In the 1960s, the radical youth of Western Europe’s New Left
rebelled against the democratic welfare state and their parents’
antiquated politics of reform. It was not the first time an upstart
leftist movement was built on the ruins of the old. This book traces
the history of neoleftism from its antifascist roots in the first
half of the twentieth century, to its postwar reconstruction in the
1950s, to its explosive reinvention by the 1960s counterculture.
Terence Renaud
demonstrates why the left in Europe underwent a series of internal
revolts against the organizational forms of established parties and
unions. He describes how small groups of militant youth such as New
Beginning in Germany tried to sustain grassroots movements without
reproducing the bureaucratic, hierarchical, and supposedly obsolete
structures of Social Democracy and Communism. Neoleftist militants
experimented with alternative modes of organization such as councils,
assemblies, and action committees. However, Renaud reveals that these
same militants, decades later, often came to defend the very
institutions they had opposed in their youth.
Providing vital
historical perspective on the challenges confronting leftists today,
this book tells the story of generations of antifascists, left
socialists, and anti-authoritarians who tried to build radical
democratic alternatives to capitalism and kindle hope in reactionary
times.