Future revolutions

10. The May 1968 strike in France.

Most people today are fed up with political parties and politicians but see no other way to run society. The General Strike in France in May 1968 was the first attempt of people in a modern industrial society to try to run work and education themselves, without Politicians, Managers, and State or Union officials. It was a unique strike, unlike any other strike in history. Not only its demands were unique but also the way it was run. It did not demand higher wages and was not run by Unions. Strikers demanded "Self-management" at work, in education, in neighbourhoods. "Action committees" any striker could join ran the strike. The strike was preceded by University students' strikes and demonstrations against authoritarian University regulations and education. Young workers joined the strike to support the students. The Unions and Political Parties opposed the strike. Only after realizing they would lose members if they did not support it did they join it, trying to control it. The strike erupted like a volcano. Attempts by all political parties and Unions to control it failed.

Like WW1, the outbreak of this strike surprised everyone, including all Marxists and even the strikers themselves. As it was not motivated by material misery Marxists could not explain its outbreak even after the events. It occurred during a period of economic expansion that began after France lost its final colonial war against the Algerian liberation struggle. Why did people strike? They did not demand higher pay or better working conditions. They demanded the right to decide how their work, their neighbourhoods, their education, and the entire country - should be run. This demand grew from frustration caused not by some policy but by the very structure of political system. People were fed up with Government officials, with Politicians and Political Parties, with Unions, and with all those who decide for them without even consulting them. They were fed up with rule by representatives (RR). based on electing representatives who elect their representatives to decide what society should do. Citizens can only decide which party will nominate those who decide policies for them. Parliament has become a barrier between the citizens and the political decisions that affect their lives. To call this system "Democracy" is dishonest and misleading. Original "Demos-Kratia" in ancient Athens meant that the "Demos" (in antiquity this meant all free men).voted directly on policies, not on politicians. A Parliamentary system contradicts democracy. A Parliament is preferable to a Monarchy where a single unelected ruler decides policy for all, but Parliament is not democracy. Democracy is policy-making by the Demos, i.e. by all citizens, not by representatives. In a democracy every citizen has at every moment the right to propose and vote on every policy. Demos-Kratia means the demos - not politicians - decides all policies.
The French strike had three stages:

1. The Student's revolt. 2. The General Strike. 3. The decline of the strike.

Since 1960 students everywhere had been demonstrating against the US war in Vietnam. The French Students' struggle peaked in March '68. Students revolted in Germany, Britain, and USA. A few political activists started it. Most students were busy with their studies and exams. They wanted to get jobs, and start their careers. The student activists expressed the disgust many citizens felt about US war against Vietnam and about French authoritarian society. French Press and TV publicized it.

In the USA students demonstrated against racial segregation of Blacks in the South. This gave rise to Freedom Marches led by Martin Luther King (see the Internet) and to the Free Speech Movement (FSM) in the University of California at Berkley, led by Mario Savio (see the Internet). German students protested against the murder of Iranian Students in Germany by the Iranian Secret Police (SAVAK) and against the attempt to assassinate Rudi Dutschke, leader of Left German students. French students demonstrated against authoritarian University rules and Police brutality.

The birth-control pill freed women from fear of pregnancy. Students were the first to enjoy the sexual freedom granted by the pill but University authorities defended traditional morals and attitudes. When students ignored outdated University regulations the authorities called the police. Clashes between Police and Students started. Some students were expelled from University or arrested. Their friends demonstrated demanding their release. The police attacked student demonstrations violently. TV news showed it and this outraged many people. Eventually it drove young workers to join the students' confrontations with the police. This developed into the largest General Strike in History.

A revolution in popular music added fuel to the flames. Young people were fed up with banal tunes and lyrics like "I can't live without you". They preferred angry hits like Bob Dylan's grim "Desolation Row" or the "Rolling Stones" angry "I can't get no satisfaction", with lyrics saying:

"When I'm drivin' in my car /And a man comes on the radio /He's telling me more and more /About some useless information /Supposed to fire my imagination/
I can't get no, oh no no no / Hey hey hey, that's what I say/ I can't get no satisfaction/ I can't get no satisfaction/ 'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try/
I can't get no, I can't get no, Satisfaction/

When I'm watchin' my TV /And a man comes on to tell me/ How white my shirts can be /But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke /The same cigarettes as me/

I can't get no, oh no no no / Hey hey hey, that's what I say/ I can't get no satisfaction/ 'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try/ I can't get no, I can't get no/ I can't get no satisfaction/ No satisfaction, no satisfaction, no satisfaction /

Disgust with boring consumerism and authoritarian rule - not low wages - motivated most strikers in France in May '68. The chronology of this strike was as follows:

March 22 At Nanterre University in Paris, 150 students occupy the administration offices. The University authorities suspend all courses till April 1.

April 12 German Students’ leader Rudi Dutschke is shot in Berlin. Students in France and Germany demonstrate in protest against this assassination attempt and against incitement of the yellow press against students.

May 3 Anti-Demonstration Police (CRS) clears Students from Sorbonne courtyard. CRS clashes with Students in the Latin Quarter. 100 Students injured, 596 arrested.

May 4 Sorbonne authorities suspend all courses. The University Teachers Union declares an unlimited strike.

May 10 "The Night of the Barricades". Massive battles between CRS and Students in Latin Quarter: 251 Police and 116 students hospitalized, 468 arrested, 720 hurt, 60 cars burnt, 188 damaged.

May 11 Workers Unions CGT, CFDT, and the National Union of Students call for a mass demonstration on May 13.

May 13 800,000 Students and workers demonstrate in Paris. Union leaders were to march in front and Students' leaders in the rear, but students overturned this order and marched in front leaving Union leaders in the rear. The police leave the Sorbonne which is re-occupied by Students who start a non-stop free debate. Anyone - even non-students - can address the audience.

May 14 Workers at Sud-Aviation factory in St.Nazaire occupy their factory. May 15 Workers at Renault factory in Cleon occupy their factory. May 16 The wildcat strike movement accelerates, workers all over France join the strike, occupy factories. So do workers in French railways and Paris Transport. May 20 10 Million French workers are on strike. France is paralyzed. May 25 French Radio and TV workers join the strike. No Radio/TV News.

May 27 To end the strike the government signs "Grenelle Accord" with Unions agreeing to raise basic wage by 15%, cut working hours, reduce retirement age. CGT (Communist) Union leader Seguy announces this achievement to strikers at Renault in Billancourt (SW Paris). The strikers reject it shouting: "We don't want a larger slice of the economic cake. We want to run the bakery".

May 29 President De Gaulle flees secretly to Germany to meet General Massu, Commander of French troops there, to plan use of French troops against strikers in Paris. The Plan is dropped.

May 30 One million De Gaulle supporters demonstrate in Paris. De Gaulle dissolves National Assembly and announces new elections.

June 10 French elections. The Right wins an overwhelming majority. Left loses 61 seats, Communists lose 39. Strike begins to decline. . 1969 April 4, De Gaulle announces referendum to see if French want him as President. April 27 Vote results: "YES" - 10,901,753. "NO" - 12,007,102 . June 10 De Gaulle resigns. Georges Pompidou becomes President of France.

To give the reader an idea what this strike was like I shall quote passages from a book by two British Journalists who went to Paris to report for the British newspaper "The Observer". Their book - "French Revolution 1968" (Penguin books" London, 1968) - is based on their reports. The journalists - Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville - were not members of the British Left. They had an Irish Catholic background yet were ready to learn from new facts rather than judge them by traditional standards.

The following are some of their observations:

"What the strikers really wanted, although they did not put it in that way, was local autonomy, perhaps an essential precondition for a successful university. They wanted to devise their own methods of work and research, to revamp the curricula in the light of new knowledge, to specialize as they please." (p.31)

"The new militants were groping towards a far more ambitious programme inspired by the challenging belief that students have a role to play in the shaping of society as a whole. But this function presupposes a radical transformation of the university itself. . . . a struggle against the authoritarian caste-ridden university, and rejection of the university as a servant of a technocratic society" (p45)
"In the week from Monday 6 May, to Monday 13 May, the students' revolt changed fundamentally in character. From pranking and street brawls it became a mass insurrection. In that week the revolutionary leaders first took command - however tenuously - of large-scale forces, and demonstrated their gift for mobile strategy , spreading disorder across the face of Paris and tying down tens of thousands of police. The revolutionaries set the pace. They seized the initiative, forcing a baffled government into error after error. Within 24 hours the movement spread to provincial universities, provoking a rash of demonstrations and strikes at Aix-en-Provence, Bordeaux, Caen, Cleremont-Ferrand, Dijon, Grenoble, Montpellier, Nantes, Rouen, and Toulouse. In that first unforgettable week the most striking quality of the student explosion was - Joy. . . .There was a spontaneous surge of the spirit expressed in the marvellous claim scrawled on the faculty wall: "Here Imagination Rules". The most cynical adults were moved. Public sympathy welled up enclosing the rebels in a protective cocoon so they became invulnerable. The authorities only blackened themselves by striking at them" (p 71/2)

"The immense demonstration, some 800,000 strong, on Monday, 13 May, was a landmark. By forcing the Unions to strike in their favour, by bringing such hordes into the streets, the student leaders demonstrated once and for all that they are no longer a lunatic fringe groupouscule but a national force. They managed to touch something very profound in the conscience of the country, and here, in the massed ranks of the workers and in the countless fluttering banners, was the proof of it. They were proved right and those who sneered at them were proved wrong" (p. 92)

On this demonstration "The young revolutionaries wanted no one to muscle-in on their act, no political Party to take them over. As usual it was Cohn-Bendit who most pungently expressed their contempt for the official Left: "The Communist Party? Nothing gave me greater pleasure than to be at the head of a demonstration with all that Stalinist filth at the rear". To the alarm of their Union leaders many young workers seemed thrilled by the students' slogans. The virus was spreading to the labour force eating away the Union leaders' authority… Cohn-Bendit called for action committees to be set up in every firm and in every area of Paris" (p.93/4)
"Pompidou (French Prime Minister. A.O.) kept his promise: the imprisoned students had been released, the police had pulled back from the Latin Quarter, the gates of the Sorbonne stood open. The students surged in and took possession. That was the first night of the Student's Soviet - an extraordinary example of primitive communism in the heart of a Western industrial country - it did not end till their expulsion 34 days later, on June 16. Fired by the students' example the workers too struck and occupied, first at an aircraft plant at Nantes on Tuesday, and then - like wildfire - throughout France. How were these Committees organized? What was the mood of this novel experiment? What has remained? These are some of the questions which the following pages will seek to answer" (p. 93)
"To live through a revolution is a delirious experience. It is a little frightening, but also exhilarating, to see authority flouted and then routed. In the two or three weeks after the "Night of the Barricades" France was in a state of revolution. That is to say, the existing power structure - not only political power but every sort of power - was challenged and in some cases overthrown, and an attempt was made, however confused and disorderly, to put another in its stead. Students, workers, active citizens, joined together spontaneously in hundreds of insurrectional committees all over Paris but also in the provinces. This very widespread revolt against the old forms of established authority was accompanied by an acute, and profoundly enjoyable, sense of liberation. All sorts of people felt it in all walks of life. A great gust of fresh air blew through dusty minds and offices and bureaucratic structures. This throwing-off of constraint, this sense of relief was the authentic stamp of the Revolution, the proof that the changes being wrought were really of revolutionary proportions. Quite suddenly, and for a few precious days, the French, whose normal life is bound by many petty regulations, enjoyed the pleasures of a primitive anarchistic society. It was a society without policemen, with everyone his own traffic cop. In spite of the vexations of life, of the strike, and the drying up of petrol pumps, men will look back on that period and remember it with joy. The most striking feature of these days was the sight of people talking to each other - not only casual exchanges but long intense conversations between total strangers, clustered at street corners, in cafés, in the Sorbonne of course. There was an explosion of talk, as if people had been saving up what they had to say for years. And what was impressive was the tolerance with which they listened to each other, as if all those endless dialogues were a form of group-therapy. Many French men and women woke up to the fact that their relations with each other had been far too stiff and suspicious, far too unfraternal. It seemed as if the system were wrong: Children not speaking freely to their parents, employees touching their caps to their bosses, the whole nation standing to attention before the General. …General De Gaulle's decade of rule is doubtless among the major causes of the May outburst. His paternalism, the control he has exerted over information, the cant and pomp of his style of government, irritate and do not impress the young … But De Gaulle is not alone to blame…Everywhere petty bureaucrats sit, passing up dossiers to hierarchical superiors, jealously exercising their limited authority according to the rule-book". (p.94/5)

" The most original and creative phase of the Revolution was the last three weeks of May, from the Night of the Barricades, to De Gaulle's prodigious recovery on 30 May. It was then that a new political vocabulary emerged, drawing the crowd into action as allies of the young revolutionary leaders. It was then that the insurrectional committees sprang up, embodying the thirst for de-centralization as well as the urge to run one's own affairs, which lay at the root of the revolt.

From the start of their protest movement, the revolutionaries preached 'direct action' as opposed to negotiations. Now the slogan was 'direct democracy' as opposed to the classical delegation of powers within a Parliamentary system. Both in 'direct action' and 'direct democracy' was present the notion of 'permanent contestation' - the view that the bourgeois State and all its institutions must be subject to constant harassment and questioning. Nothing was taken for granted. The 'contestation' could equally well take the form of mobbing a Professor, of 'occupying' a faculty, of defying the power of the State by a street demonstration, of locking a factory manager into his office.

Everywhere, from one end of France to another, 'action committees' were spontaneously formed at grassroots level, forums of debate as well as of decision. They were the translation into practical (but often impractical) terms of the twin notions of 'direct action' and 'direct democracy'. These action committees were conceived as the agents of revolutionary change. They were to be the forerunners of a totally new type of society, in which everyone had the right to talk and the right to share in decision-making. These committees - of which 450 were set up in those three weeks of May, with widely different functions and memberships - were the most characteristic expression of the Revolution. They justified the claim that new, and original 'power structures', new revolutionary channels of authority, were emerging. (p. 99)

" For just over a month, from 13 May to 16 June,1968. the Sorbonne was the central fortress of the Students' Soviet. When it fell the heart was knocked out of this utopia. While it held it inspired the whole Latin Quarter to exultant insurrection, to become a free State within the Gaullist empire. The Sorbonne under student management is perhaps the most eloquent symbol of the May Revolution. It was both a Political laboratory in which the students tested out their theories of direct democracy, and an example which fired the workers, if not to do likewise, at least to strike and occupy their factories." (p.101)

"Gradually, through trial and error, out of feverish debate, took shape a tentative command structure. Simply to describe it is to ignore the countless changes, accretions, squabbles of that hectic month. At the base, and in the theory the source of all sovereignty, was the General Assembly, a vast shapeless mob which nightly packed the Grand Amphitheatre. This was direct democracy in action, a talking shop of infinite permissiveness. One of the first acts of the first General Assembly on 13 May was to declare the Sorbonne an Autonomous Popular University, open day and night to all workers. In principle all decisions taken in the building had to be put to the Assembly for approval. Each night the Assembly elected a 15-man Occupation Committee which was the seat of executive power. Its mandate was limited to a single day and night on the theory that power corrupts and that every elected representative must constantly give an account of himself to his electors. The bureaucracy must not be given time to ossify. The system did not last beyond the first few days." (p. 104)

There were many different committees running various affairs, from recording every case of police brutality, to allocating rooms for activists visiting Paris: "For the thousands of young people taking part (in running these committees. A.O.) it was a delirious and unforgettable experience, one of the most formative they might ever live through. If the May Revolution was anything at all, it was this roaring mass of spontaneous student committees and assemblies running its own affairs." (p105)
"The legacy of May is likely to be three-fold: A new and healthier student-teacher relationship. A certain measure of local autonomy both at faculty and provincial university level. A far greater share by the students in the planning and running of their studies. In planning these reforms the State must – inevitably - take into account the detailed proposals - some running to hundreds of pages long – which students and teachers drafted during the crisis." (p.106)
"The "Comite' d'action" was the vehicle chosen by the revolutionary leadership to mobilize mass-support for its aims…. They sprang up with incredible speed in schools, universities, government offices, professional organizations, and firms but also in residential areas on the basis of a network of streets. These committees were in many cases no more than groups of active citizens, usually between ten and fifty strong, unaffiliated for the most part to any particular political movement. What they had in common in those uncertain, delirious, May days, when the Gaullist State seemed to be melting away, was the idea that revolution is something you do yourself, not something you leave to others. They were the expression of a will for direct, extra-parliamentary, action. They declared themselves ready to pass from spontaneous violence to preparation of organized violence…. The movement reached its peak in the last week of May, when there were at least 450 action committees in Paris alone. They formed a remarkably flexible and effective instrument in the hands of the revolutionary leaders who exerted some control over these far-flung cells through a Coordinating Committee. This met daily for two weeks in the Sorbonne after its occupation, then moved to the Institute of Psychology in the rue Serpente, where at the time of the writing it still was"(p. 122)
High school (Lycée) students were extremely active in the strike. Their action committees were known as CAL ("Comité d'Action Lycéen"). At a meeting called as early as February 26 they supported secondary school teachers on strike. "That same night six hundred school boys and girls gathered to discuss what should be the future role of their embryonic organization. It was an important meeting. For the first time school militancy was linked to left-wing political objectives. The leaders presented a report claiming that education was a slave to the economic system. Words like 'capitalist' and 'socialist' were mentioned. It was suggested that the role of CAL was to denounce the education system as an instrument of social selection. The idea was to challenge society by challenging the school. This was as far as they got by April 1968, still a small movement in a handful of lycées, affecting about 500 school children. The street fighting on 3 May, following the police invasion of the Sorbonne, had a shattering effect on adolescents. In many lycées there were immediate strikes. Classes were interrupted as young people abandoned their studies to discuss the situation. Many rushed to join the demonstrations, some were wounded. On 10 May CAL called an all-day strike in all Paris lycées and a teenage force of some 8000 to 9000 strong marched to join their seniors in the great demonstration which ended at the barricades. What propaganda had failed to do in a year, action did in three hours. A long tradition of schoolboy passivity was broken. The CAL preached that the pressures of home, school, and police, were all faces of the same repression. At the barricades that night the lesson was rammed home: faced with the choice at midnight of going home to mummy or staying out all night to fight, many chose to stay. From then on the lyce'ens were never absent from the front line. Once the Sorbonne was occupied the CAL took over the Grand Amphitheatre for their General Assembly on 19 May. It was then that they decided on the next crucial step - a general strike and the occupation of the schools. The next day the movement was widely followed with teachers in some cases joining in and spending the night on the premises. Committees were formed to discuss school and university problems, but also politics: subjects like students' struggles in Europe, the role of university in society, student-worker links, and so on. Here, as in other sectors of French life, the Revolution brought an extraordinary explosion of talk. Thousands of young people were drawn in who had never had a political idea in their lives. Parents came to watch and wonder. Teachers found themselves arguing with their students with an interest they had never had in class. Workers were invited to see Russian films. The general tone was intensely serious, more so than at university level. There was none of the libertine anarchy of the Sorbonne. Instead earnest committees sat late and drafted reports, largely on school reform. No fewer than three hundred were produced in the last fortnight of May. The CAL emerged from the Revolution as a force in French national education…they are aiming for a share in decision-making inside the schools." (P.127-129)

"If proof were needed that the events of May amounted to a revolution the profound upheaval which took place in the liberal professions provides it. Theirs was not a movement of a handful of enragés (small group of extremists in the 1789 French Revolution. A.O.). No sinister foreign hand could here be suspected. The rebels were doctors, men of Law, churchmen, journalists, film makers, artists, musicians, painters, writers, social scientists and statisticians, archivists, librarians and astronomers, atomic scientists and museum directors. They were the intellectual backbone of the country, and in their thousands they rose to challenge the 'structures' which governed their work. They rebelled, that is, against excessive centralization, poor delegation of power, against the 'mandarins' 'satraps' and 'grand patrons' who until May ruled over French professional life. Inevitably the professions most immediately affected were those with close links with the university, but the virus soon spread very much further afield." (p. 130).

"The May Revolution set off an angry ferment in the arts which would need a book to do it justice. We have space for only one or two points: this was not a limited phenomenon but one affecting musicians, painters, film-makers, actors, writers, and countless others, and it was not a revolt of the 'lunatic fringe' but of the best young men at work in France today. Thirty Directors of provincial theatres and Maisons de la Culture - Culture Minister Andre' Malraux's multi-purpose art centres - met for a whole week at the height of the crisis in May pondering what should be France's cultural policy of the future. It is to Malraux's credit that these men are on the whole leftist non-Gaullist, but the joint statement they issued was a sharp indictment of the Minister's pet scheme of bringing the arts to the provinces. To a man they wanted a far more radical programme than the government’s highbrow cultural colonies provide. "We must get at the 'non-public', they declared, 'and draw it out of its ghetto'. They made a bid for socially committed art - cultural action should give people a chance to discover their humanity repressed by the absurdity of the social system. Painters, critics, and gallery directors formed an 'action committee for the plastic arts'. One day in May some of them decided to march to the National Museum of Modern Art and close it down in protest against its role of 'conservation rather than lively encounter'. They got there to find the doors locked so they pasted up a poster saying: "Closed because useless". Artists met trade-Unionists to discuss exhibiting their work in factories." (p. 134)

"..About 1,300 people in the cinema industry met regularly in Paris for nearly a month from 17 May onwards in the so-called 'Parliament of the French Cinema'. They split into working parties, drafted reports, prepared 'a Charter' for the renovation of the whole industry. At the root of these ambitious plans was the feeling that the French cinema was cut off from the social and political realities of the country. . . . The Parliament approved a programme of proposed reforms, of which perhaps the most important were the creation of a single national film distribution organization; the setting-up of autonomous production groups freed from the pressures of the profit motive, the doing away with censorship, and the merger of television and film production". (p.136)

"Two hundred museum curators from all over France met to ponder the role of museums in society while their staffs 'at one with the great movement of renovation now sweeping the country', called for an overhaul of old-fashioned, sterile, over centralized, museum administration". (p.138)
"Even footballers could not fail to be moved by the spirit of the time. About a hundred of them occupied the offices of the French Football Federation, on the Avenue D'Iena on 22 May, hoisted the red flag from the balcony, locked up the Secretary General, and the national instructor, and flung a banner over the façade saying: "Le football aux footballeours". "(p. 139)
"No strike last spring caused the regime more fury, and in no sector was it more eager to reassert its authority than in the ORTF - Office de la Radio et Television Francaise. As in so many other sectors of intellectual life, this was not a strike about wages, working conditions, or trade union rights. It was a strike for a complete overhaul of the ORTF 1964 statute and its replacement by a new charter guaranteeing internal autonomy, freedom from ministerial pressures, and an impartial news service to include freer access to radio and TV for opposition politicians. What united all but 2000 of the 14000 employees was, in the words of one of them: "Shame. Shame that when the fighting broke out in the Latin Quarter, the State TV service, under government pressure, ignored it." (p. 140)
What role did industrial workers and office employees play in this strike? All knew that only if this sector joined the strike would it be a force capable of changing society.

"From mid-May to mid-June 1968 France lay inert in the chains of a great strike. It was the biggest Labour revolt in French history (actually - in all history. A.O.) and it ended in a political fiasco. Why? Historians will long debate the paradox of how a movement involving nearly 10 million workers - politically roused and determined as never before - ended with an overwhelming Gaullist victory at the polls. Was the Revolution bungled or betrayed? Was it an illusion or did the advanced Western world miss by a hair's breadth its first successful proletarian uprising? … Had the workers not joined the nation-wide protest movement, the events of May would have had no more - and no less - significance than the student explosions of Berlin, Rome, or Buenos-Aires. What distinguished the French situation from that of other movements is that here the students' example was immediately and massively copied by the workers carrying the crisis to a new level of gravity. From one end of France to another men and women in key industries seized their places of work and closed the gates. For the first time in recent history intellectuals and manual workers seemed to be marching side by side to revolution. And yet President De Gaulle's regime survived. . . . We shall try in this chapter to reconstruct the way the French crisis, after the sombre Night Of the Barricades 10-11 May, entered a new phase, leaping like a spark from students to workers - and back again - setting off a chain-reaction of explosions, each nourished by the other. No one is absolutely certain how the great strike started. There is no easy explanation why men, driven to the limits of exasperation, suddenly lay down their tools, like an act of war."(p.146)

On may 13 "some 800,000 students and workers had paraded through Paris in the biggest demonstration the capital had witnessed for years. To a generation which had not seen the Liberation (from Nazi occupation of France in WW2. A.O.) let alone the upheavals of 1936, Monday 13 May was a stupendous landmark, the sealing of a revolutionary alliance against the Gaullist State. That night the Sorbonne was occupied and the "Students Soviet" launched on its delirious course under the gaze of workers as well as students everywhere. The watertight compartments (separating workers from students. .A.O.) had been breached. Within hours…workers in a small aircraft plant on the outskirts of Nantes struck and occupied their factory and locked up the manager in his office.

Quite independently that Tuesday some workshops at the Renault plant manufacturing gear-boxes at Cleon, near Rouen, downed tools. On Wednesday some 200 young strikers tried to get the night shift to join them but failed, so they barricaded themselves inside the works. When the morning shift arrived at 5 am on Tuesday 16 May they found the doors barred, the factory occupied, and the manager locked up. Two coach-loads of strikers set off immediately for the Renault plant at Flins in the Seine valley to bring them out as well - the red flag was hoisted at 2p.m.- and then on to the great Renault bastion in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billiancourt, the parent and pace-setter of the whole state-owned car industry. In the meantime, ever since the first spontaneous and disquieting outbreak at Nantes, the phones had been ringing in the Paris headquarters of France's two Trade-Union federations, the communist-led CGT and its social-democratic rival, the CFDT. The Union bosses were caught off-guard by this extraordinary militant phenomenon. What was' the base' up to? To forestall any further surprises CGT headquarters acted swiftly. On Wednesday night it sent a hard-core commando to close down the Billiancourt works and occupy the factory, where 60% of the 25,000 workers are CGT loyalists. 4000 men spent that night in the factory sleeping on stretchers filched from the first-aid posts, or on bundles of rags, or on inflatable rubber mattresses, relics of last summer's holiday which their wives had brought to the works with packets of sandwiches and bottles of wine. Within 48 hours, spreading with extraordinary speed, the strike-and-occupy movement paralyzed French industry across the country. Was this the concerted action of fully mobilized Unions? Or was it a semi-spontaneous process, springing from a decade of unsatisfied grievances and triggered off in some mysterious way by the Students' example and the police repression? " (p. 148)

"In those first few days of the strike no one in France was quite certain what was happening. Attention was, if anything, focused on the more spectacular developments on the Students' front - on the Libertarian experiment played out at the Sorbonne, and, it soon appeared, in every university faculty in France. The Union high-command themselves did not know what to make of it, and met that week in anxious sessions to try and see what the future might hold. Neither the CGT nor the CFDT could fail to be struck by the governments' climb down in the faced of the students' violence, and particularly by the way the Students' leaders forced the government to release their imprisoned comrades. The government had also bowed to the 24-hour General Strike of 13 May even though it had been called without the statutory 5-day warning. These were signs of weakness which could surely be exploited. It was here that the two most powerful Union federations parted company. The Communist bosses of the CGT were obsessed by the threat on their flank represented by activist groupouscules such as the Trotskyite JCR and the pro-Chinese UJC(M-L). These were ideological enemies who could be given no quarter. They threatened to outflank the Party on its left and weaken its control over the working class. These considerations lie at the root of the CGT's attitude in the first week of the strike. It spared no effort to separate the workers from the students, issuing order to its branch-officials that no students were to be allowed inside factories under their control. It sought to limit the strike because it did not like its nature or its spontaneous genesis and yet it was driven to take the leadership of it to deny it to the uncontrolled 'Leftists'. CGT tactics therefore were to cold-shoulder the student revolutionaries and to advance on behalf of the working class purely economic claims. It wanted for its members a bigger share of the capitalist cake, not, it would appear, the change or overthrow of the capitalist system. The CFDT in contrast hastened to declare their sympathy for the student movement. Several CFDT leaders went to the Sorbonne shortly after its 'occupation' to listen to the furious debates and ponder their meanings. 'The students are not only concerned with material considerations' the CFDT declared 'but seek to pose a fundamental challenge to the rigid and stifling class-structure of a society in which they can assume no responsibility. The students; struggle to democratize the universities is of the same nature as the workers' struggle to democratize the factories'. The essential difference between the two Unions was this: the CGT saw the crisis as nothing but the work of 'Leftist adventurists' . The CFDT, free from the bonds of Communist dogma, was more penetrating. It sensed that more and more young people found French society, as at present organized, intolerable. One of the CFDT's ablest leaders, Albert D'etraz, put it in this way: "It is not an accident that black flags now challenge the monopoly of red flags in street demonstrations. There is here a rebirth of an ideal of Liberty. It is a timely reminder to some political and union leaders, that a society without real democracy is a barracks". (p. 149-150).

On Thursday, 16 May, a group of some 1000 students "… marched from the Sorbonne to the great Renault works on the Seine at Boulogne-Billiancourt which had struck that afternoon. They carried a banner saying: 'This flag of struggle will pass to the worker from our fragile hands'. The workers thanked them courteously but would not let them into the factory so the students marched around the works singing the INTERNATIONALE. Small groups of students and workers formed here and there in the street and talk continued late into the night. 'To begin with' one student said later 'we chose rather simple words and spoke slowly as if to foreigners. But we found they spoke the same language as we did'. The Communist Union bosses would have none of such fraternization… On 14 May 200 men were on strike. On 19 May - 2,000,000. On 22 May - over 9,000,000." (p.152)

How did the ranks of the strikers swell at such a rate? One student explained:

"Let me give you an example: on 3 May, one of my fellow students went to collect his car on the Boulevard St. Michel. A group of riot police (CRS) fell on him, beat him up and called him "filthy student". A day or two later, when he heard on the radio that fighting had flared up again, he leaped into his car, to go and take part. He remembered to take a screwdriver to dislodge the pavement stones. I met him the next morning: he'd become an active rebel and was even quite articulate about why he was fighting. This sudden political awareness came as a surprise to everybody" (p.115)

"The paralysis spread with incredible speed and spontaneity. At no time did a General Strike order go out from the Paris headquarters of the Union federations, and yet all over the country, a calm irresistible wave of working-class power engulfed the commanding heights of the French economy. In thousands of plants the workers not only struck, but locked themselves in with their silent machines, turning the factories into fortified camps. The revolutionary students cannot claim the credit for this vast resolute stoppage but they undoubtedly had something to do with it. The analogy with the student 'Occupations' was too blatant. The student protest was steeped in the vocabulary of the workers' struggle and in the ideal of workers' brotherhood. From May 3 onwards the student leaders called persistently for a workers' revolt. It was as if they were trying to revive in the proletariat forgotten traditions of militancy. Who can tell what emotions they awakened? Old workers with memories of past struggles may have been stirred by the combativity of these young intellectuals. Young workers, not yet reconciled to the view that life is just the pay-packet may have thrilled in turn to the cry from the Sorbonne. In every University town across France workers and students met and fraternized in the streets. Though it cannot be proved it is hard to believe that the solidarity young people feel for each other did not play a role, or that workers were not impressed by the effectiveness of 'direct action' in the students hands. Would it have happened had the workers not seen the government reel back from the clash at the barricades? Would it have happened if the great demonstration of 13 May had not reminded the strikers of their numbers and their power? One thing is certain: the great well-oiled Union apparatus of the CGT, as well as its less-powerful sisters, the CFDT and Force Ouvrier, did their best to channel and control the movement but did not provide its fuel. The question is - What did? The fighting contribution of the students would have raised no echo in the working class had it not found there a mass of frustrations. (p.153)

"The CGT focused its attention on wage levels, a guaranteed working week, a minimum monthly wage, disdaining involvement in corporate affairs let alone the formation of works-council. To show an interest in them would be to show an acknowledgement that private capitalism was here to stay. This CGT attitude suited a large number of older workers. They wished to have nothing to do with French industrial capitalism except to draw money from it. But a new generation is growing up which finds inadequate this view of a Union's role. It believes workers representatives should be involved in decision-making at plant level. It is deeply concerned with the recognition of Union rights and the spread of information from the manager's office downward." (p. 156) "…The CGT is wage orientated while the CFDT seeks profound reforms at the factory level to give the workers a direct share in management. What was striking about the May crisis is that it saw the emergence of yet a third trend on the French labour scene, as hostile to the CFDT as to the CGT. This trend was frankly revolutionary: its ambition to overthrow capitalism led it first to attempt to undermine the Communist-led CGT monolith, which it saw as an unwitting pillar of the bourgeois State." (p. 157)

Commenting on the general atmosphere of the strike the authors write: "Industrial noise died in France as everything seemed to head for a state of nature … It could have been a bonus vacation, a deliciously prolonged day-off, untroubled by pangs of conscience or a nagging wife. Indeed, wives and children joined the strikers on Sundays, turning the factory yards into fairgrounds. It was as if the working class has opted out of the political struggle. And yet, on another view, this casual idleness, this proprietary lolling about the works, was the essence of revolution. Never had workers talked so much, thrashed out so many issues, got to know each other so well, or so meticulously explored those clean carpeted rooms where managers used to rule. The strike reached its peak on 22 May, leaving untouched no corner of the country. At 'Berliet', the great commercial vehicle manufacturer at Lyons, the workers re-arranged the letters on the front of the factory to spell out 'Liberté'. The Paris headquarters of the French employers federation - a club for top bosses if ever there was one - was 'occupied' for two hours by' commandos' of insurgent engineers. The Merchant Navy was on strike, and the undertakers, and some big Paris hotels. Department stores put up their shutters on all their gay windows, and hundreds of town-halls were closed. Even the Bank of France, the Finance Ministry, and the nuclear plant at Mercoule were not spared. Even the Weather-forecasters struck. It was extraordinarily and delightfully quiet. Petrol was running short but there was no real panic. …The predominant mood was not alarm but joy and liberation. With the collapse of public transport people rediscovered their legs. Friendships sprang up in the great march along the pavements. Shyness and modesty and snobbery were swept away as everyone4 turned hitch-hiker. The atmosphere was as gaily libertine as on a wartime holiday and the spring air was intoxicating. Salut camarade. (p. 161-162)

To give the reader an idea of what went on inside many firms I quote from a document by a group called 'Informations et Correspondence Ouvrière' [ICO] describing events at the Insurance company 'Assurances Générales de France':

"The Assurances Générales de France, second largest insurance company in France, is a nationalized enterprise which in four years had double concentration: first, a merger of seven companies into one group and then of this group with three others. Added to this was automation and centralization. Neither the Trade Unions nor the employees ever talked about workers' control but confined themselves to denouncing the arbitrary character of the management, which left the employees out of every decision (and which, in addition, had been taken over by a Gaullist clique). A tiny minority of employees decided on Friday, May 17 (before the strike which was to go into effect May 20) to raise the question of control in clear terms in a leaflet distributed by students of the March 22 Movement in all the companies of the group, and of which the following is the essential part:

Call a general meeting of all employees of the "Groupe des Assurances Générales de France" to discuss - and vote on - the following proposals:

1. The Assurances Générales de France continues to function normally, managed by

autonomous control of all those working there now.

2. All directors and Union Officials are relieved of their former duties. Each department will elect one or several representatives chosen solely for their human qualities and their competence.

3. Elected Department representative will have a double role: to coordinate the operations of the department under control of all employees; and to organize with other departments a 'Representatives Management Committee' which, under control of all employees, will assure the functioning of the enterprise.

4. Department representatives will explain their conduct to all employees whenever asked to do so and will be revocable at any time by those who elected them.

5. The hierarchy of wages is abolished. Every employee, official, or director, will receive provisionally standard salary equal to the average May wage (total wages divided by the number of employees present).

6. Personal files on employees kept by the management will be returned to the employees. They will be able to remove any information that is not purely administrative.

7. All property and materials of the Assurances Générales de France become the property of all, administered by all. Every employee is responsible for its protection under all circumstances.

8. To meet any threat, a volunteer squad under control of the elected Committee managing the firm, will guard the enterprise day and night.

see http://www.geocities.com/cordobacaf/ico_may.html?200613

In the city of Nantes the population tried to run the entire city by "Self-management".

"For six remarkable days, from 26 May to 31 May, the city of Nantes, at the head of the Loire estuary in Southern Brittany was the seat of what amounted to an autonomous Soviet. A 'Central Strike Committee' - representing workers' peasants' and students' unions - set itself up in the Town Hall becoming in effect the real local authority. The Mayor representing the central government in Paris was left with no staff except a doorman and a small force of police which he dared not use. Short-lived and chaotic though it was this experiment in 'Workers Power' was nevertheless of considerable historical importance. In Nantes the strikers crossed the frontier from protest to revolution. There emerged embryonic institutions replacing those of the Bourgeois State which were paralyzed by the strike. Here was an example of that 'double pouvoir' ('Dual Power' as in Russia in 1917. A.O.) for which the revolutionists longed. But the example was not followed and in Nantes itself did not survive by more than a few hours General De Gaulle's tough 30 May speech. As we saw in the last chapter the CGT was ferociously opposed to any such insurrection." (p. 163)

"The peasant Unions had in the meantime called on their members to cooperate in feeding the strikers. Teams of workers and students went out to help the farmers pick the new potatoes. By cutting out middlemen the new revolutionary authorities slashed retail prices: a litre of milk fell from 80 to 50 centimes, a kilo of potatoes from 70 to 12 centimes and of carrots from 80 to 50 centimes. The big grocery stores were forced to close. … Workers and peasants, so often at loggerheads started working together. Power workers made sure there was no break in electricity current for the milking machines. Normal deliveries to farms of animal feed and petrol were maintained. Peasant came to march the streets of Nantes side by side with workers and students."(p.168) "There were spectacular moments during the May crisis when the junction of students and workers appeared to take place, such as at the great demonstration on 13 May and at the mass-meeting in the Charlety Stadium on 27 May. The brotherhood of youth was in the air breaking down barriers of class and nationality. Groups of students marched to the factories in support of the strikers. In the Sorbonne (and later at the Institute of Psychology in the rue Serpente) a Student-Worker liaison committee tried to keep track of the many spontaneous contacts which sprang up. Workers in plants in the Paris area would themselves come to the Committee to seek student help - particularly in June when the strike movement was under strain and cracking up."(p. 164)

" What the student revolutionaries hoped for was that the workers would move beyond the 'strike and occupy' phase and actually encroach on the powers of the managers. They wanted to see workers' institutions set up at factory level which would be the precursors of a 'Workers' State'. These ambitions were not satisfied in May. Many other developments took place at factory level but not quite that"(p.165)

However, this did not mean the workers were concerned only about wages and working conditions. Their response to the Unions achievements in the "Grenelle accord" was quite unexpected. " Mr. Pompidou round table talks with the Unions and employers were held over the weekend of 25-27 May at the Hotel du Chatelet, seat of the Ministry of Social Affairs, in the rue de Grenelle. The negotiations lasted a gruelling 25 hours, ending at 7.30 on Monday morning, when M. Pompidou gave the results to the nation in a radio talk at breakfast time. For two days, millions of workers, idle in factories, followed the bargaining over their transistor radios. Scores of journalists camped, seizing on a phrase here, or a smile there, to plot the course of the debates going on in the conference hall." (p. 175)

" All those involved in the vast negotiations were deeply conscious of the need to reach an agreement - even if their motives differed. For Pompidou, his career seemed to stand or fall on a successful outcome… for the Union leaders, substantial concessions secured at the conference would, they hoped, allow them to cut the ground from under the feet of the troublesome leftists. Both sides were aware that failure, in the current climate of violence, could tip France from a national crisis into a state of revolution with results unpredictable for everyone. But finally a draft agreement was hammered out conferring what seemed unprecedented advantages relating to wages, the working week, age of retirement, family allowance, old people's allowances, union rights, and so on - the biggest benefits secured by the French working class since WW2." (p. 176)

" The CGT was disarmed when Pompidou accepted almost without discussion, an immediate and massive increase of more than a third in the guaranteed standard minimal wage (SMIG), carrying this minimum up to 3 Francs per hour - an increase of no less than 35%. Minimum wages in agriculture were pushed up by 56%. Some shop-girls, who had been earning even less than the minimum standard, got a bumper 72% rise." (p.175)
" At dawn on the 27 May Pompidou emerged from the conference room, exhausted by triumphant, and himself read the terms of the agreements to the nation. The Union bosses, George Seguy of the CGT, Eugene Descamps of the CFDT, and Andre Bergeron of the Force Ouvriere - smiled and gave the 'thumbs up' sign as they left to carry the news to their members. By mid-morning their smiles had withered. Angry shop stewards bawled their protests down the telephone from every corner of the country The unthinkable had happened. The rank and file turned down the agreements and disavowed their leaders, leaving them far out on a limb in an uncomfortable posture of collusion with the employers and the government. Still more alarming, the embattled strikers, looking beyond mere economic benefits, raised the cry for 'Government by the people'. It seemed horribly clear that the spark of revolution, struck by student extremists, had found tinder on the shop floor. Suddenly revolution seemed everywhere in the air, feared or hoped for. For the first time, solid citizens, canny politicians, and the students themselves, grasped that the movement, begun as a utopian dream, made a real dent in the political spectrum." (p.192)
"…the Grenelle Agreement as negotiated that weekend was a landmark in French social history, in the same league as the Matignon Agreements of 1936 and the social legislation which followed the Liberation (of France from the Nazis in 1944. A.O.) Seguy and Frachon must have felt that they had led their Union safely
through the breach blown open by the students and had secured enormous benefits for the working class.… But that Monday at Renault Seguy's speech was met with boos and whistles. From the first catcall he was in full retreat. In spite of all the information which had flowed to him in the conference room, he underestimated the success of an active minority in giving a political content to the strike. He was faced with a situation, comparable to - but far more dangerous than - the one he had confronted on 14-15 May, when the unofficial 'strike and occupy' movement first got under way. Then he was driven to seize the leadership of the movement in order to control it. Now he too had to underwrite the strikers' call for a popular government. But it must be said and repeated, that the CGT and its controlling body - the French Communist Party never seriously considered insurrection". (p. 194)

This is inaccurate for two reasons.

First, the strikers' did not call for a 'popular government' but for "Self-management'. They shouted to Seguy: "We do not want a larger slice of the economic cake. We want to run the bakery". 'Running the bakery' means employees manage their place of employment, and deputies of employees’ committees - not political Parties - govern.

Second, for Communist Parties everywhere - whose leaders were approved by Stalin, or later by his successors, this smacked of Trotsky's "Permanent Revolution". Stalinists everywhere were horrified. They were committed to "Defending the USSR" and "Socialism in one country". For them any call for a State run by employees' committees was "irresponsible adventurism". Moreover, had the French succeeded in setting up a State run by employees' committees it would have been a direct threat to the USSR big government itself. Workers in the USSR might then realize that Socialism did not mean an economy run by BG but a state run by employees' committees. USSR BG's rulers feared that even news reports about the events in France might inspire people in the USSR to revive demands for rule by employees' committees rather than by Party officials, therefore all TV, Press, and Radio in the USSR consistently referred to the French General Strike as "Student Hooliganism". This terminology was used in all other BG states - in Poland, East-Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Albania, China, North-Korea. This was a by-product of May '68 that the French strikers were unaware of. It reveals the far-reaching repercussions of the French upheaval around the world. It also explains the profound hatred - and fear - of the French Communist Party, and its Union - the CGT - towards anyone demanding "Self-Management". Had the strikers succeeded in setting up a State run by employees' committees based on a system of employees' management of their place of employment, they would have made redundant not only private owners and Unions, but also political parties, and 'Leaders' purporting to 'represent the interests of the workers'. When all employees decide how to run their place of employment, and all citizens decide how to run society, political representatives become redundant and rule by representatives becomes redundant. The sheer fact that this possibility was declared publicly horrified - and will always horrify - all Union officials, all political parties, and all politicians, everywhere.

" No day in recent French history can match the anguish and excitement of Wednesday 29 May. The most sceptical minds came to believe that the regime was lost. The long suspenseful day opened with the news that the weekly cabinet meeting, held each Wednesday morning at ten as regularly as clockwork - was cancelled. Ministers were turned away on the doorsteps of the Elysée. De Gaulle saw no member of his government that morning, not even Pompidou. A little after eleven o'clock Presidnet and Madame De Gaulle left the palace by car. Their destination was given as Colombey-des-deux-eglises where the President has his country house. It was put about that he had gone to ponder a great decision in solitude. The news of his departure was greeted with consternation in government circles. Many Gaullists were near to giving up the ghost, or at least their party label. Locked up in his safe at the Elysée, De Gaulle is thought to keep his political testament - a statement for his successor on the future of France. It was said that before leaving the Elysée that Wednesday, he handed the key of his safe to his top aide, the Secretary General at the presidency, Bernard Tricot. Large quantities of luggage were seen leaving the building. Had the great man at last decided to step down? Consternation turned to panic - not without a touch of wild humour, when, with the hours ticking by, De Gaulle failed to arrive in Colombey. He was lost. He had simply faded into the landscape. "On a perdu le general De Gaulle" radio reporters admitted with something like a hysterical giggle. And then the facts began gradually to leak out. He had driven with his wife to the heliport at Issy-les-Moulineaux, three helicopters had taken off – one a police machine, the second carrying the presidential couple, with a single aide-de-camp, a third laden with bodyguards. Nothing is known of De Gaulle's mood at the time. One phrase only of his has been recorded, addressed to Madame De Gaulle as they boarded the aircraft: " Depeche-vous- Madame, je vous en prie" .

The general's exact itinerary that day is still in doubt. He has not spoken nor his closest aides. What has been established is that instead of heading for Colombey the three helicopters landed at a military airfield at Saint-Dizier, 125 miles east of Paris, half way to the Rhine. The Presidential Caravelle (airplane) had flown there from strike-bound Orly (Paris airport) to meet them. According to an unconfirmed report he first called at Taverny, the underground command post of Frances nuclear striking force, and spoke to various military commanders over the secret communication network. According to yet another rumour he was joined by his son-in law General Allain de-Boissieu (an army divisional commander). The Caravelle then headed east to land at the military airport of Baden-Baden, headquarters of the 70,000 French troops in Germany. The West-German Chancellor, Kiesinger, was informed of the visit by the French ambassador as the plane touched down. No representative of the German government was there to meet him, but protocol was not violated as, by tradition, foreign heads of states can visit their troops stationed in Germany without informing the German authorities. De Gaulle did not leave the airfield but summoned French army chiefs to meet him, including General Jacques Massu, Commander of French forces in Germany and general Beauvallet, Military governor of Met. What was decided at this extraordinary council of war? No one knows for certain although speculations abound. The most reliable sources suggest that the questions debated were of two orders: the first, general and political, the second military and tactical. In Paris De Gaulle repeatedly consulted Pierre Messmer, Minister of the Army to ascertain from day to day the mood of the troops: Was the army loyal? Messmer, Army Minister for ten years and a pillar of the regime, is believed to have replied that the men could be relied upon but that it would be unwise to ask them to fire on civilians. In Baden-Baden General Masu's profession of loyalty were forthright: the army was ready for any task the President assigned it. De Gaulle clearly considered his troops in Germany as a possible force of intervention, to be used if necessary to crush a Communist insurrection in Paris. A plan of campaign had to be drawn up and the most loyal units - perhaps 20,000 men - moved to Metz ready for action. An operational headquarters was to be set up at Verdun." (p. 203-205)

De Gaulle did not use the army against the strikers as this could spark off a rebellion in the Army. After all, the soldiers were the same age-group as the students.

During May many walls in France were covered by political graffiti. Many of them are listed on the Internet. Here I quote but a few:

" Don’t liberate me - I shall take care of this myself "

Workers of all countries, enjoy!

Since 1936 I have fought for wage increases.
My father before me fought for wage increases.
Now I have a TV, a fridge, a Volkswagen.
Yet my whole life has been a drag.
Don’t negotiate with bosses. Abolish them.

A boss needs you, you don’t need a boss.

By stopping our machines together we will demonstrate their weakness.

Don't stay at home, occupy the factories.

Power to the employees committees. (an enragé)

Power to the enragés committees. (an employee)

Worker: You may be only 25 years old,
but your union dates from the last century.

Labour unions are Mafias.

Stalinists, your children are with us!

Man is neither Rousseau’s noble savage nor

the Church’s or La Rochefoucauld’s depraved sinner.
He is violent when oppressed, but gentle when free.

Conflict is the origin of everything. (Heraclites)

We refuse to be high-rised, diplomaed, licensed,
inventoried, registered, indoctrinated, dominated, suburbanized,
sermonized, tele-manipulated, gassed, booked.

TV is the police in your home.

We are all “undesirables” (After Cohn-Bendit was declared "undesirable" and deported to Germany)

We must remain “inadaptable”

“My aim is to agitate and disturb people.
I’m not selling bread, I’m selling yeast.”
(Unamuno)

Conservatism is a synonym for boredom, rottenness, and ugliness.

You will end up dying of comfort - and boredom

Meanwhile everyone wants to breathe and nobody can and many say "We will breathe later" and most of them don't die because they are already dead.

The prospect of finding pleasure tomorrow will
never compensate for today’s boredom.

The bosses buy your happiness, steal it.

Fight for your right to Happiness

Be realistic, demand the impossible.

Workers of the world - have fun.

Power to the Imagination.

From this small selection one can see that the French May '68 strike was something new, qualitatively different from all previous social upheavals and General Strikes. The strikers' motives, demands, and aims, were new. So was the way in which it was run. This strike opened a new era of political struggles aiming not only to improve working conditions within the existing political system, but to set up a new system of authority relations at work and in the state.

One point missing in most comments on this strike is the age of the activists. Most students and worker activists in 1968 were born after WW2. Their attitudes and expectations were very different from those born before WW2. Before WW2 most people saw life as constrained by "objective conditions" within which their struggles could only improve their lot. Working people accepted economic hardships as part of an employee's life and all they hoped for was to improve their lot a bit. After WW2 many began to see the "external conditions" as something they can change. They started to see their life as depending not on "objective conditions" but on what they do. They were convinced unemployment and poverty can be eliminated by government policies. They considered guaranteed employment and decent wages as their inalienable right. British workers demanded - and got - State paid Health and Education systems providing these services free to all citizens. These new attitudes (expressed by the "Existentialist" philosophy) created new expectations and aims. Young people wanted more than guaranteed employment and good wages. They wanted to participate in deciding their future. However, in 1968 those in France born after WW2 were still less than a third of the population. At least half of them were below voting age. This minority could not - and did not want to - impose its will on the majority. It challenged the view of the majority but had no intention of coercing the majority. Therefore, when De Gaulle declared on May 30 that the Constituent Assembly was dissolved and new elections would take place in June they did not object. They awaited the results of the elections. This transferred the initiative from the strikers to de Gaulle's supporters, who immediately rallied on May 30 in an impressive - one million strong - demonstration in Paris.

In the June '68 elections the entire Left (both "Old" and "New") suffered the worst defeat in its history when Socialists and Communists together lost 100 seats in the Constituent Assembly. Only 42.5% of the electorate voted for them.

This convinced most strikers that their efforts to create a new political system based on "Self-management" were premature. One cannot impose "self-management" on people who do not want to manage their own life. Seale and McConville comment: "…Most of the factories in France stayed closed and occupied well into June, and Renault, the bastion of the strike, did not yield until 18 of June, nearly five weeks after the first wild-cat rebellion at Nantes on May 14. Right across French industry the Grenelle Agreements were now used as a 'platform' from which to negotiate still greater wage benefits - increases of between 10% and 14% at Renault, already the highest paid industrial workers in the country; but the CFDT's tentative claim for 'workers power' was nowhere conceded. The great strike of May 1968 gave everyone a fatter wage packet and in many cases a shorter working week but it resulted in no profound changes in management-worker authority relations". (p. 219)

This gives a partial answer to the frequently asked question "Why didn't the strike succeed?" It succeeded in increasing wages and improving working conditions, but it failed to change the authority relations at work and in the State because the election results showed clearly that the majority did not want such a change.

Behind this explicit reason lies another, implicit, reason. Suppose 60% of the electorate had voted for the Left indicating that they wanted a change of authority structure at work and in politics. How could the new authority structure be implemented? Student and Staff committees in universities and schools can manage the universities and schools much better than their appointed directors, but how could millions of citizens decide educational policy of the entire country and manage the educational system as a whole? To decide educational policy there must be debates in which all citizens can participate, and at least two rounds of voting. This requires means of communication capable of providing millions of inputs and immediate output. No such means existed in 1968.

Employees' committees in every factory and office can easily manage their factories and offices better - and cheaper - than their hierarchical management, eliminating the costs of managers, supervisors, clerks, and Unions, but how could millions of citizens decide the economic policy of the entire country? How could millions of citizens participate in the debate on the country's budget? And then vote on it? If millions of citizens are to have the right to participate in policy debates and to vote on every policy there must be means enabling them to do so. In 1968 no such means existed. Magnetic cards, computerized Banking and shopping, PCs, the Internet, and mobile phones did not exist in 1968. Lack of a technology enabling every citizen to participate in every debate and vote on every policy rendered such participation utopian. The aim was laudable - but unattainable. No one said it but all knew it. The 1968 strike ended because the older generation rejected "self-management" but also because its loftier aims could not be implemented.

Although in some places - as in the LIP watch factory - workers continued to occupy their factory for months after the elections, the strike began to subside and fizzled out soon after the elections. A year later the same electorate voted to dismiss De Gaulle. Most French voters rejected his authoritarian style in politics. The rigid authoritarian structure in French Universities and factories became more relaxed and less authoritarian. Hierarchy at work, in education, and in politics, remained but became more tolerant and open to criticism. The French upheaval had effects outside France. In Czechoslovakia (and Poland) it encouraged the communist liberalization known as “The Prague Spring” (June 1968) which lasted until Soviet tanks rolled in on August 21 to put it down. In Chile it helped elect the Marxist Salvador Allende as president in 1970 until a CIA-instigated Coup led by General Pinochet, in 1973, killed him.

Today - thanks to the media - the May '68 Strike has slipped from memory and slid into oblivion. Even its activists start to remember it as an exceptional event.

Was this extraordinary strike a first political earthquake caused by a new - universal – political process generating frustration, or was it a local hiccup unique to France?

As this strike was caused by resentment of the way policies at work and in the state are decided then the answer lies in peoples' attitudes to this issue today.

Are most people outside France today satisfied with the way policies are decided at their place of work and in their state, or do most people just tolerate the present situation because they see no alternative?

If most people today are satisfied with the structure of policy-making then the May '68 upheaval was indeed unique to France. But if most people everywhere today just tolerate the present way of deciding policies because they see no alternative then outbreaks of similar strikes in other countries are merely a matter of time. What delays them is the fact that most people still see no alternative to rule by representatives in a multi-party system. bMost people have not yet realized that mobile phones, computers and the Internet make a non-party state where all citizens can vote directly on all policies a feasible option. When many realize this then May '68 will become for them what the 1905 revolution in Russia was for the 1917 revolutions - a forerunner of future revolutions.

If the process that caused the 1968 strike in France is universal then so is the strike.

After the collapse of Lenin's BG state in the USSR [1991] an academic political thinker wrote