JAMES GILBERT
of independence. For it has seen
this
happen in the slow descent of
the Old Left into Liberalism.
But the New Left had to struggle with more than co--optation:
it has had to contend with an older generation's purposeful
mis–
interpretation. Its romanticism, isolation, innovativeness and spon–
taneity have been made to seem the special province of youth. But
there are strings attached by this culture to its worship of the young:
the celebration of youth is a dissipating enterprise - hopefully, one
where the energy of political morality
will
be exhausted in .a frenzy
of commercial activities.
The New Left, however, is an intersection of politics and cul–
ture far more radical than society's dismissal of it as a youth move–
ment.
It
is a political movement which has roots in a cultural
revolution - a revolution in music, drugs, films, to some extent in
fashion and in a whole range of anti-middle-class mores. It is
also
a cultural movement which is deeply political, and one which has
become aware of the limitations of its base in the youth elite. What
any society needs periodically - a temporary radicalization of por–
tions of its elite - America tried to accomplish through the New
Left. At the same time
it
recognizes that such a movement can
be
dangerous, and so simultaneously seeks to isolate it by calling it im–
mature. And to some extent the Movement has caught itself in the
definition of a "generation gap," flailing at old age as if senility were
more dangerous than imperialism or racism. At times too it has
reinforced its elite position by limiting its demands to the university.
In the past two years, however, the New Left has attempted to
establish a more serious-minded radicalism, one which rejects the
Movement's special place in society and which moves beyond the
political isolation of a youth movement. It seems clear too that
during this time the political establishment has not been able to
find much in SDS or SNCC to absorb. Further, the most energetic
liberal interpreters of the Left have, like Robert Kennedy, been
assassinated, or, as in the case of Eugene McCarthy, now disdain
the role of political broker. There is now a profound gap between
liberalism and the Left, and no one remains to bridge it.
Clearly, the revolution to which the Movement now aspires
cannot be dismissed as a momentary cleansing of the Establishment.
