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This introductory article to the special report entitled “The alternative Lefts in France: From the 1968 whirlwind to reconfigurations at the end of the century” examines the “alternative Left” category and seeks to demonstrate its historical coherence. This concept encompasses all political currents that advocate for a break with capitalism while at the same time being critical of the institutional Left to varying degrees. It includes the “New Left,” a term ascribed from the early 1960s onward both to currents arising from the institutional Left and to various far-left groups that emerged at that time. However, this concept is broader as it also includes anarchism and other post-68 political experiments (feminism, LGBT groups, environmentalism, and, later, alter-globalization and so on). These various groups are therefore heterogeneous, since although their shared objective is “to change life,” their temporality and modus operandi vary from one to another. Nevertheless, with communist culture so present in France in the 1970s and even beyond, one common question for these political families was how to position themselves in relation to the French Communist Party, be it through rejection, competition, or collaboration. Consequently, the history of the alternative Lefts encompasses the history of a wide portion of the French Left between 1968 and our most recent past.