Table Of ContentReply to Debray
Régis Debray’s epigrams on May ’68 are certainly amusing. All the
same, they are dubious and even rather mystifying.
What the ex-prisoner of Camiri says in substance is that if the May
movement had not existed, French capitalism would have had to invent
it! In his view, ‘the logic at work in the uprising ten years ago was one
not of rupture but of reconciliation’ . . . the general strike ‘served as
a factor tending to stabilize fundamental class relations’; and it is from
1968 that ‘in Europe, the West wind began to prevail over the East
wind’, and so on.
If we are to believe him, in short, the ‘cybernetic’ crisis of May ’68
constituted a decisive moment in the self-regulation of French society,
in the process of liquidating its archaisms and in the tailoring of
attitudes to the new demands of the accumulation of capital. This is
the real meaning, the obective function, of the explosion of May,
unknown to its protagonists, who ‘accomplished the opposite of what they
intended’.
Forgetting a Detail
It does not require genius to see where this reasoning falls down. In
situating the truth of May in what has become of May ’68, and of
certain sixty-eighters, Debray simply ‘forgets’ one little detail: the
movement did not triumph, but was defeated by a bourgeois reformist
counter-offensive, whose broad lines can easily be retraced.
It is this counter-offensive, not the movement itself, which shaped
post-May. To attribute to the general strike of May–June ’68—even in
an unconscious and ‘objective’ relationship—responsibility for the
various palliatives introduced by the victors to consolidate their
domination, and avoid new explosions in future, may be a joke, but it
is not in good taste. This kind of reasoning could be used to claim that
the Popular Front strikers of ’36 were clearing a path for an American
New Deal, accelerating the concentration of capital, giving birth
without knowing it to ‘indicative planning’ à la française, the public
financing of private accumulation and the mercantilization of leisure...
No, the protagonists of May ’68 did not accomplish ‘the opposite of
what they intended’. They did not accomplish what they intended
either, because their bourgeois reformist adversaries did not give them
time: on 30 May, after General De Gaulle’s fighting speech and the
reactionary demonstration which followed it, the leaders of the
workers’ movement agreed to resolve the conflict in reformist fashion
by imposing a general return to work and referring their capitulation
to a general election organized by the régime. The far left lost the
initiative from that moment, and the movement was liquidated in three
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weeks by the concertedaction of the CRSand the union full-timers.The
toughest sectors were isolated and suppressed by force: a week of
battles in June at the Renault Works at Flins (one killed); several days
at Peugeot at Sochaux (two killed by bullets); police occupation of the
Sorbonne and many other university centres; dissolution of eleven far
left organizations and imprisonment of their leaders; purging of State
organs (200 journalists hunted out of the state television, ORTF);
sacking of the most combative worker militants. . . .
The Recovery
As one would expect, the Giscardo–Gaullist coalition, invigorated by
electoral victory, undertook a long-term reorganization of its system
of domination, whose weaknesses had been spectacularly exposed by
the May explosion. This reorganization was of transparently ‘hege-
monic’ type, designed not to crush the popular movement by means
of despotic power, but to weaken it by division, and channel it towards
programmes and modes of action which would be compatible with the
functioning of the capitalist system. In consequence it implied certain
concessions to the new aspirations revealed by the movement, or
rather, a specific processing of these aspirations to defuse their sub-
versive potential and exploit them as factors tending to consolidate the
régime. This is the ‘rational kernel’ of Debray’s thesis. In its hegemonic
aggiornamento the dominant class uses the stick, but also the carrot. In
its way and for its own purposes, it takes into account the new popular
expectations and demands. It is in this distorted, alienated form that
Power turned the May movement to its advantage. The prototype of
this move was to be found in the Edgar Faure law reforming the
University—passed almost unanimously by an Assembly of CRS-blue
elected in June ’68—which instituted, behind a smoke-screen of
‘autonomy’, ‘co-management’ and ‘multi-disciplines’, competitive
universities on the American model. The same measures led to the
re-launch of ‘participation’, the removal of General De Gaulle in the
spring of ’69, the blueprint for a ‘New Society’ proposed to Frenchmen
of goodwill by Jacques Chaban-Delmas, the ideal of ‘advanced liberal
society’ erected by Giscard d’Estaing, and so on.
For their part the traditional workers’ parties, just as frightened of the
May movement as the bourgeoisie, and just as eager to return to the
proven norms of republican legality, moved in a way which was
analogous in all respects: expelling extreme-left militants from the
unions (principally the CGT, as the CFDT, which wanted to build itself
up, at first pretended to be much more tolerant); isolating and denounc-
ing movements among school and university students, and later all the
mass movements born out of the impact of May (feminist, regionalist,
ecological, etc). And simultaneously trying to adapt to the new aspirations
and the new combativity of the workers (an effort denounced as
‘recuperation’ by the far left), with a view to re-establishing and con-
solidating the grip of the apparatus on workers and youth: the Socialist
Party’s swerve to the left at its Epinay Congress in 1971; the discovery
of ‘self-management’ as a ‘mobilizing myth’, first by the Socialists and
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later by the CP; setting up of the Union of the Left, signature of the
‘common programme’, etc.
The liberal pro-American France of 1979 is indeed descended from
May ’68, but as its negation, not as its completion. As the Gulag is
descended from the democracy of the Councils, and Stalin from Marx!
Double Blindness
Because it postulates, against all the evidence, the homogeneity,
continuity and organic character of the process leading from May to
post-May, the analysis proposed by Debray reveals itself as unwork-
able. In reality, it makes its author miss the main lessons which we
might learn from the events, and their fate.
In the first place, it prevents him from perceiving the revolutionary
potentialities of the May crisis. Although it is very apparent that the
general strike of May–June ’68 was not a revolutionary crisis in the
Leninist sense (crisis and disintegration of the State and organization
of an alternative power by the workers); although, therefore, the con-
quest of State power by armed insurrection was not even considered;
nevertheless it represented much more, however displeasing to the
PCF, than a simple, but rather long drawn out, conflict over the more
equitable distribution of the ‘fruits of expansion’. Both the authority
system and the bourgeois model of civilization were called in question,
raising the possibility of generalizing workers’ control over production
and popular control of all institutions; of disputing bourgeois power
on all levels and in all the fields; of winning new democratic rights and
liberties for the workers; and of re-examining the aims and modalities
of capitalist development. The spread of practical, wide-ranging
struggle along these lines (by no means out of the question, as the
examples of Lip and, on a larger scale, the Italian Workers’ Councils
were to demonstrate) would have constituted a powerful radicalizing
movement among workers. The general strike of May/June put in
question not only the personal power of De Gaulle but the very
structure of the Fifth Republic and could have produced before very
long an authentically revolutionary situation, if its political and social
logic had been driven home against the ruling power.
The general strike did not lead inevitably to Giscardian liberalism. It
did not point in one direction only but harboured various possibilities,
including revolutionary possibilities. If these have all been short-
circuited and neo-liberal possibilities brought to the fore instead, it is
because of, and by means of, a body of political decisions and practices
to which Debray pays little attention: the strategy of the PCF and the
CGT, designed to reduce the biggest general strike in French history
to a simple list of demands; the reformist policy of the main labour
movement, deliberately barring the way to any systematic anti-capitalist
struggle in the factories or on the State level; the inability of the
revolutionary left—politically confused, and, in any case, insufficiently
established in the labour movement—to promote such a struggle on a
practical level or to impose unity on the traditional workers organiza-
tions; the fact that the initiative was therefore left to the ruling class
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and the Gaullist State which, after a month of trial and error, found an
effective riposte and put it into operation; dissolution of the Assembly
and legislative elections, based on a return to work; the formation of
‘Committees for the Defence of the Republic’ and a spectacular recon-
ciliation with the former members of OAS, to ensure active support
from the army.
Régis Debray effectively denies that the May movement had any
revolutionary potential (from his account, a reader would get the
impression that the movement occurred mainly in the Sorbonne and
at the Odéon) and totally ignores the share of responsibility for the
defeat that must be attributed to the reformist leadership given to the
workers movement. True, from his viewpoint there was no defeat;
‘the fruits bore out the promise of the flowers’. . . .
The Period opened by May
His incomprehension of May ’68 is repeated in his lack of understanding
of the period begun by May ’68. Just as he fails to see the anti-capitalist
potential of the May Movement, Debray does not perceive its long-
term subversive effects: egalitarian and democratic aspirations (‘self-
management’); the desire to live by values other than those of producti-
vism and consumerism, touching every sphere of society and giving
rise to wide-ranging practical struggle; the women’s liberation move-
ment, the sexual minority movements, regionalist and neo-nationalist
movements; movements for reducing prices, consumers’ movements,
movements of tenants, prisoners, soldiers, lawyers, teachers, medical
workers, journalists, etc. . . . Obviously these movements, and their
demands, are not revolutionary by definition; where they are inward-
looking and cut off from one another and the labour movement they
can even assume a conservative rôle. The subversive charge they carry
only becomes active to the extent that they can integrate themselves
into the hegemonic advance of the whole labour movement. But it is
precisely the spread and the intensity of egalitarian and democratic
aspirations throughout the social fabric which provides the labour
movement with the objective base of a broad anti-capitalist class
alliance, however ineffective may have been its efforts so far to adopt
them and integrate them into its political strategy.
The long-term effects of May ’68 can be seen today in the French steel-
workers’ struggle against unemployment, not only in the content of
their demands (reduction of hours to 35a week without loss of income,
the right to live and work in the country) but in the forms taken by
their struggle: kidnapping the chairman, sacking the management
offices, attacking police stations when the police interfere, occupying
the regional television centre and using its channel to publicize their
struggle. . . . . More generally, the long-term effects of May ’68 have
appeared in a level of combativity and class consciousness, a balance of
strength between bourgeoisie and proletariat distinctly more favourable
to the workers than that prevailing before May ’68. A balance of force
which exacerbates the hegemonic crisis of the French bourgeoisie and
is making especially difficult, if not impossible, its plans for ‘reorganiz-
ing’. In the years immediately following May the traditional workers
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organizations were able to capitalize upon the new spiritthey had done
so much to frustrate. More than one million workers entered the trade
unions. The votes cast for the Communist and Socialist Parties climbed
back out of the pit, to reach levels not equalled since 1945. The
Presidential candidate of the Union of the Left, who in May ’68 had
sought after his own fashion to identify himself with the movement,
came within a hair’s breadth of electoral success. This is another story—
though not one unconnected to the impetus of May—and we know how
it ends; once again the leaders of the workers movement have made the
bourgeois leaders seem like masters of political strategy; once again
one could compose paradoxes about how the Socialist and Communist
leaders have saved the system, but by encompassing their own defeat
not that of their adversary. But even this story is not quite finished yet.
There remains a balance of forces which is precarious for the hegemonic
position of the French bourgeoisie and which bars the road to its plans
for re-organization. We must also say that today there is a revolutionary
left which, however small, is now a factor in national political life and
in the workers movement, as it was not pre-May. Not only is the
revolutionary left larger, but it has learnt something from the last ten
years and remains open to the future.
The aggravation of bourgeois crisis imposes two basic tasks on revolu-
tionary Marxists: to elaborate a strategy for transition to socialism
which is adapted to the national and international conditions in
advanced capitalist countries with old democratic traditions; and to
combat the hold of reformism over West European workers, with a
view to re-composing the whole labour movement. Debray has nothing
to say about these problems. His text contains many just insights and
a few sound polemics. But the overall thrust is a grotesque misinter-
pretation.
The Heart of The Debate
Besides, the fundamental argument with Régis Debray bears less on
May ’68 than on the reality of the transition to socialism in Western
Europe. Faithful to his early Third-worldism, Debray remains con-
vinced that no revolutionary prospect, however tenuous and unprece-
dented, can exist in Western Europe so long as it continues to occupy
a dominant position in the international division of labour and conse-
quently continues to drain wealth from the Third World.
Since no authentic revolutionary movement can jolt the well-fed,
privileged West, any movement claiming to be revolutionary is really
just a parody, a façade or an imposture. These, it seems to me, are the
presuppositions which shape Debray’s perception of the ‘events’. They
were very widespread during the 60s, when capitalist expansion was
at its strongest and when the rise of colonial revolutions suggested to
some people that the ‘proletarian nations’ were about to supplant the
‘national proletariats’ as the protagonists of revolution. From all the
evidence, these postulates contain a grain of truth buried with a thick
coating of apologetic mystification: precisely what was revealed by the
French and Italian upheavals.
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Must we repeat that the existence of a second base of exploitation in
the Third World certainly widens the margin of manoeuvre for the
Western imperialist bourgeoisie, but that it abolishes neither the
exploitation of the wage-earning masses of the West nor the contradic-
tions inherent in the capitalist mode of production? That the possession
of colonial empires did not save the advanced capitalist countries from
experiencing the years of depression, unemployment and hunger
between the two world wars? Or that the capitalist world has now
entered a phase of prolonged stagnation, intensified international com-
petition and monetary disorder which is forcing the different bourgeois
governments to impose on their respective working classes an austerity
programme which the workers refuse even to discuss? The situation
is pregnant with conflicts and social explosions, and in the very centres
of imperialism.
And if we look back on the last decade must we register the existence
of two hermetically sealed worlds, North and South, never the twain
shall meet? Did not May ’68 demonstrate a complex and reciprocal
relationship to revolution in other parts of the globe? To read Debray
one would think that the international dimension of the May movement
was simply deluded Maoism. Before May there was the Tet offensive,
the Bolivian campaign, the anti-Shah demonstrations of the German
students; after May the demonstrations in Mexico City, the Cordobazo,
the Spring storm of 1970 in the Philippines. Like May these defeats
opened as well as closed a chapter. What are we to make of the over-
throw of the Portuguese dictatorship? Was there not some reciprocal
relationship between the events in Lisbon and those in Luanda? And
what has Teheran to teach us about the antiquated scenarios of ‘old
revolutions’? There are a lot of questions here. Without filling in all
the answers we can be sure that they could given no sustenance to an
undialectical Third-worldism that confines revolution to the most
impoverished zones of theglobe.
‘The European by birth’, as Debray calls him, is not obliged to wait
for demography to do his work for him, meanwhile contenting himself
with ‘scraping his grain of sand from the ramparts of the fortress-West,
by lending a hand to the “barbarians” struggling outside the walls
against our sophisticated barbarism’. He can do more and better;
prepare the conditions for an assault from within.
Henri Weber
Paris, March 1979
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