New Left, New Right and Beyond: Taking the Sixties Seriously

The 1960s represented a defining turning-point in the politics and cultures of western societies. The emergence of a mass culture, the explosion of pop and new art forms, the rise of 'new-left' social movements in the wake of the events of 1968, and the first signs of a more global politics brought into question long-held assumptions. The articulation of new ideas of liberation, equality and identity and the arrival of the so-called cultural revolution combined to remake new forms of community. But what of the lasting political and cultural legacies of the sixties? In this, the first book to take the long-term legacy of the sixties seriously, the focus is on the varied and paradoxical nature of this crucial decade. Focusing mainly on the British and American context, this collection of essays brings together leading thinkers across a variety of disciplines to address a range of new perspectives on the impact of the New Left, the experience of the New Right and on how the sixties continue to influence contemporary debates on globalization and democracy. Arguing that the full implications of the 'long sixties' are still not fully realized, the book will open up new directions in the study of contemporary political ideas and movements.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; A.Hooper & M.Williams A Politics Adequate to the Age: the New Left and the Long 1960s; A.Hooper Here and Now! The Legacy of Gramsci in British Cultural Politics; T. Steele Stars and Moons: Desire and the Limits of Marketization; W.Wheeler The New Right, New Labour and the Problem of Social Cohesion; P.Saunders The New Right and the 1960s: the Dialectics of Liberation; R.Cockett We Didn't Know it Would be so Hard: The Short, Sad, Instructive History of the U.S. New Left; M.Gettleman What's Left of The New Left; G.Andrews The Libertarian Left 1968-1998: Battered but not Bowed; H.Wainwright The Long Sixties in the Short Twentieth Century; M.Williams The Rise and Fall of an Anti-Racism: From Political Blackness to Ethnic Pluralism; T.Modood From Berkeley To Blair: A Dialogue of the Deaf?; A.Showstack-Sassoon Associative Democracy; P.Hirst

About the Author :
GEOFF ANDREWS is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Hertfordshire; Associate Lecturer, The Open University; Editor Citizenship (Lawrence and Wishart 1991); and co-editor Opening the Books: essays on the social and cultural history of British Communism (Pluto Press 1995). RICHARD COCKETT is Lecturer in History at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He is author of Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution 1931-83. ALAN HOOPER is Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Hertfordshire, and author of essays on modern British history and contemporary Brazilian politics. MICHAEL WILLIAMS lectures in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Hertfordshire and elsewhere. Before then he spent twenty years as a civil servant in what is now the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. He has published papers on privatisation and the role of management consultants in shaping public policy.