Analysis on the Port Huron Statemen

1520 Words7 Pages
Analysis on The Port Huron Statement INTRODUCTION The Port Huron Statement is the manifesto of the American student movement Activist, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1962. It expanded rapidly in the sixtieth and their radical views influenced the development and social life formation in the country of the time. The SDS claims in The Port Huron Statement, as the Wikipedia entry notes, that “race and alienation were the two major flashpoints to exploit for their vision of a better America.” The Port Huron Statement states “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.” In this paper, the alienation ideas presented by SDS in the Port Huron Statement will be discussed and analyzed. A lot of elements can be included into the term “alienation.” Marxism used the word alienation to describe a process by which capitalism disrupts the natural relationships between a worker, his work and the benefits of that work. In the context of 60’s society, alienation was described as a separation between individuals and their society, a failure to bond with society socially and politically. ANALYSIS First of all, Port Huron Statement demonstrated the
Open Document