Being Young in a Postindustrial Society

Whatever is happening on campus, it is not a revolution in any recognizable sense. A revolution must have an independent socioeconomic base, and the “youth revolution” conspicuously lacks that. Its proponents do not constitute a class, definable in terms of a specific mode of production and capable of offering an alternative mode of meeting men’s physical and social needs. Nor do the young have a set of structural proposals that they could put into effect if they were to seize power—or, for that matter, an organization capable of seizing it. The campus upheavals have created a violent, destructive fringe, but the campus mood as a whole is not that. It is a mood of concern and acute alienation, and the upheaval in whic...