Other
characteristics Taibbi sees in today's radicals are a lack of
humor and a kind of lustful demand for decency and literalness.
Of course, Taibbi is exaggerating. The seventies'
continuation of the sixties' revolt certainly had no shortage
of puritanical
condemnations of other people's immorality. But surely
there are fewer carrots today, and more whips?
In part, it may
have to do with the fact that the sixties were
the height of a boom. Everyone believed that the road to
paradise was laid out and the goal would be reached in no time.
The conditions
for rebellion were also favorable – the colonial
powers had fallen, the new Fordist production technology
had made strikes
easily organized and the ruling class looked weak. Optimism
prevailed.
Which can be contrasted with the pessimism of
today, when no one can see any end to the Atlantic world's
austerity
dictatorship
and increasing inequality tyranny.
And it is also not possible to only see the permissive
culture of the sixties as exemplary. Because surely there
is a lot in
neoliberalism that is about everything being allowed for
those who have money?
But the difference between joyfully
permissive movements of the sixties and moralistic movements
of the twenties
probably goes
deeper than that. For centuries, there have been two popular
movement traditions which are sometimes mixed - with successful
results
- but which sometimes rush at each one separately, which
is not always so successful.
One tradition could be called
the republican one, with roots in the peasant and artisan revolts
of the Middle
Ages that reached
their apotheosis in the French Revolution. The other could
be called
the evangelical, with roots in the anti-clerical movements
of the Middle Ages that found their outlets in the Reformation
and
the
English Revolution and its continuation in the American.
The essence of the republican movement is that "we
are the people and we are right". The core of the
evangelical movement is "bearing
witness against sin" and individual perfectionism.
These
two currents have continued to exert influence within various
movements. The republican current has been strong in labor movements
and the national movements of the Atlantic world. The evangelical
has – for historical reasons – been strong within
the movements that originated in the Anglo-Saxon area, e.g. the
Atlantic world's environmental movements, peace movements and
women's movements.
In Asia and Africa the situation is a little
different.
Sometimes, as I said, the currents have been able
to mix, with brilliant results. A prime example is the Nordic
folk high
school whose core could be formulated as "we are
the people and we must perfect ourselves to take them on".
In the sixties, the labor movement was strong,
and with it popular self-assertion. Since then, the labor movement
has
been pushed back, or perhaps one should say drowned. Instead,
the evangelical trend's moralism and demands for individual
perfectionism have come to the fore.
This is, of course,
tragic. Nobody likes perfectionists and doctrinaires. Opponents
of environmental movements,
women's
movements and peace movements have much to gain by mobilizing
against their moralism and complacency. A dose of republicanism
and populism is needed if some victories are to be achieved.
