From "The Gates Of Eden" To "Day Of The Locust"

The section dealing with the Divine Light Mission only, is available here

FROM "THE GATES OF EDEN" TO "DAY OF THE LOCUST:"

An Analysis of the Dissident Youth Movement of the 1960s and its Heirs of the Early l97Os - the Post-movement Groups.
DANIEL A. FOSS and RALPH W. LARKIN

Article in Theory and Society, January 1976

Introduction

Despite the obvious significance of social movements as social phenomena, social scientists do not even vaguely agree on a definition of the term "social movement." Many display a pronounced distaste for dealing with the issue at all; at one extreme some researchers employ during the course of social movements the same survey techniques that they had employed during periods characterized by "routine" social behavior, thereby not understan- ding it as a social movementl. Others become carried away by the enthusi- asms of undergraduate students and do not transcend immediate advocacy and the most superficial analysis.' We also cite the case of an individual of our acquaintance, a sociology department chalnnan, who told us in all seriousness that according to his definition, there were no social movements in the United States during the 1960s.

The historically unprecedented nature of the youth movement of the 1960s seems to have escaped sociologists. The lack of formalized organization and bureaucratic structures made it impossible to study through standardized survey and structured observation techniques. Consequently, research tended to focus on "campus unrest" (The President's Commission on Campus Unrest of 1970), "hippies," "participation in anti-war activities," "student radicalism," or "communes."5

Since the social movement of the 1960s did not fit into the normal sociologi- cal categories, there was a great deal of controversy within the ranks as to just what was occurring. Though such terms as "crisis," "unrest," changing values," and even "counterculture" were used to described the phenomena, Department of Sociology, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

the concept of "social movement" was not used. Only where formalized organizations (to which sociologists could belong) were visible was the term movement used; for instance: "civil rights movement" or "anti-war move- ment." Such particularization distorts what wasoccurring among the youth of the 1960s. What contributes to the confusion is that participants as well as sociologists are often unaware that they arc involved in a "social movement" during the initial stages.

It is our purpose to clarify the existing situation hy redefining a social movement in terms of its dissident nature. By defining it thus, we can have a clearer view of when it began and when it receded. Such a definition has the added advantage of directing our attention to what happens once the dissi- deuce subsides and participants in confiict groups must make peace with the dominant society against which they have been fighting For, not only have we seen the rise of a youth movement of the 1960s, but we have also observed its decline; in its place have risen "post-movement groups" which embody various aspects of the vision of the 19605 youth movement (inclu- ding the fantasy that they are dissident), but in every case have withdrawn from confiict with the larger social order. Even though they may even call themselves movements (e.g., the llare Krishna movement. the Jesus move- ment), they provide, at the behavioral level, the basis for accommodation to the existing order of society.

A social movement, then, consists of three mutually-reinforcing lines of development:

1. Intensifying social confiict in which the group, class or social category "in motion" not only makes increasing use of conventional avenues of confiict, but more importantly continually invents new social formations, techniques, and institutions for the purposes of struggle: it also intensifies existing subcultural cohesion and continually invents new cultural forms.

2. Growing reinterpretation of social reality in the course of which move- ment participants emancipate themselves from prevailing interpretations of social reality imposed on society by dominant elites, question the inevita- bility of the dominance of those elites, repudiate the rationales by which the elites legitimate the fact of their dominance, cast doubt on the illusion of the permanence of elite domination ("When Adam delved and Eve span / Who then was a gentleman'fi"),7 and begin to construct models of a desired future society in which existing domination would be superseded (or of an imagined past society which would be restored) once the existing elite is eliminated.

3. Revaluation of the self and its capacities in which the movement partici- pants engage in what amounts to mass therapy where they in effect "cure" themselves of ago-crippling and other character deformations which are a consequence of their socialization into a stable condition of social subordinationi

The Suhcultural Evolution of the Youth Movemeent of the 1960s

The white middle class youth movements of the 1960s went through a number of phases of subeultural evolution, each corresponding to the tenta- tive conjunction of circumstances experienced in the social environment. As circumstances changed, a new collective evaluation of "where it's at" would be made and a new cultural phase would be generated. Dramatic upheavals occurred in the subculture in a matter of weeks.

Phases alternated between those of "cultural intensification" and those of "overt politics." The late 1950s were characterized by vague cultural protest among white middle class youth marked on the one hand by the Beat Generation and on the other by the popularity of rock-n-roll among teenagers.

Seen in retrospect. this movement served as an inchoate ideology expressing intense generational resentment and demands for sexual freedom. Succeeding phases were: OLd New Left (1950-65), which may be considered to have lasted from the beginning of the support for black integrationists in the South to the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley. Largely concerned with "commu- nity organizing" and university reform, this phase gave prominence to self- sacrifice and gentle humanitarianism ("serve the people"). lts most notable ideologist was Tom Hayden ("participatory democracy"). The Hippies (1965-67) drastically expanded the depth and increased the intensity of cultural revolt. Developing a shared culture around drugs, sex, music and individualistic mysticism, they constituted themselves as Walking critiques of bureaucratic rationality. The next phase we call the "New New Left" (1967- 69). Responding to the failure to transform society through the diffusion of drugs and the outbreak of mass black violence at a time of increasing escalation in Vietnam, the youth culture turned in the direction of dreams of social revolution. Psychedelic posters were replaced by Che and Mao posters.

Acid rock gave way to hard rock. Day-glo was superceded byjeans and crash helmets; be-ins by confrontations.' The overt political impulse largely exhausted itself by 1969 and gave way to the Woodstock Aquarian phase (1969-70). This was another cultural- intensification phase. The freak-radical personal ideal of"t0gether" (consoli- dation of the self in a posture of revolt) gave way to the new ideal of "mellow" (calm luxuriating in simple natural joys). Hard rock music was

replaced by country rock; the characteristic institution was the commune.

Thousands of communes, both rural and urban, were founded. The Whole Earth Catalogue was their bible, health foods and vegetarianism came into great vogue.

The Freak Vision as the Basis for Interpreting Reality By the late 19605; the subjectivist ideology of the white middle class youth movement was achieving a vague formulation and coherence, although it never acquired the intellectual systematiaation of a doctrine because of its strongly subjectivist nature." What is more, each would-be formulator- writer, musician, or mythical figure-emphasized different facets of the shared subjectivist ideology. We might describe this vague formulation as a "vision" and briefly outline some of its principal features.

First, the end of material scarcity caused a socio-economic system in which sheer economic accumulation had been retained as an end in itself to become outmoded. Its very abundance generated the feeling that the allocation of goods and the organization oflabor could be based on other than the market mechanism. Material abundance made it seem ridiculous for people to be, i.n Ray Mungo's words, "charged so many dollars a day for the right to go on living." Abbie liofman, as the leader of the New York City Diggers, proclai- med: "There is enough to go around. Take what you need! Everything is free!" The foremost articulators of the shared subjectivist ideology urged youth to intensify their awareness of the repressive influence of scarcity assumptions and the intrusion of the market mechanism into the minute areas of everyday life.

The second significant component of this vision was expressed when the Beatles sang to youth of the advanced capitalist West, "all you need is love. . .Love is all you need." Their message should be interpreted as literally as possible: the real material needs of people are relatively simple and have already been satisfied. Therefore the only thing that people need is that wich they do not yet have-love. "Love" in the vision of the 1960s is a shorthand for elaborate and complex efforts to develop new forms, styles, and intensi~ ties of being which could only come to fruition in a social order yet to be constructed.

In the hippie phase of the youth culture "love" was far and away the most powerful eatchword. The sixties thus witnessed a vast and profuse explosion of communes, collectives, encounter groups, affinity groups, "families," "tribes," group marriages, ete., as people in considerable numbers explored the multifarious possibilities of "getting by" and "getting high" with a "little help from my friends."

A third feature of the white middle class youth culture vision of the 19605 was the quest for higher states of consciousness, mystical and spiritual experiences, getting high, getting off, or whatever it was called. Such states were induced through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, peyote' and psylocybine; the practice of yoga and meditation (especially in the later cultural phases); and the participation in highly charged communal activities (e.g., group sex or communal dancing).

A fourth major element of the "vision" of the white middle class youth culture of the 1960s was, of course, sexual liberation. Sexual freedom was upheld not only because of the possibilities of sheer pleasure, but also because it was felt that the loss of sexual inhibitions necessarily carried with it an oppositional stance toward conventional culture and the established social order. The most famous slogan to emerge from the hippie period was, "make love, not War."

A fifth feature of this vision was the rejection of hierarchical structure and organizational routine. In the early stages the emerging social groupings seemed to have no manifest purpose beyond "being" (this was the time of the "be-in")-itself interpreted as an oppositional stance toward organized society. The principle of the avoidance of purposeful individual and collective activity became integrally related to the shared myth of "being" at this stage, because many individuals were preoccupied with disentangling their "authen- tic" motivations from "inauthentic" experiences imposed on them by a social order which made no apparent sense.

The suspicion of "goals" and organized collective action extended into the realm of overt politics. Any large-scale organized activity within the move- ment (and probably most small scale activities as well) carried with it vociferous charges of manipulative plots. Abbie Hoffman realized that freaki- fied youth would never accept the discipline of "serious" revolutionaries. He therefore broke with the received tradition of revolution as the outcome of a class struggle in which the insurgent class is progressively molded in both organization and consciousness until it is ready for disciplined armed struggle to destroy the existing state apparatus. Instead, he held forth a concept of revolution as a spontaneous anarchic explosion of individuals and emerging collectivities pursuing unrepressed and joyous development in an increasingly uncompromising fashion and opposing repression of all spheres of everyday life ranging from school rules to parental authority, from the exchange of money for goods and services to pay toilets. He gave his idea shorthand expression in the title of his book, Revolution for the Hell of1t,'° which he wrote under the pseudopseudonym, "Free."

Redefinition of the Self

The rise of subjcctivism led young people to redefine tllemselves in subjecti- vist terms centering on here-and-now experience. (The answer to the question "Where do you livefi" is "Wherever I am.") or universal pantheisni ("I am God. You are God. Everything is God.") By redefining themselves in terms of the present or the cosmic, dissident youth could throw off the ego-crippling negative evaluations of the dominant culture. Terms such as "neurotic," "failure," and "deviant," simply made no sense. They were oppressive labels that denoted deficiencies of performance of expectations imposed by an obsolete social order; they were mechanisms by which people were coerced into compliance with organizational requirements.

Liberation, in addition to its overtly political connotations, meant allowing full expression of personal impulse. Psychic disorder was redefined as the repression of impulse. Psychic liberation was conceived as the ability of people to free themselves of their social armor and personal inhibitions that prevented them from having fun. I-langups in youth culture argot were those aspects of the self that prevented free-flowing activity. They could be accep- ted or confronted. Often hangups would lead to "freak~outs" or "bummers," acid-trips could force a confrontation with inhibitions, fears, or repressed desires. Such confrontations became the battlegrounds in the struggle to reconstruct the self.

By the late 19605 "freakified" youth were exploring new aspects of self-hood which they had never previously thought existed. Indulgence in drug expe- riences, sex, communal activities, be-ins, sit-ins, demonstrations, riots, busts, trips with no destination in particular, not only gave subculture members a set of common experiences, but also opened vast new capacities of selflhood for exploration. New depths of love, hate, anger, sorrow, and elation were generated by participating in such activities. In the musical Hair, 1968 is asked by I948 what makes him so damn superior. He responds:

I got life, mother,
I got laughs, sister,
I got freedom, brother,
I got good times, man.

I got crazy ways, daughter,
I got million dollar charm,
I got headaches, toothaches,
And bad times too, like you.

The point made by 1968 is that the difference is not in the categories of experience, but in the depth of the experience.

Freakified youth existed as a critique of bourgeois rationality that limited both the breadth and depth of experience by encapsulating it Within the formalized structures of society so t.hat it could be monitored and kept within the bounds of conventional control. Once those bounds were broken, previously unexplored aspects of self emerged which were both frightening and seductive. Because of the pure pleasure that sensual indulgence generated, many people could not resist the temptation.

Indicative Minorities and Vanguard Nuclei The white middle class youth movement of the 19605 can be clearly demarca- ted into a series of cultural phases of everdiminishing duration which, in retrospect, are clearly identified with one or more "indicative minorities" that at the time gave mythic expression to the inchoatc feelings of a far wider youth population. Participants in the indicative minorities were normally distinguishable by being engaged full time - either as dropouts or as nominally-matriculated students-in activities which were currently most fashionable with the dissident youth culture and which gave to each successive cultural phase its distinctive cast. For example, during the Old New Left (1960-65) the main indicative minority consisted of civil rights workers, freedom riders and succeeding waves of young people who went South in support of intergration, community organizers, and other political reformers of various preoccupations. During the Hippie phase (1965-67) the principal indicative minority was that of the drug-culture dropouts. The freak-radicals were the most important indicative minority of the New New Left period (l967-69). In the culturally fragmented situation of the period l969-7O, which marked the beginning of the end of the movement, there were several indicative minorities, none of whom achieved clear predominance; these included commune residents, embitterred radicals and prototerrorists, natural- foods enthusiasts, and radical environmentalists.

Participants in the "indicative minorities" had moral ascendancy within the dissident subculture as a whole and they themselves scomed part-time move- ment participants as "liberals," "plastic hippies," or "plastic radicals." But Within the indicative minorities leadership elites were generated which we call "vanguard nuclei." These nuclei exercised leadership not through organizatio- nal machinery but by exemplifying the current ideals and preoecupations of the dissident subculture to an extreme extent: dramatic, mythical, or heroic.

By sewing as normal examples (or, "role models") to their contemporaries they were hailed as leaders or heroes at the local, national, or-in some cases~even international levels. Nuclei were almost always either primary groups or networks ofa few primary groups. Some of them were identified as the entourages of particular mythical figures, but more commonly they were popularly known under collective names.

Prominent nuclei during the 1960-65 period included the leaders of SDS, SNCC (before the expulsion of the whites), and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Typical nuclei of the 1965-67 period included acid-rock groups such as the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane, anarcho-hip community self-help groups such as the Diggers, the entourages of such personalities as Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey, and the staffs of underground newspapers.

During the 1967-69 period significant nuclei included the SDS National Office collective and anarcho-freak-radicals such as the Yippes and the Up Against The Wall Mrzrherfilckers The 1969-70 period was replete with an assortment of vanguard nuclei reflecting the loss of cohesion of the dissident subculture: the feminists were developing pioneer women's collectives; the communalists were inspired by a number of famous communes in the rural areas of Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, and Vermont, as well as by the Hog Farm troupe (one of whose members, Stewart Brand, was the father of The Whole Earth Catalogue). Embittered radicals developed collectives, some of which, including those of Weatherman (later Weather Underground), were evolving into terrorism.

The Decline of the Movement

The 1969-70 period marks the watershed of the white middle class youth movement. It was during this period that the processes which define the existence of a social movement-intensification of social confiict, reinterpre- tation of social reality, and redefinition of the self-ceased to be mutually reinforcing. Two developments stood out: first, the movement participants no longer attempted to bring greater coherence to the still fragmentary freak vision. Second, and relatedly, a dissociation occurred between the objectives of personal liberation and social transformation-which hitherto had beena increasingly experienced as indissolubly linked.

The end of the decade saw the movement develop a number of divergent thrusts. This divergence, had the movement not exhausted itself, mighthave foreshadowed a broadening and deepening of revolt, rather than its end. But as it happened, each thrust itself represented a path to accommodation or to the encapsulation of dissidence.

Communal living served to impart to the participants the subjective experi- ence of living in a libertarian-communist social order such as might prevail following a revolution. Commune residents sought to determine their "natu- ral" balance of material, spiritual, intellectual, sexual, and work needs in opposition to the definition of needs which prevailed in the "plastic" society they had repudiated. Conceivably, this experience might have imbued them with a clearer vision of the ultimate objectives of the movement as well as a

sense of the irreconciliability of the provisional alternative society then constituted. This did not happen. For the most part, they came to believe that salvation lay in the small group and t.hat the masses in the cities and campuses were best left to stow in their own corruption. Commune residents were uninterested in confiict beyond handling the "hassles" with hostile locals. Predictably enough, the rural and urban communes disintegrated after a brief period because of grecd,jealousy, and ego-tripping which the members inevitably brought with them from the wider society, despite their earnest intentions to suppress such things.

The thrust toward ecology-environmentalism might have, in theory, added a new dimension to the movement and a new set of issues around which militant struggle could develop. There was, in fact, no shortage of radicals declaring that preservation of the environment was incompatible with capita- lism and "the system." But the actual result was confusion and accommoda- tion. Very quickly, every major politician and corporate head declared against pollution. For their part, most eco-freaks failed to expend the sort of passion on environmental issues that was being deployed over the Vietnam War and student power. Many, in fact,,welcomed the opportunity to shift away from issues in which young people were isolated against the authorities, feeling themselves driven to dangerous forms of protests, to issues around which they could ally with the respectable middle class and employ more genteel means of struggle. Environmentalism therefore, far from intensifying the sense of irreconcilable differences between freaks and straights, rather led to attenua- tion of that estrangement. In the ideological sphere eco~freaks developed a great vogue for the elitist, technocratic, and non-confiictual theories of Buckrninster Fuller. In other spheres of culture the eeo-freaks were preoccu- pied with measures for individual salvation: ecofreakery coincided with the growing popularity of vegetarianism ("Love your little animal friends. Don't eat them."), organic foods, macrobiotic diets, Vitamin E, ham yoga exercises, Tai-Chi, backpacking, and meditation. The emphasis was on the growing acceptance of the notion that the attainment of happiness did not require confiict with anyone-only the purity of one's precious bodily fluids and an unspoiled view of the Sierras.

Still another thrust of the movement in this period were the embittered radicals who carried subjectivist ideology to its logical conclusion. This could only have been done against the background of the decomposition of the dissident subculture; for freak culture, always a mass of contradictions because of its dependence on commercialization and mass-media publicity, for its dissemination, never carried anything to its logical conclusion so long as it possessed vitality. But now the embittered radicals, experiencing them- selves as isolated kamikaze prolongations of the struggles of Black Panthers,

Vietnamese, Cubans, huddled together and sealed themselves off in tightly- knit collectives. Weatherman heightened mutual love and demolished "bour- geois" individual egos in marathon group therapy ("criticism-self criticism") session. Solidarity \vas further heightened with group LSD trips and enforced promiseuity ("Smash monogamyl"). Weatlierpeople purified their souls and expunged middle class inhibitions against the use of violence by staging mass hate tantrums ("Wargasms"). Thus cleansed within, Weatherman and kindred groups defined themselves as a moral elite and proceeded to offend nearly everyone lacking their resolution and noble depth of feeling. Their craving for the experience of struggle led them beyond the point of contact with a movement of white middle class youth impelled to confiict because of the experience of repression as white middle class youth. Such a thing, to Weatherman and the like, was sinful, the outcome of "white skin privilege." Confiict and confrontation had, for movements participants, always been in large measure therapeutic; but the embittered radicals now turned conflict into therapy pure and simple, without any relation to the articulation of the shared experiences of the mass of youth. Thus. their contribution to social transformation was nil.

There was more campus disorder during the 1969-70 academic year than the previous one." But with the breakup of SDS in June, 1969, the protests had lost their national focus; they tended to he isolated, often unreported, and of the single-issue variety. Confronted by movement "heavies" with their newly learned Marxist doctrine, the arrogant Weatherman, and the Welter of esta- blished Marxist sectarians, many disaffected young people recoiled from their coherent reinterpretation of social reality. They did not establish new nuclei capable of articulating or mythically dramatizing their experiences. The one remaining source of political coherence was the Nixon Administration, with its prosecution of the Chicago Seven and its invasion of Cambodia. Under these circumstances many young people became susceptible to leadership by liberals whom they had previously scorned, On November 15, for instance the liberals summoned half a million pcople--the vast majority of them yound-'to the largest peace demonstration in history in Washington, D,C, liven when the Kent State shootings touched off u spontaneous nationwide student general strike, the students responded to another call by the liberals for a Washington rally (May 9); the anger melted away in the warm sunshine and people frolicked naked in the fountains.

Feminism appeared as a major force at the very time (1969-70) that the freak insurgency was losing momentum. At the beginning of the 1970s male participants in the expiring movement, faced with growing apathy and fioun- dering for a political and cultural stance, found themselves confronted by confident and energetic women who had something to believe in; they were

forced to deal with sex role problems they would have rather avoided. Some of these men chose to become "fellow-travelers" of feminism; others accelera- ted their withdrawal from social confiict.

The rise of feminism might have provided a stimulating, intensifying, and deepening effect upon the insurgeneies of youth culture. The actual results were different: on the one hand the confiict motives for the maintenance of the boundary between freak and straight were abating; on the other hand feminism itself rapidly crossed that boundary and pereolated widely among middle class women of differing "life-styles" and ages. The bond of common gender became more significant than those of generation or "counterculture." Under the impact of feminism it became possible for suburban housewives to flee their husbands and join women's collectives in the central cities; but it became equally possible for ex-freak and semi-freak women to mount a campaign for careers open to talent within existing bureaucracies. Given the attenuation of other social confiicts, "women's lib" became extremely fashi- onable (as the freaks had once been)--and for publishers and TV networks extremely profitable.

Just as the characteristic mass'-gathering in the llippie phase had been the "be-in" and that of the 1967-69 period the "confrontation," in 1969-70 the appropriate equivalent was the music festival. The most famous one, the Woodstock festival (August 25 -29, 1969) became legendary in rock songs and oral tradition; Abbie Hoffman tried to create a freak nationalism around the legend in his book, Woodstock Nation." Superficially, a music festival resembled a "be-in" in its atmosphere of collective frolic and the prevalence of drugs. But in a "be-in" the hippies had not been simply "being;" they were a novelty as a social category and were incidentally outraging the conventio- nal public with their massed outlandishness. However, in i969 freaks were no longer a novelty; the relative growth in their respectability was revealed when Life published a special issue on Woodstock. The mood at a festival was totally non-conflictual,except in that at a very large gathering the freaks were dependent upon the promoters and their hired guards to maintain order and essential services. Crosby, Stills, and Nash neatly tied the Woodstock legend to the non-hostile eco-freak mentality: "We've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

Although in the unfolding of the white middle class youth movement of the last decade personal liberation came to be seen as inseparable from social transformation, this was not equally true of all movement participants at all times. During cultural intensification phases (Preparatory phase, 1955-60: Beat Generation, Chubby Checker-Elvis Presley; llippie phase, 1965-67) personal liberation seemed paramount, while during overt political phases

(1960-65; 1967-69) political and social change appeared to be the most pressing necessity; There were people who consistently favored one at the expense of the other through each successive phase. But 1969-70 was a cultural intensification phase; and it was also the last phase. From this time forward more and more movement participants abandoned any hope for challenging established power but retained faith in the possibility of personal liberation in one form or another. Against them were ranged a growing band of "serious" radicals, Marxist Sectarians, and neo-Stalinoids who, dancing on the corpse of the movement, insisted that the revolution must first occur before people are permitted to do as they pleZlSB-if then.

The hippies had initiated a broadening and deepening of the dimensions of dissidence to include the entirety of everyday life. They sensitized themselves to experience repression in every aspect of the conventional culture; drugs, sex, and hair beca.me political issues in the sense that they involved confiicts about the exercise ofpower over individual behavior in everyday life. But the 1969-70 phase, by contrast, failed (the feminists aside) to explore new arenas of cultural confiict or to intensify the sense of irreconcilability of freak culture with that of the straights. Although great satisfaction could be derived, as at music festivals, from the sheer number of people now involved in freak culture, the aggressiveness was draining away. Freaks were by now inclined to do as they pleased as if the straights did not exist, relying for security on their numbers; the music festival was again highly symbolic in this regard. There was an ebbing of the passion for "doing your thing" as an act of war against a depraved enemy.

The collective self-satisfaction of the freaks in 1969-70 led logically into hedonism without oppositional content. It also dovetailed into the temptation to psychologize-to focus upon one's "hangups" in isolation from the context of cultural repression and social suppression. To cater especially to the affluent hip and the 'hipified' rich seeking salvation on the personal and small-group levels, new therapies spread rapidly: Esalen, Primal Scream, and Co-Counseling in Califomia; Sullivanian and Reichian therapy in New York.

The tendency to psychologize recoiled upon feminism, draining it of the revolutionary vision of its pioneers. As commonly practiced, "conscious- ness-raising" became more and more exclusively a species of therapy, concen- trating heavily upon "relationships" and upon the removal of intrapsychic blocks to success in conventional careers.

By 1970-7l the two greatest cultural idols officially declared the movement at an end. John Lennon announced that "the dream is over," while Bob Dylan sang of his "day of the locust" as he, ideologist to a generation of rebels, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree at Princeton. Each found the only altemative to despair in privatization and domesticity.

Lennon: "I just believe in me / Yoko and me / And that's reality." Dylan: "Build me a cabin in Utah / Marry me a wife and catch rainbow trout / Have a bunch of kids who call me pa / That must be what it's all about." To retain anything like a coherent version of the freak vision in the absence of an unfolding social movement became progressively more painful for most former movement participants. Most resorted to a number of adaptations to attain painless quiescence. A minority resorted to terrorism or, more com- monly, to routine perpetuation of movement activities: There was always another meeting, another rally, another "mobilization," even if one had sworn off ever attending another one, knowing in advance that it would be a Waste of time. But another group gravitated toward the indicative minorities of the early 1970s, the post-movement groups. Each of these organizations provided a faith and a discipline which enabled the believers to liquidate or fragment in themselves the vision of the 1960s and to legitimate this process in the language of the 1960s: either discovery of the True Self and Transcen- dence or social revolution but not both. Moreover, some of these groups capitalized on the 1960s cult of pure Experience and channelled it to foster acceptance of hierarchy and asceticism; while others sought to shape expe- rience in accordance with the prescriptions of the sacred texts of Marxism, Hinduism, or Christianity. John Lennon was already aware of the gods of the 19705 and thought he understood their appeal: "God is a conceptl By which We measure our pain." His long list of deities in which he said he did not believe included "Jesus," "Buddha," "Mantra," "Gita," and "Yoga." He left out Marx, for he was about to worship at that shrine himself after a spell in Primal Scream. But many in his huge audience were unable to follow his advice: "And so dear friends / You just have to carry on / The dream is over."

This Post-Movement Groups section of the full paper is the one pertaining to Divine Light Mission and Guru Maharaj Ji. The full paper is available online.

FROM "THE GATES OF EDEN" TO "DAY OF THE LOCUST:"

An Analysis of the Dissident Youth Movement of the 1960s and its Heirs of the Early l97Os - the Post-movement Groups.
DANIEL A. FOSS and RALPH W. LARKIN

Article in Theory and Society, January 1976

Post-Movement Groups

Post-movement groups can be classified according to their historical and cultural relationship to the white middle class youth movement of the 1960s.

Some evolved organically out of the decomposing youth culture at the end of the 1960s or later. In this category we would include the Divine Light Mission of Guru Maharaj Ji, authoritarian communes like the Lyman Family, the Manson Family, and the Metellica Aquarian Foundation of Amherst, Massachusetts, and the Marxist sects that arose from the ashes of SDS (e.g., the October League and the Revolutionary Union). Other groups were formed at least in part to repudiate some or all the characteristic cultural manifestations of the sixties, either during the movement period or afterwards. Such groups include the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation (a fundamentalist Christian sect), the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (the Hare Krish- nas). the Progressive Labor Party, and the National Caucus of Labor Commit-

tees. Still other groups antedated the existence of the movement, sometimes by decades. They did not appeal to freak youth during the movement period, but received an influx of former movement participants and younger people after the demise of the movement. Examples of these groups are L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology and the Communist and Socialist Workers' Parties.

Post-movement groups, regardless of whether their manifest goal was to transform the social order through the development of a revolutionary vanguard, as in the case of the Marxist sectarians, or through propagation of the faith as in the case of the religious sects, developed an authoritarian structure, formally articulated with sharp boundary-definition. Most of these groups also developed a cult of personality around a single leader who served as an embodiment of the vision of the membership, and to whom they demonstrated extravagant servility. In the cases of the religious groups, the leader became deified and worshipped. Prabupad (A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami), the spiritual master of the Hare Krishnas, Guru Maharaj Ji of the Divine Light Mission, and Moses David of the Children of God are all examples of such deities. Even in cases where post-movement groups were established on non-religious grounds, such deification occurred. Mel Lyman, the founder of "The Lyman Family," a Boston area freak commune, had proclaimed himself God by 1967. Victor Barranco, the originator of the More Houses in Oakland, California, became the spiritual father of the "marks" (his term) he exploited in a profit-making scheme to rebuild old houses. What makes him so incredible is that he induced young ex-freaks to rebuild houses without compensation and after they finished, charged them S$00 a month to live in them. He also ran the Institute of Human Abilities, which amounted to having his devotees pay up to $65 for an hour in his presence. In the cases of the Marxist sectarians, Lyn Marcus of the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) was supposed to have the ability to foretell the precise development of world capitalism for the next five years; it would eventuate in a world-wide depression culminating in the mass strike process-in the midst of which the Labor Committee, knowing exactly what to do, will seize power.

Each of these groups is pyramidal in structure, with lines of authority highly articulated from the top down. The NCLC, directed by ex-efficiency expert Marcus, operates a tightly knit bureaucracy which measures its progress by the hour! The Divine Light Mission is rampant with titles, and has developed a centralized bureaucratic structure which spends most of its effort printing, filling out, and filing data processing forms that monitor organizational activity. The Guru himself holds the titles of Supreme Director and Supreme Chief Executive of the Mission. Smaller groups and authoritarian communes

manifest patriarchal rather than bureaucratic structures. ln these cases, as in the Lyman Family or the Alamo Foundation, the authority comes directly from the leader.

Each group has appropriated a fragment of the freak vision, often using it as the basis of legitimisation of the authoritarian structure. The servility of the members is used as evidence of spirituality, ego-transcendence, or even manifestations of peace and love. When members allow themselves to be subject to hierarchical authority, such personal subjugation is prima facie evidence of commitment to the propagation of love and peace or the historical necessity of the revolution.

Post-movement groups developed non-conflictual stances toward society-at- large. Like their predecessors, they all believed in the inevitability of radical change; however, unlike dissident youth, they believed that social transformation could not be achieved by immediate action upon and conflict with objective social reality, but must be brought about by the attainment of spiritual perfection by the members and the diffusion of spiritual perfection to broad sectors of the population." Where conflict did occur, it was not with the larger society, but between competing, post-movement groups either for similar constituencies or over minute differences in doctrine. For exam- ple, in mid-1973, the NCLC began "Operation Mop-up," a campaign to destroy the Communist Party by beating up its members. At a Divine Light Mission Festival, 30 Hare Krishnas were arrested protesting Guru Maharaj Ji's claim to Perfect Mastership.

All post-movement groups break sharply with the notion, widely disseminated in the late 1960s among White middle class youth, that removal of limitations on immediate gratification and rediscovery of the body is inextricably combined with the process of the transformation of the entire social order. Instead, they stand for a reversion to an earlier cultural syndrome: they advocate self-discipline, self-sacrifice, hard work, systematic and orderly living, and renunciation of the pleasures of the flesh.

These groups minutely regulated the everyday lives of their membership. Short hair, conventional dress for men and modest dress for women have been the norms in several groups. Most prohibited the use of substances defined by the conventional culture as "drugs," and many have banned alcohol as well. All or nearly all of these groups have discouraged uninhibited sexuality and many have encouraged sexual abstinence. Among the Jesus Freaks and the Eastern sects, renunciation of sexuality tended to be a sign of spiritual perfection and that one was relying on the source of ultimate satisfaction which lies within: The Holy Spirit; Krishna; The Reservoir of Pleasure; Theta (in Scientology); or the universal Energy source (Divine Light

Mission). Among the Marxist sects, sexual restraint seemed to be taken as a sign that one was "serious." A member of the NCLC once boasted, "I've got no time for girls, I'm too busy doing class organizing." Some groups, such as the Children of God and the Hare Krishnas, have not discouraged marriage, but insist that marital sex be intended exclusively for purposes of procreation.

All post-movement groups maintain a fierce exclusivity based on the claims of their doctrines and leaders to embody a monopoly of the truth; however, the similarity of their functions is revealed by the fact that many people pass through several of these groups in turn. The fragmentation of the youth culture is most dramatically demonstrated in such claims of exclusivity.

During the sixties, as the vision developed, it was able to incorporate greater varieties of orientations and, because of its subjectivist-existentialist core, became more-or-less universally accepted, since it raised personal experience as the ultimate criterion of validity. Though post-movement groups gave lip service to the criterion of personal experience, those experiences that were the exclusive domain of the group became the basis for the arbitration of Truth. For example, devotees of Guru Maharaj Ji cannot complete a sentence without including the word "experience." However, to them "experience" means experience in the Knowledge, which mere mortals who have not been initiated into the secret meditative techniques of the Divine Light Mission cannot possibly comprehend unless they too become devotees. Since the sole purpose of the organization is the propagation of the one and only Truth, the organization becomes the embodiment of that Truth, and membership in the organization is the only means by which one can have access to the Truth.

In accordance with the characterization of conventional society as meaningless by freaks, post-movement groups offer themselves as remedies for the meaninglessness endured by average middle class citizens and drug-soaked hedonistic hippies alike (and those which do not make overt promises also attract members who join at least in part because of a craving for a more "meaningful existence"), Whereas freaks had found meaning in maintaining a position of defiance and opposition to the "plastic world," post-movement groups find meaning in escape from the complexities and incongruities of the material world (or the world of the mind) into a more transcendent simplified view of the cosmos independent of material reality. Jesus Freaks recruit among long-hairs by denouncing the pointlessness of conflict or the hedonistic life and by claiming that the true Christian can stay permanently high on Jesus and obtain greater joy than that derived from drugs or sex ("Try Jesus-God's eternal triple"). They promise the end of all earthly mental anguish, which is said to be derived from being caught up in the toils of a society dominated by Satan. The Eastern cults promise the same thing using

different words: the material world is illusion, and a life committed solely to activity in the material world is bound to be meaningless and incapable of sustaining true happiness. The mind, preoccupied with coping with the material world, becomes a trap in which the individual becomes entangled.

The individual is urged to by-pass or squelch the mind and to "look within" to find the only reliable source of pleasure, such as Krishna Consciousness or Satchitananand ("truth-consciousness-bliss"). "Give me your troubles," says Guru Maharaj Ji, "and l will give you peace." Marxist sectarians promise a meaningful life by indicating that the individual can either choose to swim with the inexorable tides of history - or against them.

The post-movement period lasted from about 1970-l973. By 1974, the Divine Light Mission had faded from public view after the disastrous Millennium '73 festival in Houston, and conversions declined to 5,797 in 1974 compared to 30,000 in 1973. The Children of God have apparently become a sex-cult, the NCLC faltered, thanks in part to the mental breakdown of its leader, and Jesus Freaks are becoming Baptists.

Conclusion

The cohesion of the white middle class youth movement of the 1960s was based upon a shared subculture of dissidencc. So long as this subculture was evolving in the direction of a more intense, more widespread revolt, with broader aims, each successive cultural phase had been spearheaded by an indicative minority which acted out the most profound impulse of revolt within the youth culture as a whole and provided a style to be emulated by those less fully committed. Sma.ller vanguard nuclei, basically primary groups, crystallized the idealized collective self-image of the indicative minorities into mythical models.

As dissidence subsided and as the vision which imparted meaning to the revolt for movement participants faded away or became fragmented, it was inevita- ble, in our view, that the evolution of the youth culture toward accommoda- tion should havc been spearheaded by a new indicative minority-the members of the post-movement groups. These people were drawn to organiza- tions which systematically combatted the anarchic anti-authorianism of the 1960s and combined cultural vestiges of the 1960s (such as rock music, communal living, or the rhetoric of love, peace, Experience, or Revolution) with prescriptions which reversed those of the 1960s culture, e.g., obedience to superiors, short hair, or sexual abstinence. They thus assaulted the content of the movement subculture in part by appropriating some of the forms and rhetoric. They spearheaded the trend toward accommodation with conventio- nal society in the guise of a nominal rebellion and fixed the locus of true

liberation either exclusively in the individual soul or in a revolution to be brought about by the inevitable workings of history rather than by people living their lives authentically.

The leadership strata of the post-movement groups are usually primary groups or networks of primary groups gathered around the person of the leader.

These groups are the equivalents of the vanguard nuclei of the previous decade. Their primary group character is frequently obscured by titles and organizational charts. Some examples: Leaders of the Children of God (now in the process of dissolution) were drawn from those who accompanied the founder on a bus caravan from Huntington Beach, California, to Louisiana and Texas after he prophesied the imminent destruction of California by an earthquake in 1968. The executive stratum of the Divine Light Mission is largely comprised of individuals who met Gum Maharaj Ii while seeking Truth in India during l969-7l or who received Knowledge during the Guru's First World Peace Tour in 1971, and in either case induced their friends to receive Knowledge also. Swami Muktana.nda's Shrce Gumdev Ashram displays a similar pattern at an earlier stage of development. The core group of the National Caucus of Labor Committees were closely associated at Columbia University and in the Progressive Labor Party before they became disciples of the founder around the time of the Columbia Strike in 1968. The Revolutio- nary Union (whose doctrine is "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought"~ in opposition to Trotskyisrn and revisionism-and which reveres Stalin) retains its original 1969 leadership when it was known as the Bay Area Revo- lutionary Union, an SDS sub-faction. The October League, which carries an arcane doctrinal war with the Revolutionary Union, originated as an SDS splinter group called Revolutionary Youth Movement II, and still retains its original leadership.

The Youth movement of the 19605 lasted for a full decade, culminating in Wide scale confrontation of dominant society at the psychic, social, and cultural levels, with all aspects of dominant society being defined as negative, oppressive, stultifying, and inimical. Revolt occurred i.n alternating processes of political confrontation and cultural intensification. The height of the revolt was in 1968 with the advent of the freak-radical (alienated from straight society both culturally and politically) committed to bringing down the structure of dominant society "by any means necessary." As is the way with social movements, the decline occurred at a much more rapid pace than the intensification. By 1971, almost all fomts of youth dissidence had disappeared or had been encapsulated, and various forms of accommodation were appearing on the scene. Post-movement groups were on the rise and dominated the youth culture scene, reaching their apex during the summer of 1973. Since then, they have also declined as youth returned to

an uneasy state of "normalityi" the rise of "grim vocationalism" and rever- sion to 1950s privatism. With the demise of the post-movement groups, even fragments of the vision have all but disappeared. Whereas during the previous decade, a time of seemingly boundless prosperity, accumulative personal goals receded in significance, the mid~l97Os economic slump brings with it a rescuscitation of "getting ahead," though seemingly without the conviction among youth in the absolute validity of doing so.

REFERENCES

Cohen, Norman, The Pursuit ofthe Millennium, New York: Oxford, 1970.

Davis, Fred, On Youth Subculturer: The Hippie Variant, New York: General Learning, 1971.

Fairfield, Richard, Communer USA: A Personal Tour, Baltimore: Penguin, 1972.

Flacks, Richard, Youth and Social Change, New York: Markham, 1971.

Hoftfman, Abbie, Revolution for the llell of It, New York: Dial, 1968.

Woodstock Nation, New York: Vintage, 1969.

Kenniston, Kenneth, The Young Radicals, New York: Ilarcourt, Brace, and World, 1968.

Peterson, Richard and John Bileursky, May I970: The Campus Aftermath of Cambodia and Kent State, Berkeley: Carnegie Foundation, 1971.

Presidents Commission on Campus Unrest, New York: Arno Press, 1970.

Sale, Kirkpatric, SDS, New York: Vintage, 1973.

Yablonsky, Lewis, The Hippie Trip, New York: Pegasus, 1968.

Yankelovich, Daniel elal., Changing Values on Campus, New York: Bantam, 1972.

NOTES

1. D. Yankelovich, Changing Values on Campus, New York, 1972.

2. R. Flacks, Youth and Social Change, New York, 1971.

3. F. Davis, On Youth Subcultures: The Hippie Variant, New York, 1971; L. Yablon- sky, The Hippie Trip, New York, 1968.

4. Yankelovich, op. cit; R. Peterson and J. Biloursky, May 1970.' The Campus Aftermath of Cambodia and Kent Stale, Berkeley, 1971.

5. K. Kenniston, The Young Radicals, New York, 1968.

6. R. Fairfield, Communes U.S.A..'A Personal Tour, Baltimore, 1972.

7. The English peasant revolt of 1381, in N. Cohen, The Pursuit 0f The Millenium, New York, 1970.

8. A "Death of Hippie" ceremony was held in Haight-Ashbury on September 9, 1967: the new phase was inaugurated with the demonstrations in Oakland, California and at the Pentagon, October 16-2l, 1967. SDS liquidated itself in Chicago in June, 1969; the new phase was launched at the Woodstock festival in latc August 1969.

9. Subjectivist ("if it feels bad, it's repressive"), irrationalist (hero-worship, glorifica- tion of violence and destructivcncss as ends in themselves), and rationalist elements are present in ideological ambiance of all social movements. However, rationalism may be said to have been paramount in bourgeois and prolctarian radical move- ments of the age ofindustrialization in the West. lrrationalism was correspondingly prominent in reactionary romanticism and Fascism. Subjectivism was characteristic of the white youth movement oi' the 19605 as well as of the hlack and feminist movements in as much as the movement participants experienced rationalism as the universe of discourse of their enemies.

A. Hoffman, Revolution for /hr: Hell of lt, New York, l968.

K. Sale, SDS, New York, 1973, Chapter 25.

A. Hoffman, Woodstock Nation, New York. 1969.

From this we do not in the least exclude the Marxist scetarians, for while the latter claim to be "materialistic" and "scientifjc," to use the "dialectical metltod," to be opposed to "anti-intellectualism," and to he striving for a proletariau class revolu- tion on the matcriztl plane, they are faced with the undeniable tact that the working class resolutely ignores them: in the terminology of the National Caucus of Labor Committees (recruited like most of the Marxist sects. primarily from middle class students and drop-outs), the workers are "swinish." The proletarian revolution will therefore come about through the inevitable working nut of the contradictions of capitalism, which for at least the immediate future, are outside control of thc sect members but which, when they should ripen. will make the working class properly class conscious. For this reason, the Marxist seetarians' proletanan revolution has precisely the same subcultural function as the Jesus Freaks' Second Coming nt" Christ since the Apocalypse cannot he advanced through immediate action in the material world, it is best to preoccupy oneself with the attainment of the Marxist version of spiritual perfection, i.e., True Consciousness, through the thorough axsimilation of the sect's version of Mauisrn, the study of the sect newspaper and p:tmpl'liCtS, and the rote learning of the writings ot' Mars, I-ingels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, F/nver lloxha, and Kim ll Sung. True consciousness becomes divorced from practice and thus an end in itself, Theory and Society 3 (1976) 45-64