Original subtitles

who sews men's shirts at Seligman's for 1.14 francs an hour.

Reason: singing while working. What's in a name?

We wonder about this as children,

writing this name which we forget is ours.

James to Paul, writing on the ears of his dog:

"I wrote your name, Liberty, with the blood of a comrade

"tortured by the Gestapo."

The people of oppressed nations

must not stop fighting for their emancipation.

Persevering in the fight is the way to succeed.

I'm embarrassed to say I give moral support and that's all.

We know that our capacity to fight is limited,

but we'd like to fight as much as we can

and to only give moral support seems rather weak to me.

Could you explain?

You mean the presence, during the strike,

of students supporting workers?

Yes, that's it.

That's... That's important, but it's not...

It's very important, but it isn't what we need to discuss.

Of course we'll be there, that seems obvious,

but where do we go from there?

What is to be done?

We can do what we did last time,

or we can do more, for instance...

It's a case of thinking it over

and deciding when to call a second general strike

and organising it better than the last one,

even though the last one wasn't a total failure

because we did learn a lot of things.

December 1967.

The head of Lycée Condorcet expels a pupil for trade union activity

after a strike organised to protest

against the resumption of classes on a Thursday.

First, then second demonstration.

High-school pupils clash with the police for the first time.

The Russian working class is decimated by the civil war.

In his fight against Stalin

Trotsky is supported by the Red Army and young students.

He hesitates to unleash them against the Party apparatus

which Stalin has taken in hand.

It was a reconnaissance mission.

If, for instance, we wanted to work in Flins,

we'd need to go to Flins.

In order to help the workers in Flins, we'd need to go to Flins

to try to get a job at a factory,

preferably at Renault because it's a tough sector,

and find out and learn what's going on at the factory.

December 1967, Le Figaro and I Express

rebel against the prohibition on campus

of free movement between boys' rooms...

...and girls' rooms.

"The main task of the theatre is to explain the story

"and communicate ideas by means of appropriate distancing effects,"

explains Bertolt Brecht to chemists at a photographic products factory.

Despite the civil strife, which adds to the horror

civilised life resumes at the start of spring

in the territories liberated by Tito.

The partisans have put the railways back in service.

Classes have resumed in some rural schools.

So, for example, the minimum...

It would have been possible to manufacture and bring out cars...

-...and give them away or... - Or exchange them.

Exchange them for other things, or something like that.

And to make red cars rather than black cars.

It's not our tragicomic achievements

that have paved the way for revolutionary progress.

At best, only by giving rise

to a compact and powerful counterrevolution,

by creating an adversary and fighting it

can the party of subversion finally become a truly revolutionary party.

Political class awareness

can only be given to the worker from outside,

that is, from outside the economic fight,

from outside the sphere of labour relations.

If we had a job like that...

Do you think it's important or not?

- It's a way of... - I think it's important.

It's a way of putting the strike in the service

either of propaganda or of information or other things.

For example, if cars were coming out of Renault

spokesmen with loudspeakers could be used

to talk about what was happening in the factory and on the picket lines.

These are small details. However, it's very important.

It shows the workers don't need a boss

to get a factory running on their terms.

- Yes, but it hasn't been done. - No, it hasn't been done. Why not?

I don't know, but you shouldn't see it as a failure.

The way to look at it is...

the general strike was a step in the right direction.

It took the struggle to a higher level.

We couldn't solve the problem of organising

the means of production to serve the strikers, it's true.

That's the next stage.

The next stage is when, say,

we can provide food

using contacts with the countryside with the cooperatives, etc.

It's not just the contacts.

Farmers are chucking away tomatoes and stuff several times a year

and that's not good.

It's feasible as long as, for example,

we stay in contact with them and provide explanations.

For example, we explain to the farmers...

what the strike at Flins means for the workers at Flins

and we tell them that now...

The important thing is for people to feel connected.

So we say, for example, to a cooperative,

"You're going to send supplies to the strikers at this factory

"and we're going to explain what's going on at this factory."

Similarly, we can say...

to workers in the factory,

"This is the situation.

"This is the situation in this place

"and this is why they feel solidarity with you.

"They have demands too." That's how we do it.

What did you mean when you said it wasn't a failure?

I mean, it was a failure, it was a failed revolution, sure.

But it wasn't a failure...

December 1967, IFOP poll.

37% of the French believe that before the year 2000

there will be another world war. 19% have no opinion.

72% think the problem of unemployment won't be solved.

58% think that in France they'll drink more wine than now.

Prison bombed, police station blown up,

perceptions blown up.

Where? In Quimper, in Rennes, in Saint-Brieuc, in Plouzevédé.

When? In January 1968.

To check if a youth is revolutionary or not, there is only one criterion:

does he feel solidarity with the workers and farmers

and is he fighting for their cause?

If he wants it and does it, he is a revolutionary.

If he stops doing it tomorrow,

then he'll be non-revolutionary or counter-revolutionary.

February 1968. In Caen the workers fight.

The police disguise the number of deaths.

...the same bonus for everyone.

- The bonus? - The same for everyone.

The same for everyone. What does it depend on?

The bonus depends on the rate of work,

on the output the factory achieves.

If the output is down, we don't get a bonus.

No doubt this year...

The output agreed by the unions hasn't been reached.

The employer tried to get us to reach it anyway...

- What is the maximum output? - The output is...

- It's unlimited. - The output is decided...

If the employer determines a ceiling,

that ceiling must be reached.

What is it?

- We know nothing. You don't know. - No, we're in the dark.

Do you think it would help you to know, for example...

You realise...

We must attack with non-violence, and defend with violence.

22 March, 1968, in protest against the arrests

at demonstrations organised by Vietnam Day Committees,

600 Nanterre students occupy lecture theatre B1

and rename it "Che Guevara".

At the CFC in Alés, after a 48-hour strike,

the enamel workers obtained a 15-centime pay rise.

The colour workers immediately began to strike for a pay rise too.

Say they were a number of cars short on the assembly line yesterday,

that number would have to be made up tomorrow morning.

But they don't tell the workers that.

They just think there was a shortfall in the output.

For example, two and a half years ago...

when the R16 first came out...

the painting came to a halt, I think.

A car fell into a vat.

That blocked the entire assembly line and they were forced to raid the stock.

History so far has found no other way to advance humanity

than to oppose the violence of the condemned classes

with the revolutionary violence of the progressive class.

Anything can happen right now.

We could almost say everything has happened.

If our story is not believable today, it may be tomorrow,

thanks to scientific research, which is the way of the future.

Then no one will dare consign it to the realm of legends.

It's about destroying the enemy, not judging it.

In villages liberated by the column

they assembled the peasants,

asking them to point out the fascists and shooting them on the spot.

The next revolution will go the same way, serenely.

We know there will be no one to judge us.

The judges will be gone forever. We will have eliminated them.

In Flins we know the whole region geographically now.

We know the Renault factories and the roads.

We know the people, we know where to stay, etc.

If anything happens in Flins,

we'll go into the factories, no problem, because it's home.

We'll circulate in Flins.

If there are actions like the ones we led...

that infamous Friday, Saturday and Monday in Flins,

we know where the roads are and how to attack

and that, in the short term, is extremely important.

We've been observers, I agree, but there's nothing to prevent us

from staying much longer in the factory so we can stop being observers.

As you know, since we work together,

as soon as we spent four months at the factory

and got our cards...

For what it's worth,

we decided to get CGT cards...

1 May. The usual march organised by the CGT from République to Bastille.

A mixture of red and black flags. Students join in.

They get beaten up by the police for shouting,

"Long live the CGT for the class struggle!"

The scrambling of B-52s based in Guam,

although it costs $30,000 to take out the aircraft.

Each plane can transport over ten tons of bombs

and a formation of 50 bombers flying at an altitude of 7,000 metres

can saturate the region.

It's almost impossible to do the same job with ordinary fighters.

Friday the 3rd. A student throws the first paving stone.

...if you like, a combativeness,

an animosity even,

and a more general idea of having a strike,

of stopping work and starting something else,

which is also extremely important.

The issue is not staying for ten days

and then returning to the factory when it all kicks off.

The issue is not staying for three months

and forming a kind of action committee

for direct action.

The issue, at least as far as I'm concerned,

is ending the privileged conditions of students and intellectuals

and ending them completely.

In this society...

In this society the condition for students

- is one of privilege. - We can't escape the class struggle.

- Students always escape it. - No, they never escape it.

They never escape it. That's what...

- You said... - That's the Stalinist angle.

- Student are students, end of. - Student conditions are privileged

in this society.

What we want is a society

in which conditions for students are not especially privileged,

in which conditions for managers are not...

privileged conditions.

But wanting to change those conditions doesn't mean...

We just get out and say, "For now it's a privilege.

"I no longer want to be a student. I want to be..."

That depends what you mean.

I mean, there's an enormous amount of intellectual work

to be done in the middle classes.

It depends what you mean by conditions for workers.

The proletarian is...

labourers and factory workers.

Then there's what sociologists are calling the new strata.

The new strata.

People who work in supermarkets or in Galéries Lafayette.

The thing is...

With respect to this 15%, I don't agree.

Workers in France represent over 15% of the active population.

That's certain. I don't have the figures.

I don't have the figures but it's true.

But I don't understand...

Wait, you raised the issue of management just now.

It's an experience, if you like.

The student is destined...

The main criticism workers have of students is

their Simone Weil approach,

except that they don't know who Simone Weil is,

but they read...

They think, "You're very nice, you're with us,

"but when your studies are over, you'll become the cops."

Friday the 3rd.

The PCF denounces false revolutionaries,

composed of sons of the well-to-do

and led by a German anarchist.

Saturday the 4th.

Daniel Legros, a pastry chef,

is found in possession of a bolt and a switchblade

and sentenced to three months in jail or a fine of 500 francs.

Sunday the 5th. Order to strike.

The police occupy the Latin Quarter en masse.

A University Action Movement pamphlet calls for...

Monday the 6th.

Around 9.30pm, fighting stops in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

The police give chase to the groups remaining in the Odéon area.

Tuesday the 7th. Calls by the Union of Communist Marxist-Leninist Youth.

"Let us brush aside reformist slogans

"and those who unite to try to prevent

"the masses from joining the revolution."

I don't know if they worked in a different way

to the other sociologists they were working with.

Anyway...

I think there's a way people can take action in their own field.

I'm convinced of it.

I think a school teacher...

maybe...

He might not give up being a teacher,

even if he's teaching privately and earning 200,000 per month.

He can teach certain things

to the girls and boys who go to the school

and fight the system that way.

It's not about completely rejecting

this situation under the guise of...

Your reasoning is correct

in a completely static context.

Static how?

Or in a climate that's not at all insurrectionary.

The climate is insurrectionary.

- It's insurrectionary now? - It's not insurrectionary.

There are strikes every day in the region.

But that's not an insurrection.

Sorry, it may not be an insurrection

but nevertheless it's an insurrectionary climate

and it feels like one.

Right, OK, but the questions you pose

are completely crazy questions, because if you say

that the situation must move on and change drastically

by the autumn, so in two or three months,

then in four or five months' time

the questions we have to ask

will be concrete questions.

What do we students today,

who have taken to the streets...

I don't know how many. 30,000 to 40,000.

What happens to all these people?

What can we do to help?

How can we fight alongside the working class?

What should these 40,000 students do

to fight alongside the working class?

You're a student. What do you think?

How do you envision it? You're a student.

I can't answer that. I'm not a student.

How are you not a student?

No, I've never been a student. I've always worked.

I've studied for myself, without taking any exams,

but for ten years now I've rejected

the notion that I'm a student.

It's always offended me deeply.

It's nothing new but it's definite.

I'm proletarian, I work like a proletarian,

or like a revolutionary if I join the guerrillas,

but anyway, the question doesn't arise for me.

I don't take the pill of knowledge in any form whatsoever.

That's a misunderstanding.

It's a misunderstanding of the practice of students.

I don't think it's particularly interesting to know

how we define ourselves in relation to the class struggle,

since...

Everything's interesting.

But I mean, not right now.

How do you see the students helping, Nicolas?

How do you see the students helping?

- That's the problem. - In several ways, naturally.

Firstly, they can educate the workers.

That's one way.

We're counting on the students

to help us and inspire us.

They can teach us things that we...

that elude us at the moment.

- And secondly... - What things, for example?

Because this discussion, I've had it with an intellectual,

a student who showed up from time to time...

Wait, allow me a brief digression.

And he said that the workers needed to be taught class consciousness.

Analysing the recent past

is an imperative task for revolutionaries.

Yes, we talked about that.

We said, try to know who we are and how we function.

Yes, that's it.

Wednesday the 8th.

Mass movement of people in nine regions in the west.

Some 10,000 strikers.

Powerful strike action in the PTT

organised by the General Community of Transistors

and the French Democratic Transistorised Company.

Then secondly, as I said this morning,

they can help create stronger ties between us.

We can hold meetings with students

and workers in the same room and discuss...

Among others. Fourth.

Also, an example of what happens here

is that when we talk to people about what happened

during the strike in Nantes

nobody knows what happened.

- Very few people are aware. - Very few people are aware, yes.

And this is very important.

Nantes and Cléon...

This week some guys from Cléon and Billancourt met

to discuss problems at Billancourt and Cléon.

A girl from Cléon came and a guy from Billancourt.

I raised the issue and said,

"What happened? How did you stop work?"

We knew absolutely nothing about what had happened inside the factory.

The guy replied...

"We stopped for half an hour." Or perhaps it was an hour, I forget.

He said there were certain demands they wanted met,

hence the half-hour strike which turned into an indefinite strike.

We said, "We weren't aware.

"We knew there was a strike

"but we didn't know exactly what had happened."

We didn't go on strike because Cléon was on strike.

We went on strike because we too had demands.

Conveniently, they were the same.

Even with the trade unions, there is a lack of information...

given to workers.

There hasn't been enough liaison between factories:

Cléon, Creil, Sandouville, Billancourt.

If you think about it, it's happening in a fairly limited area

but there was no point in doing it on a limited scale.

Doing it on a national scale was about establishing a precedent.

That way we could pass to a higher level of relations,

so-called relations of dual power.

Against the power of the state

there is the power of the workers who are organising in the factories

which is a relatively centralised power

that isn't necessarily bureaucratic.

It's more of a centralisation or a dissemination of information,

with everybody giving their experience of what they've done.

Then we can coordinate,

once we know exactly what's happened at such and such a site

and say to people,

if we want to get the factories working again,

"At this place they need this. Let's make that happen.

"And there they need that."

Once you pass to that phase,

you hold a power which opposes the power of the state

and the state can't do anything about it.

We needed an organisation

which had absolute authority, free of tradition,

and which would assemble workers who were dispersed and unconnected.

This organisation needed to be a confluence

of all the revolutionary currents inside the proletariat.

It had to be capable of initiative and automatic self-governing.

The main thing was to get it off the ground in 24 hours.

Are there many who want to take over the power at Renault?

Not to take over the power, but would it interest

someone who makes an R16

to decide whether to make an R16 or an R8?

You, for example?

It's hard because first you have to know about cars

and how to make them.

We're not able to do that.

No, I agree,

but it would interest you, like the students?

Yes, I'd like to say...

I'd have a model in mind that I wanted to create.

I think that would be great.

And discuss it with...

Yes, discuss it with the management.

- The management! - Not the management, but...

It would still be under management.

I was going to say comrades and you said management.

- The comrades, then. - The comrades' management.

Or to say, for example,

we don't need cars.

There are comrades who have devised shortcuts at the factory.

There are comrades who have devised shortcuts at the factory.

They have found a new way of making one small part

which saves us a bit of time and earns us a bit of money.

We do that anyway but theoretically we're not allowed to.

Do you see? It saves us time.

Say you see a hole that's redundant and will never be used,

instead of putting adding putty, you don't.

The car will run just as well.

It will be worth the same.

Do you think it's desirable for these things to be linked

to protest strikes, or not?

Or not right away, or it depends?

Once we have taken over the factories.

In my opinion, it's the basis of everything.

Until now, people have been made to believe

that the basis of everything wasn't that,

but...

being able to decide what to produce...

For us, cars are useful, because basically...

In the end, the slogan "Don't make cars, make buses,"

is true.

When we go to work in the morning,

when we go to the university in the morning at nine,

at a time when everyone's going to work,

it takes much longer than if we were going there...

People start work at 7.30 not nine.

In the factory, yes, but all the office workers

and department store employees, who work hard too,

they start work at nine.

I'm talking about Paris. When we see the number of cars...

If you make buses instead of cars, there'll be buses everywhere.

The traffic would circulate better.

There are traffic problems in Paris.

Look at the problem in the USSR, for example.

People in the USSR

wanted to set about making cars.

People wanted cars.

In fact...

if you want a service to get around the city, for example...

if you set up a public transport service

and organise it in an intelligent way,

you can get very good results.

It costs much less and allows you to do other things,

instead of everyone plonking their arse in their car.

Why do people want to have a car for work?

Because taking the metro at eight in the morning or six at night

is completely disgusting.

It's exhausting. You're not paid to do it. On the contrary, you pay to go there.

Students and intellectuals

can always write books to try to...

They've seen what's going on and it doesn't satisfy them at all.

They want implementation

and implementation isn't achieved like that.

It's done communally, with the mobilisation of everyone.

I think one of the demands, like you said,

should be the right to influence what you produce.

Today we want to say,

"We want to produce this much per day.

"We want to work this many hours.

"We think this is the way to work, in these working conditions."

These are demands that don't arise now

but they are demands that should arise later.

Because, for example, when you demand...

Let's take the example of social security

and prescriptions, which...

The bourgeoisie likes nothing better than to eradicate everything.

It wasn't enough to imprison free love

in the sordid appropriation of a marriage contract

and release it at set times for adulterous needs.

It wasn't content with jealousy and lies to poison passion.

It has managed to separate lovers from the embrace of their actions.

That's how it was done.

There were cases of sickness

which were troubling, and had to be resolved.

They could afford to spend a certain amount

on their workers' health

because that affected the company's health too.

Now they're talking about a deficit in social security,

because people are taking better care of themselves.

And it's too expensive.

It's expensive and they no longer want to pay

because health is considered to be something which...

People can be healthy enough for 400 francs.

There's no need to spend 800 francs.

Spending 400 francs on health will suffice to produce cars.

"Mr Bukharin, I ask you once again, here before the proletarian court..."

"Will you confess to the world which espionage service hired you:

"German, Japanese or English?"

- Bukharin: -"None?

We may not agitate in the same way but we can maintain a presence,

a constant presence, right?

We're counting on it.

Do you think that would give you a plan

to resume the strike in the factories, etc?

Yes, I think so.

Because my idea is, if there are many doubts,

if there are many doubts...

and if the situation is repeated in the universities...

it would provide an impetus for the masses to strike again.

Don't you think they would say,

"Oh, those students, those leftists, those agitators,

"they're still stirring things up and causing a nuisance"?

- Instead of really... - Yes, a little...

Don't you think, on the contrary, it would be a wake-up call?

Thus the circle closes.

As a deterrence...

- Mao Tse-Tung's thinking outlines... - A strategy of fight to the death.

- The sources are the same. - Behind Lenin, Hegel.

The consequences reversed.

The atom bomb is not a condition of universal order.

- But of universal illusion. - A paper tiger.

Saturday the 11th at 2am.

The Interior Minister wants the streets cleared.

It takes over three hours...

...for riot police to clear Rue Gay-Lussac.

- Ten times... -...they encounter barricades.

- Ten times they are forced back. - Despite the tear gas.

Despite incendiary and other grenades.

We need workers to explain the problems in factories to students.

I think the takeover of the university

has led to direct contact between workers and students

and if that contact continues, we can take things further.

I think we would feel even more united

in the face of problems arising with the government.

First, there is the fact,

whether we open in January or not

and it seems it may be better at the end of November,

that we'll still have the premises, which is very important.

That way, when the faculty returns, we can take it over, no problem.

I think there'll be plenty of interest, as long as we explain...

Perhaps students aren't used to demonstrating,

to spending the month of May in the street, walking around.

That could pose problems for us, agitating...

Sunday the 12th.

De Gaulle's government responds to the university with bloody violence.

- Daniel... -...Cohn-Bendit is a werewolf.

Here Radio Pravda, transmitted from the station,

tells of the long wait.

- Daniel... -...Cohn-Bendit at 5am

calls on trade unions and asks them to organise a general strike.

Second paradox.

Kennedy offers Soviets what he has just refused them,

to limit conflict over the Cuban missiles crisis.

Despite allusions to Berlin, Khrushchev agrees.

Sunday the 12th. The trade unions decide to defy the government

and call a general strike of 24 hours.

We can't do that. We can only agitate.

All we can do is occupy the premises.

That's possible.

It's clear that terrorism in the cities can play no decisive role

and at the same time it endangers political order.

But if it's subordinate to the main struggle,

from a military point of view it has strategic value

since it ties up the repressive apparatus in futile protection efforts.

We should lead a protest in the universities.

That would keep us on the battlefield for a while.

What sort of protest?

For example, a protest for us

might be going to a class where a teacher is talking bullshit,

a history teacher, for example, talking bullshit about the Popular Front,

and saying to him, "Sir, you're a stupid idiot!

"You're full of crap. Get out!" and forcing him out.

I think that's logical in a sense.

But there are other kinds of protests.

There are also explanations at meetings, etc.

But to start again from here...

I'm not sure, I think...

launching attacks with Molotov cocktails

isn't the right way to achieve anything.

No, I agree.

It can help, and it has helped.

It always helps,

but to resume a protest of the kind we saw in May...

I think the demonstrations in May...

No...

This organisation of language must be poetic

because it reflects what makes language possible.

What makes language possible is what separates sounds from shapes

and organises them into propositions.

Say you sow unrest...

Say you sow unrest at the university and we sow unrest at the factory,

I think that would be good.

Yes, sowing unrest means upsetting the functioning of the university.

Stopping it or blocking it.

Yes, or modifying it a bit, because“.

Yes, modifying it.

Yes, but in the system...

Without that surface which stands out from the mass of shapes,

that line separating things from propositions,

the sounds would stick to the shapes and propositions would be impossible.

The organisation of language

cannot be separated from the poetic discovery of surface.

It's a question of going back up to the surface and discovering...

After three months they'll realise that we mean business.

There is one thing.

A demonstration of workers and students at the start of term...

Monday the 13th. The first red flags fly again in Paris.

The bourgeoisie sees the red Sorbonne transformed into a blackboard.

Say things get out of hand in your faculties

and the riot police stop you from working,

that would all lead to serious unrest.

Yes, but before that...

What I'd like to happen before that,

as soon as the summer holidays are over,

is for meetings to be held between students and workers

where we can hold lengthy discussions

before stirring up any shit, before embarking on anything.

Yes, no one's going to be starting anything on their own this time.

No, no fooling around, like we have been doing.

After those meetings we can say, "We have made a plan.

"This is what we're doing. Now we can begin."

You young people say your thing and we'll say ours

and we agree on a point and off we go.

We don't start from a vacuum.

I think that would be good

but we must be able to connect and hold meetings together.

- You entered the Cafe Terminus? - Yes.

The bomb was in the waistband of your trousers?

No, in my coat pocket.

Why were you at the Café Terminus?

First I went to the Café de la Paix

but there weren't enough people so I went to Terminus and waited.

- Why? - Until there were more people.

- You despise human life? - No, bourgeois life.

- You did all you could to save yours. - Yes, to start again.

Anyway...

about our demands...

Our demands are never valid.

At any rate...

As far as the demands made are concerned,

what made them interesting

was that the employer couldn't accept them.

- He couldn't. - We knew he wouldn't accept them.

He couldn't accept them and so saying, "We want this and we want that"

was like saying, "We want nothing from you."

Six or seven months ago we asked for a pay rise.

Say I'm in a small business and I ask for seven francs, I'll be granted five.

We know that if we ask for eight francs the boss will give us five or four francs.

We know they won't give us a 20-franc or a 10-franc rise.

Yes, it's a pedagogical strategy,

to say, "We want this and that."

It's a way of rallying the workers, or rather the team,

without saying, "We want a socialist society"

and starting a big 15-page definition with flowery language.

It's saying, "This is what we want."

We realise this society isn't capable of...

Even in that respect it's not capable of satisfying our demands.

Because“.

This is related to the fact that the social demands...

the social demands made by the unions are not political.

They're only political in the sense that,

even if the powers that be wanted to concede anything...

Say they had the will to meet those demands,

they'd be unable to do it.

And proving that they're unable to do it

by making such strong demands

that they're unable to meet them

shows that we've had enough of them and then it becomes political.

To reject the powers that be is political.

Yes, when the team said 100,000 francs minimum per month,

that meant... that meant, "Get lost!"

But there are still lots of people for whom

saying "100,000 francs per month" doesn't mean...

It doesn't mean the same.

- That needs to be explained. - That's true.

That needs to be explained at length.

The workers' demonstrations...

At the last big demonstration by workers

we called for Pompidou to get out.

What does getting Pompidou out mean?

It means the government will be replaced by another.

It's not...

No, but...

It was a way of saying...

But take the slogans, for example. There were things...

How the slogans started, how they were taken up...

Because some strange things happened with us.

At our demonstrations

we didn't have slogans.

We went to the demonstrations without any slogans.

And I don't know how, but we came up with the most interesting slogans.

- There was a sorting process. - So it was a choice.

Yes, the guys launched into something,

some completely stupid slogan.

There'd be ten guys screaming it, then it fizzled out.

Then someone launched another slogan.

The ten people in the front row joined in

and five minutes later 10,000 people were repeating it.

With the slogans...

We sensed the Communist Party had been overwhelmed at one point.

It was when they started to talk after some demonstration or other,

maybe the one on the 13th,

when...

At Rhodiaceta the management posted a notice on the door

threatening a lock-out if the workshops stopped work.

- 13 May. - Fraternisation.

I'm convinced that the shouts of "French Algeria"

will lead to a historical movement

as important as the Chinese Revolution.

Sud Aviation workers in Nantes

take over the factories and kidnap the boss.

The ruling class won't give up power unless there is violence.

Every workers' struggle that wrests social power from this class

should expect to face the most ruthless repression.

Insofar as this protest takes the form of deeds and action.

That's what I was saying.

For 30 or 40 years

only the Communist Party and the CGT have defended them.

Even if they feel it doesn't work and has gone to hell

they don't know what to do.

Unless they are offered replacement formulas

and organisational frameworks that are serious

and won't break down after two or three days

these guys won't necessarily follow.

I don't agree. I'd like to return to the problem of spontaneity.

I also think...

the first round, so to speak...

I agree with you.

Wednesday the 15th.

The CGT asks workers to meet in their workplace

to determine their demands.

Wednesday the 15th. The Movement of 22 March

calls for the formation of revolutionary action committees.

Wednesday the 15th. "Comrades," shout protesters at Odéon

to the bus drivers trying to block their way.

"When will you stop identifying with those who oppose you?"

One and the same text, or even one and the same letter,

both constitutes and represents subconscious desire.

The analysis questions the common and convenient distinction

between a term of reality...

I work with Séguy. I am behind him.

I support the policy of the CGT.

- We voted him in. - It means something.

20 years of trade unionism, of political life.

The only thing in life that interests me is politics.

"When you're a little less excited, we can talk."

If you like, it mobilised a certain number of people.

It gave them a certain confidence.

That's just it, the revolt...

The events of May-June have served that purpose.

The first round served the purpose of demystifying the CGT.

It wasn't decisive. It was...

- It wasn't decisive... - It was a good blow.

It was more than a good blow. People are still with the CGT.

They've just learned certain things. In my opinion, the CGT can't change.

It tried to change after the Grenelle Agreements

but the party, or rather Waldeck Rochet, forbade it.

We still haven't heard the last word

on what went on between Waldeck Rochet and Séguy.

In any case, Séguy lost.

The Communist Party really commands and will continue to command the CGT.

The CGT can't move anymore.

As for the workers, there's been a kind of rupture

and while there's a kind of former allegiance

in the next action, this fidelity will be totally gone.

That is, in the October action...

We face this type of difficulty.

The language spoken uses certain turns of phrase.

A method for conveying political or poetic knowledge

can only be established by increasing...

...make the figures speak to bring language alive.

Friday the 17th.

The strike, with factory sit-ins, extends throughout France.

Thousands dead and injured in Barcelona

where Stalinists and bourgeois attack the exchange occupied by anarchists.

Saturday the 18th. Steelworkers, textile workers,

shipyard workers, petrochemical workers...

Two million strikers greet De Gaulle on his return from Romania.

A former French cultural colony.

Marx introduced not only a revolutionary method to the Far East

but also conceptual problems which were left unresolved

and contributed to bloody failures in the Chinese Revolution until 1935.

Monday the 20th, Citroen workers occupy their factory for the first time.

We must criticise people

but we must do it based on their conditions.

There are guys who still rely on the Communist Party or the CGT.

No, that's not true.

- Yes, it is. - I don't trust the CGT anymore.

There is a minority that still blindly follows

the CGT slogans, which aren't the same anymore.

Now it's about recovery, etc, and during a protest...

Our train arrived in Odessa at ten at night.

I watched from the window those places I knew well.

I had spent seven years of my school life in this city.

Our carriage was hitched to the locomotive.

It was freezing.

Even though it was night, agents surrounded the platform.

...form a less politicised part of the population.

It's because of them 10 million workers went on strike.

I don't think these people will ever follow the CGT.

They will take another kind of action which is really more effective.

If there is self-management or something like that,

there'll be completely new ideas, maybe...

something more concrete...

There are now 10 million strikers in France.

The Popular Workshop will occupy factories, warehouses and building sites

and show striking workers

how to form the rearguard of the struggle they are in the vanguard of.

In Venezuela there was a surprising underestimation of the guerrilla force

and the armed struggle in general, which was intended to be

not a mass instrument for liberation

but a means of applying pressure which allowed politicians to play at war.

This isn't laboratory work.

Foreign or French, the workers proposed slogans,

talked to artists and students,

criticised posters or distributed them outside.

The hallmark of this new phase is

the Viet Cong no longer withdrawing from cities after each battle.

For example, 25 days in Hué and 30 in Saigon

during the Tet Offensive.

How to work? The projects made after a critical analysis

of the events of the day or discussions in factories

were proposed democratically to the general assembly.

He takes the floor the day of the attack

at a meeting in Detroit

organised by the Afro-American Broadcasting Company.

Despite the fire and smoke, Jack had to attend this meeting

which the local press had refused to attend.

...by the union in 1950 and then by the CFDT.

You don't have to go through all the conceivable stages.

You can skip some.

Obviously a 20-year-old kid who's worked for two or three years,

if he joins a group, if he takes part in a protest,

he'd choose one for self-management and power to the workers

rather than a union protest or a trade union meeting

with representatives, delegates, a central committee, etc.

So this is a stage skipped.

He's jumping stages in a way.

We shouldn't delude ourselves anymore

about what they may represent for the revolutionary movement,

these jumps, this youth,

and what these housewives who tell us to avoid politics may represent.

It's just a power struggle based on fear.

"Avoid politics because it's dangerous.

"Avoid joining a union, especially the CGT."

Do you see?

Tuesday the 21st.

"Let's build in our workplaces,

"independently of the employer and the state,

"organs of a popular counter-power," proposes the JCR.

"No wages below 700 francs," demands the CFDT.

"If the bourgeoisie passes up this opportunity,

"there will be no time to lose," writes the Communist Party.

To avoid a police charge

Paolo takes refuge in the Maspero bookshop

where he opens a book by Rosa Luxemburg,

The Mass Strike, The Political Party and The Trade Union.

"History does not wait patiently until the backward countries

"have caught up with the most advanced

"so the whole mass can move symmetrically forward

"in a compact column.

"Explosions are inevitable with the vanguard so exposed.

"In the storm of the revolutionary period...

"within days or months lost ground is recovered."

- "Inequalities are corrected." - "Social progress..."

"...implemented in one go."

The masses will obviously follow.

After a hard day's marching along the river and rock climbing

Che and his comrades arrive at Rio Rosita.

It's a larger river than the Nancahuazu

and smaller than Massacre River.

Its waters are reddish.

Wednesday the 22nd. Cohn-Bendit is denied residency.

In Peking 700,000 Red Guards chant in front of the French embassy,

"We are all German Jews."

An excessive concern with legality and social-democratic nuances

stops the working class from using its essential weapon, the strike,

to make headway from its unique position of strength.

They can't wait to become revolutionaries

simply to spread fear.

They have a uniquely negative utility.

They also form part of the occult forces,

though they defend themselves against them.

They frighten part of the electorate, but in a negative way.

People say: "if they ever take power, will it be a dictatorship?"

They were defending themselves. They put up posters.

They were for a democratic and social republic

endorsed by the Communist Party.

- The Democratic Union. - Exactly.

They aren't red, they're pink. It's the movement of the teachers.

"I arrest you in the name of the law."

"And I suppress you in the name of liberty."

Thursday the 23rd.

Nuclear plants, department stores, state education,

Paris taxis, banks and insurers, booksellers,

all of France has stopped work, except the cinemas.

- Stalin is too rough. - It's a detail.

No, that detail could have an influence.

Just now we were...

When it came to understanding the state of affairs,

people sought laws to explain it

so that the why and the how were clear,

but once the state of affairs had been understood

and the laws had been interpreted

they realised they had understood all along.

...non-politicised student elements, or badly politicised,

or insufficiently politicised and then...

Do you remember?

I was saying that this was the minimum that was needed

and...

Saturday the 25th. Waldeck Rochet dresses in black to look like a cop

and to condemn anarchy and the black flag on camera.

Due to the rainy season

Lake Popovo Polje, normally dry, was completely full and muddy.

The partisans led their captives ashore

and forcibly drowned them, holding their faces in the mud.

Lethal war from materialism to idealism.

Language is no longer driven by a person towards truth

but arrives as the vibration of a massive thrust.

The surface is no longer thought of...

...as an elevation to heaven, but as a limitless incline.

"Heaven away!"

Lenin's phrase cuts through Hegel's text like an arrow.

I thought it was like that, but it's not.

Already it's something...

If things aren't really nationalised at all, then...

They're nationalised to some extent

because there's something quite incredible at Renault.

How long did you say? In 48 hours the factory...

I forget the time frame but in a certain time frame

the factory transformed itself into a factory for making tanks

- and things like that. - That's true.

- And how do you know this? - How long did you say?

I think it was 48 hours.

But how do you know?

We know this because...

They had the parts.

The parts and machinery were already there.

There is material there which is secret.

It's stored there, ready for use.

Where necessary, the factory works for the state.

It's like in 1940 when Renault at Billancourt

made tanks and even bombs.

It made bombs in 1940.

Is that how you know the factory was nationalised?

Is that how you know the factory was nationalised?

Because it is possible to make tanks there?

In 1945 the Communists surrendered to the bourgeois state.

In May 1968 ten million French workers went on strike

over the 40-hour week they had obtained in 1936.

Since then the workers' struggle has taken the form of wildcat strikes,

spontaneous and massive explosions of a long-repressed resistance,

direct actions with workers taking over the fight

and abandoning unions and bosses.

Saturday the 25th.

"We will not be giving orders to return to work,"

- says the secretary of the CGT. - Georges Séguy.

"We never gave orders for a general strike."

The class struggle is the struggle of one word against another.

- True democracy. - Power to the workers.

- Genuine republic. - Occupied factories.

Wednesday the 29th.

At Charléty, in response to the 100,000 leftists,

the CGT moves 100,000 demonstrators from the Bastille to Saint-Lazare.

Guy Debord to Raoul Vaneigem.

"In societies where modern working conditions prevail,

"life is one long accumulation of spectacles.

"Everything directly lived has become representation."

Raoul Vaneigem to Guy Debord.

"When a theory escapes the makers of a revolution, it turns against them.

"The theory developed by the armed masses

"now strengthens those who disarm them."

Leninism is also the revolution explained with guns

to the Kronstadt sailors and Makhno's partisans.

An ideology.

Ideology is the lie of speech.

Renault had collaborated with the enemy.

- Yes... - No.

It was seized by the state. It was seized by the state, but...

It was run by the state.

It was administered by the state.

The Renault family is still there. The children are still there.

- Yes, but it's a joint-stock company. - Yes, OK.

- So it's still a joint-stock company. - Yes, of course.

With the state as the main stockholder.

That proves, if you like...

It proves that...

For example,

take the demands of the Communist Party.

When the problem of nationalisation arises,

it poses a problem of management of the capitalist economy

but the question of conditions never arises,

working conditions.

They approach the problem from a capitalist perspective,

saying,

"The economy could be better run. The workers could be more satisfied.

"They could be paid a bit more. The factory could be better managed."

So what we propose is to put new shoes on capitalism

to make things better.

They don't take these criticisms seriously.

They don't want to consider the problem as it really is:

the problem of the working conditions in our society.

That's what raises the level of consciousness,

when the workers come home exhausted.

They just say, "When we're in power things will get better."

But I don't know why we should trust them

given what happened during the events.

It's what we were saying earlier about the role of unions.

The union has these issues.

It has these issues to consider,

the issues of living conditions for workers,

which should be of primary concern to them.

We know what it means to earn 80,000 francs

or whatever per month.

We know it's difficult. Everyone says so.

But we believe they live like we do, just a bit less well.

In fact a worker doesn't live less well than a bourgeois.

He lives totally differently.

- It's not the same at all. - It's not just about the amount.

Monday the 30th.

We've lost our voice. We can't sink any lower.

"Renault to work," a pitiful slogan chanted on the Champs Elysées.

"Safety first. Renault to work.

"Cohn-Bendit to Dachau. France for the French.

"Renault to work. Workers to the line. Misery to the unemployed..."

Guy Debord to Raoul Vaneigem:

"The spectacle is not a supplement to the real world,

"an additional decoration.

"It is at the heart of the unrealism of real society.

"In the spectacle of the ruling economy

"the goal is nothing and development is everything.

"The spectacle's only goal is itself

"and beneath spectacular oppositions lies the unity of misfortune."

Raoul Vaneigem to Guy Debord:

"An analysis of revolutions past and present shows

"lacking the will to resume the fight more coherently and effectively

"plays into the hands of the enemy."

Except that we, too, have learned, or rather we're learning...

- Everyone's learning. - Yes, in their own way.

It's easy for you to learn

because you're more educated than some of the workers.

For example, I can't know nor will I ever know

what life is like for a worker.

I can show up and have a look around.

I can look, but I won't see clearly.

And...

The issue you raised earlier seems true to me.

Namely, the demands and how they have been made.

They've been made in the following way.

We made demands.

We like to think we're Marxists or revolutionaries of whatever tendency.

And then we said...

Thursday the 30th.

Workers are called upon to form action committees.

The French Communist Party rejects a popular government

and shelves it along with the sliding scale of wages

and the repeal of social security prescriptions.

How to know what vision has assaulted you in the night?

White or black, Harlem or Dallas?

Which is the worst of the two and which is in the wrong?

How to know? Reflect, America, on past experience.

Perhaps you'll understand why we're in Vietnam.

This is champion disc-jockey DJ

who spoke to you about the shambles of America and Vietnam.

Guatemala.

The far right has made Régis a traitor to his class and his homeland.

"None of this bothers me. I represent all that produces horror:

"insecurity, unsociability, instability.

"It couldn't be easier to condemn me on behalf on the Third World

"and to forget that above all this is a political struggle.

"Dear comrades, don't let them make me something

"different to what I am and what I want to be:

"a revolutionary fighter.

"Hasta la victoria siempre. ”

Michéle Firk.

It's helping the workers, first and foremost.

I don't know whether all the students have grasped that.

No, it's not just that.

Because I think we're in a perspective...

I don't know, that doesn't satisfy me

to the extent that to me it seems too close

to what my Marxist-Leninist comrades say.

As for the students,

it's true that they're favoured compared to...

compared to the proletariat,

to the workers.

But they have demands which have nothing to do with being as student.

For example, as a student I can say

I want to earn 200,000 francs per month for studying

and then as an executive or whatever,

but we also have intellectual demands.

There are things which don't satisfy us

and that's how we take steps, not by saying,

"I'm a student and in my university I want

"better conditions for students, more teachers, etc."

There are things that aren't working for me

and I know that...

my interests and the interests of...

the interests of...

of the working class are the same.

That's precisely why the workers...

It's why we asked you to take the floor, because we believed...

that what you had to say was basically the same...

Wednesday, 5 June. Railwaymen, postmen, textile workers,

RATP, food industry workers and AGF insurance agents

return to work victorious and united, according to L'Humanité,

while the ORTF calls on an army of private technicians.

"Citizens, apparently plots are being hatched

"among the king's men who are proving insolent in defeat.

"Perhaps they have renounced their project to get rid of us.

"We'd have to be insane to believe it.

"It's time to listen to those who show common sense

"and to those who give harsh advice...

Something is happening here and there's no common language.

But who... What is it for? Not what is it for, but...

For whom and for what?

Who are community arts centres for?

Everyone?

In principle, everyone, yes.

But in reality, very few people.

- No one goes there. - It's like restaurants.

7% of workers go at best. Most people who go are bourgeois.

It's exactly the same problem...

You can't expect someone who does 10 hours of physical labour a day...

- You can't expect them... - To want to go and watch a play.

As well as reducing the working day

we need to change the way theatre works.

In community arts centres...

Something has to change. It's not possible otherwise.

Some films are classics. You get good films and bad films.

French television should show only good films,

films which aren't intellectual poison

designed to keep people in a state of passivity and contentment.

For example, there's a programme called "Au theatre ce soir"

about light comedies.

It's enough to make you weep.

That wouldn't be of any interest to the workers.

- Yes it would. - I'm not so sure.

Look at the movies we see every night on TV.

They're not films to make you weep.

Well, they're stupid movies.

And yet Jacqueline watches them, you watch them and I watch them too.

Because there's nothing else to do and I'm bored.

- We watch them without thinking. - Exactly because of that...

In these arts centres...

We don't realise what we're watching. We just sit there, glued to the screen.

I bought a TV because I was bored at home.

I didn't know what to do with myself.

It's not normal for you to be bored at home.

- It's not normal? - No, it's not normal.

I don't mean you're sad, but it's not normal...

to have a job which leaves you feeling bored at home.

As soon as you're not working.

Yes, I agree.

Yes, as soon as I finish work,

like on Saturday, I don't know what to do with myself.

If I have household chores, I can distract myself.

But that's no fun.

I realise that, but I prefer it to getting pissed off,

because I get so bored at home.

I get pissed off when I'm bored.

That's not healthy.

I know but that's what it's like. I have to work to distract myself.

I need distractions.

I have children who are small

so I can't go anywhere with them.

I can't take my children to the movies.

If I did, people would say, "Just stay at home."

That's why I paid for a TV. When they scream, no one bothers me.

The trouble is that...

In the end, the only thing you know how to do is work.

Yes, and I paint. I pick up a paint brush.

Wednesday, 5 June.

Water, gas, electricity, petrol, supplies, price controls.

In Nantes the inter-union committee is still sitting in the town hall

and practically running the city.

These six months of victory have seen

strong coordination between the different zones

of the People's Liberation Armed Forces,

particularly the artillery,

and all the South Vietnamese people.

Previous revolutions needed historical memories

to hide their content from themselves.

The social revolution must let the dead bury the dead

and liquidate all superstition about them.

To realise its goals, it must take its poetry from the future.

In the past form overwhelmed content.

Now content overwhelms form.

What's the point in planting lettuces?

There's no point in planting lettuces when they're so expensive to buy.

It's the influence of the bourgeoisie.

The culture we endure is essentially a bourgeois culture.

We talked about cars earlier.

If you work in the car industry and you take an active part

in creating and developing them, it's not boring at all.

After your work, you should try...

Or if aeroplanes interest you more

you can go to work in aviation where you can build planes.

We've come back to the system of exchange again

between overall creation and individual participation.

The work you do,

despite being specialised and limited in terms of the overall creation,

is a part of a whole.

When you're responsible for the bigger picture,

you participate much more.

So, from the moment that there is participation,

you see things completely differently.

Workers should be able to say,

"I have one day off per week or a half-day off per week.

"I'll go to the pool.

"I'll stop at noon and go to the pool."

And then there are these arts centres

where we can go for the day or the afternoon.

How is that going to work?

What can we offer at the moment, supposing it were possible,

so that a worker can have one free half-hour per day of his choice

to go to cultural events?

What can we offer?

I know I've burned bridges and I'm going nowhere.

It bugs me.

Workers are cultured.

You could play football.

Let's just say...

- I was appalled. - Me too.

- That's not right. - The struggle teaches you nothing.

Right.

The struggle is a cultural phenomenon in itself.

The political struggle...

the free platforms like those at Odéon or the Sorbonne

have been cultural phenomena of truly great importance.

I don't know. Did you participate in the discussions at the Sorbonne?

- No. - No?

I've walked past the Sorbonne, but I've never been inside.

- But you've been in the art school. - Yes.

Actually, we went into the Sorbonne together.

You said, "I've never been inside. I've walked past it for 14 years."

No, when I was with you, we walked past.

- It was the halls of residence, no? - I've never been in the Sorbonne.

- I went inside, where was it, Censier. - That's Nanterre.

You said it was the art school.

I've been in the art school and in Censier.

I've never been in the Sorbonne.

I'd walk past it almost every Saturday.

But I never went inside.

Why? Because I felt my life was inferior to that of the students.

I think if a student walked past a factory,

until now he would never have said, "Hey, I'll talk go and talk to a worker."

When I was...

It's precisely because of that.

Perhaps it's an inferiority complex that makes you say we have to...

create the right environment, for example...

Sunday, 9 June.

Appeal from the 153rd regiment of mechanised infantry.

"We give you a gun, take it.

"Long live the solidarity of workers, soldiers and students.

"Long live worker democracy.

"Long live joy, love and creative work."

The house was under siege until four in the morning.

The local phone operator regularly cut communications

between the house and the SNCC offices.

Sacrifice and death are commonplace.

I personally would have nothing to do there.

That's why we need...

Monday, 10 June.

The workers entrenched themselves in the paint shop.

There were 700 or 800 of them.

They fought hard.

The police threw tear-gas grenades.

After a while half the comrades passed out.

Achilles: "Patroclus, why do we men, in order to give ourselves courage,

"say, 'The worse is over,' instead of, 'The worst is yet to come'?

"There will come a clay when we are all corpses."

Patroclus: "Achilles, I don't know you anymore."

Achilles: "But I know you.

"At night I know there is no difference between us and the cowards.

"Everyone experiences the worst and the worst comes at the end.

"It comes last and it smacks you in the face like the earth's fist.

"It's always good to remember what you've seen

"but isn't it strange that the hardest thing

"is the one we can't remember?"

I'm talking about the people who worked hard

and made a real effort for May and the months leading up to it.

What's the point of the guys going into the faculty

and listening to so-and-so talk and then going home and saying,

"What he said might not be entirely true,"

and taking notes on slips of paper

and saying they've heard a radical critique

of bourgeois knowledge

and returning the next day to listen again?

How do you see it?

The way I see it, you could try to block it.

Meaning?

Meaning, you can impede the normal operation of the university.

You can impede the dissemination of a knowledge it wants to present

as the only truth.

By talking to the lecturer?

- No! - I'm not saying that.

- That was a question. - Not necessarily by talking.

By impeding, I mean...

We can... We can bring terrorism into the universities.

We can do two types of work.

We can educate students politically...

Monday, 10 June.

A Marxist-Leninist student is drowned by the police who sow disorder in Flins.

Among these ruins, men raise the red flag ten times.

They say we must organise supplies.

We students...

Among these ruins men raise the red flag ten times.

Ten times it is shot down. How many are there at noon?

100, because at night there are 100 corpses at the main barricade.

...and try to contact the farmers

so that if there is a strike,

general or otherwise,

we have provisions for the strikers and their families.

I think if we managed to do something like that,

they couldn't tell us...

We'd be helping the working class to win their strike...

to win the struggle.

Given that fact, it's stupid to say,

"Yes, but these guys, when they get their diplomas,

"they'll be executives who don't care about conditions."

What counts is what they do...

during the strikes.

That's why the Communist Party's condemnation is ridiculous.

Instead of condemning people, they could put them to good use.

- That's the theory. - But the Communist Party...

This is a response to give to people who tell you,

"Yes, later."

Later if there are failures.

Later they may be obliged to do it.

But it's up to each individual to make sure there are no failures.

There's no need to speak

as if it were impossible to change the situation.

In the Rue Crozatier they were dead.

They were dead too in the Rue d'Aligre.

In the Rue Crozatier an artilleryman had joined the people on 18 March.

"We are going to shoot you," cried the soldiers.

He shrugged. "We can only die once."

Further on, an old man struggled.

The officer, out of pure cruelty, wanted to shoot him on a rubbish heap.

"I fought bravely," said the old man. "I have the right not to die in the mire."

During all the events of May

we were convinced we could do extraordinary things,

that we could go further, and people followed.

That was important, for people to follow and have confidence.

Now they may bail out because they've lost confidence.

All historical movements have been carried out by minorities

or for the benefit of minorities.

The proletarian movement is a movement by the vast majority

for the benefit of the vast majority.

It seems it was necessary for Lenin,

in order to escape spontaneity, to establish an institution.

A revolutionary organisation for training people.

- Today... -...we have the reverse.

- Ironically... - Leninist spontaneity is found

in the French Communist Party and the trade union movement

and the Leninist revolutionary vanguard is...

How do you expect things to change?

The Movement of 22 March had that purpose,

not to organise the proletariat or revolutionary forces,

but to display spontaneity.

...at last year's elections

I think everyone more or less agreed

that if one day we see change in this French society...

it certainly won't come from putting a ballot in a box.

I think people, even if they never say it,

understand this deep down.

Because when they voted...

massively to the right for De Gaulle

it was because the Communists had nothing original to offer.

They simply asked people to believe

that once they were in power, things would get better

but they gave nothing precise,

no specific objective at all.

Whereas the students...

I agree that now...

there has been a lot of excitement in the street...

Tuesday, 11 June.

- Peugeot managers... -...call the riot police.

Two workers dead, shot in the street at Sochaux.

- According to Le Monde... - Appropriation of a situation.

Palais des Sports.

Politburo merges the Internationale with the Marseillaise.

- Police arrest pupils coming out... -...of the metro at night.

- All night... -...on the Left Bank...

...countless barricades to protest against repression.

Shakespeare says men get involved in history in three ways.

Some create it and fall victim to it.

Others think they create it, but also fall victim to it.

The rest don't create history, but they, too, fall victim to it.

The first group are kings,

the next are kings' confidants who execute kings' orders

and the last are simply citizens of the kingdom.

As we said this morning,

we agreed it's not a real failure but rather...

Sorry, but that's quite possible.

We're still in a utopia

but the arrival on the labour market of a mass of 500,000 students...

More like 50,000.

All right, 50,000 students, but the boycott of universities...

You don't boycott the universities, you empty the universities.

It's a minority that fucks things up in universities.

So you empty the universities and you let...

You let the bourgeoisie carve out a niche for itself in the university

and you do your work, because you think it's important,

You take your politics to the factory. This presupposes that those 50,000...

Let's say this truly is a utopia.

Let's think about this rationally, since we have a moment to spare.

These 50,000 students...

have no training and are unable to intervene.

Or you pretend...

- You know where the problem is. - It's in your own sphere,

in whatever activity you do that you must first be revolutionary.

For the students that means not accepting, for example...

It means contesting

a certain type of class and no longer putting up with it...

Excuse me...

Excuse me, but that is still in the area of reform.

- No, it isn't. - We'll reform peacefully.

We won't accept the didactic course.

We'll talk to the boss and when this is over,

when the university is reformed,

we'll take up the position of guardian of the worker.

Not at all, because if we see the dispute through to the end...

- That's just it. - If we have these requirements...

Firstly, like I said at the start of this discussion,

if we want the university that we're claiming to want,

we have to question the workings of the country's economy.

That's the bottom line.

It's obvious.

When you start to get politicised

it's the first argument you give people.

The guys at the university are unhappy about working conditions

so you tell them it's a political problem, an economic problem.

You're told the university is a public service

but it's not at all.

It's the bottom line so don't try to tell me

if I stir things up politically at the university,

if I see things politically, as I claim to see them,

that reform will be achieved, because it won't.

I see my work as an agitator at the university

as a way of passing on information

and agitating on a social level

in the world of industry or agriculture.

That's where the reformist mission ends,

in the liaison between agitations.

At first, the crossover would occur only in the relaying of information

but at least people will have to come and have a look.

Maybe we could participate more often in direct action

and have exchanges,

because if we agitate in the university

we can start by saying

that the university is open to everyone...

Wait, there's something I don't understand.

I don't know...

There's something bothering me.

There's something bothering me.

We're talking about the university.

We're talking and...

Neither place should be closed off.

The university should come to the factory

and the factory should go to the university.

The politics of Wall Street rule in the end.

Imperialism as the only world system

must be made to appear as such worldwide,

especially in the Third World.

Five men form what is known as the Oujda group.

Educated at schools of politics rather than in resistance movements

they see Ben Bella as a symbol of revolutionary purity

but not as a strong head of state.

Faced with reality, they shift their hopes

to the only force to survive the vagaries of independence

and grow stronger in the event of difficulties: the army.

When clouds darken the sky

we've noted that this darkness is only temporary

and the sun will shine again.

Tuesday, 18 June.

15,000 workers return to Renault after...

-...a quick tour... -...of the streets of Billancourt.

But where do these subsidies come from?

- From capitalism. - Quite simply from the budget.

From you and me.

Miehn Lai said,

"if the silkworm spun silk to prolong its life

"it would be a real wage earner."

Yes, but a worker who goes to the university...

needs money to live on.

At university you just have your...

But you can go to university just like you can go...

- No, but... - After work?

Not after work. Definitely not after work.

Why don't they show movies at the university

rather than at the cinema?

You go to the cinema sometimes in Paris.

Say there's no work on Tuesdays and people can go to the university.

- That is a utopia too. - It's a utopia.

History, which threatens this twilight world,

is also the force which can subjugate space to time lived.

The proletarian revolution is a critique of human geography

through which individuals and communities

must create places and events,

no longer just for their work, but for their whole history.

It's best to leave it at that.

What I was saying is that we have to ask...

Monday, 24 June.

Return to work at the ORTF after a total failure of the strike.

Unlike those at the CSF

who made walkie-talkies in Brest for their comrades,

audio-visual strikers in Paris

have been unable to call an active strike

and make their voices heard in a language that is distinct

from the government they reject.

He was quiet for a while before speaking again.

"It's good that they didn't shoot him.

"He had others hung so he should be hung."

He took great strides around the room and asked me...

"Did he recognise Nicholas?

"Did he realise he was judging the workers?"

"I think so?'

"We must cover his face, cut the rope and cover it."

Once he had done that, Rutenberg said to the workers,

"Goodbye, comrades, remember what you have seen and heard"

"We will remember," they said.

While art, now independent, depicts its world in dazzling colours,

a moment of life has grown old

and it cannot be rejuvenated with dazzling colours.

It is true that art is in the vanguard, in the vanguard of its disappearance.

When you came to the factory, there was a union official there.

When union officials are approached by students,

they say, "No students here."

But that's the job of the workers.

The workers have to do the job of getting union officials to shut up

so that when there is a strike at the factory, the students can come

and visit the factory with the workers, etc.

That's the workers' job, not the students' job.

It's not the students' job to say to the union official in the factory,

"Let us into your factory. We have a right to come in."

Do you understand?

I don't think... It's not the student's job.

The job of the student is to say,

"Let's open the university to workers."

Similarly, the worker should say, "Let's open the factory to students."

July 1968.

Publication of Bulletin 1, a self-criticism by Marxist-Leninist groups.

The Girondins had declared war but feared that appealing to the people,

essential for fighting the aristocracy and the coalition,

would end up compromising their own influence.

Roland reinstated the free trade of grain

after Barberou denounced the fanatics who were burning carts.

They told us, "Rally around the red flag."

"Years of effort and days without food."

"Each tome of Marx we'll open anew."

"Like the shutters of our own houses."

I mean, at the same level of practice as ours...

Unless...

I mean learning new things,

the way the intellectuals are learning new things.

Why can't they profit in the same way?

My brother-in-law earns 3,000 francs a week as an apprentice.

These are the sorts of problems that can be...

that should be considered.

These are problems of organisation.

I'm more interested in problems of cooperation or reform.

Calling the workers to the university restaurants

is a reform problem?

- This is social democracy. - Everything is social democracy.

That's what social democracy is.

I mean...

It's not just a question of opening university restaurants to workers.

That's true...

It's just a question of providing the means

for them to meet one another easily like that.

Before being Marxist-Leninist meant

going to the factories and saying to the workers,

"We're leftist revolutionary intellectuals.

"We want to fight a revolution on behalf of the people."

The guys are left open-mouthed, thinking, "Really?

"If you eat with those people 15 times,

"maybe one day, on the 15th time, you might be able to talk to them."

July 1968. The police appear at the art school.

Art students take to the streets.

It is the poor who create language and constantly renew it.

The rich crystallise it to make fun of those who don't speak like them.

They'll come.

August 1968. At the Avignon festival

the Théâtre National and the Théâtre de la Monnaie

joined forces with rugby team A13

to prevent the Living Theatre performing in the streets.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution began with the abolition of epaulettes

and hierarchical distinctions in the army.

August 1968.

Russian Soviet tanks occupy socialist Czechoslovakia.

Do you have to pay to join the party?

No, it's just ideas.

You say you belong and that's it.

When there were strikes...

only one organisation didn't ask for money.

All the others asked for 100 francs or so.

All CGT workers automatically purchase a newsletter subscription.

- All of them? - Without exception.

September 1968. A Bulgarian policeman cuts the hair

of a young Italian worker returning from the Youth Festival in Sofia.

The same day in Mexico a paratrooper cuts the hair

of an American student distributing leaflets.

Well, money is big issue for organisations.

The unions have many problems,

for example, the problem of petrol at Renault.

But we've talked about it before.

I'll come back to it.

September 1968. At the Fete de l'Humanité

Mireille Mathieu rubs elbows with Coca-Cola and General Motors.

Peking and Tirana call on Eastern Europe

to join the fight for freedom and socialism.

Plaza de las Tres Culturas.

The Mexican army opens fire on the demonstrators,

men, women and children.

September 1968.

Unable to purchase Skoda, Fiat makes do with Citroen.

Proposition 1.

The weapon of criticism cannot replace criticism of weapons

but theory becomes a material force once it grips the masses.

Variation 26. Possession is condemned.

"We let husbands and wives live or die,

"sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters,

"but no one can say my or mine."

Theory 3.

Eroticism is the luxury of sexuality just as leisure is the luxury of work.

In the Interior Minister's office

the only map of France on the wall

is not a map of prefects or elections

but of where security forces are stationed.

Self-criticism 3.

Students and workers,

if violence leaves the streets, it must return to words

because violence is still clone to us,

even if only with the spoken language.

Proposition 27.

Construct millions of carparks

so children can play marbles in the gutters.

Banality 11.

The law is a justification of existing structures.

Existing structures find justification in the law.

No one can deny this contradiction.

Self-criticism 7.

To assimilate or replace economic needs with sexual needs

or vice versa is to speak of the same nothingness.

Need is the most reactionary face of necessity.

Banality 15. Universities can only be transformed

if class relations are radically transformed.

Sub-class, privileges of every kind.

Violence doesn't always get you what you want.

There will come a clay when you have to stop your violence.

Yes, OK.

Proposition 22.

Give your child seven blocks with the letters...

B-E-R-L-I-Y-T.

They will rewrite it as...

L-I-B-E-R-T-Y.

...was against violence to fix certain problems.

When it comes to fighting repression in France

are you for non-violence or for violence?

Against non-violence.

- Against non-violence? - Yes.

Because I think we shouldn't...

As soon as...

- For me it's the opposite. - No, why?

There are guys who are...

They've been making us promises for ten years and we have nothing.

I'm against non-violence and for violence.

If we have to smash things up to get it then that's what we have to do.

You don't always have to...

Imagine if De Gaulle was in power right now

and he was against the workers, which he would be,

It's not killing him that will get you what you want.

It's the same for those in government now.

We'd have to get rid of everyone in government.

But that means a civil war.

And you're against it?

Why a civil war?

- Just because... - Think about it.

The problem lies in removing privileges from those who have them. Agreed?

But they won't let that happen.

And if we continue the fight, a time may come when...

But it's the masses.

Take the strikes that have been going on.

Say the strike had continued throughout France,

do you think the government would have charged at workers with tanks?

- It's possible. - I don't think so, no.

- I don't think the soldiers... - I think they would.

- I think they would. - I can't see an army conscript...

Wait, not a conscript.

- Not a conscript. - A soldier by profession.

- We'll have to fight, then. - All the unskilled workers.

I don't know how many there are.

During the first days of May when the situation was already heated

national service conscripts were sent overnight

to do manoeuvres in the countryside.

National service recruits wouldn't shoot, we know that,

but it's possible that the police whom we've seen in action,

the cops and the professional army

are there to serve the bourgeoisie.

So if we had continued the strike, they couldn't have done anything,

but it was a desperate attempt.

A desperate attempt to try to regain control.

Using strong repression in certain places.

Dreyfus calling the CRS to get people to return to work is a violent act.

Yes, it is a violent act, but...

The two who died at Sochaux were...

- They were shot. - Yes, they were shot.

Yes.

In Latin America, for example...

But it's not the workers who are going to resort to violence.

No, but...

At some stage workers will have to respond to violence with violence.

There are times when you have no choice but to fight back.

That's precisely what worries the workers.

Because they have responsibilities.

For example...

Fighting is all very well,

but you have responsibilities to your children.

As soon as you sense or you know... Say there's a strike...

It's about knowing how to decipher straight away

what belongs to idealism

and using the appropriate discourse after a series of transformations

aimed at putting brute, dumb forces to work in a field,

so that, instead of giving them

specific, provisional, staged sanctions,

you alter them poetically, preventing their eventual dispersal,

synthesising them, sublimating them, and giving them a bourgeois head.

This head, rather than creating the false stench of culture,

stinking of the rot it comes from,

wants only to lift itself up by a movement which is not its own.

It dreams of sexually exploiting the proletariat,

giving it back in words what it has been given in strength.

The link between revolutionary intellectual practice

and the proletariat's struggle should be viewed in this light:

as a deadly war waged by idealists and imperialists.

Then we'd be forced...

We'd be forced to resort to violence.

Then you don't reject the principle of violence.

Dare to act, dare to think, dare to fight, dare to conquer.

No one to deceive, no one to seduce.

Blows received, blows given.

Educating people in ideologies

is the key task if we want to unite the party.

Educating people in ideologies

is the key task if we want to unite the party

in view of these great political struggles.

The constitution of a communist nucleus

is a long-term job,

a difficult undertaking, an unremitting process.

Skipping a step is damaging.

See that you don't skip one too.

The filmed image belongs to those who watch it

as well as to those who make it.

I think now we're looking to go further than a common strike.

We're looking at an active strike,

a strike that is a continuation of the work

but in a completely different circuit.

Yes, but isn't it...

Isn't it easier to hold this type of strike

instead of resorting to sabotage?

Meeting the demands isn't the problem.

Yes, for now, as far as the workers are concerned,

what interests them is having their demands met.

There's a revolution but mainly they're interested in their demands.

Of course. I get that.

Not just as a worker but as a revolutionary

I think the first thing to do is to get our demands met.

The workers at Renault think of their demands and nothing else.

They didn't obtain the 600,000 francs they wanted.

The 40-hour week that was voted on long ago hasn't happened.

And then there are the events of May which were unsuccessful.

I don't think if they strike in September

it will be because they want a revolution.

Far from it.

They just want their demands met because once they're met

then everything goes up in price: coffee, bread and everything else.

Exactly, if the guys make demands,

either about the hours or the wages,

it's all the same, no problem.

There's always some sort of payback,

such as increasing the pace of work

if they move onto a 40-hour week instead of the 45 hours they were doing.

They may get a 40-hour week, but the payback will be work

that is more intense, more alienating and all the rest.

If they get 100,000 francs a month...

In the United States...

The United States is a different story.

We don't have Latin America to use as our slaves.

How come in the United States

they can have a 40-hour week and pay 150,000 francs a month?

Because they have Latin America.

In Latin America they get their raw materials for half the price.

That affects profits.

You need to look at what happens Latin America,

whether it's copper in Chile, or tin in Bolivia.

It is a class made of log seats

and tables made of small branches tied with fibres.

A blackboard leant against a tree.

Of 40 students 25 are girls, aged about ten.

Half a dozen can read and write fluently.

Others read slowly, making many errors.

The uniformed teacher, a gun in her belt,

asks them the meaning of the words of the national anthem.

In the distance, the sound of bombers and explosions.

In one girl's notebook we find a Portuguese propaganda leaflet

where we see some half-naked guerrillas

looking dejected, with the caption:

"These are the savages who live in the forest."

The row of girls laughs on seeing us read the leaflet.

We show them the image. "What do you think of this?"

"It only benefits the Portuguese."

Amilcar takes the floor.

"Long ago we told the Portuguese government

"we were taking up arms, and that made them laugh.

"Now they're not laughing. That's what's changed."

The most interesting issue with trade unions is,

the first step throws up the problem of who's in charge in the company.

The demands can vary.

The demands can vary.

There are immediate material demands

which are of interest and shouldn't be neglected, obviously.

It's the age-old problem between qualitative and quantitative demands.

One leads to the other.

Yes, but not necessarily.

The issue of quantitative and qualitative demands,

for example, a company's position on unions,

is important, there's no denying that.

In my opinion, it's worth more than a 10% rise.

I don't know.

I think that...

there is enough fighting spirit among the workers.

The people are sufficiently resolved

to make claims of a purely quantitative kind,

namely higher wages and a reduction in working hours.

That's fine but in the midst of a strike

one can directly raise the issue of power

inside the factory.

That's a question we can address by raising the issue of structural reform.

For example, if they grant us a pay rise,

if the government grants us this or that

with no modification of the structure,

it's worth precisely nothing.

Anything we get will be gone in two or three months.

As if it never existed.

As far as I'm concerned the benefits...

It's already happened.

The benefits obtained by the unions

don't represent quantitative or qualitative change,

least of all qualitative.

The way I see it, the union is a legal tool in the struggle.

It acknowledges implicitly

the existence of an employer and of employees.

The problem lies in removing them both.

Anyone can acknowledge...

At least, I acknowledge the existence of the employer.

Legality is something else.

My fight against my employer isn't a question of legality.

No, it's a question of acknowledging its existence.

Yes, it's real and my struggle attempts...

My actions are determined by its existence

and the steps I take to make it disappear.

You won't succeed within the limits of the law.

That doesn't mean that to take political action

you are always obliged to resort to illegality.

You can exercise...

Part of your political action can take place within the law,

assuming the bourgeoisie is stupid enough.

Assuming the bourgeoisie is stupid enough. Right.

But the union will automatically be limited in its action

by its legality.

It is recognised and legal.

Nothing will change until it is dissolved, which it doesn't want.

It doesn't want to tackle the issue of itself.

It will be automatically limited by this legality.

So for me, anything gained through trade union action

inside a factory is relatively negative.

That's debatable because the union is a tool

which has served the workers' movement.

Discussing the union as an organisation

and saying that as soon as it is recognised it is rotten

is false.

It is the pollical angle of the organisation

which should be analysed, not the organisation itself.

An organisation is not something abstract.

Recognised organisations are not necessarily reformist.

There aren't equations like that.

There is a rather obvious parallel.

You can make parallels, but that's a bad method.

Declaring from one clay to the next that you're going to do something illegal

doesn't mean you're doing valid political work.

That's no longer true.

If you can, for example through a trade union,

agitate and spread political propaganda

in factories

about social and cultural problems

and create...

There were meetings in every factory, every school, every college,

every administration, every station, and every neighbourhood.

The police, however fierce, were powerless.

It all comes down to aesthetics and the political economy.