New Left - Student Movement

Student Movement

In the United States, student protests called the Free Speech Movement took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and others. In protests unprecedented in this scope at the time, students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom. In particular, on 2 December 1964 on the steps of Sproul Hall Mario Savio gave a speech: "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop."

Following the relative success in 1964-5 of student organizing as opposed to the failure of community organizing, in 1966 the New Left began to overturn the traditional Marxist focus on the proletariat, arguing that the Left should answer the needs of students and tap student power. One SDS publication stated that "the revolution may come from the universities after all if Berkeley is any indication." A 1967 pamphlet, The Student as Nigger, attempted to cast students as a marginalized class. Other pamphlets and movement periodicals warned students not to get into discussions with their teachers about politics, since professors were part of the academic establishment attempting to oppress the student.

As the campus orientation of the American New Left became clear in the mid to late 1960s, the student sections of the British New Left began taking action. The London School of Economics became a key site of British student militancy. The influence of protests against the Vietnam War and of the May 1968 events in France were also felt strongly throughout the British New Left. Some within the British New Left joined the International Socialists, which later became Socialist Workers Party while others became involved with groups such as the International Marxist Group. The politics of the British New Left can be contrasted with Solidarity, UK, which continued to focus primarily on industrial issues.

In the 1970s, the theory was developed further by Nicos Poulantzas, André Gorz, et al.