A Different Look at the May 1968 French Revolt

This May marked the 40th anniversary of the Paris uprising of over 10 million workers and students. It shouldn't be forgotten that 1968 was a year for many other uprisings and near-revolutions: England, Mexico, Brazil, and Czechoslovakia being the most prominent among literally hundreds; not to mention the revolt of women, African Americans, and anti-war youth all over the U.S. reaching almost revolutionary proportions. But it was in France, an "advanced" First World country that was supposedly sufficiently prosperous and stabilized by capitalism and bourgeois society, where the revolt was the deepest, and students and workers almost reached the point of being able to reconstruct society on totally different grounds.

There has been a lot written about the effects of the 1968 events on French society since then. Historical analyses abound about the roots of the student protests, the slogans, leaders like Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and the massive street demonstrations. But today, France is run by the right-wing Nicolas Sarkozy who promised to "liquidate the legacy" of 1968. What happened to the revolt itself? Why didn't it achieve its goals? Among the many slogans spontaneously created by participants, why did "Those who make revolutions half way only dig their own graves" tragically fulfill itself more than any of the other revolutionary mottoes?

The questions that are most important to ask about a failed revolution in the past are questions that will lead to working out a successful revolution in the future. This is the only thing that keeps the discussion from being a purely historical one. The pull of ideas, specifically the ideas surrounding the French revolt and its collapse, are what makes this remembrance of an event 40 years ago a contemporary discussion.

Raya Dunayevskaya wrote "The near-revolution of France, 1968: Why did it fail?" during the height of the revolt, when "the whip of counter-revolution [was] visible." What might strike some of us today is the extended essay's polemic against Trotskyism. The reasons for discussing the failings of Trotskyism during the French revolt aren't sectarian, or old news, but at the very root of a Marxist-Humanist conception of what revolution is and can be.

The de Gaulle government was shaken to the core by the students' and workers' actions. Even after de Gaulle made a back-room deal with the Communist Party-controlled unions (the CGT) for a 35% raise in wages--attempting to buy off the revolution--the workers marched in the streets chanting "Adieu de Gaulle!" ("Goodbye de Gaulle!"). What became clear, far before the attempt to buy the workers off, was that the counter-revolution against the students and workers was led not only by the government, but also by the Communist Party!

While the French Trotskyists were militant organizers and fighters during the May 1968 events, their activism and bravery lacked recognizing the class nature of Communism. The Trotskyist denial that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state-capitalist monstrosity led them to be "the left face of Communism," as Dunayevskaya put it. Holding the same concept of socialism as the Communists, who worked with de Gaulle to crush the revolution, the Trotskyists were able to differ politically from the state power. But philosophically the concept of a "party to lead" could not propel the revolution forward.

Today's anti-authoritarian radical youth aren't looking to the vanguard party to give them a direction. Still missing, though, is a philosophy that gives action its direction, that can pose questions in a way that neither strips spontaneity of its importance nor leaves everything as mere strategy or pragmatics. What is needed isn't better political leadership or better protest tactics, but a total view of what we're opposing, how to uproot it, and a vision of a new society.

Dunayevskaya's formulation of what was needed was "a new unity of theory and practice which relies, not on some 'vanguard party,' but on the masses, the masses alone who would help forge out this totally new philosophy because they had a vision of a fully free society." Dunayevskaya called this the "missing ingredient" and the proof that philosophy isn't composed of ideas floating around in the air, but of ideas that are realized by masses in motion.

That is still the "missing ingredient" today. Marxist-Humanism is a philosophy for our times that poses an alternative not only to authoritarian sects of radicals, but also to activism that exhausts itself in action, action, and only action.

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