New Left
Encyclopedia
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist approach to social justice and focused mostly on labor unionization and questions of social class
.
In the U.S., the "New Left" was associated with the Hippie movement
and college campus protest movements. The British "New Left" sought to correct the perceived errors of "Old Left" parties in the post–World War II
period.
to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 led some Marxist
intellectuals to develop a more democratic approach to politics, opposed to what they saw as the centralised and authoritarian politics of the pre-war leftist parties. Those Communists who became disillusioned with Communism due to its authoritarian character eventually formed the "new left", first among dissenting Communist Party intellectuals and campus groups in the United Kingdom, and later alongside campus radicalism in the US and elsewhere. The term "nouvelle gauche" was already current in France in the 50s, associated with France Observateur, and its editor Claude Bourdet
, who attempted to form a third position, between the dominant Stalinist
and Social Democratic tendencies of the left, and the two Cold War blocs. It was from this French "new left" that the "First New Left" of Britain borrowed the term.
's Secret Speech
denouncing Joseph Stalin
and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, many abandoned the Communist Party of Great Britain
(CPGB) and began to rethink its orthodox Marxism
. Some joined various Trotskyist
groupings or the Labour Party
.
The Marxist historians E. P. Thompson
and Ralph Miliband
established the Communist Party Historians Group
and a dissenting journal within the CPGB called Reasoner. Once expelled from the party, they began the New Reasoner
from 1957. In 1960, this journal merged with the Universities and Left Review to form the New Left Review
. These journals attempted to synthesise a theoretical position of a revisionist, humanist
, socialist Marxism, departing from orthodox Marxist
theory. This publishing effort made the ideas of culturally oriented theorists available to an undergraduate reading audience. In this early period, many on the New Left were involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
, formed in 1957. According to Robin Blackburn
, "The decline of CND by late 1961, however, deprived the New Left of much of its momentum as a movement, and uncertainties and divisions within the Board of the journal led to the transfer of the Review to a younger and less experienced group in 1962."
Under the long-standing editorial leadership of Perry Anderson
, the New Left Review popularised the Frankfurt School
, Antonio Gramsci
, Louis Althusser
and other forms of Marxism
. Other periodicals like Socialist Register
, started in 1964, and Radical Philosophy
, started in 1972, have also been associated with the New Left, and published a range of important writings in this field.
As the campus orientation of the American New Left became clear in the mid to late 1960s, the student sections of the British New Left began taking action. The London School of Economics
became a key site of British student militancy. The influence of protests against the Vietnam War
and of the May 1968 events in France were also felt strongly throughout the British New Left. Some within the British New Left joined the International Socialists, which later became Socialist Workers Party
while others became involved with groups such as the International Marxist Group
. The politics of the British New Left can be contrasted with Solidarity, UK, which continued to focus primarily on industrial issues.
, or SDS. The New Left can be defined as 'a loosely organized, mostly white student movement that promoted participatory democracy, crusaded for civil rights and various types of university reforms and protested against the Vietnam war.'
The term "New Left" was popularised in the US in an open letter written in 1960 by sociologist C. Wright Mills
(1916–62) entitled Letter to the New Left. Mills argued for a new leftist
ideology, moving away from the traditional ("Old Left") focus on labor issues, towards issues such as opposing alienation
, anomie
, and authoritarianism
. Mills argued for a shift from traditional leftism, toward the values of the counter-culture, and emphasized an international perspective on the movement. According to David Burner, C Wright Mills claimed that the proletariat were no longer the revolutionary force; the new agent of revolutionary change were young intellectuals around the world.
Student protest
called Free Speech Movement
took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley
under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio
, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker
, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg
, and others. In protests unprecedented in this scope at the time, students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom
. In particular, on 2 December 1964 on the steps of Sproul Hall Mario Savio
gave a famous speech: "...But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be - have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean - Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!...There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."
The New Left opposed what it saw as the prevailing authority structures in society, which it termed "The Establishment
", and those who rejected this authority became known as "anti-Establishment
". The New Left did not seek to recruit industrial workers, but rather concentrated on a social activist approach to organization, convinced that they could be the source for a better kind of social revolution
.
Many New Left thinkers in the U.S. were influenced by the Vietnam War
and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Like the British New Left, they recognized problems in the socialism of the Soviet Union, but unlike the British New Left, they did not turn to Trotskyism
or social democracy
. Some in the U.S. New Left argued that since the Soviet Union could no longer be considered the world center for proletarian revolution, new revolutionary Communist thinkers had to be substituted in its place, such as Mao Zedong
, Ho Chi Minh
and Fidel Castro
.
Other elements of the U.S. New Left were anarchist and looked to libertarian socialist
traditions of American radicalism
, the Industrial Workers of the World
and union militancy. This group coalesced around the historical journal Radical America. American Autonomist Marxism was also a child of this stream, for instance in the thought of Harry Cleaver
. Murray Bookchin
was also part of the anarchist stream of the New Left, as were the Yippies.
The U.S. New Left drew inspiration from black radicalism, particularly the Black Power
movement and the more explicitly left-wing Black Panther Party
. The Panthers in turn influenced other similar militant groups, like the Young Lords
, the Brown Berets
and the American Indian Movement
. The New Left was also inspired by SNCC
, Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. Students immersed themselves into poor communities building up support with the locals. The New Left sought to be a broad based, grass roots movement.
The Vietnam war
conducted by liberal President Lyndon Johnson was a special target across the worldwide New Left. Johnson and his top officials became unwelcome on American campuses. The anti-war movement escalated the rhetorical heat, as violence broke out on both sides. The climax came at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
It could be argued that the New Left's most successful legacy was the rebirth of feminism
. As the leaders of the New Left were largely white men, women reacted to the lack of progressive gender politics with their own social intellectual movement.
The New Left was also marked by the invention of the modern environmentalist movement, which clashed with the Old Left's disregard for the environment in favor of preserving the jobs of union workers. Environmentalism also gave rise to various other social justice movements such as the environmental justice movement, which aims to prevent the toxification of the environment of minority and disadvantaged communities.
(SDS). By 1962, the SDS had emerged as the most important of the new campus radical groups; soon it would be regarded as virtually synonymous with the ‘New Left’. In 1962, Tom Hayden
wrote its founding document, the Port Huron Statement
, which issued a call for "participatory democracy" based on non-violent civil disobedience. This was the idea that individual citizens could help make ‘those social decisions determining the quality and direction’ of their lives. The SDS marshalled anti-war, pro-civil rights and free speech
concerns on campuses, and brought together liberals and more revolutionary leftists.
The SDS became the leading organization of the anti-war movement on college campuses during the Vietnam War
. As the war escalated the membership of the SDS also increased greatly as more people were willing to scrutinise political decisions in moral terms. During the course of the war, the people became increasingly militant
. As opposition to the war grew stronger, the SDS became a nationally prominent political organization, with opposing the war an overriding concern that overshadowed many of the original issues that had inspired SDS. In 1967 the old statement in Port Huron was abandoned for a new call for action, which would inevitably lead to the destruction of the SDS.
In 1968 and 1969, as its radicalism reached a fever pitch, the SDS began to split under the strain of internal dissension and increasing turn towards Maoism
. Along with adherents known as the New Communist Movement
, some extremist illegal factions also emerged, such as the Weather Underground Organization
.
The SDS suffered the difficulty of wanting to change the world while 'freeing life in the here and now.' This caused confusion between short term and long term goals. The sudden growth due to the successful rallies against the Vietnam War meant there were more people wanting action to end the Vietnam war, whereas the original New Left had wanted to focus on critical reflection. In the end it was the anti-war sentiment that dominated the SDS.
Singh (2007) says the attack originated from "thinkers the political left and those associated with the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s." It was a worldwide phenomenon, as a Culture war
broke out on university campuses between the older established liberals and the younger radicals of the New Left. Herbert Marcuse
, a philosopher of the New Left, said that "The new radicalism militates against the centralized bureaucratic communist as well as against the semi- democratic liberal organization."
Isserman (2001) reports that the New Left" "came to use the word 'liberal' as a political epithet." Historian Richard Ellis (1998) says that the SDS's search for their own identity "increasingly meant rejecting, even demonizing, liberalism." As Wolfe (2010) notes, "no one hated liberals more than leftists.".
The Prague Spring
was legitimised by the Czechoslovak government as a socialist reform movement. The 1968 events in the Czechoslovakia were driven forward by industrial
workers, and were explicitly theorized by active Czechoslovak unionists as a revolution for workers' control.
The driving force of near-revolution in France in May 1968 were students inspired by the ideas of the Situationist International, which in turn had been inspired by Socialisme ou Barbarie
. Both of these groups emphasised culture as a form of production.
While the Autonomia in Italy have been called New Left, it is more appropriate to see them as the result of traditional, industrially oriented, communism re-theorising its ideas and methods. Unlike most of the New Left, Autonomia had a strong blue-collar arm, active in regularly occupying factories.
The Provos were a Dutch counter-cultural movement of mostly young people with anarchist influences.
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
.
In the U.S., the "New Left" was associated with the Hippie movement
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
and college campus protest movements. The British "New Left" sought to correct the perceived errors of "Old Left" parties in the post–World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
period.
Origins
The confused response of the Communist Party of the USA and the Communist Party of Great BritainCommunist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 led some Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
intellectuals to develop a more democratic approach to politics, opposed to what they saw as the centralised and authoritarian politics of the pre-war leftist parties. Those Communists who became disillusioned with Communism due to its authoritarian character eventually formed the "new left", first among dissenting Communist Party intellectuals and campus groups in the United Kingdom, and later alongside campus radicalism in the US and elsewhere. The term "nouvelle gauche" was already current in France in the 50s, associated with France Observateur, and its editor Claude Bourdet
Claude Bourdet
Claude Bourdet , son of the dramatic author Édouard Bourdet, was a writer, journalist, polemist, and a militant French politician, who was born in 1909 and died in 1996 in Paris. He was a son of the poet Catherine Pozzi....
, who attempted to form a third position, between the dominant Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
and Social Democratic tendencies of the left, and the two Cold War blocs. It was from this French "new left" that the "First New Left" of Britain borrowed the term.
Britain
As a result of Nikita KhrushchevNikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's Secret Speech
On the Personality Cult and its Consequences
On the Personality Cult and its Consequences was a report, critical of Joseph Stalin, made to the Twentieth Party Congress on February 25, 1956 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. It is more commonly known as the Secret Speech or the Khrushchev Report...
denouncing Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, many abandoned the Communist Party of Great Britain
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
(CPGB) and began to rethink its orthodox Marxism
Orthodox Marxism
Orthodox Marxism is the term used to describe the version of Marxism which emerged after the death of Karl Marx and acted as the official philosophy of the Second International up to the First World War and of the Third International thereafter...
. Some joined various Trotskyist
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
groupings or the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
.
The Marxist historians E. P. Thompson
E. P. Thompson
Edward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...
and Ralph Miliband
Ralph Miliband
Ralph Miliband , born Adolphe Miliband, was a Belgian-born British sociologist known as a prominent Marxist thinker...
established the Communist Party Historians Group
Communist Party Historians Group
A subdivision of the Communist Party of Great Britain , from 1946-1956 the Communist Party Historians Group formed a highly influential cluster of British Marxist historians, who contributed to "history from below." Famous members included such leading lights of 20th-century British history as...
and a dissenting journal within the CPGB called Reasoner. Once expelled from the party, they began the New Reasoner
New Reasoner
During the crisis of the 1950s within the Communist Party of Great Britain , John Saville and E.P. Thompson created a journal of dissident Communism named the Reasoner. They took the title from an early 19th century publication, created by John Bone, which had been an attempt at renewing and...
from 1957. In 1960, this journal merged with the Universities and Left Review to form the New Left Review
New Left Review
New Left Review is a 160-page journal, published every two months from London, devoted to world politics, economy and culture. Often compared to the French-language Les Temps modernes, it is associated with Verso Books , and regularly features the essays of authorities on contemporary social...
. These journals attempted to synthesise a theoretical position of a revisionist, humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
, socialist Marxism, departing from orthodox Marxist
Orthodox Marxism
Orthodox Marxism is the term used to describe the version of Marxism which emerged after the death of Karl Marx and acted as the official philosophy of the Second International up to the First World War and of the Third International thereafter...
theory. This publishing effort made the ideas of culturally oriented theorists available to an undergraduate reading audience. In this early period, many on the New Left were involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
, formed in 1957. According to Robin Blackburn
Robin Blackburn
Robin Blackburn is a British socialist historian, a former editor of New Left Review , an author of essays on Marx, capitalism and socialism, and of books on the history of slavery and on social policy...
, "The decline of CND by late 1961, however, deprived the New Left of much of its momentum as a movement, and uncertainties and divisions within the Board of the journal led to the transfer of the Review to a younger and less experienced group in 1962."
Under the long-standing editorial leadership of Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson
Perry Anderson is a British Leftist intellectual, historian, and political essayist. He is often identified with the post-1956 Western Marxism of the New Left in Europe. He is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and an editor of the New Left Review. He...
, the New Left Review popularised the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
, Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
, Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
and other forms of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
. Other periodicals like Socialist Register
Socialist Register
Socialist Register is an annual journal. It was founded in 1964 by Ralph Miliband and John Saville. They had criticisms of the New Left Review after Perry Anderson assumed leadership of the NLR. Miliband and Saville sought to bring about a journal in the orientation of The New Reasoner....
, started in 1964, and Radical Philosophy
Radical Philosophy
Radical Philosophy is a British academic journal of critical theory and continental philosophy, appearing six times a year. It was established in 1972 with the purpose of providing a forum for the theoretical work which was emerging in the wake of the radical movements of the 1960s, in philosophy...
, started in 1972, have also been associated with the New Left, and published a range of important writings in this field.
As the campus orientation of the American New Left became clear in the mid to late 1960s, the student sections of the British New Left began taking action. The London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
became a key site of British student militancy. The influence of protests against the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and of the May 1968 events in France were also felt strongly throughout the British New Left. Some within the British New Left joined the International Socialists, which later became Socialist Workers Party
Socialist Workers Party (Britain)
The Socialist Workers Party is a far left party in Britain founded by Tony Cliff. The SWP's student section has groups at a number of universities...
while others became involved with groups such as the International Marxist Group
International Marxist Group
The International Marxist Group was a Trotskyist group in Britain between 1968 and 1982. It was the British Section of the Fourth International. It and its youth organisation had had around 1,000 members and supporters in the late 1970s...
. The politics of the British New Left can be contrasted with Solidarity, UK, which continued to focus primarily on industrial issues.
1960s in the United States
In the United States, the "New Left" was the name loosely associated with liberal, sometimes radical, political movements that took place during the 1960s, primarily among college students. At the core of this was the Students for a Democratic SocietyStudents for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
, or SDS. The New Left can be defined as 'a loosely organized, mostly white student movement that promoted participatory democracy, crusaded for civil rights and various types of university reforms and protested against the Vietnam war.'
The term "New Left" was popularised in the US in an open letter written in 1960 by sociologist C. Wright Mills
C. Wright Mills
Charles Wright Mills was an American sociologist. Mills is best remembered for his 1959 book The Sociological Imagination in which he lays out a view of the proper relationship between biography and history, theory and method in sociological scholarship...
(1916–62) entitled Letter to the New Left. Mills argued for a new leftist
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
ideology, moving away from the traditional ("Old Left") focus on labor issues, towards issues such as opposing alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
, anomie
Anomie
Anomie is a term meaning "without Law" to describe a lack of social norms; "normlessness". It describes the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and their community ties, with fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values. It was popularized by French...
, and authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
. Mills argued for a shift from traditional leftism, toward the values of the counter-culture, and emphasized an international perspective on the movement. According to David Burner, C Wright Mills claimed that the proletariat were no longer the revolutionary force; the new agent of revolutionary change were young intellectuals around the world.
Student protest
Student protest
Student protest encompasses a wide range of activities that indicate student dissatisfaction with a given political or academic issue and mobilization to communicate this dissatisfaction to the authorities and society in general and hopefully remedy the problem...
called Free Speech Movement
Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio
Mario Savio
""...But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be - have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean - Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone!...
, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker
Bettina Aptheker
Bettina Fay Aptheker is an American activist, author, feminist, and professor.-Early years and education:Aptheker was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina to the first cousins Fay Philippa Aptheker and Herbert Aptheker, a radical activist and Marxist historian. She was raised in Brooklyn, New York....
, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg
Jackie Goldberg
Jackie Goldberg is an American politician and teacher, and a member of the Democratic Party. She is a former member of the California State Assembly....
, and others. In protests unprecedented in this scope at the time, students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom
Academic freedom
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...
. In particular, on 2 December 1964 on the steps of Sproul Hall Mario Savio
Mario Savio
""...But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be - have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean - Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone!...
gave a famous speech: "...But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be - have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean - Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!...There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."
The New Left opposed what it saw as the prevailing authority structures in society, which it termed "The Establishment
The Establishment
The Establishment is a term used to refer to a visible dominant group or elite that holds power or authority in a nation. The term suggests a closed social group which selects its own members...
", and those who rejected this authority became known as "anti-Establishment
Anti-establishment
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine New Statesman to refer to its political and social agenda...
". The New Left did not seek to recruit industrial workers, but rather concentrated on a social activist approach to organization, convinced that they could be the source for a better kind of social revolution
Social revolution
The term social revolution may have different connotations depending on the speaker.In the Trotskyist movement, the term "social revolution" refers to an upheaval in which existing property relations are smashed...
.
Many New Left thinkers in the U.S. were influenced by the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Like the British New Left, they recognized problems in the socialism of the Soviet Union, but unlike the British New Left, they did not turn to Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
or social democracy
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
. Some in the U.S. New Left argued that since the Soviet Union could no longer be considered the world center for proletarian revolution, new revolutionary Communist thinkers had to be substituted in its place, such as Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
, Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh
Hồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
and Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
.
Other elements of the U.S. New Left were anarchist and looked to libertarian socialist
Libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production...
traditions of American radicalism
Far left
Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...
, the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
and union militancy. This group coalesced around the historical journal Radical America. American Autonomist Marxism was also a child of this stream, for instance in the thought of Harry Cleaver
Harry Cleaver
Harry Cleaver is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, where Cleaver teaches Marxism and Marxist economics. He is best known as the author of Reading Capital Politically, an autonomist reading of Karl Marx's Capital. Dr...
. Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...
was also part of the anarchist stream of the New Left, as were the Yippies.
The U.S. New Left drew inspiration from black radicalism, particularly the Black Power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
movement and the more explicitly left-wing Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
. The Panthers in turn influenced other similar militant groups, like the Young Lords
Young Lords
The Young Lords, later Young Lords Organization and in New York , Young Lords Party, was a Puerto Rican nationalist group in several United States cities, notably New York City and Chicago.-Founding:...
, the Brown Berets
Brown Berets
The Brown Berets is a Chicano nationalist activist group of young Mexican Americans that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s and remains active to the present day. The group was seen as part of the Third Movement for Liberation. The Brown Berets focus on community organizing...
and the American Indian Movement
American Indian Movement
The American Indian Movement is a Native American activist organization in the United States, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by urban Native Americans. The national AIM agenda focuses on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty...
. The New Left was also inspired by SNCC
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...
, Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. Students immersed themselves into poor communities building up support with the locals. The New Left sought to be a broad based, grass roots movement.
The Vietnam war
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
conducted by liberal President Lyndon Johnson was a special target across the worldwide New Left. Johnson and his top officials became unwelcome on American campuses. The anti-war movement escalated the rhetorical heat, as violence broke out on both sides. The climax came at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
It could be argued that the New Left's most successful legacy was the rebirth of feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
. As the leaders of the New Left were largely white men, women reacted to the lack of progressive gender politics with their own social intellectual movement.
The New Left was also marked by the invention of the modern environmentalist movement, which clashed with the Old Left's disregard for the environment in favor of preserving the jobs of union workers. Environmentalism also gave rise to various other social justice movements such as the environmental justice movement, which aims to prevent the toxification of the environment of minority and disadvantaged communities.
Students for a Democratic Society
The organization that really came to symbolize the core of the New Left was the Students for a Democratic SocietyStudents for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
(SDS). By 1962, the SDS had emerged as the most important of the new campus radical groups; soon it would be regarded as virtually synonymous with the ‘New Left’. In 1962, Tom Hayden
Tom Hayden
Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden is an American social and political activist and politician, known for his involvement in the animal rights, and the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. He is the former husband of actress Jane Fonda and the father of actor Troy Garity.-Life and...
wrote its founding document, the Port Huron Statement
Port Huron Statement
The Port Huron Statement is the manifesto of the American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society , written primarily by Tom Hayden, then the Field Secretary of SDS, and completed on June 15, 1962 at an SDS convention at what is now a state park in Lakeport, Michigan, a...
, which issued a call for "participatory democracy" based on non-violent civil disobedience. This was the idea that individual citizens could help make ‘those social decisions determining the quality and direction’ of their lives. The SDS marshalled anti-war, pro-civil rights and free speech
Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
concerns on campuses, and brought together liberals and more revolutionary leftists.
The SDS became the leading organization of the anti-war movement on college campuses during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. As the war escalated the membership of the SDS also increased greatly as more people were willing to scrutinise political decisions in moral terms. During the course of the war, the people became increasingly militant
Militant
The word militant, which is both an adjective and a noun, usually is used to mean vigorously active, combative and aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in 'militant reformers'. It comes from the 15th century Latin "militare" meaning "to serve as a soldier"...
. As opposition to the war grew stronger, the SDS became a nationally prominent political organization, with opposing the war an overriding concern that overshadowed many of the original issues that had inspired SDS. In 1967 the old statement in Port Huron was abandoned for a new call for action, which would inevitably lead to the destruction of the SDS.
In 1968 and 1969, as its radicalism reached a fever pitch, the SDS began to split under the strain of internal dissension and increasing turn towards Maoism
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
. Along with adherents known as the New Communist Movement
New Communist Movement
The New Communist Movement ' was a Marxist-Leninist political movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S. New Left which sought inspiration in the experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution, and the Cuban...
, some extremist illegal factions also emerged, such as the Weather Underground Organization
Weatherman (organization)
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization , was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their...
.
The SDS suffered the difficulty of wanting to change the world while 'freeing life in the here and now.' This caused confusion between short term and long term goals. The sudden growth due to the successful rallies against the Vietnam War meant there were more people wanting action to end the Vietnam war, whereas the original New Left had wanted to focus on critical reflection. In the end it was the anti-war sentiment that dominated the SDS.
Attacking liberalism
Kazin (1998) says, "The liberals who anxiously turned back the assault of the postwar Right were confronted in the 1960s by a very different adversary: a radical movement led, in the main, by their own children. The white New Left." Kazin concludes, "For the young moralists of the 1960s — missionaries of a secular persuasion — only a self-conscious rebellion from below could topple the corrupted liberal order."Singh (2007) says the attack originated from "thinkers the political left and those associated with the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s." It was a worldwide phenomenon, as a Culture war
Culture war
The culture war in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting cultural values. The term frequently implies a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal...
broke out on university campuses between the older established liberals and the younger radicals of the New Left. Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
, a philosopher of the New Left, said that "The new radicalism militates against the centralized bureaucratic communist as well as against the semi- democratic liberal organization."
Isserman (2001) reports that the New Left" "came to use the word 'liberal' as a political epithet." Historian Richard Ellis (1998) says that the SDS's search for their own identity "increasingly meant rejecting, even demonizing, liberalism." As Wolfe (2010) notes, "no one hated liberals more than leftists.".
European movements
American influence on the European New Left appeared first in West Germany, which became a prototype for European student radicals. German students protesting against the Vietnam war often wore discarded US military uniforms, and they made influential contacts with dissident GI's--draftees who did not like the war either.The Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
was legitimised by the Czechoslovak government as a socialist reform movement. The 1968 events in the Czechoslovakia were driven forward by industrial
Industry
Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...
workers, and were explicitly theorized by active Czechoslovak unionists as a revolution for workers' control.
The driving force of near-revolution in France in May 1968 were students inspired by the ideas of the Situationist International, which in turn had been inspired by Socialisme ou Barbarie
Socialisme ou Barbarie
Socialisme ou Barbarie was a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-World War II period . It existed from 1948 until 1965...
. Both of these groups emphasised culture as a form of production.
While the Autonomia in Italy have been called New Left, it is more appropriate to see them as the result of traditional, industrially oriented, communism re-theorising its ideas and methods. Unlike most of the New Left, Autonomia had a strong blue-collar arm, active in regularly occupying factories.
The Provos were a Dutch counter-cultural movement of mostly young people with anarchist influences.
Inspirations and influences
- Albert CamusAlbert CamusAlbert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
- Guy DebordGuy DebordGuy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
- Frantz FanonFrantz FanonFrantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...
- Allen GinsbergAllen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
- Emma GoldmanEmma GoldmanEmma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
- Che GuevaraChe GuevaraErnesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
- Peter KropotkinPeter KropotkinPrince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
- R. D. Laing
- Henri LefebvreHenri LefebvreHenri Lefebvre was a French sociologist, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for his work on dialectics, Marxism, everyday life, cities, and space.-Biography:...
- Vladimir LeninVladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
- Rosa LuxemburgRosa LuxemburgRosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
- Herbert MarcuseHerbert MarcuseHerbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
- Theodor Adorno
- George OrwellGeorge OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
- Bertrand RussellBertrand RussellBertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
- Malcolm XMalcolm XMalcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
Key figures
- Stew AlbertStew AlbertStewart Edward "Stew" Albert was an early member of the Yippies, an anti-Vietnam War political activist, and an important figure in the New Left movement of the 1960s....
- Bill AyersBill AyersWilliam Charles "Bill" Ayers is an American elementary education theorist and a former leader in the movement that opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He is known for his 1960s activism as well as his current work in education reform, curriculum, and instruction...
- Rudolf BahroRudolf BahroRudolf Bahro was a philosopher, political figure and author who was a noted East German dissident and who became a leader of the West German party The Greens...
- Charles BettelheimCharles BettelheimCharles Bettelheim was a French economist and historian, founder of the Center for the Study of Modes of Industrialization at the Sorbonne), economic advisor to the governments of several developing countries during the period of decolonization...
- Stokely CarmichaelStokely CarmichaelKwame Ture , also known as Stokely Carmichael, was a Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. He rose to prominence first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party...
- Daniel Cohn-BenditDaniel Cohn-BenditDaniel Marc Cohn-Bendit is a Franco-German politician, active in both countries. He was a student leader during the unrest of May 1968 in France and he was also known during that time as Dany le Rouge...
- Angela DavisAngela DavisAngela Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis was most politically active during the late 1960s through the 1970s and was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party...
- Régis DebrayRégis DebrayJules Régis Debray is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in...
- Rudi DutschkeRudi DutschkeAlfred Willi Rudi Dutschke was the most prominent spokesperson of the German student movement of the 1960s. He advocated 'a long march through the institutions' of power to create radical change from within government and society by becoming an integral part of the machinery...
- Deniz GezmişDeniz GezmisDeniz Gezmiş was a Turkish Marxist-Leninist revolutionary and political activist in the Turkey in the late 1960s...
- Abbie HoffmanAbbie HoffmanAbbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ....
- Tom NairnTom NairnTom Nairn Born in born 2 June 1932 in Freuchie, Fife) is a Scottish theorist of nationalism.Prof Tom Nairn is a Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University...
- Carl OglesbyCarl OglesbyCarl Oglesby was an American writer, academic, and political activist. He was the President of the leftist student organization Students for a Democratic Society from 1965 to 1966.-Early years:...
- Ronald RadoshRonald RadoshRonald Radosh is an American writer, professor, historian, former Marxist, and neoconservative. He is known for his work on the Cold War espionage case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and his advocacy of the state of Israel....
- Jerry RubinJerry RubinJerry Rubin was an American social activist during the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1980s, he became a successful businessman.-Early life:...
- Mark RuddMark RuddMark William Rudd is a political organizer, mathematics instructor, and anti-war activist, most well known for his involvement with the Weather Underground. Rudd became a member of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society in 1963. By 1968, he had emerged as a leader...
- Mario SavioMario Savio""...But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be - have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean - Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone!...
- Raymond WilliamsRaymond WilliamsRaymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts...
- Peter WorsleyPeter WorsleyPeter Maurice Worsley is a noted British sociologist and social anthropologist.He is a major figure in both anthropology and sociology, and is noted for introducing the term third world into English...
Other associated people
- César ChávezCésar ChávezCésar Estrada Chávez was an American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers ....
- David DellingerDavid DellingerDavid T. Dellinger , was an influential American radical, a pacifist and activist for nonviolent social change.-Chicago Seven:...
- Josef Fischer
- Michel FoucaultMichel FoucaultMichel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
- Norman FruchterNorman Fruchter-Life:He graduated from Rutgers University, in 1959, where he edited the literary magazine, Anthologist.He was arrested protesting with CORE and James L. Farmer, Jr., Bayard Rustin, Rev. Donald Harrington, and Michael Harrington, at the 1964 New York World's Fair. From 1960 to 1962, he served as...
- Karl HessKarl HessKarl Hess was an American national-level speechwriter and author. He was also a political philosopher, editor, welder, motorcycle racer, tax resister, atheist, and libertarian activist...
- William MandelWilliam MandelWilliam Marx "Bill" Mandel is an American broadcast journalist, left-wing political activist and author, best known as a Soviet affairs analyst.-Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee:...
- A. J. MusteA. J. MusteThe Reverend Abraham Johannes "A.J." Muste was a Dutch-born American clergyman and political activist. Muste is best remembered for his work in the labor movement, pacifist movement, and the US civil rights movement.-Early years:...
- Nicos PoulantzasNicos PoulantzasNicos Poulantzas was a Greek Marxist political sociologist. In the 1970s, Poulantzas was known, along with Louis Althusser, as a leading Structural Marxist and, while at first a Leninist, eventually became a proponent of eurocommunism. He is most well known for his theoretical work on the state...
- Richard SennettRichard SennettRichard Sennett is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University...
- Charles TaylorCharles Taylor (philosopher)Charles Margrave Taylor, is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec best known for his contributions in political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and in the history of philosophy. His contributions to these fields have earned him both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the...
General
- Interview with André Gorz, about The New Left
- Teodori, Massimo, ed., The New Left: A documentary History. London: Jonathan Cape (1970).
- Oglesby, Carl (ed.) The New Left Reader Grove Press (1969). ISBN 83-456-1536-8. Influential collection of texts by Mills, Marcuse, Fanon, Cohn-Bendit, Castro, Hall, Althusser, Kolakowski, Malcolm X, Gorz & others.
- Michael R. Krätke,Otto Bauer and the early "Third Way" to Socialism
- Detlev Albers u.a. (Hg.), Otto Bauer und der "dritte" Weg. Die Wiederentdeckung des Austromarxismus durch Linkssozialisten und Eurokommunisten, Frankfurt/M 1979
Canada
- Anastakis, Dimitry, ed (2008). The sixties: Passion, politics, style (McGill Queens University Press).
- Cleveland, John. (2004) "New Left, not new liberal: 1960s movements in English Canada and Quebec," Canadian Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 41, no. 4: 67-84.
- Kostash, Myma. (1980) Long way from home: The story of the sixties generation in Canada. Toronto: Lorimer.
- Levitt, Cyril. (1984). Children of privilege: Student revolt in the sixties. University of Toronto Press.
- Sangster, Joan. "Radical Ruptures: Feminism, Labor, and the Left in the Long Sixties in Canada," American Review of Canadian Studies, Spring 2010, Vol. 40 Issue 1, pp 1–21
Japan
- Miyazaki, Manabu (2005). Toppamono: Outlaw, Radical, Suspect: My Life in Japan's Underworld. Tōkyō: Kotan Publishing. ISBN 978-0970171627. Includes an account of the author's days as a student activist and street fighter for the Japanese Communist PartyJapanese Communist PartyThe Japanese Communist Party is a left-wing political party in Japan.The JCP advocates the establishment of a society based on socialism, democracy and peace, and opposition to militarism...
, 1964–1969.
United Kingdom
- Ali, TariqTariq AliTariq Ali , , is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator...
. Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties London: Collins, 1987. ISBN 0-00-217779-X. - Hock, Paul and Vic Schoenbach. LSE: the natives are restless, a report on student power in action London: Sheed and Ward, 1969. ISBN 0-7220-0596-2.
- Scruton, RogerRoger ScrutonRoger Vernon Scruton is a conservative English philosopher and writer. He is the author of over 30 books, including Art and Imagination , Sexual Desire , The Aesthetics of Music , and A Political Philosophy: Arguments For Conservatism...
Thinkers of the New Left (Claridge Press, 1985). - The New Left's renewal of Marxism an account by Paul Blackledge from International SocialismInternational Socialism (journal)International Socialism is a British-based quarterly magazine of socialist theory published by the Socialist Workers Party. It is currently edited by Alex Callinicos, who took over after the death of Chris Harman in November 2009....
Archives
- New Left Movement: 1964–1973. Archive # 88-020. Title: New Left Movement fonds. 1964–1973. 51 cm of textual records. Trent University Archives. Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Online guide retrieved April 12, 2005.
- Russ Gilbert "New Left" Pamphlet Collection: An inventory of the collection at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Online guide retrieved October 8, 2005
Reference
- Albert, Judith Clavir, and Albert, Stewart Edward. The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (New York: Praeger, 1984). ISBN 0-275-91781-9
- Breines, Wini. Community Organization in the New Left, 1962–1968: The Great Refusal, reissue edition (Rutgers University Press, 1989). ISBN 0-8135-1403-7.
- Cohen, Mitchell, and Hale, Dennis, eds. The New Student Left (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).
- Evans, Sara. Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement & the New Left (Vintage, 1980). ISBN 0-394-74228-1.
- Frost, Jennifer. "An Interracial Movement of the Poor": Community Organizing & the New Left in the 1960s (New York University Press, 2001). ISBN 0-8147-2697-6.
- Gosse, Van. The Movements of the New Left, 1950–1975: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004). ISBN 0-312-13397-9.
- Isserman, Maurice. If I had a Hammer: the Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left, reprint edition (University of Illinois Press, 1993). ISBN 0-252-06338-4.
- Long, Priscilla, ed. The New Left: A Collection of Essays (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1969).
- Mattson, Kevin, Intellectuals in Action: The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945-1970 (Penn State Press, 2002). ISBN 0-271-02206-X
- McMillian, John and Buhle, Paul (eds.). The New Left Revisited (Temple University Press, 2003). ISBN 1-56639-976-9.
- Rand, Ayn. The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 1993, 1975). ISBN 0452011256.
- Rossinow, Doug. The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (Columbia University Press, 1998). ISBN 0-231-11057-x.
- Rubenstein, Richard E. Left Turn: Origins of the Next American Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973).
- Young, C. A. Culture, Radicalism, and the Making of a US Third Wold Left (Duke University Press, 2006).
Publications
- Munk, Michael. The New Left: What It Is ... Where It's Going ... What Makes it Move. 22pp A National Guardian Pamphlet. New York. n.d. [1965]. Stapled softcover. Photos.