The tensions between global, transnational, and local aspects of 1960s radicalism brings to light an even more fundamental rift between different scholarly approaches to the subject. If the aim of these movements was to abolish hierarchies and traditional institutions altogether, then who exactly were the political agents in such movements, and how should we study them? This posits a dilemma for the scholars of political history (and political sciences, for that matter), who have traditionally studied movements easily confined to their membership, organisational structures, and ideology. This tradition has greatly affected the way in which radical movements of the Sixties have been approached. However, methods usually used to analyse parliaments, parties, labour unions or guerrilla cells are not so easily applied to anti-authoritarian movements in the Sixties, when these are radical agents that clearly despised hierarchies. Nevertheless, because of the tradition of focusing on conventional organisations, it has been the case that only a handful of the many scattered organisations formed by agents of 1960s radicalism have been studied – such as
119 Kalter 2017.
120 Slobodian 2012, 204-206.
121 Müller 2011, 173-174.
the SDS122 and APO123 in West Germany, and the SDS in the US124 – with the result that these have become unfairly treated as representative of the whole sphere of radicalism. The ‘New Left’, as a concept, can also be used in a general way that ignores the sometimes vast national differences between the many disparate organisations that adopted the label.125 When the concept of New Left is studied in each specific context, it is clear that rather than attempting to form a coherent transnational movement, the New Left was principally used as a way to distinguish oneself from the ‘old’ Left. The debates on reforming political traditions were therefore often decidedly national in character, despite the internationalist heritage of labour activism.126 It seems to be the case, however, that the diversity of organisations studied has recently been slowly increasing, as the role of, inter alia, socialist and labour youth organisations in defining radical political culture has been acknowledged.127 Gerd-Rainer Horn, among others, has expanded the range of radical actors by pointing out that South European labour movements were important participants in the local radical movements there.128 Such an approach clearly challenges interpretations that only consider student organisations or New Left intellectuals as the primary objects of study.
New approaches to radical social movement organizations (SMOs)129, while broadening understanding of the subject, have also demonstrated the limits of the organisational approach for studying transnational, anti-authoritarian movements, when they include such a range of agents.130 Diversity was, paradoxically perhaps, the only characteristic that radical social movements in the Sixties all shared. While focusing on SMOs provides specific primary sources and a coherent line of argument, it limits the study of 1960s radicalism to a narrow field of publicly visible agents,131 or by trying to avoid fragmentation, assembles a wide variety of different agents and political views under a simple, indisputable umbrella-catchphrase – namely that of the SMO in question. SMOs usually did have an organisational layer that handled many practical tasks, but the movements and these organisational structures were rarely commensurable;
radical movements were profoundly shaped by different, independent agents, people who either functioned completely outside the organisational fabric, or who were members in any number of other organisations.132 Diversity and
122 Sosialisticher Deutscher Studentenbund, originally the student organisation of SPD but later dismissed from this official position because of excessive radicalism and criticism of the party. The similar abbreviation was a coincidence, albeit it was later used to draw parallels between these two organisations.
123 Außerparlamentarische Opposition, coalition of SDS and labour organisations specifically aimed at protesting against the Notstandsgesetze (Emergency Acts) advocated by the German Grand coalition of 1966. For a comprehensive overview, see Thomas 2003.
124 Students for a Democratic Society, unaffiliated student organisation.
125 Horn 2007, 144; Nehring 2011, 24.
126 Geary 2008; Müller 2011, 176-182; Vinen 2018, 6.
127 For examples in the West-German context, see Nehring 2014.
128 Horn 2007, especially chapters 3 and 4.
129 For a brief discussion of SMOs, see e.g., Parhi & Myllykangas 2019.
130 Brown 2009, 69; Brown 2013, 2.
131 Brown 2009, 73.
132 Rucht 1998, 118; Brown 2013, 44.
flexibility were not hindrances but essential features of the new politics and society that the radical activists advocated, so to study essentially anti-authoritarian movements by prioritising those with a structure is rather counter-intuitive to begin with. While many of the movements seemed to have a de facto ideological and/or political leader, it was often the media more than the activists themselves that would select this figurehead.
Organisational histories not only simplify the situation with regard to agency, they often also make a clear distinction between the political and cultural aspects of 1960s radicalism. One paramount example of this is The Sixties by Arthur Marwick, in which the Sixties is depicted as a “cultural revolution” that occurred in Western Europe and the US. Marwick states explicitly that he sees a clear distinction between the cultural and the political dimensions of the decade, and in his interpretation the huge cultural changes experienced by the majority of western countries were not influenced by the political movements of the time.133 As an analytical concept, ‘cultural revolution’ is problematic, as it ignores the 1960s usage of the term to refer to what was happening under Chairman Mao in the People’s Republic of China to describe processes that were essentially western and decidedly liberal.134 Moreover, while the clear distinction between the political and cultural might, on the surface, seem like a legitimate choice, this legitimacy seems questionable if the focus of our attentions are actually the members of radical social movements that had as one of their central aims, the abolition of the distinction between culture and politics altogether. While the relationship between culture and politics was certainly open to various interpretations, linking them together was often one of the main forms of movement activity. Culture and politics were often inherently linked in both the actions and the personal choices of the participants, and criticism expressed by artists and intellectuals had a profound impact as role models – especially for the more overtly political movements.135 Broadening the definition of politics used in studying the movements in the Sixties would do justice to the rich diversity of political articulations expressed by these movements.136 Indeed, the concepts of
‘cultural politics’ and ‘political culture’ have been used precisely to overcome the futile juxtaposition of political with cultural.137 These perspectives, while certainly most welcome, have yet to be fully explored – especially when we consider the national implications of cultural influences and their applications.138
The dynamics of the cultural and political become even more pronounced when the analytical uses of ‘political’ are critically evaluated. It seems that despite the increasing focus on methods and a growing awareness of the role of analytical concepts in writing political history, political is still often an unquestioned concept that is used in a rather mundane manner. Yet, its analytical usefulness is highly dependent on the way ‘political’ is understood by the
133 Marwick 1998, 9, 15.
134 Slobodian 2012, Chapter 6.
135 Horn 2007, 19-22; Evans 2009, 346; Brown 2014, 99; Vazansky & Abel 2014, 92.
136 Skadhamar 2008, 455.
137 Nehring 2014, 156.
138 Schildt & Siegfired 2006, 28; Horn 2007, 19-22; Steinmetz & Haupt 2013, 17-20.
researcher, and how this definition relates to the definition of ‘political’ adopted by the historical agents studied. Since this thesis focuses heavily on conceptual history and analysing discourses from the 1960s, mapping the meanings of
‘political’ from this particular era is an important key to understanding wider changes in the discourses of radicalism. Understanding that these meanings are contingent and subject to historical change is important; perhaps even more so is to constantly compare one’s own definition of ‘political’ with those of activists in the Sixties. In an effort to deal with these inevitable differences, my perspective on ‘the political’ is both empirical and rather inclusive. I see the public actions of movements in the Sixties, whether cultural, social, or transnational, as being inherently political actions, since they all aspired to change society. By defining my analytical perspective as focusing on agency and not on any particular political sphere in society underlines this inclusiveness, and makes it easier to analyse contemporaneous understandings of the political in different public, local, and temporal contexts.
The literature that seems to acknowledge the interconnectedness between the political and cultural most effectively, as well as the sheer diversity of the political within the different strands of 1960s radicalism has, for the most part, been written by the activists themselves. Because of its politically controversial nature, the temporal proximity of the 1960s, and its relatively brief timespan as a subject of historical studies, a variety of memoirs is only to be expected. In addition to these personal memoirs, contemporaries of the Sixties have had a pronounced role in scholarly literature as vast collections of oral testimonies have been gathered from interviews.139 Invaluable as these biographical documents may be, this focus has nevertheless led to a rather limited perspective of movements in the Sixties. As reminiscing is an action done by those who have the intention of doing so in a particular present, it emphasises that present's current attitudes and values associated with the past. This stratification of memory and the deliberate function of reminiscence should be taken into consideration when such sources and testimonies are used in historical research.
Oral sources also tend to limit the sphere of radical activists to well-known leaders of movements and the rigid dichotomy they represent.140 These will invariably be the agents that are most readily available and already actively promoting their views of the past. This often makes it only a poor substitute to the direct organisational approach.141
In addition to personal memoirs and studies in which retrospection is present, in the form of primary sources, former participants have also written some of the most often cited studies on the political aspects of movements in the Sixties. Nick Thomas has aptly described such an approach as a continuation of Sixties’ Marxist theory-making in the present.142 Oral history perspectives can
139 Thomas 2003, 5. See, e.g., Fraser 1988.
140 Brown 2013, 2.
141 Vazansky & Abel 2014, 92.
142 Thomas 2003, 6. See Katsiaficas (1987) for an example of such a study, in which Katsiaficas analyses the Sixties’ New Left as a global entity with its own Marcusean analytical concepts.
still be extremely valuable as they underline the role of personal agency and experience, yet without being able to contrast current-day representations of the past with a more empirical look at the history of the topic, we are in danger of loosing track of the temporal layers present in these narratives. As Martin Wiklund has poignantly demonstrated, what actually happened in 1968 has been prone to change both in public debates and scholarly writings. Different times posit different frameworks that affect the way we interpret the past.143
1.4 Methods and Analytical Concepts for Analysing