After the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s a 'New Left' appeared. The New Left, like the Old Left were anti-Capitalist. They wanted to end capitalism to replace it with communism. But the old anti-capitalist arguments: exploitation, tendencies to capitalist crisis and worker immiseration were no longer convincing. The arguments were too abstract and conflicted with reality: Western workers, compared to Soviet workers, were not 'immiserated'.
So the New Left gave up on the proletariat, or working class. The New Left based their revolutionary movement on a new alliance of: “the new political subjects — women, national, racial and sexual minorities, anti-nuclear and anti-institutional movements, etc.” [citation: “Socialist Strategy, Where Next?”, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, 1981 http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/81_01_17.pdf {PDF}]
STOP: Did I write: "anti-nuclear movements". Yes I did. In 1970s, Friends of the Earth, from 1970 to 1975, set out to convince every green organization of the importance of being anti-nuclear. An important argument they employed against nuclear power was that: "it's not needed". They believed a combination of renewable energy and fossil fuel was better. They believed nuclear power was too expensive and that its costs were hidden; that the main purpose of nuclear power was to provide plutonium for the military. That, at least, was the argument they used in the UK; and it was pretty effective. The greens became the anti-nuclear movements in the early 1970s. Prior to that, in the 1960s, anti-nuclear movement meant anti-Nuclear War. After 1975 it meant anti-nuclear power and anti-War.
Today: the far left have somewhat reframed their argument against nuclear power. There are, in fact, 3 arguments:
- 'too expensive': This is their external argument - given to non-lefties.
- 'not decentralised': This is an internal argument - they argue that nuclear plants are big technology - only possible with massive, state supported, companies. Today's far left present themselves are anarco - in favour of community run business. Nuke are far too big for that. Solar and Wind power can be community run; nukes can't be.
- 'military industrial complex': This is a general argument. We see it from neo-Conservatives too. It was first invented, in the late 1960s, as a neo-conservative answer to Eisenhower's `Atoms for Peace` program. It stresses the links between nuclear power an nuclear weapons. It was copied by the greens in the 1970s
The far left and the actual anti-nuke campaigners are NOT the same people. The Far Left aren't going to come out and try to blockade a nuke plant to shut down nuke plants directly. That's what the anti-nuke campaigners do. The far left political strategy is to 'march through the institutions'. Get themselves appointed to positions of influence. Use their influence to promote the technologies they agreed are best: renewables. Anti-nuke campaigners are different. They are the nutters we meet on the web. They are activists and, often, pretty single issue orientated.