The New Left - From Action to Theory

Kai Froeb2026

This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.

The Movement of the Whole

The New Left is the attempt to turn spontaneous revolt into systematic politics. No longer happenings and sit-ins, but analysis and strategy. No longer “Under the gowns, the musty smell of a thousand years,” but “How do we organize the working class?” The movement theorizes itself - and fragments in the process.

Rudi Dutschke - The Long March Through the Institutions

Rudi Dutschke (1940-1979, died of the consequences of the assassination attempt of 1968) is the icon of the German student movement. His slogan “the long march through the institutions” (1967) becomes the program of the New Left.[1]

The strategy: not a frontal attack on the state (that leads to repression), but infiltration of the institutions - universities, media, parties, unions. Changing conditions from within. This is not reformism (improvements within the system), but hegemonic struggle (Gramsci) - a fight for cultural interpretive authority as a precondition for political power.[2]

The Hegel connection: Dutschke reads Hegel through Marx - and Marx through Lenin. Revolution needs not only spontaneous uprisings, but conscious organization. The vanguard (intellectuals, students) must enlighten the masses (workers). This is education (Bildung) in the Hegelian sense - coming to consciousness through theory.

The assassination attempt (April 11, 1968): the right-wing extremist laborer Josef Bachmann shoots Dutschke - three bullets, brain injuries. Dutschke survives, but is severely damaged. In 1979 he dies of long-term effects (an epileptic seizure, he drowns in the bathtub). The assassination attempt shows: the right responds to 1968 not only theoretically, but violently.[3]

Critique of Dutschke: the “long march” was successful - the '68ers occupied professorships, editorial offices, parties. But at what price? Many became part of the system they wanted to fight. The “march through the institutions” often became the march of the institutions through the '68ers - they adapted, instead of changing things.

Oskar Negt / Alexander Kluge - Public Sphere and Experience (1972)

Oskar Negt (born 1934) and Alexander Kluge (born 1932) try to work through the experiences of 1968 theoretically. Their book Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung (Public Sphere and Experience, 1972) is the most important theoretical text of the New Left in Germany.[4]

The central thesis: the bourgeois public sphere (Habermas) is not neutral, but an instrument of domination. It structures experience such that critique is neutralized. The task is to create a proletarian counter-public sphere - spaces in which authentic experience can be articulated, experience that the system cannot integrate.[5]

The factory as counter-public sphere: Negt/Kluge analyze the factory not only as a site of exploitation, but as a site of the formation of experience. Workers have collective experiences (the labor process, solidarity, conflicts) that the system cannot control. These experiences are the basis for resistance - if they can be articulated.[6]

The Hegel connection: Negt/Kluge read Hegel through Marx and the Frankfurt School. Experience is not mere individual sensation, but socially mediated. Bourgeois society structures experience such that it becomes affirmative (consumerism, privatism). The task is to organize experience dialectically - as a contradiction to what exists.[7]

Critique: Negt/Kluge’s concept is theoretically sophisticated but practically vague. How exactly does one create a counter-public sphere? How does one prevent it from being integrated by the system (as happened with alternative culture)? The theory remains abstract.

The Fragmentation of the Movement - K-Groups and Sects

From the early 1970s the student movement disintegrates into countless groups:

Maoist K-groups: the KPD (later KPD/ML), the KBW, the KB, the MLPD - all claim to be the true vanguard, but fight each other more bitterly than the system. They practice dogmatic Marxism-Leninism - party discipline, cadre training, agitprop. Many members later experience this phase as a sectarian aberration.[8]

The Sponti movement: against the dogmatists arises the Sponti movement (Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin) - anti-authoritarian, anarchist, hedonistic. Their slogan: “Destroy what is destroying you.” But they too fail - spontaneity alone is not enough for social change.[9]

The women’s movement, the ecology movement, alternative culture: the most productive offshoots of 1968 go their own ways - they institutionalize themselves (the Green Party, women’s shelters, alternative projects). This is not betrayal, but sublation - preserving the impulses in new forms.

Italy - The Longest and Deepest Crisis (1968-1982)

The Italian peculiarity: in Italy “1968” does not last one year, but more than a decade - from the student protests of 1967/68 to the end of the “anni di piombo” (years of lead) in the early 1980s. Nowhere else in Europe was the crisis so deep, the violence so intense, the social polarization so extreme.[10]

The “hot autumn” of 1969: in September 1969 a wave of strikes begins that shakes Italy. Not only students, but workers - especially in northern Italy (Turin, Milan, Genoa) - strike for higher wages, better working conditions, co-determination. Fiat workers occupy factories, there are street battles. This is what was missing in Germany - the connection between students and workers.[11]

Potere Operaio and Lotta Continua: two organizations dominate the radical left:

  • Potere Operaio (Worker Power, 1969-1973): theoretically demanding, intellectually led by Antonio Negri. They develop operaismo (workerism) - not the party, but the workers themselves are the revolutionary subject. But they remain small, sectarian.
  • Lotta Continua (Continuous Struggle, 1969-1976): a mass movement with tens of thousands of members. Newspaper, demonstrations, grassroots movement. But it too disintegrates into factions.[12]

Antonio Negri - Hegel read radically: Antonio Negri (born 1933), professor of philosophy in Padua, is the most important theorist of the Italian radical left. His reading of Hegel is unorthodox: Hegel is not a thinker of reconciliation, but of constituent power (potere costituente). The working class creates history through its struggles - it is not the state that mediates, but the self-organization of the masses.[13]

Negri is arrested in 1979 - allegedly the “intellectual mastermind” of the Brigate Rosse (never proven). He flees to France in 1983, returns in 1997, spends years in prison. His works (especially Empire, with Michael Hardt, 2000) later become internationally influential - but that is a story for Volume III.[14]

The strategy of tension: at the same time there is right-wing terror - bomb attacks (Piazza Fontana, Milan, 1969, 85 dead; Bologna train station, 1980, 85 dead), carried out by neo-fascists, partly with the help of intelligence services (Gladio). The state uses the violence to demand “order.” This is the “strategy of tension” - creating chaos in order to legitimize repression.[15]

Systematic lesson: Italy shows what happens when 1968 becomes more radical than elsewhere. The connection between students and workers (which was missing in Germany) does not lead to revolution, but to years of violence that discredits both sides. The Brigate Rosse kill more than 80 people, the right likewise dozens. In the end no one wins - only exhaustion.

France - From May '68 to Disillusionment

May 1968 in France: the most spectacular moment of 1968 - but also the one that ends most quickly. In May 1968 France seems to be on the verge of revolution: 10 million strikers, occupied factories, barricades in Paris. De Gaulle briefly flees to Germany. But by June it is all over - the Gaullists win the elections with an absolute majority.[16]

The disillusionment of the intellectuals: the French intellectuals who were enthusiastic in 1968 turn away. Many become “New Philosophers” (Nouveaux Philosophes) - Bernard-Henri Lévy, André Glucksmann, all former Maoists who now denounce Marxism as totalitarian. This is the conservative turn in France - earlier and more radical than in Germany.[17]

Mitterrand and the PS: the most productive sublation of 1968 is the Socialist Party (PS) under François Mitterrand. In 1981 Mitterrand becomes president - with a program that takes up many demands of 1968 (nationalizations, the 39-hour week, abolition of the death penalty). But economic reality forces a course correction - the 1983 “tournant de la rigueur” (austerity turn). The dream is over.[18]

Michel Foucault - the productive path: Foucault (see Chapter 19) is the counter-example. He leaves the orthodox left, but develops not a conservative but a critical position - analysis of power, discipline, sexuality. This is the productive transformation of 1968 - not affirmation of the existing order (conservatives), not dogmatic Marxism (K-groups), but new forms of critique.

Systematic lesson: France shows the short-livedness of the revolutionary moment. May '68 was spectacular, but without consequence for the relations of power. The transformation happens elsewhere - in culture (Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard), in politics (Mitterrand), in social movements (feminism, anti-racism). Not the great revolution, but the many small changes are productive.

The USA - From New Left to Identity Politics

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS): the American New Left is less theoretical than the European, but more massive. The SDS (founded 1960) at times has more than 100,000 members. Its manifesto, the “Port Huron Statement” (1962, written by Tom Hayden), is moderate - participatory democracy, not revolution.[19]

But the SDS too radicalizes. In the early 1970s it disintegrates into factions:

  • the Progressive Labor Party (Maoist, dogmatic)
  • the Revolutionary Youth Movement (militant, later the Weather Underground)
  • Women’s Liberation (feminist, separatist)

The Black Panther Party: the most important radical organization (see Chapter 16.5) combines Marxism with Black nationalism. They organize survival programs (free breakfast, health clinics, schools) - practical solidarity, not just theory. But the state crushes them brutally - the FBI program COINTELPRO infiltrates, provokes, murders (Fred Hampton, 1969).[20]

Identity politics as legacy: the most productive legacy of 1968 in the USA is identity politics - not class struggle, but struggles for recognition along lines of identity (race, gender, sexuality). This is a Hegelian struggle for recognition, but particularized. Each group fights for its rights - Black people, women, LGBTQ+, Indigenous peoples. This is not wrong, but fragmented - it lacks a shared perspective.[21]

The Hegel question: is identity politics a Hegelian struggle for recognition - or a decline into particularism? Both answers are possible:

  • Pro: recognition must be concrete - not abstract “human rights,” but rights for this specific oppressed group.
  • Contra: if every group fights only for itself, there is no more universality - only competition between particularisms. Hegel’s point was: recognition must be reciprocal - all recognize all. Identity politics risks becoming the recognition of one’s own group at the expense of others.

Systematic lesson: the USA shows the ambivalence of struggles for recognition. They are legitimate and necessary (against racism, sexism, homophobia). But they must be mediated - into a perspective that includes everyone. Otherwise they fragment society instead of transforming it.

Systematic Lessons from the International Trajectories

The comparative perspective shows commonalities and differences:

Commonalities:

  • Radicalization after 1968 everywhere
  • Fragmentation everywhere (K-groups, sects, factions)
  • Everywhere the question: reform or revolution?
  • Everywhere the revolution fails - but social movements remain

Differences:

  • Italy: the longest crisis, the strongest violence, a worker-student alliance
  • France: the shortest revolutionary moment, the fastest conservative turn
  • Germany: a middle position - not as violent as Italy, not over as quickly as France
  • USA: identity politics instead of class struggle

The Hegel question, systematically: all countries pose the same question: how does one transform society? The answers diverge:

  • Italy: through workers’ struggle and revolutionary organizing -> fails through violence
  • France: through intellectuals and parties -> becomes institutionalized (Mitterrand)
  • Germany: through the “march through the institutions” -> gets absorbed
  • USA: through identity politics -> fragments

Hegel’s answer would be: transformation needs three elements:

  1. Critique (awareness of the contradictions)
  2. Organization (collective capacity to act)
  3. Institutions (anchoring of the changes)

If one of these elements is missing, the transformation fails:

  • Only critique without organization -> remains without consequence (French intellectuals)
  • Only organization without institutions -> gets crushed (Italian radicals)
  • Only institutions without critique -> becomes affirmative (German social democracy)

The successful transformation (feminism, ecology, LGBTQ+ rights) had all three - that is the dialectical lesson of 1968.

  1. Rudi Dutschke: “Der lange Marsch durch die Institutionen” (1967), quoted in: Gretchen Dutschke: Rudi Dutschke. Wir hatten ein barbarisches, schönes Leben (1996). ↩︎

  2. On Dutschke’s reception of Gramsci see Gerd Koenen: Vesper, Ensslin, Baader (2003). ↩︎

  3. On the attack see Wolfgang Kraushaar: “Das Attentat auf Rudi Dutschke” in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B 14-15/2008. ↩︎

  4. Oskar Negt & Alexander Kluge: Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung (1972). ↩︎

  5. Negt/Kluge, op. cit., introduction. ↩︎

  6. Negt/Kluge, op. cit., chapter on “the factory.” ↩︎

  7. On Negt’s reception of Hegel see Oskar Negt: Lebendige Arbeit, enteignete Zeit (1984). ↩︎

  8. On the philosophical structure see Clodovis Boff: Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations (1987). ↩︎

  9. On the Sponti movement see Tom Schimmeck: Der Frankfurter Sponti-Spruch (2008). ↩︎

  10. The best biography: François Dosse: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives, Berlin: Merve, 2007 (original: Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari. Biographie croisée, Paris: La Découverte, 2007). ↩︎

  11. Deleuze’s books on these three: Spinoza et le problème de l’expression (1968), Nietzsche et la philosophie (1962), Le bergsonisme (1966). ↩︎

  12. Deleuze: Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, Paris: Minuit, 1981. He calls Spinoza “the Christ of philosophers.” ↩︎

  13. Gilles Deleuze: Nietzsche et la philosophie, Paris: PUF, 1962. ↩︎

  14. Gilles Deleuze: Le bergsonisme, Paris: PUF, 1966. ↩︎

  15. On their meeting see: Dosse, Biographie croisée, chapter “La rencontre,” pp. 15–41. ↩︎

  16. Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Paris: Minuit, 1972. ↩︎

  17. Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Paris: Minuit, 1980. ↩︎

  18. The basic thesis is developed in: Gilles Deleuze: Difference and Repetition, Paris: PUF, 1968. ↩︎

  19. Example from: Difference and Repetition, Chapter V, “Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible.” ↩︎

  20. The rhizome conception in: A Thousand Plateaus, Introduction “Rhizome,” pp. 9–37. ↩︎

  21. On the plane of immanence: Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari: What Is Philosophy?, Paris: Minuit, 1991, Chapter 2 “Le plan d’immanence.” ↩︎