New Styles in “Leftism”

With this issue DISSENT opens up a discussion of the “new leftism,” in which, as always in our pages, a wide range of opinion will be welcome and each person will speak for himself. One view is expressed below by Irving Howe; a sharply divergent one by Staughton Lynd appears on p. 324. Certain editors of DISSENT have indicated an interest in writing on aspects of the subject where they disagree with one or another of these articles; and within limits of space and competence, we shall be glad to print opinions from readers.

I propose to describe a political style or outlook before it has become hardened into an ideology or the property of an organization. This outlook is visible along limited portions of the political scene; for the sake of exposition I will make it seem more precise and structured than it really is.

There is a new radical mood in limited sectors of American society: on the campus, in sections of the Civil Rights movement. The number of people who express this mood is not very large, but that it should appear at all is cause for encouragement and satisfaction. Yet there is a segment or fringe among the newly-blossoming young radicals that causes one disturbance—and not simply because they have ideas different from persons like myself, who neither expect nor desire that younger generations of radicals should repeat our thoughts or our words. For this disturbing minority I have no simple name: sometimes it looks like kamikaze radicalism, sometimes like white Malcolmism, sometimes like black Maoism. But since none of these phrases will quite do, I have had to fall back upon the loose and not very accurate term, “new leftists.” Let me therefore stress as strongly as I can that I am not talking about all or the majority of the American young and not-so-young who have recently come to regard themselves as radicals. Much should be said about the positive aspects of youthful radicalism, as in part I have said in an essay, “Berkeley and Beyond” in the May 1, 1965 New Republic.

The form I have felt obliged to use here—a composite portrait of the sort of “new leftist” who seems to me open to criticism—also creates some difficulties. It may seem to lump together problems, ideas and moods that should be kept distinct. But my conviction is that this kind of “new leftism” is not a matter of organized political tendencies, at least not yet, and that there is no organization, certainly none of any importance, which expresses the kind of “new leftism” I am here discussing. So I would say that if some young radicals read this text and feel that some of it is relevant to them but the rest is not, I will be delighted by such a response: the more any of them feels that parts of my portrait don’t apply to him, the better it is. I do, however, believe that through this composite portrait I am touching upon an observabl...