POWER
AND PROTEST IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY:
SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS AND POLITICS
Links:
The Youth/Counter-culture Movement
SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS OF THE 'SIXTIES
May '68 in France.
1. Overview and
roots of the crisis: (see
Sebastian Hayes in The Raven)
In France (*) during 1967 – the year before the May Days - there had
been student protests demanding the "independence of the
university" "student
rights" etc. In
(*) There were similar
conflicts and protests in universities in other countries. There is not space
for detail here, but I make a few brief comments on these
below.
The war in
What started as a student dispute, however, escalated – especially due
to the authorities’ rash handling of the trouble, and the May Days culminated
in 10 million workers on strike. To try to resolve the situation the President
General de Gaulle awarded workers a 10% pay rise, raised the minimum wage, and
called for a General Election (cleverly – he calculated he would win and he
did). During the dispute
None of the major political parties expected such an uprising: the
French Communist Party (PCF) initially ridiculed it, then
tried to hold it back. Only a few rather obscure and small left-wing groups
were ready and involved: the Internationale Situationiste (I.S., or Situationist
International – not to be confused with the British I.S. or International
Socialists, an altogether different organisation!), whose best known member was
Guy Debord, the author of an influential pamphlet: The
Society of the Spectacle… Also Socialisme ou Barbarie, whose members
included Pierre Cardan (Cornelius Castoriadis),
Claude Lefort, and others, and from whom the
organisation Solidarity was derived. For an eye-witness account of some of the
events by someone associated with these groups, see May68: Solidarity Account.
That such groups, united in their hostility to modern capitalism and the
consumer society should gain such support was unexpected in France: in America
the Hippies and others were, as shown above, hostile to consumer society; but
France was relatively "behind" in the production of consumer
goods. On other hand, as we saw, the
2. The Roots of the Crisis:
(Main source: Seale and McConville1968)
(i) the French
education system:
There had been rapid growth of the student population in a short period
of time: in 1961 there were 202,000 university students in
French Higher Education had an “open door policy” at the time. One third
to half of the students who enrolled failed to get a degree, whilst in the
Moreover, the new buildings were in juxtaposition with poor immigrant
areas, while they drew on the middle-class to recruit their students. French HE
was more dominated by the middle classes than
The universities suffered from bureaucratised
control: the state had central control over admin decisions, budgetary
allocations, even staff appointments!!! University education in France was regarded
as conveying high status, but students and staff felt powerless in their
universities, and many (especially sociology students) felt their studies were
not a preparation for work (many went into unemployment because too many were
being educated in relation to suitable jobs being available). It was said that
"A French University is like a factory in
Thus, student grievances built up: there was overcrowding, poor
amenities and poor transport; there were regulations inherited from boarding
schools: no posters in students’ rooms, no discussion of
politics, segregation in accommodation of women and men (i.e. they were not
allowed into each others' rooms except during the day!!) (See Seale and McConville, 1968, p 28
-9.)
It has to be said that some of
these grievances were felt in the
(ii) in the wider society, bureaucracy (and hence alienation!) could be found throughout
French professions, - science, even football… According to Philip French, the
film critic (Observer 08.02.04), the actual origin of the May Events was a
demonstration against the dismissal by the Minister of Culture, Andre Malraux,
of the creator of Cinemateque Francaise.
The
Seale and McConville say that “The situation
inside many French factories is positively medieval by British or American
standards. Riot police had been called in by managers at Peugeot, and two
strikers were killed. Most management is “secretive and paternalistic.” Part of
the blame for this (say Seale and McConville, op cit
p 156) lies with the communist-led group of unions the CGT: they kept demands to
wage levels and avoided any discussions on corporate affairs in case this
should appear to be co-operating with management. On the other hand, the CFDT,
which is permeated with the radical philosophy of French left-wing Catholicism,
was more prepared to listen to workers’ grievances and to seek a share in
management for the workers.
3. A summary of the events of
1968:
At
A split then developed between the reformist majority, concerned about
jobs etc, and the militant minority which “denounced the concept of the
university as servant of the technocratic state.” As the committee was getting
nowhere, the militant students, drawing on their understanding of sociology,
together with an input of Marxism - for there were many “far left” groups at
this time, in France, Britain America and Germany (see groupuscules below) - realized they would have to “contest” the university and its place in society rather than just
try to push for reforms. By early 1968,
contact between staff and students had broken down. The radical minority called
themselves the enragés,
after the French revolutionaries in the 18th century, and they grew
more and more provocative.
When the Minister of Youth and Sports came to
Rumours then spread that Cohn-Bendit was going to be expelled, and this led to
demonstrations. As the students suspected that the police had been
photographing them, they countered by taking photos of the police, which they
then enlarged and paraded up and down! The number of students demonstrating was
growing (though it was only 50 or so) and Dean Grappin
called the police: eventually armed police arrived, but this was just at the
moment when 1,000 students were coming out of lectures for their mid-day break…
When the students saw the police they rioted and pelted them and drove them out
of the university. The tactic of a small group using direct action to create a
situation that would then escalate had worked. The massed students were very
hostile to the police and the Dean from then on! At this stage there was no
further “trouble” but the students’ awareness of the nature of the “system” had
been heightened.
Escalation followed: there were threats from the Dean to shut down
Nanterre, the continued presence and aggressive behaviour of the police, the
absence from France of Prime Minister Pompidou, and the remoteness of President
de Gaulle, the arrest of a small number of students, and all this led to the
setting-up of barricades, skirmishes in which cobblestones were torn up and
thrown, rioting, the use of tear-gas, and police brutality (witnesses spoke of
students taken into vans and emerging with bloody faces). Such was the hatred
of the police on the part of the students that slogans began to appear equating
the riot police with the SS: “CRS = SS”.
At first, the students’ demands were moderate (to get the police out of
the university, to release the arrested students) and they were prepared to
talk. But they met with intransigence, and suspected that any moderate academic
staff were being undermined by intervention from
government. At this stage they also had the support of much of the French
population: middle-class parents were
horrified at the police violence, and intellectuals
such as Sartre and de Beauvoir were sympathetic.
As no progress was being made to solve the conflict, strikes broke out
at other universities. The conflict united students and the more radical among
their teachers.
But de Gaulle and the Minister for education Peyrefitte
saw it all as the work of a minority,
and demanded order – Mitterand (future President) was
one of the few members of the government who said they must listen to the
youth: “youth is not always right, but to mock, misunderstand, and strike at it
is always wrong” (Seale and McConville, 1968 p 80).
The university was closed. When the Dean offered to open it the students
protested that they wanted those arrested freed, and police removed. The
government insisted (probably over the head of the Dean) that the university
could not be opened under the conditions of student rioting and occupation.
This interference simply meant that the more radical students gained influence.
A crucial development was the forging of links with workers, which was
urged by those whose ultimate goal was a socialist revolution. As noted below,
there were many different Marxist, Trotskyist and
Maoist groups, and key figures from the international socialist movement such
as Ernest Mandel took part in the meetings. In the country, discontented
workers had begun to strike, and at the height of the action up to 10 million
workers were on strike. Often the strikes were “active”: that is, the workers
stayed in the factories and managed them by themselves. Now the situation was
to all intents a prelude to revolution.
Finally Prime Minister Pompidou took the initiative from President de
Gaulle, and declared that the imprisoned students would be released and the
Sorbonne opened, implying that the police would withdraw. But it was too late:
by now the demonstrations were up to 800,000 strong, and the Sorbonne was
occupied. Under the influence of radical students there had been an escalation
of the scale of the demands: now the students wanted autonomy, and the
resignation of ministers.
The students set up a “Soviet” which lasted for 34 days until the 16
June when they were expelled.
For some, these events were an example of the kind of popular
revolution, practicing democratic socialism, that they
saw as the alternative to the Marxist “capture of state power” and hoped would
spread in a revolutionary wave. Link to Solidarity account of the May Days.
From mid-May to mid-June 1968,
Pompidou began to placate the workers by negotiating, at Grenelles, an increase in minimum wages, and plotting
starts among politicians to remove de Gaulle.
De Gaulle flew to Germany, possibly to
prepare the armed forces to intervene if necessary; it is known that he met
with General Massu, (who died recently - see the
obituary at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,820598,00.html).
Alternatively, it was seen as a convenient vanishing trick on the part of de
Gaulle, who wanted to heighten the tension before returning to take control.
Others, including Massu, say that de Gaulle was
considering resigning, but that he (Massu) persuaded
him to stay on. Then de Gaulle returned to make a TV announcement that there
would be a general election. He said that he had a mandate and would fight to
carry on. He hinted at his preparedness to use “other means” i.e. the armed
forces, who were known to be loyal to him after his
leadership of the Free French during World War II.
Finally, the whole “near revolution” ended with de Gaulle getting an
increased vote of support in the general election!
Reasons for de Gaulle’s success:
The main explanation lies in the divisions among students and workers
and between the two groups.
As noted above, the CGT and the CFDT had taken up
different positions: the larger CGT stuck to purely economic demands, while the
(smaller) CFDT saw the problem as a need for more democracy at work. This meant
that when more money was offered, the sting was taken out of the dispute for
the majority of workers. The students demands were
even more radical than those of the more radical workers, and the two groups
never really presented a united front (given the short time-scale involved this
is hardly surprising!) There was a short-lived administration in
As regards the politicians, the opposition to the government was also
split: the Socialists (e.g. Mitterand) and Communists
could not form a viable alliance.
De Gaulle treated the workers separately to the students and offered an
industry-wide settlement involving round-table talks with government, employers
and unions, and a referendum on his (vague) plan for more “participation.”
Whilst Pompidou had appeared more amenable, he had nevertheless been maneuvering
the communists against the radicals in his talks with the workers.
General de Gaulle had a different style of approach, and different views
about the solution: his TV speech only sought more power for himself (through a
“mandate of renewal”), and offered “participation” with the aim of “adapting
our economy to national and international necessities.” Nevertheless,
crucially, he identified the uprising with the communists and scared ordinary
French voters back into their traditional conservative role.
5. Links between
the May Days and political movements/organisations:
See especially Seale and McConville 1968,
chapter two.
(i) As noted, the students saw themselves as
part of the “tradition” of revolution in
The Revolution itself ended up “devouring its own” with a new repression
and the use of the notorious guillotine. The revolutionary movement was also –
as so often – split into many factions. Some of the students “borrowed” the
name of one of these groups, the enragés: these
were also known as the “sans-culottes” and were led by Jacques Roux. He became
a member of the Paris Commune, but was condemned to death by a revolutionary
tribunal in 1794 – he stabbed himself on hearing the sentence, according to
Seale and McConville (op cit p 32).
The Commune, set up in 1791, was a dramatic instance of direct democracy
in action, and its ideas and methods also inspired the ’68-ers: the city was
taken over by its inhabitants, who then ran it by means of assemblies and
recallable delegates.
(ii) To understand the strength of left-wing thought – and its
revolutionary intentions – we need to look briefly at the history of the labour
movement in the first half of the 20th century, (see also SM 1 The Labour Movement). By
the ‘60s, there was widespread disillusion over the politics of the
Trotskyism and Maoism were alternatives for those who were not entirely
disillusioned with parties based on orthodox Marxism. Other currents, such as
“council communism” and anarchism also gained support during this time.
Some looked to
Many in
Finally, and crucial as a catalyst to protests throughout
In fact there were so many revolutionary groups that hostile critics
named them “groupuscules”
(minuscule groups) – and the students in rather self-mocking fashion, adopted
the term themselves.
Militant students thrown out of the UEC formed the Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire
(JCR), a Trotskyist group that was central to the May
Day activities. Alain Krivine was a key figure in the
JCR, which believed that a revolutionary leadership was needed. Another Trotskyist group was the Parti Communiste Internationaliste
(PCI), the French branch of the Fourth International. This is where Ernest
Mandel (of
The pro-Chinese students were represented by the UJC(M-L),
many of whom were influenced by Louis Althusser.
Similar groups and factions existed in
Finally, mention has already been made of Socialisme
ou Barbarie (see my notes
on Castoriadis)
and the Situationniste Internationale
(S.I.), whose imaginative slogans were one of the most striking features of the
May Days (see below).
In conclusion, however, it must be said that there was a general malaise
among students over their position: as future academics and intellectuals
themselves, they could not accept the old-fashioned teaching methods which
required a passive respect for “authority” and which gave them no say in what
they were to be taught.
(See ed. Cockburn and Blackburn 1969), in particular the David Triesman article on the CIA infiltration of the
International Students Association… Triesman went on
to become general Secretary of the Lecturers’ Union NATFHE, then General
Secretary of the Labour Party and is now a Labour Peer!!.
6. Postmortem to
the Days of ‘68:
What conclusions can we draw from the May Days? Here are a few views,
taken mainly from pamphlets produced at the time. The first two represent
viewpoints that one might expect to be most sympathetic to the aims of the May
participants, since the authors were participants themselves:
(i) The authors of the Solidarity pamphlet written by an observer of the events conclude:
“…this most modern movement should allow real revolutionaries to shed a
number of the ideological encumbrances which in the past had hampered
revolutionary activity”: after all, despite Marxist predictions about the
worsening of the conditions of the working class being the trigger for
revolution, these upheavals were not a response to hunger, there was no
economic crisis, nor was it anything to do with “under-consumption or
over-production.” Contrary to Marxist orthodoxy (and no doubt this is why many
on the left dismiss the Events) the uprising was not based on economic demands.
The Solidarity argument is that the Events showed that there is still
(i.e. as Marx suggested) a “contradiction” in modern capitalism, but that it
was not to do with the “forces or relations of production” – not basically to
do with the economy in fact. Students, and some workers, were reacting against
the social, political and economic division between “order-givers” and
“order-takers.” The “problem” for modern
capitalism is that whilst bureaucrats of various sorts try to turn people into
objects, people (being people and not robots!) refuse… Thus the functioning of bureaucratic capitalism of itself
creates the conditions within which revolutionary consciousness may appear.
This revolutionary consciousness would lead to demands for the abolition of the
divide between order-givers and order-takers, through workers’ self-management.
However, it was clear that there was not a real revolutionary movement:
the students did not outwit the bureaucracy (and the politicians), they did not
adequately expose the “left” leadership (not just the CP, but Maoists and Trotskyists were stuck in a traditional mind-set and could
not go so far as to demand self-management), there should have been more
attempts to propagate autonomous workers activity, workers management of
production etc.
Link to: May '68 Solidarity
Account
(ii) Another observer/participant, Sebastian Hayes, writing in the anarchist publication Raven (No. 38,
summer 1998 – which also includes a 1968 interview with Danny Cohn-Bendit) is more dismissive:
“What were the overall consequences of May ’68?
Not a lot, I would say, on a national level. The 10% wage increase was
whittled away by a devaluation of the franc that winter. It was to be some
years before Mitterand and the Socialists came to
power, and conceivably May ’68 may have delayed rather than accelerated their
victory.
On a personal level, however, May ’68 was pretty catastrophic,
especially for the younger generation. Activists in the factories were weeded
out once things had quietened down a bit… [and there was continued infighting between Communists,
Maoists et al]
May ’68 just ante-dated the massive arrival of pop music, drugs, long
hair, Eastern mysticism, feminism and so on from
Many ex-militants turned to drugs or petty crime after the collapse of
their hopes…
The trouble with an experience like May ’68 is that, having lived a kind
of dream for a while, one finds it almost impossible to re-adjust to normality…
[You] spend the rest of [your] life simultaneously regretting the experience and
wishing it had never happened.”
But why were the Events cut short of revolutionary change?
(iii) In a pamphlet produced by the International Socialists, late in
1868, Tony Cliff and Ian Birchall conclude by
arguing, as Trotsky did (and with extensive quotes from Trotsky) that whilst
revolutions might start spontaneously
(as the May Events did) they cannot move on unless there is a well-organised revolutionary party to raise the level
of consciousness of the participants (because the party will have learned the
lessons of history, as well as being thoroughly versed in the appropriate
theory!) and to take the leadership. “Revolutionaries must try and unite the
workers on the soil of economic resistance to the bosses, as well as on the
soil of political resistance to the state.”
Needless to say (but I’ll say it!) this is the usual IS/SWP line – only
perhaps spelled out more bluntly than in more recent writings – in terms of the
emphasis put on the workers, on economic struggle, and on “vanguard” leadership.
The line is even more typical in the final section of the pamphlet, dealing
with “Lessons for British Revolutionaries”:
“
We cannot be sure of the rhythm of events, but there can be no doubt
that there will be an acceleration. One thing has been
made abundantly clear by the French crisis… the immediacy of revolution… We
cannot gauge the timing, duration and sweep of the coming revolutionary crisis
in British capitalism, but it is not far off”.
(iv) In
a pamphlet produced by Roger Gregoire and Freddy
Perlman (later reprinted by Black and Red), a number of points are made:
- whilst the students recognised that the universities should be “social
property” they only went part of the way to transforming the university – they
did invite anyone who wanted top join the
“occupation”, and they did reject the student union leaders as being out of
touch, but they did not then go on to replace the administration, either of the
union, or of the university itself. Moreover, the authors argue, if they were
to completely “socialize” the university, they needed to stop regarding it as
“their property.”
- as regards factories, there was also a failure of imagination, though
this was the result of good intentions: the students did not want to antagonise the workers, so they made it clear that they
supported the workers’ rights and the workers’ unions (though they had rejected
their own student union…); they also regarded the factories as somehow the
workers’ property, and urged the workers to occupy. The better strategy, given
the revolutionary nature of the students’ demands for self-management and an
end to bureaucracy, would have been to demand the socialization of the factories. (After all, the aim of a communist
revolution is that the people should “expropriate the expropriators”! – my comment.)
- the authors make the point that it is very
easy to fall into the trap of becoming passive spectators, expecting others to
act before we will follow. But this is just the mentality that a bureaucratic/modern
capitalist/technocratic state (to me the terms are pretty well interchangeable)
wishes its citizens to have! This should have been the lesson drawn from the Situationist notion of a “spectacular society..”
(v) A more positive assessment of the Events - though an ambiguous one -
is given in the book by Feenberg and Freedman (2001,
p 68):
“While the May Events did not succeed in overthrowing the state… they
transformed resistance to technocratic authority and consumer society from the
notion of a few disgruntled literary intellectuals into a basis for a new kind
of mass politics that continues to live in a variety of forms to this day. … the May Events set in motion a process of cultural change
that transformed the image of the left, shifted the focus of opposition from
economic exploitation to social and cultural alienation, and prepared the
rejection of Stalinist authoritarianism in the new social movements.”
The feminist and environmental movements show the influence, for these
authors, of the change to “more modest
but realizable reforms” rather than “ambitious goals formulated in absolute
revolutionary terms in the 1960s.” Yet,
they also quote Sartre, who said of the May Events that they “enlarged the field of the possible.”
Link to Review of Feenberg
and Freedman on the May Days
(vi) In terms of academic discourse, the May
Events were very fruitful! A list of French intellectuals who were involved, or
observed the events closely, reads like a roll-call of influential writers on
social, political and philosophical issues:
Other views are to be found in the works by Castoriadis
and Brown cited below.
Défense d'interdire. It
is forbidden to forbid
Ce que nous voulons - tout. What do we
want? Everything!
La révolution sera une fête, ou ne sera pas. The
revolution will be a rave-up, or it will not be a revolution.
Vivre
sans temps mort et jouir
sans entraves.
For
life without a wasted moment, and uninhibited pleasure.
Contestation permanente. Permanent opposition.
Violez votre Alma Mater! Rape your
alma mater!
Je suis marxiste
tendance graucho. I
am a Graucho-tendency Marxist.
L’anarchie c’est
je. Anarchy = I.
La société est
une fleur carnivore. Society
is a carnivorous flower.
L'imagination au pouvoir. All power to the imagination.
Be
realistic, demand the impossible!
They
are buying your happiness – steal it back.
The
alarm clock rings – first humiliation of the day.
You
will all finish up dying from comfort.
Forests
came before men – the desert comes afterwards.
References:
May
'68 and student rebellions:
Astin, A W et al (1975): The power of Protest, Jossey-Bass.
Bouclier, D (1978): Idealism and
Revolution: new ideas of liberation in Britain and the United States, Arnold.
Brown, B E (1974): Protest in Paris, General Learning Press. (See esp.
pp 36 and 58 - 60)
Castoriadis, C (1987): The Movements of
the Sixties, Thesis Eleven No 18/19, 1987.
Cliff, T and Birchall, I (1968): France, the
struggle goes on, International Socialism Publication.
Cockburn, A & Blackburn, R, (Ed.) (1969): Student Power, Penguin.
Feenberg A, and Freedman, J (2001):
When Poetry Ruled the Streets, Albany (NY).
Reviewed by Ian Pirie in “Democratisation”
vol 8 no. 2, 2002: When
Poetry....
Gregoire, R and Perlman, F (1969):
Worker-Student Action Committees in France, May ’68, (reprinted 1970 by) Black
and Red,
Hoch P, and Schoenbach V (1969): LSE the
Natives are Restless, Sheed and Ward.
"The Raven" (anarchist quarterly) No. 38, Freedom Press,
summer 1998.
Seale P, McConville M (1968): French
Revolution 1968, Penguin.
Solidarity (1968):