Rev Left Radio - May 1968: An Uprising in France

Episode Date: April 7, 2018

Mitchell Abidor is the principal French translator for the Marxists Internet Archive. He is a writer and translator living in Brooklyn. His previous books are 'The Great Anger: Ultra-Revolutionary Writing in France from the Atheist Priest to the Bonnot Gang' and 'Communards: The Paris Commune of 1871 as Told by Those Who Fought It'. His newest book is "May Made Me: An Oral History of the 1968 Uprising in France".  Mitchell was on a previous Rev Left Radio episode about the Paris Commune. This time, he joins Brett to discuss the events in France in May of 1968. You can purchase "May Made Me" here: https://www.akpress.org/may-made-me.html Outro Song by French Rapper Keny Arkana  Reach us at: [e-mail] Support the Show: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio Follow us on FB at "Revolutionary Left Radio" Intro Music by The String-Bo String Duo. You can listen and support their music here: https://tsbsd.bandcamp.com/track/red-black This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition, the Nebraska IWW, and the Omaha GDC. Check out Nebraska IWW's new website here: https://www.nebraskaiww.org

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and liberate the proletarianist mind. Five for the working class. Five for equality. Fight against the right free to fascist ideology. Welcome to hit in and turn it up loud. Revolutionary Left Radio starts now. Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host, Ann Comrade, Brett O'Shea,

and today we have back on Mitch Abadour from our Paris Commune episode a few months back to talk about his new book, May Made Me, an oral history of the 1968 uprising in France. Mitch, would you like to introduce yourself and say a little bit about your background? well sure i've been do i've been the main uh poor much the only french translator at the marxas internet archive marxist dot org for i don't know about a dozen years translated about a thousand documents uh have also over the last few years produced about 10 between 10 and 13 books i'm kind of losing count and in fact may made me comes out officially next week on april 10

And then right after that, I have two more books coming out between April and the end of May. It used to be a book called The Permanent Guillaume, a book on the Sonduct in the French Revolution, like the far left of the French Revolution. And then a book I worked on with a couple of Brits collection of writings of August Blanke. So, you know, that's me. Well, that's awesome. I'm particularly excited for the guillotine French Revolution book. That sounds fascinating. And because of our last episode on the Paris Commune,

you were actually able to get our interview up on Marxist.org's website under the Paris Commune section. So that was really interesting and really honored for us to be able to be on that website, and that was all thanks to you. So I want to make sure we give you a shout out for that. We appreciate it. I know, it's my pleasure. And, you know, this one also, because we actually have,

if you go to the homepage to marxist.org right up right on the on the homepage there's a you can click on everything we have about May 68 and because I've translated a bazillion things for that for the site as well

and we also put up something that I think would be really interesting to be of interest to everybody out there is when I did this book the book is I don't know 250 260 pages I was restricted in how much I could

put in the book, but I did many more interviews than are in the book. And so those, the outtakes, I made into an e-book that's available at the website of AK, the publisher in America, or Pluto in the UK, or on Marxist.org, and that's available for free. Awesome. That's great. We'll link to that in the episode show notes, and when we post it on Twitter, we'll link to that as well so people can find it even easier. But if you're ready, I think we have a lot to cover, so I'm ready to get into it. So your new book, like I said, it's called May Made Me, an oral history of the 1968 uprising in France, is being released on the 50-year anniversary of that rebellion. As you say in your book, quote, in May 2018, we will be 50 years from the events of May 68 in France, as far from

May was from the trenches of World War I, end quote. So what effect did the events of May 68 have on you as a teenager in Brooklyn, and what made you want to write this book half a century after the events described therein took place? Okay, the interesting thing, it's actually somebody, one of the people in the book, pointed out to me, because I'm still in touch with some of the people in the book, that may made me as well. You know, the title had to do with the people who participated in it, but I was 16 years old living in the outer reaches of then very boring Brooklyn. That part of Brooklyn's still boring. And when May happened, it completely changed my life because up until then, I'd been vaguely political.

It was the 60s. So I was doing a little bit of anti-war stuff. And then in the mornings, before leaving for high school, there I would see, you know, this is a good American, my was a good American household, TV was on from as soon as we woke up in the morning, until we all went to sleep at night. and there was the news footage from France and there was the burning cars and there were the barricades and there were all the people the millions of people or hundreds of thousands of people marching through the streets of Paris and so when I was going to anti-war demos around the time I would pick up stuff about what had happened in May and it completely it was what got me to be first interested in Marxism what got me first interested in the real left in socialism

So everything that became my political life came out of May 68 and was also the beginning of my interest and ultimately love for things French. So everything may completely overturned my life and continues to. So that was so that and so why to do the book was, I was, it actually. Actually, what happened was I had given a talk in Paris on a previous book of mine, Jean-Gerese's socialist history of the French Revolution, and there was a communist publisher who was there. And we left the Accordinary Mall, which was right in the heart of the Latin quarter, and we walked down the street, and we were on the rue Galusac,

which was where all the main, where the barricades all went up. And he told me, he said, you know, 50 years ago, I was here when all that happened. and right then it hit me there's the book you know that he that and it also hit me almost simultaneously that we were as far from May as May is from World War I and it's hard to imagine I mean I remember the 60s my grandfather was a doughboy and I remembered how like old and ridiculous he seemed and I didn't want the people of May 68 to just be uh to be looked at that way and also I realize if it's 50 years on there's not going to be the 60th anniversary a lot of them won't be around for it right so it seemed like you know 50th anniversary

this is the time to do it and because I know the French left the history of the French left the history of the French left the history of the French working class so well I thought well there's really nobody better to do this than than me yeah and so I submitted a proposal about a week after I got back to America and a few months later I started doing the interviews. Yeah, and I think like we should be thankful to you precisely because, as you say, we're 50 years on. A lot of the people that took part in that are, you know, coming to the end of their lives. And so this is a very precious time in any historical event 50 years on where people are still alive and you can still talk to them firsthand. And that's what I think I like

about your book the most is that, you know, your book consists of interviews with a whole range of actual participants in the events of May 68. You talk to them. They talk about how the they remember it from the first person point of view. And that's extremely, I think, rare in a lot of historical cases. And it also makes the book stand out as extra interesting because you can actually get that first person perspective. So why did you decide to do an oral history as opposed to a different format ultimately? And what stands out to you most from all the interviews that you conducted? Well, you know, you hit it right on the head, Brett, because I didn't want to do a history. You know, there are histories of it. Not very many.

in English and frankly not very I don't particularly like them but what I really what I wanted was what is it like I wanted the the actual lived experience of it you know my book on the Paris commune which we discussed a few months ago was is based on the accounts translations of the accounts of people who were there and it was how they experienced the commune and what it meant to them and their point of view on it and I wanted to be the one to do the same thing for May 68, for an American and English audience. I wanted to know what is it to be young, because for the most part, the people were young, even the workers, and I wanted to know what the experience was to live a revolution. But I wanted to know it in

every aspect. I wasn't just interested in the politics of it. I really wanted to know what is it, What is it like to live it? Where did you sleep? How did you sleep? Did you sleep? What did you eat? Did the men pick up women? Did the women pick up men?

So I really wanted to get the actual experience. Because history, you can pretty much get anywhere. You know, like I said, there's not many good books on May in English. And they all have their axe to grind. But I figured if anybody, if I'm going to let anybody grind an axe, let it be the people who actually participated in it. And so it was just great fun to actually sit with people who were there the day the events began. You know, people who were in the courtyard of the Sorbonne on May 3rd when the cops were there and the students just decided this just isn't acceptable anymore and started throwing paving stones or the people who occupied the administrative offices in March at the University of Nantes, which was the real.

which was the beginning of the movement that was to impel May 68 to hear what what did that what did that mean to them what does it still mean to them and what do I think of it now so it was really for me it was like it was really exciting and some of the people that I interviewed there were people who actually came to me from cities in Normandy people came from the south of France I was going to go visit them I had apartment in Paris, and they said, no, no, no, we'll come see you. And they, because they wanted it, this was their chance. Some of them had never really sat down and conceptualized what they lived through.

They lived it and they moved on in their political activity. And so they were excited to be able to think about it and talk about it with somebody who, a foreigner, who knew what was, knew the history of it, knew the events and who could be a good sounding board. And does anything stand out to you, like any individual interviews, anything stand out as particularly something that sticks with you even after the book is done? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, there are a couple that really, and then actually, I have to say, they shook my analysis of May. And that was, I had great luck. The way I found people was somebody would, some people would send me lists. and the people are on the list either they said they were willing to participate or they weren't and some said I can't because I wasn't there but I know somebody else who will so in the cities of Nantes and St. Nazaire in Brittany which had real uh with the struggles who were really interesting because the first occupied workplace was in Nantes I wanted to make sure that this

wasn't a Paris book about students so it's really important everybody knows. that I went around and I traveled and I spoke to people from all over the country, but also not just students. So I interviewed, and not just Trotskyists or anarchists, the least popular, you know, people involved with a communists. And so in San Jose, I was able to interview three communists. And when they gave me their point of view on the events, and then I interviewed a couple of other communist. filmmakers, it completely shook my vision of May 68 because where everybody treats them as the heavies and as the people who destroyed May, who prevented May from developing the way it should have when I heard their case and how both convinced and convincing they

were about the communist case that time was not ripe for revolution. it got me to thinking about the role of the working class and the role of the Communist Party and the real relations between the workers and students. So I have to say there was interviews with communists that are really important in the book. Yeah, and that's something we're going to talk about later, the Communist Party generally, but also just reading through the book, your ability to take all the different perspectives and sort of synthesize it into an analysis that that isn't, you know, overly romantic. It doesn't highlight one perspective over another.

I think it's really, really well done in that it takes a cacophony of perspectives and unifies it into an analysis that I think is sort of the one of the better, if not the best analysis of the events that I've personally engaged with. So I think you did a great job doing that. Well, thank you, Ben. Yeah. Let's go ahead and get into the events. For sure.

Some people, we have a heavy millennial audience. I'm sure there's some people out there that have no idea what happened in 68 in France. So the events of May 68 in many ways felt like it came out of nowhere, as you say in your book, before the uprising, quote, France was in a state of political quiet, unquote. So what were the background conditions in France leading up to May and what, in your opinion, were some of the primary causes of this spontaneous uprising? Well, you know, that's, you know, it's actually a real tough question, Brett, because even though that almost everybody I spoke to said that France was in a state of political quiet,

that even if there were things going on, nobody's, it doesn't mean that May grew out of any of them. So, for example, in 1967, there was a two-month-long strike in San Jose. So a lot of left-wing historians of May say, well, May didn't come out of nothing. it came out of these workers' struggles, except the workers didn't join the strikes till 10 days after the students went out on strike. So it can't be, that can't be it. So the conditions were a place in political quiet,

but very much, just like we in America, you know, the 60s were quite an amazing time, to say the least. And if you look at 1968, or you take somebody like me, between October, 1967 and May 1968, you have Che is killed in October, 1967, in January, you have the Ted Offensive, then you have the McCarthy campaign for president, the anti-war campaign, then you have Johnson dropping out of the presidential race, then you have Martin Luther King being killed, you have Columbia being occupied. You have the events in May start on May 3rd. So there was all over the world. There was this incredible effervescence. And everybody I spoke to said how they felt that they were part of that wave, of that movement that was all over the world. You know, the wave of contesting the existing order.

There were people, almost nobody I spoke to spoke English. but in everybody's house when I would walk in if they were listening to music it was blues or it was something American so all the whole the American counterculture was really important to them

the American student movement the German student movement was important to them should be so that all fed into like a general mood and atmosphere what really what got everything going though was not to go too far back

there was a couple of events on March 20th 1968 there was a demonstration against the war in Vietnam demonstration got a little bit out of hand there was students from mainly from the University of Nanterre some high school students

got a little bit out of hand the American Express office near the opera got trashed students were arrested they were threatened with expulsion March 22nd in defense of these students the students at Nantere led by

Danielle Conbendit, who would become the most famous leader of the events in May, occupy the administrative offices at Nantes. So, and they formed the March 22nd movement, and this is really the beginning of the student movement in France. A couple of things go on, nothing major, and then in May, the students who were arrested are going to be threatened with expulsion, and there's going to be a meeting of the disciplinary council. at, it's going to be held at the Sorbonne.

And on May 3rd, the students go to the Sorbonne in support of the students are going to be expelled. Cops go into the courtyard of the Sorbonne, and in Europe and in most countries of the world, universities are places of asylum. The authorities have no right to enter them. The cops were called into the courtyard of the Sorbonne, and I spoke to, I don't know, five, six people, maybe more who were there on that day, and none of them could explain it. They all said something broke, something cracked in us, and this was just no longer acceptable. And they started throwing stones at the cops.

They started demonstrating to start then. They begin to, they grow every day, they grow every day. Then on May 10th, 1968 is the first great night of the barricades. and his barricades are put up around the Latin quarter this was after a long march they throw stones at the cops the cops beat the students all this goes on

the next weekend the next Monday on May 13th the workers go out on strike so now you have almost every school in the country is occupied and as time goes by the numbers vary six seven six million seven

10 million, a lot of workers, a huge number of workers. The majority probably of the French working class is on strike. So that's the May events. That's the beginning. They go on. There's all kinds of back and forth. There's negotiations start a couple of weeks later to get for pay raises. Workers go out to factories to show their support, to get the workers to join them in March.

or for the students to come in to help the workers occupy their factories. It goes on, it ends in mid-June, and everybody goes back to work. The school's at this point, the school year is over. The workers got raises, a reasonable raise for everybody, for the regular workers. Those on the minimum wage had a 30% increase in their wages. And people thought this was the beginning of something great. well it wasn't yeah but so that in a nutshell the events of may yeah and we'll get into how it was crushed and what happened afterwards but um just sort of you talked about the amount of

workers that at the height of the events you know went on strike and flooded the streets from what i read independent of your research to try to see what these numbers were what i came out was roughly 10 million i heard people say that two-thirds of the french workforce the entire country were on strike at that time, which is just, I mean, really amazing. During this whole of all these events, as things unfolded, what were the students? The students really, you know, created this rebellion and the workers joined soon thereafter. But as the events unfolded, what were the students' intentions? What did they think this, what direction did they think this was going?

And what did they ultimately wish or think was going to possibly happen? That's an excellent question. And it's one of the key questions about May. nobody could tell me what they were aiming for. And so among the many reasons it may have failed, there's that. So what people told me was that, you know, no, we never thought it was a revolution. No, we never thought it was 1917. No, we never thought we were going to seize power.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But I wasn't buying it. and so when people would say that I would say you know come on you're 18 years old you're 20 years old all this stuff is going on don't tell me you didn't think that this was the this was it for capitalism and then people would say well you know maybe maybe we did for a brief moment we did you know because when you have all these workers out it really does look like this is the end right and so so there was that most people told me we knew it wasn't it but we wanted to push this as far as it could go and then the next time around you know it's going to happen people described it and i have stuff

about it in the book they said this was how in 1905 you know the russian revolution in 1905 that was ultimately completed or murdered depending how you look at it in 1917 by uh by the bolsheviks and that was another argument that I wasn't buying because in 1905 when the Russians made their revolution they didn't make the revolution saying we'll come back in 12 years right right they thought they were going to win you don't make a revolution today saying okay sometime when I'm middle age is when this revolution is going to succeed so most of them would admit yes we thought that you know this was was going to be it and this was one of the great flaws and one of the great errors in May was they were so focused

on themselves that they didn't see what was going on around them. So you were asking about, you know, the students, so the students, they occupied the high schools, they occupied the universities. And what was a real revelation to me, and I'd known it, but I'd never really put it all together is that if our image of a general assembly is what happened in Occupy, where everybody was like voted and it was like, you know, they waved their fingers and all that, all that stuff. And it was to decide what was going to be done. You know, nothing happened in an Occupy thing unless every, you know, the majority or the, it

was consensus on what was going to be done. Right. That wasn't what they did in May. that when you watch films and you could find some of it on YouTube and everybody would get up and talk about the world of tomorrow or what was horrible with the world of today and what they wanted tomorrow to be what life was going to be like after the revolution

and because the students even though they say they don't believe they made a revolution when you watch footage at the Sorbonne or any of the schools in Paris or in any of the schools anywhere, they were all talking about their lives and the need to change and what they hope to get out of a new France. So that was what the students were looking for. And when you look at all the famous slogans of May 68, all power to the imagination, be realistic, demand the impossible, under the paving stones, the beach, all of these poetic

slogans came out of the students. Not a one of them came out of the workers. And so I really, so it's, so this is where May falls apart for me, where the students had, you know, their utopian, their idealistic, surrealist, situationist, poetic dreams, even though they were all walking around with their clenched fists and all singing in the Internationale whereas the workers viewed the students as their future bosses so when the students came to the factories all the workers could see was you know rich mama's boys who someday are going to be sitting in the manager's office with their suit and tie while we're still on the assembly line and so the students was so busy uh living

their dream that they didn't notice the workers' reality. Right. So, you know, that's the thing with May. Because, you know, the students in the workers, May 13th, the workers go out on General Strike.

Students and workers are marching together through the streets of Paris. And the only leader that I interviewed for the book, and this was because Alain Kravine, the leader of the Trotskyist, the revolutionary communist youth, the Jeannes Communists, Revolutionist, Revolution was really my hero of May.

I wasn't interested in Khan Bendit. I fell in love for El Anker Ravine. So it's exciting for me to interview him. And if you watch films of it, he's just fiery, revolutionary. He's got hair like Trotsky, the glasses, really the image of a revolutionary in May 68. And when I spoke to him, he said, you know, we would march on the streets together, but we were marching for different things. So they were physically the workers and students in the same space, but politically and ideologically and emotionally they weren't. Yeah, and I think that sort of, that dynamic between what is basically, or soon will be, the petty bourgeoisie and the proletarian themselves is something that constantly comes up in rebellions and revolutions throughout history.

There is always a dynamic there. Sometimes they unite. You know, sometimes they start to turn on one another. So I think in some sense, the workers seeing these students as their future bosses kind of speaks to that. It's interesting, though, because, like, as you said earlier, you know, millions of workers did go on strike. And in the streets you had literally 500,000 people, both students and workers, marching in the streets of France in different cities. So can you even, like, let's go a little deeper into that. Like, what was the relationship there?

How did the students view the workers? Just kind of what you were talking about, but even go deeper. I think it's important. Because, you know, for the, this was something, one of the people, I interviewed this couple, slightly older than everybody else. And they told me, you know, Mitch, never forget how worker is, the left is in France. The worker is everything. You know, they're the revolutionary class.

They're going to be, they're the ones that everything depends on. on, you know, that's why, like, the students are all singing the Internationale. But they all ended up admitting that the, that for all of their enthusiasm for the workers. And again, Kravine had a funny story about how any time a worker would come to the Sobun to one, to the General Assembly, everybody would go, ooh, ooh, ooh, a worker. And they were just, like, so excited because here was like their dream, their Bolshe would be. dreams being fulfilled but the workers just didn't see things that way and you know it's the like number one they didn't have much use for the students in some places they they did uh they they were excited to see the students they were you know they received them graciously and they

welcome them you know one one woman in non told me how it was like the higher point of our life was going to the fact the occupied fact in Nantes and we went in and we all sat around and we sang and we all it was just great and then I put that together with something somebody from Paris said and he said you know the workers were you know happy in some cases the workers are happy to see the students especially when they were attracted young girls so I mean he's he's kind of a cynic however I don't doubt that there's something to that. Right. And, you know, so the workers, if you watch films, and again, there's tons of films on YouTube of this. And if any of you live in a city where the film in the

intense now is showing by the Brazilian filmmaker, Juel Morea Salas, it's the most beautiful film essay about May that I've ever seen. And he, the filmmaker and I became friends, because, his film says exactly the same things as my book. Well, my book says all the same stuff as his film. But you'll see that the workers, the students go to factories and the workers are behind the factory gates. And there's very little, there's no physical contact between them. And they'll talk across the gates or they'll, you know, the workers, the students

will try to encourage the workers to listen to what they have to say. And the workers weren't having it. and there was there were some places where there were student worker committees and those all get blown up to being the to being the general rule but they weren't the general rule was what guitexier a communist and communist union militant in senazaire at the naval shipyard had to say when i asked him what had to happen when the students came to see you he said we kicked him in the ass and this if places where they didn't physically kick them any ass they might as well have now the question is why was that so the answer that's usually given is

the workers weren't allowed to have any contact with the students because the communist party and the communist union the CGT prevented them from doing so and it's certainly true on May 3rd the day the events began so actually before the events had begun the Communist Party newspaper published an article on the students who were just going to be demonstrating at the Sovon and it was called the fake revolutionaries unmasked and they were already attacking the students before it began but doing some research

I found at a meeting of the central committee on May 7th the party said You know, we should open ourselves up to the students. But the communists really were really proud of their role as the party of the working class. And this is the important part that gets left out of the equation. The working class considered the communists their party. The working class represented 37% of the French population. It was 45% of the Communist Party membership. So they were over representative, represented in the country.

the Communist Party and so it's easy to say it was the party leadership or it was party leaders or union leaders at individual workplaces that prevented the students and workers from getting together but it the fact is the communists the workers saw themselves in the communist party the communist party so the you know spoke for the workers and what i the conclusion that i've come to is the communists saw the workers for what they were the students saw the workers for what they should be and it's a really important distinction there's you know there were two thinkers in the 60s one very well known in america Herbert marcusa the other still pretty much unknown cornelius castoriades both of whom in different way talked about how the working class

was no longer a revolutionary class at all write them off they've been bought off by the them. For Castoriatis, they've been privatized, you know, Marcusa in the one-dimensional man. It was the students and blacks in the ghettos that were now going to be the revolutionaries. And also, and we also have to remember that a communist party like the French Communist Party, and it's something I talk about briefly in the introduction, and I've been asked to write an article about it for the New York Review of Books that hopefully they'll print. is that the French Communist Party was a communist party in a democratic society.

Nobody forced you to join the Communist Party. And there might be some perks within the working class movement within the Communist Party. But in the greatest society, you were viewed as a commie and a red and a pen in the ass. So if people joined the Communist Party, it was because the Communist Party spoke for them. and so when the communists didn't want the students coming in it was a perfectly normal reaction of any political party you know we know what's right you know our members support us but nobody jailed them and forced them and there were people who quit the party during May 68 but most of them stayed and a lot of the people that I interviewed

who hated the communist role during 68 later joined the Communist Party. Right. Because whereas the anarchist movement and all the ultra-left movements talked a good game, the only place where people were organized was in the Communist Party.

Long answer to, I don't remember which question. No, yeah, I covered a lot of ground there, but that's all extremely fascinating and that's a crucial part of understanding the events of May 68, the notion of students talking to workers through gates trying to convince them of one thing or another and trying to have dialogue is kind of a metaphor because there was that sort of divide between the two aspects of the movement generally and that was ultimately a sort of gap that was never

able to be reconciled and that is one reason ultimately I think that it might have fallen apart as you've mentioned many times that there's some really interesting documentaries on YouTube I was, you know, going through them in the lead-up to this interview. Just the visceral scenes of what went down, the amount of people in the streets, you know, people breaking up cobblestones and tearing pieces of rocks to hurl at the cops. I mean, it was really, really fascinating, and I urge people to go check it out. One thing I do want to bring up, and I want to focus on a little bit here, is there were a lot of different left-wing tendencies that participated in the uprising.

You had anarchist, you had Maoists, you had Trotskyist, and you had the situationists. Can you talk about this? Which groups were most prominent and how did leftists with such different perspectives ultimately come together? Well, another good question there, Brett. It's really hard to say, you know, it's possible that most of the students had like anarchist tendencies and but there were these other groups as you said. So for example, the March 22nd movement, the one that the most con bendit led and that started the events in non-terre within march 22nd there were different tendencies so even if the leadership and it was leadership was anarchist and they were real anarchists believe it or not card carrying anarchists because in france you

could even be a card carrying anarchist but the trotskyist existed within that movement and there were Maoists also. Now, so the Maoists, it's a really complicated situation. The Maoists, there were different groups of Maoists. The most important group of Maoists were located at the most prestigious school in France, the Ecole Normale, which is right in the heart of the Latin quarter. They were all students of Louis Altaire, and they wanted nothing to do with me. They just considered it like petty bourgeois silliness and had nothing. do with us. So the Maoists, for the most part, kept out of it. The Trotskyists, the good Trotskyists, there was like a dizzying array of groups. So the main group was the JCR, the revolutionary

communist youth, and they were really right in the heart of everything. They led the action committees in the schools. Like I said, Kravine was really one of the, in the core leadership. anarchists were pretty much everywhere within the movement at all the schools you know they were very particular about it you know they wanted to make sure that the black flag was flying you know the red flag wasn't enough had to have the black flag flying but and they didn't all work together so like a group like the jCR was able to work pretty easily with the anarchists uh and whatever a handful of Maoists, but there weren't that many, who were involved in May, because they were just a more open version of Trotskyists.

Other Trotskyists were much more workerist, and they wanted almost nothing to do with May. They just, if they weren't already working in the factories, they really want, their party focused its work on the factories. And in fact, the first factory that I meant in, in Nantes that was occupied, the leader of the union the leader of the strike was a was a member of the uh internationalist communist organization that was a trotskyist group the lambertists so so they either worked together if they weren't uh people who sneered at anything that wasn't working class or the they kept apart

so in fact when the left-wing parties were banned in june the lambert Curtis Trotskyists filed an appeal with the government saying they shouldn't have been banned because they had no part to play in May and June. And they won their case. And the party was allowed to function legally, whereas other groups were banned. Now, the situationists, they literally stayed in a tower in the pedagogical building. I don't quite know where that was. everybody said it but that was where they were there was only a handful of them they had no real direct effect during may however they were part of the intellectual ferment that led up to it

the situations in strasbourg had published a really famous pamphlet everybody all the students read uh de beau van eigen all that whether they understood them you know that i had one there was one person who I interviewed who later went on an anarchist who later went on to edit, the Anarchist Federation's magazine told me he read DeVos and he had to be honest, he had no idea what he was reading. On the other hand, there was somebody in Nantt who said that when Van Gogh came up to speak to the students, the students in Nantes didn't want him there. And not because they were opposed to him or his ideas,

they thought he was coming to speak as an expert or as a leader, and they weren't interested in leadership. But situationism was like really important among, you know, the intellectuals and the students, which again is just part of the division between the students and the workers. Because you can bet there's not a worker at a Renault factory who was reading the Society of the Spectacle. Yeah.

so it's you know that's why the you know it's good to bring up the situation is because again it's just the further sign of the split that was may all right but would it be would it be fair to say that um anarchists with the help of trotskiists were really like the most prominent sort of force in the initial push to the uprising is that kind of a fair way okay oh yeah oh yeah and and But, you know, one of the things that I was told, and it kind of shows up in books, but I'm going to accept it because the people who told me about it were there is that there was a definite leadership. But I was talking before about how general assemblies, everybody was talking about how miserable their lives were and how the New France was going to be a completely different place. But there was like a core leadership group, Daniel Kohn-Bendit, there was, there was, there was. three people who were like the real leaders.

One was the leader of the union of secondary professors, of college professors. One was the leader of the National Student Union. And one was Daniel Kahn-Bendit. Slightly lower level was Kravine from the Trotskies. So there was like a definite leadership. And they were the ones who said, tomorrow we're going to march,

you know, we're going to march up this street and down this street. We're going to cross the sand, circle and we'll come back. So, and that was a mixed bag. because two of the people in that group went on to be Maoists. One was a Trotskyist, one was an anarchist. And they all got along quite well. So, but they were, you know, they were the unofficial leaders who nobody appointed and nobody named. And some people that I spoke to sneered at the idea that they were the leaders.

But the fact was people who were at their meetings told me what they decided. you know when they decided where a march was going to go and two people took credit for there being almost no deaths you know that even though there was a lot of people who were beaten up by the cops and cops beaten up by the students right that in fact the violence was relatively compared to other things that would happen in 68 like in Mexico or as what happened in America in 1970, the violence was really not as terrible as all that. And the prefect of police thanked, two people told me, well, one I read about, one told me that the prefect of police thanked them for helping tamp down the violence.

So leadership definitely played a role in that, and it was a mixed leadership. Yeah, super interesting. Now, one thing I do want to know is, is what was the reaction from the French right during the uprising. How did the reactionaries in France kind of respond to this whole thing? Well, and this is, if it's in the book. And, you know, so when people read it, they'll all see that for many people, the end of the May events, even though they went on into June, into mid-June, the 15th of the 18th, depending how they want to date it, may really ended for most people on May 30th, 1968.

Because on May 30th, 1968, the other France, the one you're asking about, showed its face. And it's, again, the numbers are hard to say, if it wasn't the largest demonstration in 68, it was the second largest, was the demonstration of the people who supported De Gaulle. so they were laying low they were you know just keeping their heads down they were grumbling at home I mean I have interviews

actually they show up in the e-book unhappiness like within families of people who supported the strikes against people who opposed the strikes so one shouldn't think and this is like the common illusion about May 68 is that this was 100% of the people were out there

and there was just some small kernel that was like holding out for for de Gaulle Half a million people showed up on the Chances de lise on May 30th 1968 If you go on YouTube when you look up C-A-T-E-T-R-C-T-S

It's an hour and 15 minutes long It's unsubtitled There's no soundtrack But if you watch it, you'll see The demonstration is in it And everybody who I interviewed When I asked them the question about May 30th they all said well I shouldn't say all those who I thought were being the most honest said we were completely taken by surprise because everything was happening on the left bank or in the they were going to the factories in the red belt around Paris and they completely ignored the rest of France and so that one shouldn't think that the whole French nation was revolutionary and a half million people showed up

with their blue white and red flags and their pro de Gaulle posters and some of them had like disgusting you know things con bendit to dachau posters but for the most part it was just like we had the silent majority at that time so did france and they want they came back with a vengeance because when the elections were held in june de gaul's share of the vote was higher than it was in the previous elections yeah so so the you know the the the the right it was you know i tried to find the quote but it is somebody was something about like what went on after may 68 but it also applies to to what was going on during may 68 that the students were so uh they thought they'd won they thought they'd attained hegemony they thought they were the only one saying

anything that mattered. And so while they were patting themselves on the back, the right was just biding its time and building up its strength. And ultimately, they came out the winners. And that leads perfectly into this next question, which kind of ties up the events, which is how did the uprisings ultimately end? What were the overall injuries and casualties and what happened in French politics immediately afterwards? Okay, so let me do the casualty question. Okay. Because, you know, those of us who lived through the demonstrations after the invasion of Cambodia in May of 1970, we know that on May 4th, 1970, four students were killed at Kent State. And I forget how many were killed at Jackson State within a couple of days.

But whereas in May 68, with everything going on for six weeks, one. One student died. One student died. And it's hard to say that he was actually killed. Was he the Maoist that drowned? Right. He was the Maoist that drowned. Gilles-Totin. And so he went to a factory where the struggle was still going on. Most of the, it was one of the few factories that was still out on strike. It was June 9th or June 10th. And the cops started chasing them and he jumped into the river, but he didn't know how to swim and he drowned. so there was jiltotin so and also on the and on the two workers a day later were killed at a pejot factory one was killed just flat out killed he was shot and killed another was a worker who fell off a wall so it's hard to know

whether he she whether he counts is killed but let's let's say he counts is killed on the other Then later on, during the electoral campaign, a communist was killed while he's putting up electoral posters. But let's leave him out because it was after the events. And on the government side, there was one cop who died in Lyon on May 24th. And I interviewed the person who was the head of the March 22nd movement in Lyon. And to this day, he's very defensive about what happened and how that cop died. because he's been blamed for it for 50 years and somebody did go to jail

because the cop he was killed that was thought because he was run over by a truck but it was later discovered that he had a heart attack and so the guy who went to jail was released and that was it on the forces of order side and then there was one innocent bystander so there were not that many deaths

at all a lot of people clubbed by the police least, and if you watch the footage, they were brutal. But the cops were also taking it with cobblestones being thrown at them. Shouldn't say, though, the violence was equal on both sides. The cops beat the students. But all things considered, would you consider that however many hundred and some odd people

were killed in Mexico that summer and the people that we had killed at Kent State, death was not really, deaths and injuries were not. the main thing okay so how it ends is the there was negotiations that went on to settle the the strikers the working class side of the equation and so they were like round-the-clock negotiations and in late May the agreement was signed and it was as I mentioned before so all the workers got a raise the workers on a minimum wage got a huge raise and then it became a matter of every factory had a vote individually on whether to go back to work most people were more than happy to go back to work because they had no wages they had no money they're on strike

they got nothing the strike settlement got them half their wages while they were on strike but in the Meanwhile, they had no money. And, you know, the working class people I spoke to all talked about how after a couple of weeks it really got to be a strain. And in the places where the strike went on still into June, it got to be a real strain. But there were factories that didn't want to go back. You know, the famous cases where the head of the Communist Union went to a Renault factory and got booed. Those workers ultimately voted to go back. So that was how it ended.

For the students, they all have the same story. It's like everything else. People get bored. People lose interest. And people would say that, you know, the general assemblies, there were fewer and fewer people. You know, there were people were going to the beach. People weren't showing up anymore. And it just basically frittered out.

I mean, the person who I spoke about who was the leader of the March 22nd movement in Lyon and who still remains like a really hardcore left communist on June 15th he got a job in a factory just for the summer because he had no money also so he worked in a government tobacco factory and that was how it ended but the goal in the meanwhile to get the last part of the question had dissolved the legislature and so elections were held in late June where the communists pretty much held their they lost a little bit but not much but the gallists did better than they had in the previous elections and so the outcome of may was a political victory anyway of the right and that was that was the immediate result but as you talk about in the book and which is a more more long-term

result maybe you can talk about that so which which social movements grew out of may 68 and how did the events of that month eventually go on to shape French politics to this day? Okay. So, everyone says that, and this is, you know, unquestionably right, that as happened here, once the big movement dies or fails or whatever, then you splinter into all of your little movements. So people there thought this was all great. So the feminist movement, gay rights movement, prisoners rights, which is a really important movement in France, especially in the 70s, all grew out of May. So the people who were involved in May went into these other movements.

And people still, you know, there was only one person I interviewed who's not politically active now. Her ideas haven't changed, but she's not politically active. So these people like stayed active, but nobody ever saw, they never thought they would see May 68 and none of them expect to see it ever again whatever there's like a big movement as going on right now in France right right and you know people who are in my eyes just frankly delusional you know I got email today about how this is you know there are people who are commemorating May 68 we're we're recreating it and you know

the it's just not the same thing it's just not and uh so so that was like the immediate political effects gallism came out stronger the gall would be out of office within a couple of years over entirely another issue and there were people who said that this was the beginning of the end of the communist party although a year later in the in 1969 in the presidential elections, they got their best score that they'd had in years. So they had actually regained strength. The communist had 23% of the vote in 1969. They now get about 1% of the vote.

So May 68 was not what killed the Communist Party, although I had a conversation with a friend, actually from Marxist.org, who made a really interesting point, which is what I say in the book and what many people say about May 68 is that it served as a motive to speed up the modernization of France. And this is, you know, something that's at this point not really debated all that much. France was moving ahead, but May 68 really gave it the final push. You know, when I asked one of the people who was really heavily involved in May 68, did you really need May 168? did you really need May 68 to get feminism? I mean, we had it.

We didn't have May 68. And he said, you know, you got it all wrong, Mitch, because, you know, we were an old, blocked society. And so we needed an explosion like May to get us going. But what it ended up doing was modernizing not just the left or French society in general. It modernized French capitalism. And in the process of modernizing French capitalism, what it did was it made the working class less and less important and increasingly redundant and unemployed, as in most of the West, which then made the Communist Party less and less relevant until the Communist Party just faded away. I mean, it still exists, but it's just a shadow of what it once was. So, May, the unintended consequence of May was, it made capitalism, it was further proof of just how clever capitalism is.

And I think those were the words that I used, something along that line at the end of the introduction, that is kind of a despairing vision of May, and there are people who don't like it. but the fact is capitalism is as strong as it ever was in France and excuse me the left is in total disarray and marginalized

again despite you know minos shown in the France insoumese what happened was that ultimately the France lost the Communist Party and had nothing to replace it right and in the the part of your book that you were just referencing,

I actually had that highlighted because I wanted to read it because I think it sums it up well. You said, quote, may serves to prove the flexibility of capital, its ability to absorb shocks, to adapt itself to new situations, and then move on. Greater rights for women, fine.

A less Mandarin ruled education, fine as well. Even a certain change in relations at the workplace was perfectly acceptable, as long as the fundamental matter isn't touched, the ownership of the means of production. end quote. So I think that speaks perfectly to what you were saying and leads well into this last question, which is what can we today learn from May 68? What lessons should organizers and

revolutionaries take from those events, both good and bad, in your opinion? And, you know, it's, I've been thinking about that one. You know, when you told me what the questions were and it's always like inevitable. Like, what is the lesson from any, any, any, past struggles. And May is a particular case. And I think that I've come to believe that the lesson of May is the need to look at a situation realistically, the need not to have your imagination or your ideas of what should be dictate what actually is and because the students failed because they insisted I mean I say it

they were they were Marcusian in deeds and Marxist in words and they refused to recognize that the working class was not it now the problem is if the working class is not it who is it but they needed it they didn't When you get involved in a struggle to, like, have the vulgate, to have the schema dictate your actions is just foolhardy. And, you know, there were people in May who were expecting the workers to, like, take control of their factories and have workers self-management. None of them were interested in that. But, you know, students had read it in books and it sounded like good and it sounded like a logical thing. later on one factory would and then this became ah you see we will write all along the workers should take over the run their own factories but it was it was an odd case so i really think that it's that may when you watch the films when you read the when you read the contemporary stuff i can't help but feel increasingly feel the role of they were learning lessons from history or they were carrying out lessons from past history or reliving moments from french revolution

history and to a certain extent they were play acting and because they weren't looking at the real workers in front of them the real France in front of them so they're singing songs of the Red Army as they're marching on the to at a funeral for the for the one student and I look at it and I really snicker every time I watch it because it's just so phony now they were sincere. But looking back on it 50 years later, it just, they weren't facing the reality of France at the time. And even after they saw their huge march on May 30th in support of de Gaulle, they refused to see that the situation was not what they dreamed it was. Don't take your dreams for realities. Right. There you go. Yeah. I think that speaks to the sort of idealism

inherent in the movement and the sort of ironic lack of materialism as much as they propped up the Bolsheviks or Marx or just the revolutionary left tradition generally, that material analysis of the situation as it actually exists was the thing that seemed to be missing. Something you alluded to earlier was the protest happening in France right now and while they don't compare in size or sort of breadth to May 68, it is still sort of indicative of the continued onslaught of capital in Emmanuel Macron's sort of neoliberal austerity politics, which the French people, as we speak, are up in arms about. So the struggle continues. Thank you, Mitch, for coming on the show. It's been an honor to

have you back on. I really, I really enjoy your work. This is a great book. I urge people to go out and check it out. But before we let you go, can you tell listeners where they can find this book and where listeners can find you and your other work? well you know the the book can be found at the finer bookstores mainly in Europe I have to say you know it's not out yet here

you can order it at AK Press it's on Amazon like I said the e-book it's a supplement to it if you buy the book at AK Press at their website you get the download of the book for free or it's at Marxist.org

and you know if you go I hate to buzz market Amazon but it is like the reference board

you go Amazon like I said there's many books by me all covering the almost all

covering the French revolutionary activity and thought from the French Revolution to May 68 actually

I cover it all so we'll check the stuff out yep and we'll link to as much of that as we can

and when your other book on the French Revolution and the guillotine comes out. We'd love to have you back on to discuss that. That'd be great. Thanks again for coming on, Mitch. Keep up the great work. This is a great book. I really appreciate talking to you again. Save it here, Brad. Take it easy.

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