New Left

The New Left was a political movement in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of educators, agitators and others who sought to implement a broad range of reforms on issues such as gay rights, abortion, gender roles, and drugs, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist approach to social justice and focused mostly on labor unionization and questions of social class. The New Left rejected involvement with the labor movement and Marxism's historical theory of class struggle. In the United States, the movement was associated with the Hippie movement and anti-war college-campus protest movements including the Free Speech Movement. While formed in opposition to the "Old Left" Democratic Party, groups composing the New Left gradually became central players in the Democratic coalition.

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