The "New Left" and American History: Some Recent Trends in United States Historiography

From ‘Why Americans Hate Politics’ to analyze the Dilemma of Globalization

“…It's no doubt that representative politics is more favored by elites because these wealthier, more educated people always had more time and resources to devote to politics than those of the lower class. However, the "New Left" asserts that the working class, which Marx described as the "gravediggers of capitalism," has been captured by capitalist culture and has become the "affirmative force" or the most energetic supporter of capitalism [4]. Therefore, the New Left's revolution task falls to those who have not yet been assimilated into capitalism, such as young intellectuals, colors, immigrants, and minorities.…”

Parallel crises: history and the social studies curriculum in the USA

“…The new historians were unabashed about their historical agenda: it was conducted in order to help change things in the present. At the outset, they were attacked from within the profession for their partisanship (Unger 1967).…”

Notes on a Desegregated Method

“…During the 1960s, the decade Katz cites as the birthplace for modern urban history, faith in American political institutions and forms of "consensus era" social science began buckling under compounded critiques from civil rights and student activism; the Vietnam War; black, brown, and Native American nationalism; second-wave feminism; social history; and what remained of Marxism's scholarly strains. 8 On questions of racism and sexism, in particular, new academic subfields, interdisciplinary programs, and caucuses within established academic organizations arose to dismantle the exclusionary impulses of political history and the assimilationist tendencies of the Old Left's intellectual vanguard.…”