The Young Radicals: A Symposium

...This is, of course, a radically different situation than existed in the '30s—or even in the '40s or '50s...

...But the feeling of "ancien regime," I believe, stems not so much from an estrangement from the J. F. K. personality as from an awakening realization of the realities of the American—and the world—situation...

...3) Although the name and tradition of the YPSL are the same as that of the '30s, the nature of the organization and the position in which it finds itself are strikingly different...

...Particularly in the United States, the radical-tending student has been saturated with polemics for "freedom" and against "Communism" and "totalitarianism" originating from the most reactionary forces...

...4) The Colonial Revolution has been the most dynamic movement of the post-World War II world...

...If American radicals have a significant part to play today it is in struggling for the broadening and democratization of these movements, and in bringing out the political implications of their struggles...

...How do I, and how does the present generation of young radicals view earlier radical generations...

...2) Undoubtedly, the two issues which have evoked the greatest response from the present student community are racial equality and peace...

...It can't be denied that there is a considerable amount of "estrangement," if not hostility toward movements and traditions of the past...

...No one can feel this more than one, like myself, who came to radicalism in the '50s...

...And the YPSL today has a different conception of its nature and role than the traditional one of organized American Socialism...

...It is not surprising that the events and personalities of this revolution have evoked the passions and enthusiasms of students throughout the world—and even in the relatively apathetic United States...

...And neither is it surprising that even authoritarian and totalitarian tendencies in the colonial countries find a response in the student community...

...On the issue of peace, certainly one of the most remarkable events of the past few years has been the organization and overnight growth of the Student Peace Union into the organizational form of student anti-war activity in the U. S., on a basis of opposition to both of the Cold War blocs...

...Although the YPSL has increased its size more than ten-fold during the past four years, the organized Socialist movement in the U. S. still has a long way to go before it is reconstructed as a significant political and intellectual force...

...But more and more, many who share this estrangement find it impossible mechanically to separate their present radical commitment from a relationship to specific tendencies and organizations existing from the past...

...The role of Socialists and radicals generally must be in the existing peace, civil-rights, etc., movements which have a generally liberal orientation...

...second is a certain degree of realization that the non-Communist radical left in the past has been isolated—and to a large extent has isolated itself—from the main stream of U. S. society and politics...

...Leaving aside the fact that organized Socialism is much less popular in the '60s than it was in the '30s, the YPSL finds itself in the position of being the only significant organization attempting to propagate Socialism in the student and youth community...

...But the recent emergence of YPSL chapters in areas untouched by Socialist organization in years—if not in decades—from the Ivy League to the Southwest—is one of the surest signs that the '60s are not merely a re-run of the '50s...

...One of the sponsors of the TTP action was the Young Peoples Socialist League...

...The YPSL, the Socialist party's youth section, is one of the traditional faces of radicalism on the American campus...

...The reviving movements for equality and peace, the increasing concern from all quarters about the "purpose" of our nation and our society, the concern and realization about what is going on out there beyond the three-mile limit, and the domestic "reappearance" of such "old-fashioned" problems as poverty and unemployment, are changing the consciousness of American young people...

...This might be formulated best by saying that although YPSLS do not consider themselves liberals, they do act as part of the liberal community...

...Under these circumstances some young people tend to look with rose-colored lenses at figures such as Fidel Castro, or even Mao Tse-tung...

...And I should not conclude without emphasizing the fact that ideologically even the most "anti-organizational" of the young radicals in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are dependent upon people and theories produced in the organized radical movements of the past...

...In my own experience, many of the "anti-organizational" young radicals find themselves engaged in an increasingly tense balancing act between various organizations...

...And I believe that the decline of beatnikism says something important about what has changed since then...

...However, in the last generation, the word has been a subject of confusion on two counts—first, its application to the phenomenon of the so-called "beats," and second, on account of that tendency which the editors of DISSENT once called "authoritarians of the 'left.' " The "beats," while projecting a "radical" image to the publicatlarge, and providing a tone of revolt that was a major source of their appeal to young people, were not radical in any social sense...

...This is a response to the political atmosphere of the United States and is largely independent of any consciously Communist or proCommunist movements, which have all but disappeared...

...But it is undeniable that the realities of life, particularly the Cuban invasion, have caused serious misgivings about the desirability, not to say the sanity, of the "new" American Establishment...

...The fact that the first widely noted movement of the "Silent Generation" was anti-political is indicative of the '50s in America...

...Secondly, it regards itself not as an organizational rival or replacement for the movements and organizations of the existing American "Left" (i.e., liberalism) but as a left wing in the liberal student community...

...The sit-in movement beginning in February 1960, and the response it evoked in students all over the country was the first significant example of action on a social issue by the present generation of students...

...One is the traumatic experiences of some of the older of the present student radicals with the Communist movement...

...5) Without a doubt, Kennedy began his Presidential career as the most popular figure among what passes for the "left-wing" of American politics since the days of F. D. R. His popularity is still not dissipated among large sections of the labor, civil rights and liberal movements, nor even among liberal and radical students...

...In fact, they represented a retreat from politics...

...One of the most important roles that the younger radicals can play in the U. S. student community is in establishing the radical bona fides of the democratic Left and the libertarian essence of a radical program directed against all power blocs and ruling classes...

...And although the Civil Rights movement in any institutional form on the Northern campuses is presently in a state of relative eclipse, the issue is one which American society itself guarantees will be a cause for student action for a very long time to come...

...This sentiment, insofar as it exists, has two roots...

...1) The term "radical" as most of today's young radicals apply it to themselves is adequately defined by any standard dictionary— going to the roots of social problems, demanding a change in the very nature of existing society...

...The appeal of the student peace movement can be gauged from the more than 6,000 people drawn to Washington for the recent Student Action for a Turn Toward Peace...

...After the political night of the '50s, we have entered not only a nominally new, but a qualitatively different kind of decade...

...In the first place, it is explicitly broad and multi-tendencied...

...This is the most promising thing about our decade...