ABSTRACT
New left understandings of alienation, poverty and ethics can be traced back to John Dewey and a particular elaboration of social ethics in the settlement house movement. The stress is on working with others as work on the self is a social activity. This does not, of course, resolve difference into similarity. Working with others gives "differences a chance to show themselves". The new left committed itself to a kind of experiential politics that had its immediate roots in the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee amongst the black poor in the southern states of America. The Students for a Democratic Society belief in participatory democracy was, however, subjected to crippling strains. Could the movement speak for the poor? The failures of the Economic Research and Action Projects suggested otherwise. The politics of poverty were bound up with the politics of race and the problem of the "white ally".
