The
New Left and the Marxian Legacy: Encounters in the U.S., France and
Germany
by Dick Howard
In the
mid-1960s, as the Cold War seemed frozen into place after the Soviet repression
of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, and the stalemate that defused the Cuban
Missile Crisis in 1962, the spirit of a “New Left” began to emerge in the West.Although
encouraged by events in the Third World, its common denominator was the idea
that the misunderstood (or misused) work of Karl Marx must have offered a
theory that both explained the discontent with the present among a new
generation of youth and could also offer them guidelines for future
action. At once personal and social, critical and political, this
expectation was encouraged by publications of the writings of the young Marx as
well as the discovery of non-orthodox theorists and political activists whose
critical work had been ignored or suppressed by Soviet dominated communist
parties. These theories represented an “unknown dimension”[1]that became the object of
vigorous debate in the 1960s and early 1970s. The searching candle burned
bright for a decade before it flamed out.
Meanwhile, the revolutionary spirit that Marx liked to
call the “old mole” had grubbed its way underneath the Iron Curtain; the
multi-faceted movement of civil society against the repressive states anchored
to the Soviet bloc brought finally the fall of communism. But the
critical spirit was too weak, economic need weighed too heavy, and the spirit
of utopia waxed. It seemed as if there were nothing to inherit from the
past. As in the 1960s, the critical spirit of the young Marx, the critical
philosopher searching for his path, can suggest a reason to persevere. In
a “Preliminary Note” to his doctoral dissertation, Marx justified his refusal
to compromise with existing conditions by invoking the example of Themistocles
who, “when Athens was threatened with devastation, convinced the Athenians to
take to the sea in order to found a new Athens on another element.”[2] This was not yet an
anticipation of Marx’s turn away from philosophy to political
economy. Like the New Left, Marx was trying to articulate the grounds of a
critique of a present that he considered “beneath contempt” in order to hold
open the political future.
I will use this
idea of a New Left to conceptualize the underlying unity of diverse political
experiences during the past half century. Although Marx is not the direct
object of my reconstruction, his specter is a recurring presence at those
“nodal points” where the imperative to move to “another element” becomes
apparent. These are moments when the spirit that has animated a movement
can advance no further; it is faced with new obstacles, which may be
self-created. I will analyze from a participant’s perspective the
development of the New Left in the U.S., France and West Germany as it tried to
articulate what I call the “unknown dimension” of Marx’s theoretical project.
