An article titled "How Old is the New SDS?" by history professor Maurice Isserman appears in the March 2 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review. Isserman discussed the history of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organization in the 60s and compared the new incarnation of the organization with that of the previous era. He suggested that the current generation might be better off shifting its focus away from the past.
Quoting "the radical granddaddy of them all," Karl Marx, Isserman selected Marx' admonition to European leftists of the 19th century to make his point. "The social revolution of the 19th century cannot derive its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has shed superstitious belief in the past. The revolution of the 19th century must let the dead bury the dead in order to arrive at its own content," proclaimed Marx.
"I suspect that he … would agree that it's time for radical student activists of the 21st century to start writing their own poetry," concluded Isserman.
