| Abstrakt: |
The article presents information about the social condition of American radicals and poor. The outbreak of the current "War on Poverty" coincided with the appearance of the "New Left," the first important expression of left-wing radical thought and deed since the early 1930's. Largely youthful in its membership, the New Radicalism has challenged not so much those who would defend current inequities as it has the liberals, the reformers, and the social workers who, it asserts, have no real interest in producing any basic changes in the social and economic fabric, or, at best, do not understand the needs and aspirations of the poor. American radicals have never attained power in their own right. Occasionally they have gained great popularity and even been idealized by large numbers of people; but real power, if they have actually sought it, has eluded them. Not infrequently, however, their ideas have become treasures of American intellectual history and have, long after the enunciators themselves have disappeared, become intrinsic to American attitudes and even to American institutions. |
