SL intro New Left

[vze422fs at verizon.net]

"I don't think were consciously groping after any synthesis, although
perhaps we should have been. The success of the 'new left' later in the 60's
was to be limited by the failure of college kids and blue-collar workers to
get together politically. One reason was the presence of real, invisible
class force fields in the way of communication between the two groups."

Right on TRP. If anything he doesn't go far enough. This communication
breakdown continued straight through the seventies and continues today. It's
always the same. 

Personal experience. I was a poli sci major at Tufts in the late seventies.
I worked on construction jobs during summers and breaks. I considered myself
an active socialist. I came to understand why hardhats beat the shit out of
student protesters.

I heard statements without irony such as "It's our duty and responsibility
as the intelligentsia to enlighten the common man for his own good." Christ,
I wanted to smack them one myself and I'm a pacifist.

To suggest that the common man might know what he is doing, does not think
as one of a flock of sheep, and does not need to be lectured down to by a
bunch of twenty-year olds was considered heresy. This noblesse oblige was
not only misguided and alienating, it was arrogant and insulting.

Years later, I served as an officer in my neighborhood association on
Columbus Ave S.End/Roxbury. Real blue-collar activism. Student radicals
needed (and still need) to listen to and learn from those people instead of
attempting to proselytize us.

Peace
Joe