I WROTE in an earlier chapter that political life is different in different geographic and social locations, in different parts of the country, in different parts of the city. It also changes, obviously, from one historical moment to another. Politics is sometimes interesting, urgent, dangerous; more often, in any decent society, it is none of those things. The judgments we make of these different moments are bound to be ambiguous, and not only because some people flourish amidst urgency and danger, while others feel the full impact of the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times! A quiet and routine politics often conceals injustice and oppression, while “interesting times” are moments not only of risk but also of opportunity—for mobilization, revolt, social change. And citizen politics is one of the most important ways in which opportunity can be seized.
We are cursed and blessed with “interesting times.” The struggle for racial equality and the struggle against the Vietnam War have mobilized large numbers of previously passive citizens, but they have also sharply divided the country, strained its political institutions, generated sporadic and increasingly serious violence. Doubtless the causes for all this lie deeper than the immediate issues suggest, though it is difficult to overestimate the extent to which the Vietnam War especially is a national disaster (and a disaster perpetrated, it should be remembered, by professionals and experts). But that is not the whole story of our troubles. The political moments of peace and equality have coincided with a more profound crisis.
In the United States today, a society whose government and economy have been progressively removed from the effective control of its citizens, or whose citizens feel themselves to be powerless and disorganized, suddenly faces a series of revolts. These are spurred by real injustices, but are not necessarily dependent on injustice for their energy and force. Very often the revolts don’t have an obvious terminating point or a clear political character. Reflecting as much the general crisis as the concrete necessities of any particular cause, citizen politics has taken on the most inchoate forms, failing to achieve either national leadership or collective discipline, generating a kind of random militancy. The causes for which activists are recruited are not always the reasons, or the most important reasons, for their activities.
Nothing has a more disorienting effect upon political action than the sense of powerlessness—except, perhaps, powerlessness itself. It produces what might best be called political promiscuity, a feeling that anything goes, a desperate search for immediate if superficial effects because real effects are by definition beyond reach. And since the most desirable immediate effects are those of extremity and outrage, it produces at the same time a steady escalation toward revolutionary struggle (or, at least, revolutionary rhetoric)—as if powerlessness, which can’t be overcome by increments and stages, might be transformed in one unexpected stroke. This whole style of citizen activism appeals most of all, I think, to new activists, whose escape from one or another passive role is most recent and whose sense of political possibility is barely developed. It does not serve the cause, whatever the cause is: instead, it invites the defeat and repression for which it is also a subtle kind of psychic preparation. What can the powerless hope for except defeat?
Citizen politics is not easy in the United States today; it would be foolish to pretend that it is, or to hold before the eyes of new activists the formal model of a democratic system. In almost every area of social life they are certain to encounter entrenched and efficient bureaucracies which evade, resist, wear down, or simply absorb the force of their protest. The decline of political parties and of legislative authority has clearly reduced the accessibility of the political system and made the work of newly activated citizens much harder than it once was. Nevertheless, there is abundant evidence to suggest that access is still possible and that bureaucracies can be pushed this way or that (even when they can’t be seized and transformed).
A citizens’ movement, carefully organized, intelligently led, can win important victories, on both the local and national levels, short of Total Victory. Both the civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1960’s, and the peace movement too, had significant effects on American politics. They reached new constituencies, forced professional politicians to pay attention, built up local power bases, won changes in executive policies and bureaucratic procedures. These (small) victories ought to have been more heartening than they were, and might have been followed up in more successful ways, had there existed a larger number of activists scornful of apocalyptic talk and ready for the risks and sacrifices of an ongoing politics.
What would that look like? Why is that so hard? It requires self-control and organizational discipline, for one thing, and then the acting out of the kind of politics I have tried to describe, where every step is measured and pleasure is rarely immediate or ecstatic. It requires activists to live with and make compromises with men and women whose opinions they abhor, for no other reason than that these men and women are (temporarily perhaps) more powerful, or more numerous, or simply because they are there. An ongoing politics is not one whose participants can possibly hope to deliver “all power to the people” tomorrow or next month. For they represent only some of the people and must hope to win what they can win: a little more power for this or that newly organized group. And that is only possible if they work at it long and hard enough. . . .
Right now it is important to work at it long and hard. The causes for the sake of which so many of us enlisted are serious enough, but the dangers of defeat once the battle has been joined, as it has been joined in the United States today, are more serious still. It has been joined, in part, by young militants without a community base or a coherent strategy; by sectarian ideologues even more out of touch but with an all-too-coherent strategy; by isolated terrorists insanely committed to the efficacy of The Act, responsible to no one. Without the long-term activism of adult citizens, the central political movements of our time belong to them. And there is nothing more certain than that the revolution of their heated fantasies will end in a brutal and squalid repression, a bitter defeat not only for them.
The militants, sectarians, and terrorists regard themselves as the vanguard of the people; perhaps so, but they are a lost vanguard, and it is not even remotely likely that the people, whoever they are, will follow. The real question is whether citizen activists can find another way. Surely there are many thousands of Americans who will join them if they can, forging a political movement that is committed but also sane and steady in the pursuit of its goals and that makes itself an instrument as well as a symbol of democratic possibility. Nor is there any reason to think that these Americans are less fervent than those who have marched away with the lost vanguard. They are, perhaps, more modest—as befits participants in a citizens’ movement. And many of them probably look forward to a time when political action is not so urgent as it is today. They are not the sort of people who will ever win glory. But no one else can carry us forward to a society less oppressive, less unjust, more routinely democratic than the one we have now.