Sample ID/Proposition/Question Response # 2
Consensus vs. New Left
These are two historiographical approaches that emerged in the post-World War II era—
the Consensus School dominating from the late 40s to the late 60s and the New Left
School, never dominating, but extremely popular from the mid-60s to the mid-70s.
Though never as monolithic as the name “consensus” suggests, Consensus historians
such as R. Hofstadter posited, that throughout America’s past, most Americans had
embraced liberal capitalism with the consequence that there had been relatively minor
conflict within American Society. Writing at a time when America had emerged as a
world power, was in conflict with the Soviet Union’s socialist model, and appeared to
have figured out a way to tame the excesses of capitalism, most consensus historians
appeared to celebrate America’s past as they diminished the importance of class conflict
and racism in the nation’s history. By the 60s, influenced by the emergence of the Civil
Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, a younger group of scholars (H. Zinn for
example), many of whom came from social backgrounds—working class, ethnic, black,
and female—unlike previous generations of historians, challenged consensus historian’s
dismissal of conflict in American history. Adopting a neo-Progressive approach, these
historians argued that conflict had been a central feature of the American past; that many
ordinary Americans had never embraced liberal capitalism or other beliefs of the
dominant society; and that racism, exploitation, and class oppression had been the rule
rather than the exception. In focusing on the sometimes negative impact of the dominant
society’s (often elite) practices and policies on common people, New Left historians
offered an important corrective to the overly celebratory version posited by consensus
historians. At the same time, despite their interest in ordinary people, most New Left
historians still focused on the actions of elites or the dominant society, and did not
investigate the actual experiences, actions, and beliefs systems of common people—a
task left to the next generation of historians—the New Social historians (L. Levine for
example)—who tried to write a history from “the bottom up.”