May '68 Revisited

http://insurgentnotes.com/2016/06/may-68-revisited/
Date Written:  2016-06-12
Publisher:  Insurgent Notes
Year Published:  2016
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX19558

Mitch Abidor recently spent weeks in France tracking down people who came of age politically in May 1968, to ask them how they viewed that experience, then and now. He went out of his way (with 1–2 exceptions) to talk to people "unknown," in contrast to the "stars" who feature in so many accounts of May. He talked with anarchists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, and even anarchists who had become Stalinists later. We publish this short summary of his results in Insurgent Notes because we like his direct, unvarnished access to participants, while taking our distance from some of his interpretations, which are subject to debate. We (the editors of Insurgent Notes) found Mitch's results sobering, if not downright deflating, because his subjects across the board say that the French working class in May 1968 was not revolutionary.

Subject Headings

• 1968