Those Were the Days: The SDS Revisited
Puddington, Arch
Arch Puddington THOSE WERE THE DAYS: THE SDS REVISITED If the New Left failed politically, it was because students were no substitute for an exploited proletariat— and because the U.S. never had...
...lumped together with blacks and the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1989 18...
...Thus, in a little over a half- A more fundamental reason for the sinister and unclean...
...By 1968, the neighborhoods...
...How, by the end, dents for a Democratic Society, the decade, the SDS had grown to become New Left's degeneration can be found had the New Left become what its best-known of the multitude of New arguably the largest radical organiza- in that movement's principal contribufounders had early on vowed it would Left organizations spawned during the tion in American history...
...beacons of inspiration...
...The tion...
...ghetto insurrection...
...Students, New York and the author of Failed in other words, were not a substitute Utopias: Methods of Coercion in Corn- proletariat...
...Rather, it was the reaccontinues to perplex and torment those humane and reformist...
...The SDS era...
...Those who once Lenin, after all, had exalted the intellecboasted of the uniquely American na- tual cum professional revolutionary ture of their egalitarian faith had come while belittling trade unions for their to despise just about everything about tendency to sacrifice the long-range America and its people, from the na- goals of the revolution to the imtion's political and economic systems mediate economic interests of their to its working-class citizens (with their members...
...was at first deeply committed to the The most frequent explanation for idea of democracy, both as ideology the New Left's demise, and the least and as principle for internal organizaconvincing, is the Vietnam war...
...Gandhi, Camus, and sixties, puttered along with a few thou- for this phenomenal growth had little in the future it would be students, and Jefferson had been replaced by Mao, sand members until President Johnson to do with the group's philosophy or not the proletariat, who would funcFanon, and the Black Panthers as tion as the engine of world revolution...
...T he question of why the New Left a generation of dedicated young peo- began escalating the American pres- its projects in urban, working-class I failed as a political movement ple whose instincts were otherwise ence in Southeast Asia...
...Moreover, the SDS leaders did not war, it is argued, warped and alienated perceive students as a narrow elite destined to draw forth the revoluArch Puddington is on the staff of tionary consciousness of other, potenRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in tially radical constituencies...
...Instead, students were munist Regimes (ICS Press...
...How, they New Left into a position of prominence impressive since membership was re- New Left generally, the appearance of wonder, did a movement born in high unprecedented for a left-wing move- stricted to a single generation of young a mass phenomenon...
...In fact, the SDS claimed 100,000 members, a re- tion of draft-age students to an unwho actually participated in the cam- war's principal effect was to thrust the markable figure that was all the more popular war that gave the SDS, and the pus revolution of the 1960s...
...Although the sixties pro"fascist" unions) to the elite univer- duced more than its quota of wouldsities (which, ironically, tolerated some be Lenins and Maos, the Lenin analogy of the most scandalous excesses of the should not be exaggerated...
...The Stu- Americans...
...idealism turn so rapidly into something ment in the United States...
...The reason tion to radical theory: the thesis that never become...
...never had an exploited proletariat...
...A commitment This notion, initially propounded by to broadening democratic participation sociologist C. Wright Mills, was not as had degenerated into a celebration of unique as its advocates liked to believe...
Vol. 22 • March 1989 • No. 3
