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NORM FRUCHTER
ceedingly unoriginal existential subjectivism" of the new activists, who
lack the experience of oppression, roots in an oppressed class, a mass–
base to support them, or a "socialist movement which gave their
theories flesh and blood substance." Aside from the image in the last
phrase, which someone less charitable might consider "exceedingly
unoriginal," consider the banality of the theoretical position. The
reality of any specific critique of American society, according to
Rustin, is measured in terms of power and support. Critiques, how–
ever fundamental, and no matter how often reinforced by what
remains of our radical intellectual class, are suspect when they are
not reinforced by the formation of a mass movement. The only mass
movements which can be said to exist today are those formed in
partial response to material need and social oppression. The new
activists have suffered neither. Therefore, according to Rustin, the
new activists are existentialists, not potential radicals. They may be
in reaction against "the increasing bureaucratization and impersonali–
zation of the campus, and ... the vapidity, conformity, and boredom
of middle-class life," but that response has nothing to do with an
opposition to the basic structures of this society. Therefore, the new
activists come to Negro and white ghettoes,
not
to attempt to build a
base from which their opposition can become political, and their
disaffiliation radical, but "in search of meaning." After such mis–
interpretation, outright abuse is welcome. "It would be the grossest
slander," Rustin concludes, "to say that they go slumming."
7. What is clear is that, as I stated earlier, Rustin
is
no longer re–
sponsive to the irrationalities endemic to this society, that he has given
up all hope of the
possibility
of basic structural change, and has chosen
to work for ameliorative change through realignment politics because,
in his judgment, such change goes to the
realistic
limits of the situa–
tion. But why should such realism result in so disastrous a misinter–
pretation of the prepolitical actions of the new activists?
If
an opposed,
incipiently radical response to the totality of this society's values and
operation is at all possible, then perhaps it is possible during those
diffuse years of role-preparation we call university education, or
in
those few after graduation when countless young people "float,"
postponing their induction into the productive economy and its mani–
fold and institutionalized forms of value-subversion. It used to be
fashionable to upbraid these "floating" graduates as "disaffiliates,"
"irresponsibles," or more crudely, "beats." Now these same disaf-
