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NORMAN BIRNBAUM
The students, in their cultural experimentation, have sought to
establish a concrete utopia. They have refused to wait for the future,
for those hypothetical social changes enabling them ultimately to live
a new life. It is very likely that their belief that the new life can be
lived, permanently, on the margin or in the interstices of industrial
society will prove illusory. Politically, it may prove even worse than that,
particularly if it is true: the establishment of libertarian colonies sup–
ported by the rest of a bureaucratic society may guarantee an indefinite
continuation of bureaucratic rule, by diverting from politics some of
the most imaginative and energetic of the young. But for the moment,
no such difficulty confronts us: cultural and political radicalism are
related. Their close relationship is not always positive: some of the
radicals cannot distinguish, particularly in America, between transcend–
ing the reactionary elements in culture and the total destruction of
cultural tradition.
Ultimately, the central function of cultural radicalism may be
to demonstrate to those caught in one routine that other routines are
possible. It is, however, too much
to
expect that the entire technical
intelligentsia will come to radical politics by passing through a phase of
hippydom. Rather, the intelligentsia may come to radical politics by
generalizing its occupational dissatisfactions into a larger dissatisfaction
with society. Part of that dissatisfaction must inevitably turn on the
cultural and psychological restrictions it accepts as the price it must
pay for its status. The students have moved from the view that their
lives are wrong to the view that society as a whole is wrong. The in–
telligentsia can afford no immediate change of life; its members
will
have to move from a general critique of society to the recognition that
their lives are defective, and this process may well begin with their
occupational discontents. The many interconnections and interpenetrating
spheres of industrial society may help to speed up the process once it
does begin.
For the moment, the avant-garde role of the students and the in–
tellectuals may well reside in their capacity to provide moral leadership
for the technical intelligentsia. Without an extension of the present
movement beyond its narrow base, avant-gardism may turn out to be
inspired sectarianism. But the analysis of modern society promulgated
by the new left and the student movement worked at by critical in–
tellectuals for the past two decades, is too profound, too just, a vision of
reality to merit this fate. Hence the effort to convince other groups of
its truth must be the main task of the avant-garde in the next period.
In this sense, the avant-garde cannot be understood as leading a move–
ment, but as constructing one.
