For all its efforts to distinguish itself from the "Old" Left intellectually, there is little doubt that the New Left grew out of the liberal consensus of the early 1960s.

ROOTS IN COLD WAR LIBERALISM

Initially, advocates of New Left thought believed that most problems America faced were solvable. Like Cold War liberals, student reformers believed that America's abundance was the key to solving many of these problems. And like the early stages of the Civil Rights movement, these leaders believed in working through the existing political system.

Julian Bond - Civil Rights leader	Tom Hayden - New Left leader

Originally, the New Left resembled the "Freedom Now" period of Civil Rights movement. Its leaders wanted equal access to political decision-makers and equal rights. While capitalism might eventually solve social problems like pockets of poverty and remaining unemployment, these students wanted the public sector to take greater initiative in addressing these issues.

Many white students who would form the core of the student movement at elite Northern schools discovered poverty for themselves when they joined the Civil Rights movement.

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT CONNECTION

White students started streaming south to protest on behalf of civil rights in 1960.

They participated in the sit-ins of the early 1960s.

They took part in the Freedom Rides.

This activity culminated in Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964.

There students experienced first hand grinding poverty that southern African-Americans faced. They also experienced the flagrant violations of constitutional protections that Southern law enforcement officials propagated.

Video Clip: White College Students go South

The college students learned an important lesson through their participation in the "Freedom Now" movement.

They saw first hand that pluralist democracy was not going to solve these problems automatically. Nobody could observe the rabid resistance of many Southerners without concluding that outside political intervention was required if African-Americans hoped to obtain formal equal rights, not to mention a decent job.

The visiting students learned something else: the power of a movement. They felt the power of mass action. With each protest, their sense of confidence grew.

Action, participation, putting words into action, had the effect of bolstering the protesters' confidence.

Action without results can often lead to disillusionment. The students who joined the Civil Rights Movement, however, entered politics at a unique time. They literally watched as a century of Jim Crow segregation literally dismantled at lunch counters, public swimming pools, and bus station waiting rooms.

This astounding results exhilarated the student protesters. It encouraged them to feel that they were operating under unique circumstances and that further social reform might also yield such quick and positive results.

EXTENDING THE CRITIQUE

A few Northern students stayed in the South to do the dangerous, gritty, and unrewarding work of community organizing. But, most returned to their schools and, once there, some of them extended their critique of Southern segregation to American society and then to the nation's political system as a whole. They also found ample evidence of injustice in their own back yards: on their own college campuses.

Video Clip: SNCC Politicizes Students

The critique of American society that the New Left ultimately crafted began with an abiding affirmation. Man was perfectible. He could be improved. In fact, he could improve himself, if freed from the constraints that an overly materialistic and bureaucratic society had imposed on him. [Note the use of "man." As we will discuss in section, the New Left spoke and in many instances thought in these terms.]

Why were men less than perfect? Primarily because modern American politics had removed too many of them from the decision-making process. Even when citizens "participated," they did so through proxies, like interest groups and political parties.

The solution to fixing a host of problems, according to the New Left, lay in re-involving the common man in decisions that affected his life. The answer was greater political participation.

Participatory Democracy was the phrase that embodied this approach to politics. It meant that individuals had to get directly involved in decisions that impacted their lives -- whether at work, at school, or in politics.

The slogan that embodied this philosophy was Power to the People. It served the same purpose that the phrase Black Power did a few years later. It galvanized audiences and embodied the essence of a movement.

CONNECTING THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE COMMUNITY

The place where individuals connected to each other, the venue in which participatory democracy would be acted out was the community.

Significantly, these communities were not formed along the lines of race, gender, or even geography. Instead, they were formed by shared experience. As the New Left saw it, communities came to together when groups of people experienced the same set of alienating circumstances. Community members then would work together to improve their condition. Because action counted as much as words, group decision-making and the direct involvement of each individual in the community was crucial.

Taking action by actively participating in group decision-making was as important as the final decision of group. Perhaps more important. That is because the act of participating changed the consciousness of those taking part in the discussion. As each member of the community participated directly in the decison making process he or she adapted personal views; this changed their consciousness of the problem.

Participatory democracy ultimately would change the consciousness of the masses. It would lead to their liberation and end their alienation from the society that controlled their lives in all facets, without their say-so.

BREAKING WITH COLD WAR LIBERALISM: THE PORT HURON STATEMENT

How do a group of reformers who loathe bureaucratic organization organize? In the case of the New Left, in a very decentralized and partcipatory fashion.

The organization that embodied the ideals of the New Left was the Students for a Democratic Society -- SDS.

In 1962, a small group of students from a number of colleges met at a retreat in Michigan called Port Huron. There they formed Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). There were hours upon hours of discussion, which finally produced a document that best embodies the ideas of the New Left at that point in time. It was called the Port Huron Statement.

Port Huron Statement

Portions of the Port Huron Statement reveal the roots of the New Left in Cold War liberalism. For instance, the statement called for students to work for liberal candidates. It backed reform-oriented labor leaders. It was committed to expelling Southern Democrats' firm hold on the party. It called for the abolition of poverty and abundance for all citizens.

Those approaches to reform sounded a lot like what Kennedy had already proposed or would propose. They sounded a lot like the program that Lyndon Johnson would introduce and call the Great Society.

Like Cold War liberalism, they sought to give the slow workings of the liberal state a push in order to extend the prosperity of the 1950s to all citizens. But even early on, there were two crucial distinctions between the New Left and their Cold War Liberals predecessors.

1. The New Left rejected the Cold War half of Cold War liberalism

The New Left argued that social programs were necessary in their own right. These were required in order to realize social justice.

We have seen in earlier classes that the roots of many domestic social programs run back to the national security state. Aid to education, for instance, was increased in response to Sputnik. Even programs as disparate as the interstate highway system and civil rights were justified as national security measures under the Cold War imperative to fight the communist enemy and persuade the developing world that America's system proved dominant.

Troops moving on an interstate highway

The New Left, however, rejected the Cold War rationale for domestic programs because it rejected the need for the United States military to be extended around the world. The New Left began to question the unquestionable: Why were American forces and American power arrayed across the globe?

The New Left viewed upheaval in developing world countries as the product of nationalism; it was the indigenous quest for self-determination, not extension of Soviet power.

The New Left viewed U.S. presence around the world as crucial to maintaining economic hegemony, a goal it rejected. U.S. forces abroad were not needed to contain Communism.

2. The New Left also rejected the political process favored by Cold War Liberals: interest group politics.

The New Left criticized interest group politics on two grounds:
a.) Interest group politics systematically excluded many American citizens. Poor people were especially under-represented.

The intellectual groundwork for this critique was laid by C. Wright Mills.

C. Wright Mills

In an influential work, The Power Elite, Mills argued that modern society had created a process for decision-making that was highly centralized. Most decision were made by a small group of elites. We have referred to this group as the "Establishment" in past units.

Mills expanded the reach of the Establishment and its members. According to Mills, it made key domestic decisions, along with foreign policy and military decisions. Its members were drawn from corporate boards, the military, and elite universities. These were the men running America.

b.) Elite, centralized decision-making created a passive public. Because most Americans did not participate in the decision making process on key issues that affected all of their lives, the American public had grown passive. They did not even care to participate any more.

As Mills put it, "More and more people are becoming salaried workers who spend the most alert hours of their lives being told what to do."

For Mills, the very act of participation was the most crucial issue. Participation was action, and that action was essential.

Mills argued for a return to the democratic ideal of a small republic: decision-making by all in the community. As Mills put it, "The basis of our integrity can be gained or renewed only by activity."

It was crucial to link the personal and the political. Intellectuals had identified alienation as a key social and political problem, but if this alienation was to be overcome it had to be linked to political action.

Leaders of SDS viewed it as their task to energize and mobilize those who had been excluded from pluralist politics by getting these passive bystanders engaged in politics. Getting them engaged would change their view of politics and ultimately, would reshape power relations in the United States.

3. Interest Group Politics is Compromised Politics

SDS also criticized pluralist politics because in far too many instances it compromised its political demands. SDS argued that on matters that ranged from income equality to civil rights, to human rights in foreign countries, there could be no compromise. The usual techniques of pluralist politics -- compromise, splitting the difference -- might work when it came to farm subsidies or home mortgage deductions, but it could not work when fundamental issues of social justice were involved.

This position grew directly out of contemporary politics, where pluralist politics had failed to make a dent in Jim Crow segregation. Cold War alliances made strange bedfellows for Americans who claimed to promote freedom and democracy.

President Kennedy meets with Soviet Foreign Affairs minister, Andrei Gromyko.

The New Left was convinced that sometimes compromise was simply not enough. Some issues defied the pluralist approach. Taking a principled, moral, and non-negotiable stand was the only true and just action.

Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, sets himself on fire in the middle of a Saigon street to protest in 1963

PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

A concept labeled "participatory democracy" was the Port Huron's Statement's, and ultimately, the New Left's alternative to Cold War liberalism and the Establishment.

If people participated directly then all voices would count the same. The New Left also believed that something greater than the sum of individual preferences would result from participatory democracy. The very act of coming together would produce more enlightened decisions.

1963 March on Washington