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湯姆‧海登 (TOM HAYDEN) 休倫港宣言 The Port Huron Statement 我們是當代人，在至少是小康的環境中長大，目前住在大學校園裏，正忐忑不安地注視著我們所繼承的世界。 1962年，積極投身民權運動與和平運動的大學生們創建了實現民主社會學生同盟。該同盟代表當時被人們稱為新左派的力量。在密執安州休倫港舉行的成立大會上，該同盟正式通過了由密執安大學研究生湯姆‧海登(1939─
)起草的一篇宣言。休倫港宣言對美國社會進行了廣泛的批評──涉及種族歧視、核戰爭危險、無法和平發展原子能、冷戰、財富分配不公、大學生的政治冷漠以及自由主義思想的枯竭，等等。以下所載為休倫港宣言的引言。六十年代和七十年代初該宣言在學生激進分子中是一份頗有影響的文件。 我們是當代人，在至少是小康的環境中長大，目前住在大學校園裏，正忐忑不安地注視著我們所繼承的世界。當我們還是幼童時，美國是世界上最富裕、最強大的國家，當時唯有它擁有原子彈，它最少受到現代戰爭的侵害，而且它是聯合國──我們認為該組織將把西方的影響擴散到全世界──的一個發起國。人人自由平等．民有、民治、民享的政府──我們那時覺得這些美國價值觀念很好，是我們安身立命的原則。我們中許多人在自滿情緒中成長。 然而隨著年齡增長，我們的舒適安逸被一個又一個不能不令人憂慮的事件所打破。首先是南方反種族偏見鬥爭所昭示的無所不在、令人痛苦的人格貶黜的事實，迫使我們大多數人從沈默變為積極行動。其次，由原子彈的存在所象徵的冷戰籠罩世界的事實，使我們意識到：我們自己、我們的朋友以及千百萬我們因共同的危險更加瞭解的抽像的「其他人」隨時可能死去。對別的人類問題我們可以故意忽視、迴避或麻木不仁，但這兩個問題則不然，因為它們的衝擊太直接太猛烈，它們對我們提出的要求太富有挑戰性──要求我們每個人為衝突和問題的解決負起責任。 當這些和其他問題或直接壓在我們身上或折磨我們的良心，成為我們自己關切的事，我們也開始看到我們周圍的美國複雜而令人不安的自相矛盾現象。在南方及北方大城市中黑人生活的現實面前，「人人生而平等……」的宣言顯得何等虛偽。美國所宣稱的和平意圖與它在冷戰現狀中的經濟和軍事投資互相牴觸。 我們已親眼目睹，而且將繼續看到其他自相矛盾的種種怪事。依靠核能很容易向一座座城市提供全部電力，然而那些佔據支配地位的民族國家似乎更有可能發動人類戰爭史上規模空前的毀滅性戰爭。雖然我們自己的技術正摧毀舊的社會組織形式，創造新的社會組織形式，人們仍在容忍徒勞無功的工作和懶懶散散，無所事事。三分之二的人類正苦於營養不良，而我們自己的上流社會卻窮奢極欲，紙醉金迷。雖然世界人口預計在四十年後將增加一倍，各國仍聽任無政府主義成為國際行動的一大原則，而不加節制的開採正耗盡地球的自然資源。雖然人類亟需革命的領導，美國卻安於國家的僵局。它的目標模糊不清，模稜兩可，受傳統框框束縛；它的民主制度與其說是「民有，民治，民享」，還不如說是冷漠無情的，為權勢所操縱擺佈。 不僅我們關於美國人美德的意象蒙上了污點，不僅因美國理想的虛偽性被揭穿引起幻想破滅，而且我們開始感到，原來我們心目中的美國黃金時代其實是一個時代的衰落。在世界範圍爆發的反對殖民主義和帝國主義的革命、極權主義國家的牢固確立、戰爭威脅、人口膨脹、國際秩序混亂、超技術等等──這些趨勢正考驗我們自己為民主和自由承擔義務的堅韌性，考驗我們在一個動亂的世界實現民主和自由的能力。 我們的工作遵從這種觀念的引導：我們可能是進行生存實驗的最後一代人。但我們屈居少數──我國人民的絕大多數認為我們社會和世界的暫時均衡是永恆的功能要素。或許這又是件自相矛盾的咄咄怪事：我們自己感到形勢逼人，時不我待，但我們的社會卻發出這種資訊，即沒有什麼可行的方案能取代現狀。在政治家寬慰人心的語調後面，在認定美國將「馬馬虎虎對付過去」的一般觀點後面，在那些拒不考慮未來的人們的呆滯遲鈍後面，有著一種瀰漫於社會的想法：根本就沒有什麼選擇的餘地；我們的時代不但已目睹了建立烏托邦的嘗試以失敗告終，而且也看到了任何新方針走向窮途末路。人們感覺到社會的複雜壓迫著空虛的生活，擔心事情隨時隨地會失去控制。人們害怕變革本身，因為變革可能擊碎眼下似乎為他們遏制住混亂的任何無形的框架。對大多數美國人來說，一切社會運動的參加者都可疑，都很危險。每個人在他的同輩人身上看到的都是冷漠，這一情況使得不願組織起來實行變革的普遍心態永久存在。佔統治地位的制度和機構紛繁複雜，足以挫損它們的潛在批評者的銳氣；而且它們森嚴壁壘，足以迅速驅散或徹底擊潰抗議和改革的力量，這樣便限制了人們對未來的期望。此外，我們是個物質生活已得到改善的社會，通過自己狀況的改善我們似乎已削弱了進一步變革的理由。 有些人希望我們相信，美國人在繁榮昌盛中感到心滿意足──把這稱為他們對自己在新的世界中的作用內心深處的憂慮外表塗上的一層釉彩豈不更好? 如果說這種憂慮造成對人類事務更不關心的冷漠態度，難道它不也會引起對以下信念的渴求：現狀有可替代的東西，人們能夠採取行動以改變學校、工廠、官僚體制和政府的狀況。這種渴求既是變革的導火線又是變革的動力，我們正是向人們的這種渴求發出呼籲。為現狀尋求真正民主的替代物，承擔對它們進行社會實驗的義務，是有價值、能充分發揮才能的人類事業，這項事業今天推動我們前進，我們也希望它推動別人前進。正是在此基礎上我們提出這份關於我們的信念和分析的文件，作為二十世紀後期理解和改變人類狀況的一種努力，它植根於這樣一個古老的、至今尚未實現的設想──人獲得左右自己生活環境的力量。 We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit. When we were kids the United States was the wealthiest and strongest country in the world; the only one with the atom bomb, the least scarred by modern war, an initiator of the United Nations that we thought would distribute Western influence throughout the world. Freedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the people－ these American values we found good, principles by which we could live as men. Many of us began maturing in complacency. As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events too troubling to dismiss. First, the permeating and victimizing fact of human degradation, symbolized by the Southern struggle against racial bigotry, compelled most of us from silence to activism. Second, the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly because of our common peril, might die at any time. We might deliberately ignore, or avoid, or fail to feel all other human problems, but not these two, for these were too immediate and crushing in their impact, too challenging in the demand that we as individuals take the responsibility for encounter and resolution. While these and other problems either directly oppressed us or rankled our consciences and became our own subjective concern, we began to see complicated and disturbing paradoxes in our surrounding America. The declaration "all men are created equal..." rang hollow before the facts of Negro life in the South and the big cities of the North. The proclaimed peaceful intentions of the United States contradicted its economic and military investments in the Cold War status quo. We witnessed, and continue to witness, other paradoxes. With nuclear energy whole cities can easily be powered, yet the dominant nation-states seem more likely to unleash destruction greater than that incurred in all wars of human history. Although our own technology is destroying old and creating new forms of social organization, men still tolerate meaningless work and idleness. While two-thirds of mankind suffers undernourishment, our own upper classes revel amidst superfluous abundance. Although world population is expected to double in forty years, the nations still tolerate anarchy as a major principle of international conduct and uncontrolled exploitation governs the sapping of the earth's physical resources. Although mankind desperately needs revolutionary leadership, America rests in national stalemate, its goals ambiguous and tradition-bound instead of informed and clear, its democratic system apathetic and manipulated rather than "of, by, and for the people." Not only did tarnish appear on our image of American virtue, not only did disillusion occur when the hypocrisy of American ideals was discovered, but we began to sense that what we had originally seen as the American Golden Age was actually the decline of an era. The world-wide outbreak of revolution against colonialism and imperialism, the entrenchment of totalitarian states, the menace of war, overpopulation, international disorder, super technology－ these trends were testing the tenacity of our own commitment to democracy and freedom and our abilities to visualize their application to a world in upheaval. Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a minority－ the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally functional parts. In this is perhaps the outstanding paradox: we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common opinion that America will "muddle through," beneath the stagnation of those who have closed their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply are no alternatives, that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well. Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might be thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change. The dominant institutions are complex enough to blunt the minds of their potential critics, and entrenched enough to swiftly dissipate or entirely repel the energies of protest and reform, thus limiting human expectancies. Then, too, we are a materially improved society, and by our own improvements we seem to have weakened the case for further change. Some would have us believe that Americans feel contentment amidst prosperity－ but might it not better be called a glaze above deeply felt anxieties about their role in the new world? And if these anxieties produce a developed indifference to human affairs, do they not as well produce a yearning to believe there is an alternative to the present, that something can be done to change circumstances in the school, the workplaces, the bureaucracies, the government? It is to this latter yearning, at once the spark and engine of change, that we direct our present appeal. The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today. On such a basis do we offer this document of our convictions and analysis: as an effort in understanding and changing the conditions of humanity in the late twentieth century, an effort rooted in the ancient, still unfulfilled conception of man attaining determining influence over his circumstances of life. |