The word about the new SDS campus groups is rapidly being bounced around cyberspace.

I had offered to lend a hand, and Paul Buhle, an old SDSer and historian of the Wobblies, is much more involved. Among many other things, he is working on a Comix history of the 1960s new left. Here's a recent exchange between us to get the flavor of things:

Paul Buhle wrote on 1/19/2006:

Carl, just encourage good olditmers to rejoin,and young folks to join.

They'll all decide what needs to happen after that.

Just one point and I won't thump it too hard. You and Greg Calvert embodied as well as articulated the Last New Good Ideas. After that, they didn't materialize (NWC theory, PRAXIS one-shot tabloid) or turned out dreadful. The distinction of RADICAL AMERICA, CLR James apart or not apart, is that the magazine tried to carry that new idea forward for another generation. I left it in 1973, of course.

Reply from Carl:

Hi Paul

The word is already spreading -- and now that Portside, with 20,000 readers, posted the release, it'll reach most places.

I've been pulling together old writings for a separate project of mine, and was up to the Wisconsin historical society. I've got Greg Calvert's 'In White America' speech and Mike Klonsky's original, 'Towards a Revolutionary Youth Movement,' both very good, but I need to digitize them. I had also already digitized the original 'White Blindspot' papers, the Ted Allen / Noel Ignatin critique of PLP, for a study group of young people here. It's the mother lode of all the 'whiteness' studies popping up everywhere.

Most important, though, through Bob Gottlieb, I've got a full xerox copy of the original 'Port Authority Statement,' actually titled 'Toward a Theory of Social Change,' where we, the 'Praxis Axis,' launched the 'new working class' line. It's still very impressive. Bob found it in a dusty file cabinet, after some prodding from me. It's amazing how on target it was, and how it forecast the future. You know, only the first third of it was published in New Left Notes, when the factional struggle stopped the whole thing from seeing the light of day, except in photocopies passed around. It's long and not easily scanned, so it will take a while for retyping.

To succeed, I think the new bunch will have to keep a tight reign on nostalgia. One key to our success was that our views were so generational. This generation will have to find its own voice as well.

But nonetheless, if they ever set up in Chicago, I've still got one of the original -- weatherbeaten but still solid -- old oak chairs, that I rescued through Johnny Rossen, our old landlord, from our last office at 1608 W Madison, just in case we ever had to set up the NO again!

Keep on Keepin' On...

Carl

Reply from Paul:

I had thought the whole PA Statement was that NLN essay, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one. The loss, in one way or another, of that intellectual tendency was just tragic.

Reply from Carl

No, only the first section. I had forgotten there was more to it, too.

I've often pondered what caused us to set aside or drop that perspective so rapidly. I decided it was the Year 1968, when the world burst aflame, especially after the King and Robert Kennedy assassinations, and the Black Revolt. A tank sitting outside your headquarters with guns pointed at you has a way of diverting your attention.

The Black revolt shifted our debate from matters of class to matters of nationality, connected through the Vietnamese to national liberation, where Lenin, Stalin and Mao then rose to the top of our study groups, replacing Serge Mallet, Angre Gorz and Marcuse. In brief, when over 100 cities were experiencing the Black revolt, French neoMarxism didn't seem all that relevant at the time, even though our take on it held up over the long haul.

Tragic is a good word.

Reply from Paul:

Amen to this. And so it shall be recorded. In comic form!