There's a diary up talking about and extolling the far left. And I think this is a topical subject, as so many of us (and by "us" I don't mean the far left in particular, I mean Kossaks in general) wish to convince mainstream Americans who are already against this Administration to join in opposition to it, up to supporting impeachment of both Cheney and Bush.
I did a little research on the far left's role in the 60s and found some interesting information.
Of course, one of the largest issues in the 60s was the Vietnam War. There were protests in the streets, and takeovers of universities, violence and rhetoric. Yet out of all this storm of protest, Richard Nixon was still reelected. The war continued to escalate and for the first time since World War II a draft lottery was instituted. None of the rhetoric or protests of the far left accomplished anything as far as stopping the war. And even Nixon's resignation was directly affected by the mainstream media (hard to believe), the New York Times in publishing the Pentagon Papers, and the Washington Post who further reported on the Watergate break-in. So as far as political influence, "being right," I just don't see any substantive fruits of far left political action from the 60s and much more results from mainsteam folks.
And I think that's an important thing to remember as we move forward in these dangerous times. It's not enough to be "right," if indeed all those involved even were right -- there were many factions on the far left and not all of them were right in what they said or did. I don't think either the SDS or the Weathermen were right. I think they were very destructive, and they didn't accomplish any real change in America. So really to say "far left" as though it was one large group all sharing the same views is misleading, because that's not the way it was. But in any event, being "right" is not much consolation if nothing is changed, if injustices still occur and folks still get hurt over them.
I found an interesting article, Nobody Gets Off the Bus: The Viet Nam Generation Big Book, which talks about the labor movement and the student movement of the 60s. Seems that before the 60s, the left was very much intertwined with labor, and that in the 60s, that changed:
The story of Labor and the Vietnam war exists with the larger context of the story of American radicalism. In the 1960s, a significant number of American Leftists gave up on the revolutionary potential of working class people. Following the lead of Herbert Marcuse, they shifted their attention to students. Marx had defined revolutionary potential not in terms of attitude or ideology or even specific activities, but in terms of the relationship of a particular class to the means of production. The more essential a class was to production, the more inherently revolutionary this class would be. In simple terms, if all the lawyers walk, it's an inconvenience. If the line workers walk, everything shuts down.
There were many reasons for this. One was that union leaders had become pretty far right themselves and did not use their influence and power to protest what was going on in Viet Nam:
In the 1930s, the revolutionary potential of the working class was fairly obvious, widely understood, and readily accepted. Labor unions went from near extinction to being a political force that had to be reckoned with, and the New Deal so thoroughly incorporated the radical agenda that the Communist Party USA, with an estimated membership of over 80,000, endorsed New Deal programs with unbounded enthusiasm. Three decades later, working class people were regarded by many radicals as rock-headed bigots solidly in support of a hopelessly racist and imperialist system. As Carl Oglesby stated it in 1969:
A politically practical Left must be able to convincingly say, "This is not even a good battle." But how could the American Left have said that, since it had traditionally endorsed a program whose simplest driving objective was for the same economic security "for the masses" which the "masses" in question believed themselves already to possess. (3)
Indeed, how could one convince the workers to rise up and overthrow a system which was benefiting them in real and material ways? The dominant angst of the era shifted from a proletarian angst--"Brother, can you spare a dime?"--to an angst afflicting the middle and upper middle classes and the intelligentsia. Radicals were set adrift and when the civil rights movement became the dominant cause, what progressives saw on the other side were white workers. When the Vietnam war heated up, what they saw again were white workers opposing them.
The biggest single factor in the latter perception was AFL-CIO president George Meany's support for Lyndon Johnson and his war policies. Labor spoke with a monolithic voice. Worse, Labor spoke with a Neanderthal voice. In May of 1965, Meany declared that the AFL-CIO would support the war in Vietnam "no matter what the academic do-gooders may say, no matter what the apostles of appeasement may say." He further argued that those who criticized the war were "victims of Communist propaganda." (20-21) From organized Labor, no other voice was audible.
So we had problems. Our labor force was being greatedly rewarded by defense work, the labor leaders were hawkish, and the workers were complacent. So the far left turned to the students. And how did that work out? Politically, not so much. Again, with all the protests, all the marches, the war did not end and Nixon was reelected.
But even given the situation with labor, there were unions who were against the war and who protested:
But the next two years saw a dramatic increase in Labor involvement in the peace movement. Walter Reuther took the UAW out of the AFL-CIO and in June of 1969, the Teamsters and the Auto Workers formed the Alliance for Labor Action which called for an immediate end to the war, a far more militant stand than the call for negotiations issued by the Labor Assembly for Peace. Also in 1969, the newly formed New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam made a concerted effort to include Labor. Radical students, realizing that their power was limited, joined workers on the picket lines--most notably in the 1969 strike against GE--to connect peace with economic issues. In brief, the supposedly unbridgeable gap between peace activists and Labor was being bridge. George Meany's response was that "those demanding withdrawal from Vietnam [were] creating obstacles to a negotiated settlement." (Foner: 88)
This would continue until the end of the war as more and more unions openly disagreed with the Executive Council. As of 1972, four million of the twenty-one million workers represented by unions were represented by dissenting unions, and in the presidential elections of that year, half of all union households voted for McGovern even though the AFL-CIO had refused to endorse him. Meany, at least on this issue, was losing control.
The article also goes into the media's role in quashing the power of the far left protesters ... shades of our present time. But what was striking to me was the failure of both the far left and the labor movement to join forces in working for real political change in America. There were, of course many reasons for this. Some folks who were very much against the war were turned off by the condescending rhetoric of the far left, others were against the war but not inclined or educated enough to know how to effectively make their voices heard.
So no, in the matter of how to effectively oppose the Vietnam War and other injustices, I don't think the far left was "right," and the proof is in the pudding. Here's a timeline of the Vietnam war. Look at all the protests that went on, all the outpouring of resistance. It didn't stop the draft. It didn't stop the war. And it didn't keep Nixon from being reelected. It did help to keep LBJ from running for office again ... but look at the result -- we got Nixon.
And the labor movement also was not "right." Nor was the media. In the end it was a few individuals, reporters and courageous editors, working at a couple of newspapers, who helped to bring Richard Nixon down, along with some principled politicians on both sides of the aisle. And the American public supported this, in the end.
There's good things about the far left, about labor, and even about some in the media. But none of these groups were always "right." I think this is a good thing to think about in the present time as we are facing an even more dangerous situation and one that requires real unity in our country. Right now most Americans are against Mister Bush and his War in Iraq. If activists are to convince the mainstream that opposition measures, including impeachment, are in our national interests, I think it's important we don't make the same mistakes that were made in the 60s.
And one more note, about art. I am an artist, a poet ... not a famous or perhaps even a very good one, but an artist just the same. I think authenticity is as important in art as it is in politics. Even when I write a little poem I have no intention of sharing, I do research on it to make sure I know what I'm writing about ... one example being a poem I did about roulette ... I googled it to find the right names for the various aspects, like croupier. And most of the artists I know are also interested in athenticity, in being accurate about their subject. So art and accuracy are not mutually exclusive, rather I think they are very harmonious and bring people together, as the art is based on what is real and true. Just sayin'.