The New Left: A History

by William L. O'Neill

In his latest publication, William L. O'Neill presents a concise critical history of the New Left, the thinking, people, and events that helped shape the 1960s in America, and its principal heir, the Academic Left. The first two chapters of this lively, interpretive narrative relate the history of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), an organization that despite such well-publicized actions as the first mass protest in Washington against the Vietnam War and the student strike that shut down Columbia University, was unable to expand beyond its student base or survive a factional split. Next covered is the theatrical Left, notably those at the head of the Yippie movement who skillfully manipulated the mainstream media to garner enormous publicity for their stunts and staged events but whose movement, like the SDS, failed to survive the decade.

Chapter Four follows the major figures in the story-Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, the Weathermen, Timothy Leary and others, and sifts through various theories to conclude why and how the New Left burned out so quickly. Finally, Chapter Five addresses the legacy of the New Left in the rise of the Academic Left, which, while riddled with ironies, remains entrenched in academe today.

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2001

About the author

William L. O'Neill was an historian specializing in 20th century America. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan and his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught at the universities of Pittsburgh, Colorado and Wisconsin before accepting a position at Rutgers University in 1971, where he taught until his retirement in 2006.

Reviews

[Simon · Rating 1 out of 5]

William O’Neill’s The New Left briefly recounts the history of the American New Left in the 1960s by chronicling the rise and fall of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and, to a lesser extent, the so-called Youth International Party (Yippies). O’Neill posits that SDS was always badly organized due to its adherence to “participatory democracy” (a form of anarchism) and could never settle on a coherent strategy. Its temporary success in terms of membership numbers and relative political influence was not due so much to its own efforts as to its being in the right place at the right time, until that time was over (mainly as a result of the Vietnam War winding down) and it succumbed in desperation to Leninism and terrorism. He argues that the New Left had only negative practical consequences: accelerating the country’s political turn to the right and encouraging a disrespect for authority which he claims has resulted in higher crime and family breakdown. He maintains that following the demise of SDS, the remnants of the New Left transmogrified into the “Academic Left,” which he blames for asserted ills such as political correctness, affirmative action, and overly zealous sexual harassment policies. As for the Yippies, he dismisses them as a movement based on media exposure and shock value which lost its reason for being in the 1970s.

O’Neill presents the standard “good sixties/bad sixties” narrative via the story of SDS’s rise and fall. He begins with SDS’s origins from the SLID and the penning of the Port Huron statement, then hits all the familiar beats of sixties narratives (the Berkeley Free Speech movement, the Pentagon peace rally of 1967, the Chicago convention of 1968, the SDS split and the Days of Rage in 1969, etc.). As is typical in such accounts, he ends his narrative at some indeterminate point in the 1970s, with no attempt to trace the New Left's continuing impact except via his final chapter on the "academic left." Relatively little attention is given to the black civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, or the feminist movement. No attention at all is given to other movements e.g. Red Power, LGBT, etc. The final chapter is an extended screed against “political correctness,” which O’Neill asserts (without providing evidence or even a reasoned argument) is an outgrowth of the New Left.

No citations are provided at any point in the book, despite being written by a historian. There is a bibliographic essay at the end, where O’Neill cites the typical sources for a book on SDS (Kirkpatrick Sale, Todd Gitlin, etc.). There is no indication in the text that O’Neill consulted primary sources (other than a few contemporary news accounts, probably cribbed from the secondary sources that he read) or conducted interviews.

Even in a subgenre of historical studies (mainstream accounts of the New Left) that tends to lack rigor, this is a particularly bad book. O’Neill offers no new information about the subject that was not already available in other, better books. He also suffers from the political historian's tendency to reduce the entire American New Left to simply the story of SDS, a gross oversimplification. The final chapter is little more than an extended rant with only the most tenuous connection to the ostensible subject of the book. The book reads as if written in a few extended sessions by a grumpy old professor with an ax to grind against his workplace administration, with the preliminary chapters on the sixties dashed off in order to provide a psuedo-intellectual foundation for his own personal grievances. Don't be tempted to read this just because it's short; you'd be better off with the Wikipedia page on the New Left if you're just looking for quick knowledge. (At least Wikipedia cites its sources!)

[Left Sr · Rating 1 out of 5]

While this contains a lot of valuable information which I doubt can be found elsewhere, given the author's firsthand experience and good source work, and I am no partisan for academic neutrality (in fact, I think it's always the most disorienting imposture), but I must say that in a scholarly work it is not considered good form to express *open contempt* for your subject. If O'Neill can't keep his political proclivities in check long enough to stop himself from describing something the SDS did as a "pathetic excuse for a plan" (this is an actual quote), perhaps he has no business writing on this subject. Even given the good facts inside, I would have very deep reservations recommending this to somebody who wasn't already well acquainted with the subject.