398
WILLIAM PHILLIPS
occupied the buildings of the government and the news media, not
the university of Prague, or P.S. 162.
In general, perhaps an even more important problem
is
that
unless one has some general idea of the kind of society one would
like to see and of the forces working to create it, he tends to go for
any
militant act and
any
radical doctrine, the more militant and
radical the better. The result is to transform a tactic into an end,
converting politics into a game in which the new radicals trump
the old ones. And such a celebration of intransigence, we know,
plays into the hands of those who make more noise and are better
organized. This
is
actually the predicament today of the New Left,
dramatically indicated by the recent split of SDS into two factions,
the PLP hard-liners and the old student softies. In
this
case the
militants are also the more disciplined, more programmatic group, so
the choice narrows down to a return to Stalinization or a continua–
tion of loose, improvised politics.
Two other dilemmas, one involving the generation gap, the
other the question of patriotism, seem to me to be important, too.
For the first time in history the revolutionary movement has been
identified with the youth movement. Again, we can understand the
necessity for such a break with the symbols of the past
in
order to
energize a New Left, and we can only admire the adventurousness
and innocence with which the idea of dissent has been endowed.
But the theoretical and practical consequences of what amounts to
a new class conflict are so enormous they can scarcely be imagined.
The immediate effect is to make politics literary and to create a per–
manent generational revolution in politics as well as
art.
In the
past, art and politics have been distinct: new art movements have
been generational and youthful, announcing their aims in the form
of arrogant and defiant gestures, while political movements,
indif–
ferent to age or style, have spoken in the name of society as a
whole. Today, however, the new politics is creating a situation
in
which political thinkers, like writers, are swept aside by the younger
rebels as soon as they mature. No wonder Marcuse can't compete
with Che. And, only in this situation could someone like Eldridge
Cleaver, for instance, who is really a gifted and courageous writer,
be elevated into a political theorist.
The feeling of disaffection from America, particularly by Amer-
