Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretative History

244 Pages·2005·45.329 MB·English

by  Van Gosse (auth.)

Rethinking the New Left

RETHINI{ING
THE
NEW LEFT
An Interpretative History
Van Gosse
* RETHINKING THE NEW LEFT
Cl Van Gosse, 2005.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-6694-0
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2005 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN'M
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press. LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan«> is a registered trademark in the United States. United Kingdom
and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-4039-6695-7 ISBN 978-1-4039-8014-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4039-8014-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gosse, Van.
Rethinking the New Left :an interpretative history I by Van Gosse.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and Index.
1. Radicalism-United States-History-20th century.
2. New Left-United States-History-20th century. 3. Social
movements-United States-History-20th century. 4. United
States-History-1945-1. Title.
HN90.R3G66 2005
303.48' 4'097309045-dc22 2004060109
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd .. Chennai,lndia.
First edition: October 2005
10 9 8 7 6 s 4 3 2 1
Transferred to digital printing in 2007.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements. · ..... .. vii
Preface: Why This is not Another "Sixties Book" ;x
DEfINING THE NEW LIFT . .
2 AMmCI III THE 1950s: "THE BEST OF ALL
POSSIBLE WORLDS" • . . • . . • . . . • . . • . . • . • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •. 9
3 THE NEW Lm's ORIGINS IN TBE OLD LEFT. . . . . . . . . .• .. .. . .• . . . 19
4 Tn BUCI FREEDOM STRUGCLE: fROM "WE SULL
OVIICOIE" TO "FREEDOM Now!" ...... ... ... ....... ....... . 31
5
CHALLENCING THE COLD WlR BEfORE VIETN!M: .
"BlII TBE BOMB! F.UR Puy FOR Cun!" . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. .. . . 5.3 .
6 THE NORTHERN STUDENT MOUIINT: "FREE SPIECH"
1MB "PlRTICIPlTORY DEIIIQCUCY" .. ... ... ... ... .. ...... .. .. 63
1 UNDERGROUND FEMINISTS IND BO!(QPHILIS:
"THE PROBLEMS TB1T HUE No NI.E" . . ... ... · . .. .. . 13
.
8 V1ETNiM UD "THE WAR n HOlliE" . • . . . . . . . . . . · .. ... . 85
9 BLiCK POWER:"! NITION WITHIN l lhTION?" .... .. • . • .. • .. . • .. . III
10 RED, BROWN, iRD YELLOW POWER IN
"OCCOPIED AMERICI" .. • ..•... • ..•.. • .. ••. •• . • .. • ..•.. 131
vi I tOUUTS
11 WOMEN'S LIBERlTION AND SECORD-WiVE FEMINISM:
"THE PmONlL IS POLITICAL" .••..•.. • ..•..••.... • ..•...•. 153
12 G1Y LIBERlTION: "OOT OF TBE CLOSETS lKD
IIITO TBE STREETS!" •..•..••..•..•..•• • •• • • ••• • •• • ..•. 111
13 WINNING AND LOSIKG: THE NEW LEFT
DIMOCRlTIlIS bERIC! 181
A Selected Bibliography . . . . 211
Index ......... . . .. 221
Acknowledgements
This book was made possible in large part by the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, where [ enjoyed a fellowship in 2000~2001.
I thank Rosemary LYOll, Kimberly Conner, and the rest of the WWIC staff for
their graciolls and highly professional support.
It was completed while I was teaching at Franklin and Marshall College.
[ thank my chairs (Ben McRee, Ted Pearson, and Abby Schrader). my depart
ment as a whole, and Provost Bruce Pipes and Dean Ann Steiner for their
unstinting support. , owe a special thanks 10 Peggy Bender, administrator of
the History Departrnem, who makes all things possible.
Various people read parts of the manuscript over the years, or offered
useful guidance, including Max Elbal1m, Lise Vogel, Jeffrey Escoffier, James
Miller, Ellen Schrecker, and Allen SmiTh. None of Them are responsible in any
way for iTS errors of faCT or idiosyncrasies of inTerpreTaTion.
Special thanks also go 10 Patricia Rossi, who suggested I bring the manu
scripT to Palgrave, and Brendan O'Malley, a first-class editor who made it con·
siderably better. As always, I express my appreciation TO Johanna Gosse, my
brillianT daughter, and her brillianT mother, Eliza Jane Reilly.
This book is dedicaTed 10 Jack O'Dell, whose life has transcended the left
in the twentieth century-old, new, and newer. From him I have learned
abollt patience and the long view. We need more Americans like him.
Van Gosse
April 2005

Preface: Why This is not Another
"Sixties Book"
Since the late 19805, an extraordinary number of books have been published
about that nebulolls decade or era we call '"the Sixties." Clearly there is a
demand, and clearly, there is much 10 say. Still, I feel considerable unease
abom this cottage industry, even though [ have contributed to it with a recent
volume co-edited with Richard Moser, The World the Sixties Made: Politics
and Culture in ReceTll America (Temple University Press, 2003).
My concerns are twofold, and both are reflected in this book's fOCliS not on
a period, but on the collection of movements, episodically united, that made up
the New Left. First, an examination of a period in this country's hislory through
temporal parameters is almost always a short-term solution, soon made
anachronistic. Such works make the impossible claim of capturing the entirety
of an era. How many books simply describing ·'the l\venties,"· "the Thirties,"' or
"the Forties·· have survived? Indeed, even this nomenclature suggests a com
mon assumption about which century one is describing, which seems Quite
dated as we move into a scary new world post-200l. Of course, books about the
American Revolution, Reconstruction, the Great Depression, or the Cold War
wil! remain essential to how we interpret the past, but those topics have a cer
tain specificity which "the Sixties" lacks. Simply put, the poor decade cannot
carry the freight-it·s at best a convenience, a political trope, and trying to bur
den it with the whole weight of social change in the post-World War II era does
not work. Inevitably. the best historians feel compelled to widen their scope as
they attempt to write a comprehensive general history where there is no self
evident beginning or ending, 110 Fort Sumter. Pearl Harbor, or Black Friday. The
result is that more and more historians of the Sixties now try to balance social
movements on the left with those on the right. massive change with underlying
continuity. and so on. To what end? One solution would be to accept that the
Sixties, however one dates them. are really a phase in the history of Cold War
America, part of a period that begins approximately 1945-1947. and runs to
1989-1991. But if olle does not want to write a general history, with all its diffi
culties of compression and generalization, the alternative is to focus on a par
ticular dynamic of the period. and that is what I have attempted to do here.
My goal in this book is to offer a new synthesis of older and recent scholarship
on all of the movements of the New Left, stretching back to the post-World