RADICAL QUESTIONS
by
Irving Howe
(Continued from Page
192)
There is no easy solution to the dilemma Rustin describes:
that the Negro movement is, at least intermittently, more active
and alive than its potential allies, but that the socio-economic situa–
tion makes it impossible for the movement to achieve its aims short of
stirring those potential allies into a bolder action they may resist or
refuse. Consequently, within the Negro movement there will
be
sharper
internal strains and factionalism than during the past few years, with
some following Rustin's policy, others exhausting themselves in an
increasingly desperate activism, and still others straying into an apoca–
lyptic, semi-nationalist "radicalism." For through the very intensity of
its work and the defined limits of its success, the civil rights movement
dramatizes its own insufficiency. It is a movement desperately in need
of political-intellectual help; yet the very situation giving rise to that
need also creates intense resistance to any efforts that might satisfy it.
Nor, for that matter, is the Negro movement a movement in the tradi–
tional sense. It is a loose alliance of organizations, some of them large
and with nominal demands upon their members, others composed of
full-time elite activists; and, as a result, there are special difficulties in
working out programs and strategies. One can barely speak of a Negro
political irttelligentsia attached to or associated with the movement, who
might provide some intellectual substance; indeed, given the kind of
advice offered by certain Negro writers, it is perhaps just as well that
they are detached from the movement. And it is a further difficulty
that the most active, though not necessarily most representative, sectors
of the Negro movement are often hostile to liberals and intellectuals,
partly for reasons that can be understood if not accepted, but· also for
perfectly sound reasons: too many liberals and intellectuals, still sunk
in the apolitical moods of the fifties, have shown little inclination
toward active participation or help.
That the Negro protest movement will emerge from its present
state of uncertainty-a condition at least partly the result of its notable
victories these past several years-seems quite certain. The very mag–
nitude of the tasks still facing it will be a powerful stimulus to strategic
innovation and tactical ingenuity. But the hopes of a few years ago
that as a direct consequence of the civil rights struggle there might
emerge a larger movement for social radicalism seem unlikely to be
fulfilled.
Though it has already had a profoundly refreshing and valuable
impact upon American society, the Negro movement cannot, by itself,
