which they live. . . . This molecular movement creates an atmosphere of general lawlessness; a growing personal, . day-to-day disobedience, a tendency not to "go along" with the existing system, a seemingly petty but nevertheless critical attempt to circumvent restriction in every facet of daily life. The society, in effect, becomes disorderly, undisciplined, Dionysian-a condition that reveals itself most dramatically in an increasing rate of official crimes. A vast critique develops of the system-[Jike the Enlightenment during the French revolution]-which seeps downward and accelerates the molecular movement at the base ... A second parallel between the rClOlntionary Enlightenment and our own period is the emergence of the crowd, the so-called "mob," as a major vehicle of social protest. ... Contrary to social psychologists, who see in these modes of direct action the submission of the individual to a terrifying collective entity called the "mob," the truth is that riots and crowd actions represent the first gropings of the mass toward individuation. The mass tends to become de-massiÂŁed in the cdical sense that it begins to assert itself against the really massifying, automatic responses produced by the bourgeois family, schoolo, and media. The rebellious crowd marks the beginning of a spontaneous transmutation from personal to social revolt. ... In the era when technological advances and cybernation have brought into question the exploitation of man by man, of toil, of material want in any form whatever, the cry-be it "Black is beautiful" or "Make love, not war"marks the transformation of the traditional demand for survival into a historically new demand for life.... \Vhat we are witnessing, in short, i~ the breakdown of a century and a half of embourgeoisment and a pulverization of all bourgeois institutions at a point in history when the boldest concepts of utopia are realizable. ... In the epoch ahead, the goal of the revolutionary process will no longer be the seizure of power by a specific group or class, but the dissolution of power by society at large. . . What this means in the "private" sphere is that the individual finally gains control over all the conditions of his personal life. What this means in the "public" sphere is that the popular assembly-emphatically not the "soviet" or the "worker's council," with its indirect mode of representation and its inherently hierarchical structure -gains control over a;} conditions of social life. And, in the decentralized, ecologically balanced community of free individuals and public assemblies, the private sphere and public sphere merge-and re-emerge-as a qualitatively new domain of human freedom. By Friday there were numerous anarchist-inclined students in the buildings, though Hamilton's blacks had SPRING, 1968
very few in their midst, and the strikers in Mathematics tended to be much more Leninist and strong-armed in their approach. A half hour before noon, a professor broke into the Ad Hoc Faculty meeting to announce that 150 Negro teenagers from nearby Harlem schools had pushed their way onto the campus past the four faculty members checking ID cards, and that 200 more were expected to come after lunch hour. "They seem to want to help their black brothers in Hamilton and take over another building or two," someone else reported. The faculty disbanded to see if they could help keep order. Fearing possible violence to faculty members, President Kirk ordered police barricades to be set up at the two open gates to the main campus at either end of College Walk. The egroes were mostly males, though roughly one-third were females, and they were young. About half of them were under 15, and some were only 12 or 13 years old. Two of them had bullhorns, and a number of them had transistor radios. All of them w:;re playing hooky from their high schools and junior high schools. They gathered in groups of 40 or so on South Field to
English professor Lionel Trilli.ng '25 at a recent Class Dinner. "For yOUllg people now, being political serves lIwch the same purpose as being litenl1'y has long done."
listen to soul music and address the crowds of onlookers, who were mostly curious, angry, or frightened. There was a kind of assertive gaiety about them, but some of the older young men swaggered and acted like braggadocios. "Columbia's got integration, but it's a token integration. But we don't care about that any more. vVe blacks want the whole university now." So shouted one fellow. Several others talked about taking over another building. Before very long, however, the teenagers were spoken to by egro students from Columbia, who counseled them to cool down. One SAS member grabbed the bullhorn from a fiery young speaker, who was prodding his group to seize a building, and admonished the youngsters for their undisciplined enthusiasm. The black students in Hamilton Hall had clearly developed an amazing control over themselves and considerable purpose and poise in dealing with the many sympathetic Negroes in other areas of Jew York. They had also developed an independent position in the strike, vigorously defending the interests of black citizens near Morningside, but playing down the demands of student power and a university takeover coming from the other buildings. They began to feel that, as one of their internal Riers put it, "The SDS leaders are clowns playing games." At 12:4.'5, when the Ad Hoc Committee reconvened, Professor Wallerstein, who had again been in Hamilton with the blacks, announced to his colleagues, "The blacks in Hamilton are now the most rational, disciplined group in the insurrection." Shortly after Wallerstein spoke, a small insurrection broke out among the Ad Hoc Faculty group. Alarmed by the possibility of hordes of young blacks coming in from other parts of ew York to roam around the campus in a violent mood, and angered by SDS's fury at being policed by the faculty, numerous of the more senior professors began to have second thoughts about the wisdom of calling off the cops the previous evening. Said one professor: "SDS is literally playing with fire. They are going into Harlem to foment hah'ed and violence over which they clearly will have no control." Three successive speakers got up and argued for "an end to faculty sympathy and support of reckless rebels who have lost all con45