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The Port Huron Statement: Sources and Legacies of the New Left's Founding Manifesto. Edited by Flacks Richard and Lichtenstein Nelson . Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press , 2015. 344p. $49.95.
Review Symposium: The Port Huron Statement and Political Science
In reading this book and re-reading the Port Huron Statement, I am struck by the continuation of a tension between the "micro" of participatory democracy and the "macro" of the big policy battles of then and today. It is a tension that has long divided the left and, indeed, it is a tension that has long been within each of us.
The micro concerns for democratic life at all levels, from the workplace and community life to the national and even international level, expressed in The Port Huron Statement and SDS were important influences in political life of the 1960s and remain so today. They articulated criticism of "bosses," be they of the party, the union, the workplace, or the state. This "bottom up" perspective can be found in discussion of workers control, union rights, safety conditions in the workplace, decentralization of government, and citizen activism in civil society. The macro context had to do with the un-finished New Deal, fulfilling the dreams of a fully developed welfare state: health care, full employment, educational opportunity, and ending apartheid. The concern with macro issues raised questions in the United States about the weakness of the progressive movement at the national level to achieve the goals its European counterparts had achieved by the 1950s.
These debates were very real to me at the time the Port Huron statement emerged. At Oberlin College (1959-1963), I met SDS leader Rennie Davis among other political activists, and felt a lively political culture there. In the summer of 1963, with an internship in Washington, I attended the civil rights march at the Lincoln Memorial and was deeply moved by King's speech. My cousin Helen Garvy was active in SDS and I heard about it from her and other activists. Being a graduate student...