Features » August 1, 2008

In Defense of the ‘60s (cont’d)

On May 6, 1968, students battled police in the Rue Saint-Jacques in Paris.

For the first time in history, the possibility of achieving the goals of the 18th century revolution existed, and the protesters of '68 were the first to raise it in the arena of political and social action

In May 1968, a columnist for Le Nouvel Observateur wrote of Paris:

It was the strike, not the student revolt, that truly paralyzed the country for three long weeks. The paradox is that these two movements never encountered each other. The students marching toward the factories to “meet the workers” found the doors closed. The unions didn’t want them: the workers found the students disorganized and irresponsible.

The New Left tried to put all claims together and in context, but in the end failed. The system was too strong, was able to deliver the goods to meet ever-increasing, artificially created needs and consumerist desires, and provided enough satisfaction to thwart the emergence of even deeper demands. The reforms that were achieved were limited not by the weakness of the students and the protesters of the ’60s, but by the strength of the system that they critically engaged.

By 1968, the advances that a technologically oriented industrial society had opened up were, in a technical sense, revolutionary. They created a possibility of a world without want, a world in which necessary uncreative labor was reduced to a bare minimum, in which restraints on liberty and blocks to fraternity were no longer required for growth, in which there was no need to repress love that might interfere with economically more desirable motivations — a world in which, in a manner of speaking, utopias were no longer utopian but were technically feasible.

Realizing this, as many of the protests of ‘68 did, put the possibility of meeting new claims — such as for the achievement of happiness — on the historical agenda, and on the global stage.

For the first time in history, the possibility of achieving the full goals of the 18th century revolution existed, and the students and protesters of ‘68 were the first to raise it in the arena of political and social action.

However, the formulation of these new demands ignored one simple thing: the system — which had delivered the goods to many of the students and their supporters, enabling them to formulate these newly realizable aspirations — had not delivered the goods in like manner to everyone.

Many workers, the unemployed and poorly paid, members of ethnic or racial minorities, and many women were excluded from the benefits of the new abundance, as were huge numbers in the Third World. Their struggles were for the minimal level of equality that would let them participate in the acquisition of the goods being delivered to others. Žižek, writing in In These Times, calls them the Excluded, differentiating them from the Included, such as the students and many of those on the New Left.

As a consequence, a conflict appeared between the demands of the ‘68 protesters and the large number of those whose demands could be seen as a prerequisite for pursuing the claims of the new sensibility. In other words, a disconnect occurred between the needs of the Included and the needs of the Excluded.

That disconnect was little addressed in theory, and it perhaps prevented the ferment of the ’60s from achieving either side’s goals.

But there were glimmers of a realization of the problem: in the calls of the civil rights movement not only for full participation in the existing system but also for reform of that system as in the calls of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the end of his life:

We have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society. We are still called upon to give aid to the beggar who finds himself in misery and agony on life’s highway. But one day, we must ask the question of whether an edifice which produces beggars must not be restructured and refurbished. That is where we are now. (Speech to the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Frogmore, May 1967.)

When Žižek stresses the importance of “the destructured masses” and attention to “the Excluded,” but criticizes the French suburban riots of 2005 as “an outburst with no pretense to vision,” he is right. But the lesson that needs to be drawn is to forge the link between the resistant members of the Included — the students and intellectuals of ‘68 and their successors today — and the Excluded — the exploited workers of the majority of the world, including the French suburban rioters in 2005 and of African Americans and Latinos of the United States. But the unification of the two is not easy in practice.

We have seen a perverse reflection of the failure to unite the sources of protest in the current election campaign. In caricature, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) primary campaign drew on the demand for sorority, and Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) on that for racial equality. Both campaigns dealt, with various levels of directness, with the exploitation of workers.

But Obama also draws on another sensibility — that greed is dehumanizing, that broader changes in human relations and conduct are needed, that there is something missing in everyday life that goes beyond a mere paycheck and a middle-class standard of living. Perhaps calling it a real chance at the pursuit of happiness is too rhetorical, but that is what it harkens back to.

Clinton tried to convince voters that this was elitist, of interest only to the Included, and she tried to convince those who endure exploitation — whose daily lives are insecure, whose needs and anxieties are day-to-day, who may in fact really be bitter, the Excluded — that Obama and his greater vision come at the expense of neglecting their immediate crises.

Former White House adviser Karl Rove saw the difference in similar, if cruder, terms. He wrote in the May 16 Wall Street Journal: “The primary has created a deep fissure in Democratic ranks: blue collar, less affluent, less educated voters versus the white-wine crowd of academics and upscale professionals (along with blacks and young people).”

In diluted form, this is precisely the problem that 1968 raised for the first time in efforts for major social change in the United States: on the one hand, the connection between the immediate needs of those still struggling for the basics, and, on the other hand, the hopes for a fuller, richer life that others, largely better positioned, want to pursue.

The two together constitute a call to implement the “inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” that the Declaration of Independence claimed more than 200 years ago, that the idealistic protesters of 1968 were after, and that Obama must succeed in unifying if he is to advance the change he is talking about.

It is a set of goals still well worth fighting for. And we should honor the activists of 1968 for their contributions to it, not dismissively denigrate them.

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• Reader Comments

  The attempt to provoke revolutionary change is often framed as a failure as the “cracks in the edifice” are often quite small. Marcuse reminds us not to be so cynical in our analysis of 1968, to understand where the potential for a larger movement was arrested, and hints at how we might move forward. I’m not sure about Marcuse’s choice in the end to focus on Obama as an agent of change, though of course I would welcome it.

  Posted by bfrancisp on Aug 2, 2008 at 4:01 PM

  Many who followed the 1968 generation (I graduated college in 1980) see them in fact as indulged children ‘finding themselves’ through revolutionary posturing.  Consider Mr. Marcuse’s statement

  “Internationally, the ‘68 protests changed the character of post-war politics, helped end the Vietnam War, and legitimized concerns about peace, welfare and democracy beyond the prevailing mainstream consensus”

  It’s easier to postulate than actually argue.  The 1968 protesters ushered in Pres. Nixon and six more years of war.  The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia showed that it had no impact on generating peace or democracy.  The nature of post-war politics was, in fact, unchanged.  The French chose de Gaulle.  The East Bloc kept Sovietism.  The Mexican government was unchanged.  The Cold War continued.

  Posted by sobieski on Aug 3, 2008 at 4:07 PM

  I’m so depressed. Not only does this article by Peter Marcuse (son of…) conclusively disprove that evolution in the human species is inevitably progressive, but Marcuse and son equally conclusively are physical refutations of the theory of intelligent design. Back to the drawing board….

  Posted by gavin on Aug 3, 2008 at 6:12 PM

  Puhleeeaase!!!  A son of the 60’s attempts to defend the “Failure of his Fathers”.  Consider a few of these contribtions of the “boomers” and their life of “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll”:  Drug use and abuse to the point of death; sexual promiscuity leading to rampant STD’s and AIDS, and aborted (killed) babies; destruction of family and denegration of “family values” - see rampant divorce rates, destruction of a once world leading educational system, selling off the long fought gains of American corporations and their workers - such as strong retirement and medical benefits, and decent job security; exporting of American jobs while importing illegal aliens, destruction of our banking and financial system, bankrupting of the American government due to excess spending, bankrupt America due to excess spending, greedy lawyers destroying the true “rule of law” and prudence/respect…NEED I GO ON????  Thank you Mr. Marcuse for setting America straight!  What a joke…as if the boomers were not destructive enough, NOW, we get their narcissistic, slacker kids…

  Posted by JoeK on Aug 4, 2008 at 1:42 AM

  First, the most egalitarian advances of our time were in the 90s rather than the 60s. This was through the invention of the Internet and print-on-demand publishing. Suddenly, little people have a voice. We’re hearing the opinions of lots more people these days.

  Second, not only did the left try to change society during the 60s. It changed itself. Prior to the 60s, its main goal was helping labor. Now, labor is way down the list. It comes in seventh place after (1) race, (2) gender, (3) sexual orientation, (4) the environment, (5) the Third World, and (6) the disabled.

  These days I snicker when leftists try to get a class war going. How can you legitimately claim to stick up for the poor when you want gas to be $9/gallon? Giving labor such a low priority is the reason why we’ve had a string of Republican presidents. It’s because the white working class no longer trusts the left.

  Posted by JFP1 on Aug 4, 2008 at 1:24 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 6 posts.

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