New Left

The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, feminism, gay rights, drug policy reforms, and the rejection of traditional family values, social order, and gender roles.[1] The New Left differs from the traditional left, in that it tends to lean more in favor of social justice compared to previous eras. However, others have used the term "New Left" to describe an evolution, continuation, and revitalization of traditional leftist goals.[2][3][4]

Some who self-identified as "New Left"[5] rejected involvement with the labor movement and Marxism's historical theory of class struggle,[6] although others gravitated to their own takes on established forms of Marxism, such as the New Communist movement (which drew from Maoism) in the United States or the K-Gruppen[lower-alpha 1] in the German-speaking world. In the United States, the movement was associated with the anti-war college-campus protest movements, including the Free Speech Movement.