Reviews for Submarines, Technology, and History

The average rating for Submarines, Technology, and History based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-04-14 00:00:00 Eric Berg One of the better analyses of SDS/The New Left written by the former National Secretary Greg Calvert and his partner Carol Neiman in 1971. Their focus is on dissecting the destructive pathos of Marxism-Leninism which the authors see as having corrupted and finally broken apart SDS and the New Left through a storm of Old Left ideological posturing, mistaken guerrilla tactics, and primacy on self-denial and self-repression. To counter this, the authors argue, the left of the future, and particularly the young and campus-based left, must rediscover the ethics of community-building, self-expression, and decentralized and democratic decision-making. They include an analysis of post-war industrial capitalism (the "new" capitalism) and how the political landscape has significantly transformed, so that our revolutionary strategy can be relevant to our context, and the people we are trying to organize. A worthwhile read and certainly a helpful contribution for student/youth organizers, with the new SDS or otherwise, building a new "student syndicalism". Here's a passage I liked: pg. 160-1 - "One of the most important ways that a movement can help people find a way out of their isolation and alienation is to provide the means for them to express what they feel. Unless that happens, unless people are able to integrate their feelings and experience and find ways to build community together, then one form of alienation is simply substituted for another. The movement becomes a mirror image of the society, where people are excluded from the action because they don't know the 'right' words; because they don't have the expertise. There was a time in the New Left when people were listened to because they talked about their experiences and what they had learned from them. Anyone who tried to launch into a long, abstract speech was asked how that related to his or her concrete experience, and if no answer to that question was forthcoming, the speech-maker was politely disregarded. During the 1966 SDS Convention in Clear Lake, Iowa, a group of young people came from a nearby small town, with the intention of throwing rocks and bottles at the 'communists." They arrived at the convention hall during a particularly dull session of debate over agenda, and a good portion of the delegates inside, mostly from what was known as the 'Prairie Power-Texas Anarchist Caucus,' left the hall to go talk to the visitors. The remaining delegates shouted that the 'important political decisions' were being made and berated those who were leaving for their lack of seriousness. On the way out, someone replied, 'Talking to these people is politics, not debating about a lot of paper resolutions.' The kids who had come to beat up the freaks stayed for several hours, and left wanting to know more, wanting to start an SDS chapter in their town."

Review # 2 was written on 2012-01-06 00:00:00 Robert North Read Calvert and Neiman this fall. Herbert Marcuse described this hard to find book as 'the most articulate, honest, critical, and charming' work on the US New Left. The authors were SDS activists influenced by Marcuse, Andre Gorz, Paris 1968. Unfortunately, the 'socialism from below' perspective Calvert and Neiman articulated was not to be in SDS's future.