THEGUILFORDIAN
New Left
ican society: poverty in the richest nation the world has ever known; equality
for every man as long as his skin is not
black; and freedom of speech for the
spokesman of the "power—structure."
These are young people who are rebelling against the Main Street morality and
the smug Philistine ethical standards of
their parent generation. They see no
reason why they should serve as "cannon-
fodder" in a war they did not start, much
less approve.
They are suspicious, if not downright
hostile, toward businessmen. Just as the
right-wingers see every unknown stir as a
Communist plot, the New Left sees contradictions and the restrictions on individual freedom as a part of a military-
industrial conspiracy to control their lives.
Most of them have read, or are at least
familar with, C. Wright Mills,so they view
with circumspection that amorphous unit,
the "power-elite." In sum, they feel a
certain righteous indignation at the double-
standards and the Babbittry of their
elders, and they shiver in revulsion at the
mess they have inherited.
Student activism and dissent is not
newyof course, but never has this country
seen it on such a large scale, and never has
it occured with quite the same degree of
intensity as in the 1960's. The New Left
is reacting against the intellectual and
moral sell-out of the 1950's. Against
those "realists" wbo were concerned with
ranch-style homes and Dad's office, and
against those "clean-cut" youths who
worshipped the bitch-goddess "success."
The "silent generation" of the 50's seemed
to be more concerned with stuffing telephone booths and gripeing about bad
cafeteria food than with speaking out on
McCarthy or Korea. To be sure the 1950's
had its "beatnicks," those kindly, almost
meek, bohemian "Village-dwellers" who
retreated to the sancitity of their "pads"
to write poetry, and to the security of the
expresso" cafe to pluck their guitars. The
"beat-generation" had essentially given
up. They saw the power structures as implacable, incapable of movement. The
New Left rejected this defeatist position.
In the 1960's, "involvement" replaced
"success" in the student's lexicon, and the
hand-painted placard and the beard substituted as passwords for entrance to the
cavernous structure of the New Left.
"Non-involvement" gave way to the activist tenent "do your own thing;" the
guitar was replaced with the old Churchill
victory sign; and the poems were discarded for the underground newspaper.
Life was to be lived and to do this one
needed to get involved. Jingoism, the
restrictive environs of the "white-ghetto,"
phoniness, brinkmanship, police brutality,
injustice, and war were all repulsive. They
even viewed cybernetics as a form of
slavery (the New Left apparently never
tires of handing out IBM cards symbolizing the extreme impersonality of the
future).
This new breed is concerned with
ideals, theories, and principles. Their somewhat strange philosophy equates poverty
with purity, and they see "powerlessness
as next to Godliness." Even so, they are
non-doctrinaire. Marx and Trotsky they
will tell you are outdated; Stalin was insane; and Debs and Thomas were losers.
They are social actionists and they are
looking for something more relevant than
the tired dogma of the wild-eyed labor
organizer of the '30's.
The first shot in the arm for the yet
unborn New Left came in 1959 when
Castro defeated the seemingly implacable
Batista regime. This showed them above
all else that a small determined group
could effect change, and it gave them
their first real flash of hope. Following
closely on its heels in 1960 came the
execution of Caryl Chessman in San
Quentin, the election of John F. Kennedy
and his fresh"new-look,"and the first of a
series of sit-indemonstrations which started in Greensboro, N. C. After witnessing
the remarkable success of the sit-ins the
New Left moved swiftly to include it,
non-violence, the strike, and the boycott
in their arsenal.
Throughout the 1960's students rebelled. They went to Selma for Negro rights;
they went to Washington to protest the
war in Vietnam; and often they merely
stayed on their own campuses.
In 1964 Mario Savio, a straight-A
philosophy major at the University of
California at Berkley, led the now-famous
demonstration against California's monolithic "computer-colleges." He then became the first real leader of the New
Left. He was the Robin Hood, just as,the
poet Allen Ginsberg was the Friar Tuck.
Today the New Left is about as strong
as ever, but they are facing monumental
problems. The old leaders are approaching middle-age. They now have children
and the responsibilities of family life. As
they age, they are increasingly finding
that they are losing contact on the
campuses. Furthermore, they are no longer receiving enthusiastic support because
their solutions are so unrealistic; they
oppose Welfare measures on the grounds
that money is irrelevant to happiness;
racism is commanding an even larger share
Of support as the Black Power movement
gathers momentum; and their protest
over Vietnam has degenerated from the
silent vigil to the violent demonstration.
What is often overlooked, however, is
that Vietnam and Negro rights are really
peripherial issues. If it was not Vietnam
or Civil Rights it would be something else.
For this country has reached an unprecedented degree of opulence and for
the first time students and non-students
alike can afford the luxury of philosophy.
They no longer need worry about where
the next meal comes from. The irony is
that the very society they reject - the
"vulgar" middle class - is also giving them
this luxury. They are living off the garbage of the "Affluent Society."
Conversely, the middle class may detest
the beards and the "loose morality" of the
New Left, but they fail to see that the
moral fiber of our nation is strengthened,
not weakened, by their existence. The
very fact that dissent is allowed is a real
sign of commitment to freedom and
toleration. It is probably the harbinger of
a new world commitment to tolerence.
Obedience is no longer expected for it is
only when dissent is tolerated that "freedom" moves from the realm of platitude
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to the point of fact.
The New Left has acted. It was the
"front-lash" and now the real test will
come with the "back-lash." Judging from
past actions, this nation will remain committed to the principles of freedom when
the moral show-down comes.
HAMS
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