6 ms·

50th Anniversary of May 1968, Paris: Memories of an Illusory Revolution

57 points by behoove 8y ago

behoove 8y ago
I found these reflections interesting. Since she was there at the time and doesn't draw any simplistic conclusions, I thought the essay might make an interesting HN post. It's a political site, but the article is not so politicized. This one is slightly more ideological but still more personal and also quite interesting: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2018/05/some-reflections-on-may-1968-now-half-a-century-ago-.html http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2018/05/some-reflecti.... I found it pretty consistent with Diana Johnstone's piece.
- amaccuish 8y ago
  Thank you for this. It sad that these protests came to nothing. Marx is more relevant than ever. Do you have any good french language sources?
  - duncan_bayne 8y ago
    Marx is relevant? Socialist intellectuals have been moving the goalposts for decades, after failure upon failure to achieve their stated goals. http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/hicks-ep-chart-56-evolution-of-socialist-strategies.gif http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/hicks... To put it bluntly, Marxism has failed dismally in every place and at every time it's been tried.
    - dang 8y ago
      Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. The parent dipped a toe in that tarpit, but that's no reason to jump in. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - amaccuish 8y ago
        Sorry was merely stating why I was greatful for the source. Perhaps I should have phrased differently. Sorry :)
duncan_bayne 8y ago
It's fortunate for France that the revolution came to nothing. Marxist policies have destroyed every country that has embraced them. USSR. North Korea. Cuba. Vietnam. China. Those that have recovered have done so to the extent that they have abandoned Marxism. Economically speaking, even fascism (e.g. China) is better than Marxism. It's probably better from a human rights perspective, too. This was first published in 1988, but is still highly relevant: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/marxist-dreams-soviet-realities https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/marxist-dreams-... How many died altogether? No one will ever know. What is certain is that the Soviet Union has been the worst reeking charnel house of this whole awful twentieth century, worse even than the one the Nazis created (but then they had less time). The sum total of deaths due to Soviet policy — in the Stalin period alone — deaths from the collectivization and the terror-famine, the executions and the Gulag, is probably on the order of 30,000,000.
- walshemj 8y ago
  You do know that France has a tradition of citizens going to the barricades going back to the 18th century :-) Let alone the French revolutions role in supporting the AWI
  - duncan_bayne 8y ago
    Yes! In particular, I knew about the message behind their gift of the Statue of Liberty.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  As the aricle notes, May 1968 was not a Marxist uprising. If anything, established Marxist forces are blamed for deflating the momentum of May '68 and, through the unions, simply being content with extracting some concessions for workers.
  - eeks 8y ago
    That could not be more true. Mai 68 is now considered in some thought circles to be the first “color revolution”. The main figureheads come from French upper middleclass bourgeoisie (Cohn-bendit, Sauvageot, Geismar, Goupil) and derailed legitimate blue collar upsets to push their liberal/libertarian agenda in order to shake up the conservative government led by General de Gaulle. At that very moment, losing ground, de Gaulle flees France for Baden-Baden to regroup with General Massu. After that meeting de Gaulle decides to resign, leaving the room to the banker Pompidou, much more open to the Anglo-saxon “weltanshauung” that the General spent his life fighting.
duxup 8y ago
French posters and Spanish civil war posters were so great. The events (the Spanish Civil War) was terrible, but man the art in the posters is always very compelling.
pydook 8y ago
I see it as a irony that in 68 there were many communist activists in the West, while Czechoslovakia - socialist country - was invaded by 'allied' eastern bloc armies. Reason was that local politics shifted towards what was called "communism with a human face", meaning it introduced freedom of expression. Any attempt to implement Marx ideas resulted in unimaginable amount of suffering and injustice, scarring nations for decades to come. I am dismayed that he still has so many followers, and quite a lot of them seem to be Westerners.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  It's because the West never really experienced mass-scale communism. The two things closest to it are: (1) some socialist ideas implemented in rich countries like in Scandinavia, where you pay huge taxes, but at the same time you receive quite a lot from the state in different forms, (2) small-scale communist communes, such as the Longo Maï which, as far as I can tell, still functions since '68, although the spirit is different - and they accept donations, so it's difficult to say the commune is self-sustaining (and nowadays it's practically impossible anyway).
dandare 8y ago
As someone who grew up behind the iron curtain in the Soviet sphere of influence Czechoslovakia I see this period through a very different optics. > the Vietnamese national liberation struggle ... the victory was even more clearly just and inevitable. There was another revolution in 1968, the Prague Spring calling for a "communism with a human face". It was crushed under the wheels of Soviet tanks that de-facto occupied Czechoslovakia until the velvet revolution in 1989. The author may have her heart in the right place, but as of her brains, she is one of many useful idiots of communism.
- dang 8y ago
  Please read and follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That means not propagating ideological battle and not name-calling.
  - dandare 8y ago
    My apologies.
  - duncan_bayne 8y ago
    Don't you think the very presence of this article is propagation of an ideological battle? And what is more relevant to the topic at hand than the personal experience of someone who grew up under Soviet rule?
baud147258 8y ago
I've never understood how May 68 is so important. What was changed afterward that makes this period so important to be remembered 50 years later? Could someone explain this?
- lkrubner 8y ago
  1968 was a crucial turning point in the economic history of France. After 1968 France enjoyed almost 20 years when the working class saw large gains in wages. Income inequality shrunk dramatically. See here: http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/05/08/may-1968-and-inequality/#xtor=RSS-32280322 http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/05/08/may-1968-and-inequ...
  - baud147258 8y ago
    But I don't why this is so important that this particular months has to be commemorated, long after any economic changes has faded away.
lkrubner 8y ago
1968 was a crucial turning point in the economic history of France. After 1968 France enjoyed almost 20 years when the working class saw large gains in wages. Income inequality shrunk dramatically. See here: http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/05/08/may-1968-and-inequality/#xtor=RSS-32280322 http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/05/08/may-1968-and-inequ... an excerpt: In France the years 1945-1967 are marked by high rates of growth, but also by a movement of reconstitution of inequalities, with, at one and the same time, a steep rise in the share of profits in national income and the reconstitution of highly ranked salary scales. The share of the 10% highest incomes which was barely 31% of total income in 1945 gradually rose to 38% in 1967. ...The break came in 1968. As a way out of the crisis, General de Gaulle’s government signed the Grenelle Agreements which included, in particular, a rise of 20% in the minimum wage. The minimum wage was officially indexed on average wage gains in 1970 and, most importantly, all the successive governments from 1968 to 1983 felt obliged to grant very high ‘special hikes’ almost every year in a social and political climate far from stable. The result was that the purchasing power of the minimum wage rose in all by over 130% between 1968 and 1983, whereas at the same time the average salary only rose by about 50%, whence a very strong compression of pay inequalities. The break with the previous period was clean and wide-ranging; the purchasing power of the minimum wage had risen by barely 25% between 1950 and 1968, whereas the average salary had more than doubled. Driven by the strong rise in low salaries, throughout the years 1968-1983, the total payroll rose significantly faster than did production; as a result there was a considerable fall in the share of capital in the national income. All this took place at the same time as a reduction in the number of hours worked and an increase in paid holidays.

57 points by behoove 8y ago

I found these reflections interesting. Since she was there at the time and doesn't draw any simplistic conclusions, I thought the essay might make an interesting HN post. It's a political site, but the article is not so politicized. This one is slightly more ideological but still more personal and also quite interesting: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2018/05/some-reflections-on-may-1968-now-half-a-century-ago-.html http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2018/05/some-reflecti.... I found it pretty consistent with Diana Johnstone's piece.

amaccuish 8y ago
Thank you for this. It sad that these protests came to nothing. Marx is more relevant than ever. Do you have any good french language sources?
- duncan_bayne 8y ago
  Marx is relevant? Socialist intellectuals have been moving the goalposts for decades, after failure upon failure to achieve their stated goals. http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/hicks-ep-chart-56-evolution-of-socialist-strategies.gif http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/hicks... To put it bluntly, Marxism has failed dismally in every place and at every time it's been tried.
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. The parent dipped a toe in that tarpit, but that's no reason to jump in. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - amaccuish 8y ago
      Sorry was merely stating why I was greatful for the source. Perhaps I should have phrased differently. Sorry :)

duncan_bayne 8y ago

It's fortunate for France that the revolution came to nothing. Marxist policies have destroyed every country that has embraced them. USSR. North Korea. Cuba. Vietnam. China. Those that have recovered have done so to the extent that they have abandoned Marxism. Economically speaking, even fascism (e.g. China) is better than Marxism. It's probably better from a human rights perspective, too. This was first published in 1988, but is still highly relevant: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/marxist-dreams-soviet-realities https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/marxist-dreams-... How many died altogether? No one will ever know. What is certain is that the Soviet Union has been the worst reeking charnel house of this whole awful twentieth century, worse even than the one the Nazis created (but then they had less time). The sum total of deaths due to Soviet policy — in the Stalin period alone — deaths from the collectivization and the terror-famine, the executions and the Gulag, is probably on the order of 30,000,000.

walshemj 8y ago
You do know that France has a tradition of citizens going to the barricades going back to the 18th century :-) Let alone the French revolutions role in supporting the AWI
- duncan_bayne 8y ago
  Yes! In particular, I knew about the message behind their gift of the Statue of Liberty.
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
As the aricle notes, May 1968 was not a Marxist uprising. If anything, established Marxist forces are blamed for deflating the momentum of May '68 and, through the unions, simply being content with extracting some concessions for workers.
- eeks 8y ago
  That could not be more true. Mai 68 is now considered in some thought circles to be the first “color revolution”. The main figureheads come from French upper middleclass bourgeoisie (Cohn-bendit, Sauvageot, Geismar, Goupil) and derailed legitimate blue collar upsets to push their liberal/libertarian agenda in order to shake up the conservative government led by General de Gaulle. At that very moment, losing ground, de Gaulle flees France for Baden-Baden to regroup with General Massu. After that meeting de Gaulle decides to resign, leaving the room to the banker Pompidou, much more open to the Anglo-saxon “weltanshauung” that the General spent his life fighting.

duxup 8y ago

French posters and Spanish civil war posters were so great. The events (the Spanish Civil War) was terrible, but man the art in the posters is always very compelling.

pydook 8y ago

I see it as a irony that in 68 there were many communist activists in the West, while Czechoslovakia - socialist country - was invaded by 'allied' eastern bloc armies. Reason was that local politics shifted towards what was called "communism with a human face", meaning it introduced freedom of expression. Any attempt to implement Marx ideas resulted in unimaginable amount of suffering and injustice, scarring nations for decades to come. I am dismayed that he still has so many followers, and quite a lot of them seem to be Westerners.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
It's because the West never really experienced mass-scale communism. The two things closest to it are: (1) some socialist ideas implemented in rich countries like in Scandinavia, where you pay huge taxes, but at the same time you receive quite a lot from the state in different forms, (2) small-scale communist communes, such as the Longo Maï which, as far as I can tell, still functions since '68, although the spirit is different - and they accept donations, so it's difficult to say the commune is self-sustaining (and nowadays it's practically impossible anyway).

dandare 8y ago

As someone who grew up behind the iron curtain in the Soviet sphere of influence Czechoslovakia I see this period through a very different optics. > the Vietnamese national liberation struggle ... the victory was even more clearly just and inevitable. There was another revolution in 1968, the Prague Spring calling for a "communism with a human face". It was crushed under the wheels of Soviet tanks that de-facto occupied Czechoslovakia until the velvet revolution in 1989. The author may have her heart in the right place, but as of her brains, she is one of many useful idiots of communism.

dang 8y ago
Please read and follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That means not propagating ideological battle and not name-calling.
- dandare 8y ago
  My apologies.
- duncan_bayne 8y ago
  Don't you think the very presence of this article is propagation of an ideological battle? And what is more relevant to the topic at hand than the personal experience of someone who grew up under Soviet rule?

baud147258 8y ago

I've never understood how May 68 is so important. What was changed afterward that makes this period so important to be remembered 50 years later? Could someone explain this?

lkrubner 8y ago
1968 was a crucial turning point in the economic history of France. After 1968 France enjoyed almost 20 years when the working class saw large gains in wages. Income inequality shrunk dramatically. See here: http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/05/08/may-1968-and-inequality/#xtor=RSS-32280322 http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/05/08/may-1968-and-inequ...
- baud147258 8y ago
  But I don't why this is so important that this particular months has to be commemorated, long after any economic changes has faded away.

lkrubner 8y ago

1968 was a crucial turning point in the economic history of France. After 1968 France enjoyed almost 20 years when the working class saw large gains in wages. Income inequality shrunk dramatically. See here: http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/05/08/may-1968-and-inequality/#xtor=RSS-32280322 http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/05/08/may-1968-and-inequ... an excerpt: In France the years 1945-1967 are marked by high rates of growth, but also by a movement of reconstitution of inequalities, with, at one and the same time, a steep rise in the share of profits in national income and the reconstitution of highly ranked salary scales. The share of the 10% highest incomes which was barely 31% of total income in 1945 gradually rose to 38% in 1967. ...The break came in 1968. As a way out of the crisis, General de Gaulle’s government signed the Grenelle Agreements which included, in particular, a rise of 20% in the minimum wage. The minimum wage was officially indexed on average wage gains in 1970 and, most importantly, all the successive governments from 1968 to 1983 felt obliged to grant very high ‘special hikes’ almost every year in a social and political climate far from stable. The result was that the purchasing power of the minimum wage rose in all by over 130% between 1968 and 1983, whereas at the same time the average salary only rose by about 50%, whence a very strong compression of pay inequalities. The break with the previous period was clean and wide-ranging; the purchasing power of the minimum wage had risen by barely 25% between 1950 and 1968, whereas the average salary had more than doubled. Driven by the strong rise in low salaries, throughout the years 1968-1983, the total payroll rose significantly faster than did production; as a result there was a considerable fall in the share of capital in the national income. All this took place at the same time as a reduction in the number of hours worked and an increase in paid holidays.