NEW RADICALISM
535
question, the hub of my disagreements with many new radicals. It
is
central because only by answering it
is
there any hope of breaking
out of the vicious circle which may seem at first to be merely a
function of Hentoff's style but is really a vortex of contradictions in
the basic thinking of the new radicalism.
In the absence of revolution, revolutionary
ideas
either wither or
become the property of the established social order, infused with its
values and turned toward its ends. The Theobald idea, for example,
is not terribly dissimilar to Milton Friedman's mechanism for abolish–
ing poverty. It
could
become a device whereby the haves buy off the
have-nots, the latter being totally separated from the productive
process. It
could
easily be incorporated into a
Brave New World
totalitarianism. Radicals who are optimistic about the correctness of
their ideas ("...
it
is not too late to shape a technological society so
that human capacities and spontaneity can be maximized ...") but
pessimistic about the prospects of actual change (". . . they are not
especially sanguine that they can convince others in time.") are there–
fore in a peculiar position.
Obviously, I am not proposing the fabrication of optimistic out–
looks where no basis for them exists. But the insistence of the new
radicals that there is no basis for a coalition now, that they are not
interested in a coalition except on radical terms (even where those
radical terms become nonradical in the absence of large-scale move–
ment) is in the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Eschewing
coalition now, the new radicals in practice attack coalition and its
proponents. They counterpose themselves to coalition and thereby to
the very forces which must be set in motion if the radical ideas are to
be radical, i.e., become functional. Having begun a "constant dia–
logue" with a bare handful of the dispossessed, some new radicals
would already speak in their name; and in their name they attack
as empty shells organizations which have actually organized and enjoy
the adherence of millions. Hentoff cites the work of Students for a
Democratic Society, most of which I find exciting. But at this writ–
ing, at least, no SDS community organizing projects can claim a
steady membership of more than fifty indigenous people. Of course,
these are fifty more than would have been reached if the student
organizers had not moved in. But it hardly entitles them to
dismiss
the
NAACP (with over half a million members); to charge Martin
