The New Left

If forced to date the inception of the “New Left”; the anti-war/student-power/counterculture wave of the 1960s and 70s, historians tend to point to June 15th, 1962 and the Port Huron Statement. Drafted largely by Tom Hayden, the statement was ratified by about sixty students meeting in Port Huron, Michigan. “Filtered through the experience of the civil rights movement and reborn as a critique of a militarized, bureaucratic society and the organized man,” about sixty students, many attending the University of Michigan, met with the intention of chartering an offshoot of the socialist League for Industrial Democracy, another left-wing activist group whose origins dated back to the turn of the century (Foner 289).

Hayden's statement consecrated the Students for Democratic Society, and more generally “captured the mood and summarized the beliefs of this generation of student protesters” (ibid). In it, Hayden wrote about seeking “the establishment of a democracy of individual participation, governed by two central aims – that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence in men that provides the media for their common participation” (quoted in Foner 289) To achieve this, Foner continues, “the document called for the creation of a new left,” – 'a left with real intellectual skills,' in Hayden's words, made of “younger people who had come of age in the post war mold” (ibid).

Part of the reason why Hayden and those like him saw students as the saviors of America's left was in part because the traditional pillars of the left's constituency – the urban, industrial proletariat – was no longer viewed as sufficiently radical. This notion of authenticity is recurrent in liberal revolutionary political thought.

For example, because of the labor movement's success, such as mandatory work week lengths, basic safety requirements and other amenities we now take for granted, now made white workers as port of 'the system. As a result, only “the outcasts and outsiders,” the populations of unemployed, minorities and the young possessed the true revolutionary bonafides necessary for social change.

Yet a simultaneously theoretical yet deeply practical question posed on the New Left movement was; how are college students, easily more comfortable and privileged than most Americans, supposed to spearhead a subversive revolution? How, or why, would those most benefiting from the status quo then seek to abolish it? This incongruity was no lost on many new activists:

“Students are being oppressed? Bullshit,” wryly comments SDS member Carl Davidson, “We are being trained to be oppressors and the underlings of oppressors. Only the moral among us are being hurt. Even then, the damage is only done to our sensitivities. Most of us don't know the meaning of a hard day's work” (quoted in Schwartz 7, emphasis mine)

Against this relative comfort of the university life, the SDS organizers created a shift in revolutionary focus. “Instead of material deprivation, class conflict, and social citizenship, students spoke of loneliness, isolate and alienation, of powerlessness in the face of bureaucratic institutions, of a hunger for authenticity that affluence could not sate” (Foner 287-288). Hayden and others carrying the 'New Left' banner hoped to realize the revolutionary rhetoric they espoused by arguing that the student-power movement should not be concerned with simple goal or the procurement of material benefits; examples of such practical demands include better student-to-teacher ratios, higher levels of tuition aid or more representation on university boards.

Hayden and his cohorts were aiming to attack the deeper structures of American's educational system itself. This attack was in many ways focused on changing the way politics was thought about and experienced, through the process of 'prefigurative politics' and 'participatory democracy.' These two themes are essential for an analysis of MassPIRG, it's recruitment model, and the student experience. The New Left's student activists accused mainstream American politics as being fundamentally undemocratic, arguing that their new form of political experience was the only alleviation: prefigurative politics and participatory democracy. Both of these ideas, while never authoritatively defined, ultimately were attempts to articulate the idea of individual power to participate in the decision that shaped ones life.

Prefigurative Politics

The practice of prefigurative politics meant to be “deeply connected with ends,” explains activists Cynthia Kaufman. “It is crucial for people in a social justice movement to treat one another with respect and care. In prefigurative movements, we are reweaving the social fabric,” (278). By exemplifying political ideals through personal action, the practice of prefigurative politics, activists hoped to “act right now as if we were living in the better world we are fighting for” (ibid). From the perspective of a social change activists, this is an intuitive idea. Lobbing criticisms of the status quo can only take a movement so far; comporting yourself to the idea you espouse can in many ways be a form of argument, using your own self as an example to illustrate a political ideal.

The basis of prefigurative politics created an emphasis on authenticity which was integral to the vocabulary of the New Left's activism, and carries to this day in student activist groups such as MassPIRG. For many students, this is a refreshing contrast to the general competitiveness of academic life. For example, one student leader in the UMass-Amherst chapter explained to me she joined, and enjoyed the recruitment process because "If you wanted an internship, you could have one. If you wanted to be a part if this you could do it. There was no competition for anything. Everyone was accepted, which was nice” (Alexa, 3:25-3:45). By accepting all willing applicants, MassPIRG helps demonstrative the social justice politics it advocates.

Participatory Democracy
The second important theme of the first-wave student-activism movement was notion of legitimacy through the full participation of citizens in a democratic process, termed 'participatory democracy'. The ideal of participatory democracy was (again) best articulated by Tom Hayden in his remarks at Port Huron before the statement's adoption. Freedom,” Hayden said, “is more than the absence of arbitrary restrictions on personal development.” Rather, it implied an individual ability to determine the factors that shaped their life (quoted Foner 289-90). However, in contrast with the ideals of prefigurative politics, participatory democracy was “never defined with any precision," and in many ways the ideal of participatory democracy was often used in the context of expressing the prefigurative political ideal on an institutional scale (Foner 271). What is meant by this, is that the decision making process of whole institutions (such as universities), should seek the participation of all pertinent members.

Yet how institution's could craft such a structure of decision making, outside of pure peblicites, was “never defined with any precision" (271). As such, the term was mostly “a critique of the undemocratic features of American Life," while participatory democracy "served as a blueprint" (ibid). The phrase “soon became a standard but which existing social arrangements – workplaces, schools, government, political parties and organizations of the Old Left – were judged and founding wanting” (289). In contrast, the new structures and institutions built in the New Left's participatory ideal, would imply organizations that better channeled the participation if its members; or, in the words of Kaufman, act as “vehicles for the expression of the people involved” (271).

It is hard to overstate how important this notion of participation and legitimacy has on current student power groups. For example, MassPIRG itself internalized this ideal, writing in their Board of Directors Manual:

Rarely will the Board move forward on an idea if it doesn't already have
organizational consensus. When a decision needs to be made by the Board, the Board
generally asks the chapters to discuss the issue in advance. Ideally, chapters are able to reach consensus on a decision in advance, so that the Board’s decision feels more like a “rubber stamp" (3, emphasis mine)

More importantly, students interviewed often expressed their ideal student organization similar participatory terms. One former campaign coordinator felt that "students [should be allowed] to come up with things on their own, completely from scratch," and that "people would have more power if they were able to figure things out on their own" (Nicole, 18:35-20:00). Similarly, a former intern expressed satisfaction with her work in a student run business because of how participatory it was; stating that:

[Working in a student run business was] interesting, especially because you also have to work with other students who are also on the same level, and when you communicate and figure out how to run the businesses, you're looking at other people to help you out...[it] was a communal feel of individual people taking on equal responsibility (Katherine, 16:45-18:08)

Vietnam
Earlier in this paper, the date of June 15th, 1962 was pointed to as the origins of the New Left , and more broadly the student power movement. This was not meant to mislead the reader with an impression that the origins of 1960s and 70s tumult, in all of its amorphous and eclectic facets, could be pin pointed on one date. The deeper fault lines that defined the contours of the New/Old Left split presaged Tom Hayden's activist manifesto, namely: the Cold War and Vietnam.

Hayden's ideal of a mass, student-led movement that not only instigated subversive action, but redefined how activists perceived their organization, would not have caught on the way it did by itself. As with any campaign or movement, there needs to be a organizing point, a fundamental issues that facilitates cross-cutting associations. For students in the 1960s and 70s, that issues was Vietnam.

This is important because both Vietnam specifically and the Cold War in general served as the as a “perfect antithesis to participatory democracy,” explains Eric Foner, “since American involvement had come through stealth, lives and elite decision – making with no semblance of public discourse (292). More to the point, these two events are what provided students the central rallying point, for a mass-movement, and the the underlying organizing principle in which “doubts, disillusionments, and hidden discontents now coalesced,” writes Eric Foner, who continues. “More than any other issue … what transformed student protest into a full-fledged generational rebellion was the war in Vietnam” (290 emphasis mine).

The themes of prefigurative politics, participatory democracy and the organizing principles of the Cold War all have direct effects on how MassPIRG is organized, the language its staff uses, and the experience students have when they are recruited. Armed with this understanding, we can no turn to the history of MassPIRG itself.