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JAMES GILBERT
must
be
shifted to depend on other groups. The new movement
would still include a large cross section of young people - quite
naturally - and become a Revolutionary Youth Movement made
up of students, young workers and young Blacks. But it was the
working class and Black elements which promised to alter the class
basis of the alliance, making it revolutionary, not reformist. The
program still talked extensively about the university, but only to
treat it as an extension of the capitalist state. Reform of the univer–
sity was no longer apriority, but intensified action within it was–
its admissions policies, its real estate and urban renewal manipula–
tions, its counterinsurgency programs and all the other war services
it offered were to be challenged. RYM was obviously a document
produced by a movement which wished to outgrow itself, and be–
come part of a revolutionary force. But at the same time, the pro–
gram was ambiguous because it left so many questions unanswered.
If
anything, it added new fuel to the argument over the role of
actual members of the New Left in a radical transformation of
society. After ten years the fundamental ambiguity about the mean–
ing of the New Left, and the usefulness of what it had accomplished,
remained.
Changes in the Black Movement also greatly affected SDS
and the factional fight brewing within it. The rapid growth of the
Panther Party and its adoption of Marxist-Leninist rhetoric brought
the fight against racism into a different perspective. Many members
of SDS saw the Panthers as a vanguard, not only in fighting racism,
but also in struggling against capitalism - .and some even identi–
fied them with Third World liberation movements. Such arguments
were obviously persuasive, for in the Spring of 1969, SDS endorsed
the Panthers as the vanguard of the revolution. This intensified the
factional disputes within the Movement, for PL challenged the desig–
nation, calling any nationalism, Black nationalism or Black Power,
reactionary. SDS's focus on the Panthers had more complicated
effects than simply giving factionalism an outlet. It has undoubtedly
increased the sense in the Movement of a profound polarization
in
society, as it sees growing repression against its allies in the Black
community. At the same time, the Panthers' politics, as the recent
July Conference in Oakland, California against Fascism has shown,
has led
it
to a position which currently sounds more like the Amer-
