This thesis The Failure of the New Left in the US: The Case of SDS analyzes the causes and reasons of the failure of the New Left in the United States. The left-leaning students who were discontent with the social order and reality of the country gathered under the idea of participatory democracy in a group called Students for a Democratic Society. Their aim was to change and improve the system through universities being agents of social change, thus making a clear difference with the Old Left. The worker no longer stood in the center of social progress, but the student did. SDS promptly plunged into several burning issues of the era, such as civil rights movement and inferior position of the blacks and poor in the society. The Vietnam War and antiwar protest movement have also been great issues in which SDSers directed their energy. As the Vietnam War escalated in terms of American soldiers being sent overseas, the intensity of student protests grew as well. Inevitably SDS resorted to usage of violent means of expressing dissent and clashed with the forces of the establishment. The thesis seeks to answer what reasons, events and realities led them to finally adopting revolutionary Marxism as their flag ideology. Soon after that SDS broke up and its once great influence waned away.

by Stephen Eugene Parr. / Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 445-456).

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