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Reviews / Comptes Rendus
| John McMillian and Paul Buhle, eds., The New Left Revisited (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2003)
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| JOHN McMILLIAN launches New Left Revisited on a political note. "[C]onservatives have taken the New Left both too seriously and not seriously enough," (2) he says. They have given the movement too much responsibility for cultural changes and too little credit for what it accomplished. Sympathetic historians — themselves often participants in the movement — have inadvertently strengthened the conservative reading by oversimplifying the New Left's history as "a tragic rise-and-fall story." (6) Now, a new generation of historians is attempting to create a more "nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the New Left." (3) This volume is part of that effort. |
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New Left Revisited succeeds admirably in suggesting the complexity of what contributor Doug Rossinow describes as this "messy agglomeration of national and local groups and initiatives." (241) The collection of twelve essays blends events at the ground level with thoughtful larger views. Part I ("Local Studies, Local Stories") focuses on institutions and places inadequately explored in the past — for instance, Peter B. Levy's account of the civil rights movement in Cambridge, Maryland; Gregg L. Michel's chapter on the Southern Student Organizing Committee, and Jennifer Front's on the Economic Research and Action Project of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Part II presents "Reconsiderations," in which analysis predominates, supported by dense detail with an iconoclastic goal: to challenge past over-simplifications. |
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Francesca Polletta, for instance, takes up the role that conflicts over participatory democracy played in the end games of both the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the SDS. Drawing on archival sources and interviews, she dismantles the idea that participatory decision-making was an idealistic goal that foundered on the rocks of reality. To the contrary, as she demonstrates, consensus building was a practical necessity for SNCC, which was trying to develop local leadership and was, besides, facing such danger that activists had to participate fully in the decisions they were putting their lives on the line for. Participatory decision-making came under fire in SNCC's later days, not so much because it had proved impractical, she argues, as because arguments over organization arose out of conflicts over goals and tension between white newcomers and African Americans, who thought greater centralization might allow them to retain control of the organization. Similarly (and inversely), the argument over centralization in SDS's later days was a conflict between the "old guard" and newcomers out of the west, who attacked centralization because they felt excluded by it. |
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Polletta is not the only contributor to consider the New Left in relation to other political sectors. Andrew Hunt, for instance, places the New Left in the stream of time, taking up its kinship with older versions of the Left. David McBride explores the relationship of political radicals to hippies in Los Angeles. Similarly, Robbie Lieberman and David Cochran describe the interlocking party and political cultures at Southern Illinois University. These explorations rightly imply the hazard of defining the New Left narrowly; its roots and branches extended in many directions. |
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For labour historians, the most interesting comment on the relationship of the New Left to other sectors often defined as progressive is likely to be co-editor Paul Buhle's Afterword, in which he takes up the relationship between labour and the New Left. The only contributor who belonged to the New Left generation, Buhle brings considerable passion to his critique of philosopher Richard Rory, who has blamed bad student behavior for labour's lukewarm participation in movements on the Left during this period. Buhle argues that the blame for that defection lies, not with the students, but with labour bureaucrats, led by George Meany, who "blocked assorted progressive movements, including the New Left, from mobilizing labor on a massive scale." (260) What a different path the 1960s story would have taken, Buhle suggests, if labour and the students had joined forces. That they did not, he says, had little to do with student flamboyance and more to do with labour's participation in the Cold War liberal alliance. Summing up recent scholarship on the relationship between Cold War intellectuals and the CIA, Buhle says, provocatively, "we have far to go in understanding the connected systems of power underlying intellectual life and the labor movement." (260) |
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Some significant relationships between the New Left and other sectors go unexplored or are touched on lightly for instance, the relationship of the New Left to the Democratic Party or the relationship of the New Left in the United States to its counterparts in Canada and Europe. But the editors make no claim to offering a comprehensive account of the New Left. Rather, they are filling in gaps and bringing new perspectives, and that they do abundantly well. Several bring fresh perspectives: for instance, a "queer" reading of the Chicago 7 trial or Michael S. Foley's study of gender dynamics in the draft resistance. Jeremey Varon analyzes the evolution of "revolution" as an organizing idea in the 1960s, raising the question: why, by the late 1960s, did so many Americans believe that revolution was possible? Believing that revolution was "morally and politically necessary" and witnessing chaos all around, they took a leap of faith "into the mistaken sense that revolution was therefore likely or even inevitable." (230) |
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Those who lived through the events of the 1960s, and perhaps others as well, are likely to respond to these essays with mixed feelings of regret and admiration. The political energy of those times inspires — although there is no reason to feel nostalgia: in many arenas today we are seeing a new wave of political energy. Indeed, the weakest aspect of this volume is contributors' passing attempts to link the New Wave to present progressive movements. They cannot begin to do justice to the complexity of the present. In fact, their "present" is already the past. Who would recognize our post-September 11 sense of the future in Russell Jacoby's 1990s comment quoted by Jeremy Varon: "We have entered the era of acquiescence, in which we build our lives, families and careers with little expectation the future will diverge from the present." (233) |
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Still, activist readers will find in these excursions into the past much useful food for thought. Authors manage to be both sympathetic and critical at the same time, creating at least the illusion of objectivity that academic writing demands while inviting respect for their subjects. This is not a line that is easy to walk. As Kevin Mattson points out in his chapter on the New Left journal, Studies on the Left, "The editors at Studies understood that the academic virtue of "objectivity" might conflict with their radical predilections." (40) Favouring "objectivity," few of these writers attempt the scene-setting and characterization of individuals that would help readers imagine themselves back into this dramatic time. We get a glimpse of the kind of imaginative creation that would be possible when Ian Lekus describes the trial of the Chicago Seven, capturing the drama of Allen Ginsberg's appearance on the witness stand, "bringing the defendants to tears as he recited fragments of 'Howl'." (200) Although such moments are perhaps too rare in these accounts, the volume as a whole is a rich repast, for professional historians and lay readers alike. |
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Carol Polsgrove
Indiana University, Bloomington |
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