New Left

The label commonly applied to humanist dissidents from communist parties and to followers of Western Marxism during the period of the Cold War. The contrast is with the Old Left; that is, pro-Soviet and other traditional communist currents, such as for example Trotskyists, Maoists , and anarchists . The New Left developed in the late 1950s as a self-conscious Marxist and radical intelligentsia, particularly in the United States and Britain, which was critical of capitalism and state socialism of the Soviet model in equal measure. It sponsored a number of journals of which New Left Review was the most prominent. The movement was given additional impetus by the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.