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

New Left

In the 1930s and through the 1950s, a political movement known later as the "Old Left" emerged in American politics. A liberal group of predominantly northern intellectuals, the Old Left shared a fascination with labor problems and frequently maintained an interest in communism as a solution to America's economic troubles. The New Left, the successor to the Old Left, emerged in the 1960s and was heavily influenced by the early accomplishments of the civil rights movement. The New Left included many different groups, and was often dominated by middle-class college students disillusioned with life in America. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) emerged as the best known of these groups, and pressed for a more democratic government, nuclear arms reduction, an end to the war in Vietnam, and better living conditions for the urban poor.

The New Left, in its widespread critique of American society, also included environmental and pollution reform in its agenda. Many New Left activists focused on the dangers of increased industrial production and increased consumption, leading to waste and pollution. One influence of the New Left was the development of the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Earth Day was originally planned by New Left activists as a teach-in and sitin at university campuses, similar to earlier civil rights and antiwar activities to protest environmental degradation. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson developed and changed the idea for the event, hoping to organize a peaceful mass demonstration without the negative lawless image that public protest had acquired over the course of the turbulent 1960s. Approximately ten million people across the country participated in the original Earth Day, with even local and national polluters professing their support. Overall, though, the concept of Earth Day initiated by the New Left as a protest to industrial production bore little resemblance to the actual event, which was supported by the very polluters the New Left stood against.

New Left protest influenced the overall awareness of environmental issues, and helped lead to legislation, including the Clean Air Act in 1970. By the early 1970s, however, the New Left counterculture had become increasingly interested in the use of violence and associated with drug use and "free sex." This use of violence appeared in a small group of New Lefters called the Weathermen, or the Weather Underground, who advocated armed revolution against "American Imperialism," usually in the form of random bomb explosions. Other acts of New Left violence included the "liberation" of areas for public park space.

By the late 1970s, New Right conservatism had catapulted Ronald Reagan to the presidency, and before long a powerful backlash against many of the accomplishments of the New Left, the civil rights movement, and the 1960s in general took hold throughout the United States.

see also Activism; Earth Day; Environmental Movement; Politics; Public Participation; Public Policy Decision Making.

Bibliography

gottlieb, robert. (1993). forcing the spring: the transformation of the american environmental movement. washington, d.c.: island press.

o'neill, william l. (2001). the new left: a history. the american history series. wheeling, il: harlan davidson.

Elizabeth D. Blum

New Left A movement of radical intellectuals in the 1960s, spanning the leading Western societies. The New LEFT was socialist in inspiration but it was critical of orthodox COMMUNISM as practised in Eastern Europe at the time (as well as of existing socialist and communist parties in the West). Its members focused their attention on cultural factors, such as the mass media and the growth of consumer culture, which impeded revolutionary opposition to CAPITALISM. Seminal books were Raymond Williams's Culture and Society (1958) and Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man (1964). New Left ideas were influential mainly in such movements as that against the Vietnam War (1964–75) and played a large role in the student uprising in Paris in May 1968, which led to educational and administrative reforms.

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.