What do you think?
Rate this book
The Port Huron Statement
We seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation governed by two central that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence in men and provide the media for their common participation . . ."
—from The Port Huron Statement.
Four key periods in American history have most influenced what America is like the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, and the 1960s. No document better frames and explains the 1960s than The Port Huron Statement.
The statement was a generational call for direct participatory democracy in which Americans would have greater say over the decisions affecting their lives. It called for the extension of democratic principles to the workplace as well as the electoral arena. It opposed the dominance of the military-industrial complex with the hope that social movements could reform the Democrats as a party of progressive opposition. In its vision greater democracy would lessen individuals' alienation.
The manifesto's 1962 publication preceded the phenomena of the counter-culture, hippies, and back-to-the-land. It is truly the intellectual roots of the social change of the 1960s and its impact is still being felt in 2005. In The Big Lebowksi, the character played by Jeff Bridges claimed authorship; it was condemned by right-wing justice Robert Bork, recalled with nostalgia by Garry Wills and E.J. Dionne, and sections have been printed in countless readers on American history.
—from The Port Huron Statement.
Four key periods in American history have most influenced what America is like the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, and the 1960s. No document better frames and explains the 1960s than The Port Huron Statement.
The statement was a generational call for direct participatory democracy in which Americans would have greater say over the decisions affecting their lives. It called for the extension of democratic principles to the workplace as well as the electoral arena. It opposed the dominance of the military-industrial complex with the hope that social movements could reform the Democrats as a party of progressive opposition. In its vision greater democracy would lessen individuals' alienation.
The manifesto's 1962 publication preceded the phenomena of the counter-culture, hippies, and back-to-the-land. It is truly the intellectual roots of the social change of the 1960s and its impact is still being felt in 2005. In The Big Lebowksi, the character played by Jeff Bridges claimed authorship; it was condemned by right-wing justice Robert Bork, recalled with nostalgia by Garry Wills and E.J. Dionne, and sections have been printed in countless readers on American history.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
11 people are currently reading
278 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 26, 2018
Reading this in 1984 2018 is simultaneously inspiring and devastating. It's inspiring that a bunch of radically progressive 20-something students produced a document which catalyzed a movement that changed the Western world as we know it. It's also tragic that so many of the inequalities and injustices they hoped to eradicate have proved to be so resilient. The ambition of Tom Hayden and the other authors of the Port Huron Statement (as Hayden acknowledges in his 2005 preface) is matched only by their almost admirably naïve idealism. I wish we still had such high hopes; goodness knows we need them.
January 17, 2015
Like many others, I was politically torn during the sixties. Joining the Young People's Socialist League, youth affiliate of the Socialist Party, in sixty-seven at age fifteen, I worked sedulously in Senator Eugene McCarthy's Democratic primary campaigns in Illinois and Hawaii at age sixteen, joining the Students for a Democratic Society during the same period and serving as a delegate from Iowa to their convention at Chicago's old Coloseum. At the outset of a meeting at Grinnell College when I reported on that convention and the splitting of the SDS into three factions (the Progressive Labor Party and Revolutionary Youth Movements One and Two, the first of which became the Weather Underground) to the local chapter, I identified with the "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party, with the old Socialist Party (soon to split itself over the war in Southeast Asia), with the RYM2 faction and now, also, with the War Resisters' League, an international pacifist organization.
The Grinnell meeting of 1969 resulted, incidentally, in a decision not to affiliate with any of the factions of the old SDS, but to maintain our local organization and its publication, Pterodactyl (soon itself to be renamed). Later in that school year I drove to Chicago for demonstrations with fellow students identifying with RYM1. They went to the "Days of Rage" event in the Lincoln Park area. I went to the RYM2 demonstration at the Federal Building. They were all arrested. I took the bus back to college. We all remained friends after their release. One when on to work after graduation at the Library of Congress. One now is a published poet.
The Port Huron Statement, along with other, then poorly printed, materials had got me interested in the SDS in the first place--that and the fact that all of my older, student friends either belonged to or at least admired the organization which had printed our own underground newspapers in high school for free. The Statement itself is very much directed to the kind of audience of which I was a part: idealistic, educated younger members of the American middle class. Unlike what the organization itself became, the Statement is inclusive, adding to the traditional economic and class concerns of the Socialists significant mentions of democratic processes (including a nod to the Democratic Party as a possible instrument of reform), race relations, personal liberties, education and foreign relations. Although the Communists were criticized, communists were not excluded--though they were treated as a bit of an atavism so far as the U.S. was concerned. What struck me the most, consciously at least, was its high moral tone, my prime emotional motivation for being a leftist having much to do with not wanting to be responsible for causing unnecessary human suffering. Basically believing in representative government, the actions of the government of the U.S.A. were actions I strongly felt responsible for and, in many cases, ashamed of.
Franklin and Penelope Rosemont and all the other volunteers at Chas. Kerr Publishing are to be applauded for keeping the Port Huron Statement in print.
The Grinnell meeting of 1969 resulted, incidentally, in a decision not to affiliate with any of the factions of the old SDS, but to maintain our local organization and its publication, Pterodactyl (soon itself to be renamed). Later in that school year I drove to Chicago for demonstrations with fellow students identifying with RYM1. They went to the "Days of Rage" event in the Lincoln Park area. I went to the RYM2 demonstration at the Federal Building. They were all arrested. I took the bus back to college. We all remained friends after their release. One when on to work after graduation at the Library of Congress. One now is a published poet.
The Port Huron Statement, along with other, then poorly printed, materials had got me interested in the SDS in the first place--that and the fact that all of my older, student friends either belonged to or at least admired the organization which had printed our own underground newspapers in high school for free. The Statement itself is very much directed to the kind of audience of which I was a part: idealistic, educated younger members of the American middle class. Unlike what the organization itself became, the Statement is inclusive, adding to the traditional economic and class concerns of the Socialists significant mentions of democratic processes (including a nod to the Democratic Party as a possible instrument of reform), race relations, personal liberties, education and foreign relations. Although the Communists were criticized, communists were not excluded--though they were treated as a bit of an atavism so far as the U.S. was concerned. What struck me the most, consciously at least, was its high moral tone, my prime emotional motivation for being a leftist having much to do with not wanting to be responsible for causing unnecessary human suffering. Basically believing in representative government, the actions of the government of the U.S.A. were actions I strongly felt responsible for and, in many cases, ashamed of.
Franklin and Penelope Rosemont and all the other volunteers at Chas. Kerr Publishing are to be applauded for keeping the Port Huron Statement in print.
September 16, 2021
Still relevant to contemporary society, particularly the first half that focuses on political apathy, complacency and the importance of hope to foster change.
October 28, 2022
This is a 1962 political manifesto of student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It was written by SDS members, and completed on June 15, 1962, at a United Auto Workers (UAW) retreat outside of Port Huron, Michigan that is now part of Lakeport State Park, for the group's first national convention. Under Walter Reuther's leadership, the UAW paid for a range of expenses for the 1962 convention, including use of the UAW summer retreat in Port Huron. "The Dude", portrayed memorably by Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski, claims to be one of the authors of the "original" Port Huron Statement (as opposed to the "compromised" second draft). I honestly think I never knew it was a real document. So, I decided to read it once I learned of the fact.
(Mostly for convenience since I am reading a scanned image-PDF of the final, published "Port Huron Statement", I am taking at least some quotes from the text of the original draft of the 1962 Port Huron Statement, as distributed by Alan Haber to the attendees at the SDS Northeast Regional Conference, April 23, 2006. I see AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History appears to have some of the text version that I read as does the Online Archive of California.)
This time capsule of the radical left contains a blend of hopeful internationalism led by America, hope even for nuclear power, and attention to issues that seem to have gone to the back burner for progressives: prison reform and health facilitities.
Even back then, there was a need to call out the 1 %'ers:
While that doesn't surprise me, the fear of time-sapping "smart"
technology is:
Manufacturing jobs have been declining for decades. This was an emergent priority to these authors.
The change in employment landscape had a lopsided effect on voting, as observed in Nonvoting Americans (Population Division of the Bureau of the Census, 1980):
The then contemporary Cold War concerns seem repeated now in rhyme with Putin's Russia:
I like this terse summation of the malleability of a traumatized population:
Nobody really talks "Ban the Bomb" these days:
This look at NATO and how it was viewed by a threatened USSR is something I think Putin and his apologists could agree with to some length. I do see the line of though coming back in books I have been reading including Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate and How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe.
Much angst was then expressed about getting the two major parties "realigned" and how the conservative element in the Democratic Party was hampering the "Southern civil rights movement":
Has that realignment been completed? It was touch and go at the time.
(Mostly for convenience since I am reading a scanned image-PDF of the final, published "Port Huron Statement", I am taking at least some quotes from the text of the original draft of the 1962 Port Huron Statement, as distributed by Alan Haber to the attendees at the SDS Northeast Regional Conference, April 23, 2006. I see AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History appears to have some of the text version that I read as does the Online Archive of California.)
This time capsule of the radical left contains a blend of hopeful internationalism led by America, hope even for nuclear power, and attention to issues that seem to have gone to the back burner for progressives: prison reform and health facilitities.
The United States' principal goal should be creating a world where hunger, poverty, disease, ignorance, violence, and exploitation are replaced as central features by abundance, reason, love, and international cooperation.
...
America should concentrate on its genuine social priorities: abolish squalor, terminate neglect, and establish an environment for people to live in with dignity and creativeness.
...
...Mental health institutions are in dire need... Public hospitals, too, are seriously wanting... Tremendous staff and faculty needs exist as well, and there are not enough medical students enrolled today to meet the anticipated needs of the future.
...Our prisons are too often the enforcers of misery. They must be either re-oriented to rehabilitative work through public supervision or be abolished for their dehumanizing social effects. Funds are needed, too, to make possible a decent prison environment.
With nuclear energy whole cities could easily be powered, but instead we seem likely to unleash destruction greater than that incurred in all wars in human history...
...
...atomic power plants must spring up to make electrical energy available. With America's idle productive capacity, it is possible to begin this process immediately without changing our military
allocations. This might catalyze a "peace race" since it would demand a response of such magnitude from the Soviet Union that arms spending and "coexistence" spending would become strenuous, perhaps impossible, for the Soviets to carry on simultaneously.
...
We should undertake here and now a fifty-year effort to prepare for all nations the conditions of industrialization.
Even back then, there was a need to call out the 1 %'ers:
The modern concentration of corporate wealth is fantastic. The wealthiest one percent of Americans own more than 80 percent of all personal shares of stock.
While that doesn't surprise me, the fear of time-sapping "smart"
technology is:
…we learn to buy "smart" things, regardless of their utility...
Manufacturing jobs have been declining for decades. This was an emergent priority to these authors.
In addition, the American economy has changed radically in the last decade: suddenly the number of workers producing goods became fewer than the number in the "unproductive" areas—government, trade, finance, services, utilities, transportation. Since World War II "white collar" and "service" jobs have grown twice as fast as have "blue collar" production jobs. Labor has almost no organization in the expanding occupational areas of the new economy, almost all its entrenched strength in contracting areas. As big government hires more and more, as big business seeks more office workers and skilled technicians, and as growing commercial America demands new hotels, service stations and the like, the conditions will become graver still.
War is still pictured as one more kind of diplomacy, perhaps a gloriously satisfying kind. Our saturation and atomic bombings of Germany and Japan are little more than memories of past "policy necessities" ...
The change in employment landscape had a lopsided effect on voting, as observed in Nonvoting Americans (Population Division of the Bureau of the Census, 1980):
While the number of Americans who were employed as white-collar workers was slightly larger than the number employed as blue-collar, service, and farm workers, white-collar
workers were much more likely to vote than workers employed in these other groups (72 percent and 51 percent, respectively) in 1976. The net result of these differences is that among the employed, white-collar workers constituted 60 percent of the voters but only 38 percent of the nonvoters. Blue-collar, service, and farm workers, however, constituted 62 percent of the
employed nonvoters and only 40 percent of the voters.
The then contemporary Cold War concerns seem repeated now in rhyme with Putin's Russia:
Such a harsh critique of what we are doing as a nation by no means implies that sole blame for the Cold War rests on the United States. Both sides have behaved irresponsibly -- the Russians by an exaggerated lack of trust, and by much dependence on aggressive military strategists... There are inadequacies in international rule-making institutions -- which could be corrected. There are faulty inspection mechanisms -- which could be perfected by disinterested scientists. There is Russian intransigency and evasiveness...
Today the world alternatively drifts and plunges towards a terrible war...
when vision and change are required, our government pursues a policy of macabre dead-end dimensions -- conditioned, but not justified, by actions of the Soviet bloc. Ironically, the war which seems to close will not be fought between the United States and Russia, not externally between two national entities, but as an international civil war throughout the unrespected and unprotected human civitas which spans the world.
...
As democrats we are in basic opposition to the communist system. The Soviet Union, as a system, rests on the total suppression of organized opposition...
...
...it is evident that the American military response has been more effective in deterring the growth of democracy than communism. Moreover, our prevailing policies make difficult the encouragement of skepticism, anti-war or pro-democratic attitudes...
I like this terse summation of the malleability of a traumatized population:
Militaristic policies are easily "sold" to a public fearful of a demonic enemy. Political debate is restricted, thought standardized, action inhibited by the demands of "unity" and "oneness" in the face of the declared danger.
Nobody really talks "Ban the Bomb" these days:
Universal controlled disarmament must replace deterrence and arms control as the national defense goal.
This look at NATO and how it was viewed by a threatened USSR is something I think Putin and his apologists could agree with to some length. I do see the line of though coming back in books I have been reading including Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate and How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe.
...the United States should reconsider its increasingly outmoded European defense framework, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Since its creation in1949, NATO has assumed increased strength in overall determination of Western military policy, but has become less and less relevant to its original purpose, which was the defense of Central Europe. To be sure, after the Czech coup of 1948, it might have appeared that the Soviet Union was on the verge of a full-scale assault on Europe. But that onslaught has not materialized, not so much because of NATO's existence but because of the general unimportance of much of Central Europe to the Soviets. Today, when even American-based ICBMs could smash Russia minutes after an invasion of Europe, when the Soviets have no reason to embark on such an invasion, and when "thaw sectors" are desperately needed to brake the arms race, one of at least threatening but most promising courses for American would be toward the gradual diminishment of the NATO forces, coupled with the negotiated "disengagement" of parts of Central Europe.
...
...the United States would be breaking with the lip-service commitment to "liberation" of Eastern
Europe which has contributed so much to Russian fears and intransigence, while doing too little about actual liberation. But the end of "liberation" as a proposed policy would not signal the end of American concern for the oppressed in East Europe. On the contrary, disengagement would be a real, rather than a rhetorical, effort to ease military tensions, thus undermining the Russian argument for tighter controls in East Europe based on the "menace of capitalist encirclement". This policy, geared to the needs of democratic elements in the satellites, would develop a real bridge between East and West across the two most pro-Western Russian satellites. The Russians in the
past have indicated some interest in such a plan, including the demilitarization of the Warsaw pact countries. Their interest should be publicly tested. If disengagement could be achieved, a major zone could be removed from the Cold War, the German problem would be materially diminished, and the need for NATO would diminish, and attitudes favorable to disarming would be generated.
Needless to say, those proposals are much different than what is currently being practised and praised. American military strategists are slowly acceeding to the NATO demand for an independent deterrent, based on the fear that America might not defend Europe from military attack. These tendencies strike just the opposite chords in Russia than those which would be struck by disengagement themes: the chords of military alertness, based on the fact that NATO (bulwarked by the German Wehrmacht) is preparing to attack Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. Thus the alarm which underlies the NATO proposal for an independent deterrent is likely itself to bring into existence the very Russian posture that was the original cause of fear. Armaments spiral and belligerence will carry the day, not disengagement and negotiation.
Much angst was then expressed about getting the two major parties "realigned" and how the conservative element in the Democratic Party was hampering the "Southern civil rights movement":
Every time the President criticizes a recalcitrant Congress, we must ask that he no longer tolerate the Southern conservatives in the Democratic Party. Every time in liberal representative complains that "we can't expect everything at once" we must ask if we received much of anything from Congress in the last generation. Every time he refers to "circumstances beyond control" we must ask why he fraternizes with racist scoundrels. Every time he speaks of the "unpleasantness of personal and party fighting" we should insist that pleasantry with Dixiecrats is inexcusable when the dark peoples of the world call for American support.
Has that realignment been completed? It was touch and go at the time.
Since the Democratic Party sweep in 1958, there have been exaggerated but real efforts to establish a liberal force in Congress, not to balance but to at least voice criticism of the conservative mood. The most notable of these efforts was the Liberal Project begun early in
1959 by Representative Kastenmeier of Wisconsin. The Project was neither disciplined nor very influential but it was concerned at least with confronting basic domestic and foreign problems...
July 3, 2022
The Port Huron Statement is 60 years old, yet nearly all points made are still relevant. It is disheartening to see so few changes toward progress in our nation, but this fact makes the book still so important. Now we are again facing a crossroads and I just hope this time we can work toward what America claims it represents, for the good of everyone.
April 2, 2021
very nice tom hayden very cool
June 4, 2019
Now I know why I am who I am...I read this back in the 60s, joined the SDS just before getting drafted, but didn't participate in the SDS as they turned violent shortly thereafter (Weathermen) and I wasn't for that. Much of this Statement is relevant in today's political situation. Much of what was talked about in the Statement is still true today.
May 12, 2022
I became a member of the SDS—being pulled into its office by a laconic recruiter—almost by happenstance and was never active because the Ohio State chapter in the early 1970s was fairly moribund and because my awakening feminism was not welcomed. I had missed the height of SDS influence by 10 years and I never read the Port Huron Statement until now.
Its sense of idealism, hope, and naïveté has made me shed tears 50 years later. Written in 1962, it predates serious gains in civil rights and the horror of the universal draft and the Vietnam war, not to mention the devastating assassinations of 1963 and 1968. It began as a political organization and the increasing frustrations and sense of outrage led to splits in the organization and open futility and cynicism in the remaining non-violent members.
To read it now is to wonder at both its occasional prescience of what was to come and its misplaced faith in various aspects of the political scene at the time, not least the labor movement and the Democratic Party. Its desire to bring together student movements and the national labor movement was beyond naive. It called organized labor on its faults, keenly observed, without understanding that those faults would be absolutely key in labor’s downward spiral. Its hope that the Democratic Party would embrace the civil rights movement eventually came true, thanks to LBJ (I believe), but in so many other aspects (see 1968 convention onward to today with a short respite to elect Obama) the Dems have never had their heads out of their asses.
The words in this document are not radical and never were. They were a call for this country to be its best self. I can’t imagine any college student reading this today would do anything but laugh hysterically. For me, it brought tears. “You may call me a dreamer ….”
Its sense of idealism, hope, and naïveté has made me shed tears 50 years later. Written in 1962, it predates serious gains in civil rights and the horror of the universal draft and the Vietnam war, not to mention the devastating assassinations of 1963 and 1968. It began as a political organization and the increasing frustrations and sense of outrage led to splits in the organization and open futility and cynicism in the remaining non-violent members.
To read it now is to wonder at both its occasional prescience of what was to come and its misplaced faith in various aspects of the political scene at the time, not least the labor movement and the Democratic Party. Its desire to bring together student movements and the national labor movement was beyond naive. It called organized labor on its faults, keenly observed, without understanding that those faults would be absolutely key in labor’s downward spiral. Its hope that the Democratic Party would embrace the civil rights movement eventually came true, thanks to LBJ (I believe), but in so many other aspects (see 1968 convention onward to today with a short respite to elect Obama) the Dems have never had their heads out of their asses.
The words in this document are not radical and never were. They were a call for this country to be its best self. I can’t imagine any college student reading this today would do anything but laugh hysterically. For me, it brought tears. “You may call me a dreamer ….”
November 13, 2024
Summary: Written in 1962, this manifesto expressed the desires of young American activists who were dissatisfied with the state of the nation. It called for social justice, civil rights, nuclear disarmament, and the democratization of society. It became a cornerstone for the New Left movement and American activism during the 1960s.
June 20, 2025
I bought this book after watching The Trial of the Chicago 7 and I thought that I would look so smart and intellectual reading it. In reality, I struggled through this entire book and it felt like it took forever to read.
Read
April 17, 2015This doesn't seem like the type of read that deserves stars. The statement, written in 1962 by 21 yr-old Tom Haden, became the basis for SDS. Most of what is written reads like many blogs found all over the net today from critics from the left. Things change; things stay the same. Fear in 62: too much administration and bureaucracy in schools. 2015: Admins bigger than ever; budgets being slashed; students treated as consumers and debt laden. Fear in 62: Military-industrial complex; 2015: military even bigger and locked in endless "War on terror" (reminiscent also of the many concerns voiced about McCarthyism in the statement). Let's see - fear in 62: increasing concentration of wealth and power by the 1% and corporations; 2015: Worst wealth gap since 1929. 1962: pervasive apathy; 2015: lowest voter turnout on record. 1962/2015: 2 major parties that publicly stress their differences, but more or less act the same.
Not to say that there haven't been significant changes in society since the Port Huron Statement; also not to say that plenty of the Statement isn't just a lot of feel good philosophy; BUT, looking around right now - police violence and Black Lives Matter, Global Warming, No Child Left Behind, War on Terror and PATRIOT ACT, wealth gaps, achievement gaps, budget cuts and bankruptcy, etc - one can see the historical trend towards grassroots social movements seen in the 60s. Perhaps.
Not to say that there haven't been significant changes in society since the Port Huron Statement; also not to say that plenty of the Statement isn't just a lot of feel good philosophy; BUT, looking around right now - police violence and Black Lives Matter, Global Warming, No Child Left Behind, War on Terror and PATRIOT ACT, wealth gaps, achievement gaps, budget cuts and bankruptcy, etc - one can see the historical trend towards grassroots social movements seen in the 60s. Perhaps.
June 15, 2007
this is a snapshot of a people, a time and a place. a vision into the revolutionary america of a former generation.
January 7, 2015
Still relevant
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews