Re: what the masses do

The Weather(men)(Underground) were UTTERLY irrelevant in building the
movement. They had a very tiny base. The only reason why any of us have
heard of them is because: 1) some of them blew themselves up in a New York
apartment; and 2) the media, which LOVED to report on their antics. Some of
them went "underground" for years in order to avoid "misdemeanors", but
going underground put them on the FBI list.

The "Yippies" were utter clowns, but they were very well known, and many
people thought that they were cute and funny, but they did not have a
serious following among more than perhaps a few thousand.  Whether a song
"captures a mood" is data, of a sort, but it's not much data. There are too
many other factors between the beliefs of the majority of protestors and
hearing a song thirty years later. It's important to consider whether the
"data" is convincing you, or whether it is confirming what you already were
leaning towards. (No offense intended, of course; it's a question we all
must ask of ourselves to avoid dogmatism.)

Actually, the counter-culturalists and the more focused political types were
MORE in unity through most of the 1960's. The mass infusion of drugs on the
campuses in 1968-1969 combined with Woodstock, etc. and the fact that major
sections of the capitalist class decided to "give in" to some of the
counter-cultural stuff (movies/ media giving more favorable impressions of
some counter-culturalists; long hair allowed in school, etc. etc.) caused
more of a split between the more focused anti-capitalists and the
counter-culturalists. Of course, if you went a a march in Washington of
perhaps 500,000, or a smaller city protest of 2,000, or a campus protest of
200, the great majority were NEITHER deeply committed anti-capitalist
political types NOR counter-culturalists. They were just normal college
students and others who wanted the U.S. to stop the killing in Vietnam.

Alan Spector

P.S. -- Some of the songs that were most popular among "protestors" were
early Dylan, but not much after 1967 although musically he was still very
popular, lots of Phil Ochs, especially "Draft Dodger Rag", and that
particular favorite: Country Joe and the Fish "Fixin' to Die Rag", which
combined politics with "counterculture". The Rolling Stones: "I am waiting"
(or something like that) and "Satisfaction" and "Street Fighting Man",
(which was supposedly written as a response to the Beatles' "Love" themes)
were also popular, as was a lot of Motown, especially "Dancing in the
Streets" which was NOT written as a song about revolution, but became such,.
"Bad Moon Rising" also had a double meaning. The Airplane was very popular
as "countercultural" but there really was no one song that captured the
mood. The term "militant counter culture mood" is something of an "oxymoron"
since much of the counter-culture was diverted into passivity rather than
rebellion against the system.

=============================
 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard N Hutchinson" <rhutchin@U.Arizona.EDU>
To: "Alan Spector" <spectors@netnitco.net>
Cc: "World Systems Listserv" <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2001 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: what the masses do


> Alan and all:
>
> Alan, you may be right -- I was too young (I didn't turn 18 until the end
> of 1974, though I did sweat the restart of the lottery for a time, and was
> assigned a number which would have put me first in line) and thus have no
> first-hand evidence.
>
> But my sense, based on analysis of plenty of secondary sources, is that in
> the post-68 period, peaking with the May 1970 nationwide student strike in
> response to the invasion of Cambodia, the earlier core of politically
> conscious activists was swamped by a massive influx of much less overtly
> leftist "activists," who were more countercultural in their overall
> inclinations.  The Yippies and Weathermen certainly acted on this
perception.
>
> George Katsiaficas (who was a participant) is quite good on this in his
> "The Imagination of the New Left," which was published by South End Press
> in 1987, and personally I think some of the music of the Jefferson
> Airplane and Quicksilver (especially "What About Me?") captures the
> militant counterculture mood.
>
> RH
>
>