Tom
Max Sawicky wrote:
> Nathan:
> >Please, please, spare us from 60s nostalgia. The Civil Rights movement was
> >admirable and the embryo of the environmental and women's rights movements
> >spun off from the New Left, but the general core of New Left activism can
> >only be considered an abysmal failure. And a lot of that came from their
> >general scorn for working class power in favor of "do your own thing"
> >self-expression and self-indulgence.
>
> Not too hip.
>
> There were multiple generations of the New Left.
> There was no one 'new left.' All you have to
> do is compare the Port Huron statement to
> the Little Red Book. Or compare Mario
> Savio to Robert Avakian. Quite a gulf there.
> On balance, I'd say the puritanical left
> outnumbered the hedonistic left.
>
> The Civil Rights movement was a bi-racial
> student movement in important respects.
> It's silly to say put aside race and say
> there isn't much left. Race was issue numero
> uno, along with the War, which NN doesn't mention
> above. One of the first, if not THE first
> big anti-war demos did not come from the
> civil rights movement. It was put on by SDS.
> The New Left(s) made the anti-war movement.
> It broke apart in a public way the common
> presumption that the Gov would routinely
> tell the truth about major issues.
>
> The issue of the working class was bitterly
> contested within the new left. Generalizations
> on this count are baseless. The do your own
> thing stuff is from Time magazine, not
> history.
>
> We thought going from university into
> a profession was self-indulgence.
>
> I could go on, and I probably will . . .
>
> mbs