The idea of the Third World created a picture of the world whose potency extended far beyond France. But another French innovation also conquered the globe: the concept of the political Left. It goes back to the seating arrangement of the constituent National Assembly in the French Revolution of 1789, and for a long time it remained limited to the jargon of the parliamentarians. But around 1900, in the wake of the change in politics through modern parties and mass media, “the Left,” and its counterpart, “the Right,” became generic political terms in France. From the 1930s, at the latest, they both functioned as fundamental representations of politics, unfolding potentials of identity, communication, and mobilization, while simultaneously making it possible to analyze them.

The Third World, the political Left – two French concepts with a global career. During the long 1960s, the second of the two changed so profoundly in relationship to the idea of the Third World that I speak of the emergence of the “New Radical Left.” In what follows, I shall situate its beginning, contours, and end within the development of the French Left and its relationship to the colonial world. In the process, the history of social groups and political organizations, but also of Marxist thinking, blends with the histories of activist practice, intellectual fields, and political cultures. All of this makes up the “political Left,” with the analytical concept and the sphere of historical reality constantly intersecting. In terms of structural analysis, the Left is a relational concept – just like the Third World with its relationship to the First and the Second. The constant point of reference for leftists is the political Right, but also, if less obviously, “the center,” which is what makes a political spectrum that runs from Left to Right conceivable in the first place. This conceptualized center makes possible distinctions between a Left located close to the center, a Left to the left of that, and a Left situated even further out. These spatial metaphors, conceived as a sequence, describe very schematically also a historical development. Beginning with the French Revolution, and down to the mid-1970s, at least, every Left was confronted with a Left positioned “even further left.”

Consistent with these considerations is a pluralized typology of the French Left (les gauches) that historian Michel Winock proposed.