Democracy is in the Streets
From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago

Miller, James

Publisher:  Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, New York
Year Published:  1987   First Published:  1987
Pages:  431pp   Price:  $9.95   ISBN:  0-671-66235-X
Library of Congress Number:  HN90.R3M47 1987   Dewey:  378'.1981
Resource Type:  Book
Cx Number:  CX3754



Abstract:  James Miller presents a thoughtful and evocative history of the American New Left in the 1960's, looking critically but sympathetically at the struggles and passions of that period. Among the most valuable parts of the book is Miller's detailed description of the organizing efforts of the early New Left, on the campuses, in the anti-war movement, and in the cities. A central theme of the book is "participatory democracy", with the different interpretations that came to be given to that term. To one leading activist, it meant "number one, action; we believed in action. ... Active participation. Citizenship. Making history." To another, it "meant an exciting transformation of the meaning of socialism. Not just that it was another code word for socialism, it meant redefining the socialist tradition in terms of the democratic content of it. It meant extending principles of democracy from the political sphere to other institutions, like industry, like the university." Miller writes that "the meanings of participatory democracy multiplied. By 1964, it had indeed come to mean for many activists rule by consensus; by 1965, it was being widely discussed as a radical alternative to representative institutions."

In looking at the failings of the sixties New Left, Miller quotes Richard Flacks, who believes that the New Left ultimately disintegrated as a coherent force because of its inability to extend its middle-class base, its preoccupation with immediate "revolutionary apocalypse" rather than long-term organizing, its failure to develop a durable organizational structure. Flacks, still an activist, also wryly comments that "It seemed perfectly natural at that time that we'd know better than these old people. After all, they'd failed. It was obvious. And it somehow seemed intuitively right that if you were younger, you know more than people who were older. Now that I'm older, I think that it's absurd."

Miller documents the lasting legacies of the New Left, including the role it played in the development of the modern women's movement, and concludes that there is still a great deal we can learn from the New Left experience.

[Abstract by Ulli Diemer]

Subject Headings

• Activism/Radicalism
• New Left
• Sixties
• U.S. History