Assessing the New Left: failure and legacy

Welcome to the second episode of the week as we conclude the story of the New Left. In part one, we explained the various groups and thinkersthat fed into the New Left’s attempts to reimagine socialism during the 1960s.

It all comes to a head in 1968 with a chain reaction of youth-driven street protests and occupations: Paris, London, New York, Rome, Mexico City, Tokyo. It’s 1848 all over again, only this time its global and its televised, turning leading activists into overnight celebrities. Everywhere, though, these rebellions end in defeat and fragmentation. In its wake, figures as prominent as John Lennon convince themselves that revolution is imminent even as it becomes vanishingly improbable.

The New Left splinters in the 1970s. Some “68ers” enter mainstream politics. Others turn to terrorism. A few plunge into the factional jungle of Maoist and Trotskyist sects. But many more redirect their idealism towards new liberation movements: second-wave feminism, gay rights, racial justice, Third World solidarity.

We explain how the theories of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci became a lodestar for the left decades after his death — a new approach to changing society. The New Left may have failed to mount a political revolt but it succeeded in redrawing the parameters of socialism beyond class struggle. The left of today is its legacy.

Why did the thrilling upheavals of 1968 fall so short? What led so many people to expect a revolution? How did Gramsci become the most important socialist thinker of the modern era? Was toxic disunity inevitable? And how did the New Left ultimately succeed, despite backlashes, setbacks and self-imposed wounds, in changing the world?

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Reading list

Histories

• Andy Beckett – The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies (2024)

• Bryan Burrough – Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence (2015)

• Max Elbaum – Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (2002)

• Todd Gitlin – The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage: Revised Edition (1993)

• Vivian Gornick – The Romance of American Communism (1977)

• Joachim C. Häberlen – Beauty Is in the Street: Protest and Counter-Culture in Post-War Europe (2023)

• Michael Kazin – American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (2011)

• Mark Kurlansky – 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (2004)

• Dorian Lynskey – 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs (2011)

• William L. O’Neill – The New Left: A History (2001)

• Rick Perlstein – Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008)

• Terence Renaud – New Lefts: The Making of a Radical Tradition (2021)

• Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright – Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism (1979)

• Roger Simon – Gramsci’s Political Thought: An Introduction: Third Edition (2015)

... reading list continues on Patreon

Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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