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lent radical left to left-liberalism. The much-praised idealism and
moralism of the new left was the source of the push toward violence.
If
American society was so hopelessly repressive, how could pallia–
tives suffice?
The results of the 1968 convention are well known. The Pro–
gressive Labor Party was expelled, and SDS became "better, smaller
but better." After a meeting in Cleveland in August of that summer,
Weatherman became explicit about its intention to form an armed
underground, for which several "days of rage" in Chicago in October
1969 were to be a preparatory step. A friend-who in the early sev–
enties became a vice president in a Hollywood movie company and
is now, I'm told, one of Hollywood's most powerful and wealthiest
executives-kept urging me to accept the Weatherman position and
then to join after the Cleveland meeting. The revolution was begin–
ning, he said. The movement was over. Private life, family, children,
and career would have to wait . At times he said the conditions for
revolution were ripe, at others that fascism was around the corner
and we had to prepare ourselves for the coming clash.
At the end of the summer in 1969, I returned from a trip home
to find that my friend the Hollywood executive-to-be had invited the
New York "Weather collective ," composed mostly of Columbia SDS ,
to stay in our apartment. Thirty people were lying on the floor,
I
"smashing monogamy" in between chants of "pick, pick, pick up the
It.
gun, the revolution has begun." One fellow was torn: how could he
join Weatherman and continue in psychoanalysis? A woman was
yelling at her older brother on the phone: "What do you mean, you
can't give me $10,000? I know Daddy put five times that much in
your trust fund." A Marcusian intellectual who'd written a pamphlet
called "Consumption: Domestic Imperialism" insisted that Weather-
man followed from the analysis in
One-Dimensional Man.
Several people
had returned from a summer trip to Havana where they had "talked
with the Vietnamese" who had urged them to "open up a front in the
United States." I left to go to graduate school. My friends denounced
me as a "wimp," and I felt miserable, convinced that they really were
going to accomplish something and that I had chickened out at the
decisive moment .
Soon after, in May 1970, the invasion of Cambodia and the
shootings at Kent State and Jackson State once again brought our
apocalyptic visions to a fever pitch. My last political meeting in a
new left organization was in May when I gathered with the members
of a Black Panther "support group" called the December 4th Move-
