The May-June 1968 revolt in France and its influence today (+ videos)
In
May and June 1968, a movement erupted in
The
revolt occurred in a context of rising struggles across the globe. In January 1968,
the Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF) launched its massive Tet
Offensive against the
The
Vietnam War had a radicalising role on people around the world, especially
young people. The US, and the ``liberal democratic’’ capitalist system it
represented, was espousing freedom while carrying out a war that by its end had
killed at least 3 million Vietnamese people. The examples of French colonialism,
especially in Vietnam until 1954 and more recently in Algeria — which France
was finally forced to relinquish control of in 1962 following a brutal war —
also played a role in the radicalisation of ordinary French people, most
notably the students.
Student revolt
It
was the actions of the students, against a background of a worldwide youth
radicalisation that triggered the events of May-June 1968, which took
Paris, May 1968
More graphic videos of May-June 1968 here and here.
On
February 21, Paris witnessed the first mass university and high school student
demonstration in response to poor conditions in overcrowded universities.The
demonstrators renamed the area of Paris known as the Latin Quarter as ``The
Heroic Vietnam Quarter’’. The repression meted out by police led to further
protests.
This
led to the formation of the March 22nd Movement, taking its name from the March
22 protest against the arrest of leaders of an antiwar rally. This group led
the occupation of the
A
further series of protests addressed a range of student concerns, from
conditions on campus, to the war in
A
May 7 protest involved 20,000 high school and university students demanding the
freeing of arrested students and the re-opening of both the Sorbonne and
The
two universities remained closed and on May 9 the students met en masse in the streets of the
The
police did not think that the ``spoiled’’ students would last the night, and
took bets as to when the students would ask to go home. However, the students
refused to budge and the authorities made the mistake of using the Republican
Security Companies (CRS) to brutally attack and tear gas the students.
For
the French people, the CRS was not an impartial force — it had a long history
as being used as strike breakers. By using the CRS, the government showed its
intention of seeking to smash the student protests.
At
According
to historian Charles Sowerwine, in his 2002 book
By
the time police crashed through the barricades on May 11, they found not just
students but local residents angrily demanding: ``Is this any way to treat our
youngsters?’’
The
night of
The
revolt spreads
After
initially condemning the students — denouncing them as ``adventurers’’,
``anarchists’’ and ``Trotskyites’’ — the French Communist Party (PCF), then a
mass party that controlled much of the trade union movement, voted in favour of
a resolution in solidarity with the students.
Prime
Minister Georges Pompidou made a speech on May 11 conceding to the demand to
reopen the universities and implied the government would release arrested
students. However, by this stage the student movement had gained confidence and
momentum — as well as the support of large sections of the working class.
On
May 13, workers went on strike and up to 1 million people marched in
Responding to the role of the students in sparking a wider rebellion against the government, President De Gaulle referred to the students as cette chienlit (``this shit in the bed’’). The students occupying the Ecole des Beaux Arts responded by putting out an iconic poster picturing a silhouette of De Gaulle with their response: La chienlit c’est lui! (``He is the shit in the bed!’’).
The
movement that erupted was increasingly taking on broad support, both in the breadth
of the population being drawn into it and the degree of its radicalisation —
the insistence that a better world was possible. The situation was rapidly
developing into a revolutionary situation that could overthrow the regime.
French
workers had been involved in strikes through out the ’60s, but nothing on the
scale reached during May and June 1968. The power of the working class was
imposing itself on French society. Nothing moved unless the working class
wanted it to. A desperate government sought to host a referendum to attempt to
defuse the situation, and channel the discontent back into safer, more passive
electoral channels — however French workers refused to print the ballots. The
government tried to get them printed in
A
more powerful democracy was emerging on the streets — mass action of working
people and students, beginning to take over the running of society in the
occupied universities and factories. In some parts of
De
Gaulle was forced into hiding. He secretly went to French troops stationed in
Role of PCF
However,
while the revolt shook the foundations of the system, it failed to overthrow
it. The movement slowly lost momentum and the government took the initiative to
organise elections for June. The strike movement came to an end, with the
workers winning significant gains, but the fundamental situation remained
unchanged.
A
significant factor in saving the system was the role of the PCF. The PCF sought
to distance itself from the student revolt at the time of the Night of the
Barricades, and the subsequent May 13 general strike was called by the PCF-controlled
General Confederation of Labour (CGT) due to pressure from below.
Although
at the height of the revolt, the working class was moving beyond the
pro-capitalist, reformist politics of the PCF, the student-based groups that led
the movement’s anti-capitalist trajectory and were leading the student revolt
were too new and lacked a working-class base.
The
PCF had been dragged into the revolt kicking and screaming. Rather than seeking
to lead the movement in a revolutionary direction, it manoeuvred throughout to
attempt to limit the struggle of the workers to seeking reforms within the
existing system.
When
the regime sought to consolidate itself in June, the PCF worked to convince
workers to end the strikes and the occupations of the factories, in preparation
for the June election organised by the De Gaulle regime as the way out
of the crisis. The PCF fully supported the election and even ran on a ``law and
order’’ platform.
A
different way forward could have been for the CGT to encourage and organise the
election of strike councils and democratic mass meetings, as was occurring in
the occupied universities, and to seek to coordinate elected delegates
nationally to pose an alternative to the existing regime. However, the PCF was
afraid of losing its control over the situation.
In
the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik Party was not afraid of losing
control of the movement. At one point it was a minority in the Soviets
(workers’ and peasants’ councils), yet called for ``All power to the soviets!’’
If
the PCF had maintained the pressure, leading up to the June election and had
maintained the political pressure, the character of post-1968
With
the mass revolt dying down, and with no clear alternative on the left (not only
had the PCF refused to provide a lead to the growing anti-capitalist sentiment,
the revolutionary groups that did were outlawed and banned from running) in
June De Gaulle’s right-wing Gaullist Union for the Defence of the Republic
increased its vote to win a parliamentary majority.
However,
the revolt had fatally wounded De Gaulle’s reign, and he stepped down less than
one year later — Pompidou having already resigned as PM in July 1968.
Role of the JCR
The void left by the PCF, in terms of the absence of a mass
revolutionary party, was large. The events of May-June 1968 may have looked
quite different if there had been a revolutionary party capable of initiating
action, one which saw the power on the streets and called for an overthrow of
the existing order, not for waiting for the ballot box. There were formations
that did play this role, but none with a mass base. One such organisation, the
Revolutionary Communist Youth (JCR), did initiate action and was at the
forefront of the revolt, at the beginning of the movement and at the end.
Apart from lacking a working-class base, the organisation was
relatively young. It had only formed two years prior to the May revolt, in
April 1966. In the autumn 1965, a number of the militants with in the Union of
Communist Students (UEC) did not support the left-capitalist politician François Mitterrand in the
general election, and they were expelled from the organisation. These students
formed the JCR, which by the time of the May 1968 revolt had between 600 and
700 highly political radical members, inspired by the Vietnamese and Cuban
revolutions.
While the JCR was small in comparison to the PCF, it had a large impact
during the May-June events. The JCR was the dominant political
tendency in the Union National des Etudiants Français (UNEF – the National
French Student Association). During the events of May, almost every day the
major newspapers mentioned the JCR. This was partly due to the fact that the
JCR had launched itself straight into the rising student movement.
While
the CGT was calling off the strike through the July days, the JCR, through its
leadership of the UNEF, was calling more protests and continuing to try to fuel
the mass movement and overthrow bourgeois order. The students only made up a
minority and lacked the ability, as the workers did, to bring the economy to a
standstill. After waiting for the CGT and other mass-based unions to organise a
protest against the suspension of the parliament and De Gaulle’s open threat of
military dictatorship, the JCR decided to initiate action. After De Gaulle’s
May 30 speech, on June 1 the JCR organised a protest of 30,000 students. The
PCF-led CGT instructed its members to stay away. The protesters sung the Internationale – the song of the
communist movement, reflecting the mood of the students.
The
JCR grew during the revolt, doubling its membership in
`Death of May ‘68’?
In
2008, President Nicolas Sarkozy came to power saying, ``My victory shows the
death of May ’68 and that legacy in
Is
this true? Sarkozy’s
Last
year, a mass movement of students and workers forced the government to withdraw
a particularly nasty anti-worker law, and this year has already seen strikes
and student protests. In a poll taken in 2005 by the Globe Scan institute, only
36% of the French people agreed with the claim, ``the free enterprise system
and free market economy is the best system on which to base the future of the
world.’’ Sarkozy must not have seen these results.
Forty
years after May-June, socialist commentator and 1968 participant Tariq Ali
pointed out that the government which came after De Gaulle and Pompidou actually
made a lot of concessions in terms of wages, working conditions and the
conditions inside universities. So, in order to prevent revolution, it acceded
to a number of the workers’ and students’ demands. He pointed out that the 1968
movement won the French working class a relatively high standard of living, and
a number of the large movements have developed in response to attacks on those
rights.
Birth of the LCR
After
the events of May 1968, the parties to the left of the PCF were banned by the
De Gaulle regime. This subsequently meant that the JCR was dissolved, but
reformed as the Communist League (1969) and then later as the Revolutionary Communist
League (LCR). As both the Socialist Party (social democratic) and Communist
parties placed a priority on preserving the bourgeois order, the need for such
an organisation was vital for advancing the struggle for socialism in France.
The
May-June 1968 revolt shook the foundations of French society. The LCR was born
out of a key lesson learned from the revolt: that there needs to be a
revolutionary party that is open and spirited in the tradition of the Bolshevik
Party, one that is not afraid of leading movements which it may not necessarily
``control’’.
In
last May’s presidential election, the LCR’s Olivier Besancenot polled 4.1% of
the vote in the in the face of a concerted effort by other left groups to throw
their weight behind the Socialist Party candidate. The 34-year-old postal
worker is the spokesperson for a left movement deeply rooted in the traditions
of 1968. An IFOP poll in November 2007 found that Besancenot would receive 7%
in a presidential election. In the same poll, the figure climbed to 12% for
people born between 1977 and 1982.
The
fact that a party with its origins in the 1968 revolt is still so prominent
goes to show that Sarkozy is dead wrong when stating that the legacy of May-June
1968 is dead.
A
range of young people are joining the organisation, which champions a multitude
of movements for democratic change and equality; from the feminist, to the
environmental and the global justice movements. While a number of its policies
are highly popular among the French people, the LCR has not shied away from
addressing the immigrant rights struggle, even to the detriment of immediately winning
sections of the working class over. As Besancenot told Marc Perelman in the
The
LCR has doubled its membership since 2002. With the growth in the ranks of the
LCR mainly being among young people, the LCR has also seen an increase in its
membership from people from a working-class background. This is in contrast to
the aging ranks of the PCF and the increasingly non-working-class composition
of the Socialist Party.
The
spirit of 1968 has not been extinguished. As long as the workers and students
of
[Duncan
Meerding is a member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective, a Marxist
tendency within the Socialist Alliance of Australia.]