IS THERE A NEW RADICALISM?
The pieces by Nat Hentoff and Michael Harrington were
written at the invitation of the editors. They are presented in the
form of a debate to stress existing differences of opinion on
whether there
is
a New Radicalism. In the next issue, Mr. Hentoff
and Mr. Harrington will discuss each other's views, and there will
also be comments on the question of the New Radicalism by Daniel
Bell,
Martin Duberman, Irving Howe, Norman Podhoretz, Bayard
Rustin, Stephen Rouseas, and others.
Nat Hentoff
If
by "a new radicalism"
is
meant a set of specific programs
for social change, there is not yet a cohesive design for a "new society"
among those I would call the new radicals. There are, however, the
beginnings of a consensus about the irrelevancy of most traditional
American radical styles and a corollary recognition--often more
visceral than ideological-of both the root failures of the present
society and the prospects of a far worse "society of technical necessity"
(using Jacques Ellul's term) unless there is a fundamental change in
values
as well as in institutions.
It is true that in the past few years the initial dynamism for
the new radicalism has come from sections of the civil rights move–
ment, but the new radical style (sometimes with substance annealed
to
style) is not limited to "the movement." There are those, for
instance, in the Free Speech Movement of the University of California
at Berkeley who have moved beyond pressing for freer speech to dis–
secting the kind and quality of education now offered by the multi-
