The Revolt Against Reason:
A Quarter Century On

October, 1996

The New Leftists outlined by Horowitz have just passed the peak of their active careers and political power in the Western World. Their concerns and methodology are very much active, having enjoyed a strong influence on public discourse and our institutions. As a result, the concerns raised in The Struggle is the Message are still quite valid. They also require examination, as a new generation is picking up their tools and tactics to employ them in unforeseen causes.

Horowitz saw a parallel in New Left thinking with the 1890s, the theories of Sorel and fin-de-siècle thinking. He found the late 1960's style of the New Left -- abrasive, physical, impatient and eclectic. Its leaders sought to exercise their will over the political realities and currents that exist in the world, and in the process assumed a strong moralistic tone. Their prevailing ambition was to mobilize individual wills in one total will, thus imposing a new social order on the world. (Ironically, in this the Left unconsciously apes a central tenet of Nazism -- one of the many things they claim to refute.)

The New Left was a revolt against capitalism and the self-satisfied consumer society of the 1950s. It was also a rejection of Marxist theories and their "objective conditions", and therefore also a revolt against Marxism as a scientific model. (The question arises: might not Lenin, Mao and Castro have shared these "new" beliefs since they also created their revolutionary conditions rather than waiting for them?) For the New Left, what remained of Marxism in 1970 were its myths of hard moral purpose and inevitable victory.

The New Left rejected the concept of political organization in favour of a concept of will. They didn't join groups so much as they "turned on, tuned in and dropped out" -- as Timothy Leary more or less put it. By wanting to become rebels, they became rebels. The New Leftist thought he would win because he must, rather than because he has organized for victory. This leads to an impulse towards anarchism (particularly of the nihilist flavor) stressing the importance of the person over politics per se.

The New Left also embraced a purity of conviction as opposed to stifling rationalism. Everyone from Libertarians and Populists to Fascists and Marxists tries to construct a rational gestalt, the '60s rebel couldn't have cared less. Instead, the guerrilla movement offered a magnetic model of the transformation of radicalism from a rational to a romantic doctrine. Unity came from a common youth culture -- savage passion, unexamined ideals and concerns with goals rather than interests.

In this climate, action was more important than victory and orientation overrode achievement. Indeed, the activists who carry the New Left torch still abide by this creed. A protest march where organizers hope to attract 50,000 people and only got 200 is still a "victory" because the demonstration actually occurred, and all who participated showed their support for the cause of the month.

On the other hand, because organizations usually favor material accomplishment over passion and meaning, New Leftists believed it was necessary to attempt their destruction (or their subversion), in order that purpose should remain supreme. Thus, 25 years later, those of the New Left who are within official bodies can still launch campaign after campaign against undefined ills such as "racism", without ever bothering to see if they are accomplishing anything.

Towards the end of the 1960s, the passions of the New Left often turned sour because they had no means of restoring the original sense of purpose to any particular campaign. Indeed, the question of how to restore purpose in a disintegrating movement that eschews the creation of formal mechanisms also troubled Sorel, Adam Schaff and Herbert Marcuse. Because of this failure, the New Left became extremely vulnerable to overtures from Marxists of various stripes.

The New Left believed that they ought to eventually work out some sort of conspiracy, whereby Society's elites might be toppled by a "revolution" from below. This was necessary because they felt that the "establishment" was conspiring against them. When the latter was supported by technology, particularly computers that could hold and control intelligence and constituted a form of state violence (in the eyes of the New Left), it was proper for insurgents to use counter-violence and bombs. Indeed, a number of computer centres were attacked during this time.

A "revolution" allowed for speed, through the use of will, whereas electoral politics might take forever. In this, there was an element of anti-intellectualism. Conspiracy theory was also a hedge against personal immorality. A victory in the realm of psychology could occur irrespective of conditions in the material world and this was deemed necessary as a pre-condition of a good society. Thus to the New Left activist, a bomb in a government office was justified, because the civil servants were obviously working to enslave everyone. Even if the bomb killed no one, obviously all civil servants would be quaking in fear and the cause of the "revolution" would be thereby advanced.

The New Left raised itself above socialism because an anti-political standpoint was necessary for psychological redemption or moral purification. Conventional political practices (such as actually joining parties or seriously running candidates), like Puritanism, were hang-ups to be overcome, not a system to be worked. Some of the slogans of the time remain common -- "Don't vote, it only encourages them" is still frequently heard and the attitude may be gaining a new saliency.

Moreover, the New Left believed acquiescence to a bureaucratic organization brought impotence. If you joined a party, the civil service, or whatever, you became trapped by their rules. Hence, there was some need for a permanent revolution, so that organizations would always be under attack. An interesting compromise that Horowitz might not have foreseen was for the would-be revolutionary to enter an existing political party or organization to serve his own purposes, and slowly subvert the larger body. It is interesting to observe that this transformation occurred as the New Leftist baby-boomers started to approach 30.

For the New Left, the struggle was not between liberalism and conservatism, but between radicalism and liberalism. Liberalism was identified with the stultifying effects of reason in society. Therefore, by being anti-liberal, the New Leftist had to be anti-rational and against reason. It was necessary to mount an attack on the notion that reason was the only mode of knowing. There was also a suspicion that reason was an ideology that caught people between the two extremes, unable to act. This line of thinking has continued, and is currently being carried by the Canadian essayist, John Ralston Saul.

In summary, the attack by the New Left on society became totalistic, being against socialism (or at least socialism arising out of liberal democratic traditions), as well as capitalism, industrialism, agrarianism and technological achievement. However, Horowitz concluded: "Fascism returns in the United States not as a right-wing ideology, but almost as a quasi-leftist ideology." The New Left created a neutral style of activism in America, a style which can be (and is) used by Left and Right alike.

Horowitz's brilliant analysis of the New Left is still relevant in 1996. As things turned out, the movement reached its height in the 1970s but lost momentum with the end of the Vietnam War and the maturing of many members of the generation that had created it. As a revolt against reality, it was exciting. As a design, even a hazy outline, of the way things might be better, it was an empty and cruel hoax. The hard-liners drifted off to more-or-less orthodox Marxism, supporting the Soviets against the West throughout the decisive decade of the 1980s.

A few others in less orthodox Marxist groups (such as the Trotskyites) have continued the New Left revolt without let-up since the 1970s. One can still see their dreams of revolution in the language on their street-corner posters. The rank-and-file tried to meld their youthful radical vision with the bureaucracies of the civil service and publicly funded bodies, through unions, special interest groups, universities and even through business corporations.

Often, over the past 25 years, those "Boomers" who became adults while within the New Left have managed to achieve considerable success in warping or altering institutions. The desire of their youth for sudden and sweeping change against professionalism has resulted in a supplanted leadership in many organizations.

The New Leftist exercise of leadership has little to recommend it, for everything old and practiced had to be swept away for the sake of an undefined future that would be "good" only because it is new. They continue to claim the moral high ground, because they refuse to count costs and never admit to error or defeat. The examples are endless: Affirmative action programs to fight racism by replacing it with more racism; human rights tribunals that seek to sweep aside long-established legal codes; new definitions of the family while grinding the traditional form underfoot, established churches which discard the verities for "New Age" practices... one could go on.

First the New Left undermined confidence in our Institutions. Then they began to run them.

Today, much that was written 26 years ago about the New Left applies to the anti-governmental, anti-rational, anti-intellectual, anti-liberal/conservative/socialist, anti-technological Patriot Movement. The New Left Method for being a rebel without a clue has found new adherents. Interestingly, the new rebels are opposed to a system that has been much shaped and influenced by the New Left. For their part, the anti-establishment movement of the 1960s and '70s has become the establishment and seems terrified by the purposeless rebels who are now poised against them.

Within the Patriot militias, and to a wider extent within the vaster community that shares some of the same anxieties, there is a growing distrust of all institutions and a belief in self-reliance. Two of the biggest trends in the North American church are declining attendance in established churches as parishioners grow dissatisfied with the changes wrought over the past decades, and the growth of hard-line Pentecostal churches. Many of those who drop out maintain their traditional beliefs as well, but feel compelled to do so outside of an increasingly alien Church. The distrust is also being reflected in attitudes towards the established education system and various government agencies. Fortunately, there have been few signs of vigilantism as a substitute for the justice system -- for now.

Attempts by political leaders and party structures to capture the new rebel spirit are also floundering. This new spirit is largely populist among those who have not embraced the extreme, and will be hard for political leaders to control. The Reform Party of Canada experienced rapid growth at first but seems to have stalled once the demands of normal political life began. Smaller parties of various stripes have been springing up and withering away like prospectors' boom-towns, but none have yet hit the mother-lode and really gathered sufficient strength to grow.

Apparently, the purity of dissent is now even more strongly compromised by political activity. This is perhaps the biggest difference between the rebels of 25 years ago, and their successors.

The Baby-boom's New Left rebels for the most part entered into political and institutional life -- the urge to enter society and change it proved too strong. So far, the new rebels seem more disposed to retreat from society and isolate themselves from a world that is seen to be in danger of self-destruction. This trend is reinforced by the Millenialist spirit of the time, and it remains to be seen if it will continue after the year 2000.