Old vs. New Left

1
Old vs. New Left

• 1. Focus on Communism/ Soviet Union-
• (Anti-Anticommunism, Speaking American)
• 2. Working Class/Unions as Agents of Social
  Change-
• (Students as Agents of Social change, existing
  unions as part of the system.)
• 3. Economic Explanation of Society
• (Making values explicit, alienation as central
  problem)
• 4. Building Centralized Organizations the Key to
  Victory-
• (Organization, bureaucracy as the problem)

2
The Growth of SDS

• 1960 SDS Formed
• 1962 Port Huron Statement
• 1964 Berkeley FSM
• 1965 April SDS initiated Anti-War March attracts
  25,000
• Chapters 1960 3
• 1963 19
• 1966 172
• 1968 400

3
Collapse

• Summer 1969
• SDS breaks apart at its annual convention
• Progressive Labor/ PL-SDS
• Weathermen/Weather Underground
• Rapid drift into irrelevance

4
Organizational Dilemmas

• Explosive growth acculturating new members
• Having meetings open to all made SDS vulnerable
  to takeover by a determined minority willing to
  pack meetings and wait out opponents
• Lack of Controlor even communication with
  individual campuses
• Difficulty in planning mass actions and setting
  priorities

5
Radicalization

• Nonviolence ?Violence
• From Speaking American ? denunciation of
  imperialist America
• (PIGS, support for the NLF)
• Student Agency Third World/ Inner City
  Revolution (Black Panthers/Che/Mao)
• Reform? Revolution
• (Fortune magazine/Chalmers Johnson)

6
Weather Underground

• Days of Rage
• --Bombing at Haymarket
• --Destruction in the Gold Coast
• Turn to Violence
• Bombings attempts on campus on 67-68 10, 68-69
  125, 69-70 174
• Targets ROTC 197 attacks 19 buildings destroyed
• Govt. Buildings 232 in 69-70 alone (esp.
  selective service centers)
• Corporate offices IBM, United Fruit, Standard
  Oil, GM
• March 1970 Greenwich Village Explosion

7
Why Radicalization?

• Turbulence
• Influx of New Members
• Rapid Escalation of War
• Desperation
• Other methods have not stopped the war
• Assassination of King RFK
• Repression
• Couintelpro
• Panthers Assassinations
• The Sabotage and Explosives Workshop

8
Backlash

• Reagan 66 Election
• Nixon/Wallace receive 58 together
• Spiro Agnew
• A spirit of national masochism prevails,
  encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs
  who characterize themselves as intellectuals.
• 1972 election/class

9
On the plus side Breines

• Vs. Classical Theorists
• Vs. Good 60s/Bad 60s
• Protest w/o SDS
• Cultural revolution
• New Movements

10
Participatory Democracy to Cultural Revolution

• Rock and Roll Is a Weapon of Cultural Revolution
  by JOHN SINCLAIR
•    "The duty of the revolutionary is to make the
  revolution." The duty of the musician is to make
  the music. But there is an equation that must not
  be missed MUSIC IS REVOLUTION. Rock and roll
  music is one of the most vital revolutionary
  forces in the West-it blows people all the way
  back to their senses and makes them feel good,
  like they're alive again in the middle of this
  monstrous funeral parlor of western civilization.
  And that's what the revolution is all about-we
  have to establish a situation on this planet
  where all people can feel good all the time. And
  we "I not stop until that situation exists.
•       Rock and roll music is a weapon of cultural
  revolution.If you engage yourself in a total
  revolutionary program of self-reliance and
  serving the people any way you can, you will have
  a guaranteed good time forever (except for when
  they lock you up from time to time) and will help
  other people get it together too.
•       It isn't enough just to drop out though-you
  have to create new forms which will enable you to
  sustain yourselves while you're doing your work.
  The commune is the life-form of the future, it is
  the revolutionary organizational life-form, and
  the communal relationship must be realized in
  everything you do. Rock and roll is the best
  example. That's why I said at the beginning of
  this rant, that MUSIC IS REVOLUTION-because it is
  immediate, total, fast-changing and on-going.
  Rock and roll not only is a weapon of cultural
  revolution, it is the model of the revolutionary
  future. At its best the music works to free
  people on all levels, and a rock and roll band is
  a working model of the post-revolutionary
  production unit

11
New Social Movements

• New Social Movements
• Environmental
• Feminism---
• Gay liberation--
• Lesbian Feminism in Stein
• anti-nuclear power and weapons movements.
• peace movements--particularly those of the
  early 1980s
• Features
• Middle class or unclear class basis
• Qualitative rather than material goals
• Vs. hierarchy
• Focus on Civil Society and Identity building