Theodore Kolokolnikov
At first glance, May 68 can be characterized by its spontaneity and rejection of everything: God, De Gaulle, bureaucracy, apathy, society, work, art, and eventually itself. There was also an attempt (especially by hot-blooded contemporaries) to reject history, to place May 1968 as an event outside history [1]. But as I will show, May 68 can be explained quite coherently within the socio-philosophico-historical framework that developed in France at the time. While international influences are apparent, the movement could not have ignited were it not for particular set of favorable circumstances that occurred in France at the time. The transcending factor was the emergence of the New Left in its French form. It was the combination of intellectual fervor fed by Sartre, Castoriadis, Lefebvre through Situationist International and énragés, fueled by the Algerian (and to some extent, Vietnam) wars, the stagnation of and the student's discontent of the IVth and Vth republic, intellectual curiosity and typically French provocative spirit, an impotent university system in need of reform, government conservatism and police repression, that eventually resulted in the instantaneous mass protests of May 68.
To put May in its proper historical perspective, we have to start by examining the ideas of the New Left. The New Left slowly drifted away from the PCF (French Communist Party) and other communist and socialist groups and eventually rejected Marxism itself, on which it was originally based. In the process, it rejected any kind of leadership and bureaucracy to become (theoretically) a leaderless movement, promoting autogestion or self-management. May was a manifestation of this philosophy, where these ideas were successfully (though for a short while) applied in practice.
"We reject a world where security against starvation is bought for the risk of death by boredom" -- typical May rhetoric [3]
As with any sociological terminology, the definition of the New Left varied and evolved prior to 1968. It began as an intellectual theory developed mainly by Sartre, Castoriadis and Lefebvre. While Sartre laid solid theoretical foundations, Castoriadis developed it into a movement which essentially involved three main concepts regarding bureaucracy, alienation, and self-management. I will trace the progression of the New Left, from its existentialist roots, through disillusion with Stalinism, rejection of Marxism and most leftist movements at the time, to its popularization among student leaders and eventually the student body.
Perhaps the single most important intellectual in twentieth century France was Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Throughout his life, Sartre was a humanist. He also believed in change through proletariat, though he differed on how this change should be achieved. His relationship with the PCF was dubious however. During the war he was thought to be a German sympathizer by PCF (he studied under Nazi Germany before the war, and was released as a POW in 1941, thereafter joining the Résistence). However when the process of constructing a Popular Front - type of organisation, the PCF offered Sartre a position in the Comité National des Ecrivains (a mainly communist organization) which he gladly accepted [4].
A period of tension (1943-52) followed as Sartre disagreed with the PCF's Stalinist interpretation of communism. It was during that time that he established the fundamental principles of existentialism. As the hope of armed communist revolution following the glory of liberation faded away, the communists grew weary of Sartre's avant-garde existentialism and what it implied about Engel's popularization of Marxism as a solely economic theory on which the Soviet Marxism was based.[5]
During the Ridgway Riot of 1952, he once again strongly allied himself with PCF, seeing it as the only possible response to the police raids on communists that followed, and the only active support of the "last hope" for communism, the USSR. However, his alliance and his faith in USSR and PCF was cut short in 1956 when Soviet tanks rolled over the Hungarian peasant revolts. This breakup with PCF probably inspired him, at least in part, to concentrate on the total rejection of Stalinist Marxism (PCF being a key proponent of it) and, at the same time, trying to reconcile and integrate his existentialism with Marxist philosophical theory. The Critique de la raison dialectique was the result of this work. [6]
The theory of existentialism that he developed starting in 1943 with L'être et le néant, was central to the ideas of the New Left, in particular, the concepts of alienation, engagement (central to the idea of self-management) and a rejection of doctrinal marxism. Athough he never rejected marxism as a philosophical theory, he rejected the attempts to popularize marxism solely on economic basis, as was done in the Soviet Union, without considering its philosophical foundation. [8]
He based his philosophy of existentialism on several assumptions. The first assumption was that freedom precedes the human existence, and is in fact, equivalent to being:
Human freedom precedes essence in man and makes it possible; the essence of human being is suspended in his freedom. What we call freedom is impossible to distinguish from the being of "human reality". Man does not exist first in order to be free subsequently; there is no difference between the being of man and his being free. [7]In this axiom he captures one of the essences of the New Left that was later echoed by Castoriadis: that the revolution cannot be separated from the building of the new system; it must contain, in itself, the essence of what to come. This also rejects any notion of God and places responsibility into human hands. Everyone is held accountable for their actions. This leads into the New Left idea of self-management, which will be explained below. [8]
He continues by arguing that even though we are free to act, unless we do act, we will fall into nothingness. In other words, in order to remain human, we have to act in ways which prevent our alienation. He also provides a pessimistic view of our relationship to others in this world: that by communicating, we project onto others what we are. These others often misinterpret our representation and instead of perceiving us for what we are, they objectify our attempts, essentially reducing us to an object, and this is the reason of our alienation. This alienation, and the struggle to liberate oneself from it, is one of the three main directions of the New Left movement, later on elaborated by Castoriadis (see below). [8]
At the same time as Sartre was developing Existentialism, Castoriadis Greek living and hiding in France, was actively promoting similar views in the journal that he founded, Socialisme ou Barberie.
He had come to the conclusion that the Stalinist socialism is but a variant of capitalism and that all of the capitalistic essence is present in the form of Soviet bureaucracy. Afterall, Lenin's ascent to power in Russia was not a grass roots movement; it was a few Bolsheviks who seized and were able to attract the masses. Thus, the system was not any more democratic than any capitalist state: the power was still in the hands of a select few. In its essence, the Soviet revolution was just a change in the bureaucratic system. Furthermore, unlike the west, this bureaucracy was more dangerous since it mascaraded itself behind ideologies and slogans. [9]
Bureaucracy is a controlling class, it gains its strength from controlling and rationalizing the allocation of resources. It is a parasitic organization because is far removed from the production process: it knows not how to produce, but how to grab. It creates a division between those who command and those who obey. In order to survive, it masks its inherent ignorance with slogans and enthusiasm created through propaganda. [9]
In an attempt to control the means of production, the bureaucracy suppresses initiative and creativity. This leads to alienation. But the managers are smart, they hide this suppression behind an accusation of intellectual incompetence of the working class. Castoriadis tried to unmask the ugly face of bureaucracy. In the pages of Socialisme ou Barbarie, he printed numerous interviews with workers who confessed that, in fact, the manager had no idea of what is going on on the factory floor and prevented workers from taking any initiative, trying to suppress their solidarity and understanding. If workers are so passive, it is not because they were born that way, but because they have become conditioned and reduced to mechanical robots by bureaucracy. Bureaucracy breeds alienation and since it has no obstacles, it progressively gains more and more ground. [9]
Gorz, another prominent intellectual who held views simular to Castoriadis', wrote:
One had to recognize and to prove... that the prevailing methods of organizing work merely reflected - and were mere devices of - a system of class domination intent on perpetuating itself by imposing - under the false pretense of efficiency and of `technical' necessities - degrading and stupefying work on the mass of people. [42]
Castoriadis argued that in order to achieve a true socialism and true equality, bureaucracy in any form must be abolished. This contradicts the ideas of Lenin or Trotsky, since both viewed bureaucracy as a necessary evil if society is to function properly (it just happened that Lenin was more successful at acquiring power than Trotsky). Castoriadis response to this criticism is that this is an excuse for securing power and that, in essence, all that Lenin was an opportunist who was only concerned with acquiring power. In reality, the masses have a lot of potential for creativity. What he is saying is that the bureaucrats are really fatalists on purpose in order to remain in power. [9]
As we have seen, by the end of 1950s there was a vast theoretical development within the intellectual circles centered on the ideas of New Left, as well as a rejection of doctrinal marxism. But until 1956, these ideas were often dismissed as coming from a few dysfunctional intellectuals bordering on insanity who had nothing better to do than to brag about their angst:
In the queer existence described by Sartre, anxiety, vertigo, fascination, the need to destroy, etc., become sources of truth [10]
The ``real-world'' connection was absent in the minds of many. But many international events that happened in 1950s and 1960s contributed to the increasing popularity of the New Left: the advent of the Cold War, the Prague Spring, the Khrushchev's ``Secret'' speech, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Cultural Revolution in China, the Algerian and Vietnam wars. I will first provide a description of their influence on the New Left and then I will describe these events in more detail.
1) These events drove the New Left leaders such as Sartre or Castoriadis away from the Communist Party which remained wedded to the Stalinist model of marxism. The credibility of this model had become difficult to justify rationally given Moscow's inflexibility vis-a-vis its satellite states (see Hungarian Revolt below), and at the same time, Chrushev's own accusation of Stalin in the speech to the Party Congress of 1956.
The New Left gained on several fronts with its rejection of Stalinism and PCF. By gaining its independence, the New Left could navigate its own course. As a result, the New Left in 1968 provided a very different alternative to any other philosophical/political movement. At the same time, this alternative platform had a very vague definition and a multitude of faces. It was still a movement in search of its goals, a movement where the free flow of thought was encouraged, with no subjective truths to stand on the way of evolution. Such an invitation to freely express thoughts and ideas is sure to attract independent thinkers and philosophers. In contrast, PCF had a policy of expelling any member who dared to deviate from the Party line. It is thus not surprising that at a time, lot of prominent intellectuals, including Sartre, turned away from PCF. Furthermore, despite its vague sense of direction, the ideas of New Left directly opposed that of any established system (and in particular Gaullism, with which was increasingly under pressure from students, especially in 1960s)
2) Until 1956, there was no immediate precedent for the ideas of the New Left. To some extent, the communes of 1871 was an example of practice of Direct democracy, but these communes were quickly crashed, and the historico-economic realities of the time were very different from that of post-war France. The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was the first practical application of the theory of the New Left.
3) The Algerian war in 1950s and more immediate, the Vietnam war in the 1960s mobilized the students and allied an important group of them with the New Left ideas. This reaction of students was a direct response to provocation. In the case of Algeria, the provocation was caused by government's repression of UNEF. As we shall see later (see 3.4), provocation turned to be a very powerful tool that was successfully used later on by Situationist International.
In 1956 the workers in revolted against the totalitarian nature of communism in Hungary:
Within a week a national network of federated workers' councils took over governmental functions and control of the economy. The party-state apparatus was completely bypassed. Operating on the principle of mass meetings and direct democracy, the Hungarian Workers' Councils formulated a program demanding workers' self-management in all enterprises (including governmental departments), the abolition of externally imposed work norms, a sharp reduction in income inequalities, popular control of national planning, and free governmental election. [11]
This was a real example of exactly the ideas put forward by Castoriadis and Socialism ou Barberie group! Lefort, a member of this group remarked:
All the propositions formulated by the Hungarian workers' councils, and the embryonic programs elaborated during the course of the revolution... attest to an historically unprecedented project: an anti-capitalist and anti-bureaucratic project.[12]
What followed this optimism was the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 by Russian tanks, killing an estimated 20,000-50,000 of workers in the process. This could hardly be dismissed as a friendly gesture on the part of the Soviets to suppress the evil anti-revolution of Hungarian workers, even by die-hard Stalinist members of PCF and came as a complete shock and disillusionment to many.
Although the Hungarian revolt offered a model and evidence that the New Left's ideas could be enacted, what kicked off the student movement was the Algerian crisis. It had a real influence on student life: university budgets were cut, there was a threat of a draft, and it struck a nationalistic chord in many others. For the first time, UNEF (which has political and intellectual agenda as part of its constitution) was forced to take a political stand [16].
The impact of the Algerian crisis was first most noticeable at Montpellier University in south of France. It was a university both in geographic and ethnic proximity to Alger: since Alger had only one university, many of Algerians went to Montpellier. The war ignited an anti-war movement as well as a French nationalistic movement on campus; the local UNEF charter, university, and the downtown core (where university was located) became the center of it all. The events in Montpellier soon spread throughout France.
Until 1956, the UNEF tried to stay out of the conflict: it did not want to take an ``anti-war'' stand in the fear of loosing the government support. Furthermore their charter requires that UNEF represents the whole of student body whereas students were divided on the issue. [17] But As the Algerian crisis escalated, both the nationalist and anti-war movements fed on one another, becoming more and more vocal. At the same time, the horrors of torture used by the elite French paratroopers were revealed by Le Monde and Government announced that the draft would be increased to 27 months [21]. Further, the Muslim Students Federation and UGEMA, a Catholic Students Charter, both condemned UNEF for its inaction and broke off negotiations. UNEF could no remain neutral and in view of these pressures, took a stand against the war. [18]
As the Algerian conflict escalated, so did the pressure from both sides. By 1957, UNEF was firmly against the Algerian conflict and had actively mounted an aggressive anti-war campaign. Of course, this was against official government policy and as such, government took measures to subdue the UNEF. At first, the Montpellier dissident pro-nationalist charter of UNEF, aided by the local government, separated itself from the national UNEF. At the same time (and maybe encouraged by the opposition), UNEF became a more political and visible force:
On 13 May 1958, a military-settler insurrection in Algiers brought down the Fourth Republic itself. Faced with the insurrections at Algiers and the newly installed power of Charles de Gaulle, UNEF tightened forces with the unions of teachers, students, and workers. The student movement acted as the protagonist, forging unity-in-action around symbolic days of action, work stoppages, and multiple demonstration to end the war in Algeria. [19]
But UNEF did not stop there. By 1960, what started as the student struggle against inscription escalated into a full blown movement supported by many leading intellectuals, including Sartre, and directed against the government. UNEF became a primary force in the fight for Algerian independence. Soon the government began to attack UNEF and in June 1960 cut their funding, dissolving the student union. Nevertheless, UNEF remained a major force, and managed to call a general strike in 27 October, in which some 15,000 people demonstrated. Ripples were felt throughout the university system. [20]
By the time the conflict was over in 1960, the student population had been transformed from being completely apolitical in 1954 to politically active in 1960, whether against or with the government. There is an important lesson to be learned from the history of UNEF during Algerian crisis, and a theme that keeps recurring: suppressing the population only provokes it.
The Vietnam War, just as the Algerian War did, forced the students not only to act, but to think, to reflect on their own situation, try and find other alternatives, and to realize that other alternatives existed.
The Vietnam situation was different from Algiers: the official Gaullist position was against the Vietnam war, so the anti-Vietnam movement in France was not necessarily directed against the government, unlike in the United States. However it made the French aware that they do not exist in isolation. It awakened their consciousness as to their position and their role in the world. Thus the anti-Vietnam movement in France can be viewed as an anti-American, or anti-imperialist capitalist movement. [23]
At the same time as the Vietnam war, the Cultural revolution erupted in China and Cuba had a revolution of its own. The American universities were already in revolt. In this excited atmosphere of 1960s, many of the students felt that they could not be left out. Even though these were separate events, in the minds of many they were all directed against American Capitalism, creating a solidarity between students. Many groupiscules formed, such as the Maoist, founded by a professor in Ecole Normale Supérieure and his class of students [24]. These events united politically oriented portions of society with a single goal of fighting against imperial capitalism, though their goals were different from that of PCF which had taken a neutral stance vis-a-vis the Vietnam war. This anti-war population was made up of students for the most part.
A unique group rose to prominence in France in 1960s whose ideology (or anti-ideology) was very similar to students ideas of May 1968. This group originated as an avant-garde arts society, rooted in Dadaism and uniting three organizations in 1957: the French Lettristes Internationals, the Belgian Imaginist Bauhas and Psichogeographic society of London. It called itself Situationist International. Its original mandate was to promote art as a weapon against the dullness of life, ``to intensify living experience through `situations' ''. The art it wanted to promote was surrealist and independent, a rebellion against established criterions fo what constituted art. It was originally planned as an organization with no central control. [29]
Soon however, the SI became partitioned into an artistic and a radical political wing. Its political wing came under an increasing control Guy Debord, a young movie-maker. This political radical wing under his leadership came increasingly in conflict with the artists of SI. These radicals, and especially Debord, become increasingly sceptical about the possibility of achieving change through art. Soon, Debord tightened his control over SI, firing the opposition. His group concentrated on the problem of the increasing intrusion of consumerism and advertisement in daily life as filling the human existence, an existence which SI wanted to fulfill with enriching situations. Eventually Debord goes even further, deciding that action was needed, and that the current system based on commodity must collapse. [30]
The central idea behind these thoughts is that of society as a spectacle. In his most influential book, "The society of spectacle" (1967), Guy Debord writes as an opening paragraph and his premise:
The whole of life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that was once directly lived has become mere representation. [33]He argues that society is a spectacle, in a theatrical sense, in which individuals are actors given a role to play, without any existence of their own. What we perceive as desires, feelings, needs, are actually either our instincts (such as food, sex) or else imposed upon us by the system (such as a desire to own a car, entertainment). He proposed to fight against the spectacle through situations which would be provocative in nature, such as taking an advertisement and substituting a non-sensical rhetoric or poetry for the words in it. Unless art is provocative, Debord argued, it becomes part of the spectacle. [34]
The ideas promoted by SI were in line with the New Left philosophy (though some of them dismissed Sartre as a part of the ``spectacle'') [35], and in fact advanced them even further. It is clear how the idea of spectacle corresponds to concepts of bureaucracy and alienation (according to them, spectacle is alienation imposed upon individuals by the state bureaucracy), but they also advocated self-management and spontaneity. Their argument is very similar to Castoriadis: the alienation (or ``spectacle'' in SI terminology) occurs when the workers are forced to do menial labour. They argued that modern society, through technology, has enough resources to automate the production process, and liberate the protalitariat from ``alienation'' thus imposed, but it is not in the interest of state to do so. [30]
But SI aimed to be more than just intellectual theories. Their theories were directed at and about people, and thus, they needed support and recognition outside intellectual circles. The 1996 election in Strasbourg University put radical students in charge of UNEF. The situation of Strasbourg University was no better than anywhere in France (see 3.6). This newly elected radical leadership appealed to SI for support in their efforts to revolutionize UNEF. In response, SI delegated Mustapha Khayati to act as a liaison between Strasbourg UNEF and SI. The result of this collaboration was a brochure (whose primary author was Khayati), On the Misery of Student Life. UNEF decided to use its entire budget to print and distribute this brochure. It was widely read not only in Strasbourg, but on campuses all over the country, including Nanterre. [34] [31] In line with SI philosophy, the brochure was very provocative in nature, reducing students to puppets in the hands of the bureaucratic state, proclaiming that students were doomed to a life of misery while remaining in a state of perpetual childhood:
A mechanically produced specialist is now the goal of the "educational system."...Nowadays the teenager shuffles off the moral prejudices and authority of the family to become part of the market even before he is adolescent: at fifteen he has all the delights of being directly exploited. In contrast the student covets his protracted infancy as an irresponsible and docile paradise. Adolescence and its crises may bring occasional brushes with his family, but in essence he is not troublesome: he agrees to be treated as a baby by the institutions which provide his education.
The real poverty of his everyday life finds its immediate, phantastic compensation in the opium of cultural commodities. In the cultural spectacle he is allotted his habitual role of the dutiful disciple. Although he is close to the production-point, access to the Sanctuary of Thought is forbidden, and he is obliged to discover "modern culture" as an admiring spectator. Art is dead, but the student is necrophiliac. He peeks at the corpse in cine-clubs and theaters, buys its fish-fingers from the cultural supermarket. Consuming unreservedly, he is in his element: he is the living proof of all the platitudes of American market research: a conspicuous consumer, complete with induced irrational preference for Brand X (Camus, for example), and irrational prejudice against Brand Y (Sartre. perhaps).
... since the student is a product of modern society just like Godard or Coca-Cola, his extreme alienation can only be fought through the struggle against this whole society [35].
As if the provocation caused by this brochure was not enough, as a result of its publication, the UNEF charter of Strasbourg was promptly closed by court order [35,32], playing right into revolutionary hands. Of course, this only further escalated the crisis, put Strasbourg University and SI in the limelight, and made a sensation.
The SI understood well what was needed to get students politicized: provocation and they delivered it well. SI once again applied this technique tested during the Algerian war, and that will recur again as the events develop. But as important was their concern over applicability of their theories.
Although the political and philosophical currents were very different in France in 1968, it is hard to ignore the fact that the student revolts in 1960s were a global phenomena. The revolts were especially serious in US, but they occurred all over the Europe. Some common trends are visible. All were primarily student uprisings and all advocated New Leftist ideas. To be fair, there are significant differences between the American and French student movements and its causes. In the US, the students revolted continuously for more then 10 years (though only a small portion, 50-60 people, were active leaders) [36]. They also differ in motivation: in U.S, it was primarily the Cold War, (embodied in Vietnam), the phobia of nuclear holocaust, assassination of J.F.Kennedy and the civil rights movements [36] that shaped the revolt whereas in France it was a crisis of university and identity . But despite their differences, there seems to have been a common thread, so a solely national explanation is insufficient to explain the French revolt.
The period immediately following World War II saw unprecedented economic and demographic growth in the history of the twentieth century, universally. The cause was the global devastation after World War II, and a regeneration that followed as men returned home and natural resources were freed from the war production. By the late 1960s the ``baby boomers'' were entering the universities. For the first time, this generation was given a voice and a vote. For the first time, the younger generation was the most numerous one. In America, there was also a change of guard: John F. Kennedy was the first President born after WWI. And the start of American student movement coincided with his assassination in 1962 and return of the return of old the guard to power [36]. The change of guard was also happening in France, as it did around the world, the old leaders of various political parties were replaced by younger and more enthusiastic leaders [37]. However in France, De Gaulle still remained in power. representing the old generation that had different experiences and needs.
Not only the boomers, being the largest portion of society, were under-represented on the political arena, but there developed a generation gap between those who were born before the war and after. The boomers did not go through the world depression, through the misery of the war, losing their loved ones and through post-war reconstruction. They were more concerned with nuclear bombs than material commodity; for them, the consumerism part of them, and not something to live for. For the older generation who was only exposed to a refrigirator after they grew up without one, the posession of material goods was often an overwhelming concern in life, whereas for the new generation did not put as much emphasis on it. This generation gap with majority under-represented was one of the causes of student revolts, around the world.
Any interpretation of the student May movement must include an examination of the university system at the time. University numbers increased from 1949 to 1960 by 60% from 135,000 to 220,000, but an even more dramatic increase occurred from 1960 to 1967: 230% (!) from 220,000 to 520,000. [38] Universities were unable to keep up with such an increased demand. The government rushed to build a new campus on the outskirts of Paris in Nanterre. Built in the protalitariat slums, it imposed strict disciplinary control over students and suppressed any academic freedom: libraries were inadequate and late in coming, the professors were unavailable and alienated from students, and most importantly, the system tried to intervene in student's personal life. Some examples of the events that took place; to give a feeling for the repressive atmosphere that developed:
[January 68] The Nanterre men's residential block is occupied by women. Police are called and riot follows. Students protest against the drawing up of a 'black list' of politically active students. ... Feb 68: André Philip (former Socialist minister) resigns from the presidency of the Maisons de Jeunes as a result of a dispute over the participation of young people in running the organization
And Nanterre was not in any way an exception to the rule: all over the country the students were denied personal freedoms through supervision of residences; independent, especially, sexual life, was not possible; lecture halls were overcrowded; curriculum outdated; professors often ignorant of and isolated from students. The events of the spring 68 were the best illustrations, showing that the escalation of violence as the spring progresses:
9 March: Demonstrations in Rennes and Besançon over student residential rights;15 March: Meetings and demonstration in Paris, saint-Etienne, Clermont-Ferrand, Dijon and Bordeaux calling for university reform;
21 March: Demonstrations and meetings in Nantes to protest against police interrogating students active in the university reform movement;
22 March: After the arrest of CNV leaders (Comitteé Nationale pour Vietnam) in Paris, an amphitheater at the Nanterre faculty and then the administrative block is occupied by 142 students who discuss new means to change society.
23 March: The administrative block at Dijon University is occupied in protest against disciplining of students for political activity.
28 March: meeting of protest against proposals for restricted entry to the universities. Call for re-appraisal of the role of the university in society and rejection of the university as the training ground for technicians. [40]
In the meantime, the government was spending much more money on its nuclear program than on education. The De Gaulle government was unable or unwilling to deal with the student problems, adding to student alienation from the government. The students were at the end of their patience, they had enough.
By May 1968, the situation that was brewing for more than twenty years had all the necessary ingredients: solid theoretical underpinnings, mass student and intellectual following (whether through provocation, discontent or soul searching). It was ready to explode.
That explosion came when the ``eight members of 22 March movement, including of course Cohn-Bendit, were summoned to appear before a disciplinary committee on 6 May'' [45]. At that time, a crowd of 500 students were called to demonstrate inside the Sorbonne courtyard. Discontent started to spread throughout the crowd as time went by. Fearing the uneasiness of the crowd and in an unprecedented and stupid move, the administration called in the flics. They managed to take control of the crowd and started to load the students into the trucks, in a degrading group-by-group fashion. At the same time (it was about 17:00), the adjacent Rue St. Michel, was filling with students finishing their courses and going to the movies. This provided the final provocation that everybody was longing for. The students stopped to watch their comarades being treated so degradingly and taken away. Somebody shouted `` Libérez nos comarades!'' The rest is history.
The New Left both influenced and shaped the May 68 revolt, or to be more specific, the leaders of the revolt. In fact there is plenty of evidence to suggests that, just like any other revolt, it was a revolt of a few leaders, the entragés (though they would object to being called as such, by the very nature of what they were trying to accomplish: a society without leaders). These leaders were able to sway the student body to their side and tried to achieve certain goals, namely, a society where everyone is willingly accountable for their own actions. Mostly though, the masses participated just for fun, for an adrenaline rush. The best evidence of that is the 70% confidence vote for re-election of De Gaulle to power, who embodied the opposite of what the enragés were proposing, just one month after the revolts. Thus when talking about the influence of the New Left on the revolt, one should look primarily at their influence on its leaders.
To see how the New Left influence the student movement, one needs to look no further than the developement of the revolt, its leaders and its slogans. The most obvious influence on students was the SI that was very popular at a time of revolt, and the pamphlet De la misère en milieu étudiant written by a member of SI and published by a renegate UNEF of Strasbourg University [35], that was widely distributed and read, as a result of both its prohibition and the efforts that Strasbourg UNEF took to publish it (dedicating its entire budget to its publication). Members of SI personally participated in the siege of Sorbonne and Debord was alongside Cohn-Bendit and other enragés [28]. And it was not PCF nor CGT who supported the student movement (in fact, they were at the start against it) [27]; on the other hand Sartre made a speach at Sorbonne during the occupation, supporting the students. Cohn-Bendit himself remarked:
Some people have tried to force Marcuse on us as a mentor: that is a joke. None of us has read Marcuse. Some read Marx, of course, perhaps Bakunin, and of the moderns, Althusser, Mao, Guevara, Lefebvre. Nearly all the militants of the March 22nd movement have read Sartre. [13]And in his book on May 68, Cohn-Bendit refers constantly to Castoriadis' journal Socialsim ou Barbarie [14]:
The readers, unfortunately far too few in number of this and other Leftist reviews, will appreciate how much this book owes to them... I am not, and do not want to be, anything but a plagiarist when it comes to preaching of revolutionary theory and practice.[15]
The international influences are also clear. For example, Mao's little red book (that was a best seller among American students [36]) has started a maoist groupiscule, which had a prominent presence during the May:
Pro-Chinese ideological movement centred around the Ecole Normale Supérieure where Louis Althusser's lectures attracted the most brilliant students. These would provide the leadership of the future Maoist movement. ... The more subtle Althusser took the line that it was possible to contradict official PCF party positions via the use of theory without incurring expulsion. He attacked the party in a domain where it never been previously challenged, namely dogma, suggesting that PCF ideology was in decay. ... Althusser was no mere academic tutor but a highly subversive operator, aiming to influence the PCF and beyond that French public opinion at large. Althusser was a manipulator, who worked in the shadows, applying psychological pressure in the closed atmosphere of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, manipulating his students and being manipulated by them. This is why he became a best seller, exerting enormous influence on the intelligentsia and the PCF. Even the JEC (Jeunesse étudiante chrétienne) felt obliged to study his writings. [24]
Let's look at the developement of the movement to see how the New Left philosophy reflected upon it. During May, several trends were present: absence of centralized control, rejection of authority and individual involvement.
The absence of political power in the movement is somewhat paradoxical, given that the students were in the first place mobilized by strong leadership of Cohn-Bendit and others. But Cohn-Bendit, though clearly a leader, refused to take that role, at the same time, accepting the role of the organizer, for example, during the demonstrations:
He might well ask a 40,000-strong crowd of demostrators which way they wanted to go, like a genuine libertarian; but he would still be expected to sort out the actual details of the procession in consultation with the police, along with other members of the co-ordinating committee. The leadership was, then, composed of men with an archaic political culture. [25]Not only the student organizers refused to be the leaders, but there was also a rejection of control at large. There were several attempts by different political parties to take control of the demonstrations. Both CGT and PCF originally condemned them, but as the revolts spread, they tried to reassert their authority over the students (PCF) or the striking workers (CGT). Both of these attempts were unsuccessful. In fact, the hesitation and even condamnation of the student movements by PCF helped to make the leaders of PCF, Marchais and Séguy, among the most hated people in France in 1968 [26]. As for striking workers, their demands were beyond just salary increases and the improvement of working conditions; they were demanding more power in decision making process, the power of self-management:
Never had people felt so free and so close to each other. And this was true not only with those cadres who came out for equal incomes for all; it was true also in the factories where a majority of workers rejected the 10 per cent wage increase offered on 27 May and strengthened their strike, well aware though that they were losing 2 per cent of their annual income every week. What they held out for, during two more weeks in several large industries, was not further rises but measures of workers' control that would give them a new kind of freedom.[43]
During the revolt, there were also several attempts at establishing self-management. In [46], Jane Elizabeth Decker provides three such experiments: the Sorbonne Student Soviet, the action committees, and the Commune of Nantes. These examples, especially the Commune of Nantes, cleary illustrate how the ideas of the New Left were put into practice.
On 13 May the entragés stormed the Sorbonne and established the Student Soviet that lasted to 16 June. The first meeting on the night on 13 May was attended by some 2000 students. This meeting was open to all, especially the the working class, and everybody could freely express their opinion. It was decided that a 15 member Committee of Occupation would be elected every 24 hours in order to avoid corruption and stagnation of bureaucratic power. A number of other committees were elected to deal with everything imaginable: from press relations to nursery services. The Sorbonne became self-sufficient: "the Sorbonne eventually became a city itself, with virtually everything necessary for normal life". [47]
At the same time, different ``action committees'' sprang spontaneously all over Paris. These committees were not set up by some central body, they were the grass-roots initiatives created at a local level, by ordinary citizens, university students and factory workers. Their objective was very loosely defined
to be committees made for action and not discussion commisions or problem study groups. For this the committees are not large committees (10 to 30 persons) and choose their point of intervention in a precise manner.The ideas of New Left about bureaucracy are also reflected in this definition. These committees refused to be dominated and were decentralized. Any attempt to coordinate or control them failed. [49]to be political committees, that is to say, which do not fortify themselves in university or ccorporative action but concentrate for an objective on the downfall of the regime and on the beginning of a revolutionary course of societal transformation. This objective obviously cannot suffice by itself, but its affirmation gives coherence to all the other particular objectives (salaries, examinations, university reforms, syndical power, political liberties, etc.) [48]
But perhaps the best example of direct participation was the Commune of Nantes: ``from 26 to 31 May, the citizens established a viable alternative municipal organization and increasingly took over the operation of the life of the city. A viable coalition between workers, peasants, and students developed to run the city. The Commune of Nantes emerged as exceptional in degree among the events and actions of the 1968 revolt'' [50]. The students occupied the university on 9-10 May, and on 25 May several thousand peasants marched in the protest of condition of French agriculture, blaming De Gaulle and the French capitalism, renaming the central Place Royale to Place du Peuple and drawing the students to join the demonstration. Just as in Paris, numerous action committees instanteniously sprung up in neighbourhoods, made up of all the spectrum of society: the students, the workers, the peasants, the housewifes. In the atmosphere of complete solidarity between everyone, students helped farmers to produce food for the city, while the housewifes took care of delivery to the local shops. Then in 26 May, the leaders of these different classes joined to form the Central Strike Committee. The following day, 40,000 showed up for a mass rally. The striking citizens blocked all of the access roads and the Central Strike Committee took over the distribution and administrative systems, public utilities, sanitation services, and so on. The committee also arrange a nursery school for the children of striking workers and arranged the delivery of food to grocery stores and local schools, forcing all the supermarkets to close. The food prices actually fell. [51]
May 1968 was an experiment in rejection that questioned every commonly held belief and left no stone unturned (especially in the Latin Quarter). As an experiment, it was successful. It provided people with an alternative philosophy, and took it to the streets. It was successful at popularizing the views of the New Left, demonstrating, especially in the Nantes commune, which developed as the events progressed, the feasibility of self-management. Even more profoundly, it demonstrated that we can be responsible for our action, if we choose to be. But as a revolution it failed, and for the same basic reason that any other revolution fails: no mass support.
There was an apparent unity between workers and students during those turbulent weeks of May. However, a closer examination will reveal that it was just that: only apparent. When a revolution of the 1917 type is carried out, there is an elite group and a mass following, a blind mass that is excited about a chance to have fun, to avenge themselves, and uses a revolution as an excuse to fulfill their own egotistical goals, at the same time carrying the revolutionary rhetoric. The May revolt attempted to be a different creature. It tried to dispense with the idea of the elite all together, following Castoriadis' teachings that the masses themselves are not just alienated mechanical beings, but are able to take the matter in their own hands. This was not to be a movement controlled by elite and herein was its failure: For all the mass support it gained was rather inertial, the enthusiasm was fake. Apart from a few places like Nantes, from a handful of students [46], all it could do from there was to degenerate into a Leninist-type revolution with leaders and followers. This is precisely what its advocators such as Cohn-Bendit or Guy Debord wanted to avoid. Because of this lack of deep-seated support, the movement had to reject itself not to become the status quo itself. It is interesting to note the Situationist International also dissolved themselves in 1972 after coming to a conclusion that they could not escape being a part of a spectacle themselves.
The vast majority of people who participated in the events, came there as a result of provocation by the few, the enthusiasm was fueled by discontent instead of content. Most people did not start from zero and then developed, instead, they started by negating the system. But since, as Castoriadis would say, the essence of the system is contained in the revolution itself, the system that is created from discontent can only be negative. All of these new leftist philosophers assumed that we are completely conditioned by the system. But I think that to large degree, we are also conditioned by our experiences, from within. So even if we could get rid of the system, how can we get rid of ourselves?
Quoi de neuf sur le mai francais in Movement Social [France] 1988 (143): 91-97
Hirsh, Arthur: The French New Left: An intellectual history from Sartre to Gorz Boston, South End Press, 1981.
Lee C. Whitfield, The Rise of Student Political Power and the Fall of French Imperialism in North Africa: Montpellier, 1954-1962 in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, Vol. 18 (1991)
Schalk, David L.: War and the ivory tower: Algeria and Vietnam, New York, Oxford University Press, 1991.
D.L. Hanley and A.P. Kerr, ed., May'68, London, The Macmillan Press, 1989.
Myriam D. Maayan, From avant-garde aesthetics to the occupation of the Sorbonne: the career of the Situationist International, 1957-1968 in Proc. of AMWSFH, Vol. 14 (1987)
The Archive of Internationale Situationniste, on the internet: http://www.nothingness.org/SI
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, originally published in French in 1967; English translation available on the internet: http://www.nothingness.org/SI/debord.html
A.H.S. Boy, Biding Spectacular Time, in Postmodern Culture Vol.6 No.2 (January, 1996). Available on Internet: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/issue.196/review-2.196.html.
Published by UNEF, Strasbourg 1966: De la misère en milieu étudiant. English translation available on the internet: http://www.nothingness.org/SI/journaleng/poverty.html Original French version also available: http://www.nothingness.org/SI/journalfr/misere.html
Philippe BENETON et Jean TOUCHARD, The Interpretations of the Crisis of May/June 1968 in Revue Française des sciences politiques, summer 1970; English translation in [44].
Charles Posner, ed., Reflections on the Revolution in France: 1968, Middlesex, England, Penguin Books Ltd., 1970
Reader, Keith A.: The May 1968 Events in France New York, St. Martin's Press, inc.
Decker, Jane Elizabeth, Direct democracy and revolutionary organization in the 1968 French student-worker revolt, in Proc. of AMWSFH, Vol. 5 (1977) p. 406-414
Interpretations of May 1968: the New Left
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