On 2010-11-03, at 10:05 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> One of the sillier and misleading comments on the '60s movement is that it
> did not involve or did not "reach" "the working class." This exibits, to
> begin with, a profound misunderstanding of the mdern working class, a
> misconception which, unfortunately, too many members of the '60s movement
> shared.
>
> It _was_ a Movemnt of the Working Class, and like _all_ such movements (past
> and future) it involved particular _sectors_ of the class: Blacks, Women,
> Young White Workers. (The students were working class, and ANY serious
> working-class movement in an urban society will be made up _mostly_ of
> students, i.e., young workers, because that is where young workers are to be
> found. Near the end it was beginning to expand to other sectins of the
> working classd: older people (Gray Panthrs), welfare -ricipients and
> social workers, members of the already shrinking industrial working class
> (Lordstown), and so forth.
It's true that many male and female students on the campuses, where the 60's protests were disproproportionately concentrated, came from working class families.
What you're overlooking, however, is these students a) were not themselves workers, strategically located in factories, offices, mines, and ports with the potential power to shut down parts or all of the economy and b) were transient, lacking any material incentive to organize enduring institutions in their self-interest on campus, defining their self-interest instead as securing well-paid employment on graduation.
This is why students, regardless of family background and future employment as salary earners, have typically been seen on the left as "peripheral" or "allied" to the working class, rather than, as you suggest, an integral part of it.
Often what you sniffily dismiss as "silly" and "not worth discussing" turns out to be otherwise on closer examination.