The new left: The anti-industrial revolution - Ayn Rand

The ’60s are usually glorified as a time when America’s youth stood up in rebellion against the cultural establishment. Protesting everything from Vietnam to industrial capitalism, college students under the banner of the New Left forcibly occupied campus buildings and idolized Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro — and were hailed as idealistic revolutionaries.

Ayn Rand viewed them very differently.

In a number of essays, she analyzes the campus protests and the ideology of the New Left, concluding that far from rebelling, they were slavishly following every basic idea of their teachers — and that far from being idealistic, they were attacking the key foundations of a rational, free society.

Rand’s writings on these and related topics were collected in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution(1971). A 1999 edition, Return of the Primitive, added supplementary articles, including three by editor Peter Schwartz analyzing the New Left’s enduring legacy.

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