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)
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
100000
90000
80000
70000
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
0
Members
60 62 64 67 68
Collapse
Summer 1969
SDS breaks apart at its annual convention
Progressive Labor/ PL-SDS
Weathermen/Weather Underground
Rapid drift into irrelevance
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 Control—or even communication with
individual campuses
Difficulty in planning mass actions and setting
priorities
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)
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
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
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
On the plus side… Breines…
Vs. Classical Theorists
Vs. Good 60s/Bad 60s
Protest w/o SDS
Cultural “revolution”
New Movements
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 lifeform, 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
“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