Cycles and Activism

IT-IS obviously very difficult to interpret or predict the duration of given political trends and cultural styles. To forecast such developments is similar to dealing with the weather. The best prediction about tomorrow's weather is that it will be the same as today's, but whatever phase we are in, a heat wave, a cold wave, a rainy season, this, too, is sure to end and be followed by a very different type of climate. In politics, conditions which encourage the growth of right-wing or left-wing movements, or of relative stability and little political interest, also last for a time, and end.

The Ku Klux Klan of the early 1920's reportedly had between three and four million members, came close to dominating both major party conventions in 1924, yet looking back on it, we can see that it lost half its membership in 1925, and was practically dead by 1926. No one in 1924 would have possibly predicted such a rapid decline, and even now with the benefit of hindsight, it is hard to tell why the people who moved to join from 1920-1924 dropped it so totally in 1925-1926, (Joe) McCarthyism was basically a four year phenomenon, 1950-1954. The famous Berkeley anthropologist, Alfred Krocher, studied the changes in the length of skirts for a 100 year period using Paris fashion catalogues. He reported an irregular cyclical pattern in which skirts rose and fell almost as far as they could go in either direction.

Although it is easy to recognize and describe a new political or cultural stage after it has occurred, few, if any, analysts have a good record in predicting the beginning and end of these cycles. I know no one, whether left, right, or center, in his politics, who anticipated the rise of student and intellectual radicalism as a major phenomenon of the second half of the 1960's. Many radical theorists pointed to the seemingly enduring character of quiescence and acquiescence of the 1950's as a reflection of the ability of an affluent consumer-goods oriented capitalism to breed "contented cows." But just as the period of overwhelming passivity came to an end, the period of aggressive activism also will end, if past history tells us anything. And when that happens, it will be totally unexpected by radicals and conservatives alike, much as the decline of the Klan surprised observers in the 1920's.

Many concerned with campus affairs anticipated or feared that the Fall term would see a continuation of the massive protest movements and political efforts of May and June. This clearly has not occurred. Most surprising and telling of all is the almost total lack of concern in the Panther trails in New Haven exhibited by the Yale student body this fall. Does this mean that the activist phase of the current cycle is over, as many are saying? I do not know. New major political events could stimulate a wave of protest. But whatever the course of events during the remainder of this academic year, it is highly probable that we have entered the declining phase of this particular cycle. But like everyone else, I will really be able to tell you for certain a few years from now.

(Seymour Martin Lipset, Professor of Government and Social Relations, is co-author of The Politics of Unreason, a study of right wing extremism,)