“May Made Me – An Oral History of the 1968 Uprising in France” by Mitchell Abidor, 2018
Revolutionaries study revolutions. May-June 1968 in France was a peculiar kind
of revolt, not a revolution, but a moment when all of progressive French
society was up in ‘arms’ in a mass way.
It happened in a somewhat modern capitalist society not so long
ago. There are some similarities to what
happened in other countries at the time, like Italy, Greece, Germany, Mexico,
Czechoslovakia and even the U.S. What can we learn?
This book interviews a raft of participants – anarchist
leaders, students and activists, Trotskyist cadres and supporters, Maoist
ideologues, hippie students, high school and neighborhood activists,
proletarians of various political persuasions, General Confederation of Trade
Union (CGT) and Communist Party of France (PCF) members, syndicalist peasants,
radical white-collar workers and ex-PCF filmmakers. Situationism, Althusser, self-management, film,
French philosophers and every kind of politics are discussed. The interviewees stretch
across France, in many towns besides Paris – Nanterre, Lyons, Nantes, Saint-Nazaire,
Marseille, Rouen, Villefranche.
The issues that motivated the movement began with
opposition to the American war in Vietnam and the French occupation of Algeria.
The French Resistance, the Spanish Civil War and the 1936 Popular Front hover
in the background of family experience. While De Gaulle wanted to fire on
demonstrators and had secretly mobilized the army, the more intelligent police
used less lethal methods on purpose. Two
demonstrators died, but not quite by design.
This gave the movement almost no martyrs. The movement spread to include almost every
demand except building dual power or taking state power. For instance, the unguarded practical power
centers or government Ministries were not occupied. There is a reason for this.
The
MERRY MONTH of MAY
The personal narratives highlight the main events. They start with an attack on a bank in Nanterre over Vietnam. Nanterre is a northwest suburban town near Paris. A student occupation followed at Nanterre University over those arrested, starting March 22, 1968. The police occupied the Sorbonne May 3 in the Parisian Latin Quarter after the Sorbonne joined Nanterre. The subsequent occupation of the Odeon Theatre by radicals was next, along with attacks by the police against demonstrators on May 6. Farmers marched on May 8th in Nantes. Then the Night of the Barricades occurred in Paris, May 10, involving pitched battles with police. After this, the CGT union federation finally called a general strike on May 11, which led to a mass student-worker demonstration on May 13 in Paris. Strikes and factory occupations began on May 14 and by May 19th 122 factories were occupied and 2 million were on strike, which eventually went up to 9-12 million across the country. The city of Nantes was taken over by the working class for a week. Mutual aid was instituted everywhere. Another half-million workers marched in Paris on May 29th.
After a ‘bread and butter’ deal called the Grenelle
Agreements between De Gaulle and the CGT which gained benefits, conditions and higher
wages for labor, the strikes ended after June 5. Ones that held out were crushed by police
operations. De Gaulle called elections
and gained an even bigger majority from the frightened middle class, farmers
and bourgeoisie. Street demonstrations were banned, some left-wing groups
outlawed and some leftists jailed.
The PCF lost authority after 1968. Their social-patriotic position on Algeria;
their hesitancy to take radical steps against the Vietnam War; their
denunciation of the students and forcible limitation of the uprising to
economics; their expulsions of anyone who disagreed; all led many young people,
– including Alain Krivine who eventually became a Trotskyist leader – to
abandon the PCF. According to one of the interviewees, only in 2018 were some
CPers finally admitting they’d made a mistake.
The LABOR
‘PROBLEM’
The ‘unity’ between students and workers was only
apparent. As was pointed out, the 30
years of somewhat better living standards for workers after WWII had made
French workers passive. Only some
factories and younger workers, like in the Renault plants in Flins and
Billancourt opposed the June financial deal made by the CGT leadership. The PCF
formed the main roadblock to a revolutionary approach to the situation, though
the PCF had proved this many times before.
They had become a mass reformist, social-democratic party, but still used
bureaucratic / Stalinist tactics and rhetoric to control the movement. Today they are a shred of their former selves,
still in the unions, but unable to mount real electoral campaigns or speak
credibly of socialism.
The farmers – which this book calls ‘peasants’ – provided
concrete help in Nantes suppling milk and chickens to striking workers at cost. The CGT leadership in Nantes had nothing to
do with them, but younger workers and students welcomed them. However this is somewhat
of an exception due to the leadership of a tenant farmer from Brittany. A similar thing happened in the 1985-’86
Austin, MN meatpacker’s strike in southern Minnesota, when a Trotskyist grocery
owner supplied food to the strikers there.
 |
| Renault Billancourt Factory Strike |
CGT metal workers in Saint-Nazaire in the shipyard and
aircraft factory voted to occupy their plants.
They secured their tools and machines, organized food delivery from
local farmers and fishermen at cost, developed security inside and outside the
plant and slept in the factory offices, as the actual work spaces were
unsuitable. They also controlled the gasoline supply in the city by taking over
the pumps to provide food to residents, as there was a gas shortage due to the
strikes. But they opposed any political
demands.
After the general strike, the gains for workers was a
national minimum wage, recognition of unions inside the plants and wage
increases in many workplaces. Each plant
also had individual demands. Some anarchists had brought up ‘wrecking machinery
and tools’ but the whole Marxist Left stood against that idea. A Trotskyist CGT
member was a leader of the occupation of the aircraft factory, Sud-Aviation in
Saint-Nazaire, so the PCF didn’t control everything. The head of the CGT was booed at the Renault
plant in Billancourt when he called for acceptance of the Grenelle
accords. In a way, the so-called ‘middle
class students’ from OUTSIDE the union movement spurred a mass movement
which greatly helped the working class.
The ‘ouvrieriste’ CGT/PCF never recognized this alliance, much to their
discredit. The Maoists, led by Louis
Althusser of the elite Ecole Normale Superieure, also distained the student and
community movement, as they were coming from a similar background as the PCF.
The U.S. AFL-CIO at the time was led by George Meany, a
hard-core cold warrior whose labor federation was far weaker and far to the
right of the CGT. They would have never
thought of a general strike or factory occupations. They supported the war in
Vietnam, the government and the U.S. capitalist system in all its glory. This trade union pathos is somewhat similar to
today.
The French Trotskyist, anarchist and Maoist groups which
advocated further steps or revolution were too weak to guide the movement
except in smaller ways. They had few
roots in the factories and unions. Few even
thought they could challenge state power or take over, as this was no ‘rehearsal,’
no 1905 or Paris Commune. It was perhaps
more similar to the 1936 Popular Front strikes, though without the PCF in government.
Essentially the student side of the rebellion was dominated by an ‘anarchist’
approach to organization, demands and ideas, a method which had both
spontaneous authority and effectiveness but a long-run weakness. Universities were occupied, General
Assemblies formed and action committees grew up in neighborhoods and high
schools, though only one lasted. The
action committees were an idea of Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s, a prominent anarchist. Battles with Catholic, traditional and
monarchist fascists like the OAS also occurred.
A
CULTURAL REVOLT
Gaullist figures like Culture Minister Andre Malraux were
pilloried. Louis Aragon, former
surrealist and PCF honcho, was booed at the Sorbonne. The ‘establishment’ got pied, but not
overtaken. A French feminist and gay
rights movement grew out of 1968 - which was not initially present. Most speak of the events causing a
modernization of archaic French rigidity and paternalistic capitalism,
resulting in more free speech, looser forms of dress, communal living, relaxed sexual
attitudes, youth rights – essentially a cultural ‘progression’ out of archaic
Catholic Gaullism. At the same time the
French working-class gained in security, pay and power across the board … for a
time. The example of a complete and massive general strike and factory occupations show such an event is possible.
Many speak of how strangers – everyone – actually talked to
each other for a change, for a month or two at the height of events, then went
back to isolation and silence. Community
had returned, if for only a moment, out of the alienation of capitalist society. This is a fascinating materialist account and
parallels other books that show how a certain historical event or period ‘made’
people into left-wing radicals. That process has not ended.
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using these terms: “The
French Communist Party versus the Students,” “The Age of Uprising – the Legend of Michel Kholhass,” “The Permanent
Guillotine,” “Citizen Tom Paine,” “Two Days, One Night” “Thieves of the Wood,” “The Coming
Insurrection,” “The Left and Islamic Literalism,” “The Committed,” “Thomas
Piketty,” “The Beach Beneath the Street,” “The Permanent Guillotine,” “The
Merry Month of May,” “Society of the Spectacle” (Dubord); “Something in the
Air,” “The Conspiracy,” “Finks,” “The Ghost of Stalin” (Sartre); “A Walk
Through Paris” or the words “Paris” or “France.”
And I bought it at May
Day Books!
Red Frog
August 29, 2022
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