To mark the 50th anniversary of the struggles of '68, the ICC is holding a public meeting to discuss the meaning of these events.
Saturday 9th June, 11am-6pm
The Lucas Arms 254A Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8QY
Morning Session: The events of May '68, their context and significance
Fifty years is as far away from today as the Russian revolution was to the events of 68. That’s why it will be necessary to recall the broad outlines of what actually happened in May-June, from the agitation in the universities to the ten-million strong strike wave. At the same time, we will try to place these events in their broader international, and above all historical, context: before 68, the international scale of a new generation’s questioning of a society which breeds racism and war, together with growing signs of working class discontent faced with the beginnings of a new economic crisis. In the wake of May 68: an international upsurge of workers’ struggles which signalled the end of a long period of defeat and counter-revolution, and the emergence of a new milieu of revolutionary political organisations.
Reading material
‘May 68 and the revolutionary perspective’, in International Reviews 133 and 134; see the online dossier ‘Fifty years ago, May 68’, https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201804/15127/fifty-... [3]
Afternoon Session: The evolution of the class struggle since 1968
Just as the five decades prior to May 68 were marked by definite periods in the balance of class forces – a period of open revolutionary struggles followed by a period of deep counter-revolution – so the period opened up by 68 also needs to be analysed in its overall characteristics and not simply as a series of particular struggles. Broadly speaking, we can say that the period 1968-89 was marked by waves of class struggle which contained a potential for massive and even decisive class confrontations; but also that the failure of these movements to develop an explicitly revolutionary perspective, coupled with the bourgeoisie’s own inability to enlist the proletariat for another world war, ushered in the current phase of capitalist decomposition which has produced further difficulties for the working class. This part of the meeting will then look at the potential for the working class to overcome these difficulties and finally realise the revolutionary hopes raised by the events of May 68.
Reading material
21st ICC Congress: Report on the class struggle, International Review 156, https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201601/13787/report... [4]
22nd ICC Congress: Resolution on the international class struggle, International Review 159, https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201711/14435/22nd-i... [5]
This is an opportunity for debate among all those groups or individuals who want to develop a better understanding of the past, present and future of the proletarian struggle. All are welcome!
The British Labour Party harbours antisemites, leading to what the Chakrabarti Report in June 2016 called an “occasionally toxic atmosphere”. Furthermore this is a longstanding and somewhat intractable feature of the party, continuing despite the recommendations of the report 2 years ago, despite Corbyn meeting with the Jewish Leadership Council and Board of Deputies in April, which they described as a missed opportunity, and despite the fact that is has caused problems in recent local elections in areas with a large Jewish population. On the day of the royal wedding, the Labour Party chose as one of its three new peers Martha Osamor, who had signed a letter two years ago defending those accused of anti-Semitism.
This aspect of the LP should not surprise us. It is a party belonging to the capitalist class, and antisemitism is deeply embedded in capitalism (see https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201605/13931/labour-left-and-j... [6]). And, as we showed two years ago, “It is well known that Corbyn has developed links with Hamas and Hizbollah, and his allies in the Trotskyist movement, after years of supporting Arafat or other factions of the PLO, have raised slogans like ‘we are all Hizbollah’ at demonstrations against Israeli incursions into Lebanon. It is here that anti-Zionism indeed becomes indistinguishable from antisemitism. … Hamas has referred to the Protocols in its programme to prove that there is a world Zionist conspiracy. Hezbollah’s leaders have talked of ‘throwing the Jews into the sea’. Corbyn and the Trotskyists may disapprove of these excesses, but the essence of national liberation ideology is that you make a common front with the enemies of your enemy. In this way, the left becomes a vehicle not only of a more shamefaced antisemitism, but of its most open manifestations.”
The existence of antisemitism is, however, not sufficient to account for the campaign about it. Whether the media make a scandal of something, or whether it is hushed up, often depends on the divisions in the ruling class and the need to put pressure on a politician or a government. So while Kennedy’s affairs were always hushed up, Clinton’s with Monica Lewinsky was publicised and led to impeachment proceedings which we analysed at the time as due to divisions over imperialist policy in the Far East, and whether to play the China or the Japan card. As leader of the opposition Corbyn has faced fairly sustained pressure, including campaigns about the antisemitism in the party two years ago and again today, a vote of no confidence by the Parliamentary Labour Party and a new leadership election after the referendum. To understand why all this is happening, we need to see what role the Labour Party plays for British capital.
Often called a ‘broad church’, the Labour Party has different wings that play a greater or lesser part in the various functions it fulfils for the state. Often they loathe each other, but somehow the Labour Party is hanging together much better than the Socialist Parties in France or Spain that have lost much of their influence to the more left wing France Insoumise and Podemos. Ever since the Party and the trade unions were definitively integrated into the state during World War One, Labour’s first responsibility has been to provide a safe means for the working class to express discontent within capitalism, and to monitor that discontent through the unions. This is its unique task, and it is carried out at all times, not just during periods of heightened class struggle as in the period between 1968 and 1989, but also in periods with low levels of class struggle as today, and even in periods in which the class has been defeated as in the 1930s and 1940s. Jeremy Corbyn is clearly on this wing of the Party, a politician who has often been seen on picket lines and demonstrations, and like others on the left of the party has often expressed views that are not wanted in government. For instance his views on unilateral nuclear disarmament, which he has conveniently dropped following a vote by the Party.
The other main role played by the Labour Party from the first half of the 20th century is as a credible party of government, either to ensure the main parties alternate in government to give credence to democracy, or in exceptional circumstances in coalition, as in World War Two. When the ruling class is in control of its political apparatus this works very well for it. In the 1980s the UK, like much of western Europe with the notable exception of France, put the right wing parties in power to impose austerity and privatisation, and the left in opposition to control the wave of class struggle going on at the time. The left wing Michael Foot became leader of the Labour Party and however unpopular Margaret Thatcher’s government became, she kept winning elections. When the Labour Party was no longer needed in opposition a different sort of leader, Tony Blair, was elected.
Two surprises have resulted in Corbyn finding himself as Labour leader and prime minister-in-waiting, both of which highlight the bourgeoisie’s political difficulties. First, and most disastrously for British capital, the Tory Party felt the need to offer a referendum on EU membership in its manifesto for the 2015 election, both because of the divisions on this issue within the party and because of pressure from UKIP. The narrow vote in favour of Brexit was unexpected, and has thrown the bourgeoisie (Tories and Labour) into confusion because of the deep divisions on the issue and the fact that there was no agreed policy on what Brexit would mean.
While the UK bourgeoisie has always had Eurosceptics in both major parties, it has been able to cope with this difference until faced with the current wave of populism. This development of populism, the anti-elitist anger that has led to the election of Trump in the USA and the growth of the Front National in France, expresses the decomposition of capitalism and not any struggle against it. It is therefore a hindrance for the development of working class struggle as well as causing problems for the ruling class.
Similarly, the LP had its leadership election after its defeat in 2015. Corbyn was not expected to win, but was put on the ballot paper so that left wing views would also be represented in the campaign. However, he proved attractive to many Labour Party members and many new members who joined in order to vote for him, swelling the ranks of the party. Nevertheless, he was considered unelectable and it was expected that if he lasted until the next election, Labour would lose disastrously and he would be gone. However, he was a good lightning rod for discontent and anger, particularly among the young, and the Labour Party did much better in the 2017 election than expected. The result was that the PLP, which had only recently voted no confidence in him, was partially reconciled to put up with his leadership for the time being. The new media campaign on antisemitism shows this is no longer the case.
On the one hand, as the Economist, 19.5.18, put it, “the prospect of a far-left government led by Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell is not the joke it might have seemed 18 months ago. Labour deprived the Conservatives of their majority in a general election last year. Polls now have the opposition snapping at the heels of the flailing Tories, who are hopelessly bogged down in Brexit negotiations.”
On the other hand, Corbyn has been expressing views that are generally acceptable only in a back bencher, not a leader of the opposition, let alone a prime minister-in-waiting. First of all his expression of doubts about Russia’s responsibility for the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, and secondly his lack of support for the missile attack on Syria following a gas attack on civilians. This has reminded the main factions of the ruling class just why they do not trust him as a potential PM: “he has voted against every military action proposed by the UK government during his 35 years in Parliament. He is also firmly opposed to air strikes in Syria in response to chemical attacks, arguing that it will escalate tensions…” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43737547 [7]).
It is precisely this issue that makes the campaign about antisemitism perfect as a means to pressurise Corbyn. It hits him on his links with Hamas and Hizbollah, and with his Trotskyist supporters, and is intended to weaken this wing of the Labour Party and to induce the leader to distance himself from it. It is also something that a party that claims to oppose all forms of racism cannot openly tolerate.
The Labour Party is from top to bottom and from left to right a party of capitalism. It is always ready to take the reins of government, impose austerity and pursue Britain’s imperialist policy. There is nothing to be gained from supporting one wing against the other. Alex, 19.5.18
This article was written by a comrade of the ICC who works at a UK university and took part in the recent UCU strikes. Although not in the UCU or even eligible to join the pension scheme at the centre of the dispute, the comrade joined the strike in solidarity.
In February 2018, the University and College Union (UCU) launched industrial action across the university sector in the UK. The strike was called over attempts by Universities UK (UUK)[1] to reduce the benefits members of the University Superannuation Scheme (USS), the pension scheme for academics and professional staff in the Higher Education section. The employers have claimed that this reduction in benefits was necessary to tackle the large deficit that the scheme is accruing.
The cuts are significant, with the headline figure suggesting an ‘average’ academic would lose £10,000 annually from their pension.
This is especially the case in my institution[2] where militancy is weak. Staff are divided into three unions:
· UNISON covers lower graded administration and manual workers (porters, cleaners, etc.). This would be my natural home, were I unionised.
· Unite covers technical staff.
· UCU covers academic and ‘professionally’ graded administration staff.
Only a minority of staff are unionised and those outside are generally apathetic. Unison is chronically weak, having been on strike only once in all the time I’ve been there. Unite seems a bit more militant but, again, I’ve only ever known them to go on strike once.
UCU has a far more militant rhetoric (albeit only by comparison) and has its main support in the academic community.
In general, HE strikes are small and demoralising affairs, token efforts involving one or two-day actions. Any more is practically a revolution in comparison. Turnout at pickets is limited – many workers cross the picket line or stay at home, cut off from one another.
In contrast, this action was announced for 14 days over 4 weeks. This essentially meant giving up three weeks’ pay over one, possibly two, pay packets – a considerable loss for even the better off workers, but an eye-watering sum for the growing layer of low-paid, casualised staff in both administrative and academic functions[3].
In previous strikes, the local branches have had to scrape together picket rotas in order to maintain a minimal presence. This time, the first days of action on 22nd and 23rd February produced pickets of around 150 at the main entrance. Other entrances had smaller – between 10 and 20 – but still lively gatherings.
Originally, the union had planned a picket on only the first day or so. The branch leaders were visibly astonished by the turn-out and quickly moved to organise further pickets for the rest of the week. Every strike day saw a picket and although numbers fluctuated, the main entrance always managed to attract a minimum of around 50 picketers, even during the arctic winds of the “Beast from the East”[4].
The picketers were mainly drawn from the academic staff, with support functions a clear minority. There were also notable differences in turnout between disciplines, with arts, humanities and social sciences far more strongly represented than technical subjects.
Numbers were augmented by a significant number of students that joined the picket, rejecting calls from the administration to go to their lectures as normal. The student composition largely followed that of the picketers, being weighted towards non-technical disciplines. The local “Socialist Students” society joined the line, setting up pop-up food tables.
Further evidence of how the local branch had completely underestimated the support for the action was evident at the post-picket rally on 22nd Feb. They had booked a small room at the local community centre. This filled up almost immediately, resulting in another, more spontaneous, rally taking place outside, essentially creating two meetings.
Everyone I spoke to was surprised at the turnout. Many people had never been on strike before or had experienced only small actions supported by a hard-core. In the early days, there was a real sense of euphoria as hundreds of people gathered in common purpose, made new friends both personal and professional and aired common grievances.
There was a real sense of anger and betrayal over the pensions issue. Over the years, staff have accepted a series of cuts to the pension scheme, often following demoralising small-scale industrial actions. Having already accepted significant cuts, the employers are back for more. But, more important, there was a general sense that the attack on pensions is only the latest in a series of continual attacks on academic freedom, low-pay, casualisation, ever more regimented working environment, increasing dictatorial control from the centre, impossible workloads[5], etc. It cannot be denied that some of this can be explained as the revolt of a layer of workers that has previously enjoyed an almost petit-bourgeois level of autonomy in their working lives, resisting increasing proletarianisation.
However, the younger academics and students never experienced those halcyon days – their education has been an experience of continued testing, growing financial pressure, and an uncertain job market. Early-career academics now face particularly harsh conditions. The rise of casual working among students has a broader impact. Exposed to the harsh reality of dead-end jobs, they quickly come to see academic success as the only path to escape. The pizza delivery shift serves as a warning of their likely future should they fail their degree, not to mention the emotional weight of debts in the tens of thousands.
Naturally, debt slavery and naked exploitation is the lot of most working-class children who ‘fail’ in the current education system, and we should not forget that working-class students are still ‘privileged’ in comparison to workers of the same age. But, in some ways, the intellectual stimulation of a degree contrasted with the brutal world of work, combined with the ideology of ‘employability’, is even worse as it teases these young adults with the possibility that they might have a better future.
Where once Higher Education was about training the future bourgeoisie, these days it is more about feeding the capitalist machine with high-skilled labour. The most intelligent and ideological tractable are pushed towards a career with the large corporations, the more independent towards the cult of the entrepreneur and the start-up. The rest are destined to become fodder for low or middle ranking administrative functions, call centre work, and the like, and many not even that.
Small wonder that students’ mental health conditions have deteriorated steadily. Declarations of mental health problems among students have increased around 500% in the last decade, while suicide rates have risen by 56%. As poorly resources support services struggle to cope, students now have a higher risk of suicide than the general population[6].
Although the issue of pensions was the spark that lit the fire, the underlying nature of the strike was really a revolt against the alienation of the education system, the modern workplace and society itself, a revolt against social decomposition.
In response to these underlying issues, the strike was accompanied by a series of “teach-outs” that attempted to articulate a need for something different. These ranged from efforts to formulate an alternative foundation for the University system run on democratic lines, to celebrations of strike-poetry by the English department, lectures on the growth of casualisation and much more.
Much of this was, unsurprisingly, dominated by academic and leftist ideology. The ‘enemy’ was repeatedly framed as ‘neo-liberalism’ rather than capitalism, and the emphasis was on trying to find solutions within the capitalist system. Building strong unions, varying forms of Keynesianism, Jeremy Corbyn, etc. were all seen as offering, if nothing else, some sort of relief from being engulfed in the current effluent of society. To a large extent, however, the meetings were dominated by what could best be described as a cry of torment, tempered by rage, as people shared their experiences of life in the capitalist education system.
Nonetheless, the fact that the struggle impulsed an effort by students and workers to create a space where issues can be discussed shows the hunger for discussion growing within this sector. In particular, it shows that a new generation of workers, for all its confusions around identity politics, etc. is not simply willing to passively accept the increasingly brutal attacks launched against it[7].
On a more practical level, there were also attempts to overcome the nature of the strike itself. As mentioned above, the financial penalty for supporting the strike in its entirety was too much for some workers. But, instead of simply crossing the picket line, they decided to strike on random days, reducing the financial penalty but also maintaining disruption by making it impossible for bosses to predict who was going to turn up when.
Academics also began to withdraw external examiner support for institutions that attempted to intimidate strikers; with the result that many institutions abandoned the hard line they had taken and became much more conciliatory towards striking workers. Threats of disciplinary action were replaced with cloying “acknowledging your strong feelings”.
Students also launched occupations at several institutions, waging a highly effective campaign on social media that further helped dissolve the moral authority of the employers. It’s difficult for the powers that be to maintain credibility when students denied access to toilets post pictures of bottles of urine online and female students lament the anatomical difficulties of filling bottles!
As the strike progressed into March, the employers’ front appeared to be crumbling. One-by-one, University Vice Chancellors began to distance themselves from the UUK and attempted to cast blame on the disproportionate weight of Oxbridge colleges in UUK voting. Some Vice Chancellors openly supported the strikers, with some even joining picket lines at their own institutions[8], although this ‘support’ was still accompanied by attempts to intimidate workers behind the scenes by HR departments[9].
UUK’s point-blank refusal to back down vanished and suddenly the UCU and UUK were negotiating again and a deal was announced. The ‘deal’ offered the retention of some benefits at the cost of a significant increase in contributions, plus a commitment to a revaluation of the fund.
The mood on the picket line was angry. After launching one of the biggest, most high profile strikes in recent history and the biggest ever in the sector, the employers’ front disintegrating, this was the best that the union could get? Adding to the resentment was the fact that the union had circulated the offer without a recommendation, with many feeling completely unequipped to make a decision about a complex financial product most barely understood.
There was a lot of heated, but good-natured discussion on the picket. A minority supported the deal, and there was a lot of conversation about the way the union hierarchy appeared to have betrayed the strikers. There was also discussion as to how decisions were taken in the union, but although there was significant resentment against the leadership, no explicit anti-union critique emerged.
This didn’t stop anger solidifying into a Twitter campaign around the hashtag #nocapitulation. The next day of pickets was massive, even larger than those at the beginning. One-by-one branches around the country announced their rejection of the deal and within 24 hours it was dead in the water.
The strikes continued with, on the one hand a sense of victory in having beaten back the proposal, but also an underlying sense of worry of what would come next.
As the strikes ended, new negotiations were announced with the threat of another wave to come in May.
Very quickly, a new proposal was agreed between the UCU and UUK. The main thrust of this new agreement was a suspension of the attack on benefits in order for a new valuation of the pension to take place over the next couple of years, by an expert panel with more involvement from the union.
The proposal was put to ballot with a recommendation to accept, with a majority of 64% voting to accept.
At first glance, this looks like a victory, if only a temporary or partial one. After all, the attack has been pushed back. But there has been no agreement whatsoever to preserve current benefits or prevent a rise in contributions and, indeed, the union explicitly stated that any attempt to get guarantees on this (a “no detriment” agreement) was “unrealistic”. Everything now depends on the assessment that the newly appointed valuation panel makes concerning the health of the pension scheme.
Workers are now faced with the potential of having to go through the same struggle again a year or two down the line. And this time, the employers (or the union) won’t be caught by surprise at the strength of the struggle.
Despite the high participation represented by both the large pickets and the surge in members of the UCU, the strikers were still in a minority. Most of the support workers went into work, even those who had been called out, and around half the academics. Although there were isolated incidences of other workers not crossing the picket line (Birkbeck library was disrupted by a brief action from UNISON members), there doesn’t seem to have been a real dynamic for the struggle to extend to other workers.
In many ways, the stronger-than-expected turnout and its accompanying euphoria was itself a factor in damaging the struggle. While on the positive side it imbued the strikers with a much-needed burst of confidence, it also worked to prevent a self-critical spirit emerging. The electrifying strength of the struggle prevented many from seeing the inherent weakness in its lack of extension.
The debatable victory may also lead to the illusion that actions of this kind have an inherent strength. As discussed, the sheer length of the action will result in a significant financial loss for the most militant workers. It is essentially a strategy around a war of attrition – a struggle that, in the end, the workers will always lose. It’s almost certain that the prospect of another 14 days of lost wages weighed heavily on the minds of many union members when they voted to accept the deal.
The only way for workers to overcome this inherent disadvantage is to spread the struggle. Had the struggle brought in other University workers, far more pressure could have been brought to bear on the bosses.
Using the anger of more militant workers in the union, the left have launched a campaign to get Sally Hunt (UCU General Secretary) out of office by staging votes of no confidence.
This strategy enables the ruling class to frame the conflict between workers and union as a conflict between the grassroots and the leadership. Defeats are thus the consequence of betrayal by union leaders, not the fundamental conditions of capitalism today and the way they have made unions tools of capital rather than labour.
By channelling the struggle around the valuation of the pension fund and whether the cuts were really necessary the unions disguise the real nature of the conflict. Firstly, arguing that the fund has been badly managed deflects from the fact that pension schemes everywhere are under attack. The fact that this phenomenon is so widespread shows that it stems from something systemic, not a local problem of incompetent management.
By making workers a partner (through ‘their’ union) in valuing the fund, the union creates the illusion of some sort of joint interest between workers and the bosses. It also implies that workers should accept these valuations (when competently done, of course) as somehow objective. And that they should submit to them just as they must submit to pay cuts, job losses, etc. which result from the headwinds of the capitalist economy. These economic or financial difficulties are presented as unavoidable, no different from a natural disaster such as a bad harvest.
There is a kernel of truth hidden within this ideological attack. As the capitalist system continues its historic decline, it finds it vital to increase exploitation to ever more intolerable levels. This relentless assault is, for capitalism, systemic, inevitable and, above all, necessary. This inexorable decline is also the root of the profound economic and spiritual degeneration of working class life that was the core motivator behind the strike.
However, while austerity is necessary for capitalism, capitalism is not necessary for the working class or the wider masses of humanity. The laws that govern it are not natural but the product of human action. The solidarity workers and students have experienced in this struggle has provided the glimpse of a different way of life, the possibility of a different world. Even in a conservative, limited struggle the fundamental communist nature of the working class shows itself in embryonic form – a nature diametrically opposed to capitalism.
The role of the unions in this process is to make this degeneration acceptable to the workers, and where struggle is inevitable to contain struggles in non-threatening forms. Above all, they work to prevent the communist potential of the working class from flowering. They preach solidarity while advising workers to cross picket lines, they preach struggle while telling workers this is the best you’re going to get. This is sometimes difficult to see, especially when working class confidence is low and the unions appear to be the organisers and motive force of the struggle. As workers develop their struggles they will more-and-more find themselves in direct conflict, not only with the union leadership but the union framework itself.
At present, this fundamental conflict is expressed as an opposition between base and leadership. Harnessing this anger, the leftists demand the resignation of Sally Hunt while simultaneously calling on workers to “build the union”.
As workers develop their struggles and particularly once they adopt the most important need of any strike – to spread the struggle – this conflict will be expressed in a more and more open form. Against the unions, “in order to advance its combat, the working class has to unify its struggles, taking charge of their extension and organisation through sovereign general assemblies and committees of delegates elected and revocable at any time by these assemblies”[10].
Demogorgon 19/5/18
[1]. This body is the employers’ association for the Higher Education sector in the UK.
[2]. I work in a low-grade administrative function at a Russell Group university.
[3]. Academic pay used to be better than most other functions but many academics are now on temporary and casual contracts especially at the beginning of their careers. Indeed, the HE sector has been one of the leading industries in terms of casualised labour.
[4]. Thankfully for the picketers, the big snowfalls of that period did not happen on strike days. For some institutions, including my own, this added to the chaos. Return to work days saw campuses closed due to heavy snowfall, exacerbating the overall disruption. As soon as the snows melted, the strikes resumed. At that point, workers felt even the elements were with them, despite the bitter cold.
[5]. Academics are now expected not only to provide engaging teaching, develop new modules, etc. but also to continually produce “world-leading” research and bring in ever-increasing grant money, with those failing to meet both targets being punished. One anecdote involved a lecturer being nominated for a teaching award by their students; having won the award, this was then used against them by their supervisor as evidence they weren’t dedicating enough time to research. Stories like this are ten-a-penny in academia today.
[7]. That the bourgeoisie is aware of this is evidenced by the increasing open attempts to pacify the “millennials” by buying them off with discounted train tickets while many of them can barely afford to rent. There is also a truly poisonous campaign around “intergenerational fairness” that tries to frame the effects of decaying capitalism on young workers as being the fault of older workers, namely the greedy baby-boomers with their low house prices, free education and great … pensions! This campaign is designed to cut the new generation off from the last generation that had experience of mass struggle, i.e. the generation that returned the working class to the stage of history in May 68. It also, as usual, deflects blame from deteriorating living standards away from capitalism itself.
[8]. At Sheffield and Glasgow, for example.
[9]. These cynical shows of support accompanied by threatening letters were quickly exposed on social media. Although social media has its negative aspects, it makes it far more difficult for employers (and unions) to use underhand tactics of this sort. The trick played by the unions in May 68, when workers were told “all the other factories have gone back to work”, would be very quickly exposed today.
[10]. Basic Positions of the International Communist Current: https://en.internationalism.org/basic-positions [9]
The two articles published in World Revolution 380 are part of a broader project aimed at re-examining the authentic legacy of the events of May-June 1968 in France. The article ‘Sinking into the economic crisis’ takes us back to a document written by the newly-formed group Révolution Internationale in 1969, a polemic against the Situationist thesis that the events were a response to a capitalist system that was “working well”. RI’s article insisted that the struggles of 68 were in fact the first reaction of the working class to the resurfacing of the world economic crisis – and our more recent article concludes that this argument has been amply confirmed over the past fifty years. This will be followed by further articles assessing the predictions we have made about the evolution of the class struggle since 1968, and looking at the development of the revolutionary movement over this period.
The second article in this issue, ‘Against the lies about May 68’, also written by our comrades in France, takes up some of the principal distortions and outright lies being spread about the meaning of May '68: that it was something specifically French, that it was essentially a student rebellion, that its main legacy is in contemporary identity politics, or that it was just something that happened a long time ago with no relevance for today.
A brief consideration of some recent attempts to deal with May 68 in the British media confirms that these are indeed the main mystifications about May 68. We are not talking about the lamentations of the right who bewail the permissive spirit of the 60s for destroying traditional values, or of liberals like Polly Toynbee who moaned that “out of all this revolution against ‘the system’ came a ‘me’ individualism that grew into neo-liberalism”[1]. We are talking about articles and a TV programme that proclaim a certain sympathy with the mood of revolt that swept through France in 1968, display a level of sophistication in their knowledge of what happened and who was involved, but that, in the end, remain firmly inside the standpoint of bourgeois politics and sociology.
For example: both the BBC TV programme ‘Vive la Révolution’, presented by Joan Bakewell[2], and the Guardian article by John Harris, ‘May 1968: the revolution retains its magnetic allure’[3] do not simply repeat the banal idea that May 68 was a student revolt and little more. Both point out that it was the massive involvement of the working class which provoked a situation of national crisis. It’s true that Bakewell’s programme reinforces the idea of something specifically French because, while it deals with student and civil rights protests in other countries at the time, it says nothing at all about the powerful international wave of working class struggles which followed on from the movement in France. By contrast, the article by John Harris, which focuses more on cultural and historical works dealing with May 68 in retrospect, talks about the Italian workers’ struggles of 1969, the so-called ‘Hot Autumn’, which is the subject of a novel by Nanni Balestrini, We want everything, written in 1971 but only published in English in 2014. As the title suggests, and as Harris notes, the novel shows that the Italian Hot Autumn echoed the profound desire for social transformation that was such an important component of the French events. Also noteworthy is that both Bakewell and Harris deal with the Situationists, who, whatever their faults, did give voice to the renewed revolutionary hopes of that era. Harris in particular is of the view that the Situationist concept of the Spectacle – and the related slogan, “Are you consumers or participants” – retain their vitality in today’s world of obsessive consumerism, Facebook and fake news.
And yet we are also informed by Harris that the true heirs of the Situationists and other radicals can be found in the Momentum movement inside Corbyn’s Labour Party – an example of something the Situationists understood rather well: recuperation, the channelling of radicalism and revolt into the existing institutions of bourgeois society, just as the movement in 68 was derailed onto the trap of democratic elections, and so many of its most dynamic elements were sucked up into the political groups of capitalism’s extreme left.
It is also striking that Bakewell, Harris and also David Edgar in ‘The radical legacy of 1968 is under attack. We must defend it’[4] agree that the feminist movement – and identity-based politics in general – are a palpable, enduring legacy of the revolt of May 68. And of course, there is a grain of truth in this: as the article ‘Against the lies about May 68’ points out, every serious proletarian movement has indeed posed the question of the oppression of women and the necessity to overcome it through the unification of the class and the future unification of humanity. The same goes for all other forms of oppression - sexual, racial, national...and all these oppressions were indeed called into question in the animated debates that sprang up everywhere during the wave of working class struggles of the late 60s and early 70s. But the idea of a specific “women’s movement” independent of class is something different, since it acts not for the unification of the proletariat but for its internal fragmentation and its dissolution into cross-class alliances. In today’s period where the working class is experiencing profound difficulties in forging a sense of itself as a class, the growth of identity politics threatens to further exacerbate this tendency towards fragmentation and dissolution.
In this sense, the true legacy of 1968 is indeed less obvious and less spectacular: it can be found in the small milieu of authentically revolutionary, communist organisations, in various forums of discussion about the class struggle and the problem of revolution, but also, now and again, in much more massive movements which give rise to the same kind of searching, reflection and discussion that we saw in the occupied faculties and factories of May-June 68: movements like the 2006 students struggle in France, or the Indignados movement in Spain in 2011, which are not mere pale echoes of May 68, but which point the way to the revolution of the future. Amos 19/5/18
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/wr380.pdf
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/ad_pic.jpg
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201804/15127/fifty-years-ago-may-68
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201601/13787/report-class-struggle
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/international-review/201711/14435/22nd-icc-congress-resolution-international-class-struggle
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201605/13931/labour-left-and-jewish-problem
[7] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43737547
[8] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-43739863
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/basic-positions
[10] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/08/revolution-victoria-albert-museum-sixties-usher-neoliberalism
[11] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b2lz6r
[12] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/11/may-1968-the-revolution-retains-its-magnetic-allure
[13] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/10/radical-legacy-1968-neoliberalism-progressive