In Search of a New Left, Then and Now

January 25th, 2014

“In Search of a New Left, Then and Now,” is a short autobiographical-philosophical essay published in a collective volume called Living with Class.  Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Material Culture, edited by Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz (Routledge, 2013), pp. 25-31).

The important parallels come from the attempts to renew a left gone static, whether it was that of the Old Left of communist-marxist vintage, or the attempt to draw implications from the Occupy … movements.  The collection tries to draw some lessons, or better– to reflect on:  the Occupy movements and the question whether the concept of “class” makes sense today.  Younger contributors offer newer views; but interesting is that the essay following mine is by Stanly Arownowitz, who contributed to the 1971 volume edited with Karl Klare, The Unknown Dimension, in which we tried to make inroads into received opinion, as does this volume.

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