Monday, May 30, 2005
Bravo to the No Vote on the European Constitution!
I am glad that the people of France have rejected the European Constitution. I haven't exactly read the thing, but I've seen a lot of convincing reasons to oppose it. One of the most convincing arguments came from the World Socialist Web Site, in their editorial of May 25, in which they pointed out:
Whoever votes “yes” is not voting “for Europe,” as the proponents of the constitution state. Such a vote legitimises the bourgeois state, capitalist private property, militarism and imperialist foreign policy. It legitimises a Europe in which the elementary interests of the population are subordinated to the profit interests of the major corporations and banks.
Among the basic principles laid down in the constitution are “an internal market where competition is free and undistorted” and “a highly competitive social market economy.” This makes the domination of the interests of big business over all aspects of social life a constitutional principle.
Such a stipulation is historically unprecedented. The great bourgeois constitutions in modern history — the American Constitution of 1787 and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789 — do not defend capitalist market relations, but rather “the natural, unalienable and sacred rights of man.” They defend the social and democratic rights of the individual citizen, not the power or free movement of capital. The text of the EU document resembles more the statutes of a “Europe Inc.” than a democratic constitution. By raising the market and competition to the status of constitutional axioms, it in effect declares that any fundamental social struggle is unconstitutional.
A current WSWS article reveals the class divisions over this document, making me even more happy that the "no" votes won:
According to one poll, three quarters of all wage workers, two thirds of all employees, and the majority of farmers voted “no,” while executives and academics generally voted “yes.” More than 80 percent of the supporters of the government parties (Chirac’s UMP and the “free market” liberal Union for the French Democracy—UDF) voted for the constitution, while a majority of Socialist Party and Green supporters voted “no,” in defiance of the recommendations of their respective party leaders.
And if all that information isn't convincing enough, here are some comments from ZNet:
Today France will vote in a referendum about the European Constitution. That constitution was made by a commission that were appointed, and not voted for. They discussed and wrote the constitution in a semi-closed way, having open meetings to engage with the citizens, but without ever giving those citizens the possibility to have a say, to make amendments or to change anything in the draft....
The constitution centralises even more power in the hand of the undemocratic and often neoliberal EU commission. The EU commission gets a fast track in trade issues, something the former trade commissioner Pascal Lamy, now head of the WTO strongly pushed for. The constitution clearly speaks about a military union and states that the nation states have to increase military expenses in their national budgets (without an end date which means that military expenses should grow eternally). The neoliberal economic policy is fixed in the treaty; it gives priority to the fight against inflation over unemployment - an economic dogma creating problems in the entire world....
Regardless whether the vote is on the Maastricht Treaty, the Economic and Monetary Union or the European Constitution, the debate is about neoliberal economic policy, privatisations, and lack of democracy. The biggest issue is democracy, people want more of it and that is the reason they vote no and they use what is left of it, to vote against the will of the establishments that decided to call for a referendum....
So, from what I can see, France's rejection of the European Constitution is a victory. It's a defensive victory, simply blocking something bad rather than building something else that it is better. But it is the result of the people democratically defending their own interests in defiance the wishes and extensive propaganda of the ruling class.
Whoever votes “yes” is not voting “for Europe,” as the proponents of the constitution state. Such a vote legitimises the bourgeois state, capitalist private property, militarism and imperialist foreign policy. It legitimises a Europe in which the elementary interests of the population are subordinated to the profit interests of the major corporations and banks.
Among the basic principles laid down in the constitution are “an internal market where competition is free and undistorted” and “a highly competitive social market economy.” This makes the domination of the interests of big business over all aspects of social life a constitutional principle.
Such a stipulation is historically unprecedented. The great bourgeois constitutions in modern history — the American Constitution of 1787 and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789 — do not defend capitalist market relations, but rather “the natural, unalienable and sacred rights of man.” They defend the social and democratic rights of the individual citizen, not the power or free movement of capital. The text of the EU document resembles more the statutes of a “Europe Inc.” than a democratic constitution. By raising the market and competition to the status of constitutional axioms, it in effect declares that any fundamental social struggle is unconstitutional.
A current WSWS article reveals the class divisions over this document, making me even more happy that the "no" votes won:
According to one poll, three quarters of all wage workers, two thirds of all employees, and the majority of farmers voted “no,” while executives and academics generally voted “yes.” More than 80 percent of the supporters of the government parties (Chirac’s UMP and the “free market” liberal Union for the French Democracy—UDF) voted for the constitution, while a majority of Socialist Party and Green supporters voted “no,” in defiance of the recommendations of their respective party leaders.
And if all that information isn't convincing enough, here are some comments from ZNet:
Today France will vote in a referendum about the European Constitution. That constitution was made by a commission that were appointed, and not voted for. They discussed and wrote the constitution in a semi-closed way, having open meetings to engage with the citizens, but without ever giving those citizens the possibility to have a say, to make amendments or to change anything in the draft....
The constitution centralises even more power in the hand of the undemocratic and often neoliberal EU commission. The EU commission gets a fast track in trade issues, something the former trade commissioner Pascal Lamy, now head of the WTO strongly pushed for. The constitution clearly speaks about a military union and states that the nation states have to increase military expenses in their national budgets (without an end date which means that military expenses should grow eternally). The neoliberal economic policy is fixed in the treaty; it gives priority to the fight against inflation over unemployment - an economic dogma creating problems in the entire world....
Regardless whether the vote is on the Maastricht Treaty, the Economic and Monetary Union or the European Constitution, the debate is about neoliberal economic policy, privatisations, and lack of democracy. The biggest issue is democracy, people want more of it and that is the reason they vote no and they use what is left of it, to vote against the will of the establishments that decided to call for a referendum....
So, from what I can see, France's rejection of the European Constitution is a victory. It's a defensive victory, simply blocking something bad rather than building something else that it is better. But it is the result of the people democratically defending their own interests in defiance the wishes and extensive propaganda of the ruling class.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
In Memory of the Memorial Day Massacre, Let's Honor Those Who Died in Class War
This weekend is a three-day weekend for most people in the U.S., in observance of Memorial Day, the time when we are supposed to honor soldiers who’ve died in war. For many people, it really signifies other things, such as the unofficial beginning of summer (several weeks before the official one), or the time to find a good sale. But leaders and other public figures make sure to remind us what Memorial Day is really, supposedly for.
And thanks in part to the activities of those leaders, in the public realm - in the media, etc. - Memorial Day isn’t so much a day to mourn the dead as it is to wave the flag and glorify war. It’s unfortunate, because the dead should be honored, and it’s terrible for all these young soldiers to die in the awful ways that they die during a war, but… I really don’t feel like participating in a collective glorification of war or jingoism, especially since these displays seem to have gotten so much worse here in the U.S. after September 11, 2001. In general, I oppose organized war as we know it in the capitalist system; I suppose my approach is, No War But The Class War.
Fortunately – or I should say, very unfortunately – Memorial Day Weekend also gives us plenty of “opportunity” to honor those who’ve died in the class war. One such opportunity is the crushing of the Paris Commune that I mentioned earlier; the height of that massacre was reached on May 28. But here in the U.S., in the past century, we also had something called the Memorial Day Massacre, a much smaller-scale massacre but still a horrific reminder of the brutality of the class struggle as it has occurred right in our “home” country.
Some information about this event can be found on a Memorial Day Massacre Web page that is part of a project about the East Side of Chicago and its “Industrial Sites.” Among several descriptions that I saw on the Net, I thought this summed the event up most efficiently:
On Memorial Day, 1937 an incident took place in an open stretch of prairie near the Republic Steel plant that ranks as one of the bloodiest confrontations in American labor history. In 1937 steel union organizers declared war on Little Steel, which included Republic, Bethlehem, Inland, and Youngstown sheet and tube. Republic hired off duty Chicago policemen as security for the plant. On the morning of May 30, Republic strikers held a rally in a hall near the plant. Later 300 of them marched toward the main entrance of the mill. As the strikers approached the front gate they were intercepted by a line of police and were greeted by gunshots. Ten of the strikers were killed, shot in the back or side, and many more were injured. 125 men, women, and sustained some sort of injury. The dead were all participants in or sympathizers with the Little Steel strike, called by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), a group affiliated with the CIO. 35 of the injured were members of the Chicago Police Department, who were acting as plant security for Republic Steel. A plaque at the foot of a flag pole in a parking lot of a nearby union hall lists the names of the victims of this incident.
But when you visit this Web site, what you will probably notice first is the black-and-white stills above that description, a couple of which are stunning, classic portraits of police brutality. They may remind you of things that happened before and things that happened since. Such things, of course, will continue to happen as long as there is a class system and as long as there is class struggle.
Another site comes to us courtesy of the Illinois Labor History Society. This site, entitled Memorial Day Massacre of 1937, provides another still of footage, with a description that includes a couple of more detailed paragraphs about the location where the original rally started, and where the event is commemorated today:
As a show of support, hundreds of SWOC sympathizers from all around Chicago gathered on Memorial Day at Sam's Place, where the SWOC had its strike headquarters. After a round of speeches, the crowd began a march across the prairie and toward the Republic Steel mill. They were stopped midway by a formation of Chicago police. While demonstrators in front were arguing for their right to proceed, police fired into the crowd and pursued the people as they fled. Mollie West, a Typographical Union Local 16 member and a youthful demonstrator at the time, still recalls the command addressed to her: "Get off the field, or I'll put a bullet in your back."
The union hall of USWA Local 1033 now occupies the area where Sam's Place once stood. A memorial to the ten who died can be found there at 11731 Ave. O, about a 10-minute drive from Pullman. From Pullman take I-94 northbound to the 103rd St exit. Go east to Torrence Ave, then south to 106th. Turn left past the rotting hulk of Wisconsin Steel. When you cross the Calumet River watch for Ave O. Turn south to 117th. Look for the flagpole....
Incidentally, that description of the location is interesting because of something else it mentioned. I imagined most people probably have the same reaction I did when I saw that word “Pullman”… It kind of reminded me of another incident at which a good number of strikers were killed. As sardonically summed up at the site from Recollection Books:
The Pullman Railroad Strike, largest industrial strike to date in U.S. history, eventually broken by federal government troops, resulted in at least 24 strikers killed, & Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Grover Cleveland suspended the constitutional right to assembly (the ability of any two or more people to meet in public) in seven states.
And, of course, if we’re talking about Chicago, especially in the merry month of May, the mind quickly turns to thoughts about Haymarket - yet a third very famous and brutal massacre in the class struggle, and we haven’t even gotten out of the Chicago area yet!
But let’s stop here… Suffice to say that if I choose to honor those who died in war on this Memorial Day Weekend, I’ll honor those who died in class war.
And thanks in part to the activities of those leaders, in the public realm - in the media, etc. - Memorial Day isn’t so much a day to mourn the dead as it is to wave the flag and glorify war. It’s unfortunate, because the dead should be honored, and it’s terrible for all these young soldiers to die in the awful ways that they die during a war, but… I really don’t feel like participating in a collective glorification of war or jingoism, especially since these displays seem to have gotten so much worse here in the U.S. after September 11, 2001. In general, I oppose organized war as we know it in the capitalist system; I suppose my approach is, No War But The Class War.
Fortunately – or I should say, very unfortunately – Memorial Day Weekend also gives us plenty of “opportunity” to honor those who’ve died in the class war. One such opportunity is the crushing of the Paris Commune that I mentioned earlier; the height of that massacre was reached on May 28. But here in the U.S., in the past century, we also had something called the Memorial Day Massacre, a much smaller-scale massacre but still a horrific reminder of the brutality of the class struggle as it has occurred right in our “home” country.
Some information about this event can be found on a Memorial Day Massacre Web page that is part of a project about the East Side of Chicago and its “Industrial Sites.” Among several descriptions that I saw on the Net, I thought this summed the event up most efficiently:
On Memorial Day, 1937 an incident took place in an open stretch of prairie near the Republic Steel plant that ranks as one of the bloodiest confrontations in American labor history. In 1937 steel union organizers declared war on Little Steel, which included Republic, Bethlehem, Inland, and Youngstown sheet and tube. Republic hired off duty Chicago policemen as security for the plant. On the morning of May 30, Republic strikers held a rally in a hall near the plant. Later 300 of them marched toward the main entrance of the mill. As the strikers approached the front gate they were intercepted by a line of police and were greeted by gunshots. Ten of the strikers were killed, shot in the back or side, and many more were injured. 125 men, women, and sustained some sort of injury. The dead were all participants in or sympathizers with the Little Steel strike, called by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), a group affiliated with the CIO. 35 of the injured were members of the Chicago Police Department, who were acting as plant security for Republic Steel. A plaque at the foot of a flag pole in a parking lot of a nearby union hall lists the names of the victims of this incident.
But when you visit this Web site, what you will probably notice first is the black-and-white stills above that description, a couple of which are stunning, classic portraits of police brutality. They may remind you of things that happened before and things that happened since. Such things, of course, will continue to happen as long as there is a class system and as long as there is class struggle.
Another site comes to us courtesy of the Illinois Labor History Society. This site, entitled Memorial Day Massacre of 1937, provides another still of footage, with a description that includes a couple of more detailed paragraphs about the location where the original rally started, and where the event is commemorated today:
As a show of support, hundreds of SWOC sympathizers from all around Chicago gathered on Memorial Day at Sam's Place, where the SWOC had its strike headquarters. After a round of speeches, the crowd began a march across the prairie and toward the Republic Steel mill. They were stopped midway by a formation of Chicago police. While demonstrators in front were arguing for their right to proceed, police fired into the crowd and pursued the people as they fled. Mollie West, a Typographical Union Local 16 member and a youthful demonstrator at the time, still recalls the command addressed to her: "Get off the field, or I'll put a bullet in your back."
The union hall of USWA Local 1033 now occupies the area where Sam's Place once stood. A memorial to the ten who died can be found there at 11731 Ave. O, about a 10-minute drive from Pullman. From Pullman take I-94 northbound to the 103rd St exit. Go east to Torrence Ave, then south to 106th. Turn left past the rotting hulk of Wisconsin Steel. When you cross the Calumet River watch for Ave O. Turn south to 117th. Look for the flagpole....
Incidentally, that description of the location is interesting because of something else it mentioned. I imagined most people probably have the same reaction I did when I saw that word “Pullman”… It kind of reminded me of another incident at which a good number of strikers were killed. As sardonically summed up at the site from Recollection Books:
The Pullman Railroad Strike, largest industrial strike to date in U.S. history, eventually broken by federal government troops, resulted in at least 24 strikers killed, & Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Grover Cleveland suspended the constitutional right to assembly (the ability of any two or more people to meet in public) in seven states.
And, of course, if we’re talking about Chicago, especially in the merry month of May, the mind quickly turns to thoughts about Haymarket - yet a third very famous and brutal massacre in the class struggle, and we haven’t even gotten out of the Chicago area yet!
But let’s stop here… Suffice to say that if I choose to honor those who died in war on this Memorial Day Weekend, I’ll honor those who died in class war.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
A Tale of Two Patties in 1975
Patti Smith once said:
Honey, the way you play guitar makes me feel so, makes me feel so masochistic. The way you go down low deep into the neck and I would do anything, and I would do anything and Patty Hearst, you're standing there in front of the Symbionese Liberation Army flag with your legs spread, I was wondering will you get it every night from a black revolutionary man and his women or whether you really did and now that you're on the run what goes on in your mind, your sisters they sit by the window, you know your mama doesn't sit and cry and your daddy, well you know what your daddy said, Patty, you know what your daddy said, Patty, he said, he said, he said, "Well, sixty days ago she was such a lovely child, now here she is with a gun in her hand."...
Hey Joe, where you gonna, where you gonna run to,
Where you gonna run to, Joe, where you gonna run to ?
Go get a cover.
I'm gonna go down South, I'm gonna go down South to Mexico,
I'm going down, down, down to Mexico where a man can be free
No one's gonna put a noose around my neck,
No one is gonna give me life, no.
I'm goin' down to Mexico, I'm going down.
You're not going to hear 'em stand there
And look at the stars as big as holes in the arms
And the stars like a back truck electric flag
And I'm standing there under that flag with your carbine
Between my legs, you know I felt so free of death beyond me
I felt so free, the F.B.I. is looking for me baby,
But they'll never find me, no, they can hold me down like a
And I'm still on the run and they can speculate what I'm fee
But daddy, daddy, you'll never know just what I was feelin',
But I'm sorry I am no little pretty little rich girl,
I am nobody's million dollar baby, I am nobody's Patsy anymore
I'm nobody's million dollar baby, I'm nobody's Patsy anymore
And I feel so free.
- From Sixty Days/Hey Joe, a medley (of sorts)
Monday night, I saw this documentary on PBS about the Patty Hearst kidnapping and the SLA. It was OK (I guess), though I sort of didn’t like the way it seemed (at least to me) to implicate most '70s left radicalism as being connected to the SLA through some sort of naivete that naturally disappeared in everyone as they got older and assumed responsibilities and then dropped radicalism altogether. (I never could relate to that sort of generalization… I was a teenager by the mid-‘70s – though a few years younger than these folks – and I just got more radical as I got older, decade after decade... Maybe a little politically smarter too (see below) but overall, just more radical.) But, on the other hand, what would you expect from public television? Maybe it’s a little less right-wing than regular TV, but so what? If it’s being shown on PBS, it’s got to meet the approval of at least some corporate patrons (“Death to the fascist insect!” as the SLA would say)…
Anyway, in late 1975 or early '76, right when this whole episode was still fresh on everybody’s mind, I heard the song/poem above by Patti Smith. I think Patti Smith had just come out with this album "Horses," her first, which I heard on a late night show on New York City’s WNEW FM, back when it was still something of a free form station. But I remember listening to this particular song and some other odd stuff by her (mainly poetry) on some other, noncommercial station – if I’m remembering right, it was actually WBAI. And I think I was listening to it on the headphones under the covers very late at night (I was 14 years old at the time)…
And, looking back on this, I’ve got to say… Both Patti Smith and Patty Hearst bring on such waves of nostalgia... I suppose that I was rooting for Patty Hearst when she did those bank robberies; a lot of kids were at the time. I conveniently didn't notice the murder, I suppose. And I was a little too young and naïve and ignorant even to think about political tactics and the point at which the unwise becomes the simply absurd. (Although some of the goals were not so bad. Food distribution to the poor – you can’t knock that. Seems a little better to me than, for example, committing terrorism for some fanatical quasi-religious group that really just ends up lining the pockets of manipulative multi-millionaires.) Anyway, what rebellious teenager of the 1970s couldn’t identify at least a little with Patty Hearst at the time that she got photographed with that gun in her hand? Plus, frankly, being a healthy heterosexual boy of 13 or 14, I probably did have some hormonal reaction to seeing this sort-of-cool-looking chick holding a big gun. (Actually, that’s a tendency that it took me a long time to outgrow. Just eight years ago, I got into some trouble with some feminists on a lefty listserve for over-praising the virtues of these rifle-wielding women in a movie about the Mujeres Libres of the Spanish Civil War. But we need not get into that.)
Still, much as I’d rooted for Patty Hearst, or maybe exactly because I so naively, youthfully had, I was awfully disappointed about the way she turned on her comrades after she got arrested. And I remember that, back in the mid-1970s, it wasn’t so unusual to feel that disappointment, either. There was even a semi-popular left-liberal radio jock – Alex Bennett – who carried on extensively one night about how Patty Hearst had sold her comrades out. (Though maybe, like any good radio jock, he did that just to piss people off. How I miss hearing radio jocks who boldly set out to piss off right wingers instead of liberals...)
And, quite frankly, I still feel pretty much the same about this case. I don’t much believe that stuff about “Stockholm syndrome,” much less the nonsense about “brainwashing.” I guess she must have gone through a hard time, and it’s hard to say or understand what kind of trauma something like a kidnapping might bring. Maybe the kidnapping had brought on some kind of depression that made Patty Hearst more acutely attuned to some emptiness in her shallow heiress’s life. But I get the impression that there was something within her that must have drawn her to the excitement and romanticism of being with a small group of self-styled revolutionary outlaws robbing banks. And at the age of 19, you can’t always make the finest distinctions about who has sound ideas and who’s a deluded wing nut (one of the reasons I have some trouble with entirely youth-based “revolutionary” movements and always did). But I think Patti Smith was onto something in her poem/song when she spoke about Patty no longer being a “Patsy” and feeling “so free.” There’s also a touch of dark humor in that piece, and a little of that playing for shock value that was very typical of the then-youthful Patti Smith. Nonetheless, all things considered (as the PBS people like to say), I still feel as though that little song offers a better insight than any part of the PBS documentary or any other coverage that I've seen.
And I wonder, after several of Patty Hearst's comrades were murdered in that L.A. shootout, and after others did so much jail time (after she turned against them)... Was it really right for Ms. Hearst to get off so easy and to become such a famously cute (albiet kitschy) nostalgia piece? Notwithstanding that the kidnapping alone was a terrible thing to happen to a 19-year-old girl (whatever the particular details of her captivity – which no one will ever be completely sure about)... Would she ever have gotten off so easy had she not been the rich heiress that she was? I doubt that a poor non-white girl who’d undergone a similar experience (abducted for some other reason, let’s say) would have gotten away with much of anything after participating in her former captors’ violent antics so much. But maybe this is something that’s so obvious, it’s not worth saying, really.
At the end of the PBS documentary, there was a clipping of a more recent Patty Hearst on some talk show… And, to tell the truth, she looked kind of ugly to me – not outside, but certainly inside. I get the impression that this was partly the intention of the documentary; it succeeded at being quite unflattering about the heiress’s general character in the end. But regardless of how the documentary depicted her, I think I would have felt the same. When all is said and done (as it has been for a long time), I do not like this Patty Hearst. But I still love Patti Smith.
Honey, the way you play guitar makes me feel so, makes me feel so masochistic. The way you go down low deep into the neck and I would do anything, and I would do anything and Patty Hearst, you're standing there in front of the Symbionese Liberation Army flag with your legs spread, I was wondering will you get it every night from a black revolutionary man and his women or whether you really did and now that you're on the run what goes on in your mind, your sisters they sit by the window, you know your mama doesn't sit and cry and your daddy, well you know what your daddy said, Patty, you know what your daddy said, Patty, he said, he said, he said, "Well, sixty days ago she was such a lovely child, now here she is with a gun in her hand."...
Hey Joe, where you gonna, where you gonna run to,
Where you gonna run to, Joe, where you gonna run to ?
Go get a cover.
I'm gonna go down South, I'm gonna go down South to Mexico,
I'm going down, down, down to Mexico where a man can be free
No one's gonna put a noose around my neck,
No one is gonna give me life, no.
I'm goin' down to Mexico, I'm going down.
You're not going to hear 'em stand there
And look at the stars as big as holes in the arms
And the stars like a back truck electric flag
And I'm standing there under that flag with your carbine
Between my legs, you know I felt so free of death beyond me
I felt so free, the F.B.I. is looking for me baby,
But they'll never find me, no, they can hold me down like a
And I'm still on the run and they can speculate what I'm fee
But daddy, daddy, you'll never know just what I was feelin',
But I'm sorry I am no little pretty little rich girl,
I am nobody's million dollar baby, I am nobody's Patsy anymore
I'm nobody's million dollar baby, I'm nobody's Patsy anymore
And I feel so free.
- From Sixty Days/Hey Joe, a medley (of sorts)
Monday night, I saw this documentary on PBS about the Patty Hearst kidnapping and the SLA. It was OK (I guess), though I sort of didn’t like the way it seemed (at least to me) to implicate most '70s left radicalism as being connected to the SLA through some sort of naivete that naturally disappeared in everyone as they got older and assumed responsibilities and then dropped radicalism altogether. (I never could relate to that sort of generalization… I was a teenager by the mid-‘70s – though a few years younger than these folks – and I just got more radical as I got older, decade after decade... Maybe a little politically smarter too (see below) but overall, just more radical.) But, on the other hand, what would you expect from public television? Maybe it’s a little less right-wing than regular TV, but so what? If it’s being shown on PBS, it’s got to meet the approval of at least some corporate patrons (“Death to the fascist insect!” as the SLA would say)…
Anyway, in late 1975 or early '76, right when this whole episode was still fresh on everybody’s mind, I heard the song/poem above by Patti Smith. I think Patti Smith had just come out with this album "Horses," her first, which I heard on a late night show on New York City’s WNEW FM, back when it was still something of a free form station. But I remember listening to this particular song and some other odd stuff by her (mainly poetry) on some other, noncommercial station – if I’m remembering right, it was actually WBAI. And I think I was listening to it on the headphones under the covers very late at night (I was 14 years old at the time)…
And, looking back on this, I’ve got to say… Both Patti Smith and Patty Hearst bring on such waves of nostalgia... I suppose that I was rooting for Patty Hearst when she did those bank robberies; a lot of kids were at the time. I conveniently didn't notice the murder, I suppose. And I was a little too young and naïve and ignorant even to think about political tactics and the point at which the unwise becomes the simply absurd. (Although some of the goals were not so bad. Food distribution to the poor – you can’t knock that. Seems a little better to me than, for example, committing terrorism for some fanatical quasi-religious group that really just ends up lining the pockets of manipulative multi-millionaires.) Anyway, what rebellious teenager of the 1970s couldn’t identify at least a little with Patty Hearst at the time that she got photographed with that gun in her hand? Plus, frankly, being a healthy heterosexual boy of 13 or 14, I probably did have some hormonal reaction to seeing this sort-of-cool-looking chick holding a big gun. (Actually, that’s a tendency that it took me a long time to outgrow. Just eight years ago, I got into some trouble with some feminists on a lefty listserve for over-praising the virtues of these rifle-wielding women in a movie about the Mujeres Libres of the Spanish Civil War. But we need not get into that.)
Still, much as I’d rooted for Patty Hearst, or maybe exactly because I so naively, youthfully had, I was awfully disappointed about the way she turned on her comrades after she got arrested. And I remember that, back in the mid-1970s, it wasn’t so unusual to feel that disappointment, either. There was even a semi-popular left-liberal radio jock – Alex Bennett – who carried on extensively one night about how Patty Hearst had sold her comrades out. (Though maybe, like any good radio jock, he did that just to piss people off. How I miss hearing radio jocks who boldly set out to piss off right wingers instead of liberals...)
And, quite frankly, I still feel pretty much the same about this case. I don’t much believe that stuff about “Stockholm syndrome,” much less the nonsense about “brainwashing.” I guess she must have gone through a hard time, and it’s hard to say or understand what kind of trauma something like a kidnapping might bring. Maybe the kidnapping had brought on some kind of depression that made Patty Hearst more acutely attuned to some emptiness in her shallow heiress’s life. But I get the impression that there was something within her that must have drawn her to the excitement and romanticism of being with a small group of self-styled revolutionary outlaws robbing banks. And at the age of 19, you can’t always make the finest distinctions about who has sound ideas and who’s a deluded wing nut (one of the reasons I have some trouble with entirely youth-based “revolutionary” movements and always did). But I think Patti Smith was onto something in her poem/song when she spoke about Patty no longer being a “Patsy” and feeling “so free.” There’s also a touch of dark humor in that piece, and a little of that playing for shock value that was very typical of the then-youthful Patti Smith. Nonetheless, all things considered (as the PBS people like to say), I still feel as though that little song offers a better insight than any part of the PBS documentary or any other coverage that I've seen.
And I wonder, after several of Patty Hearst's comrades were murdered in that L.A. shootout, and after others did so much jail time (after she turned against them)... Was it really right for Ms. Hearst to get off so easy and to become such a famously cute (albiet kitschy) nostalgia piece? Notwithstanding that the kidnapping alone was a terrible thing to happen to a 19-year-old girl (whatever the particular details of her captivity – which no one will ever be completely sure about)... Would she ever have gotten off so easy had she not been the rich heiress that she was? I doubt that a poor non-white girl who’d undergone a similar experience (abducted for some other reason, let’s say) would have gotten away with much of anything after participating in her former captors’ violent antics so much. But maybe this is something that’s so obvious, it’s not worth saying, really.
At the end of the PBS documentary, there was a clipping of a more recent Patty Hearst on some talk show… And, to tell the truth, she looked kind of ugly to me – not outside, but certainly inside. I get the impression that this was partly the intention of the documentary; it succeeded at being quite unflattering about the heiress’s general character in the end. But regardless of how the documentary depicted her, I think I would have felt the same. When all is said and done (as it has been for a long time), I do not like this Patty Hearst. But I still love Patti Smith.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Vive La Commune!
This week (May 21-28) marks the bleak anniversary of the brutal crushing of the Paris Commune. As succinctly described in Marxists.org's Timeline of the Civil War in France:
The French army spent eight days massacring workers, shooting civilians on sight. The operation was led by Marshal MacMahon, who would later become president of France. Tens of thousands of Communards and workers are summarily executed (as many as 30,000); 38,000 others imprisoned and 7,000 are forcibly deported.
However, before this happened, there were at least two months of working class revolution that went beyond everything that had preceded it and left a legacy that would greatly inspire egalitarians up to the present. Fruits of our Labour recently featured a very good post, Paris Commune : From Rebellion to Revolution. Here, Reasoninrevolt aptly wrote:
The Paris Commune marks the beginning of the new world for the working classes, and the beginning of the end for class society. This was quite clear at the time to the reactionaries, and continues to be the thing which they fear most to this very day. The Commune was fueled by the moving spirit of a social revolution, a movement of the lowest classes to seize true freedom and equality for all men. The blood of the martyrs is why we raise the red flag to this day!
...And it's also why many raise the black flag, in the tradition of Louise Michel.
______________________
P.S. Marxist.org has an impressive list of links on their Paris Commune page; Anarchist Archives has a pretty good list, too. And apparently, a good book about Louise Michel came out in the past year; I was very intrigued by a review at Socialism Today.
The French army spent eight days massacring workers, shooting civilians on sight. The operation was led by Marshal MacMahon, who would later become president of France. Tens of thousands of Communards and workers are summarily executed (as many as 30,000); 38,000 others imprisoned and 7,000 are forcibly deported.
However, before this happened, there were at least two months of working class revolution that went beyond everything that had preceded it and left a legacy that would greatly inspire egalitarians up to the present. Fruits of our Labour recently featured a very good post, Paris Commune : From Rebellion to Revolution. Here, Reasoninrevolt aptly wrote:
The Paris Commune marks the beginning of the new world for the working classes, and the beginning of the end for class society. This was quite clear at the time to the reactionaries, and continues to be the thing which they fear most to this very day. The Commune was fueled by the moving spirit of a social revolution, a movement of the lowest classes to seize true freedom and equality for all men. The blood of the martyrs is why we raise the red flag to this day!
...And it's also why many raise the black flag, in the tradition of Louise Michel.
______________________
P.S. Marxist.org has an impressive list of links on their Paris Commune page; Anarchist Archives has a pretty good list, too. And apparently, a good book about Louise Michel came out in the past year; I was very intrigued by a review at Socialism Today.
Friday, May 20, 2005
And Revolution is a Powder for Your Wash, and Solidarnosc is a Brand of Vodka
Half of an old Mekons song has been running through my mind the past few hours. The song is "Funeral," from the 1991 album, The Curse of the Mekons. The half of the song that I've been thinking about goes like this:
Your dead are buried, ours are reborn
You clean up the ashes while we light the fire
They're queuing up to dance on socialism's grave
This funeral is for the wrong corpse
This is my testimony, a dinosaur's confession
But how can something really be dead when it hasn't even happened?
Democracy is an alibi
The peaceful country is an ordered cemetery
What you call a sane man is now an impotent man
Smart bombs replace the dumb bombs
We can aim right into someone's kitchen
Hard rice sprays from the cooking pot
Into the eyes' delicate jelly
When the natural order gets unruly
The cost of living starts going up
That makes a man's life worth so much less?
In the boring land of the snoring men
Where happiness is the taste of a sausage
And revolution is a powder for your wash
Glory in the greatest of a toilet soap
And a man falls in love with a motor...
I think this song started going through my head because of a nicely written and moving slice of life that I encountered in a blog that I discovered during the last couple of days, while touring a British corner of the blogosphere. These lines from an April 27 post at A Few Words Before We Go should explain exactly why the song above came back to me:
...Coming closer to the car, beneath the famous red-and-white flag that I used to wear on a badge on the lapel of my school blazer, I saw the words:
WODKA POLSKA
- those words, and the URL www.solidarnosc.co.uk. All it was, was a lousy advert for vodka. And a lousy advert for vodka that had appropriated - and presumably placed some copyright on - the use of the name and symbols of Solidarity.
The only thing that stopped me saying "fuck off" this time was speechlessness. Speechlessness on my part, provoked by shamelessness on theirs. A lack of shame, a lack of dignity, an entire lack of appreciation of the difference between what something is worth and what you can pay for it....
I'm glad the Berlin Wall came down. It was one of the greatest and most important political memories of my life. I'm glad even though Wenceslas Square has been turned into an advertising hoarding, Moscow into a brothel and Yugoslavia into a war zone. You cannot support that which will not stand, and I am glad the Wall came down. But sometimes, you know, on some days, I am less equally glad than on others.
I don't think I could have said it better myself - better than EJH, the author of the blog above, or better than the Mekons.
Your dead are buried, ours are reborn
You clean up the ashes while we light the fire
They're queuing up to dance on socialism's grave
This funeral is for the wrong corpse
This is my testimony, a dinosaur's confession
But how can something really be dead when it hasn't even happened?
Democracy is an alibi
The peaceful country is an ordered cemetery
What you call a sane man is now an impotent man
Smart bombs replace the dumb bombs
We can aim right into someone's kitchen
Hard rice sprays from the cooking pot
Into the eyes' delicate jelly
When the natural order gets unruly
The cost of living starts going up
That makes a man's life worth so much less?
In the boring land of the snoring men
Where happiness is the taste of a sausage
And revolution is a powder for your wash
Glory in the greatest of a toilet soap
And a man falls in love with a motor...
I think this song started going through my head because of a nicely written and moving slice of life that I encountered in a blog that I discovered during the last couple of days, while touring a British corner of the blogosphere. These lines from an April 27 post at A Few Words Before We Go should explain exactly why the song above came back to me:
...Coming closer to the car, beneath the famous red-and-white flag that I used to wear on a badge on the lapel of my school blazer, I saw the words:
WODKA POLSKA
- those words, and the URL www.solidarnosc.co.uk. All it was, was a lousy advert for vodka. And a lousy advert for vodka that had appropriated - and presumably placed some copyright on - the use of the name and symbols of Solidarity.
The only thing that stopped me saying "fuck off" this time was speechlessness. Speechlessness on my part, provoked by shamelessness on theirs. A lack of shame, a lack of dignity, an entire lack of appreciation of the difference between what something is worth and what you can pay for it....
I'm glad the Berlin Wall came down. It was one of the greatest and most important political memories of my life. I'm glad even though Wenceslas Square has been turned into an advertising hoarding, Moscow into a brothel and Yugoslavia into a war zone. You cannot support that which will not stand, and I am glad the Wall came down. But sometimes, you know, on some days, I am less equally glad than on others.
I don't think I could have said it better myself - better than EJH, the author of the blog above, or better than the Mekons.
Monday, May 16, 2005
37 Years Ago in Paris, France
Some very interesting things happened 37 years ago in Paris, France. The week from May 13 to May 20 marked the crucial peak of this highly significant student-worker revolt. There are a number of timelines or articles found on the Net describing the events that unfolded that week. My favorite comes from Ken Knabb's Bureau of Public Secrets (excerpted from his translation of the Situationist International Anthology), beginning with the occupation of the Sorbonne:
The occupation of the Sorbonne that began Monday, May 13, has opened a new period in the crisis of modern society. The events now taking place in France foreshadow the return of the proletarian revolutionary movement in all countries. The movement that had already advanced from theory to struggle in the streets has now advanced to a struggle for control of the means of production. Modernized capitalism thought it had finished with class struggle — but it’s started up again! The proletariat supposedly no longer existed — but here it is again.
By surrendering the Sorbonne, the government hoped to pacify the student revolt, which had already succeeded in holding a section of Paris behind its barricades an entire night before being recaptured with great difficulty by the police. The Sorbonne was given over to the students in the hope that they would peacefully discuss their university problems. But the occupiers immediately decided to open it to the public to freely discuss the general problems of the society. This was thus a prefiguration of a council, a council in which even the students broke out of their miserable studenthood and ceased being students.
To be sure, the occupation was never complete: a chapel and a few remaining administrative offices were tolerated. The democracy was never total: future technocrats of the UNEF [National Student Union] claimed to be making themselves useful and other political bureaucrats also tried their manipulations. Workers’ participation remained very limited and the presence of nonstudents soon began to be questioned. Many students, professors, journalists and imbeciles of other professions came as spectators.
In spite of all these deficiencies, which are not surprising considering the disparity between the scope of the project and the narrowness of the student milieu, the exemplary nature of the best aspects of this situation immediately took on an explosive significance. Workers were inspired by the free discussion and the striving for a radical critique, by seeing direct democracy in action. Even limited to a Sorbonne liberated from the state, this was a revolutionary program developing its own forms. The day after the occupation of the Sorbonne the Sud-Aviation workers of Nantes occupied their factory. On the third day, Thursday the 16th, the Renault factories at Cléon and Flins were occupied and the movement began at the NMPP and at Boulogne-Billancourt, starting at Shop 70. Three days later 100 factories have been occupied and the wave of strikes, accepted but never initiated by the union bureaucracies, is paralyzing the railroads and developing into a general strike.
Another fascinating account of the same events can be found in the Daily Bleed. I particularly like this account because its one of the very few that I've seen, outside of Ken Knabb's Situationist translations, that emphasize the council communist nature of the revolt. It's important to keep in mind that this happened in the spring of 1968, a time when most people thought such a thing simply could not happen in a "developed" or "advanced capitalist" place such as Paris, France:
On the morning after the 24-hour general strike, the young workers at the Sud-Aviation plant near Nantes seized & occupied the factory, & with the Internationale blasting over the public address system, they imprisoned the management in the factory offices & fortified the plant against police attack. One day later, managers were seized at the Renault plant in Cléon & workers occupied the Renault plant at Flins. The imprisonment of the managers caused an uproar in the government, & the CGT sent a special delegation to intervene.
Within two weeks, more than 10 million workers had seized hundreds of factories, mines, shipyards, government offices, a nuclear facility & even at least one whole town. Wave upon wave of strikes cut off all public transportation, air, rail & sea service, communications and even the banks & the Paris stock exchange. In one of the longest strikes, 13,000 producers, journalists & technicians shut down the government-run radio & television, raising slogans like "The police on the screen means the police in your home." & at one point, the technicians responsible for communication between the Ministry of the Interior & police headquarters went on strike.
Paris - the heart of France - was paralyzed, and the whole country was in turmoil. Everywhere public officials were held up to ridicule.
A mood of autogestion (self-management) took hold. Some workers such as utility workers continued production, assuring regular supplies of gas & electricity for the community. In Cheviré workers refused to readmit managers to the plant despite an offered increase in monthly wages averaging 150 francs. One worker explained, "The managing staff has been away for two weeks & everything is going fine. We can carry on production without them." At the Atomic Energy Center in Saclay, the Central Action Committee organized production so that when gasoline was running low in the area, 30,000 liters were delivered with the compliments of the Finac strikes in Nanterre. In Vitry at the Rhone-Poulenc factories, workers established direct exchange with nearby farmers & made their own contacts with chemical workers in Western Europe.
In the city of Nantes, food & gasoline distribution, traffic control & other activities in the life of the city were conducted by an elected Central Strike Committee - which seized the town hall for six days & even developed its own currency.
Of course, there were elements within the uprising that were extremely conscious of the connection to other struggles throughout the 20th Century that had set up workers' councils. As a perfect illustration, here's another inspired communique from the SI anthology quoted on Ken Knabb's site:
In reality, what is necessary now has been necessary since the beginning of the proletarian revolutionary project. It’s always been a question of working-class autonomy. The struggle has always been for the abolition of wage labor, of commodity production, and of the state. The goal has always been to accede to conscious history, to suppress all separations and “everything that exists independently of individuals.” Proletarian revolution has spontaneously sketched out its appropriate forms in the councils — in St. Petersburg in 1905, in Turin in 1920, in Catalonia in 1936, in Budapest in 1956. The preservation of the old society, or the formation of new exploiting classes, has each time been over the dead body of the councils. The working class now knows its enemies and its own appropriate methods of action. “Revolutionary organization has had to learn that it can no longer fight alienation with alienated forms” (The Society of the Spectacle). Workers councils are clearly the only solution, since all the other forms of revolutionary struggle have led to the opposite of what was aimed at.
Now, I don't know if workers' councils are "clearly the only solution," but they may be the essential revolutionary form of workers' struggle even to this day, and the organizing principles behind them remain extremely important to the formation of other revolutionary groups, such as people's assemblies. That's why these forms of revolutionary organization have reemerged in such a strong way in contemporary struggles, seen, for example, in the new workers' councils and people's assemblies of Argentina, Venezuela, and other countries in Latin America.
When looking back at the revolt in Paris of May 1968, I think it's most important to remember the ways that revolution was put into practice, in the factories and on the streets. From what I've seen, a lot of the interest that exists in movements that became prominent in this moment, such as Situationism, focuses on the more abstract philosophical or "cultural" thinking while losing sight of this uprising's radical communist roots. (In fact, many people who profess a great interest in Situationism don't even know that most of the Siutationists were council communists!) There's also a tendency among some to focus solely on the "festival" aspect of the '68 uprising and Situationism, so that revolution becomes equated with having a party in the streets. That is an approach that eventually feels very limited and tired.
Needless to say, the '68 uprising was a very complicated moment, into which people might read many different things. Since it was so quickly defeated (mainly, some would say, by the actions of the trade unions and old-left French communists quickly negotiating with the French government in order to reestablish order), it was hardly a significant concrete success. But it was extremely influential on contemporary revolutionary thought. Probably, its most significant effect, especially after so many years of a Left dominated by Leninist parties, was to return the focus of revolutionary struggle to questions about alienation and autonomy, about people being able to manage their own lives and control their own fates. This was an emphasis that repeatedly emerged in the communiques, propaganda, and literature.
But often when I see this stuff from '68, I can't help thinking that the revolutionaries could have been a little better at remembering (or, in some cases, a little less quick at dismissing) the basic struggle for bread. I guess we shouldn't forget that this stuff happened right after an extended period of capitalist boom, at a time when even many leftist revolutionaries had begun to think that the struggle for subsistence had become much less of a concern, so that people in the "advanced" nations, especially, didn't have to think as much about getting access to the most basic material things. The circumstances look a little different these days, as a lot of things happened over four decades to show that we hadn't had the subsistence part all sewn up: the advancement of neoliberalism and the consequent return of harsh capitalist conditions for many people even in the "advanced" nations; the decline of workers' rights and apparent retreat in workers' struggle (connected somewhat to major changes in the organization of work); the greater globalization of exploitation; the recent history of numerous capitalist crises (which actually was just beginning in 1968, with the collapse of the dollar-gold link) and all the stagnation and decline...
So, nowadays, especially if you're someone who's struggling, it may seem pertinent at many times to look more to eras such as the 1880s, 1905 to 1914, or even 1929. But, to use a sort of cliche, you can take what's relevant from any moment and discard some of the rest. I like the Situationist statements above exactly because they show the commonalities of proletarian struggle from one era to the next. Short-lived and limited though it may have been, the revolt in Paris in May of '68 definitely deserves a place in the list of great revolutionary uprisings to look back on as we seek some inspiration to move ahead.
The occupation of the Sorbonne that began Monday, May 13, has opened a new period in the crisis of modern society. The events now taking place in France foreshadow the return of the proletarian revolutionary movement in all countries. The movement that had already advanced from theory to struggle in the streets has now advanced to a struggle for control of the means of production. Modernized capitalism thought it had finished with class struggle — but it’s started up again! The proletariat supposedly no longer existed — but here it is again.
By surrendering the Sorbonne, the government hoped to pacify the student revolt, which had already succeeded in holding a section of Paris behind its barricades an entire night before being recaptured with great difficulty by the police. The Sorbonne was given over to the students in the hope that they would peacefully discuss their university problems. But the occupiers immediately decided to open it to the public to freely discuss the general problems of the society. This was thus a prefiguration of a council, a council in which even the students broke out of their miserable studenthood and ceased being students.
To be sure, the occupation was never complete: a chapel and a few remaining administrative offices were tolerated. The democracy was never total: future technocrats of the UNEF [National Student Union] claimed to be making themselves useful and other political bureaucrats also tried their manipulations. Workers’ participation remained very limited and the presence of nonstudents soon began to be questioned. Many students, professors, journalists and imbeciles of other professions came as spectators.
In spite of all these deficiencies, which are not surprising considering the disparity between the scope of the project and the narrowness of the student milieu, the exemplary nature of the best aspects of this situation immediately took on an explosive significance. Workers were inspired by the free discussion and the striving for a radical critique, by seeing direct democracy in action. Even limited to a Sorbonne liberated from the state, this was a revolutionary program developing its own forms. The day after the occupation of the Sorbonne the Sud-Aviation workers of Nantes occupied their factory. On the third day, Thursday the 16th, the Renault factories at Cléon and Flins were occupied and the movement began at the NMPP and at Boulogne-Billancourt, starting at Shop 70. Three days later 100 factories have been occupied and the wave of strikes, accepted but never initiated by the union bureaucracies, is paralyzing the railroads and developing into a general strike.
Another fascinating account of the same events can be found in the Daily Bleed. I particularly like this account because its one of the very few that I've seen, outside of Ken Knabb's Situationist translations, that emphasize the council communist nature of the revolt. It's important to keep in mind that this happened in the spring of 1968, a time when most people thought such a thing simply could not happen in a "developed" or "advanced capitalist" place such as Paris, France:
On the morning after the 24-hour general strike, the young workers at the Sud-Aviation plant near Nantes seized & occupied the factory, & with the Internationale blasting over the public address system, they imprisoned the management in the factory offices & fortified the plant against police attack. One day later, managers were seized at the Renault plant in Cléon & workers occupied the Renault plant at Flins. The imprisonment of the managers caused an uproar in the government, & the CGT sent a special delegation to intervene.
Within two weeks, more than 10 million workers had seized hundreds of factories, mines, shipyards, government offices, a nuclear facility & even at least one whole town. Wave upon wave of strikes cut off all public transportation, air, rail & sea service, communications and even the banks & the Paris stock exchange. In one of the longest strikes, 13,000 producers, journalists & technicians shut down the government-run radio & television, raising slogans like "The police on the screen means the police in your home." & at one point, the technicians responsible for communication between the Ministry of the Interior & police headquarters went on strike.
Paris - the heart of France - was paralyzed, and the whole country was in turmoil. Everywhere public officials were held up to ridicule.
A mood of autogestion (self-management) took hold. Some workers such as utility workers continued production, assuring regular supplies of gas & electricity for the community. In Cheviré workers refused to readmit managers to the plant despite an offered increase in monthly wages averaging 150 francs. One worker explained, "The managing staff has been away for two weeks & everything is going fine. We can carry on production without them." At the Atomic Energy Center in Saclay, the Central Action Committee organized production so that when gasoline was running low in the area, 30,000 liters were delivered with the compliments of the Finac strikes in Nanterre. In Vitry at the Rhone-Poulenc factories, workers established direct exchange with nearby farmers & made their own contacts with chemical workers in Western Europe.
In the city of Nantes, food & gasoline distribution, traffic control & other activities in the life of the city were conducted by an elected Central Strike Committee - which seized the town hall for six days & even developed its own currency.
Of course, there were elements within the uprising that were extremely conscious of the connection to other struggles throughout the 20th Century that had set up workers' councils. As a perfect illustration, here's another inspired communique from the SI anthology quoted on Ken Knabb's site:
In reality, what is necessary now has been necessary since the beginning of the proletarian revolutionary project. It’s always been a question of working-class autonomy. The struggle has always been for the abolition of wage labor, of commodity production, and of the state. The goal has always been to accede to conscious history, to suppress all separations and “everything that exists independently of individuals.” Proletarian revolution has spontaneously sketched out its appropriate forms in the councils — in St. Petersburg in 1905, in Turin in 1920, in Catalonia in 1936, in Budapest in 1956. The preservation of the old society, or the formation of new exploiting classes, has each time been over the dead body of the councils. The working class now knows its enemies and its own appropriate methods of action. “Revolutionary organization has had to learn that it can no longer fight alienation with alienated forms” (The Society of the Spectacle). Workers councils are clearly the only solution, since all the other forms of revolutionary struggle have led to the opposite of what was aimed at.
Now, I don't know if workers' councils are "clearly the only solution," but they may be the essential revolutionary form of workers' struggle even to this day, and the organizing principles behind them remain extremely important to the formation of other revolutionary groups, such as people's assemblies. That's why these forms of revolutionary organization have reemerged in such a strong way in contemporary struggles, seen, for example, in the new workers' councils and people's assemblies of Argentina, Venezuela, and other countries in Latin America.
When looking back at the revolt in Paris of May 1968, I think it's most important to remember the ways that revolution was put into practice, in the factories and on the streets. From what I've seen, a lot of the interest that exists in movements that became prominent in this moment, such as Situationism, focuses on the more abstract philosophical or "cultural" thinking while losing sight of this uprising's radical communist roots. (In fact, many people who profess a great interest in Situationism don't even know that most of the Siutationists were council communists!) There's also a tendency among some to focus solely on the "festival" aspect of the '68 uprising and Situationism, so that revolution becomes equated with having a party in the streets. That is an approach that eventually feels very limited and tired.
Needless to say, the '68 uprising was a very complicated moment, into which people might read many different things. Since it was so quickly defeated (mainly, some would say, by the actions of the trade unions and old-left French communists quickly negotiating with the French government in order to reestablish order), it was hardly a significant concrete success. But it was extremely influential on contemporary revolutionary thought. Probably, its most significant effect, especially after so many years of a Left dominated by Leninist parties, was to return the focus of revolutionary struggle to questions about alienation and autonomy, about people being able to manage their own lives and control their own fates. This was an emphasis that repeatedly emerged in the communiques, propaganda, and literature.
But often when I see this stuff from '68, I can't help thinking that the revolutionaries could have been a little better at remembering (or, in some cases, a little less quick at dismissing) the basic struggle for bread. I guess we shouldn't forget that this stuff happened right after an extended period of capitalist boom, at a time when even many leftist revolutionaries had begun to think that the struggle for subsistence had become much less of a concern, so that people in the "advanced" nations, especially, didn't have to think as much about getting access to the most basic material things. The circumstances look a little different these days, as a lot of things happened over four decades to show that we hadn't had the subsistence part all sewn up: the advancement of neoliberalism and the consequent return of harsh capitalist conditions for many people even in the "advanced" nations; the decline of workers' rights and apparent retreat in workers' struggle (connected somewhat to major changes in the organization of work); the greater globalization of exploitation; the recent history of numerous capitalist crises (which actually was just beginning in 1968, with the collapse of the dollar-gold link) and all the stagnation and decline...
So, nowadays, especially if you're someone who's struggling, it may seem pertinent at many times to look more to eras such as the 1880s, 1905 to 1914, or even 1929. But, to use a sort of cliche, you can take what's relevant from any moment and discard some of the rest. I like the Situationist statements above exactly because they show the commonalities of proletarian struggle from one era to the next. Short-lived and limited though it may have been, the revolt in Paris in May of '68 definitely deserves a place in the list of great revolutionary uprisings to look back on as we seek some inspiration to move ahead.
