May '68

What is your opinion of the revolts of '68? How come those happened in what was essentially a time of prosperity for first-world capitalism? Where they completely crushed by state repression or actually co-opted by the spectacle?

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You have to understand it from a wider perspective. The revolt of 68' happened, indeed, in the most prospous time of capitalism. But it wasn't the workers, nor farmers who went out to the streets. It was university students, intelectualls, post-modernists and like. Student situation back then was horrible, universities were underpaid, people were forced to study what would give them a job, not what interested them. Living conditions (for students) were so bad that the book was published (On the Poverty of Student Life), which caused significant uproar, and accelerated the revolt.
While again, it is true that capitalism was prospering back then, political situation in France was, well, bad. France struggled with political infighting (gaulist faction vs socialist and communist factions), the memories of Algerian war, which ended in 1962, were still vivid, people grew more radical, embracing counter-culture, hippie movements and so on. Basically it was a fusion of number of events.
What happened later was escalation of protests, workers, farmers, artists, the whole country went on the biggest strike in history. De Gaulle, seeing this, dissolved the parliament and called new elections- which, paradoxically, only made the Gaulist faction stronger, but forced de Gaulle to ultimately resing from politics. Gaulist promised reforms reluctantly, but eventaully fulfiled most of them. May of 1968 was more of a cultural, youth rebellion than any actual revolutionary situation, although it was very close to become a revolution. Sadly, it didn't happen, but the revolt of 1968 changed France, and ultimately the world, forever.

The foundation of the destruction of european socialdemocracies.

Seems to me to be an excellent example of materialism in action. While there were some economic motivations for the protests (student living conditions, etc) the movement was ultimately the product of cultural forces responding to the war and 60s counter culture. No matter how powerful these forces became, they were unable to topple the dominant superstructure and culture because they lacked a proper material basis. This is why you only see revolutions in places where revolutionary consciousness is generated by a shift in the base (such as the French Revolution) or when the base is in a state of total collapse/dysfunction (Russia and China revolutions).

That's totally correct. Through revolt of '68 we can learn that revolutions are indeed complex and mysterious thing, being accosted in both mass consciousness (funny how Hegel was totally right about this one) and material base. Both are equally important, and you can't have a succesful revolution without one of these.

Workers went out to the streets, it had 11 million workers (almost a quarter of France's population) striking at its height. It was the largest strike in France and it was probably the largest wildcat general strike that ever happened. The workers were striking despite their trade unions and the communist parties being against it. It failed not because it lacked the material basis, but because their institutions (backed by the Soviet Union) betrayed them. No wonder it inspired so many thinkers to consider that maybe reality has been disconnected from its material basis and the "superstructure" now dominates the "base."

Please don't spread the bourgeois lies that tries to erase it from revolutionary history by claiming that it was a "cultural" or "social" issue and not economical. Those are simply lies.

May 68 was the only legitimate socialist uprising since the Russian Revolution.

b-but muh pomo!!

It was a key battle that shaped porky's strategy in the 1970s, leading to the neoliberal revolution that made certain a '68 style general strike wouldn't happen again. Labor unions had become too complacent and corrupt and couldn't keep a lid on worker discontent, so labor's power was diluted by financializing and globalizing capitalism to the point where it couldn't be attacked in any one place effectively.

Are you familiar with French sociologist Luc Boltanski? He wrote a big ass book reviewing managerial literature starting in the '70s, and he showed how capitalists gradually reshaped the labor process away from top-down discipline towards more impersonal networks to make sure it undermined solidarity and organizing so something like May '68 would never happen again.

No but thanks for the recommendation.
I do wonder if general strikes are feasible in today's world, or at least America. It might be more effective to cause a collapse in one vulnerable sector of the economy like transportation.

This thread is fucking amazing quality

it is strange that that actually proves marx to be wrong on the whole "revolution will happen on the most advanced capitalist states first (19th century Belgium i think is what he said).

also it draws on the question that is the proletariat really the revolutionary class? i mean 60s france failed, 30s spain and so on "fascisms are the result of failed revolutions" as its sometimes said. Anyway, the the ones who succeeded are actually the ones which the peasantry was the main revolutionary force. I suppose that it happens because in is those extreme poverty regions (rural areas) that the the poor have nothing to lose and commit fully, and also that it is also in those regions that the ideological and repressive apparatuses work less efficiently.

Bullshit. It failed precisely because its rejection of these structures. Rejecting all of it and putting nothing in its place just leads to an orgy of carnival that goes nowhere and fizzles out when people grow tired of the event.

The Communist Party and labor unions literally backstabbed French proles by negotiating an end to the strikes with the government and employers without any sort of popular solicitation. They were objectively a counter-revolutionary force by any fucking metric. How you can even consider pretending otherwise is beyond me. But then again, tankiës are no more capable of identifying a counter-revolution than a goldfish of realizing he's swimming in circles in a bowl.
"Wah wah, unruly proles won't obey the guideline set by the 'Communist' Party and bourgeois unions! Call the cops!"

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I hope smashies are planning shit for the 50th anniversary.

Where I live, Belgian cultural institutions have organized a bunch of exhibitions on the theme of political agitation but that's about it. :^)

I feel like zizek would have something profound to say about that, but I am too much of a brainlet to articulate it.

Yeah, but the PCF was revisionist by this point and this was well-known in international Leninist circles–even though the party did quite well electorally. The Unions were hit or miss, some supported the uprisings initially and some didn't, but most came around to supporting the student rebels for a time but…

Unions, while playing an important role in class struggle and proletarian life and organization aren't inherently revolutionary. The student radicals failed to put forward a coherent plan to transform society and so the they missed the opportunity to seize French state power when that was open, its hard to blame the unions for taking the deal that was offered to them considering this.

Many of these student radicals literally became the French establishment post-68. The only thing that came out of 68 was the destruction of the quality of French university education and the fall of de Gaulle's nationalist anti-capitalist government in favor of a pro-US, pro-Israel, pseudo-leftist ultra-liberal establishment favoring globalization.

The student radicals of 68 have long been idealized and so have many of the ordinary (typically petit-bourgeois) students who participated in it but the student radicals were at least as guilty as the revisionists when it comes to the outcome.

Funnily enough, the radical right actually staged a a series of coups a decade earlier that succeeded in bringing down the fourth French Republic and five French governments. The difference here being that they were actually serious about taking power unlike the petit-bourgeois student leaders of 68.

I think objectively-speaking, the French far-right caused more long-lasting chaos in the post-war period than the docile French Left. The memory of May 68 has been made into a fantasy for red liberals, akin to the image of the hippie in America, the dream comes so close to succeeding in the media portrayal but never quite can. It's short-comings are never honestly dealt with but we are told by anarchists and many different varieties of mealy-mouthed western leftists that 68 is the model that we must expire to while at the same time they denounce the Russian revolution as a failure. It is also doubly ironic that these same leftists who denounce Leninism as "trapped in a fossilized past" and constantly call for "reinvention" always look upon 68 nostalgically through rose-color glasses and even go so far as to comment that it was "a miracle"

t. Michael Parenti

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You better be joking, mate.

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A.nti-Amerikan is now word-filtered. I did not know this when I made my post.

World-filters are funny when it filters Zig Forums talking points, but that sort of filters just makes conversation tedious.

Dismissing the students of May '68 as "petit-bourgeois" shows you have no idea what you are talking about — many had working-class backgrounds. Sure, some student leaders did end up being incorporated into the ruling class, but so what? Many Communards ended up joining bourgeois governments, imperialist militias or antisemitic leagues — that doesn't mean the Paris Commune should be brushed off socialist historiography.

...

*they were more likely to revolt