New Left

New Left. An uprising of students against the dominant policies and cultural mores of American society, the New Left emerged in the early 1960s, peaked at mid‐decade, and dissipated in the early 1970s.Arising from the civil rights movement, fears of nuclear war, and socialist movements of the 1930s (the so‐called Old Left), the New Left became closely identified with protests against the Vietnam War and related campus uprisings as the 1960s progressed. The spread of left‐leaning periodicals, most notably Liberation, Ramparts, and Studies on the Left; the specter of student protests, black and white; and the formation of leftist organizations, particularly Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), signaled the emergence of the New Left.

The movement's espousal of “participatory democracy” emphasized widespread popular engagement in political decision‐making. The slow pace of change, meanwhile, reinforced the New Left's disdain for political liberalism. While SDS supported the idea of a war on poverty, it found President Lyndon B. Johnson's policies lacking and established its own Economic Research and Action Project, aimed at forging an interracial movement of the poor. Furthermore, while applauding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, SNCC and other New Left voices condemned Johnson's forces for refusing to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party at the Democratic National Convention that same year.

The New Left gained a devoted following, particularly among college students, through its leadership of the antiwar movement and association with black power advocates and the counterculture. Together, these forces broke down the liberal consensus represented by President Johnson's landslide victory in 1964 and fueled a host of other movements on issues such as feminism and environmentalism. Whether the New Left actually shortened the Vietnam War remains a problematic question, since radical student protests created a backlash among mainstream Americans.

While most prominent on the East and West coasts, on campuses like Columbia and Berkeley, the New Left attracted supporters nationwide, at such institutions as the University of Texas, the University of Wisconsin, and Kent State in Ohio. Moreover, the youth‐led rebellions in France, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere during the 1960s demonstrated that New Left–type protests were not confined to the United States. Convinced that a worldwide revolution was at hand, some New Left students abandoned their initial goals and methods in favor of more traditional Marxist‐Leninist tactics. Most prominently, the Weathermen, a violent offshoot of SDS, cast itself as the vanguard of a global struggle against racist imperialism.

Several factors produced the New Left's demise. Increased militancy alienated some movement supporters, while prompting a government crackdown on radical insurgencies. The end of the Vietnam War also took its toll, turning leftist attention and energy to other social and political movements. Paradoxically, some New Right groups adopted the tactics and vocabulary of the New Left in their own crusades of the 1970s and beyond.

While some scholars present the New Left in a favorable light, as an idealistic movement dedicated to increasing minority rights and ending a disastrous war, others focus more on its excesses, including the defense of terrorism by some and its divisive impact on the Democratic party and its liberal agenda. Nearly all scholars, however, agree that the New Left played a key role during the 1960s, leaving a powerful legacy of youthful protest and political change.
See also Antiwar Movements; Black Nationalism; Black Panthers; Civil Rights Legislation; Great Society; Kent State and Jackson State; Nixon, Richard M.; Radicalism; Sixties, The; Socialism.

Bibliography

Kirkpatrick Sale , SDS, 1973.
Irwin Unger , The Movement: A History of the New Left, 1959–1972, 1974.
James Miller , Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago, 1984.
Todd Gitlin , The Sixties: Years of Hope and Days of Rage, 1987.
Peter B. Levy , The New Left and Labor in the 1960s, 1994.
Terry Anderson , The Movement and the Sixties, 1995.

Peter B. Levy