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jgn's review
4.0
One of the most interesting questions during the BLM period is whether 2020 is somehow like 1968.
To help get some context for that, I decided to re-read a history of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and "the Movement," encompassing the various commitments and protests of the 60s era. I wanted to re-read [b:The Sixties: Years Of Hope, Days Of Rage|10202820|The Sixties Years Of Hope, Days Of Rage|Todd Gitlin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435970075l/10202820._SX50_.jpg|337092], but I couldn't find my copy in the house, so I settled for this one, James Miller's Democracy is in the Streets (the reissue from 1994 with a new preface). The book originally came out in 1987. I read it back in the early 90s, when I was trying to understand the intellectual history that undergirded the assumptions of the critical theory I was reading then. At the time, the book blew me away. Now re-reading it, you see its flaws: While the book acknowledges the influence of SNCC on SDS, there's just not enough about the Black democratic/self-governance efforts. Feminism is scantly addressed, amounting to just a citation of [b:Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement & the New Left|352008|Personal Politics The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement & the New Left|Sara M. Evans|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403183005l/352008._SY75_.jpg|342237], and some now somewhat embarrassing quotations (p. 186: cringe-worthy). In his 1994 preface Miller notes these gaps.
Anyway, the obvious fact is that the problems of 1968 and 2020 are pretty much the same: Black unemployment, the threat of automation (noted several times in the book), the police, and systemic racism (not called that here). The problems were conceptualized differently, though: In 1968 people didn't talk about systemic or structural racism. In fact, very broadly SDS took a Marxian class-oriented approach, so besides their activism in poor black neighborhoods in Newark and elsewhere, they worked with poor whites who had left Appalachia for northern cities.
Meanwhile, you feel like the backdrop of the Vietnam war has some symmetry with COVID-19: In that era, the nightly news showed the number of deaths in Vietnam each night and now we see the toll from COVID-19 via Twitter.
One contrast I would draw would be that this time the problems are perceived as domestic (even though COVID-19 and systemic racism are both world-wide pandemics); while in 1968, the increase in hostilities with Vietnam tended to disrupt SDS's work in the cities: Students' energies recentered to the anti-war effort. So, arguably, this time we might not lose steam fixing the system because there isn't (or isn't yet) the distraction of a full-on war.
The most alarming thing re-reading this book is the vanguardism of the students. There is talk in the book of the students listening to communities, but, really, the student movement situated themselves as the people who exercised their intellectual powers to tell the non-university-educated what to do. Maybe I'm exaggerating that, but in hindsight the overweening self-regard is amazing.
One section that really stood out was Chapter 11, "A Leader in Search of Legitimacy," with page after page describing the conflicts between top-down organization and the countervailing bottom-up "participatory democracy" (which is also called "self-government" a couple of times). I think our movements today could learn a lot here. Back in the 60s, it seems that it was really difficult to get stuff done with communes and consensus: At that time, a big national movement needed big national organization: It will be interesting to see how/if BLM addresses this.
The book also touches on the role of celebrity in the Movement, and here the book is acute. On p. 271 and following, Miller traces out Tom Hayden's story as he becomes more and more famous, which undermines many of Hayden's relationships within SDS. The Movement valued authenticity so much, but by the end of the book, no one, except for the people who stuck to their local community work, could be said to have retained their authenticity.
Let's see, what else? So the moral center of the book is the protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. But the story extends from 1962 to 1971 or so. What this means for the present moment is that future historians will help us out by looking back to 2014 (if not earlier) and show how BLM, as a movement, was really full-developed years ago even though the white media wasn't registering it very well. The other disturbing thing is that the Movement and SDS petered out in the early 70s. This time let's hope that doesn't happen.
To help get some context for that, I decided to re-read a history of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and "the Movement," encompassing the various commitments and protests of the 60s era. I wanted to re-read [b:The Sixties: Years Of Hope, Days Of Rage|10202820|The Sixties Years Of Hope, Days Of Rage|Todd Gitlin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435970075l/10202820._SX50_.jpg|337092], but I couldn't find my copy in the house, so I settled for this one, James Miller's Democracy is in the Streets (the reissue from 1994 with a new preface). The book originally came out in 1987. I read it back in the early 90s, when I was trying to understand the intellectual history that undergirded the assumptions of the critical theory I was reading then. At the time, the book blew me away. Now re-reading it, you see its flaws: While the book acknowledges the influence of SNCC on SDS, there's just not enough about the Black democratic/self-governance efforts. Feminism is scantly addressed, amounting to just a citation of [b:Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement & the New Left|352008|Personal Politics The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement & the New Left|Sara M. Evans|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403183005l/352008._SY75_.jpg|342237], and some now somewhat embarrassing quotations (p. 186: cringe-worthy). In his 1994 preface Miller notes these gaps.
Anyway, the obvious fact is that the problems of 1968 and 2020 are pretty much the same: Black unemployment, the threat of automation (noted several times in the book), the police, and systemic racism (not called that here). The problems were conceptualized differently, though: In 1968 people didn't talk about systemic or structural racism. In fact, very broadly SDS took a Marxian class-oriented approach, so besides their activism in poor black neighborhoods in Newark and elsewhere, they worked with poor whites who had left Appalachia for northern cities.
Meanwhile, you feel like the backdrop of the Vietnam war has some symmetry with COVID-19: In that era, the nightly news showed the number of deaths in Vietnam each night and now we see the toll from COVID-19 via Twitter.
One contrast I would draw would be that this time the problems are perceived as domestic (even though COVID-19 and systemic racism are both world-wide pandemics); while in 1968, the increase in hostilities with Vietnam tended to disrupt SDS's work in the cities: Students' energies recentered to the anti-war effort. So, arguably, this time we might not lose steam fixing the system because there isn't (or isn't yet) the distraction of a full-on war.
The most alarming thing re-reading this book is the vanguardism of the students. There is talk in the book of the students listening to communities, but, really, the student movement situated themselves as the people who exercised their intellectual powers to tell the non-university-educated what to do. Maybe I'm exaggerating that, but in hindsight the overweening self-regard is amazing.
One section that really stood out was Chapter 11, "A Leader in Search of Legitimacy," with page after page describing the conflicts between top-down organization and the countervailing bottom-up "participatory democracy" (which is also called "self-government" a couple of times). I think our movements today could learn a lot here. Back in the 60s, it seems that it was really difficult to get stuff done with communes and consensus: At that time, a big national movement needed big national organization: It will be interesting to see how/if BLM addresses this.
The book also touches on the role of celebrity in the Movement, and here the book is acute. On p. 271 and following, Miller traces out Tom Hayden's story as he becomes more and more famous, which undermines many of Hayden's relationships within SDS. The Movement valued authenticity so much, but by the end of the book, no one, except for the people who stuck to their local community work, could be said to have retained their authenticity.
Let's see, what else? So the moral center of the book is the protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. But the story extends from 1962 to 1971 or so. What this means for the present moment is that future historians will help us out by looking back to 2014 (if not earlier) and show how BLM, as a movement, was really full-developed years ago even though the white media wasn't registering it very well. The other disturbing thing is that the Movement and SDS petered out in the early 70s. This time let's hope that doesn't happen.
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