Student politics failed from both quietist apathy and revolutionary activism

Evidence

These lay in the fact that the gap between theory and praxis had become unusually large; and the students’ role was characterized by tensions, on the one hand, between political commitment and preparing for a career and, on the other hand, between the positivist academic system, which could no longer offer guidance for action, and their need for practical general guidance. He described the difficult, but correct, path as being like walking a tightrope between indifference, excessive conformism and political apathy, or irrational guidelines for action, on the one handthis was the mass of the studentsand activism, uncontrolled permanent preparation for revolution and theoretical oversimplification, on the other handthis was a group of students so small as to be hardly worth mentioning. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 652

Categorization

• XREF: Overlaps with the Frankfurt School material on the students’ split between voluntarism and theory — Dutschke’s ‘new voluntarism’ rejected Habermas’s orthodox reading of historical tendency. — connects to: Habermas saw the student path as a tightrope between apathy and revolutionary oversimplification — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2615; The student movement split between revolutionary strategies and demands for self-directed study. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 667
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Habermas saw the student path as a tightrope between apathy and revolutionary oversimplification — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2615; The student movement split between revolutionary strategies and demands for self-directed study. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 667