Historical understanding of the new left labor civil activism war and ideological effect

1 Motivated by the anti-establishment ideologies, students under the umbrella of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) spearheaded the activities of The New Left. Some observers argue that The Left and SDS was the same thing because most of the activities started with students’ unrest. In other words, students were at the center of every activity of the New Left. 2 The Tom Hayden drafted manifesto of 1962 would later become the movement’s main document, guiding its activities and operations. The New Left was a complete departure from the Old left, which was mostly Marxist-inspired. Factories experienced massive labor shortages, which inevitably raised demand for higher pay for the existing workers and more union protests. The end of World War II came with the Second Red Scare.

This was another tug of war between the United States and the communist-leaning Soviet Union due to differences in ideologies. As the two most dominant unions after World War II engaged in cold war, an arms race began with the Soviet Union first developing the atomic bomb in 1949. The United States responded with the making of the more dangerous hydrogen bomb. As Rothman Stanley6 observed, it was ironical that American government claimed to protect democracy by fighting elements of communism, yet the same democracy they denied those they accused of embracing communism. The perspective of labor and civil rights activism When the SDS issued “The Port Huron Statement”, its vision was straightforward: to have democracy that involved everyone irrespective of social status, color, race, gender, sexual orientation, labor rights and civil rights.

Notably, the concept of labor rights in the New Left has received little attention from scholars, except for the common mentions in the history of United Auto Workers who were the owners of Port Huron Hall in Michigan. 7 This is the hall that gave the statement its name. However, labor as a concept was prominent in the New Left activities in many ways, just like it was with the Old Left. However, one most cited ideology is that of libertarian and democracy, which emphasizes on the transformation of both socio-cultural and political landscape for the people. Nevertheless, some scholars have argued that the New Left is an extension of class struggle witnessed with the prior forms of struggle such as labor movements, race and gender equality struggle, and anti-bureaucracy.

On other hand, some scholars have argued that the New Left was a complete departure from the old movements, even though the former picked inspiration from the latter. On this front, it can be argued that the New Left unified the class struggles into one, making it more forceful as it sought to establish a just society for all without prejudicing on others. Phelps9 argues that the New Left mainly contributed to the revision and diversification of Marxism views and its associated doctrines, particularly in line with class and culture. It is only logical to conclude that the “New Left” did not generate any unified theoretical aspect of political movements, as most of the theories associated with it are diverse and scattered.

Scholars such as Eli Zaretsky12 have argued that no New Lefts exist in America today, as the Second Wave feminists and other movements made them irrelevant with a new wave of separatists’ activism. In what could be referred to as the fall of the New Left, it is argued that as women activists tried to wrestle for a niche in the 1960s, it created more epicenters of power, which inevitably weakened the New Left. In Zaretsky’s view, there are no longer protest movements that have taken the form of the New Left, at least with the vigor of a social movement with intellectual standing. This is closely related to the declined radical tendency that is manifested with feminists’ activism. Works Cited Alvarez, Alberto M.