AMERICAN DISSENT AND RESISTANCE IN THE POSTWAR GENERATION
This research paper discusses three different topics relating to the activities of the New Left during the period 1950-1975: 1. main concerns shared by dissident organizations and movements. All these movements protested their denial and exclusion from political participation, legal equality and a fair economic share in postwar America and also shared a common aversion to many of the values of mainstream American society; 2. accounting for the emergence and impact of these movements. The rise of affluence made the Old Left's causes largely irrelevant to the postwar period. That affluence and the dislocations generated by World War II and its aftermath produced a new generation less prone to accept the status quo and which yearned for rapid political, social and economic change. The divisions, frustration and resistance arising out of the Vietnam War helped unify the New Left and provided its disparate groups with opportunities to gain support in mainstream American society just as the ending of that war contributed to the eventual declining influence of New Left movements; and 3. contributions made by these movements for social change. These movements made major contributions toward lessening various forms of discrimination and injustice against particular groups but they also contributed toward the polarization of political conflict in America. Some of those movements such as the civil rights movement and the women's liberation movement helped bring about a permanent broadening of political participation by racial, ethnic and gender groups in society and opened up new social and economic opportunities for their members while others left largely a legacy of distrust, disunity, and even social hatred.
Shared Concerns of New Left Movements
According to Van Gosse, a shared concern or value of all postwar New Left movements was "the importance they placed on the dignity...