Written for the class book for the fiftieth reunion of the Wesleyan University class of 1976. Thanks to Karen Harmin for suggesting I write this. Titled with apologies to Alvin Lee.
I’ve thought often about the expectations I formed of both my life and the future of our country at, and because of, Wesleyan. In many ways, my life has gone as I had hoped and expected. The country has very much not.
We came to Wesleyan in the seventies. But the spirit of the sixties shaped us with its sense of optimism and possibility, the aspiration to a new kind of freedom, and the belief that we were on the verge of a radical step forward in our political, social, and moral lives.
I began college with the idea of studying American politics to prepare for a career in left of center politics. My first American politics class, with Jim Murphy and nine other students, taught me how much more complicated politics was than I had imagined and how much I enjoyed learning about it. So, I started thinking about going to graduate school in political science before going into politics. Then I took a class on Democratic theory with Don Moon and a political sociology class with Vernon Dibble and recognized that I had too many deep questions about my political ideals to even think about going into politics until I figured them out. And finally, I took a course with Moon and Brian Fay on the philosophy of social science that gave me insights into how to answer those questions.
Together these courses set me on a journey in political philosophy that aimed to defend three aspirations that are deeply connected to the radical impulse I discovered at Wesleyan.
The first was to extend the prosperity of the middle class to the poor Black and white people who fell outside our charmed circle. That seemed to be a relatively easy task, which required us merely to deepen the welfare state that had already reduced poverty and expand educational opportunity.
The second was to break down the barriers of race that had marred our country since its founding, and of sex and gender, which had marred Western civilization since its founding.
The third was to eliminate monotonous, boring work and the isolation of suburban life. This would enable everyone to find work that was fulfilling because it challenged us to develop and extend our faculties and capacities in close-knit communities.
I’ve largely remained on that personal and intellectual path. I wrote three manuscripts that I hope to publish soon, now that I’ve left full-time work in political activism. They lay out the case for a radically inclusive, feminist, and multiracial democracy. They address the questions about ultimate goals I needed to answer before I felt comfortable turning to political activism.
But when opportunities for such activism came up that I was afraid might not come again, I jumped on them knowing I’d be guided by the writing I hoped I’d eventually publish.
As I was making my way along this path, however, American politics and life changed in 1980 and then again in 2000 and 2016. And at each of those backward steps, the radical promise of the ’60s and ’70s became more distant. So, while my heart still longs to fight for a radically democratic egalitarian society, most of my political activism has been devoted to protecting and slightly expanding the democratic welfare state I took for granted in my twenties.
The organizations and campaigns I led in Pennsylvania did not demand workers’ control in corporations, the devolution of power and funding to local neighborhood councils, or reparations. Instead, they raised the minimum wage, helped enact the Affordable Care Act, created a state earned income tax to reduce poverty among the state’s lowest-income families, added $1 billion for an adequacy fund meant to eventually end our state’s worst-in-the-nation economic and racial inequity in K–12 school funding, stopped an attempt to undermine Pennsylvania’s independent judiciary, and gave Democratic candidates the tools they needed to take over the state House of Representatives. (And when we Democrats take the Senate, perhaps this year, I expect to see the enactment of proposals I’ve devised to tax the ultra-rich and corporations so the state can pay for expanded access to child care, healthcare, and housing.)
The skills and ideas I brought to this work were shaped by what I learned not just in the classroom but also in campus politics at Wesleyan and in the twenty-five years of teaching and writing that preceded my turn to full-time political activism.
And now, as I return to writing, my new work in political philosophy will also explain why our radical hopes have been dashed while a large portion of the country has turned to the Right.
The short version is that some of the radical hopes of the 1960s and 1970s have been realized. The radical Right’s rise to power is the product of a backlash against the dramatic, if incomplete, cultural and material advances of women and Black and LGBTQ people. If we survive the current moment, the backlash is worth those advances. For they are among the best parts of the radical aspirations of our youth.
While advances for women and Black and LGBTQ people can be rolled back for a time, if we keep pushing forward, we will eventually reach our goal. And when we are far less divided by race and gender, we will be better placed to create a just and democratic economy and polity.