Perspective

William Ayers came of age intellectually during the 1960s. He was then and remains today a prominent member of the political left. However, his leftism is particularly radical; further, it is of a specific type, New Leftism, or the leftism of the 1960s and 1970s developed during the civil rights, anti-war and feminist movements.

Ayers's generation of leftists developed their ideas in response to the more traditionally statist and often Marxist (even Stalinist) politics of their predecessor generation (and in many cases, their parents). The leftism of their parents' generation supported a powerful, managerial, industrial state as the solution to both economic efficiency and just social policy.

New Leftists criticized the previous generations. While sharing a common commitment to human equality, the New Left rejected many of the activities of the modern industrial nation-state, arguing that the traditional left-wing state treated people like cogs in a machine rather...