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Page 6
THE BATTALION
THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 1977
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Carl Oglesby talks about politics of the 1960s
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country, could not provide a direc
tion or program.
Another thing that was happening
is that partly because so many of us
were so young, there was a romantic
or even a sentimental tendency to
I
want to be like the people who were
real, honest-to-God, grown-up big-
league revolutionaries like Che
Guevera or Fidel or Ho Chi Minh,
people like that. So, since they were
into armed struggle, and since no
body could figure out how the pow
erful were ever going to give up
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their power unless they were forced
to do it, the Weatherpeople drew
the conclusion that they should act
like the Cubans or act like the
Vietnamese or whoever was making
a revolution in an armed way.
It was a totally specious piece of
reasoning, and it just didn’t hold
water. In just the most practical
terms, there was an incredible fail
ure in that line of argument to
understand the difference between
making a kind of conventional polit
ical revolution in a backwards pre
industrial country that was suffering
essentially from colonial rule from
without and, on the other hand, try
ing to generate changes in a highly
developed, well-established indus
trial democracy. The Weather-
people lost sight of that difference,
tried to impose on a First World
situation a politics that had grown in
the Third World.
Battalion: Many students during
the 1960s seemed to have an intense
committment to what they were do
ing, most notably in trying to cor
rect social problems. Have students
today lost that committment, and if
not, to what do they seem commit
ted?
Oglesby: I think the committ
ment has been driven out of people
by their experiences. I mean people
read the newspapers, right? They
see how politics works. You’ve got
to have millions of dollars to throw
around. You’ve got to have big
companies as power bases. You’ve
got to be able to be a senator or to
control a senator.
Ordinary people don’t have any
role to play in that except as a kind
of cannon fodder of the process.
There is a slackening of spirit and a
kind of sickening feeling in a lot of
people’s souls about politics now in
this country and beyond this coun
try, too. To look for the reasons is
just to look at what’s been happen
ing here. The experiences that
people have gone through have per
suaded them that it’s a losing game.
Battalion: Do you think the ideals
of the so-called New Left of the
1960s were compromised by the
ideals of the old left which doomed
the new to the same fate as the old?
Oglesby: That’s a good question.
We fought the old left, I remember,
all the time. The first thing that I
got into when I got into SDS was a
fight with the organization that used
to be our parent — the League for
Industrial Democracy. We tried to
stay pretty far away from the old left
ideas until towards the end when
people got discouraged at their own
adventures in political thought.
See, like we thought there could
be a cross-class movement. We
thought that you could appeal to
people of upper-class, middle-class,
lower-class, black people, white
people, all kind of people around
certain principles which seemed to
be universal. Call them the princi
ples of democracy and con
stitutionalism.
But then, when a certain amount
of time had gone by with politics
based on those assumptions, and
people didn’t think we were getting
in far enough fast enough, and
people started thinking we were ac
tually falling behind in terms of the
agenda of struggle and in terms of
reaching the objectives that we
started out trying to reach, the re
sult was that people abandoned
those assumptions and took on other
assumptions — abandoned the as
sumption that we had to have a
non-violent participatory demo
cratic politics and began to think
that we had to practice a violent
politics determined by cadre groups
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or elite groups which would operate
by themselves with no direct ac
countability to any larger member
ship.
It breaks my heart to think about
that. It was a very bitter experience
for all of us to have to go through
that, especially because the failure
was so much our own. And yet our
own failures were themselves so
much a question of inexperience
7 was a libertarian
through it all, and l m
closer to the libertarians
now than 1 ever was.
and of not having any grownups to
believe in.
Battalion: In reading the Port
Huron Statement, one notices many
statements about the rights of indi
viduals. Would you characterize the
early SDS leaders as more liberta
rian or socialist?
Oglesby: More libertarian than
socialist. Like myself, I was liberta
rian through it all, and I’m closer to
the libertarians now than I ever
was. I never felt that comfortable
with the socialist program. Every
body who studies any kind of Mar
xism is affected by Marxism. It’s a
very powerful philosophy.
But I never thought of myself as a
Marxist and in the beginning there
was nothing like that. There were
Marxists in SDS, but there were a
lot of people who were not, too.
There were socialists. There were
communists. There were also a lot
of libertarians and most people were
just sort of ordinary Democrats who
didn’t know how the economic
question fit in, but thought that it
would be better if the system were
opened up to a greater popular par
ticipation. And then also there was
the black civil rights movement
which was very key and had a very
strong impact on white students in
the North.
Battalion: I’ve read that the old
left had a program but they didn’t
have any activism to carry out the
program, but the New Left had the
activism but they didn’t have a pro
gram. Do you think that’s an accu
rate assessment?
Oglesby: Yes, as accurate as any
kind of simplification like that can
be. Although, program in that case
is a funny kind of word. We didn’t
have any large-scale program for the
society like the old left did. U f
dn’t think that owing to what
were doing, sometime there
going to result a communist ut(
And I think the old left
things like that, and the old left
does. The New Left didn’t.
The new left was anti-Stalin, i
cautious and critical about the*®
communist movement, raisi
tions about socialism and weri
erally very open as to the large-i
social program. But then, int«
of tactical programs to get pa
activity and to give them a
sense of engagement in political!
we were really good on that,
more time that went by, the
debate there was, the more
that were raising questions,
closer to us the people came,
like I said, some people got diss
fled with that, they thought it*
too slow and too uncertain and i
everything was coming to a!
wards the end of the ’60s, be[
of the ’70s. They thought that it'
important for the political force:
the United States to develo]
capability of inflicting violent4
age on the state. So they blew
couple of bathrooms and thenfmi
blew up theinsleves. A greatm
Phone rate hike rejected
United Press International
AUSTIN — The Texas Supreme
Court, without a written opinion,
has turned down Southwestern
Bell’s request for a full judicial re
view of the company’s plea for a
$298.3 million rate increase.
Bell, however, said it would not
stop trying for the full amount of the
request.
“We will continue to pursue all
legal avenues available to us be
cause our need for additional reve
nues is real,” said Bell attorney Jon
Dee Lawrence.
The Public Utility Commission
initially studied Bell’s request and
gave the company only a $57.8 mil
lion boost — one-fifth of what the
utility wanted.
The utility company then asked
Travis County District Judge James
Meyers for an order halting the ac
tion. Bell also asked for an eviden
tiary hearing which was refused by
Meyers.
The Supreme Court refused to let
Bell seek an order requiring Meyers
to review the utility’s case. The
court also turned down Bell’s plea to
let the company go ahead with the
increase pending the appeal.
Bell was joined in its plea by six
other Texas utility companies, in
cluding Dallas Power & Light Co.
and General Telephone Co. of the
Southwest.
“Each and every day that Bell suf
fers confiscation under the orders of
the commission it suffers losses in
excess of $500,000,” the telephone
company said in its appeal.
“If these issues ultimately are re
solved in Bell’s favor, as we bell
they will be. Bell will then have
fered losses of a staggering
nitude which it can never rea)i[|
the company said.
Att. Gen. John Hill oppoi|
Bell’s attempt for a court reviei
the rate case, saying the Sip|
Court had no jurisdiction to
the district court to block enlo
ment of the commission order,
“It is important to keep in
that we had not asked the Supi
Court to rule on the merits
appeal of the utility commissk
rate order,” Lawrence said. He
the court’s decision yesterday
no bearing on merits of the Bel
peal, and the company will seel
ruling from the district court in
tin.
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Winner of the 1967 Academy
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Film
Jiri Menzel’s
CLOSELY WATCHED
TRAINS
Monday, March 7
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Admission One Dollar
Rudder Theatre
Discussion led by Dr. Larry Reynolds
CPPC
HOW TO
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