What “New Left” meant
The term New Left was applied in the late 1950s and 1960s to a set of political movements, in the United States and elsewhere, that tried to separate themselves from the older left. The Old Left, in the American context, was associated with the Communist Party, with trade unions and with the debates of the 1930s. The New Left was more suspicious of rigid doctrine and of both Soviet communism and Cold War liberalism. It drew energy from the civil rights movement, from student campuses, and from the sense that postwar affluence had left questions of power, alienation and inequality unanswered.
Among the writers who influenced it were the sociologist C. Wright Mills, who argued in a “Letter to the New Left” at the start of the decade that students and intellectuals might replace the working class as agents of change, and the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, whose book One-Dimensional Man (1964) criticised modern industrial society. These figures were read selectively, and the movement was never a single school.
Students for a Democratic Society
The central organisation was Students for a Democratic Society, usually called SDS. It grew out of an older socialist student body and in 1962 adopted the Port Huron Statement, a long manifesto drafted largely by Tom Hayden. The document criticised apathy, racial inequality and the nuclear arms race, and it called for “participatory democracy”, the idea that ordinary people should take part directly in decisions that shaped their lives. SDS organised community projects in poor urban neighbourhoods and supported civil rights work, and its early tone was earnest and reformist.
The war changed it. In April 1965 SDS organised a march in Washington against the war that attracted a crowd in the low tens of thousands, a surprise even to its organisers. Membership and the number of chapters rose substantially afterwards, though the figures usually quoted for later years vary, and the organisation was loosely run, with a national office that had limited control over local chapters. By 1967 it was a prominent presence on many campuses, particularly in opposing recruitment by the military and by firms such as Dow Chemical, and in resisting the Selective Service draft.
Reform or resistance
Two broad currents emerged. One held that the movement should build alliances, work with unions, churches and liberal Democrats, and use elections and organising to change policy. The other held that peaceful pressure had failed, that the war reflected deeper features of American society, and that the movement should move from “protest to resistance”, including confrontation and obstruction. The slogan “From Protest to Resistance” became prominent in the autumn of 1967, around the time of the October demonstrations at the Pentagon and in Oakland.
The tension appeared in several organisations. At the National Conference for New Politics, held in Chicago over the Labor Day weekend in 1967, a black caucus demanded a substantial share of the votes and the conference was left divided; the event is often cited as an illustration of how racial and ideological disagreements were weakening the broader left. The meeting was meant to build a coalition for political action, possibly including a third-party presidential ticket, and it ended with little agreement. Earlier in the summer, the SDS national convention in Ann Arbor had shown a different split, with its older leaders worried about the growing influence of smaller Marxist-Leninist groups and by an increasingly confrontational mood.
The rise of Black Power, especially among SNCC organisers, had already pushed many white activists to ask what their own role should be, since some black activists wanted organisations led and staffed by black people. This gave New Left white organisers a reason to turn toward campuses and antiwar work, and it also fed discussions of the draft as a form of class and race privilege.
Style and culture
The New Left was entangled with the American counterculture but was not identical to it. Some activists regarded the hippie scene as a distraction from politics, while others, including the Yippies who emerged around the end of 1967, tried to merge political action with theatre and style. The underground press carried news of campus protests and police actions to readers who did not trust mainstream newspapers. The tension between serious organising and expressive lifestyle politics became another dividing line.
What happened next
The splits of 1967 widened in 1968 and after. At the SDS convention of June 1969 in Chicago the organisation broke apart, with one faction becoming the Weathermen, who advocated violent action, and others forming rival groups. The split ended SDS as a national organisation, although its members and ideas continued to shape American politics in other forms, including the movements for women’s liberation, environmental protection and gay rights.
As a historical judgment, the New Left is credited with encouraging political participation, shaping how many Americans thought about the war, and contributing to changes in universities. It is also criticised for strategic confusion, for internal bitterness, and for sometimes misjudging public opinion; critics say that the most militant actions may have alienated potential supporters. Historians continue to disagree about the balance, and the 1967 debate over reform and resistance is where the disagreement first took clear organisational shape.