History 47
New Left: 1960s
 

H47 (planned as #18b 3/26. but given as part of #22 4/9
 
 
Introduction. This class will consider the New Left primarily in terms of two leading theorists C.W. Mills (1916-1962) and Herbert Marcuse (1899-
 
Review of points made re "Old Left"
 
A. The American left has been perennial feature since late 19th century. See John Patrick Diggins, The Rise and Fall of the American Left
 
1. Immigrant/worker Left 1870s-1910s. Major organization was Social arty of America (1901-) with more radical Socialist Labor Party (Daniel DeLeon)
 
2. "Lyrical Left"" Bohemian, young intellectuals : Bourne, Max Eastman, John Reed 1910s
 
3. "Old Left" 1930s-1950s
 
4. "New Left" 1960s
 
5. "Academic Left 1980s-90s
 
B. at each stage the agenda was determined by different (a) economic (b) social and (c) intellectual context.
 
1. Worker/immigrant. (a) Nationalization of the economy; (b) industrial labor; and (c) ideas drawn from evolution, positivism etc. to mount a "revisionist" Marxism
 
2. Lyrical Left. (a) Immigration and doubts about the melting pot (see Bourne); (c) incorporated ideas from European modernism (Freud, Nietzsche etc.)
 
3. Old Left (a) Depression; (b) industrial unionism a key issue but personal history of second generation immigrants (Jewish and others) played role; (c)
 
4. New Left (a) affluence and mass society in 1950s; (b) abandon faith in radical worker movement; Civil rights and Vietnam ; Trotskyite roots; youth and intellectuals; (c) Weber, Freud etc. much more prominent than in earlier.
 
C. was particularly appealing to "intellectuals," and can be seen as preeminently if not exclusively a phenomenon of the intellectual class. Positive side in 1960s was passionate interest in ideas, and even reason.
 
D. Various Lefts relatively discontinuous *current plight of the Left: review of Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals
 


I. From Old Left to the "New"
 
*For more detail see Maurice Isserman, If I had a Hammer.
 
A. The 1950s seemed to spell the death of the Old Left in two ways
 
1. ideologically, with the end of ideology movement,.
 
2. anticommunism. although McCarthyism soon ran its course, it lived on in HUAC, a committee that made annual trips to California 1951-60
 
(i) HUAC a Congressional sacred cow
 
(ii) in 1961 met riots in San Francisco, triggered in part by execution of Caryl Chessman, who was accused of forcing oral sex at gun point although not murder. Since he moved victims to their car was technically a kidnapper (O'Neill, Coming Apart, pp. 276)


II. Organizational Roots
 
A. Studies on left
 
B. Student for Democratic Society . Emerges by 1962
 
1. Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID) as wing of League for Industrial Democracy, a small socialist (but anticommunist) organization that had existed since 1921 SDS later broke with.
 
2. Tom Hayden and Al Huber write "Port Huron" statement.
 
3. sponsored Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP) in the North to parallel SNCC's southern Civil Rights drive.
 
*note: emerged from general moralist/reformist tradition (see Swarthmore ca 1963). Bacciocco, Edward A. The New Left in America : reform to revolution, 1956 to 1970 (Stanford, Calif. : Hoover Institution Press, [1974] p. 228 explains why a "NEW" Left
 
a. saw that capitalism had satisfied the material needs of many worker. Hence rejected the Marxian premise of class struggle
 
b. also rejected Soviet Communism (police state, Party bureaucracy etc.) [O'Neill comments that their central weakness was the absence of organization and centralization, although ironically the movement collapsed when a few confused the central office with the "movement"]
 
c. younger, and favored direct action is issues--especially race--that the old left did not attack directly.
 
d. sexual radicalism. [here Marcuse is central figure]
 
** their problem says O'Neill was less strategic than contextual: there was no "Left", and youth is a temporary condition.
 

III. Intellectual Roots
 
A. C.W. Mills
 
*major works (see H47. Mills Bibliog)
 
 
1. Background and education
 
a. grew up in Texas ("Texas Trotsky"), Did not leave until 21, with the result that his provincialism also showed (e.g. see chapter in White Collar on Macy's). Also one root of his despair over bureaucracy, from perspective of someone who had known 5 people per sq. mile.
 
*thus in tradition of radical scholars: Turner, Beard, and esp. Veblen
 
b. education
 
U Texas
 
U. Wisconsin
 
Columbia (where he began his teaching career. Esp influence by Franz Neuman.
 
*Gillman in AQ notes how many of his opponents were people he knew at Columbia.
 
2. CAREER
 
**Mills career had three phases: (1) "sociology of knowledge' (2) class analysis (post-Marxian, post Weberian; and (3) propagandist of New Left in the final years before his death in 1962. Although not really very systematic development (see Spinard).
 
a. sociology of knowledge
 
* as sociologist, Mill completes the story begun with Lester Ward, Dynamic Sociology (1883), and continues the prophetic role sociology has assumed in modern American culture. To understand look briefly at developments since 1929, the year of Ogburn's "Folkways of a Scientific Sociology"
 
 
i. Ph.D. on Sociology and pragmatism : the higher learning in America / [by] C. Wright Mills. Edited with an intro. by Irving Louis Horowitz.(New York : Oxford University Press, [1966]
 
*note Veblen tone
 
ii. at time developed argument in an important article "Social Pathology", in which he reacted against the "over-socialization" of authority going back to Cooley, whom he characterized as the "local colorist of the movement."
 
iii. Complete in The sociological imagination (London ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1967, 1980 printing, c1959
 
Attacks major schools:
 
ch 2 is on "Grand Theory," which is attack on Parsons
 
ch3 "Abstracted Empiricism" on Lundberg and by extension the whole tradition of "scientism" that culminated in his operationalism.
 
*concludes of both: (p. 75) "As practitioners, they may be understood as assuring that we do not learn too much about man and society--the first by force and cloudy obscurantism, the second by force and empty ingenuity." [check quotation]
 
 
Discussion: selection from Sociological Imagination in Hollinger and Capper, 3rd edn.
 
1, what does he mean by "modern"? How compare to other uses of the term? Why "postmodern" ?
 
2. why has "reason" no longer any scope? what are implications for traditional liberalism and Marxism? cf Daniel Bell.
 
3. who are the intellectual forerunners of the Cheerful Robot? what solutions does Mills reject?
 
4. what is his program? role for the "sociological imagination? is anti-reason?
 
 
b Bureaucratization (post-Marx and post Weber)
 
i. White Collar. should be seen in context of other "sociological criticism" of early 1950s (Riesman et al).
 
ii. New Men of Power (1947) anticipates New Left disillusionment with American labor as revolutionary force.
 
iii. Power Elite (1956) In one sense a continuation of his earlier analysis, but in another goes beyond purely economic of class and occupational analysis of earlier work to look more broadly at Power.
 
a. Power elites not an "aristocracy" or a "ruling" class. See Jay A. "The Political Philosophy of C. Wright Mills, Science and Society 30 (wint 1962)
 
*this was something of a watershed not only because dropped class and occupational analysis of earlier work, but now opposed "elite" to "mass" (everyone else), which is a clue to his impatience with or insensitivity to the possibilities of pluralism. :
 
**goes beyond Marx (1) because "power"lies more than in property, that is "ruling class is too narrow".(2) Thus adds to analysis of capitalist centralization of political and military power in hands of elites (cf. Eisenhower, who in 1959 first coined "military-industrial" complex). (3) rejects idea of labor as the "proletarian vanguard." Not sure where he stood in 1960 but looked finally to Cuba and Cuban revolution.
 
***goes beyond Weber who had anticipated a struggle between the ":property classes" and the "acquistors" (i.e. bankers), and saw middle class between the two. In Power Elite has echoes of Weber;s three order s of society": economic, social, legal-political (plus military), but emerges into one. Is like Weber, however, in the the coordination of organization leads to pessimism.
 
b. role of intellectuals. Freethinking intellectuals are only hope, although most are bought off by government. (see Sigler p. 44, and Spinard, p. 550
 
*develops in "The New Left," The New Left review (Sept-Oct 1960), in Power, politics, and people; the collected essays of C. Wright Mills. Edited and with an introd. by Irving Louis Horowitz.(New York, Oxford University Press, 1963)
 
c. Propagandist.
 
*EVALUATION.
 
Negative:
 
1. many critics said he had no clear idea as to where to go or how to get there (cf. Veblen?)
 
e.g. Gilliam American Quarterly charges that what should be a systematic analysis of power becomes an emotional/personal assault on the high and mighty., filled with confusions (p. 477) Thus he he ultimately fails:
 
2. others note conflict between neopopulism and the elitism implicit in his view of the role of intellectuals.
 
Positive:(see especially writing of I. Horowitz)
B. Herbert Marcuse
 
*major works (see H47 Supp2.Marcuse Biblio
 
 
**like Mill went through three stages, only 2 and 3 to be discussed here
 
(1) Hegelian idealist of Das Elend der kritischen Theorie. and Das Ende der Utopie : Vortrage u. Diskussionen in Berlin , and finally Reason and Revolution (1941)
 
(2) Freudian of Eros and Civilization 1955)
 
(3) New Left propagandist of One Dimensional Man and A Critique of Pure Tolerance (1965)
 
Discussion of introduction,ch 1, and "Conclusion" of One Dimensional Man (photocopy in binder). Questions
 
Introduction
 
1. what is the context?
 
2. what theory of "science" does he oppose? who represents?
 
3. what earlier writings does he draw upon? relation to other theorists?
 
4. How relate to marx?
 
Ch. 1. What are the "new forms of control"? Compare with Ross Social Control? Is it the same thing? How does it compare with "end of ideology" " to operationalism and Behaviorism? what is attitude toward the counterculture (hippies)? See especially last two paragraphs on p. 18?
 
Conclusion
 
What is the "absolute refusal?"
 
 

III. Fragmentation and Decline
 

IV. Accomplishments and Legacy
 
A. Political
 
1. SDS had little impact on workers
 
2. Dickstein p. 213
 
3. Matosow Unraveling of America nonetheless notes some positive accomplishments
 

Written by Robert Bannister, for classroom use in History 47, Swarthmore College 4/98. May be reproduced in whole or part for educational purposes, but not copied or distributed for profit.