22

p The "protest explosion" hi the sixties was so unexpected for the majority of Western sociologists and politicians that it appeared to them as a social “mystery” the deciphering of which was particularly difficult in view of the fact that concepts of “late-bourgeois” society, dominating bourgeois social theory of the mid-twentieth century, were not equipped to provide the key to it.

p Indeed these concepts were rooted in the "ideology of integration" which viewed capitalism as "organised society" (and rejected the possibility of the appearance of class conflicts as something inherent in the nature of that society), 23 and in the official optimistic postulate concerning the absence in that society of tangible motives for mass protest, in so far as the society in question succeeded in providing a relatively high standard of living and instilling in the minds of a large section of the working people consumer ideals and stereotypes.

p It is this which explains why despite the apparent diversity of solutions for the problem of the sources and social nature of the New Left movement, the majority of the answers put forward were superficial and one-sided.

p The youthful years of the majority of the New Left’s members gave many bourgeois philosophers, sociologists, politicians, and publicists grounds for seeking out the explanation for the protest movement in factors connected with the age of its participants ("youth’s perennial tendency to revolt", youthful romanticism, sexual problems, etc.) and the conflict of generations.  [23•* 

p Age factors do indeed play a significant part in the social behaviour of many members of the New Left. Young people are more inclined than the elder generation to engage in a search for action, to romanticise, to be energetic and openly manifest their emotions, moreover often in extravagant forms, which, of course, lent the movement of the radical Left a distinctive aura traditionally associated with youth (and above all student) protest movements. However these features left their mark above all on the outward form of the New Left’s social behaviour which often seemed deliberately designed to “shock”. As for the fundamental causes behind protest movements that shaped their social, cultural and political essence, these cannot be dismissed as “youthful” or “student” factors but can be traced to the fundamental contradictions inherent in modern bourgeois society—- contradictions which young people were better equipped to sense keenly and express graphically and which in the selfawareness of a substantial section of present-day youth (as 24 indeed also in the awareness of sympathetic sociologists) assumed the form of the "conflict of generations”.

p There is no doubt that each generation enters adult life along its own path shaped by changing conditions of life and formulates and solves in its own way the tasks facing it, a circumstance which at times creates obstacles to mutual understanding between generations. Lenin, in his day, wrote: "The middle-aged and the aged often do not know how to approach the youth, for the youth must of necessity advance to socialism in a different way, by other paths, in other forms, in other circumstances than their fathers.”  [24•*  It is not age which makes a man reject or embrace this or that social ideal, but age does lead him to grasp and express in different ways social needs and trends, whose content and structure are determined not so much by age as by a given stage of social development, new social possibilities, and acceleration in the rate of social change.

p In the context of a society divided into antagonistic classes and based on the principle of competition, the technological revolution provides certain grounds for a lack of mutual understanding between generations and an increase in the gulf that separates them. The growing flow of information, the doubling of the volume of knowledge each ten or twenty years means that the younger generation is brought up on new knowledge that was inaccessible to the majority of its elders, and this inevitably gives rise to a "cognition barrier" between the elder and younger generation, complicating their communication and the continuity of ideas and aspirations.

p At the same time the technological revolution leads to further curtailment of the time gap between scientific discoveries and their introduction into mass production that serves to shape life styles. This means that the world of things in which a generation is brought up changes very rapidly nowadays. The times when several generations, gathered together under the paternal roof, were surrounded by one and the same set of objects, when fathers and sons learnt their lessons from one and the same books, shared common consumer ideals and concepts of prestige are a thing of the 25 past—in the most advanced capitalist countries at least. Therefore the problem is how to make generations more communicative, and make sure that bridges are built between their cultures, their “languages”, their object worlds. The solution of this problem is directly linked with the character of the relations that dominate in a given society. The presence of social antagonisms, the internal fragmentation that besets each generation ("mass culture" unites representatives of different classes belonging to one and the same generation only on the surface, but it does not penetrate their social being in depth), the assessment of the individual on the strength of the function he fulfils inside the social integration mechanism—all this renders more difficult the building of bridges between generations in the conditions of developed capitalist society. In view of this a certain sector of modern youth has attempted to evolve its own “language” and culture, in place of the language and culture used by the rest of society, asserting its own sub-culture as an anti-culture. It is not that young people, in particular the radicals among them, have taken up arms against Culture which for some reason appears to them laden with guilt, as certain critics would have us believe. The fact is that in a "society of mass consumption" the new generation is sometimes not in a position to assert itself, precisely as a new generation, in any way other than by its deliberate rejection of previous culture, a break not without concomitant tragedy, for criticism of earlier culture can (and does) easily degenerate into rejection of culture as such, and criticism of capitalist culture into criticism of the culture of capitalist society full of inner contradictions and heterogeneous in its class implications; in other words, the criticism can acquire a nihilistic character. Here indeed lies the tragedy of the younger generation as such which does not see (and in many respects does not have) any other means for asserting its own existence, than through the rejection of forms of universal social being. It is in fact the tragedy of present-day capitalist society.

p Yet while the conflict of generations within society is socially conditioned, research into this conflict can make it easier to single out the various reasons for the radical Left’s revolt, and shed light on the social origins of its participants, 26 only provided this conflict is explained in terms of the trends discernible within bourgeois society at the present stage of its development, and above all in terms of the changing social status and prospects of the intellectuals and students  [26•* .

p It cannot be said that bourgeois philosophers and sociologists rejected out of hand any kind of link-up between the phenomenon of the radical Left and the social processes at work within the advanced capitalist countries, in particular the technological revolution. But even when attempts were made empirically to follow up and substantiate the link theoretically, radical protest more often than not was presented as part of the inevitable cost of the Western world’s entering into “post-industrial” (or “technetronic”) society. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that "the supreme irony of that loose and volatile socio-political phenomenon of contemporary middle-class America named the New Left is that it is itself the creation of the technetronic revolution as well as a reaction against it"  [26•** —a reaction of provincials that has no chance of success and in general does not reflect the serious “disease” of Western society. "The New Left has jeopardized American social progress by providing a convenient rationalization for the more conservative social attitudes. Beyond this it has brought to the surface and intensified—but not caused—the current crisis of American liberalism. That has perhaps been the most significant political result of the New Left’s neo-totalitarian reaction to the third American revolution.”  [26•*** 

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p Assessments of this kind smack of pre-conceived ideas and are of a distinctly ideological character based on belief in the stability of the principles underlying the functioning of capitalist society, which did admittedly contemplate the possibility of “technical” maladjustments and modifications, but in the main was consistent in its bourgeois-progressive tone.

p The position adopted by left-bourgeois sociologists critical of the establishment (such as Alain Touraine) looks very different, not to mention that upheld by the ideologists of protest themselves—who saw in the phenomenon of the radical Left not a by-product of “post-industrial” society but a manifestation of its essential contradictions. The New Left and the mass protest movements adopting its principles were regarded by bourgeois left sociologists as a revolutionary force which would replace the proletariat and meet the requirements of capitalist society’s modern stage of development.

p To be fair it should be pointed out that New Left members themselves behaved in such a way as to give rise to misrepresentation of the nature of the protest movement. Many of them however were vaguely aware that the phenomenon of the radical Left was linked with the collapse of the old social structure and the crisis of bourgeois civilisation^ this was reflected in their stress on the need to build a "new culture" and educate a "new man". Yet despite all this the radical Left found it difficult to define their socio-political stand, a fate which befalls all social groupings which either do not yet constitute an independent class, or which cannot hope to do so in the future at all. In such cases the social and political self-identification of most group members usually takes the form of identification with one or other existing (or previous) social group or class and with the attribution to themselves of the socio-political functions peculiar to the group or class in question.

p This was the case with many of the New Left’s members. Seeing themselves as “new” or “modern” revolutionaries they inevitably modelled themselves on ^the ideal of the revolutionary class or the specific type of “modern” revolutionary of which they had created a spontaneous mental image. Yet self-identification of this kind is always fraught 28 with paradoxes, as was to be the case once again here. While rejecting the existing proletariat as a revolutionary force, the New Left identified itself precisely with the revolutionary proletariat, with the exploited masses, but at the same time saw itself to be, unlike those masses, aware of its revolutionary mission and ready to carry it out. "In the past we only constituted a small minority of potentially privileged persons of necessity easily integrated. Now we are a minority too large to be assimilated, yet still possessed of the status the old ‘minority’ had. Such is the contradiction in which we, children of the bourgeois, find ourselves," declared the students of the Sorbonne in their 1968 Charter. "We are no longer assured of our position of future leaders, and this is the sole source of our revolutionary strength. ... From now on we are toilers like the others... .”

p Yet the image of the revolutionary proletarian—and indeed the modern revolutionary as such—took shape in the minds of the New Left not as the result of generalisations drawn from the actual historical experience of the working class in the developed capitalist countries and from sociological analysis of the processes at work within those societies, but mainly from pragmatic generalisation concerning certain aspects of social experience of non-proletarian strata in the capitalist countries (in particular ethnic minorities) and the countries of the Third World, in which the New Left discovered its alter ego, that is, another "minority too large to be assimilated" and an “exploited” minority—but this time on a world scale. It is not surprising that the radical Left saw the "revolutionary proletarian" in the guise of the guerilla engaged in armed struggle in the mountains and jungles of South America and Asia,  [28•*  or in that of the Chinese Hungweiping, and finally the American Negro defending his civil rights. This explains why so many of the participants in the protest movements of the sixties identified themselves with Maoists, guerillas, etc.

p Yet this self-identification was, in actual fact, illusory, both because it was superficial and one-sided in character  [28•**  29 and because there proved to be little ground for the radicals to identify themselves with the Chinese Hungweipings or the Latin-American guerillas. Both those groups with whom the New Left used to identify itself were not only far from the ideal or perfect embodiment of the "modern revolutionary" but not even Hungweipings or guerillas in the true sense of the word: the elegant European suit kept peeping out from underneath the borrowed garb.  [29•*  In its search for a revolutionary model, the New Left, without suspecting what it was really doing, modelled itself on a mirage, and its identification with this mirage was of a strictly Utopian character.

p In actual fact the real features of the proletarian revolutionary (as indeed of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois revolutionary) change from one generation to the next, and these changes take some time to penetrate the awareness of social groups who tend to think in terms of stereotypes— “bourgeois”, “bandit”, “bureaucrat”, “proletarian”, “ revolutionary”—which are rooted in past experience. This explains the inevitable initial “clash” between the traditional stereotype and the real figure, a clash which can give rise to lack of faith if not animosity on the part of “society” in relation to the new performer of the traditional social role. Particular problems emerge in this respect during transitional epochs, when a revolutionary of a new type comes into being—the living embodiment of the contradictions of the society which shaped him.

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p The members of the New Left were of course not the embodiment of a new type of proletarian revolutionary, but neither were they clowns:  [30•*  they represented a new type of non-proletarian Utopian revolutionary born of the contradictions inherent in advanced capitalist society, which is now experiencing the initial stage of the technological revolution.

p History has seen a good number of mass protest movements supported by social forces which either at the given stage of development had no hope of political success, or were not prepared after reaping unexpected success for the practical implementation of the declared objectives—- movements which put forward Utopian slogans, set their sights on a Utopian social ideal, relied on Utopian methods and which, in the final analysis, were incapable of overcoming those antagonisms which had prompted their protest in the beginning. Examples of such movements were those of the ana-baptists in Miinster, the Taborites in Bohemia, the Diggers in seventeenth-century England, and the Taipings in China. These movements, which served to express the immediate, spontaneous, ill-organised reaction of the working people (mainly from non-proletarian strata) to overall changes in social conditions (above all changes in the social position of these strata), were of an “experimental” nature and essentially Utopian in their socio-political character.

p They were of course capable of producing a more or less significant impact on society and bringing about radical and extensive changes in social consciousness, but at best they were “catalysers” of history clearing a path for forces better prepared for implementing true historical “necessity”. 31 The New Left movement was for all intents and purposes a movement of this type.

p The immediate causes and concrete forms of radical protest varied from one country to another, bearing the mark of each individual country’s historical destiny and traditions. But when viewed as an international social phenomenon, the New Left movement was basically the result of the crisis of modern bourgeois civilisation, linked—in the socio-economic sense—with the nature of the development of the technological revolution within the framework of bourgeois social relations: with contradictions between the stimulation of the technological revolution by the ruling classes and simultaneous attempts to steer that revolution into the traditional channel of industrial civilisation; with conradictions between the demands made by that revolution on society and the individual (which constitute a condition for the development of that revolution), and the real possibilities for the implementation of those demands, bound up both with society’s potential and with the immediate interests of the classes concerned. The answer to the “mystery” of the phenomenon of the radical Left movement of the sixties should be sought precisely in these contradictions, in this “clash” between two civilisations, that gives rise to profound social “shock”—between industrial civilisation which dominates the capitalist countries and the scientific and technological civilisation, which is only just beginning to take shape, but for which the capitalist framework is already proving restrictive, since this civilisation requires a “higher” social system in order to function properly.

p This conclusion is borne out by the mere fact that the bulk of the New Left membership consists of student youth and intellectuals, who mostly come from bourgeois families and notably from the so-called "urban middle class", i.e. essentially from the petty bourgeoisie.

p The crux of the matter is not of course that the social background of the New Left determines the social nature of the movement. The individual social background conditions not so much his present or future, but his past. The former is determined not so much by his social (or ethnic) background as by the social role he performs, the 32 professional category to which he belongs, his place in the system of social production and social control and his position visa-vis prevailing institutions and values.

p Advanced capitalist society of today is characterised by two trends—change in the social function of science and the relative narrowing down of the human base for the reproduction of the bourgeois status quo—trends which overlap above all in intellectuals who come from a bourgeois background.

p The actual position of the intelligentsia (in particular that section of it preoccupied with the humanities which still refuses to relinquish its claim to be society’s “conscience”) and the student body, as socio-professional groups, is undergoing substantial changes in advanced capitalist society in the present context of the technological revolution and the concomitant process of the transformation of science (or knowledge) into a direct productive force. These changes influence the social function and historical role of the intelligentsia and the student body as bearers of knowledge.  [32•* 

p The intellectuals in capitalist society, who previously for the most part were not involved in the process of direct production of surplus value, were able until quite recently to feel themselves relatively “free” either because they enjoyed the privilege of “ruling” (that is inclusion or chance of inclusion in the ranks of the ruling class) or because they were privileged not to be the immediate object of the rulers 33 and manipulators. The overall growth in the numbers of the intelligentsia and the changes in its social functions stemming from the change in the role and functions of science in material and non-material production, lead in the context of advanced capitalist society to the emergence of what might be termed a "surplus intelligentsia”.

p This "surplus intelligentsia" as it grows in numbers gradually loses its one-time “free” status and despite its own wishes and the principles it upholds is turning into a "proletariat of intellectual labour", a "partial worker" directly employed in one or other sector of material or nonmaterial production. This section of the intelligentsia finds itself in the position of a group which is no longer the bourgeoisie but at the same time is not yet the proletariat, in other words, in the position of a “lumpen-bourgeoisie”.  [33•* 

p A large section of the student body, whose numbers are growing steadily as society’s needs for highly qualified specialists grow, finds itself in a similar position. A student coming from a bourgeois or petty-bourgeois background, as a future member of the intelligentsia is bereft of firm guarantees that he will retain his privileged social status, guarantees that he would have enjoyed a mere twenty or thirty years ago and which in his mind were closely associated with the status of the intellectual. Today the student —unless he has reliable and highly-placed strings to pull 34 in the business world—may well find himself part of the "surplus intelligentsia", i.e., a "proletarian of ’intellectual labour’ ”.  [34•* 

p The gulf between the former and actual social status of the student and the intellectual, and the expectations associated with this status (that are based on what are now anachronistic stereotypes), on the one hand, and the real prospect of the proletarianisation of a large section of the intelligentsia, on the other, i.e. the gulf between their past and future, gives rise to their protest and the demand that their freedom be “returned” to them. However, in so far as he is aware that the loss of his freedom can no longer be averted by a "return to the past", the protesting intellectual now sees the path to his own freedom to lie in surmounting his new proletarian status through radical transformation of the establishment and the liberation of labour, i.e., through speeding up advent of the future.

p A paradoxical situation arises that does at times crop up in history, namely when the critically inclined representatives of one particular class are compelled to take action in the name of another class and put forward demands that diverge from the interests of their own class, in order to uphold their own interests.  [34•** 

p In under-developed capitalist countries the proletariat found itself in this position on several occasions when it 35 either was not sufficiently experienced in order to take the administration of society into its own hands, or when social relations were not sufficiently developed for the rule of the proletariat and the latter’s implementation of its own proletarian tasks, which meant that nothing else was left open to it—if it was to uphold its class interests—than to ensure the completion of work which logically speaking was the prerogative of the bourgeoisie.

p Today in the context of advanced capitalist society, we are witnessing the inversion of this paradox: now certain sections of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie that have "fallen away" or are "falling away" from their own classes but have not yet sided with the proletariat (to be more precise have not yet entered its ranks) are, however, in keeping with the logic of change in the social structure of the modern bourgeois world, moving precisely in that direction and start out from the standpoint of their class opposites, demanding freedoms for the proletariat and all working people, urging them to take part in revolutionary activity.

p However this inversion does not rob the paradoxical situation under discussion of its inherent tragedy: the “ revolutionary” claims of the bourgeoisie that finds itself in this position prove inconsistent, and its principles and objectives Utopian, for the illusory quality of its view of itself, of the revolutionary proletariat and its fundamental class interests means that the practical methods of struggle based on these conceptions are not in line with actual historical possibilities. Essentially speaking all these viewpoints, principles and methods are none other than the ideological expression of the contradictory situation in which the intellectuals in revolt now find themselves—an expression of the novelty of their social being and the split in their consciousness lending their utopianism a radical character that-takes extremist forms in a number of instances.

p The New Left has, for all practical purposes, rejected not only the idea of the absence of conflict in the "integrated society", but also the “end-of-ideology” theses. Although within this movement there has always existed a cautious attitude to ideology as such, which part of the radical Left saw as the absolute form of dogmatisation in critical 36 analysis of existing society, nevertheless the majority of the New Left supported the political course advocated by C. Wright Mills at the beginning of the sixties when he called for the creation of a “new”, “left” ideology. In his "Letter to the New Left" Mills wrote: "The Age of Complacency is ending. Let the old women complain wisely about ’the end of ideology’. We are beginning to move again.”  [36•* 

p The New Left’s need for an ideology was called forth not only by their messianic mood, but above all by the inner logic and conditions of the tide of protest. Social movements that have no foundation of real institutions of power and firm organisation, often feel a keen need for an integrating force capable of uniting participants and attracting new supporters. This function is performed by ideology. In addition some members of the New Left saw ideology as one of the forms suitable for their own self-expression and self-determination, and indeed self-justification as well, this last being something they resorted to from time to time despite all their assurances of their indifference to public opinion.

p There was however no systematically elaborated ideology accepted by all detachments of the New Left. In the theoretical journal Political Affairs put out by the US Communist Party we were reminded that "the New Left ‘ideology’ is not susceptible to easy analysis, because it changes so rapidly, and is never accepted by the whole movement at any one time. The matter is further complicated by the fact that many claim they have no ideology at all, that they are starting with a completely fresh slate. This of course has itself become a part of the New Left ideology.”  [36•** 

The New Left movement did not come forward with any original ideology. Just as they tried to reach an awareness of their social nature and the implications of their own protest by identifying themselves with existing socio-political movements, groups and institutions, so in the sphere of ideology the members of this movement were obliged to 37 search for ideological formulas to express their spontaneous awareness of this protest beyond the confines of their actual movement. This situation reflected the pattern of development typical for both non-proletarian protest movements and also for action of the proletariat at early stages of its development. Admittedly when members of the New Left turned to ideologies, in which they deemed they were able to find substantiation and vindication for their outlook and social self-awareness, they subjected these ideologies to arbitrary adaptation and selected from them those ideas which suited their own interests and needs, thus deforming certain of the objective contradictions and problems characteristic of advanced capitalist society.