Essay: THE NEW RADICALS

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Something else the New Leftists have in common with other Utopians is a remarkably detailed concern for the physical environment. They dream of "the total beautiful society" with smogless air, unpolluted rivers, swift and clean public transportation and, in the phrase of Atlanta Lawyer Howard Moore, "airlines carrying the people all over the country to the great museums." Paul Goodman, 55, one of the aging gurus of the New Left, spends much time visualizing how city streets could be turned into playgrounds or parks, and how motor cars could be barred from Manhattan (the last being an idea that should do a lot to win friends for the New Left).

Ultimately, the New Leftists, like all Utopians, not only want to reform society: they really want to reform human nature. They want men to work not for gain or glory but for the satisfaction of contributing to the general good. In a broad sense, the movement is not political at all but religious. "We want to create a world in which love is more possible," says an S.D.S leader, Carl Oglesby. For all their rant and naivete, the New Radicals can sound strongly appealing. The fact that many of their proposals are impractical and that they lack a program is not an ultimate argument against them. Critics may perform a service to a society by pointing out evil and injustice without necessarily offering alternatives. Some of the things the New Left says about modern American life need to be said and evoke certain echoes in anyone who has ever been in white-hot anger over a slum, or a traffic jam, or a piece of blatant official hypocrisy, or a TV commercial, or has felt alone in a big organization.

Wanted: Middle-Aged Leftists'

The trouble is that even in the role of merely negative or gadfly critics, the New Radicals are too mindless. In the words of one New Left manifesto, they want to remain "permanently radical"—which is about as possible as remaining permanently young. Their refusal to make common cause with liberals and other reformers, their dedication to action rather than thought, emotion rather than reason, will almost surely destroy what influence they have. Some are already disillusioned: protest demonstrations are not changing the Viet Nam situation, and the civil rights movement is not only stalled but increasingly hostile to them. Their leaders say that they will now concentrate on community action, and wistfully speak of a coalition of the universities and the poor—but that will not work either. The poor are not radical. What they really want to be is middleclass, and once they buy a car and make a down payment on a house, they will ignore the New Left and stick with their unions or political parties.