Michael Pollak wrote:
>
>
> I thought the change in the climate of ideas was produced by the anti-war
> movement, and the questions it managed to raise and to get people to ask
> and demand answers to. You don't think so?
I don't know. Even though I was a part of it from early 1965 on I never have been at all certain of what made it grow -- of what made people listen to us (or what made "us" begin to speak in the first placee).
The precipitant for me actually to flip over to marxism, strangely enough, was neither the civil rights movement nore the anti-war movement, though they obviously formed the context for _anything_ that happened in that decade: including an eruption in the ISU English Dept. against an incompetent drip of a Dept. Head, and the quite exhilarating solidarity that developed among a very varied group of people in the department. Then a royal fuckup by the University (they gave the head a lame-duck year before replacing him), and an immense wreck within the department that followed. But that's a long and (here) irrelevant story, except that probably similar trivial episodes like it were happening all over, and all fed into (and in some way were nourished by) the two controlling movements.
But I still don't understand exactly what happened in that decade from 1965 to 1975 -- except for the truth of a point Max has made over on Pen-L: we have to be ready.
Carrol
>
> The anti-war movement may or may not have stopped the Vietnam war. But I
> think it certainly should get credit for changing the climate of ideas
> that made Vietnam into a syndrome.
>
> Michael