Louis argued:
>Instead of dealing with objective
>conditions, [the antiwar movement] projected possibilities onto American
society >that did not exist. This meant that all the Maoists and Trotskyists
began colonizing
>basic industry in expectation that a prerevolutionary situation was
>unfolding.
>The 1930s was a working-class mobilization. Nothing like this happened in
>the 1960s. The misfortune of the US left was in not recognizing this
>reality and making the best of it. Instead it went chasing after chimera.
and Stephen LaBash argued:
>The debate over why a more systemic analysis didn't succeed is
>still going on, but you certainly didn't see the working class rising up
>in opposition. We too were caught in the contradictions of American
>society.
Since the working class was not in revolt, there was nothing the Left could do to mobilize them- that seems to be the excuse for the broad failure of the New Left.
I don't buy it and I return to the point I made on Gramsci and civil society. He specifically condemned the obsession of the Left with "crisis" and timing, what he called the "war of maneuver" where we must wait for the right time for a full-out assault. Instead, he promoted what he called the ongoing, never-ending "war of position" where, in political terms, we are always enmeshed in civil society and the contradictions that promotes among the working class.
In modern society, there will almost never be such a full-out crisis when the working class is in spontaneous revolt (Gramsci had total scorn for those waiting to exploit spontaneous eruptions) since the whole nature of civil society is to pin people down in multiple associations that prevent such spontaneous breakdown. As Gramsci argues, "It always happens that individuals belong to more than one private association, and often to associations which are objectively in contradiction to one another."
The only way to overcome this is to build a broad left party that is so multifaceted that "the members of a particular party find in that party all the satisfactions that they formerly found in a multiplicity of organizations." It is only when that is accomplished that, step-by-step, political power can be wrested from the ruling class in a hegemonic struggle. Waiting for spontaneous revolt is a waste.
So what does this mean for the anti-war movement and the New Left?
By its single-issue nature, the antiwar movement guaranteed that people would not find satisfaction for their multiple identities, so it was in many ways the direct cause of the political splintering that followed. In its focus on a full-out assault on one political front, the Vietnam War, it sacrificed building a broader organization on the Left that could have been a counter-hegemonic weight to the state. The narrowness of the antiwar movement led to the multiplicity of organizations on the progressive side, each meeting one facet of different peoples' multiple identities. And, by their nature, such fragmented organizations reinforce the contradictory forces on each individual - which is exactly what the state needs. Given fragmented single-issue organizations, the state is able to make concessions, even cooptations as needed to divide the population and hold power.
As to the idea that the 1930s was a "working class mobilization", which came first, the organization or the mobilization? The early 30s had sporadic, even impressive individual political fights, but it's hard to chalk it up as so impressive. Between 1929 and 1934 - five long years of misery and poverty - there was surprisingly little mobilization and I would happily compare strikes and working class fights from 1968-1973 against that early Depression period. What began to change after 1934 was the mode of organizing by the Left; partly this was due to the Communist Party moving away from sectarianism towards a broader Popular Front, partly to other forces teaming up in the effort to take on the government in venues ranging from the workplace to culture in a comprehensive way.
This contrasts sharply with the "do your own thing" attitude of the New Left that made a virtue of division between different political movements. Single-issue organizations with narrow political focus was the main fruit of the New Left, and the results have been shabby. And the antiwar movement was the prototype for that failed strategy we still are largely burdened with today.
--Nathan Newman