Abstract

In the summer of 1973, a group of prominent activists met in New York City to discuss a proposal for a new, left-wing political party, written by radical attorney Arthur Kinoy. A failure on its own terms and a non-event to historians of the period, the Kinoy initiative nonetheless helps mark an important turn, taken by activists and scholars in the early 1970s, from an internationalist to a nationalist outlook. By placing that shift at the center of our attention, we gain fresh insight into the demise of 1960s radicalism and new incentives to abandon the "old left/new left" distinction that most historians have used to make sense of the decade.