New Winds on the Campus

...There is something admirable about this desire to create new institutions...

...What has happened since the Vietnam March on Washington in April 1965, when SDS mobilized the largest student demonstration in over a decade...

...He replied, "No, I mean the unions...

...Another reason, I think, besides the genuine openness of most SDS members, is the state of the adult radical movement...

...And as a result of SDS's experiences with elements of the "antiwar" movement, many were willing to reconsider the question of SDS's "opening to the Left" Lee Webb noted that "this united front of ours may turn into a civil libertarian funeral for the movement...

...We want [liberals] as allies on the issues we raise...

...Some SDSers argued that the creation of democratic institutions was largely impossible in underdeveloped economies...

...Let the people decide' has been an escape from our own indecision...

...As one liberal student expressed it, "She may be a Communist, but she is our Communist...

...Because of LID participation and growing uneasiness within SDS, the issues of "coalition" and "Communism" were discussed more seriously than they had been for some time...

...in part it stems from a pro found moral insight into the deficiencies of American society, where so many Negroes, the poor, the aged and the sick are outcasts...

...The next session was on Communism, and the discussion leader was a socialist, Saul Mendelson...

...And all of us, who make claims to being radicals, should be wary of this tendency in ourselves...

...The fate of SDS is important, not only because it contains many young people who can make an important contribution to building a democratic radical movement, but also because it reflects many of the conflicts within the intellectual middle class today...

...The "wreckers" by their definition included the Socialist Workers Party and its youth group, the Young Socialist Alliance and Youth Against War and Fascism...

...Most of the SDS leadership walked out in disgust...

...186 III This seems likely because most SDSers lack the rigid dogmatism that prevailed in the radical groups that had one or another kind of illusion about the progressive nature of the Communist world...

...Most other SDSers would not have gone as far as Webb, though the majority really wanted serious discussion...

...Recognizing the correctness of the criticisms on this score was not a signal for the LIDers to beat their breasts...

...The editor of a conservative Southern newspaper after an interview with one SDS leader concluded that the attitude of many in SDS toward the welfare state was similar to those held by economic conservatives...

...Both sides masked their political differences behind structural questions and attempted to use younger New Leftists as pawns...

...For us the situation is a bit different...

...To add to SDS problems, its Northern community organizing projects are also in trouble...

...Many new members of SDS had never before heard a full presentation of the democratic socialist view on united fronts and had accepted preposterous second-hand accounts that we were advocating exclusion of individuals from picket lines or were motivated by fears that the SDS would be taken over by Communists in joint activities...

...Of course this has been true of other generations of middle-class radicals who have mistaken their vision of a new society for that of the masses they are supposed to serve...

...Another participant countered that the previous speaker believed this because he had lived under IBM but never under Castro...

...Some in SDS wanted an "opening to the right" to break out of isolation...

...SDS President Carl Oglesby seemed to have the attitude toward Communism that most reflected the thinking of the members...

...But no matter what the record of the democratic left on this and other questions—and no doubt it could have been better—it would not have been enough to bridge the gap between the two radical generations...

...Quite a number also recognized that in their anti-war activities they should have been critical of the Communist as well as the American role in Vietnam and the cold war...

...The educational experience of the conference was not a one-way process...

...And in every session where the nature of Communism was discussed, there was also a small minority that used the traditional arguments of the totalitarian left...

...A radical posture alone does not bridge the gap between these two strata in our society...

...From his experience in an IBM society where he was only a number on a card he said he could appreciate "Fidel's spontaneity" and was sure Cubans were freer than Americans...

...I glanced around at the 75 or more young people in the room, wondering if by accident I had stumbled into a friendly group of left-wing democratic socialists, but there were only two faces I recognized...

...To be sure, there were echoes from the past...

...Just as there is no strong democratic left to provide an ideological attraction, so there is no longer a monolithic Communist movement...

...The first discussion I attended was on "imperialism...

...But even here we made some headway with the argument that apologists for the authoritarian regimes in Saigon made similar kinds of rationalizations for not helping to create democratic alternatives to Diem and Ky...

...This is among the healthier developments in SDS...

...In fact Staughton Lynd-style "wave after wave" proposals which used to be endorsed with enthusiasm now were greeted with hilarity...

...National Guardianites, CPers, the Dubois Clubs, some wouldbe mentors of the New Left, including Liberation editors Staughton Lynd and David Dellinger, Studies on the Left editor Stanley Aronowitz, and even the Progressive Labor Party people made a united front against what they described as "Trotskyist wreckers...

...My point is that many of them are just as alienated from the masses of working-class people as they are from the conformist middle class...

...V Some of the SDSers active in community organizing whom we talked to informally said they were against the poverty program because it would "coopt the poor" (from poverty or from them, one wonders...

...But the problems were too glaring to be ignored...

...This was also aggravated by a simplistic analysis of how ghetto organizers could combine a "militant" domestic protest movement of the poor with the anti-war movement...

...The problem of Communism and other authoritarian movements in the Third World was more difficult...

...Although SDS still had important differences with its former parent group, the League for Industrial Democracy, it invited LID to send working papers and speakers to the conference...

...or it can become part of the new academic-managerial elite...

...One disillusioned young participant compared the proceeding to life in Animal Farm...

...The New Leftists at the conference had some justified criticisms to make of the democratic left...

...HUAC notwithstanding, there are not that many proCommunists on the campus...

...Hopefully, the best in SDS will not make their peace with injustice, but will find a road to democratic social change...

...be the beginning of an analysis and self-criticism which has been lacking in SDS for the last year...

...they have very little knowledge of, or feeling for, the millions of American workers organized into trade unions...

...Political differences are not enough to explain this phenomenon...

...How seriously have we treated those not from the 'New Left...

...The SDS call for an educational conference during Christmas sounded a new note: "The December Conference will...

...The USSR, of all the Communist governments, came under the sharpest attack...

...Instead a number of SDSers agreed, with varying emphasis on which side was most guilty of imperialistic practices...

...Symptomatic is the tendency of some children of the comfortable middle class, who predominantly make up the New Left, to identify the cause of the "underclass" with their own, while refusing to recognize that the needs of the economically exploited are not identical with the needs of the socially alienated from other classes...

...They also raised some incisive questions about whether the democratic left could build a radical movement when most of its energies were going into "coalition politics...

...I attended the conference with the LID contingent which included its Executive Director, Tom Kahn, and other younger members...

...The split between Moscow and Peiping cuts down the ability of proCommunist adult tendencies to influence the student movement...

...But embattled social groupings like the New Left— which makes up a very small segment of society—also develop their own forms of exclusiveness...

...At best this is expressed in legitimate disgust with social hypocry in the U.S...

...In any event, SDS is now "deemphasizing" foreign policy questions and "re-emphasizing" a perspective for building a movement for domestic social change which it hopes will eventually be able to gain enough strength to challenge the existing foreign policy consensus...

...In his speech at the recent March on Washington, Oglesby was critical of the lack of freedom in Eastern Europe, but expressed a romantic feeling toward Communist revolutions in the Third World...

...A year ago it is likely that this thought would have been ridiculed...

...As Lee Webb, former SDS National Secretary, pointed out, "In Italy an opening to the left by the Christian Democrats is significant because there are 15,000,000 people on the left...

...They attempt to maintain an inner cohesion by blurring principled political differences within their ranks...

...In this situation SNCC-style militancy was simply not enough...

...At the national council meeting immediately following the conference, a resolution was passed that even foreign policy activities would be undertaken with an eye for winning over parts of the trade union movement...

...This theme ran through the conference...

...But after a year of marching around the "Establishment" walls, which not only didn't fall down but hardly shook at all, Students for a Democratic Society is trying to work out a new battle plan...

...They have their own pressures to conformity, particularly in the face of outside hostility...

...But it didn't go over as well as it used to...

...But there was also another group —a minority, I think—that wanted no part of this dialogue...

...This generational solidarity is not limited to the New Left...

...These were begun when the Northern ghettos seemed to be coming alive in solidarity with the Southern Negro struggle...

...Many were willing to give some serious thought to this dilemma, but remained unconvinced that the democratic left had any real solution to the problems of the Third World...

...We have slogans which take the place of thought: 'There's a change gonna come' is our substitute for social theory...

...It is still not clear, however, whether this amounts to somewhat of a break with the politics of the NCC which is only critical of the West in the Cold War or is a reaction to the sectarian faction fights within it...

...Only in the phantasy world of the extreme Right or extreme Left can Tom Hayden take power and become the Nkrumah of the West...

...Age is the criterion, not politics...

...Where to, no one can be certain...

...Many students saw her election as a way of defying the "establishment" as well as making a protest for civil liberties...

...But the senior Aptheker would not be accepted in the same way...

...This will certainly be news to the far right which has been doing pretty well as a pressure group, and it is certainly a dangerous assumption when the threat of a wider war looms so great...

...Paul Booth and Lee Webb submitted a working paper that stated: "We are not satisfied with a facile antiestablishment position . . . which equates the Peace Corps with the Air Force...

...Significant here is the priority they give to bringing the poor into their "movement" while expressing indifference or outright hostility to broader efforts for new social welfare legislation, as proposed by the trade unions...

...Peaceful coexistence within this "Anti-War" movement could not be maintained among pacifists, Vietcong supporters, warring proRussian and pro-Chinese youth groups, and other students who had no ideological bias but felt a justified moral outrage at U.S...

...It has elitist tendencies but also profoundly democratic impulses, and sometimes they coexist in a single individual...

...One SDS activist reported how unnerved she had been when she was thrown out of Negro homes after trying to explain that their plight had much in common with that of the Vietcong...

...As we feel it is essential to point out our differences with Michael Harrington, Norman Thomas and Bayard Rustin, why do we forget the Vietcong, or Progressive Labor or the Dubois Clubs...

...For one thing, we ourselves had not been guilty of such compromises, and as we pointd out, democratic socialist leaders like Norman Thomas, Michael Harrington and Irving Howe had spoken out in defense of the rights of Communists when so many others were silent...

...I sat down quickly and waited for smashing attacks...

...Further we said that the appeal of the radical movement was undermined if we restricted our demand for `one man, one vote" to Mississippi and Saigon and became strangely quiet when someone asked us, "What about Hanoi or Peiping...

...Others were supporters of groups like the Dubois Clubs who didn't want their ideology critically examined...

...Consensus becomes the watchword, hard and controversal decisions necessary to maintain a radical movement are avoided, and internal democracy is muted...

...II As a result of such experiences, some in SDS concluded that it was time for rethinking...

...These are the real political alternatives in the U.S...

...They counterpose their conception of "Communitas" and meaningful social relationships to the middleclass life and values they are rejecting...

...When Webb spoke for this resolution he was asked, "You mean the workers...

...A few argued for support of movements like the Vietcong as "a lesser evil...

...The SDS national council has voted down a resolution to affiliate to the NCC and participate in two of its Vietnam protest demonstrations...

...This new middle-class generation has two political options: It can try to help build a democratic left coalition to move this country beyond the welfare state...

...Particularly traumatic for some SDSers was the recent Convention of the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam...

...SDS members have a strong sense of belonging to a generation apart and of being at war with their predecessors, no matter what their politics...

...we have 5,000 on our left, and 190,000,000 on our right...

...But instead of confronting the deeper question of why their politics isolated them on the Vietnam issue, they are comforting themselves with a notion I heard over and over again at the conference that "it is impossible to change American foreign policy through direct pressure on the government...

...Very few of the young people present were totally uncritical of Communist movements and governments...

...They seemed genuinely surprised when we said what we were advocating was that the left not blur its political position to swell demonstrations or compromise its commitment to democracy at home or abroad in the name of a specious unity...

...We were a bit taken aback when one SDS member opposed social security because it was bureaucratic and alienating like any dole ("the check came on an IBM card...

...Part of the reason for this was the belief held by many that there is a Soviet establishment which limits freedom for its own reasons...

...Anyone who has been active in radical politics could not help being sympathetic to the description in the SDS National Secretary's report on how the SDS draft and conscientious objector program got out of control and took its own course...

...This, to be sure, is a more realistic approach to the problem of building a radical movement...

...They would reject Aptheker because he is from the "Old Left," that "outmoded generation that failed...

...There a bitter power struggle took place for control of the "anti-war" movement that was reminiscent of the faction fights of the '30's...

...and anger at a government that calls upon them to fight for "democracy" in a war in support of a dictator in Saigon...

...And a few felt there was nothing wrong that a good demonstration couldn't cure...

...The real danger is that the disaffected children of the middle class will become tired of marching up dead-end streets, as so many in past radical generations have, and return to the path society has marked out for them...

...The tensions generated on the New Left as a result of this self-imposed isolation from other groups and institutions in American society create a corresponding desire for relatedness and community...

...we scream 'no leaders', 'no structures' and seem to come up with implicit structures which are far less democratic than the most explicit elitism...

...Many in SDS now recognize that the organization's rebounding from issue to issue is a symptom of a deeper malaise...

...If nothing else, the SDS now shared with the democratic left a common frustration at trying to build a radical movement...

...But once the drama of the South subsided without sparking a similar movement in 184 the North, the young people who had gone to work in the ghetto were faced with the enormous problem of organizing wholly around the problems of the Northern poor...

...It is basically a by-product of a larger generational conflict...

...SDS is certainly an organization in transition...

...More than 800 young people came from all over the country to the conference at the University of Illinois...

...They did not come...

...And the tendency of some in the New Left who have expressed, perhaps unwittingly, a kind of proprietary interest in the poor raises some real doubts about their values...

...Most of these younger radicals know little about the history of the Communist Party or the radical movement in general...

...But as SDS moves away from ideological abstractions and moral generalities, it will be more and more called upon to make some rigorous judgments about Communist movements and systems all over the world...

...During the meeting I presented the traditional democratic socalist view criticizing both sides in the Cold War for attempting to impose their will on other nations by force of arms or economic and political pressure...

...Here the moral and political questions were thorny not only for the New Left but, to be honest, for democratic socialists as well...

...Paul Booth noted in his report that "the phenomenal growth of SDS Chapters" was in part the result of "the student response to the war and the deeper social trend of the development of a culture of dissatisfaction based on a deeply felt understanding of the compromises of our middle-class parents...

...This confusion of the need for a beloved community with building a radical political movement leads to the substitution of symbolic actions for meaningful political work...

...The commitment of the SDS activists was admirable, but as the Introduction to its Conference Working Papers pointed out, such slogans as "do as the spirit says" were a "substitute for thought...

...We are worried because we see the movement without any clear sense of direction, in political isolation, and trapped in the undergrowth of single issue politics that has so long weakened us," wrote two of the more experienced SDS leaders, Paul Booth and Lee Webb, in a working paper for the conference...

...Some of them had a vested interest in the SDS programs that were not working out...

...Typical of the newer SDS members was a student who declared he couldn't support the Vietcong and Communists generally, but admired Castro's close relationship with the people...

...I am not arguing here that the prevailing tendency in SDS is towards incipient Goldwaterism or bureaucratic collectivism...

...The chairman of the session presented that old evasion, "We are Americans and should only criticize our own government...

...A few months ago, when the New Left seemed to be riding high, such admissions would have been considered treasonous by many inside SDS ranks...

...actions in Vietnam...

...These young radicals do not discriminate among Maoists, Moscovites, Social Democrats or even liberals...

...A Report on the SDS National Conference "A change is gonna come" is the battle hymn of the New Left...

...Ironically Lynd was, by his own definition, in "a coalition with the Marines," as his side opposed SWP efforts to make the demand of the movement, "Bring the boys home now...

...What sociology, what psychology, what history do we need to know the answers...

...This partially explains their enthusiasm for setting up, mostly on paper, sometimes in reality, counter communities and institutions —their own "Continental Congresses," "free universities," "community unions," etc...

...It is not because he defended Russian tanks against the Hungarian workers and students...

...In brief, the section of the "AntiWar" movement SDS had been working with, had collapsed as a result of the hostility it encountered not only from the right but from within the liberal community, which became leery of the New Left's vague position on Communism...

...They saw a conflict between industrial development and democracy, and they gave higher priority to the former...

...At Berkeley Bettina Aptheker, a leader of the Free Speech Movement who an nounced she was a Communist, was elected to the student government with a high vote...

...SDSers scored some telling points about the failure of the liberal community to stand up to McCarthyism...