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TODD GITLIN
seventies and eighties could begin with considerable advantages. There
are ten years of proximate experience to be explored, codified, and
made generally accessible. There is something of a new political cul–
ture which offers some - not nearly enough - practical models of
radical work, and some protection. There is some awareness of the evils
of male dominance, self-righteousness, encapsulation ("Berkeley is
America"). And with the patent failure of the political system and the
decay of prevailing ideology, radical ideas are coming to have a legit–
imacy in many layers of the society which could encourage imagination
and energy.
There are scattered signs of new possibilities.
If
there is much
despair and self-delusion among radicals there is also something of a
new realism, bubbling beneath the public surface of self-celebratory un–
derground media and extravagant rhetoric. There is not only a modest
upwelling of analysis and self-criticism on the Left, mostly in
Liberation
and in privately circulated papers, but more important, the unavoidable
insistence of the women's movement that a revolutionary movement
cannot be allowed to replicate the pathologies of the larger society. Yet
finally myths persist past their time when they are not supplanted by
more plausible ideas. At the moment, there is no sign of strategy or
actionable political program generally agreed upon. The new awareness
inhabits a political vacuum.
The question is not whether there will be a revolutionary 1984 but
whether there will be a credible mass revolutionary movement, strate–
~ically
located in production, bent on democracy, capable of taking and
remaking power.
If
an unprecedented revolution is not just felt to be nec–
essary for The Others, but for oneself, if it is understood as a process
in which a revolutionary integrates his life, love, and work, without
contempt for others who do not, then the powerful and joyful and
sustaining sense of a movement's self may re-emerge - this time not
as an exclusive identity, defined by moral superiority to The Others,
nor as a Judeo-Christian gift to The Others, but as an I-Thou con–
fluence which defines itself more by inclusion than by exclusion, which
makes it natural if not easy for The Others to feel themselves, and be,
a part of the process of conscious change. A new movement could be
the long-overdue and historically appropriate marriage between socialism
and anarchism, expressing a practical vision of decentral power which
banishes once and for all the powerful ghost of Stalin.
It
could span
an age continuum which gives the young models of useful roles. Such
a movement could make "revolution" more than a rallying cry or a
statement of urgent and inchoate need, but a plausible image of the
