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Rock tossing is not completely out; many left-wing organizations, particularly in Italy and West Germany, are still committed to disrupting society in the hope that police repression will create martyrs who will win public sympathy. But the new radicals have generally chosen what "Red Rudi" Dutschke, who led West Berlin's student rebellion in 1968 and is still active in the Movement, calls "the long march through the institutions." The archetype of the new, sober, methodical and coolly professional radical is Wolfgang Roth, 32, the ambitious, mod-haired leader of the openly Marxist Jusos (Young Socialists), who have virtually seized from within the left wing of Chancellor Willy Brandt's Social Democratic Party (TIME, April 23). Instead of only taking to the streets, French Maoists are now working on assembly lines, the better to be able to recruit workers for the revolution.
By now, in fact, the radical superstars of the 1960s are passé, along with their Marxist models: Castro, Che and increasingly, Mao Tse-tung. The new radicals, says Parisian Journalist Robert Pledge, who was a student activist in 1968, "have abandoned the idea of the political hero." Instead, they are promoting a more pragmatic, down-to-earth "Marxism with a human face."
That face has not come across everywhere, of course. Scandinavia, with its costly welfarism, seems to have pulled out of the market for radical solutions, at least temporarily. Britain, for its part, still seems content to be the country in which Marx is buried. Cambridge University's debating society next fall will discuss "Is Marxism Dead?" The Marxist resurrection seems to be confined mainly to Western Europe's three most populous states:
WEST GERMANY. With no large established Communist Party, West Germany seems to be the target of the most concerted new radical assault. The country crawls with left-wing organizations. In addition to Roth's Jusos, there is the small West German Communist Party, which with funds channeled from East Germany has spawned 130 other orthodox Marxist groups across the country. Out on the extreme-left edge of the West German political scene are another 260 assorted groups, including such outfits as Red Dawn and Red Flag, which specialize in tearing up German institutions with troublemakers known as chaoten.
Marxists control student councils and sometimes even the administrations in all but a handful of the country's 67 universities and technical institutes, which have a combined enrollment of 670,000. Says a West Berlin professor: "If you are not a Marxist professor, you don't get the students. The organizations see to that."
Some Germans dismiss the Communist youth movement, perhaps too lightly, as "middle class." Says one Social Democrat: "They talk revolution and spend their vacations in Spain and Greece, rather than their beloved East Germany. It is all sheer nonsense." But the radicals' demands are serious enough: the ouster of U.S. forces and a drastic reduction of West Germany's defense budget. Beyond these goals, the left seems to be aiming for an eventual reunification of the two Germanys in which socialism would be triumphant.