The Red, White, and Blue Left
Rifkin, Jeremy
The Red, White, and Blue LEFT JEREMY RIFKIN The prevailing wisdom that radicalism in America, especially among the young, is moribund rests on appearance, not reality. The absence of televised...
...The absence of televised confrontation, the waywardness of coverage by the news media, and the presence of factional strife among the Left—all these have created the impression that the Left has shrunk to ineffectual griping about the system and the establishment...
...The white movement must do the same...
...The questions of racial and sexual exploitation, the neglect of old people, inadequate housing and health care, population congestion, chronic unemploy- ment, urban decay, rural poverty, rising crime rates, anachronistic educational institutions, cumbersome bu- reaucratic mismanagement, political corruption and incompetence, and a host of other urgent problems that threaten our very survival, go unanswered...
...By continuing to place primary emphasis on the "here and now" morality or immorality of each indi- vidual, the New Left reinforces the assumption that the great majority of people are free to exercise their own will and to determine their own behavior within contemporary American society...
...The Red, White, and Blue LEFT JEREMY RIFKIN The prevailing wisdom that radicalism in America, especially among the young, is moribund rests on appearance, not reality...
...conscience above property and institu- tions...
...The Federal Government and the nation's business community have launched a five-year multi-million dollar campaign leading up to the celebration of Amer- ica's 200th birthday in 1976—to rekindle the "Spirit of '76" and to promote the words and deeds of the Founding Fathers...
...It tends to view decision-makers as free individuals exercising their own will for their own evil ends, rather than as the most intensely indoctrinated victims of the system...
...It follows that defeat is unthinkable and un-American...
...This awareness could well lead to fascist reaction if those in power manage to convince people that the gap is a fabrication: that the desperate human condi- tion is not the result of American institutions but rath- er of alien, sinister forces determined to undermine those institutions...
...government of the people, by the people, for the people...
...They are committed to a new democratic focus in these Bicentennial Years—the years between now and the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Inde- pendence...
...People regain control over decisions and institu- tions that affect their lives...
...the authoritarian family...
...The Left movement's character has become increas- ingly strange and, at times, even frightening to many Americans...
...and most of what we are has to do with our unique American heritage...
...The growing crisis has brought into question the more reactionary aspects of the American tradition...
...A feeling of powerlessness and isolation began to engulf the movement...
...What started as a movement to make institutions live up to the rev- olutionary part of the American dream transformed itself into a rejection of that dream itself...
...the ruthlessly compet- itive spirit as the motivating force for self-fulfillment...
...The New Left was unable, however, to apply this understanding to its own immediate environment—white, middle-class America...
...If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a re- bellion and will not hold ourselves bound to obey any laws in which we have no voice or represen- tation.,, —Abigail Adams to husband John, 1776 The new awareness that this country is in the midst of a grave crisis—a realization which millions of Americans have acquired in recent years—can lead to a mass-based revolutionary struggle if the movement will discard its self-imposed ideological isolation and begins to re-identify with the revolutionary principles and symbols of the American heritage...
...Understanding the revolutionary currents and move- ments that have influenced American life can help those of us already involved in political struggle in developing a revolutionary perspective that is germane for America...
...Benjamin Rush (1787) As the Revolution of 1776 was launched by the ringing language of grievances against the British Crown, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, so today unmet grievances against our governmental, economic, and social institutions compel us to launch a new struggle to recapture control over our lives: the next act in the drama of the American Revolution...
...Production for profit and war is replaced by pro- duction for human needs and peace...
...The terrifying specter of nuclear holocaust hangs over all of us as our leaders play out military fantasies of another age...
...Rather, the strategy, ideology, and rhetoric are taken largely from the experience of work- ers' struggles in other countries...
...At best, the New Left offers white America the option of vicarious involvement as defenders and cheer- leaders for the black and Third World struggles...
...Whites, blacks, Latins, native Americans, middle class, workers, poor people, women, and men will forge a new unified identity around a common revolutionary heritage...
...The potential for a fascist reaction is enhanced by the kind of identification that the New Left has assumed...
...Consider that today: • The hunger, misery, and despair of thirty million Americans are met with silence...
...If the New Left hopes to engage this new consciousness and give it positive direction through political struggle, it must first take a long hard look at itself and what it represents...
...But even here, little effort is made to remind people of the revolutionary history of their own strug- gle in this country...
...This new focus and spirit are essential if we are to overcome the isolation, fac- tionalism, and defeatism that now exist within the movement...
...Instead, the revolu- tionary heritage must be used as a tactical weapon to isolate the existing institutions and those in power by constantly focusing public attention on their inability to translate our revolutionary dreams into reality...
...allegiance to freedom of expres- sion and the right to self-determination...
...Without this positive identifi- cation those in power may succeed in isolating the movement from American society...
...material accumulation as a measure of man's achievement on earth...
...The freedom to act in accordance with human values requires that the individual be able to perceive the insanity that masquerades as the normal human condition and rise above it...
...sympathetic interest in the new, the untried, the unexplored...
...The American heritage embodies a set of principles or ideals which provides the great mass of people with a unique social identity...
...Such an understanding will help bring the existing fac- tions and groupings within the New Left community itself...
...The human aspirations we seek to fulfill at home will also guide our relations with other peoples of the world...
...Some attempt is made to engage that section of the white work force that is employed in blue-collar and service jobs...
...Today's revolutionaries are not so naive, nor so be- mused with romantic adventurism, nor so unaware of the lessons of history that they believe in the overnight attainment of these goals through instant revolution...
...This identification is necessary to create an atmos- phere of confidence among the people in their abil- ity to shape the future, to explore and enter unfamiliar areas of experience...
...We are dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness...
...distrust of those who command positions of power and privilege...
...Typical of many surveys of public opinion was this finding of the Gallup Poll: "Forty-seven per cent of the American people believe that unrest is likely to lead to a real breakdown in this country...
...Up to now, these projects have been viewed either as alternatives for only those immediately involved in them, or as organizing techniques for involving large numbers of people in political struggle...
...MAN AND TECHNOLOGY Science and technology have been viewed, for the most part, as the means for man's salvation from the oppression of the physical world...
...He has been a coordinator of the Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S...
...Economic cooperation is substituted for competi- tion and corporate profit...
...It must give form to the feelings of helplessness and indifference so that people may see the political, social, and economic sources of their private troubles and organize to change society...
...Most people perceive little or nothing that they have in common with the New Left...
...The first step in the new revolution must be to find out who we are and how to build on the base erected in the revolution of 1776 and refurbished in the successive dramas of change that characterize the most affirmative periods of American history...
...The ultimate expres- sion of this approach is the New Left's attitude to- ward political and economic leaders...
...For this reason, these separate projects should begin to come together on the local level around some commonly agreed upon set of principles, demands, and goals...
...The Left must take this up as a challenge and turn it into a campaign designed to cre- ate a mass revolutionary consciousness in tune with the revolutionary legacy of 1776...
...Within its own experience, white America, the left-looking movement continued to apply the Christian concept of individual moral choice and the judgment that there were good and evil people, especially within the im- mediate family and governmental structure...
...Yet within the last decade the rise in the numbers of middle-class families has—for many—been accompanied by a reduction in the psychic value of material accumulation as an end in itself...
...Now, ten years later, the move- ment has been fragmented into a constellation of factions whose ideological perspectives, slogans, tactical formats, and heroes are borrowed largely from Euro- pean and Asian revolutionary struggles...
...Those beliefs which reinforce our economic system and which have, for so long, provided a rationalization for the individual's role within that system are under unprecedented attack...
...In this manner, projects and pro- grams are redefined as "models for political alterna- tives" and free themselves from the unrealizable goal of asserting to be the alternative itself...
...faith in the brotherhood of all mankind...
...In our judgment this impression is false...
...The State, as the ultimate extension of their own being, has been stricken with impotence in the international arena at the very moment when its domestic institutions are proving themselves incapable of coping with the demands for change at home...
...To do this, the New Left must be willing to meet people where they are at rather than where it would like them to be...
...THE WORK ETHIC Political and economic events of the past decade have forced the middle class into a painful re-exam- ination of the work ethic—the concept that work is ennobling in itself, no matter what it produces and what toll it takes from the worker...
...It will bring together large sectors of the American population around common goals and aspirations...
...For the American Left to develop a strategy that can win popular support for programs that answer present grievances, it must first gain a clear under- standing of the role which the American heritage plays in the formation of the American people's political attitudes and behavior...
...To be true to its revolutionary origins, the new American Revolution must not be a revolution in rhetoric, as President Nixon and the leaders of both political parties are advocating, but rather a revolution in fact...
...One of the most significant developments is the emergence of a group of young radicals whose radicalism is home-grown...
...The emerging Left of the 1960s was not prepared for the overwhelming succession of events that was to sweep the nation during that turbu- lent decade...
...This results in a reluctance to experiment with new strategies for fear of being attacked as reformist...
...That does not mean that non-American revolutionary thought cannot serve as an important aspect of cul- tural, educational, and political direction...
...Without confidence in our revolutionary heritage, deteriorating economic and social conditions are liable to lead to an increased sense of hopelessness and fear, and a defense of the most reactionary aspects of the American ideology—with appeals to national honor, duty, courage, and vigilance in protection of the mother country—as the American people make a desperate at- tempt to hold onto what is familiar in their everyday life...
...Its non-American style and rhetoric offer a perfect target for the forces of reaction...
...Today's revolution will be one in search of new human values and new institutional structures...
...Through its rhetoric and actions, the movement has tried to force the American people to identify with Third World struggles at home and abroad before they have even identified with their own oppression and their own revolutionary struggle in this country...
...The validity of tech- nological "progress" as our "most important product" is now being challenged...
...He is now serving the Peoples American Revolutionary Bi-Centennial Commission and the New American Move- ment...
...Lacking thoughtful analysis, strategy is often an aimless reflex reaction to momentary crisis...
...Why has the New Left rejected its own revolutionary American heritage...
...cooperative enterprise...
...The first step in the new revolution must be to find out who we are and how to build on the base erected in the revolution of 1776 and refurbished in the successive dramas of change that characterize the most affirmative periods of American history...
...In divorcing itself from the American experience, the New Left has given those who seek the per- petuation of a reactionary system carte blanche to exploit those reactionary elements of our historic legacy that can be used to maintain allegiance to reactionary institutions and to disregard those revolutionary ele- ments of the ideology that could seriously challenge institutional performance...
...A genuine understanding of American revolutionary ideals is what links the American people with the struggles of all oppressed people in the world...
...Although its rhetoric is often revolutionary, its analysis and its actions reveal a deep sense of misguided moral outrage and collective guilt...
...Our need as human beings to find meaning and value in our lives and to explore freely our relation- ship to all that is eternal and of the spirit is cruelly extinguished by the oppressive environment in which we live...
...Traditional optimism about the nation's steady progress has faltered...
...Control of the economy is taken away from the very rich and very few and returned to the hands of the worker and consumer...
...The crisis of American beliefs lies in the increasing polarization of both the revolutionary and reactionary elements in the American legacy...
...Technology is brought under control to serve rath- er than exploit man and the environment...
...The contradiction between American ideals and practice became more visible and pronounced for the New Left with each successive political confrontation...
...The Left has entered a period of reflection and planning...
...A serious re-thinking of the strategies of confronta- tion, engagement, and mobilization will have to begin to take into account as major weapons of change the use of electoral politics, especially in communities with large student populations, research operations on the local level patterned after Nader's Raiders, mass media as a means of reaching out beyond the student and radical communities, and entry into government and corporate bureaucracies in order to gain vital informa- tion and to influence attitudes and behavior...
...We cannot build a contempo- rary revolution without an acute awareness of ourselves as a people, as citizens of a nation born in revolution...
...Our revolutionary beliefs—popularized through the words and deeds of such great Americans as Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush, Sam Adams, Henry Thoreau, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth, Eugene V. Debs, W. E. B. DuBois, Mark Twain, and A. J. Muste, and the movements they inspired or led—derive from the principle of the inherent unity and fraternity of all mankind...
...In a period of growing political alienation, when people no longer accept the tired old programs or the idle promises of new approaches that never materialize, these models can offer productive alternatives in which people can begin to believe and on which they can con- struct alternatives to the existing institutions, programs, and values...
...The Commission is working with individuals and groups to plan and carry out alternatives to the Government's official bicentennial observances...
...Their first steps may be modest, their first demands transitional, but they will achieve their ultimate goals, which are built upon nothing less than our own Amer- ican Dream...
...For example: MATERIAL ACCUMULATION For many years, emphasis on material accumulation and economic security seemed to balance the negative effects and meaninglessness of one's own role in the economy...
...Those individuals and groups in- itially associated with a particular strategy tend to de- velop a vested interest in its continued use so as to rationalize their past position of influence within the movement...
...Consequently, they are beginning to question the very values and institutions which for so long were regarded as in- vincible and sacred...
...The new American Revolution must bring about fundamental changes in our social, economic, and political institutions...
...By failing to help people recognize their social con- ditioning, by continuing to make moral judgments on the assumption that people are free to make meaning- ful choices, the Left thwarts the development of a revolutionary consciousness in America...
...Past struggles in America, such as the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements, and the farmer and labor insurgencies, cannot be expected to provide a blueprint for revolution in the 1970s, but they can tell us much about American behavior and the American character...
...Strat- egies tend to become ends in themselves or substitutes for lack of ideology...
...If to be "liberal" means to identify with someone else's oppression before one's own, then the Left move- ment is still liberally oriented...
...Black behavior was defined in terms of the economic and social forces that acted upon the black community...
...The search for transcendence and ultimate aware- ness of ourselves and our environment is nourished as the highest aspiration of mankind...
...Economic, social, racial, and sexual barriers will give way to a new form of equality and opportunity for all...
...Solidarity comes from understanding the collective nature of our separate struggles and the cry for humanity that is shared by all...
...THE NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION The goals of this new movement are as revolutionary for our time as were the goals of those who framed the Declaration of Independence...
...On the other hand, it con- tinues to castigate and condemn the American people for being dehumanized by the system—as if people who have been indoctrinated and victimized by an ex- ploitive social environment are still totally free to maintain and act upon some higher moral premise that goes beyond their experience...
...THE FAMILY Though his economic position offered little in the way of recognition or status, the average working adult could, in the past, still take refuge in his position of unquestioned importance within the family...
...The clear need for revolution does not guarantee it will happen...
...A slave of any kind of system cannot be expected to choose among alternatives when the option to choose has, in fact, been foreclosed...
...COMING FROM THE GRASS ROOTS There now exist in most large communities several independent organizing projects and collectives cen- tered around experiments as diverse as consumer unions, free schools, health care centers, abortion coun- seling services, alternative employment agencies, tenant unions, food cooperatives, alternative media, veterans' projects, draft services, and many others...
...The decline in the psychic value of material possession has served to reinforce the feeling that one's automated position in the production process was largely insignificant and meaningless...
...These aspirations have led to a set of beliefs that forms the revolutionary aspect of the American experience—hu- man equality...
...The mo- rality of the Left turned into a Christian sense of guilt for being associated with an ideology and history that exploits and colonizes racial and ethnic minorities at home and nonindustrialized peoples abroad...
...With such an understanding, our heritage can contribute to building consciousness and promote programs and demands in the spirit of the American revolutionary tradition...
...In the past, Americans have found personal signif- icance and self-confidence in identifying with the great- ness of the nation...
...Victories are so rare that any suc- cess is frequently elevated to the level of a sacred rev- olutionary principle...
...Personal interests can be identified with the collec- tive interest...
...But for many Americans, the principles—if not the language—enunciated in the Port Huron Statement of 1962, and by the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1963 and the Russell War Crimes Tribunal of 1967 are only now beginning to make sense...
...It must be our goal, in the next five years of struggle, to recapture our revolution- ary heritage and to build on it a society worthy of our legacy...
...War Crimes, which conducted veterans' hearings in cities throughout the United States, culminating in Congressional hearings last spring...
...If the objective conditions for a revolutionary move- ment exist for white as well as black Americans—and I think they do—then it makes more sense for whites to identify with the revolutionary heroes, slogans, prin- ciples, and beliefs that make up the most positive aspects of the American heritage than to attempt to import a European or Asian ideological format...
...Today, after seven years of bearing witness to America's genocidal policy in Southeast Asia, of knowing (but not accepting for some time) that our cause was without honor, and, finally, of realizing that the United States might be defeated by a small country fighting for its independence, most Americans feel bewildered and confused...
...WHERE PEOPLE ARE AT Large numbers of Americans have become aware of the gap between institutional performance and be- liefs...
...At present the New Left has found no way of dealing with this fear and misunderstanding, since it has abandoned or rejected much of the heritage and most of the symbols to which the great majority of the American people can respond...
...The first ap- proach leads to isolation and elitism and the second to despair as limited resources and societal constraints preclude the possibility of any meaningful participation by large numbers of people...
...We give our loyalty and allegiance to political and economic institutions which we re- gard as consistent with our collective beliefs and capable of translating promises into reality...
...Conditioned by a Judeo-Christian sense of morality —to believe that man is the master of his fate and the captain of his soul, that he makes conscious de- cisions between good and evil on the basis of some ab- solute moral premise—the New Left became over- whelmed by the disparity between what Americans pro- fessed to believe in on the one hand, and political real- ity on the other...
...it does mean that far greater emphasis must be placed on a tradition that most people already identify with—the revolutionary aspects of the American experience...
...The bureaucracy and technology of our capitalist economy have increasingly forced the average worker into the role of a small and insignificant cog in a vast, dehumanized production cycle...
...Our environment is being destroyed by these corporations and by the mass consumption they induce in the interest of profit and expediency...
...The frustration and bitterness of millions of work- ing people, who see the fruits of their exhaustive labor syphoned off into the coffers of the very rich, are ig- nored...
...The traumatic change in American attitude from one of hope and progress to one of pessimism and retrogression is analyzed in two recent polls conducted by the Gallup and Roper organizations...
...The United States seeks only freedom and democracy for all nations and, there- fore, must always triumph...
...Reinforcing the revolutionary beliefs is essential be- cause it provides continuity with the heritage of the past...
...Orthodoxy is challenged and creativity is en- couraged...
...Confidence in our ability to maintain discipline and to develop a long-range revolutionary perspective that is neither rigid nor authoritarian must come from an understanding of who we are...
...THE NEW LEFT The New Left movement of the 1960s was born out of this "crisis in meaning...
...Other nations might seek conquest and empire and, therefore, de- serve humiliation and defeat...
...Subtle, and not so subtle, forms of coercion and intimidation continue to mock our Bill of Rights and bar the way to the people's full expression of their opin- ions...
...The average American feels that the United States has slid back over the past few years...
...Those involved in the independent projects and col- lectives must begin to realize that disenchantment and alienation can appear on many levels, and that no one project or program can hope to answer all of the com- plex needs of the residents of a community...
...In its celebrated Port Huron Statement of 1962, Students for a Democratic Society put it this way: "A new Left must transform modern complexity into issues that can be understood and felt close-up by every human being...
...On the one hand, the movement attacks the social and economic system for so dehumanizing and brutal- izing the American people that they have lost touch with their own humanity...
...In the past, this process was tolerated and even accepted with varying degrees of enthusiasm for several reasons, all embedded within the American ideology...
...equality of opportunity...
...During the past year, President Nixon, one eye cocked on the election of 1972 and the other on the political dividends to be harvested from the approach of the bicentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence in 1976, proclaimed his new American Revolution...
...The black movement had to rediscover the positive aspects of its own heritage in order to build an identity that would give it confidence in its ability to initiate action, sustain discipline, and win support from the black community...
...Health care for all people is defined as a human right rather than a market-place commodity going to the highest bidder...
...This principle is the basis of a set of beliefs that forms the reactionary aspect of the American experience—the sacred value of private property...
...If individual blacks participated in anti-social or inhumane actions, their behavior could be defended as the inevitable consequence of victimiza- tion by an exploitive and inhumane system...
...Such a shift would bring with it either demands for fundamental change or vehement repression to uphold the status quo...
...Its sense of guilt keeps it from developing a revolutionary identity of its own, since doing so would necessitate an identification with the revolutionary aspects of its own American heritage...
...Outraged by this dichotomy, the New Left began to conclude that the gap between perform- ance and principle was attributable to the hypocrit- ical, deceitful, dishonest, and evil character of parents, political leaders, the American (white) people, and, by association, American history and ideology...
...In determining effective strategies, more critical at- tention must be focused on new ways of reaching people...
...It must advocate and be pre- pared to implement solutions to the grievances that now go unredressed by our present American system...
...For many Americans, this constitutes a grave crisis of confidence...
...Our reactionary beliefs—popularized through the words and deeds of such Americans as Alexander Ham- ilton, John Adams, and John D. Rockefeller—come from the principle that hostility and war, the survival of the fittest and to hell with the rest—the public be damned—constitute the natural condition of man...
...An accu- rate analysis of the American spirit must take into account the fact that the American legacy is at once both reactionary and revolutionary...
...To a large extent, this has been due to the New Left's failure to develop a realistic analysis of the American system and to create a long-range revolutionary per- spective...
...They reject classical Marxism and other importations in favor of social and economic analysis that fits the American scene...
...An examination of his "revolutionary pro- gram" revealed a bit of tinkering and a lot of patching —the whole wrapped up in a package of meaningless rhetoric...
...Impatience and frustration mounted as the movement found itself more often reacting to rather than initiating the course of political events...
...They find their inspiration in the radical idealism of the American Revolution...
...A significant portion of the youth community has come to attack and ridicule the entire set of as- sumptions upon which the average American adult has rationalized and justified his own existence within the family and society—including the concept of material accumulation, the notion of postponed gratification, the work ethic, competition, filial gratitude for paren- tal sacrifice, and pre-marital chastity...
...The New Left still focuses much of its energy on aiding and defending the revolu- tionary struggles of the black and Third World com- munities...
...Not un- til the masses of Americans begin to re-identify with these principles and develop their own revolutionary struggle will they be able to form a real bond of fra- ternalism and solidarity with the struggles of all op- pressed people...
...It is a statement of our beliefs —what we stand for and to what we dedicate our- selves as a people...
...This contradictory myth is now being challenged on several levels...
...A more realistic approach would be to reach out to the community in a limited way commensurate with the manpower and resources available, with emphasis on improving the quality rather than the quantity of social actions taken and services rendered...
...We never lose, we have assured our- selves, because we are never wrong...
...To rise above social conditioning to a new sense of values, people must come to understand how they are victimized by the American system as it operates today...
...Re-identifying with the American revolutionary her- itage during the Bicentennial Years can provide the New Left groupings with the beginning of a new phil- osophical and political focus as well as a new spirit of enthusiasm and hope...
...The emergence of Third World identity—the identity of underdeveloped peoples struggling for their fair share in the world, both here and abroad—overwhelrhed the already shaky identity of the New Left, and hastened the process by which it separated itself from any identi- fication with its own American heritage—even with the revolutionary aspects of that heritage...
...By exposing the tragic state of affairs within America in recent years, the forces of change have seriously damaged the myth that all capitalist production is socially valuable, and, with it the individual's own justification for his eco- nomic contribution to society...
...Implicit in the process was ac- ceptance of the contradictory myth that one's economic and social role within the capitalist system was essen- tial to the common good, to the ultimate realization of the more revolutionary collective aspects of the Amer- ican ideology, which means, as George Orwell might have put it, that a man can be free only if he is a slave...
...On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed...
...Millions of Americans are aware, for the first time, of the fact that many of America's economic, social, and political institutions are perform- ing in ways that undermine the revolutionary ideals and principles to which the nation purports to be ded- icated...
...In 1976, we, the American people, will celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the signing of our Dec- laration of Independence...
...Never having suffered defeat at the hands of another nation, Americans have come to accept "greatness" as a way of life...
...The escalating political and economic crisis does not alter the basic positive truths of the American heritage...
...These, in briefest outline, are among today's major assaults on the constitutional mandates conceived by the Founding Fathers to "promote the general welfare...
...Two hundred huge corporations dominate the American economy and the Government, manipulate the tax structure to their advantage, and engineer the very patterns of American life...
...The black revolution, race riots, political assassinations, Vietnam, pollution, campus confronta- tions, drugs, and a host of other developments intensi- fied the movement's sense of urgency in dealing with American institutions...
...At this critical stage in American history, it makes no sense for the New Left to allow the defenders of the system the advantage of presenting themselves and their institutions as the true heirs and defenders of the American revolutionary tradition...
...NATIONAL OMNIPOTENCE For Americans more than for most peoples, the nation state has always stood for greatness untarnished by the humiliation of military defeat or surrender...
...confidence in the ability of the people to create a more just and humane world...
...The New Left talks about the need for a revolution in this country, but its ideology threatens to exclude it—and most of white America—from the possibility of developing a revolutionary identity...
...To stimulate revolutionary consciousness, the New Left must develop a strategy by which the American people can identify the movement's demands and pro- grams with the most noble and revolutionary principles of our common heritage...
...Among the spokesmen for this movement is Jeremy Rifkin...
...On the contrary, it would be impossible to point out the contradictions in the American system—to expose the exploitation and dehumanization at all levels of Amer- ican life—without in some way appealing to the rev- olutionary beliefs and ideals with which so many Amer- icans identify...
...These acts of suppression and coercion are em- ployed to deny the expression of unorthodox or creative thought, thus locking us into a condition of uniformity, obedience, and passivity...
...The Government's policy of genocide in Southeast Asia and its economic, political, and military exploita- tion throughout the world go on in the face of over- whelming opposition by the American people...
...Though it ignored this contradiction in its assess- ment of American history and the American (white) people, the New Left did apply simple logic in analyz- ing the condition of the poor and the blacks within the American system...
...The New Left started as a movement to force Amer- ican institutions to live up to the revolutionary aspects of American ideology...
...The average American feels stripped of his identity: He feels increasingly isolated and powerless in a world that seems to have lost all meaning and purpose...
...Loss of faith in technology as a practical means for attaining total fulfillment, fear of its increasing control over human life, and its dehumanizing effects on the human species and the natural environment—these have led to a resurgence of religious fanaticism, drug culture, and back-to-the- earth movements, especially among the sons and daughters of the middle and upper middle classes— the chief beneficiaries of the technological society...
...respect for the judgment of the com- mon man...
...This is no longer the case, for a great many middle- class children and young adults have begun to reject the structure and authority of the family unit, as well as the role and values of their parents in the economic process...
...The New Left broke entirely with its American heritage because it failed to grasp a basic historical contradiction—that American ideology is at once both revolutionary and reactionary and that the American people are at once both reactionary and revolutionary...
...Above all, this must he a revolution built upon hope and alternatives for the future, rather than the fears and dismay of the present...
...The Editors The American war is over, but this is far from the case with the American Revolution...
...This movement must be a revolution in which: • Human values are placed above property values...
...Too often, the New Left continues to pursue a single strategy of confrontation, even when its con- tinued use is alienating and ineffective, merely because it has met with some measure of success in the past...
...Even now, much of the New Left continues to act as a liberal movement...
...As the political and economic crisis deep- ens in America, the present balance in numbers be- tween those who believe that the root cause of our growing crisis is institutional and those who still believe that it is the fault of "Communists" and other "alien" and "subversive" forces is likely to shift dramat- ically toward one pole or the other...
Vol. 35 • November 1971 • No. 11
