Living Out the Wars of 1968

By Barbara Ehrenreich

It was the best of times or, depending on your political and philosophical outlook, one of the foulest and most depraved. Rebellion seemed to be leaping from city to city, continent to continent, by some fiery process of contagion. Vietnam unleashed the Tet offensive; France shook with the revolutionary "events of May"; radical students filled the streets of Mexico City, Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing, Prague. In the U.S., Chicago swirled into near anarchy as cops battled antiwar demonstrators gathered at the Democratic Convention. And everywhere from Amsterdam to Haight-Ashbury, a generation was getting high, making love, acting up.

So, clearly, it was the year from hell -- a collective "dive into extensive social and personal dysfunction," as the Wall Street Journal editorialized recently. Or, depending again on your outlook, a global breakthrough for the human spirit. On this, the 25th anniversary of 1968, probably the only thing we can all agree on is that '68 marks the beginning of the "culture wars," which have divided America ever since.

It wasn't only a left-right thing. '68 reconfigured all the categories and tore up the political maps that had worked, more or less, since the time of the French Revolution. Yes, the social movements that climaxed in '68 were a "New Left," but only in the sense that, say, Rosemary's Baby (1968) was just a new member of the family. Old leftists -- communists and socialists -- responded to it, more often than not, with revulsion. In France the Communist Party did its best to isolate the young enragees. In China senior party hacks shuddered before a Cultural Revolution whose slogan was "Attack the Party headquarters!" In communist East Germany the Stasi agreed with its Western counterparts that student leader Rudi Dutschke was a "dangerous subversive."

For the old, pre-'68 left, the goal was socialism, meaning a new, more rational system of authority. The mad vagaries of the market would be replaced by the sober deliberations of experts; dedicated, responsible cadres would take over from the CEOs. But if there was one theme that united the New Leftists of the world it was a hatred of authority in any form, no matter how well-meaning. French radicals demanded "All power to the imagination!" Americans in the civil rights movement envisioned -- not socialism -- but a huge, messy, effervescent process of participatory democracy, from the bottom up. "Power to the people" was to be power subtracted from smug men behind desks -- including, among others, Marxist professors.

Grown-up leftists responded by denouncing young radicals as "spoiled children," anarchists, even "orangutans." Horrified by the student take- over of Columbia University in the spring, one band of intellectuals moved en masse to the political right -- where they made their mark as "neoconservatives."

But the other side of '68 was a radical remolding of the American right. The "old right" stood for anti-communism and economic conservatism and had a strong anti-authoritarian streak of its own, as personified, for example, by novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. But in response to the anti-authoritarianism of the young radicals, the right suddenly restyled itself as the defender of authority in all its manifestations -- legal, familial, religious and military. "Traditional values" made their first tentative debut in the '68 Republican campaign, when Spiro Agnew promised to cure social unrest with a mass spanking. It was in '68 that a "New Right" -- toughened with the grass- roots racism of George Wallace, fortified intellectually by the neoconservatives -- emerged to uphold the traditional icons of God, family and flag.

Thus both sides of the "culture wars" of the '80s and '90s took form in the pivotal year of '68. The key issues are different now -- abortion and gay rights, for example, as opposed to Vietnam and racism -- but the underlying themes still echo the clashes of '68: Diversity vs. conformity, tradition vs. iconoclasm, self-expression vs. deference to norms. "Question authority," in other words, vs. "Father knows best."

The 25th anniversary of '68 is a good time to reflect, calmly and philosophically, on these deep, underlying choices. On one hand we know that anti-authoritarianism for its own sake easily degenerates into a rude and unfocused defiance: Revolution, as Abbie Hoffman put it, "for the hell of it." Certainly '68 had its wretched excesses as well as its moments of glory: the personal tragedy of lives undone by drugs and sex, the heavy cost of riots and destruction. One might easily conclude that the ancient rules and hierarchies are there for a reason -- they've worked, more or less, for untold millenniums, so there's no point in changing them now.

But it's also true that what "worked" for thousands of years may not be the best way of doing things. Democracy, after all, was once a far-out, subversive notion, condemned by kings and priests. In our own country, it took all kinds of hell-raising, including a war, to get across the simple notion that no person is morally entitled to own another. One generation's hallowed tradition -- slavery, or the divine right of kings -- may be another generation's object lesson in human folly.

'68 was one more awkward, stumbling, half-step forward in what Dutschke called the "long march" toward human freedom. It helped inspire the worldwide feminist movement and the resistance to communist authoritarianism that climaxed in the vast, peaceful revolutions of '89. For these reasons alone, the rebellions of '68 deserve at least one brief, nonpartisan cheer: Hats off to '68 and -- depending on your personal and political preference -- also shoes, shirts, ties, bras, plus blindfolds and manacles of any kind!