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Unity is around issues and responses to them, not aboutformal organizational affiliation.
At the present time no issue ignites enough strong response to generate the kind of public action which itself acts as an attraction to greater activity. In the '60s those issues were Black Liberation and the war. Black liberation was strong enough and active enough to enforce a rough unity around it on any group, from small local discussion groups to national parties or coalitions) that by the mid '60s _any_ public action (on whatever issue) or any visible behavior was in fact taken as part of that movement. Unity was real, not merely nominal or formal agreement on 'ideas.' The anti-war movement profited by this visibility given to all activity by the force of the Black Liberation Movement. (More on this below.) And that activity brought results. When a racist windbag from Illinois, Senator Dirksen, said civil rights was an idea whose time had come what he _meant_ is, things are getting too disorderly. Unless we quiet them down it just won't be possible to do business as usual. But as is often the case in periods of left upsurge, this granting of demands was too little, too late, and the movement and other disturbances only increased in size and militancy, with many offshoots (such as welfare rights, curriculum change, etc) developing. (Above all, the Black Panthersd, but I'll deal with that in another post.) The unity needed was there, with popular force behind it.
Several further questions emerge from the preceding paragraph. The first concerns the nature of the "ruling class" and the way it responds to pressure. Most discussions of the Ruling Class focus on the very top of that class, the one-half of one percent or so that control so much of the nation's wealth. But throughout the history of class society the _full_ ruling class runs at about 5% of the population. Rule, after all, is primarily about keeping the population under control and the surplus flowing, not just the 'big' decisions of foretign policy or controlling the financial system. Hence the importance of local elements (pretty small potatoes), whose adherence to the fundamental structure and whose role in maintaining it must be nurtured. Why is it important to kill Mumua. An op-ed in the WSJ back in the '80s explained: the morale of the Philadeplphia Police Force, and of course of the local powers in Philadelphia that control that police force. And while the whole ruling class can be pretty timid at times, those local levels are especially so, and quite apt to be freaked out by any disorder. And their feelings will be made known to central powers. In Bloomington in 1966 or so we succeeded in observing the letter of the War on Poverty legislation, electing poor people to run the local organization. As a result the City Council refused to give their approval and the funds from Washington did not flow. The Poverty organization had been first begun by a group of "prominent citizens," not I presume pleased by having it taken out of their hands. And things like this were happening all over the U.S. Local distorder even in little burgs such as Bloomington/Normal Illinois. In 1965 or 66 we had also attempted to put a Black Santa in the annual Christmas Parage, with the result that they had the whole fucking police department out to block Black Santa & a 10-year old little blond girl from entering the parade! That was the last Christmas parade ever held in Bloomington. That sort of thing filtered up to Congressman & Senators and various lobbying groups. And that put serious pressure on the national elites, who had enough on their hands anyhow with those fucking Vietnamese peasants and two strong nominally socialist states competing for hegemonoy in the 'third world.' And so forth. And so the whole structure which had 'ruled' in the U.S. since the end of Reconstrction began to crumble. If they numbered 'regimes' the way they do in France we would now be living in the Third Repbulic.
And if you have the proper criteria for measuring unity, there was as much unity in the '60s as in any left movement in history, and more unity than in most. And all not only witout a single hegemoinc party but I would argue BECAUSE there was no such party. The force of that unity was such that it was able to transform quite non-political, even anti-political, events into part of the overall Movement of Movements that had developed. Those local ruling elites, for example, couldn't really tell the difference between a small group putting a Black Santa in the parade on the one hand and kids in the local high school growing long hair and smokign pot! Those kids had not a single notion of being part of an anti-war movement, but the trouble they caused the local elites (or at least seemd to from the perspective of the those elites) were just as much a part of the total political movement of the '60s as were the great demonstrations in Washington. And in fact that is one of the signs of a period of left upsurgence: _everything_ (however intended) becomes political!
Now though no one knew it at the time, and the size and number of demos even increased for a few years, by the end of 1969 the Movement, the moment of upsurge, had reached its end point, accomplished all that the particular world and national conditons made possible at that time. And yet 40 years latere there are still people and groups on the left that speak of the "defeat" of the left of the '60s. That is sheer stupid voluntarism. The 60s were a victory, period. When a decent history of the period gets written it must do two things: 1) Explain that Victory 2) Explain the way in which conditons beyond anyone's control limited the extent and depth of that victory. And such a history will make hash of those idiotic political analyses that implicitly or explicitly assume that "correct" strategy would have achieved more.
Obviously much more to say (and say more coherently) about the '60s, but for now I want to make a point about the present. Everyone agrees that at present "the left" is weak. (Whether or not it is united is irrelevant; the forces in motion are too small for unity to become a question.) But for too many recognition of that weak ess leads to the voluntarist premise that it must be somoene's fault; that if only 'we' were doing things right we wouldn't be weak. But that simply isn't the way history operates. (Marx in 18th-Brumaiere is good on this.) To begin with, such "weakness" has simply been NORMAL for 200 years. The periods of upsurge such as The '60s or the '30s are the exception. They have to be excplained, but the periods of weakness require no explanation. Such periodds as the present represent the normal state of political relations under capitalism. History after all is ruled by Contingency. The asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs & made our species possible can stand as a symbol of the great changes in human history as well. We are in a quite normal interval that we cannot in any major way affect. And that is the context in which we need, over and over again, ask WITBD. What do leftists do when their actions are not going to seriously change the world?
Engough for now.
Carrol
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