PARTISAN REVIEW
99
In the halcyon days of the movement, however, the necessity of
praxis
always included respect for its theoretical dimension. In 1967,
Marcuse was able to write, "today a turn toward theory can be ob–
served among the opposition, which is especially important in that the
New Left ... began with a total suspicion of ideology." Most influen–
tial in this regard was, of course, the war in Vietnam, which led to a
general reassessment of the conventional wisdom of the Cold War years
about the dangers of speculative thought. What in the fifties had been
too swiftly dismissed as ideological mystification enjoyed a renaissance
as critical social theory. In some cases, of course, this meant little more
than a dusting off of the stale cliches of an even earlier period (one is
reminded of William Phillips's remark that he couldn't respond to some
new leftists because their arguments were so old he had forgotten the
answers). But for others- Marcuse, Carl Oglesby, Tom Hayden on
occasions, non-Americans like Ernest Mandel, Serge Mallet and Tom
Nairn, to mention a few - it led to a sensitive application of theoretic
insights to contemporary realities. And what was equally important, it
resulted in an increasing awareness of the interrelationship between
thought and action. "The unity of theory and
praxis"
became one of
the central phrases in the vocabulary of the New Left.
With the new terrorism, however, all this has changed. In an article
appearing in the
Harvard Crim.son
in late '69, an undergraduate named
Richard Hyland attempted a defense of terrorism. He began by paying
the required lip service to the necessity of theory: "The point is that
modern philosophy, maybe since Marx, has taught us the necessary cor–
relation between theory and practice. You don't really believe something
unless you are acting for it." But in the course of the essay, Hyland
demonstrated how far he had departed from "modern philosophy, may–
be since Marx." "Arguments based on ' reason," he wrote, "and the
valid laws of discourse can prove anything within their system. It is
the feeling I have in my stomach against the war that matters. Any
argument in favor of it does not. . . . Rationality binds the mind and
restricts the soul. It might even destroy the brain cells. We need to be
liberated. We should be constrained no longer by possible rational con–
sequences." Politics is thus aestheticized, separating feelings from rational
considerations.
Of course, some of the terrorists claim to be operating according
to a theoretical critique of current conditions. But their estimate of the
contemporary scene is not convincing. For the most part, the terrorists
seem to follow the Weatherman line with its scornful dismissal of the
American working class as irretrivably co-opted by the fruits of im–
perialism. In so doing, it should be added, they distinguish themselves
from the Russian prototypes with whom they are so often compared.
