Mark Satin
Mark Ivor Satin is an American political theorist, writer, and newsletter publisher. He is best known for contributing to the development and dissemination of three political perspectives – neopacifism in the 1960s, New Age politics in the 1970s and 1980s, and radical centrism in the 1990s and 2000s. Satin's work is sometimes seen as building toward a new political ideology, and then it is often labeled "transformational", "post-liberal", or "post-Marxist". One historian calls Satin's writing "post-hip".
After emigrating to Canada at the age of 20 to avoid serving in the Vietnam War, Satin co-founded the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme, which helped bring American war resisters to Canada. He also wrote the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, which sold nearly 100,000 copies. After a period that author Marilyn Ferguson describes as Satin's "anti-ambition experiment", Satin wrote New Age Politics, which identifies an emergent "third force" in North America pursuing such goals as simple living, decentralism, and global responsibility. Satin spread his ideas by co-founding an American political organization, the New World Alliance, and by publishing an international political newsletter, New Options. He also co-drafted the foundational statement of the U.S. Green Party, "Ten Key Values".
Following a period of political disillusion, spent mainly in law school and practicing business law, Satin launched a new political newsletter and wrote a book, Radical Middle. Both projects criticized political partisanship and sought to promote mutual learning and innovative policy syntheses across social and cultural divides. In an interview, Satin contrasts the old radical slogan "Dare to struggle, dare to win" with his radical-middle version, "Dare to synthesize, dare to take it all in".
Satin has been described as "colorful" and "intense", and all his initiatives have been controversial. Bringing war resisters to Canada was opposed by many in the anti-Vietnam War movement. New Age Politics was not welcomed by many on the traditional left or right, and Radical Middle dismayed an even broader segment of the American political community. Even Satin's personal life has generated controversy. At age 76, Satin wrote a book seeking to draw lessons from his political and personal journey, Up From Socialism: My 60-Year Search for a Healing New Radical Politics.
Early years
Many mid-1960s American radicals came from small cities in the Midwest and Southwest, as did Satin: he grew up in Moorhead, Minnesota, and Wichita Falls, Texas. His father, who saw combat in World War II, was a college professor and author of a Cold War-era textbook on Western civilization. His mother was a homemaker.As a youth, Satin was restless and rebellious, and his behavior did not change after leaving for university. In early 1965, at age 18, he dropped out of the University of Illinois to work for African American civil and political rights with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Later that year, he was told to leave Midwestern State University, in Texas, for refusing to sign a loyalty oath to the United States Constitution. In 1966 he became president of a Students for a Democratic Society chapter at the State University of New York at Binghamton, and helped recruit nearly 20% of the student body to join. One term later he dropped out, then emigrated to Canada to avoid serving in the Vietnam War.
Just before Satin left for Canada, his father told him he was trying to destroy himself. His mother told the Ladies' Home Journal she could not condone her son's actions. Satin says he arrived in Canada feeling bewildered and unsupported. According to press accounts, many Vietnam War resisters arrived feeling much the same way.
Neopacifism, 1960s
Toronto Anti-Draft Programme
As 1967 began, many American pacifists and radicals did not look favorably on emigration to Canada as a means of resisting the Vietnam War. For some this reflected a core conviction that effective war resistance requires self-sacrifice. For others it was a matter of strategy – emigration was said to be less useful than going to jailor deserting the military, or was said to abet the war by siphoning off the opposition. At first, Students for a Democratic Society and many Quaker draft counselors opposed promoting the Canadian alternative, and Canada's largest counseling group, the Anti-Draft Programme of the Student Union for Peace Action – whose board consisted largely of Quakers and radicals – was sympathetic to such calls for prudence. In January 1967 its spokesman warned an American audience that immigration was difficult and that the Programme was not willing to act as "baby sitters" for Americans after they arrived. He added that he was tired of talking to the press.
When Mark Satin was hired as director of the Programme in April 1967, he attempted to change its culture. He also tried to change the attitude of the war resistance movement toward emigration. His efforts continued after SUPA collapsed and he co-founded the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme, with largely the same board of directors, in October 1967. Instead of praising self-sacrifice, he emphasized the importance of self-preservation and self-development to social change. Rather than sympathizing with pacifists' and radicals' strategic concerns, he rebutted them, telling The New York Times that massive emigration of draft-age Americans could help end the war, and telling another reporter that going to jail was bad public relations.
Where the Programme once publicized the difficulties of immigration, Satin emphasized the competence of his draft counseling operation, and even told of giving cash to immigrants who were without funds.
Instead of refusing to "baby sit" Americans after they arrived, Satin made post-emigration assistance a top priority. The office soon sported comfortable furniture, a hot plate, and free food; within a few months, 200 Torontonians had opened their homes to war resisters and a job-finding service had been established. Finally, rather than expressing indifference to reporters, Satin courted them, and many responded, beginning with a May 1967 article in The New York Times Magazine that included a large picture of Satin counseling Vietnam War resisters in the refurbished office. Some of the publicity focused on Satin as much as on his cause. According to historian Pierre Berton, Satin was so visible that he became the unofficial spokesman for war resisters in Canada.
Satin defined himself as a neopacifist or quasi-pacifist – flexible, media-savvy, and entrepreneurial. He told one journalist he might have fought against Hitler. He was not necessarily opposed to the draft, telling reporters he would support it for a defensive army or to help eliminate poverty, illiteracy, and racial discrimination. He avoided the intellectual framework of traditional pacifism and socialism. Sometimes he spoke with emotion, as when he described the United States to The New York Times Magazine as "hat godawful sick, foul country; could anything be worse?" Sometimes he spoke poetically, as when he told author Jules Witcover, "It's colder here, but you feel warm because you know you're not trying to kill people." Instead of identifying with older pacifists, he identified with a 17-year-old character from the pen of J. D. Salinger: "I was Holden Caulfield", he said in 2008, "just standing and catching in the rye."
The results of Satin's approach were noticeable: the Programme went from averaging fewer than three visitors, letters, and phone calls per day just before he arrived, to averaging 50 per day nine months later. In addition, the American anti-war movement became more accepting of emigration to Canada – for example, author Myra MacPherson reports that Satin's Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada could be obtained at every draft counseling office in the U.S. However, Satin's approach was distressing to the traditional pacifists and socialists on the Programme's board. The board clashed with Satin over at least 10 political, strategic, and performance issues. The most intractable may have been over the extent of the publicity. There were also concerns about Satin's personal issues; for example, one war resister claims to have heard him say, "Anonymity would kill me". In May 1968, the board finally fired him.
''Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada''
Before Satin was fired, he conceived and wrote, and edited guest chapters for, the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, published in January 1968 by the House of Anansi Press in partnership with the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme. The Programme had issued brochures on emigration before – including a 12-page version under Satin's watch – but the Manual was different, a comprehensive, 45,000-word book, and it quickly turned into an "underground bestseller". Many years later, Toronto newspapers reported that nearly 100,000 copies of the Manual had been sold. One journalist calls it the "first entirely Canadian-published bestseller in the United States".The Programme was initially hesitant about producing the Manual, which promised to draw even more war resisters and publicity to it. "The didn't even want me to write it", Satin says. "I wrote it at night, in the SUPA office, three or four nights a week after counseling guys and gals 8 to 10 hours a day – pounded it out in several drafts over several months on SUPA's ancient Underwood typewriter." When it finally appeared, some leading periodicals helped put it on the map. For example, The New York Review of Books called it "useful", and The New York Times said it contains advice about everything from how to qualify as an immigrant to jobs, housing, schools, politics, culture, and even the snow. After the war, sociologist John Hagan found that more than a third of young American emigrants to Canada had read the Manual while still in the United States, and nearly another quarter obtained it after they arrived.
The Manual reflected Satin's neopacifist politics. Commentators routinely characterized it as caustic, responsible, and supportive. The first part of the Manual, on emigration, suggests that self-preservation is more important than sacrifice to a dubious cause. The second half, on Canada, spotlights opportunities for self-development and social innovation. According to Canadian social historian David Churchill, the Manual helped some Canadians begin to see Toronto as socially inclusive, politically progressive, and counter-cultural.
Inevitably, the Manual became a lightning rod for controversy. Some observers took issue with its perspective on Canada; most notably, The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature criticizes its "condescending tone" in describing Canada's resources. Elements in the U.S. and Canadian governments may have been upset by the Manual. According to journalist Lynn Coady, the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police attempted to wiretap the House of Anansi Press's offices. In addition, Anansi co-founder Dave Godfrey is convinced a 10-day government audit of the press was generated by FBI–RCMP concerns. Many people did not want the Programme to encourage draft-eligible Americans to emigrate to Canada, and Satin routinely denied that the Manual encouraged emigration. But few observers believed him, then or later. The first sentence of an article in The New York Times from 1968 describes the Manual as "a major bid to encourage Americans to evade military conscription". Canadian essayist Robert Fulford remembers the Manual as offering an enthusiastic welcome to draft dodgers. Even a House of Anansi Press anthology from 2007 concedes that the Manual is "coyly titled".
Satin was fired from the Programme soon after the appearance of the second edition of the Manual, which had a print run of 20,000. His name was removed from the title page of most subsequent editions. According to a study of the Manual by critic Joseph Jones in Canadian Notes & Queries, a literary journal, some later editions experienced a falloff in quality. Nevertheless, Jones says the Manual stands as an icon of its age. It made significant appearances in at least five 20th-century novels, including John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, and it continues to be pored over by journalists,
historians, social scientists, creative writers, social movement strategists, and graduate students. In 2017 the Manual was re-issued as a Canadian "classic" by the original publisher, with an introduction by Canadian historian James Laxer and a politically charged afterword by Satin, then in his 70th year.