Review of:

Letters to a Young Activist by Todd Gitlin

Edward J. Dodson

[letters to a young activist is published by Basic Books, New York, NY / 2003]

I had never heard of Todd Gitlin before being asked to review his latest book, which says something about my own history as an activist. The author and I each "came of age" during the tumultuous decade that began in the early 1960s and shared some of the same anti-establishment ideals that influenced activists of that period. Mr. Gitlin's personal journey included a central role in the establishment of Students for a Democratic Society as a voice for the young adults of our generation. He emerged from this experience to earn a Ph.D. and embark on a long teaching career in journalism and sociology.

What Professor Gitlin offers readers is a lessons learned memoir on the 1960s struggles. He hopes this book will help the young activists of today be more effective in their advocacy of progressive social and political change. He reminds us that what brought younger persons into the activist ranks in the early- to mid-1960s was a sense of responsibility and obligation. "We were trying to build - to be - a better society," he recalls. "The idea of the movement erased the distinction between public and private; as a way of life, it was a network of linkages, public bonds that were so private as to erase this distinction…" [p.3] This was a peculiar moment in history when a small number of people shared a commitment to change the course of history. But, in what direction and to what outcome? Here is an important lesson learned:

"You do what you can - and in the right spirit. The wrong motives not only corrupt and betray you, they are more likely to bring bad results." [p.10]

Even then, he adds, being armed with the right spirit and sincere motives is not enough. Responding emotionally without a full understanding of the history, of the forces at play and the motives of others can lead the activist to run full speed in the wrong direction. Problems are more easy to see than the solutions to those problems:

"We all rummage around for forebears, lest we feel utterly marooned in history. But all such mystiques, whatever their share of truth, become distortions by the time they get into popular circulation." [p.19]

Those who had the discipline to learn from the past and came closest to this ideal of sincere motive somehow were the activists who managed to escape becoming what Eric Hoffer described as "true believers," or, as Todd Gitlin describes what amounts to the same thing, "the herd instinct." He associates this characteristic with the Old Left, wisely discarded by the thoughtful in favor of "a fresh - democratic, searching, pragmatic - New Left that for a time offered vastly more promise."[p.23] That promise was invariably thwarted by the complex coming together of societal attitudes, issue-oriented activist efforts, conflicting value systems, economic class concerns, political estrangement, knee-jerk anti-communism, the stresses of military adventurism and ongoing racial conflict. All the while, the overwhelming majority of the young were only superficially involved. Expanding experimentation with drugs and a more casual attitude toward sex did not lead to concerted challenges to the nation's economic system or socio-political arrangements and institutions.

Despite all of this, Professor Gitlin reminds us that some concrete changes for the better came out of the "radicalism of the sixties," in particular the long-term commitment to become better stewards of the environment. The years have brought him to another important lesson, applicable for social democracies such as ours:

"Liberal society needs conservatives. …A good measure of equipoise is healthy. Someone has to resist unrestrained social change whenever it moves 'too far' in any single direction - and the debate as to where too far starts is always useful. Brakes are the health in the conserving impulse. But when conservatives blame domestic enemies for epochal extensions of democratic and individual rights, they are refusing to face the complexity and strangeness of culture."[p.38]

This brings to mind the great debate between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine that erupted out of the French Revolution. One might fairly conclude (as did Mortimer Adler, for instance) that without an education in these and other classics of our intellectual and philosophical heritage, we are ill-equipped for rational discourse. "The price of intellectual honesty is high, but not as high as blindness," writes Professor Gitlin.[p.40] Left unsaid is that the path to intellectual honesty requires one to have an inquiring mind and something of a disciplined commitment to learning. Only a handful of philosophers have emerged in history to also become effective activists. Charismatic individuals too often emerge to lead others into the depths of depredation under the guise of bringing an end to worse depredations. To the young activist of today, Professor Gitlin sets down a powerful gauntlet:

"Ignorance of the past may be an excuse for people with lesser ambitions than changing the world, but it's no excuse for you. Paying attention to history … will help you improve on your predecessors. They - we - made mistakes, which is one (though only one) reason why the world remains to be changed - and while the situation you confront is always different from what your predecessors confronted, the best way to free yourself from their shadow is to walk a while in their shoes."[pp.42-43]

The passage of time convinces Professor Gitlin that change comes when the activist combines idealism with realism. "Right action requires thought: a realistic appraisal of the world of institutions and powers, of actual and potential adversaries and allies."[p.49] From whom is this knowledge to be learned? One source in the sixties were the rapidly evolving college and university communities, awakened by an arising youth culture from a deep sleep. Another was the very process of organizing for nonviolent, civil disobedience. The violent outbursts that came at the fringe of these broader coalitions also aroused a deeper and long-lasting backlash:

"…the riots, threats and violent rhetoric panicked much of the white electorate, stampeding them into the Republican Party, which proved adept at managing wedge issues and where many of them have lodged ever since. …[P]anic worsened the white recoil, inflamed northern and western whites, boosted the Reaganite movement, and deepened the Left's discredit."[p.57]

Another lesson learned. "Our anger was most productive," he writes, "when (1) we had good arguments, (2) we stayed nonviolent, (3) we won a hearing from serious-minded insiders, and (4) we mobilized outside forces. Then we could afford to offend a lot of well-meaning bystanders and still get results by making intelligent nuisances of ourselves."[pp.64-65] I am again reminded of a Churchillian observation - that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the rest. As deep we feel is the corruption, as entrenched we know is the privilege, as frustrated as we are by the slow, incremental pace of progress, we still owe a great deal to those who crafted our unique socio-political arrangements and institutions. Great care must be taken not to discard all that is good while working to dislodge all that is bad. Moreover, there is the very real propensity for things to get out of control:

"In a world bound together by media, investment, migration and violence, consequences ripple outward far and wide. So in politics, you need to channel your impulses, frustrate your spontaneity, think as well as feel, settle for less than the ideal result, because you live alongside others, because they are the field of your action, because consequences count and history is unforgiving."[p.87]

Over and over, the good has been subverted by fundamentalist true believers who "have their hearts set on destruction."[p.89] Constructive, progressive movements, on the other hand, "are not centralized think tanks that adopt and enforce party lines. They are mélanges, dispersed, polycentric and fluid, their positions all over the lot. …Movements frustrate our hopes for orderly reason, and sometimes do more than frustrate them - they blast them apart."[p.101] In this sense, the fundamentalist and nominally-conservative Right is not a movement; rather, the Right is an hierarchical organization, the members of which see themselves as defenders of traditional values. Their leaders have faith in centralized power and seek this power in order to prevent a broadened interpretation of the Constitution's defense of individual rights against governmental intrusion. Thus, for example, the Right looks back to the Framers to claim special privilege for religious sects and institutions but to deny others freedom from having to financially and otherwise support religion. To the Right, we are "one nation, under God." Athiests, Deists and Agnostics might be tolerated in our midst, but this land is a land for believers - and for Protestant Christian believers especially. The absence of an equally powerful, well-organized and citizen-supported counter on behalf of true individual liberty "leaves the Right claiming the mantle of universal values while defending plutocratic power and immense inequalities," concludes Professor Gitlin.[p.124]

From this long-time activist, the young are encouraged to "[f]ace up to America's self-contradictions, its on-again off-again interest in extending rights, its clumsy egalitarianism coupled with ignorant arrogance."[p.157] Study the issues, question authority, challenge power - but recognize "[t]hat the quandaries we confront now - and for the foreseeable future - are immensely difficult," and that this "makes the asking of questions a citizen's duty."[p.161]

I am largely in sympathy with Professor Gitlin's message. Construction, cooperation and coalition-building is what we need more of if we are to stand a chance of saving the earth from wanton destruction. Our only real hope is to do everything possible to spread by education and dialogue a transnational sense of right and wrong. As Professor Gitlin states, solving our problems will demand "of us an unprecedented response."[p.167] There is great uncertainty ahead for us. Many of us felt a moment of exhilaration when the despotism of state-socialism imploded across the Eurasian continent. Little did we know that lurking just beneath the surface were pent-up hatreds ready to be ignited by the inflamed activism of ethnic and quasi-religious nationalists. Professor Gitlin takes a page from Mortimer Adler by his support for a federal world government, or at least meaningful movement toward that end. If only…