported the Unidad Popular government in Chile under the socialist President Salvador Allende and condemned the 1973 coup against Allende by General Augusto Pinochet in 1973 . They also sympathized with the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in 1979 . Many members of the international brigades who traveled to Nicaragua to support the Sandinista and who were primarily involved in maintaining the country's medical and civil infrastructure came from the spectrum of the New Left.

Intended to support the revolutionary movements of the Trikont, some left-wing terrorist groups emerged in the West from a minority of militant left-wing extremists who operated from the illegal underground. They included the Red Army Faction and the June 2nd Movement in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Action Directe in France and the Red Brigades in Italy. As urban guerrillas, they wanted to carry the revolutionary struggle into the metropolises of the industrialized countries. They also planned and carried out kidnappings and assassinations of leading symbols from politics , business and the judiciary .

Just as the New Left adheres to the theories of socialist internationalism and anti-imperialism in foreign policy , it advocates the expansion of democratic and civil rights domestically in the respective countries where it is active. The fight against racism and campaigns of solidarity for politically and socially disadvantaged minorities , for example for refugees and the politically persecuted, are as much part of the political repertoire of the New Left as the resistance to the emergence of right-wing extremist and fascist groups and parties ( cf.Antifa ) as well as armaments and militarization in the industrialized countries.

After the decline of the student movements at the end of the 1960s, the New Left was and is heavily involved in the activities of the new social movements, in particular the anti-militarist branches of the peace movement, the anti-imperialist movement, anti- nuclear opponents and the increased activities of the Globalization critic.

See also

literature

  • Uwe Backes , Eckhard Jesse : New Left and New Right. A comparison . In the S. (Ed.): Yearbook Extremism & Democracy , 5th year (1993), Bouvier, Bonn 1993, ISBN 3-416-02483-4 , pp. 7-28.
  • Nanni Balestrini, Primo Moroni: The golden horde: workers' autonomy, youth revolts and armed struggle in Italy , 2nd edition, Berlin: Verl. Association A, 2002
  • David Bebnowski: Foundations of the New Left. Franz L. Neumann and American German networks in West Berlin , in: Magic of Theory - History of the New Left in West Germany, special issue of Work - Movement - History , Issue II / 2018, pp. 23–38.
  • Lin Chun: Word storm: the British left after 1945 , Hamburg: Rotbuch-Verl., 1996
  • Claudia Derichs: Japan's New Left: Social Movement and Extra-Parliamentary Opposition, 1957–1994 , Hamburg: OAG, 1995
  • Van Gosse: Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretative History , Palgrave MacMillan 2005 - History of the New Left in the USA
  • Michael Hewener: The West Berlin New Left and the Stasi - The Struggle for the “Republican Club” , in: Work - Movement - History , Issue I / 2017, pp. 22–44.
  • Felix Kollritsch: The Concept of the New Left in the SDS. Lines of tradition, continuities and breaks in relation to the SPD using the example of two magazines in: Arbeit - Bewegungs - Geschichte , Issue II / 2018, pp. 54–71.
  • Sabine Koloch: Discussion platform for the undogmatic left. The magazine " Alternative " and its editor Hildegard Brenner [1] , in: 1968 in the German literary studies / topic group "The 68er: Topics, Theses, Theories" (literaturkritik.de archive / special editions) (2020) [2] .
  • Wolfgang Rudzio, The erosion of demarcation. On the relationship between the democratic left and communists in the Federal Republic of Germany , Opladen 1988, ISBN 3-531-12045-X
  • Gottfried Oy: Searching for traces of the Neue Linke - The example of the Socialist Office and its magazine links. Socialist Newspaper (1969 to 1997)} ; rls-papers, published by Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung , Frankfurt am Main 2007 ( online as PDF file )
  • Hanning Voigts: uncorked message in a bottle: Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno and the dispute over the New Left . Lit Verlag, Berlin (among others) 2009.
  • Alexander Neupert-Doppler: The Utopian Imperative - Herbert Marcuse , 1968 and the New Left . Philosophical Conversations Booklet 46. Helle Panke e. V. - Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Berlin. Berlin, 2017. 40 pp.
  • Erwin K. Scheuch (Ed.): Anabaptists of the affluent society. A critical examination of the "New Left" and their dogmas. Special edition for the Hessian State Center for Political Education. Markus, Cologne 1968.
  • Anina Falasca: "Fun spontaneous ideas " and "happy freaks". On the theoretical reorientation of the New Left around 1978 , in: Magic of Theory - History of the New Left in West Germany, special issue of Work - Movement - History , Issue II / 2018, pp. 72–87.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Bebnowski, Foundations of the New Left. Franz L. Neumann and American German networks in West Berlin , in: Magic of Theory - History of the New Left in West Germany, special issue of Work - Movement - History , Issue II / 2018, pp. 23–38.
  2. ↑ Michael Hewener, The Theory of the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition: Johannes Agnolis "Transformation of Democracy in: Magic of Theory - History of the New Left in West Germany, Special Issue of Work - Movement - History , Issue II / 2018, pp. 39–45.