Keeping the faith: the U.S. Left, 1968-1998

The future of the Left, in the United States as elsewhere, is bound up with a larger question: What will it take to bring socialism back onto the popular agenda? In the eyes of many, the defeats of the past generation have been so crushing as to make this question no longer worth asking. By the same token, however, capitalism has come to enjoy a level of exclusive hegemony unknown since before 1917. In its current global incarnation, it is plunging more people into misery, at a more rapid rate than at perhaps any time since the beginnings of colonial conquest. The old first world suffers from aggravated social polarization, amplified by public-service cutbacks; what used to be the second world shows similar trends, but typically in more extreme form (in the Russian case, acute scarcity, a savage level of social breakdown, and a marked decline in life expectancy); and the long-misnamed third world, including its recently touted "tiger" economies, writhes under the impact of structural adjustment. While all this might seem at first only to reinforce the sting of defeat, it also sharpens the case for a revolutionary alternative.

But how does socialism now stand as a political force? The collapse of purported socialist regimes served to reinforce an already notable worldwide deterioration in the following of Left parties. Among advanced capitalist societies, 1968 ushered in a brief period which constituted the Left's recent high-water mark. Certainly, in terms of explicit manifestations of radical sentiment, those times have not been recently matched. This observation, combined with the regressive nature of subsequent official policies (especially in the United States), has led numerous observers to suggest that the radicalism of the 1960s had an impact which on balance hurt the Left's long-term growth.

Those who argue along these lines generally call attention to the more spontaneous, chaotic, and self-indulgent manifestations of 60s radicalism, and suggest that such behavior made it possible for conservative ideologues, particularly in the United States, to build up a pivotal constituency for repressive policies. There can be no doubt that this is a part of what happened. Nonetheless, to fixate on it as the major legacy of that period is to lift the whole conflict out of its historical setting, thereby obscuring both how the U.S. Left of the 60s came to acquire its particular traits and how its various offshoots found the resources to withstand - and eventually to counter - the ensuing reactionary policies.

Historical Grounding of the 60s Left

The negative/stereotypical view of the 60s Left tends to downplay a number of important considerations. First, it tends to either underestimate or misrepresent the global context within which the U.S. New Left arose. Second, it leaves out of account the role of the post-1945 U.S. Red Scare in setting the parameters for subsequent Left activity. Third, it largely excludes from its conception of the Left all but the relatively privileged, predominantly white, university-based sectors. Finally, by focusing on the Right's campaign rhetoric (which took aim at the movement's more "outrageous" expressions), it obscures the strategic dimension of the ruling class's turn away from New Deal liberalism.

1. Global setting. The worldwide scope of the 1968 upheavals is acknowledged on all sides. What is missing, however, from the Left's more pessimistic assessments of that juncture, is a recognition of how its different components fit together. The stereotypical view of the 60s Left focuses on student radicalism, with its characteristic volatility and impatience. The more longstanding liberation struggles of the time might be noted (in this view), but not with any suggestion that their character ought to feed into our composite portrait of the Left. Without this latter inclusion, however, the variously constituted revolutionary movements (e.g., Vietnam, southern Africa, Latin America) are reduced to the rank of mere "causes," defined by the way core-country radicals looked at them, rather than being seen as autonomous players with their own distinctive trajectories.

If we now refocus our attention on these movements, we can observe a number of things about them that should sharpen our understanding of the bigger picture. First, they represented far more people - both in absolute terms and relative to their own national populations - than did their university-based allies in the advanced countries. Second, their demands, in comparison to those of these same allies, had a stronger material dimension; in particular, they spoke directly to the needs of the poorest people. Third, these popular and essentially anti-imperialist movements, far from being sudden eruptions, emerged on the strength of longstanding organizational buildups, spanning decades if not generations, and embracing a full range of political practices, from guerrilla warfare (as in Cuba and Vietnam) to parliamentary struggles (as in Guyana and Chile). Finally, it is only through the existence of such third-world movements that the triumphalism of empire was punctured and First-World social movements were given space - in the form of both issues and constituencies - in which to grow.

The upshot of these considerations is clear: the stereotypic "60s radicals," far from being the defining force of their generation, were just one strand of a far bigger tapestry. If this suggests their limits, however, it also points to the basis of whatever impact they had. True, they were unable to "make the revolution"; but this does not mean that they weren't part of the revolutionary process. Their integration in it refers not just to the support they gave, but also to the understanding they gained - as to the nature of society, of political work, and of their own and others' needs. All this may seem rather modest, but its importance is not limited to the immediate time and place in which it occurred. The revolutionary process is a long one, and it would be presumptuous to insist that a particular moment of it - especially in its early stages - should yield a clear-cut and definitive result.

2. Impact of Red Scare. In the aftermath of the Second World War, U.S. society underwent one of the most intense and sustained periods of political repression ever imposed within a constitutional framework. This fact alone deserves much more attention in discussions of the 60s Left than it has ever so far received. It suggests both the reasons for the New Left's weakness and the directions in which it would have to go in order to find its strength.

The debilitating effects of the repression have been far-reaching. The crippling of an already small Communist party was only the most obvious and, compared with the situation that existed before the war, probably the least consequential. Far more important was the general assault on socialist and progressive ideas. Unlike in Europe and elsewhere, the concept of socialism became for most people simply a bad word; class, as a social science concept, was stripped of its dynamic significance; even the word "peace" became suspect. Beyond these direct effects of the repression, however, there was a particular significance to its being imposed within the established constitutional framework. On the one hand, this endowed it with legitimacy in the eyes of those who were not its victims; which helps account for the vast conformity it induced. On the other hand, in contrast to the situation of a dictatorship that has been overthrown, there is no dramatic moment of liberation. Specifically, congressional committees or individual representatives might come and go, but the FBI, the conformist commercial media, and their partners in the educational system are still there.

This was a chilling setting within which to contemplate any form of progressive activity. We should keep it in mind before too easily passing judgment on what "should have" been accomplished, even over a period of years, by those who had to confront it. In terms of the usual mechanisms for political work, they were starting largely from scratch. Later they might rediscover resources from the past, but at the outset, they had to contend not only with a lack of organization but also with an overwhelmingly hostile surrounding culture.

In a more immediate sense, however, the effect of the political context of the time, for those trying to walk new ground, was to put a premium on qualities that would set them apart from their ideological forebears. This could well lead to an exaggerated emphasis on "home-grown" traits, often fortified by expressions of deliberate non-conformity vis-a-vis the larger community. Later observers might label the revolt "generational" and accuse its protagonists of "amnesia"; but the generational aspect was not by choice, while the amnesia, to the extent that it was willed, served partly as an antidote to paranoia. Unfortunately it is also fostered, among many activists, a distrust of organizational rigor and a distaste even for certain minimal levels of political discipline. These traits, problematic in themselves, could eventually, under adverse conditions, turn into their opposites. Shapeless structures could fall prey to manipulation, while guilt-driven individuals, lacking a mature collective culture, could accept altogether unwarranted invasions into their personal lives.

In any case, it is not surprising that the New Left, lacking a solid tradition of its own, had to look partly outside its ranks in order to find sustenance. In so doing, it displayed, despite its shortcomings, a certain openness and generosity of spirit. This quality, seasoned with modesty in some quarters and with an irreverent sense of humor in others, was an authentic contribution to the Left's revival. But the ultimate driving force clearly came from the most oppressed sectors, not only in third world countries but also within the United States.

3. Mass constituencies. The harbinger of revival was the civil rights movement in the U.S. South. Its eventual expression, as massive nonviolent protest against racist laws, had a long prehistory, encompassing both personal defiance and political organizing (notably by communist activists). Out of this tradition of struggle emerged a culture of resistance which, at least for the issues closest to it, was free of the conformity that pervaded most of "white America." Large numbers of ordinary people, inured to struggle, targeted the most morally vulnerable joints of the system - the denials of legal equality and voting rights - and risked the first forays of what would become a serious challenge to the U.S. ruling class. As the movement grew, it drew in white supporters and activists from around the country - a development which consolidated certain gains but jeopardized others, eventually prompting the shift to an exclusionary membership policy on the part of black organizations. What does all this imply, however, for our overall characterization of the 60s Left?

In the first place, while it is true that both the civil rights movement and the subsequent Black Power movement included certain elements that embraced a capitalist framework (whether assimilationist or separatist), the overwhelming thrust of these movements, in class terms, was in a progressive direction. That is to say, while few of the constituents articulated their position in anticapitalist language, their collective organized presence constituted a threat to ruling-class hegemony. Even the modest demand to protect citizens registering to vote required an immense popular movement in order to gain official acquiescence. Further, the political logic of the struggle for equality pushed even so cautious a leader as Martin Luther King Jr. in increasingly radical directions (in terms of both his public statements and his political alliances), to the point at which he became a virtual "public enemy number one" for the FBI. From another direction, of course, it was precisely the experience of working closely with black civil rights activists that energized and inspired some of the most creative leaders of what would soon develop into the more diffuse, predominantly white-led Left and antiwar movements.

For all these reasons, it is quite misleading not to treat the progressive Black movements as integral to the 60s Left, which in any case was far from being a unified movement even apart from its racial divide. The very existence of such a divide within the movement, moreover, must itself be recognized not as an automatic given, but rather as having to be continuously reinforced by official repression. The postwar Red Scare gestapo had a particular animus for any expression of black/white unity (a longstanding nightmare for Southern elites). Black communists were the most dangerous of all, for they provided a bridge between the white Left and a popular constituency that could recognize its own discontent. The demise of the communists did not end the witch-hunt, however. Malcolm X appeared never more threatening than when he broke out of his Nation of Islam cocoon and, with his exceptional magnetism, began addressing wider audiences. His most direct successors, the Black Panthers, were marked for destruction from the outset. It is important that they be remembered, however, not only as advocates of armed self-defense, but also for their programmatic commitment to socialism and their vigorous critiques of black separatism (most notably by Fred Hampton, for whose murder the FBI's responsibility has been fully documented).

Once this whole tradition of the black Left has been acknowledged, it becomes impossible to avoid questioning the larger stereotype of the 60s Left as a movement of the privileged. Obviously individuals from comfortable backgrounds went into the movement, as they have from the time of Marx and Engels. There is also a long tradition of activists from such backgrounds having a proclivity for individual or small-group acts of violence, as with some of the nineteenth-century Russian populists. But the relative role of privileged individuals and, among them, the susceptibility to adventuristic or guilt-driven tactics, are themselves historically conditioned variables. In the particular U.S. setting of the 1960s, Left activism arose from a great variety of directions. To the extent that the "privileged" component exercised a disproportionate role, two factors appear to be at work. First, in the relatively loose sense in which the term privilege is used in this context, the number of young people who partook of it, growing up in the postwar United States, was inordinately large. One would have had to spread the net much wider than in any previous capitalist society to draw in people who lacked their advantages. Secondly, we again have to recall the postwar repression, which hit the labor movement and the public school system with particular force. Under these conditions, a private school or an elite university could well become paradoxically, and with all the inherent drawbacks - a refuge for progressive ideas.

It should not be surprising, then, that young people of privilege played an important role in the white Left, especially in its early stages. But the movements grew far broader over time, particularly as the U.S. occupation of Vietnam became more costly. By the early 70s, the movement's initial antiracist and antiwar constituencies were reinforced by demands for women's liberation, for the rights of other oppressed national or ethnic communities, for an end to all forms of discrimination (including by sexual orientation, age, and disability), and for sweeping curbs on environmental degradation. The breadth of these concerns, even with all their overlapping, signaled at least an implicit majority supportive of a dissident agenda.

4. Imperial overextension and state. violence. Just as student radicalism was only one component of a much broader movement, so also, from the other direction, the state's response to the 60s Left was just one element of a far more comprehensive imperial posture. As the earlier Red Scare had shown, the state's repressive impulse was longstanding, and operated with little reference to either the legality or the "propriety," of Left activities. In the late '40s, the objective was to establish a favorable climate for the then-unprecedented official commitment to worldwide U.S. intervention on behalf of capital. Publicly, Washington advertised its posture as one of support for "free peoples everywhere"; the privately voiced advice on which President Truman was acting, however, was to "scare hell out of the country."

In the decades that followed, the policy goal (defense of capital) remained constant, but the need for domestic repression fluctuated. Still, extreme measures never ceased to be a live option. They peaked around 1969 with the government's murderous assault on the Black Panthers, but this was only the culmination of a long-simmering brew of reactionary violence in which private operatives and state agencies - ranging from local police to the FBI - worked in tandem. Sometimes, as during the civil rights movement, the violent initiatives were "unofficial" and the state agencies simply looked on. Even when state agencies took a more active role, however (as in FBI efforts to stoke hostilities among Black Power organizers or in the CIA's perennial campaign against revolutionary Cuba), they continued to rely heavily on an extragovernmental - and extralegal support network. In terms of establishing a violent political climate, finally, we should not forget the more routine (ostensibly apolitical) practices of local police officers patrolling oppressed communities; these created the climate, and often the spark, for spontaneous yet desperate acts of popular protest.

But whatever the ebb and flow of domestic strife, it was the larger imperial setting that would guide any revision of U.S. strategic priorities. The period of the Red Scare had brought the first assault on the New Deal, with a strong focus on labor legislation. There followed a roughly decade-long truce during which popular demands were held in check, in return for the limited material benefits afforded by private-sector expansion and "business unionism." The civil rights movement and ensuing urban uprisings burst through these restraints to drive a new round of progressive social legislation, but not before Washington's growing overseas role - most notably in Vietnam - had begun to arouse pressures for austerity at home. These had already reached a significant level by 1968, quite independently of the progress of student radicalism. Denunciations of the latter would eventually feed the mix, but it was the economic squeeze that forced a choice between social legislation (which politicians saw as a merely conjunctural requirement) and military priorities (which they equated with long-term national interests).

So long as both these budget-categories could expand simultaneously, ruling-class parties could differ over which of them deserved more attention. Once an either/or was reached, however, grassroots demands - whether against the war or for social betterment - became more and more difficult to satisfy. The antiwar position became a particular embarrassment, for even as its immediate ramifications became irrefutable, its longer-term echoes undercut official pretensions to democracy and thus threatened the whole imperial structure with which the war effort was bound up. The response from above reached lethal proportions. What had begun with the selective and surreptitious murder of certain key individuals (especially in the black community) culminated, by 1970, in the massacres of white as well as black students by National Guard units. Washington's war strategy, meanwhile, shifted toward fewer U.S. troops and more U.S. bombing. The combined effect of these changes was to reduce the numbers who would engage in antiwar actions while at the same time increasing their level of desperation.

While violent state repression thus increased (on Nixon's Republican watch), top Democratic funders, unwilling to support their own party's incremental opening to the left (1972), joined a new ruling-class consensus based on the blunt assessment - expressed in Samuel P. Huntington's 1974 report to the Trilateral Commission - that democracy had been allowed to go too far. On the Republican side, the same years saw the formation of the right-wing think tanks that were to shape the Reagan agenda. For Left constituencies of those years, therefore, the distance between organized initiatives and policy impact seemed only to be growing. It was under such conditions of ruling-class non-responsiveness - carried a step beyond pre-1968 appearances - that the Left became splintered and partially marginalized, and that a small detachment of its activists took the turn toward guerrilla tactics.

Looking back on that period, it is important to understand the various Left responses both in proportion and in context. The context was one of extreme state violence, especially in Vietnam but also, albeit in a more focused way, at home. The domestic face of this violence was local as well as national, vigilante as well as official, covert as well as overt. The impact was as varied as the sectors against which the violence was directed. Among these, however, apart from the few who took up arms and the many who retreated from politics, there remained a large (and itself diverse) contingent which sought to implement its political mission through channels that the 60s movements had tapped only lightly if at all. Through such channels, extending into every corner of the working class, they would build on the positive legacies of that period.

Achievements and Long-Range Impact of the 60s Left

The principal accomplishments of the 60s Left were: 1) it led what historian Tom Wells has called "perhaps the most successful antiwar movement in history"; 2) it gave wide diffusion to an anti-imperialist understanding of U.S. foreign policy, offering among other things a growing support network to defectors from the Intelligence establishment; 3) it generated an extensive network of communities of resistance (some of them clandestine), including an "underground railroad" for military deserters as well as hundreds of grassroots alternative newspapers; 4) it significantly reduced the climate of fear which had previously marginalized progressive social criticism; 5) it multiplied the dissemination of revolutionary ideas within the U.S. prison population, eventually winning legal protection for prisoners against the screening of written materials; 6) it reestablished a visible Left presence in higher education and policy research, including radical caucuses and publications in virtually every discipline; 7) it launched a number of useful periodicals which continue to come out (e.g., In These Times, Dollars & Sense, Covert Action Quarterly) and injected new life into a number of older ones; 8) it drew conscientious people of every ethnicity into the struggle against racism; 9) it stimulated - directly or indirectly - the articulation of progressive demands on the part of each of the distinctively oppressed sectors of society as well as on behalf of the natural environment; 10) thanks especially to the women's movement, it absorbed and transmitted the awareness that what one does can never be judged apart from how one does it; and finally, 11) it provided a schooling in activism for a significant core of people who then carried their skills into virtually every walk of life, including notably the labor movement.

This is a remarkable set of achievements - the more so if we consider the prodigious power-resources of the regime against which they were primarily directed. For the first time, an assemblage of popular opposition movements in the United States had earned a measure of prestige among its counterparts in other countries. The U.S. Left of the 60s thus did more than just partake of a worldwide upheaval; it was a leading player. Just as the U.S. civil rights movement influenced the African National Congress, so the U.S. antiwar and student movements influenced student activists in Western Europe - not so much because of any effort at theoretical guidance as by virtue, simply, of articulating mass disaffection from the world's militarily most powerful and most aggressive state.

But what came of all this? Why didn't the Left go on to mount an even stronger challenge to official policies? There are several reasons why this was not immediately possible. First, given the existing balance of forces, it would have required the cooperation of a sector of the ruling class that was open to progressive reform. We have already noted, however, that top Democrats were moving in the opposite direction - a development that was further solidified in 1984 with the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council. Underlying this consideration was the evolution of the U.S. global role, which required the ruling class - because of imperial over-extension - to bury its strategic disagreements and unite behind a policy of domestic austerity.

Further difficulties had to do with the evolution of the Left itself. The 60s Left emerged, as we have seen, in the wake of the massive internal repression' that accompanied Washington's unprecedented claim to function as arbiter to popular struggles throughout the world. The resulting movement had a correspondingly distinct character: on the one hand, improvised; on the other, saddled with an immediate programmatic goal of daunting scale: stopping a major imperialist war. Even today, the scope of that task has not been sufficiently acknowledged. In the frenzy of an organizing process that far outpaced the necessary discussions among coalition-partners, new constituencies burst onto the scene and demanded the opportunity to press their needs - and expound their positions - without being constrained to submerge them in the interests of some larger mission. The notion that a broader struggle (challenging class power) might enhance rather than impede their particular agendas was, in part, another casualty of the Red Scare.

Politically, capital was all-powerful, subject only to eventual protest against its own unchecked policies. These went into high gear after 1980 (under Reagan, but with ample help from leading Democrats). They have provoked a full spectrum of grassroots reactions. Most important for the Left, however, was their impact on the organized working class. During the Vietnam war, much was made of the labor movement's support of official policy. This did not reflect the actual attitudes of most workers (as Andrew Levison showed in his 1974 book The Working-Class Majority), but it has nonetheless been held up - then and since - as a further reflection of the alleged political ineptitude of the 60s Left. In fact, it had much deeper roots, for the official anointment of "business unionism," as legislated in the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, had of course been an integral component of imperial institution-building. The labor bureaucrats who emerged from this process were so wedded to capitalism in general, and to the State Department/CIA complex in matters of foreign policy, that no amount of popular pressure could conceivably have budged them.

The gradual undermining of this carefully groomed labor leadership has been a major development of the past two decades, and one in which the legacy of the 60s Left has played a central role. The half-million-strong Solidarity Day demonstration of 1981 - called by the AFL-CIO to protest the first round of the "Reagan Revolution" - may have been treated by the labor leadership as a momentary indulgence of the ranks, but it was nonetheless the first such massive expression of working-class opposition since before the onset of the postwar Red Scare. Despite its size, which rivaled that of the biggest antiwar demonstrations, no one expected Reagan to listen to its message; but the participants could take heart for the immense task that lay in front of them.

Notable among the signs displayed in that march were those denouncing U.S. intervention in Central America. In a manner that would have been hard to anticipate, this issue turned out to be a touchstone for U.S. labor's political reawakening. On the one hand, this had to do with the increasing shift abroad of U.S. manufacturing operations and with the rise of Central American sweatshops. But on the other hand, it drew on the strength of a popular anti-imperialist response which had been honed in the struggles over Vietnam and which was sufficiently strong, by the time Nicaragua and El Salvador drew U.S. attention, to mold an opposition that could substantially limit the government's options. By the mid-1980s this opposition had filtered into enough of the labor leadership to provoke a serious split over an AFL-GIO policy statement. The AFL-CIO's most powerful foreign policy arms, the various government-funded and -directed institutes for overseas "labor development," would remain in place until the collapse of the Meany/Kirkland dynasty, but would then be finally dismantled. The AFL-CIO's new American Center for International Labor Solidarity, which replaced these institutes in 1996, has charted the first steps toward an autonomous "labor" foreign policy.

The process leading up to this change illustrates the complex way in which the role of the 60s movements has played itself out. Had the New Left simply accommodated itself, during the 60s, to the then-prevalent outlook of the AFL-CIO, its long-run impact would have been negligible. On the other hand, by acting, however "naively," on its convictions, it helped to change the political climate and thereby, over time, to sap the labor bureaucracy from within. There are numerous examples of this kind of link between 60s activism and positive present-day developments. If they are not more widely noted, it is partly because observers often allow the surface expressions of "the sixties" to obscure the substantive political experience that was being acquired.

In terms of the revitalization of the U.S. working class, the 60s movements have affected the process not just externally (by defining issues) but also internally, by providing personnel. A significant minority, of 60s activists became trade unionists, and some of these - as well as others with professional backgrounds - went on to become union staffers. Some of them now hold high positions in international unions or in the AFL-CIO itself. Still others have been able to exert a progressive influence through their roles in higher education, particularly in labor studies programs. Within some unions, a critical mass of former student-activists have organized directly to challenge bureaucratic or crime-ridden leaderships. The most successful example of such efforts has been the work of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. Thanks to TDU, and despite the tenacity of corrupt fund-raising practices, the Teamsters now have an unprecedentedly responsive leadership, with progressives in high-level elected and staff positions. The year-long educational campaign sparked by these leaders was indispensable to the union's historic victory in the 1997 UPS strike.

The classic downside to such advances, of course, is the risk that the new officials may end up caring more about the positions they now occupy than about the larger political visions that originally motivated them. This cooptation scenario will continue to exert its attractions until the AFL-CIO's shake-up goes much deeper than it has so far. The answer to the associated risk, however, is not to shun the new positions but rather to build stronger ties to the rank and file.

Similar opportunities and dilemmas have arisen in the sphere of electoral politics. To the extent that top Democrats backed the regressive turn of the 1980s, new space was opened on their left. Constituencies previously neglected by mainstream candidates were now offered serious arguments even by politicians (like Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988) who had no intention of giving up their party affiliation. It became once again possible for progressives to imagine winning office as Independents, as in the case of Bernie Sanders, a student activist of the 60s who, after serving four terms as mayor of Burlington, was elected to four more terms (1991-) as Vermont's sole representative in the U.S. House. The possibility of further advances along such lines is being actively pursued by several party projects and coalition-building efforts, which have partly complementary missions and partially overlapping memberships. These include the Labor Party, the New Party, and the Green Party, as well as various umbrella organizations and statewide groupings. This is not the place to describe such efforts in any detail, but a few points about them deserve to be made. First, the larger political context has created an enormous constituency that is explicitly ready for an option other than the two capitalist parties (the Labor Party's preparatory organizing included surveys on this point, in union locals throughout the country). Second, the new formations differ from earlier Left parties not only in their fluidity but also in their orientation toward building "from the ground up" (as opposed to emphasizing token presidential candidacies). Third, having set modest short-run goals, the parties can show meaningful and promising gains, whether in membership-organization (the Labor Party), in winning seats in local non-partisan elections (the New Party), or in picking up significant percentages in statewide and congressional elections (the Green Party in New Mexico).

A further dimension of heightened activity is in certain kinds of grassroots organizing, involving demands that press quite directly against corporate priorities. Community movements against plant-closings or against toxic waste dumps - the latter often reflecting environmental racism - have served in many regions to raise the level of popular awareness. The work of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles offers a particularly striking example of such organizing. By taking a resolutely anticapitalist stance, it has broken new ground in present day Left activism. It has been able to involve a multiracial membership in a full range of local, national, and international issues, without abandoning its focus on immediately winnable goals. The Strategy Center's achievements are important to our discussion, because they reflect a thorough blend of a) Marxist analysis, b) lessons from the 60s on "process," and c) due concern for the more recent sharpening of ethnic identification. The Center's ability to combine these approaches reflects the career and the thinking of its director, Eric Mann, whose work in the 60s and early 70s spanned community, antiracist, antiwar, student, and prisoner-support organizing, and who subsequently brought this accumulated experience into the industrial workplace.

All these developments - the reawakening of the labor movement, the expansion of electoral alternatives, and the deepening of community-based struggles - carry the seeds of a popular mobilization that could grow to challenge capitalist priorities. Whether - or how soon - this happens will also depend on the movement's ability to break the increasingly severe corporate stranglehold over public information, news analysis, and the diffusion of popular culture. In this sphere too, however, important initiatives growing out of 60s activism are in place. The most direct challenges are offered by media or news-analysis projects, such as FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, the publisher of Extra!), the Institute for Alternative Journalism, the National Radio Project, and the investigative newsletter CounterPunch. Imaginative TV productions by Michael Moore stretched the limits just a bit further, showing that the normal exclusion of radical content could not be rationalized on grounds of any intrinsic unpopularity. Newer journals of opinion launched by 60s activists (Z Magazine, Tikkun) or by younger writers (The Baffler) also help expand the underpinnings that the developing movement will require. Interwoven with these processes is the diffusion of critical analysis of what has been left out of the history textbooks. Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, which has sold over half a million copies since its original publication in 1980, has played a special role in this regard, having galvanized a largely successful campaign to remove Christopher Columbus from his official pedestal, thereby providing the opening move in a sorely needed shift of national values.

Looking Forward

The U.S. Left is not publicly visible in the 90s in the same way that it was in the 60s. This could be read as meaning that the Left had an opening in the 60s but blew it. I believe that the historical evidence shows otherwise. The opportunities of the 60s were severely constricted. A strong public presence of the Left was called forth prematurely, by an extraordinary challenge. It proved impossible to simultaneously respond to this challenge and build for the future. Since the end of that immediate crisis, capital has strengthened its grip over social policy to what might have seemed an unimaginable extent. In response to all this, however, the hurriedly constituted Left of the 1960s has slowly sunk its root into U.S. society. While its individual members have gone in different directions, with varying impacts, many of its activists have been at the core of a whole series of progressive projects which, in their totality, have established a basis for popular movement-building that was lacking when these same activists first came on the scene.

There is always a need to understand and criticize past errors. But unless we also learn to recognize and build upon our successes, no one will find inspiration in our message.

Victor Wallis teaches in the General Education department at the Berklee College of Music. His activism dates from the early 1960s. This is a revised and shortened version of an essay originally published in Socialism and Democracy no. 22 (Fall 1997). The earlier version includes extensive references which have been omitted here.

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