The left bobs up and down in American history, a battered and leaky craft which often disappears beneath the tide but somehow never sinks. The reports of its wreckage are always exaggerated. It is now almost five years since the last major antiwar demonstration in Washington and since Time announced the "cooling of America." We find ourselves in the trough of the post-Vietnam wave. The issues which moved the Movement belong to another era, as we focus our attention on the pocketbook crises of the 1970s.

Five years: time enough to ask what remains. What ever happened to that hodgepodge of groups and movements we called the New Left, the hundreds of thousands of peace marchers, the student strikers, the radical feminists, Black Power advocates, antiwar soldiers, draft resisters, welfare-rights activists, gay liberationists, environmentalists, and community organizers?

I count myself among them. Like most white Americans of my age (29) and class (middle), I grew up thinking of America as the Good Ship Lollipop, only to discover in the '60s that it more closely resembled a Roman man-of-war. The ship's officers I came to believe combined the vision of Ahab with the sensitivity of Bligh. I joined the mutiny, for which I was court-martialed. Meanwhile, the rebellion seemed to fizzle. I got married, had a child, and found a profession. Now, in the mid-1970s, I think of America as the Titanic, and look around for a lifeboat.

It stands to reason that a great many people find themselves in the same predicament. The Los Angeles Times recently cited the figure of 2 to 3 million erstwhile activists who retain their radical allegiance, though they may lack a cause to which they can pledge it. Even if the numbers are accurate, I told myself, there is a difference between 3 million former activists with radical notions, and radical activity. The former is just a statistic; the latter is a political force. And political force, at least for most of my friends and myself, hasn't been a compelling preoccupation in the last couple of years.

The Rabbit That Ate Pennsylvania Ron Chernow January 1978

The Pennsylvania auto plant may prove a symbol of fiscal lunacy on as grandiose a scale [as the Lunar Rover]. In a well-publicized campaign last year, Governor Milton Shapp pledged more than $70 million to the German automaker if it would set up shop in the state. He turned Pennsylvanians, willy-nilly, into Volkswagen stockholders, hitching their fortunes to a single, shaky corporation.

What's happening to VW is no different from what's happening to major corporations everywhere. As formerly regional companies become plugged into national and global markets, corporate chieftains enjoy a corresponding freedom to shift their plants around like chess pawns. Large capital has liberated itself from all responsibility to a given community. Improved communications and transportation have enhanced this mobility. The result has been the bane of the contemporary labor movement: the runaway corporation.

Arthur M. Schlesinger's Robert Kennedy and His Times Reviewed by Joe Klein December 1978

At one point, Schlesinger describes Kennedy visiting the Mississippi Delta hovel of an unemployed cotton picker. It was during one of those grand tours that Senate committees used to make (before it became too dangerously liberal to oppose poverty) with TV crews snaking along like Chinese dragons -- a few shots of dire poverty, a few shots of senators shaking their heads, some platitudes, and then home to Washington. But Kennedy, spotting a little boy with a distended stomach on the ßoor of a shack, went inside, sat down on a filthy mattress, and held the child on his lap. Charles Evers remembered the gagging smell and pestilence of that shack -- none of the others would venture inside -- and Kennedy sitting there, hugging and patting the child, tears streaming down his face...

The passion of Robert Kennedy was a remarkable event in recent American politics, a moment of inÞnite possibilities. Looking back on it now, he clearly was the last politician able to unite the working class and the poor. His appeal crossed some impressive boundaries: Both Tom Hayden and Richard Daley, who would confront each other in Chicago several months later,

A Case of Corporate Malpractice Mark Dowie & Tracy Johnston November 1976

The Agency for International Development's population-control program is in the hands of Dr. R.D. Ravenholt, a man whose enthusiasm for birth control as a solution to the world's problems borders on the fanatical. Only when the FDA ruled the Shield unsafe (which was some time after Robins had stopped selling it) did Ravenholt and aid try to recall any Shields. They managed to get back fewer than half of the 769,000 Shields they had given away.

What I would like to see would be the development and spread of a genuinely international consciousness, as opposed to Coca-colonization, holidayinnery, or uninationalism fostered by American capitalism. It would not necessarily be produced by democratizing the U.S., but it's unlikely to take place without it.

The Final Entry of Pablo Neruda's Memoirs, published for the first time in English August 1976

They couldn't pass up such a beautiful occasion. He had to be machine-gunned because he would never have resigned from office. That body was buried secretly, in an incon-spicuous spot, the corpse followed to its grave only by a woman who carried with her the grief of the world. That glorious dead figure was riddled and ripped to pieces by the machine guns of Chile's soldiers, who had betrayed Chile once more.

New Populist on the Scene November 1978

Political progressive-watchers always a worry ahead of the crowd are already wondering whether Clinton's populism will survive as he advances politically.

New Orleans, Before It's Too Late Michael Goodwin December 1977

Back at the fairgrounds, dancing and trying to take notes at the same time, someone pinches my ass. Turning around, I discover two beautiful Creole women, drinking beer and laughing like crazy. "What are you doing?" one of them asks.

"I'm taking notes," I say, "whaddya think?"

"Yeah, for who?"

"You never heard of it." (A safe assumption. Probably no one in New Orleans has ever heard of this magazine. And when you tell them they'll probably call it Mother Earth.)

"Come on, who are you writing for?"

"Um, it's a national magazine called Mother Jones."

"No shit?" says one of the women. "We subscribe to Mother Jones! You want a joint?" She passes a reefer, I hit it, and we all start dancing. "Hey, when you write this up, be sure and mention that two fine New Orleans women got you stoned on dynamite Colombian," she says.

Two Poems Alice Walker September/October 1976

Martin King
There is no end to conversation
with you my thoughts talking back
to that soaring voice of yours
which is all we knew we had
to bring us back.
And when the racists
and the raced against
tear you apart
I put you back together
with eager fingers
and a loving tongue.
I am no cannibal
to join the feast
to devour you living
devour you dead.

Malcolm X
Those who say they knew you
offer as proof
an image stunted
by perfections.
Alert for signs of the man
to claim, one must believe
they did not know you at all
nor can remember the small, less popular
ironies of the Saint:
that you learned to prefer
all women free
and enjoyed a joke
and loved to laugh.

Under Cover in the New Germany Abbie Hoffman's profile of radical German reporter Gunter Wallraff February/March 1979

So here I am at the press conference in Paris, which takes place in an old library on Boulevard Saint Germain. It's standing-room-only, as reporters from all over Europe flock to catch a glimpse of their hero-colleague. Everyone knows it's only a glimpse -- Gunter constantly changes his appearance. There is a collection of Wallraff photos taken over the past 10 years that are worthy of Lon Chaney. Long hair, mustache, crew cut, beard, head shaved bald. He'll put on or take off 30 pounds to better assume a role. Without being introduced, it's possible Europe's most celebrated reporter could be in the room undetected. He's not the only one here incognito. Five years of fugitive living has made me a little camera-shy, so I'm wearing my best wig and dark glasses for the occasion. The mysterious Madame Ange who accompanies me on such missions as bodyguard and translator (Gunter speaks no language other than German) has transformed herself into a blond model of Aryan respectability. There may be others in disguise, for press conferences dealing with any aspect of terrorism have taken on the appearance of masquerade parties.

Pinto Madness Mark Dowie September/October 1977

Mother Jones has studied hundreds of reports and documents on rear-end collisions involving Pintos. These reports conclusively reveal that if you ran into that Pinto you were following at over 30 miles per hour, the rear end of the car would buckle like an accordion, right up to the backseat. The tube leading to the gas-tank cap would be ripped away from the tank itself, and gas would immediately begin sloshing onto the road around the car. Now all you need is a spark from a cigarette, ignition, or scraping metal, and both cars would be engulfed in flames. If you gave that Pinto a really good whack -- say, at 40 mph -- chances are excellent that its doors would jam and you would have to stand by and watch its trapped passengers burn to death.

An extensive investigation by Mother Jones over the past six months has found these answers:

Fighting strong competition from Volkswagen for the lucrative small-car market, the Ford Motor Company rushed the Pinto into production in much less than the usual time.

Ford engineers discovered in preproduction crash tests that rear-end collisions would rupture the Pinto's fuel system extremely easily. Despite this, Ford officials denied under oath having crash-tested the Pinto.

Because assembly-line machinery was already tooled when engineers found this defect, top Ford officials decided to manufacture the car anyway -- exploding gas tank and all-- even though Ford owned the patent on a much safer gas tank.

By conservative estimates, Pinto crashes have caused 500 burn deaths to people who would not have been seriously injured if the car had not burst into flames. The figure could be as high as 900.

Ford knows the Pinto is a firetrap, yet it has paid out millions to settle damage suits out of court, and it is prepared to spend millions more lobbying against safety standards. With a half-million cars rolling off the assembly lines each year, Pinto is the biggest-selling subcompact in America, and the company's operating profit on the car is fantastic. Finally, in 1977, new Pinto models have incorporated a few minor alterations necessary to meet that federal standard Ford managed to hold off for eight years. Why did the company delay so long in making these minimal, inexpensive improvements?

Ford waited eight years because its internal "cost-benefit analysis," which places a dollar value on human life, said it wasn't profitable to make the changes sooner. More...