One minute French students were getting all uppity because of a ban on having visitors of the opposite sex in their dorms; the next thing you know, ten million workers had taken over their factories and de Gaulle's semi-authoritarian state was visibly teetering.
Sadly, I was only eight at the time, and May 1968 will for me personally always be more about Lego then les événements. But for the true soixante huitard generation, what happened in France that year was a defining political moment.
It is probably impossible to underestimate the subsequent psychological significance of these protests for the far left. Its role as a symbol - or dare I say it, myth - is perhaps second only to that of Russia 1917.
Its most common usage in this context is as a counter to the commonsense argument that revolutions simply cannot happen in advanced capitalist countries. May 1968 proves they can, we are told. Well, almost, anyway. But how valid is this case?
Prompted by the 40th anniversary media coverage that will presumably grow to a crescendo this month, I have been rereading some of the leftist literature produced to mark the 20th anniversary in 1988. Much of it, extravagently celebratory in tone, seems to me to overstate results and prospects.
Crucially, many writers fail to grasp that what occured was not a revolution. To say that is not to downplay the importance of developments that genuinely do deserve the much overused adjective 'earth-shaking', just as the classic picture of rioting in the streets of Paris hints.
France in 1968 was a textbook example of dual power, in the sense that Lenin used the term. But it was - again in the jargon - a prerevolutionary situation, not a revolution proper. Perhaps it would have possible to secure a relatively peaceful transition to socialism; the means of production were in the hands of the working class and, given the correct approach, a largely conscript army might have split on class lines.
On the other hand, there were 70,000 troops on the other side of the Rhine, and de Gaulle's cross-border chopper trip proves he would have been prepared to use them if a crunch had come. Nor would other capitalist countries have stood idly by and watched one of their number succumb to workers' control. They too would likely have committed armed support.
What is more, the forces of indigenous reaction could undoubtedly have mobilised the support of millions of people on the right. It would be lightminded to insist that extensive bloodshed could have been ruled out in advance.
Several writers slam the cowardice of the Parti Communiste Français, and maintain that 'correct Marxist leadership' of their precise and pure ideological stripe was the only missing magic ingredient.
But to postulate this is to fail to ask why neither the Trotskyists nor the anarchists secured a mass base, either through their work in the preceding decades or in the course of the struggle. Why do our historians think their outfit would necessarily have done any better? There is more to politics than retrospective transitional demands.
All of this leads me to what I think is the most pernicious effect of the May 1968 myth, namely the idea that there is a serious chance that a small group of revolutionaries can suddenly be catapulted to the bigtime, almost on the random caprice of history.
The 1988 literature on 1968 was full of confident predictions that revolutions were on the agenda, in France and even in Britain too, before the end of the twentieth century. This perspective, to say the least, hasn't panned out.
This post is not intended to say that we will never see new May Days, or even new Octobers; what I am arguing is that France 1968 was an exceptional historic conjuncture that even four decades on has yet to be repeated.
It is essential for the revolutionary left to dream, of course. But given a reality that could see two fascists elected to the London Assembly today, remember that day dreams can be debilitating.
Happy May Day comrades. Sous les pavés la plage.
Posted at 08:42, 1 May 2008
Comments (11)
Best magazine cover marking '68 forty years on, bar none.
Scroll down the page - past the masthead that is way TOO LARGE - to see the magazine cover, and click on the picture to see it as a larger image.
PS
- Happy May Day!
It's Mayday. International (not European) Workers Day.
"what I am arguing is that France 1968 was an exceptional historic conjuncture that even four decades on has yet to be repeated."
Poland 1980/1, Peru (90s), Nepal (recently), Argentina (2003ish), South Korea (80s), Iran (1979) Czechoslovakia (1968), Bolivia (maybe), Venezuela (recently) and parts of (or should be) countries - West Bengal (Naxalite days), Kurdistan (various times). There are more.
I'm not suggesting that all the above were necessarily as healthy as France 1968 (although how much went on in Provence, Burgundy etc?) - manly were as powerful but all were different.
In Iran a lot more factories were occupied and the ancien regieme did fall (unlike France) - but with one hell of a counterswing as well.
Mayday greetings to all. It is possible.
Neither the Trotskyists nor the anarchists secured a large base because they began 1968 still a miniscule force compared to the French Communist Party, which had hegemony over the French Left, in part because of its role in the Second World War, in a way that say its British counterpart could only dream about.
You can ask why in 'the course of the struggle' they were unable to break the decades long grip of the French CP over the most militant sections of the French working class, but this was never going to happen that fast whatever the heights the class struggle reached. Workers coming into mass activity for the first time need to go through their own experiences and draw their own conclusions - they are likely to see any CP as still in some way holding up the banner of the October Revolution - however much that CP is trying to shed its connection to revolutionary politics.
'Why do our historians think their outfit would necessarily have done any better?' Because whatever the Trotskyists or the anarchists may have done wrong - and they may have made many mistakes - they would not have played the disastrous and reactionary role of the French CP, which famously denounced the politically radicalising students as ultra left and tried to keep the workers struggle in purely trade unionist, economistic channels, so as not to lose their influence in the trade union bureaucracy.
'The 1988 literature on 1968 was full of confident predictions that revolutions were on the agenda, in France and even in Britain too, before the end of the twentieth century. This perspective, to say the least, hasn't panned out.'
Er, and what of the democratic revolutions which then brought down Stalinism in Eastern Europe and Russia, the democratic revolution in Indonesia in 1998, in Serbia in 2000, or the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela? Revolution may not be 'on the agenda' in the West right now, but to think that we will live through the 21st century without seeing any more revolutions or revolutionary situations - even in the West - is an utterly utopian position to hold.
I would question whether several of these cited were in fact revolutions.
And why should revolution not be on the "agenda" in the West? After all, there are probably more Trotskyists and anarchists in the West than anywhere else? Or perhaps it is that few workers are convinced by the groupuscules. Nepal is a bit short on Trotskyists and anarchists but it has done the left no harm there.
I don't know about what happened in France - I was five in 1968. But how much did a CP-voting French worker and a Parisian student have in common in reality?
At least one of the leaders of 1968, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, has moved dramatically to the right. He went to Turkey in the 1990s and described much of the left there as "stone age". In fact they were still true to what they believed 20 years ago, while he was not. Over 1,000 "stone age" people have been arrested today in Istanbul for trying to celebrate May Day in the city centre.
The "Turkish left" (and the "Kurdish left") present in much of western Europe is indeed to a large extent "stone age", if you want to count Maoism and Stalinism, including small children brandishing placards of Stalin on May Day demonstrations as "stone age". I would. I have no idea whether such groupings are particuarly representative of the left within the Turkish state - but I suspect they might be.
If so, that is probably the first occasion that I have ever agreed with anything Cohn-Bendit, the loudmouthed annoying rent-a-quote, has said (within the last 20 years anyway).
OK, 1968 wasn't a Revolution, but look on the bright side it launched hundreds of careers into the arts, media and politics, after the obligatory rites of passage thru some Trot organisation
so maybe it didn't achieve much, but at least it made the offspring of the middle classes feel happy, for a period?
I didn't state the above were revolutions - many were just revolutionary situations. Iran was clearly a revolution although the outcome (which wasn't a given) eventually just replaced one group of exploiters with another. With revolutionary leadership of the Left, instead of the 'official communist' leadership of the Tudeh, who knows what may have been
One thing very noticeable about France and all the others is either a very small number or no communists i.e. Trotskyists. If communists did or do take the lead in places like Venezuela (I think that is conceivable) then all is possible.
There's a morbid, self debasement amongst many in the Left in Britain. It will often end in a collapse into Labour (what alternative is there? they ask).
It's true that there hasn't been a revolutionary situation here for at least 80 years but reds should think internationally - all great social movements and revolutionsget here, eventually. Hell, we might even go metric sometime in the 21st century.
Nepal is a bit short on Trotskyists and anarchists but it has done the left no harm there.
So what are the Maoists offering the people of Nepal then?
Here they are in their own words:
"Rest assured, we are in favor of the capitalist economy"
That's the Maoist leader Prachanda who has also promised to retain links with the World Bank and the IMF, make the climate for investment more favourable and use their militias as a security force to clamp down on strikes.
They sound really revolutionary, it must be like France 1968 in Nepal.
I find comments on the alleged "primitiveness" of the Turkish left interesting, especially from a commentator who apparently lives in Germany. Certain people there have decided that people from Turkey are too "primitive" to be allowed to live on German soil. That accounts for a neo-Nazi arson attack in Solingen in the 1990s which took lives, to cite one particularly bad example, and there was a fatal fire in Ludwigshafen earlier this year in which people from Turkey died and whose cause was unclear. Arson directed at "primitives" has been suspected.
I cast my eye over photos of the London May Day march on Socialist Unity Network and elsewhere. What was interesting to me was that the "primitive" Turkish and Kurdish marchers looked both more militant and considerably younger than the indigenous left, who, for all their presumed "sophistication", looked rather long in the tooth.
As to Nepal, I suspect that if the Maoists were more radical, people like Duncan Money would be screaming about Pol Pot reborn. Whatever they do they cannot please sectarian commentators in the West whose own record is, well, patchy. The east is, if not red, certainly redder...
Well, they may not be able to please 'sectarian commentators' like myself, but they seem to be doing a good job of pleasing and reassuring those closet revolutionaries at the World Bank...
However, perhaps I've misinterpreted the statement 'we are in favour of the capitalist economy'. Let me guess, they're lulling us into a false sense of security?
Thought I'd mention that one of the meetings at Saturday's '1968 and all that' Conference and Bookfair at Conway Hall might be of interest to people reading this thread:
'Was there really a revolutionary situation in France in May '68?'
Speaker: Adam Buick
Room: Artists Room
Time: 3pm
Conway Hall,
London.
May 10th