Essay: THE NEW RADICALS

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Says Staughton Lynd: "The key question is whether the movement will grow beyond its student base and produce men who will carry their radicalism into middle age and beyond." The New Left leaders are afraid of the American talent for assimilating dissent—and this is already happening to some of their ideas. Practically everybody has a kind word for decentralization, in the interests of efficiency if not humanity; the war on poverty, while now bogged down, will be carried on. Even the guaranteed annual wage is not beyond the capacity of modern industrial society. Thus quite a few of the New Left proposals, in modified form, will be taken over by the liberals and by the managers. As for the New Left's anger at the human condition, its yearning for love, these will, as always, be taken over by the poets, the preachers, and perhaps a few minor saints. The present New Left will undoubtedly fade without producing many middle-aged radicals. But it will have performed a function. There should always be a New Left—to drive conventional society to a constant, sometimes painful review of its own values.