[Marxism] the sixties

[Bradley Bauerly]

Walter, I am in my early 30's.  Sure some people got radicalized but most got swept up in the moment and eventually ended up back were they first started or worse.  There are radicalizing moments in each generation, the fact that the cohort was larger during the babyboomer radicalization does not mean that it was a sign of a significant revolutionary era.  

As for my attitude toward revolutionary movements, I would argue that the anti-globalization moment brought us much closer to a world wide anti-capitalist revolution than the sixties did.  Now of course one can not abstract the 90's from history, so the 60's did play a part in building toward the 90's and whatever else is coming around the corner.  Isn't that the point, that the 60's and the 30's before it and the 90's are all part of a building process based on a critique of capitalist systems of domination.  

I do see a problem with movements that seem to only deal with conjuctural issues as they arrive, they tend to miss out on the longterm, or systemic openings by dealing too narrowly with current issues.  The 60's and the 90's are no exception.  

Joquin, so anyone who does not hold the 60's up as the epitome of revolutionary decades is somehow a rightwinger?  Is it possible to be interested in the topics posed on a marxism list and not think too highly of the babyboomer generation in aggregate?  Seems to be a typical selfindulgent 60's generation attitude.  As if the world revolves around that generation and only those born and/or radicalized by it are decent marxists.  

My analysis of the self centered nature of the babyboomers has nothing to do with rightwing ideology.  It is based on my own personal living and on simply looking around.  If one looks at what the sixties has brough us, besides the civil rights movement which I will grant you is a positive step, the aggragate is simple horrible.  The babyboomers are now the most ecologically damaging generation to ever live, capitalism is now stronger than ever and was allowed to commodify forms of creativity- art, music, clothing styles- and spread into new realms.  The babyboomer generation did not simply stop impacting the world in 1968 as some would like to think, it is still impacting the world and I am just saying on balance it is a negative impact. 

Jeffery, this is precisely my point; to aggrandize the sixties to and to attempt to always compare any movement to the glory days of the sixties is to let 'history and tradition weigh like a nightmare on the present', rather than to see it as a building block.  Which does not mean that as soon as the babyboomers stopped being radical, and most did, that they are then exempt from critique by leftists.