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may of 1968
In the spring of 1969, France stood on the brink of a socialist revolution. A giant social upheaval had been touched off by a protest movement among university students. The movement rapidly spread to high-school students and to young workers.
Soon, two-thirds of the workplace was on strike. The red flag flew over schools, factories and several municipal offices. The Fifth Republic of General Charles de Gaulle tottered – and almost fell.
But most workers at the time continued to look to the French Communist Party (CP) and to the bureaucratized trade union leadership to provide guidance and leadership in what to do next. Unfortunately, the Stalinist CP was not a revolutionary party; it was opposed to the workers taking political power into their own hands. This allowed de Gaulle’s capitalist government to regain the initiative and to remain in power.
This dramatic upheaval and near-revolution contains many valuable lessons for today’s activists and young revolutionaries. Below is an article by Michael Schreiber from the June 1988 issue of Socialist Action which discusses the near-revolution of May 1968. – Youth for Socialist Action.
How Workers Almost Made a Revolution in France
On March 22, 1968, police arrested five university and high-school students in Paris. The students, activists in the movement against the war in Vietnam, were charged with having detonated several small explosive charges outside the offices of U.S. corporations.
That evening, a meeting was called at the University of Paris at Nanterre to protest the arrests. The meeting was held in defiance of school officials, who had been trying to limit political activity on campus. When students took over a lecture hall to show a film on Che Guevara, the authorities closed down the entire university.
In a frantic speech before the National Assembly, the Minister of Education attacked the students. “What sort of machinations did these Nanterre ‘madmen’ carry on daily?” he cried out. “Under the label of ‘critical university,’ the most absurd lucubrations were voiced in the auditoriums renamed to serve the cause, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Mao Tse-Tung, Leon Trotsky!”
On May 3, after several students at Nanterre were threatened with expulsion, students at the Sorbonne (in the center of Paris) organized a solidarity meeting. At the end of the meeting, police invaded the Sorbonne, beating and arresting hundreds of demonstrators.
The government, which had ordered the crackdown, gambled that it would meet no opposition from the Communist Party and the other major left parties. And true to expectations, the CP scathingly denounced the student movement as nothing but “grouplets” and “provocateurs.”
But the activists at the universities took up the challenge. “We are all a grouplet!” they cheered – as tens of thousands poured into the streets. On May 6, the student unions called an unlimited student strike. On May 9, high schoolers also walked out.
The “Night of the Barricades”
On the evening of May 10, the students and striking teachers organized a large march to demand freedom for the jailed activists, withdrawal of the police from the Sorbonne, and full political and trade-union rights. Other banners proclaimed, “End the police state!”
The march swelled to over 60,000 as bystanders – including many young workers – joined in. When the demonstration reached the Sorbonne, they found it surrounded by police ready for battle. And after a few clashes, barricades went up throughout the Latin Quarter of Paris.
The police attacked, using truncheons and chlorine gas. Finally, early the next morning, the final barricades had been breached. The government won the “battle,” but public opinion was aroused against it.
The Communist Party had voiced its opposition to the student strike. But now the “grouplets” were clearly getting out of hand. The CP had to try to assert its control. During the “Night of the Barricades,” word came that the CP had decided to support the students’ struggle.
On May 13, the CGT (the major union federation, dominated by the Communist Party) and the CFDT (a union federation of left-Christian origins) called a one-day general strike and a mass demonstration. Over half a million workers and students took part in a march through Paris.
That night, students occupied the Sorbonne and declared it an autonomous “people’s university.” A democratic general assembly met daily to manage the university and to carry on the struggle. This Sorbonne “soviet” became the prototype and the nerve-center of some 400 popular “action committees” that were set up in the neighborhoods of Paris alone.
Sid-down strikes
The Communist Party leadership continued to issue statements warning the workers and students against any “adventurist” acts. But it was too late to hold back the tide of rebellion. On May 14, workers began a sit-down strike at the Sud-Aviation plant near the city of Nante.
The following day, some 200 young workers occupied a Renault parts plant near Rouen. Delegates set off for the giant Renault manufacturing complexes at Flins in the Seine Valley at the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. Workers there were convinced to join the strike; red flags were raised over the rooftops.
By the following week, over 9 million workers were on strike. A few plants were reopened later under the control of the workers. Farmers unions mobilized their members to help feed the strikers. In some towns, strike-support committees (inspired by the students) supervised the distribution of goods – and even directed traffic in the streets.
As workers laid down their tools at factory after factory, the union leaders of the CGT tried desperately to maintain their control. They hoped to negotiate some wage gains quickly in order to convince the workers to go back to work.
On May 26, the union tops worked out a deal with the government in which the workers would receive a 35-percent raise in the minimum wage (to 60 cents an hour). But when the union leaders carried the terms of the settlement to the occupied factories, they were jeered.
Twelve days after the first sit-down strikes began, a reporter from the New York Times visited Boulogne-Billancourt. He commented that now “there is a marked change in the Renault factory here, and it is summed up in the two words of a sign over the main gate: ’Workers power!’”
“The sign,” the reporter continued, “symbolizes the new realization among the rank and file in this southwestern suburb of Paris that striking workers throughout France may be capable of forcing not only sweeping economic changes, but political ones as well.” (May 29, 1968 NYT)
“Adieu de Gaulle!”
Indeed, on the same day in the heart of Paris, as many as 800,000 workers chanted together, “Adieu, de Gaulle!” The CGT had reluctantly called the mass demonstration. Now for the first time, the bureaucrats of the Communist Party and the unions they dominated were permitting political slogans to be raised in the streets.
Pushed to the wire, the Communist Party advanced the slogan of a “popular government” in which its representatives would share power with the capitalist class.
In contrast, the Revolutionary Communist Youth (the JCT, which was a Trotskyist group with tremendous influence among the students, and which remains the French sister group of Youth for Socialist Action) pointed out: “The government must spring from the strike committees and action committees of the workers and students.”
But de Gaulle refused to say “adieu.” He had been allowed some breathing space by the CP; now he took measures to strengthen the forces of the bourgeoisie. Loyal army units were placed on alert, ready to march on Paris. Armed police began to attack some of the weaker strikes. Many left-wing organizations, such as the Trotskyists, were banned.
At the same time, de Gaulle knew that only the powerful Communist Party was capable of “normalizing” the country (that is, convincing the workers to return the factories, stores, and utilities to the capitalist class).
Accordingly, the CP proved amenable. The party proclaimed a “victory” and geared up for the electoral campaign. Striking workers were urged to settle for limited “economic” gains – and to go back to work. When police broke through the picket lines at the Renault plant at Flins, the CP said nothing. By the end of June, the strike wave was over.
The CP justified its treachery by arguing that the workers were not yet ready for “revolution.” But the Stalinists choose to ignore a fact that had become clear to millions – only consistent mass action could force the de Gaullist government to yield on their demands for justice.
During the rapid pace of events, the embryo was formed of a nationwide movement for workers’ self-rule. But no mass-based revolutionary party had been constructed that could guide the working class to a more advanced level of struggle. That task still lies ahead.
