Freedom Socialist • Vol. 28, No. 5 • October-November 2007

SOAPBOX

Crossing the age divide with radical politics

by Guerry Hoddersen

Guerry Hoddersen

Ever dream you’re bowling alone? It’s just you and that long lane with the pins at the end. The bowling alley is full of people — but none of them are in teams.

Welcome to the 21st century where belonging to organizations, even bowling leagues, is out.

Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist, examined the abrupt decline in membership of U.S. social and civic groups in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. While Putnam’s analysis and proposed remedies provide much to argue with, his description of the problem reverberates with me, a Bolshevik Baby Boomer.

After dedicating my adult life to radical politics, I’m looking for young people to step forward and sign up for the revolution. A reasonable expectation, yes? After all, when I was in my 20s, I did it.

Of course, I was lucky. I was one of a number of young people who met up in the anti-Vietnam War era with an older generation of rebels in the Freedom Socialist Party. FSP pioneers Clara Fraser, Gloria Martin and Melba Windoffer convinced us that going it alone was a dead end if we wanted to fight effectively.

Now that I’m 60-something, I realize how lucky they were, too. A young, New Left, anarchist-leaning generation stepped up to join their tiny, women-led party that proudly claimed the mantle of Marxists like Leon Trotsky and feminists like Crystal Eastman.

It was not all smooth sailing. We gave the veterans a lot of headaches while learning the ropes in our unions and the mass movements. What mattered, though, was that we joined. We learned as we went along and in time we created something of worth.

Today the party looks much different than it did then. It’s an institution, god forbid; I’m sure to some it appears to have a life force all its own. But nothing could be further from the truth. Without young folks signing up, the party is a goner. In fact, it’s a damn miracle we’ve made it this far in the Land of the Bushites and the Clintonista Demagogues Party.

Why is organizational membership declining everywhere? Putnam identifies the watershed period as the 1970s. From my perspective, that decade marked the ebbing of the revolutionary struggles of African Americans and other people of color as well as the anti-war movement. By the end of the decade, the movements of Native Americans, women, and gays and lesbians also had subsided.

Government-instigated murders and the COINTELPRO dirty tricks of the FBI derailed some organizations. Others were bought off. But the bigger war was cultural.

The “Me Decade,” it was called. Failing to make a revolution, my generation turned inward and settled for remaking ourselves. Self-help became a multibillion-dollar industry as Madison Avenue sold us on the need to transform everything about our lives except our economic and political system.

In a relentless search for new markets, advertisers, with the help of demographers, created one cutesy-named “generation” after another: the Boomers, Generation Jones, the Gen-Xers, Generation Y or the Millennials, Generation Z.

Along with the fancy nomenclature came generational warfare. “Don’t trust the old farts” has practically become a national rallying call.

What makes the FSP unique is that we rejected that baloney along with the narcissistic belief that our generation (whichever one that might be) has got the corner on cool and relevant. For us, it’s class, baby, not age.

Where else can you find an organization with an active membership born between 1926 and 1982? By active, I mean they serve together on the same committees, walk the same picket lines, and tell it like they see it to each other. In other countries where the generational divide is less acute, this might be nothing special. In the U.S. it is remarkable.

Youth always feels that it is anointed to remake the world because an older generation has failed. And this is wonderful because it means that the young are a powerful force for social change. However, if young people buy into Madison Avenue’s hard sell and substitute loyalty to an age group for a program based on class allegiance, their anti-establishment coloration will fade as rapidly as the Boomers’ did.

Hyping age differences is just another cheap divide-and-conquer ploy of the ruling class. It is suicidal to ignore the experience of older generations (see today’s Socialist Workers Party). As author and psychiatrist Robert Coles has pointed out, “The past is the ground on which we walk.”

So if you are tired of bowling alone, please sign this dotted line ....................................... and get in touch with me ASAP. And your age is not an issue!  

FSP International Secretary Guerry Hoddersen can be taken up on her invitation at guerryh@mindspring.com.