History 476
Devine
Spring 2016
David Steigerwald, “The Reddish Decade”
- Why were the ideas of the Old Left
not much help to the New Left in its attempt to critique the
“Affluent Society”? Why did Paul Goodman, C. Wright Mills, and
Albert Camus prove more attractive to New Leftists looking for
inspiration?
- Why were there disagreements
between SDS (the New Left) and LID (the Old Left)?
- How did the New Left propose to
address the problems of apathy, alienation, and the ills of bureaucratized
society?
- Who did SDS see as potential
allies? How did it plan to structure its organization? What
were some of SDS’s weaknesses from the very outset?
- Why didn’t the ERAP project work
out like the New Leftists had hoped? Why did the poor not make
good “revolutionaries”?
- How does the author contrast Tom
Hayden (who led the ERAP movement) with Mario Savio (who
led the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley)? More broadly, what is
the difference between “radicalism” and “rebellion”?
- Why did opposition to the Vietnam
War prove a good catalyst for mobilizing SDS on a national level?
- What was “corporate liberalism”
(p. 136) and why did the New Left oppose it?
- How did the later New Leftists’
ideas about “revolution” (expressed by Gregg Calvert) differ from those of
the early New Leftists (expressed in the Port Huron Statement)? (see
p. 137) Why did they pursue revolution, when, according to the
author (and common sense), revolution was “objectively impossible”?
- What happened in Chicago during
the summer of 1968? Why was it an important benchmark for the
New Left?
- What explains the violence of
Weatherman? According to the author, why did young people join
such an organization?