All language subtitles for 1968 Un film comme les autres eng

October 4, 1967. An hour's wage
taken from Fran�oise Moreau,

who makes shirts at Seligman's
for one franc fourteen an hour.

Reason: sings 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

absolutely must not stop
fighting for their emancipation.

Persevering in the fight
is the way to succeed.

It bothers me to say I give
moral support and only that.

We know that our capacity
to fight is limited,

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

and merely moral support
seems to me rather weak.

Could you explain?

You mean the presence
during the action

of students
alongside the workers?

Yes, that's it.

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

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

Of course we'll be there, it's
not a matter of our being there,

but where do we go from there,

what are we to do?

We can do things
like last time,

or we can do more.
For instance,

it's a matter
of thinking it over,

we're thinking, when can we
organize a second general strike,

when can we carry it out
better than we did in this case?

Even though this
wasn't a complete failure,

because we did learn
a lot of things.

The director of the Lyc�e
Condorcet expels a student

as the result of a strike organized

to protest against the resumption
of classes one Thursday.

First, then second demonstration.

High school students for the first
time are pitted against the police.

The Russian working class is
decimated by internal strife.

In his fight against Stalin,

Trotsky is supported by the Red
Army and the young students.

He hesitates to unleash them
against the Party apparatus

which Stalin has taken.

It was a matter of a
reconnaissance mission,

If for instance we wanted to work
in Flins, we had to go to Flins.

To try to help the workers
in Flins, we had to go to Flins,

try to get hired at a factory,

preferably at Renault because
it's a rather difficult factory,

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

In 1967, Le Figaro...

...who rebel against
the prohibition on campus

of free movement between
boys' and girls' rooms...

The main task of the theater
is to explain the story

and communicate ideas

by means of appropriate
distancing effects,

explains Bertolt Brecht to the
chemists of a toxic products factory.

Despite the civil strife which
adds horror after horror,

civilized life resumes
at the start of spring

in the territories
liberated by Tito.

The partisans put the
railways back in service.

Classes are resumed
in some rural schools.

So, for example, the minimum...

It would've been possible
to manufacture, make cars...

and give them or...

or exchange them for other
things, or something like that.

And to make red cars
rather than black.

They say that our
tragicomic achievements

haven't 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 of
the economic fight,

from outside the sphere
of labor relations.

If we had a job like that...

Do you think
it's important or not?

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

In reality, it's putting
the strike at the service

either of propaganda,
or information,

or other things, for example,
if cars came out of Renault

with loudspeakers,
things like that, to tell about

what was happening in the factory,
how they were picketing, etc.

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

It's showing that the
guys don't need a boss

to get a factory going
and use it.

- Yes, but it hasn't been done.
- Yes, it hasn't been done, why?

Don't think about it
as a failure.

I can think that too, but...

the general strike situation
was in fact a step.

We've reached a relatively
high step in the fight.

And besides, we couldn't
solve the problem of organizing

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,

through contacts with the country,
with the cooperatives, etc.

It's not the contacts
because the farmers,

several times a year they pitch in
tomatoes or other things, and...

effectively, it doesn't work...

It's feasible to the extent
we make sure the contacts

are provided with explanations.

For example,
explain to the farmers

what the strike at Flins means

for the workers at Flins,
tell them that now...

That's the interesting thing, that
men feel in contact with each other.

Say, for example, to
a cooperative:

"You're going to send supplies
to the strikers in this city,

we'll also explain what's
going on at this factory..."

In the same way, we can tell...

the workers in this factory...

this is the situation,
how it is in this place...

and this is why they feel
solidarity with you...

why they make demands,
and that's how it is.

What do you mean by
"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
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.

Bombs in prison,
explosion of the police,

explosion of perception.

Where? In Quimper, in Rennes,
in St. Brieux, in Plouzevede.

When? In January 1968.

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

that which binds him to the
workers and farmers and helps them.

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

If he stops doing it tomorrow,

then he'll be a 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 pace,

on the output the factory achieves.

If it's not reached, no bonus.

No doubt this year...

when the output hasn't
been reached by the unions,

and then the employer decided
to reach it by any means...

But what is the
maximum output?

- It's unlimited.
- The output, it's done...

Suppose the employer has
determined a ceiling,

and it must be reached.

What is it?

- We know nothing, you don't know.
- No, nothing is known.

You have no idea. Do you think
it helps you to know, for example...

We must attack with nonviolence,
and defend with violence.

March 27, 1968,
to protest the arrests

during demonstrations organized
by grassroots Vietnam committees,

600 Nanterre students occupy
stadium B1, renaming it Che Guevara.

At the CFC in Al�s,
after 48 hours of strike,

the enamel workers
obtained a 15-cent raise.

Soon the color workers began
a strike for a raise of...

...for example, yesterday there was
a gap of many cars on the line.

Well, that gap of lost time must
be recovered the next day.

But if you tell that
to the workers...

for them there are so
many cars, it must be a trick.

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

when the R16 first came out...

there was a breakdown
in painting, I think...

a car crashed into a bathroom,
and that blocked the entire line.

Then they were forced
to pull the stock...

History so far has found no
other way to advance humanity...

than to oppose every time the
violence of the condemned class...

with the revolutionary violence
of the progressive class.

We're in a time
when everything happens.

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...

and no one would dare put it
in the realm of legend.

It's about destroying
the enemy, not judging.

In the villages liberated
by their column...

they assembled the peasants
to point out the fascists...

and shot 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
away forever...

because we will have
eaten them.

In Flins, we know the whole
region geographically now.

The Renault factories,
we're used to the roads,

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

And if something happens
in Flins,

we return to the factories, no
problem, because it's home.

We move well in Flins.

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

the famous Friday,
the famous Saturday...

the famous Monday
we led 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 nothing prevents us from...

staying much longer in the
factory to stop being observers.

From the moment, and you know
well since we work together...

from the moment we were
at the factory four months...

we held our card...

it's a very simple example...

we decided to
take a CGT card...

May 1st.

The usual parade organized by the
CGT from R�publique to Bastille.

The students participate.

Law enforcement beats them
because they shout:

"Long live the CGT
for the class struggle!''

...of B-52s based in Guam...

though it costs 30 thousand dollars
to take out the machine...

Each plane can transport
over ten tons of bombs...

and a formation of 50 bombers
flying at 7000 meters altitude...

can saturate...

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

Friday the 3rd, a student
throws the first paving stone.

...if you like,
a combativeness...

even an animosity eventually...

and a more general idea
of having a strike...

to deploy,
to launch other things...

which is also
extremely important.

The problem is not
to stay for ten days...

so we can return to the factory
when the situation breaks out.

The problem is not
to stay three months...

so we can form a
kind of action committee...

to make a direct action.

The problem is directly,
for me, at least...

to break with the privileged condition
of students and intellectuals...

and to break completely.

In this society...

in this society,
the student's condition...

- ...is a privileged condition...
- We can't escape the class struggle.

However, the student escapes
one way or another.

He never escapes.
That's what...

- ...that's the Stalinist rejection...
- You said...

- ...the student is a student.
- ...the student's condition...

is a privileged condition,
in this society.

What we want is a society...

in which the student's condition
is not particularly privileged...

in which the condition
of managers is not...

a privileged condition...

but not by wanting
to change that condition.

We must pack up and say:
"For now it's a privilege...

but I can no longer be a
student, and I'd like to be..."

I...

That depends
on what you mean...

...I mean, there's an
enormous intellectual work

to do in the middle classes.

That depends on what you
consider poor conditions.

The proletarian is...

the laborer,
the factory worker...

and also that which all
the sociologists...

call new strata...

...who works, works in the
Galeries Lafayette...

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

workers in France represent more
than 15% of the active population.

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

...but that's absolutely true.

But I don't understand...

Wait, you raised the issue
of management just now.

There's an experience,
if you like...

the student is destined,
faced with...

the workers' principal reproach
against the students,

they say: "You play
at being Simone Weil,"

not because they don't know
Simone Weil, but they read...

and they think:

"In any case, now you're
very nice, you're with us...

but when your studies are
finished, you'll be the cops."

Friday the 3rd.

The PCF denounces
the false revolutionaries...

composed of sons of
the well-to-do...

and led by a German anarchist.

Saturday the 4th,
Daniel Legros, pastry chef...

is found in possession of
a bolt and a switchblade...

and sentenced to 3 months
in jail or a fine of 500 francs.

Sunday the 5th, order to strike.

The police massively occupy
the Latin Quarter.

Ambush of the
University Action Movement...

Monday the 6th.

Around 9:30pm, fighting stops
in Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s.

The police give chase to the groups
remaining in the Od�on area.

Tuesday the 7th.

Call of the Union of Communist
Marxist-Leninist Youth.

"Sweep away the
reformist slogans...

and those who are allied
to cut off the road...

of the masses,
the road of revolution."

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

than the others
with whom they worked.

Anyway...

I think there's a way of
acting on their own ground.

I'm convinced.

I think a school teacher...

maybe...

he can't very well
give up being a teacher...

even if he teaches privately
and earns 200,000 per month...

but he can teach
certain things...

to the girls and boys
going 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.

- Or the climate is...
- Isn't it insurrectionary now?

Not insurrectionary.

There are strikes
every day in the region.

But that's not an insurrection.

Sorry, that's
not an insurrection...

but nevertheless it's
an insurrectionary climate...

and feels like one.

Well, okay, so I tell you that
the questions you pose...

are completely crazy questions,
because if you say...

that the situation must
move and evolve dramatically...

by the autumn, that is,
in two or three months...

and within four or
five months...

the questions
we have to ask...

are concrete questions:
What do we students, today...

students who've taken to the
streets, I don't know how many...

30,000 to 40,000...

what do we do
with these people?

What can we do to help...

to fight alongside
the working class?

What should these
40,000 students do...

to fight alongside
the working class?

You're a student,
it's yours to answer.

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

I don't have to solve it,
I'm not a student.

How are you not a student?

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

and studied for myself,
taking exams or not...

but I've always rejected,
for ten years...

actions which would make me
be considered a student.

It's always offended me deeply.

It's nothing new,
but definitely...

I'm a proletarian,
I work like a proletarian...

or like a revolutionary,
participating in the guerrillas...

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

if someone receives the pill of
knowledge in any form whatsoever.

That's a misunderstanding.

It's a misunderstanding
of the student's role.

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

for the moment, to determine
our relation to the class struggle...

since...

Everything's interesting...

But I mean,
not immediately...

How do you envision
helping students, Nicolas?

How do you envision
helping students?

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

First, from the viewpoint of
of instruction among the workers.

That's a medium level.

So, we count ourselves
with the students...

since they help us,
they inspire us...

they teach us many
things that we...

that now escape us...

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

Because this discussion,
I had it with an intellectual...

a student who came
from time to time...

wait, allow me a brief digression,
who said that at all costs...

the workers must be taught
class consciousness, you know?

Analysis of the recent past...

is an imperative task
for all revolutionaries.

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

Yes, that's it...

Wednesday the 8th.

Great popular movement in the
nine departments of the West.

Some 10,000 strikers. Powerful
strike movement in the PTT...

organized by the General
Community of Transistors...

and the French Democratic
Transistorized Company.

Then secondly,
as I said this morning...

create stronger ties
among us...

that is, we can hold meetings
with the students...

and the workers in
the same room, discuss...

Among others. Fourth.

Besides, also, an example
of what happens here...

is that when we talk to people
about what happened...

the Nantes active strike...

nobody knows what happened.

Very few are aware.

And this is very important.

Nantes and Cl�on,
this week there was a meeting...

with some guys from
Cl�on and Billancourt...

on the problems at
Billancourt and Cl�on.

A girl from Cl�on came...

and a guy from Billancourt.

I raised the issue.
I said: "What happened?

How did you stop the factory?
We knew absolutely nothing.

How did it go
inside the factory?"

The guy replied:

"We stopped for a half hour,"
or an hour, I don't know.

He said it was for certain
demands they wanted to get...

hence the half hour,
then suddenly, unlimited strike.

We said:
"We weren't aware.

We knew there was a strike...

but we didn't
know exactly how it was."

We didn't strike because
Cl�on was on strike...

we went on strike because
we too had demands.

Conveniently,
they were the same.

Even with the trade unions,
we're misinformed...

about the workers.

Anyway, there hasn't been
enough contact...

amond all the factories,
Cl�on, Creil...

- ...Sandouville, Billancourt...
- If you think that it's...

something that happens in a
geographically restricted space...

It would have been interesting
to do it on a limited scale.

Finally, the interest in a national
scale was to establish a precedent.

That way we could have passed
to a higher level of relations...

so-called relations of dual power.
Against the State's power...

there was the power of the workers
who organized in the factories...

who could have a power with
a relative centralization...

which isn't necessarily
bureaucratic...

insofar as it's centralization
of information...

a dissemination of information
in which everybody...

gives their experience
and what they've done.

And where we can,
in this moment...

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

coordinate.

Say, for example...

if we want to put the
factories in operation...

at this place they need this,
let's bring it here...

there they need something.

At that moment, when you
pass to that phase, well...

in fact, you hold a power which
opposes the State's power...

and they can no longer
do anything...

We needed an organization...

which enjoyed an incontestable
authority, free of all tradition...

which would gather workers who
were scattered and unconnected.

This organization must be
the most influential...

for all the revolutionary
currents in the interior.

It must be capable of initiative
and control itself automatically.

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

Are there many who want to
take power at Renault?

Not to have power,
but maybe they'd want...

someone who makes an R16 to decide
whether to make an R16 or an R8...

for example?

It's very difficult,
because first...

you must first know a car,
how to create it, how to make it.

We're not able to do that.

No, I agree, but it would interest
you, just like the students...

Ah yes, I'd like to say,
to take...

to make a model in your
head, create this car...

I think it'd be very good...

And discuss it with...

And discuss it
with the management.

- The management?
- Yes, the management.

Yes, it'll still be
under management.

You see, I'd say comrades...

and you said management.

- The comrades' management.
- The comrades' management?

Or say for example...

we don't need cars...

You have comrades who've found
tricks in their work at the factory...

You have comrades who've found
tricks in their work at the factory.

For example, if you
have a facility with a piece...

and you have to make it
one way, you make it another...

to gain a little time and
earn a little more money.

It happens we
can't do it theoretically.

This allows us to gain time.

Say you see a hole...

that's useless and
won't be used...

instead of putting a
piece of putty, you don't.

The car rolls just the same.

It has the same price.

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

with protest strikes, or not?

Or not right away?
Or depends on the moment?

Once you have power
in the factories...

I think, in my opinion, it's
the base, the foundation of it all.

Until now, people
have been made to believe...

that the basis of everything
wasn't that, but...

precisely, to be able
to decide what to produce...

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

In the end, for example, the slogan
"don't make cars, make autos".

It's true.

When we go to work
in the morning...

when we go to the university
in the morning at 9:00...

at the time when
everyone goes to work...

it takes more time to go to...

People start to work
at 7:30, not 9:00.

In the factory yes,
but all the office workers...

the Paris department
store employees...

who don't like it either,
who start at 9:00...

I'm talking about Paris.

When we see
the number of cars...

So you want there to be
fewer cars?

It 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 want to make a public
transportation service...

and organize it
in an intelligent way...

you can get results,
very good things...

which cost much less and
allow you to do other things...

instead of everyone putting
their ass in their car.

Why do people want to
have a car for work?

Because taking the metro at 8 in the
morning or 6 in the afternoon...

is completely disgusting...

you're annoyed, you're not paid,
on the contrary, you pay to go there.

Precisely the students,
the intellectuals...

who can always
write books to try...

They've seen that this
doesn't satisfy them at all...

they want implementation,
and implementation...

isn't achieved like that...

it's done in common, it's done
with the mobilization of everyone.

I think one of the demands,
how do you say...

one has the right to see
what one produces.

Today we can say:

"We want to produce this much
per day, work this many hours,

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

They're demands that
don't arise now...

but they're demands that
should arise later.

Because, for example,
when you demand...

let's take the example
of social security...

about the provisions which...

The bourgeoisie knows no other
pleasure than eliminating it all.

It wasn't enough to imprison
the freedom of love...

with 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's managed to separate lovers
from their actions' embrace.

That's how it was done...

There were cases of sickness...

which were troubling,
which had to be resolved...

so they could afford to
spend a certain amount...

for the workers' health...

because they were also interested
in the company's health.

Well then, in social security
they talk about deficit...

because in fact the guys
take better care...

because people take
better care of themselves.

And that's too expensive!

It's too expensive, and they
no longer want to pay...

because health is considered
to be something which...

We're told that you can be
healthy enough for 400 francs.

You don't need
800 francs to be...

A health of 400 francs
will suffice to produce cars.

Accused Bukharin, I ask you again,
before the proletarian court...

Before everybody...

will you confess which
espionage service hired you:

German, Japanese or English?

- Bukharin:
- None.

...turmoil.
Maybe not in the same way...

but we are still present.

Well, count us in.

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 impetetus
to the masses to start again.

And don't you think
they would say:

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

still pulling their shit,
still bored, et cetera!"

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

And don't you think, on the contrary,
it would be a complete shock...?

Thus the circle closes.

As deterrence...

Mao Tse-tung's thought
attempts to define...

a strategy of fight
to the death.

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

The consequences, reversed.

The atom bomb isn't a
condition of universal order...

- ...but universal illusion...
- ...a paper tiger.

Saturday the 11th.
At two in the morning...

the Interior Minister
orders the streets cleared.

Against all odds,
it takes over three hours...

for the riot police to
clear Gay-Lussac street.

- Ten times...
- ...they encounter roadblocks.

Ten times they are
forced back...

despite the tear gas...

despite the incendiary
and other grenades.

...to explain the real
problems in a factory...

or, like you, the
students with a worker.

I think the occupation
of a university...

has led to direct contact
between workers and students...

and if this contact had continued,
I think it would go further.

I think we would feel
even more united...

before the problem which
arises with the government.

First, is the fact that we...

if we open in January or not...

it seems it will be better
at the end of November...

we'll always have the premises.
It's very important...

because we, when the
faculty returns...

we take them, no problem.

I think there's interest
to the extent that we explain...

or maybe it's demonstration,
the students haven't done that...

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

This can also impose problems
for us, that is, agitation...

Sunday the 12th. Gaullist power
responds to the university...

with bloody violence.

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

Here Radio Pravda transmits
from the station on the long wait...

- Daniel...
- ...Cohn-Bendit calls at 5 a.m...

on the trade unions...

and asks them to
organize a general strike.

Second paradox.

Kennedy proposes to the Soviets
what he has just rejected:

to limit the conflict to the problem
of missiles in the Caribbean.

Despite some allusions to
Berlin, Krushchev accepts.

Sunday the 12th.
The trade unions...

decide to accept the
challenge of power...

and call a general
strike of 24 hours.

We can't do that.

We can only make agitation.

Besides, we arrive right away
at the state of occupation.

It's possible...

It's clear that
terrorism in the cities...

can play no decisive role...

and at the same time
endangers political order.

But if it's subordinated
to the basic struggle,

there is, from a military point
of view, a strategic value...

since it ties up the
repressive apparatus...

in futile protection efforts.

We should take the
agitation to the universities.

That would mean that...

we would remain
on the ground for a time.

Agitation how?

I mean, for example,
agitation for us...

may be going to a class where
a teacher talks bullshit...

a history teacher,
for example...

who talks bullshit about
the Popular Front...

then getting up to say:
"Sir, you're an idiot...

a stupid ass, bug off, you're
rotten, fuck off!" and leaving.

I think that's logical
in the sense of the word.

But there are different
kinds of agitation...

There's also explanation,
meetings, etc.

But to start again from here...

I think that attacks with Molotov
cocktails and other things...

isn't exactly how we can
achieve something.

No, I don't think so...

It can serve, and
in fact it has served...

It always serves something...

but to resume demonstrations
like they were in May...

I think... like they were
in May, I think that...

This organization of language
must be called poetic...

because it reflects that which
makes language possible.

What makes language possible is
what separates sounds from bodies...

organizes them into propositions.

...let's say you sow
discord at the university...

and we at the factory,
it would be nice...

Yes, that is,
sowing disorder...

means upsetting the
university's functioning...

Not stopping it, blocking it...

Yes, or modifying it
a bit, because...

Yes, modifying it...

Yes, but...

Without this surface that distinguishes
itself from the depths of bodies...

without this line that separates
things from propositions...

sounds would become
inseparable from bodies...

and propositions
would be impossible.

This is why the
organization of language...

is not separable from the
poetic discovery of surface...

It's a question of reascending
to the surface, of discovering...

...in three months, we'll be able
to protest from the interior.

I see something...

a demonstration of workers and
students at the return of fall...

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

The bourgeoisie,
occupied inside...

sees the red Sorbonne
transformed into a blackboard.

...if you've displaced
your faculties...

you're beside the riot police
who prevent you working...

all that would form
a bloody turmoil.

Yes, but then,
at that time, before...

pardon, before, what I'd
like to happen, at the return...

is that, as soon as
summer holidays are over...

there are meetings between
students and workers...

where we can go to
discuss for some time...

before launching, before starting...
to know where we are.

Anyway now, each one will
no longer start on their own.

Ah, no! No fooling around
like we have done.

After those meetings,
we could say:

We have a plan,
we do this and that...

and now we can begin.

You young people
say something...

and we too...

we can agree on
a point, and that's it.

We don't start from a vacuum.

It would be nice...

but we must be able to
connect, hold meetings...

between us.

- You entered the Caf� Terminus?
- Yes.

The bomb was in the
belt of your pants?

No, in my coat pocket.

Why were you at the
Caf� Terminus?

First I was at the
Caf� de la Paix...

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

- Why?
- To have more people.

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

You did all you could
to save yours.

Yes, to start again.

Anyway, about...

...our demands...

our demands are
never quite correct.

I think, finally...

I think, in the demands
that you've made...

what constituted a great
part of their interest...

is that the employer
couldn't accept them.

- He couldn't, so...
- We knew he wouldn't accept...

He couldn't accept them,
therefore...

saying "we want this,
we want that"...

was really saying
"we want nothing from you".

It happened like that
six or seven months ago...

asking for a raise.

Suppose I'm in
a small business...

I ask for seven francs,
the boss gives five.

We already know if we
ask for eight francs...

they'll give us
five or four francs.

We know well they won't
give us the twenty francs...

or the ten francs raise.

Yes, it's a pedagogical strategy.

To say "we want this,
we want that"...

lets us bring together, bring
together the workers, in short...

the team, around that,
and then...

without saying we want
a socialist society...

and starting a big definition in
fifteen pages with nice phrases...

it says "this is what we want"...

and we realize that in fact
this society isn't capable of...

even with respect to that,
of satisfying our demands...

because...

This is related to
the fact that, let's say...

the social demands...

the social demands
made by the unions...

are not political.

In this they're political:
it's the fact that...

even if the powers finally
wanted to concede the goods...

if they had the the will...

to meet those demands,
they'd be unable to do it.

And just to show that
they're unable to do it...

we make demands
strong enough...

to show that they're
unable to meet them...

to show that we don't want
them anymore, then it's political.

To want nothing
but power is political.

When the team told him 100,000
francs minimum per month, it meant...

it meant: disappear!

But there are still many
precisely for whom...

saying "100,000 francs
per month" isn't saying...

there's no content... right.

- This must be explained...
- That's true.

This is what we must
explain at length.

The process of the
worker demonstrations.

In the last, the big worker
demonstration that occurred...

we demanded
that Pompidou get out.

Pompidou get out,
what does that mean?

It means that a government
will be replaced by another...

it's no longer...

No, but...

that was to say...

But about slogans, if we spoke
about slogans, there were things...

slogans, you must... how they're
launched, how they're taken...

because we've had
strange things.

In our demonstrations...

we didn't have slogans.

We sat in the demonstrations,
there were no slogans.

Then we found, I don't know how,
the slogans which were...

more interesting,
there was a sorting.

We had to choose.

Yeah, the guys launched
into something...

you had a completely
stupid slogan...

then there were ten guys
screaming it, then it ended.

Finally a guy
found something...

then ten in the first row
repeated it, joined in...

and you had 10,000
men after ten minutes.

With the slogans...

At one point, we felt that
the CP had been overwhelmed.

It was when,
after a demonstration...

they started to talk, I don't
know which demonstration...

maybe the one
on the 13th, when...

At Rhodiaceta the management
posted a statement on the door...

threatening a lockout if the
workshops stopped manufacturing.

- May 13th.
- Fraternization:

"I'm convinced that when
we shout 'French Algeria'...

we face a
historical movement...

no doubt the most important
along with the revolution."

The Sud Aviation
workers in Nantes...

occupy their factories
and kidnap the director.

The ruling class won't give up
power except through violence.

Every workers' struggle
important enough...

to take social power
from this class...

should expect to face the
most ruthless repression...

...inasmuch as this protest
turns into deeds and action.

That's what I was saying...

for thirty or forty years, only the CP
or the CGT have defended them...

and even if they feel
it doesn't work...

that it's gone to hell,
they don't know what to do...

and while they propose
replacement formulas...

for organization, organizational
guidelines that are serious...

and not things which
disappear in two or three days...

these guys won't
necessarily follow.

I don't totally agree.

I'd like to return to the
problem of spontaneity...

and I also think...

the first assault...

I agree with you.

Wednesday the 15th.

The CGT asks the 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,"
respond the occupants of the Od�on...

to the bus drivers who
want to block passage...

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

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

constitute, and at the same time
represent, unconscious desire.

The analysis puts in question
the distinction...

common and convenient,
between a term of reality...

I work with Seguy, I still...

support the policy
of the CGT...

- We voted for him.
- That means something to me:

twenty years of trade unionism,
etc., of political life.

Maybe the only thing that's
interested me in life is politics.

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

In reality, this has mobilized
a certain number of people...

it gives them a
certain confidence...

- See what they say.
- Well, just the revolt...

The events of May-June
have served that...

This first assault served
that, to demystify 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 still eventually
stay with the CGT...

except they've learned
certain things.

In my opinion,
the CGT can't change.

It tried to change in the Grenelle
accords, but the next day...

the party of Waldeck Rochet
forbade it altogether.

We still haven't heard
the last word about...

what went on between
Waldeck Rochet and Seguy...

in any case, Seguy lost.

The CP 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, if you like...

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

That is, in the October action...

We come to this
type of difficulty...

the language spoken
according to certain forms...

and the proper method of
political-poetic knowledge...

can only be established
by redoubling...

by speaking again about the forms
in which the language speaks.

Friday the 17th.

The strike with factory occupations
extends throughout France.

Thousands of deaths and injuries
in Barcelona where the Stalinists...

and the bourgeoisie attack the central
telephone occupied by anarchists.

Saturday the 18th.
Metalworkers, textile workers...

shipyards,
petrochemical works...

two million strikers receive De Gaulle
on his return from Romania...

...former French cultural colony.

Marx not only introduced a revolu-
tionary method to the Far East...

but also conceptual problems
which, unresolved, contributed...

to the bloody failures of the
Chinese Revolution until 1935.

Monday the 20th, the Citro�n
workers first occupy their factory.

We must criticize
the people's defects...

but we must do it based on
the people's condition.

...there are guys who still
rely on the CP or the CGT...

No, that's not true...

But listen, even so...

There is a minority that still
blindly follows the CGT slogans...

which aren't exactly
the same anymore.

It's the factory, recovery, etc.
And in action...

Our train arrived in
Odessa at ten at night.

They watched from the window
those places I knew well.

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

Our car was hitched
directly to the locomotive.

I was freezing.

Even though it was night,

the platform was
surrounded by agents.

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

It's because of them
that there were...

ten million workers
on strike...

and I think that
these people really...

will never follow the CGT, but
will take another kind of action...

which is
really more effective.

If there is self-management,
something like that...

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

something more concrete...

There are now ten million
strikers in France.

The workshop participants...

will keep factories occupied,
stores and yards...

discuss with the
striking workers...

how to defend the struggle
in which they're the vanguard.

In Venezuela, there was a surprising
underestimation of the guerrilla...

and the armed struggle in general,
which was intended to make...

not a mass instrument
for liberation...

but a simple means of pressure
to let politicians play war.

This isn't laboratory work.

Foreign or French, the
workers proposed slogans...

discussed with the
artists and students...

criticized the posters made
for distribution abroad.

The hallmark
of this new phase...

is that the Viet Cong...

no longer withdraw from
the cities after each battle.

For example, 25 days in Hue...

and 30 in Saigon, during the
Tet offensive in 1968.

How to work? The projects
made after a critical analysis...

of the events of the day or
discussions in the factories...

were proposed democratically at
week's end to the general assembly.

...takes the floor
the day of the attack...

at a meeting
organized in Detroit...

by the Afro-American
Broadcasting Company.

Despite the fire and smoke, Jack
should be present at this meeting...

which the local press had
refused to attend.

...by the union like in 1950...

and then by the CFDT.

You're not obliged to undergo all
possible and conceivable degrees.

There may be jumps.

Now a twenty-year-old kid who's
worked two or three years...

if he joins a group, if he
participates in an action...

he'll prefer a self-management
and workers' power action...

to a union action,
trade union meeting...

representative, delegate,
central committee, etc., etc.

So this is called a jump...

steps are jumped over
in some way.

Now we shouldn't delude
ourselves anymore...

about what they may represent
for the revolutionary movement...

these jumps, this youth...

what these housewives may
represent who say:

"Avoid politics."

Only a relationship
of force is established...

almost a
relationship of fear.

"Avoid politics
because it's dangerous...

you shouldn't join a union,
especially the CGT..."

Understand?

Tuesday the 21st.

Let's build in
our workplaces...

independent of the employer
and state apparatus...

organs of popular counter-
power, proposes the JCR.

No wages below 700 francs,
demands the CFDT.

If the bourgeoisie
pass up the opportunity...

no more tranquility,
writes the French CP.

To avoid a police charge...

Paolo takes refuge in
the Maspero bookstore...

where he opens a book
by Rosa Luxemburg...

and reads in "The Mass Strike,
Political Party and Trade Unions":

"History does not
wait patiently...

until the
backward countries...

have joined the
most advanced layers...

so the whole mass can
move symmetrically forward...

like a compact column.

It brings explosions to the best
prepared points of the vanguard.

Then in the storm of the
revolutionary period...

in days or months,
lost ground is recovered...

- inequalities corrected...
- the pace of social progress...

changed at one stroke
to double-quick."

After a day of painful
marching along the river...

and perching on the rocks...

Che and his comrades
arrive at the Rosita.

It's a larger river than
the Nancahuazu...

and smaller than the Masicuri.

Its waters are reddish.

Wednesday the 22nd.

In Peking, 700,000 Red Guards
chant before the French embassy:

"We are all German Jews."

An excessive concern with legality
and social-democratic nuance...

prevents the working class from using
its essential weapon, the strike...

to establish its conquests from its
unique position of strength.

...tired of being revolutionaries,
simply because it scares them.

They have only
a negative utility...

they also form part
of the occult forces...

though they defend against them.
In fact, it's like that...

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

People say: "If they ever take power,
what will happen, dictatorship?"

They defended themselves at a
given moment, they put up posters.

They were for a democratic and
social republic, finally...

the Communist Party sign.
All those posters...

- Union Democratic Government.
- Exactly.

It proves they're
no more than "reds".

It's the movement
of the teachers.

"Duval, 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, national education...

Paris taxis, banks and insurers,
booksellers associations...

all France has a work
stoppage, except the cinema.

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

No, because that detail
could have an influence...

But when it came to
understanding the situation...

people seek laws
to explain the situation.

So that it's clear,
the why and the how.

But when the situation
was understood...

and these laws were deduced
and formulas made...

it was noted that
understanding wasn't good.

...that the non-politicized student
elements, or badly politicized...

or insufficiently politicized,
and then...

Do you remember?

...I was saying that
this was...

the minimum to
provide, and that...

Saturday the 25th.

Waldeck Rochet dresses
in black to look good...

and to condemn anarchy and
the black flag before the cameras.

Due to the rainy season...

Lake Propovopoli, normally dry,
was completely full and muddy.

The partisans led their
captives to the shore...

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

Mortal war from
materialism to idealism.

Language is no longer driven
by a person towards truth...

but arrives as the vibration
of a massive and stormy push.

The surface is
no longer thought of...

as an elevation to heaven,
but as a decline without limit.

Down with heaven!

This phrase of Lenin crosses
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
nationalized at all, then...

They're nationalized
to some extent...

because there's something
quite incredible at Renault.

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

I don't know
in what time frame...

a certain time frame, the factory
was capable of transforming

into a factory
for making tanks.

It's true.

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

I think in 48 hours.

But how do you know?

We know this because...

There are already parts.

The parts and machinery
are already there.

There is material there
which is secret.

Which is stored
and is ready for use...

If necessary, the factory
works for the state.

They do like in 1940, when at
Renault in Billancourt...

they made tanks, and
even bombs.

So you know the factory
was nationalized for that?

You know the factory
was nationalized for that?

Simply because it's
possible to make tanks?

In 1945, the communists give up
totally to the bourgeois state.

In May 1968, ten million
French workers go on strike...

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

Since then, the working class
combat takes more often...

the form of wildcat strikes, spontan-
eous and massive explosions...

of a long-repressed
spirit of resistance...

direct actions in which the
workers take over the fight...

abandoning
unions and bosses.

Saturday the 25th.

"There's no question of us
giving orders to return to work..."

- ...says the CGT secretary...
- Georges Seguy...

"...since we've never even
ordered a general strike."

All class struggle can
at times be summarized...

as the struggle of
one word against another.

- True democracy.
- Power to the workers.

- Genuine republic.
- Occupied factories.

Wednesday the 29th.

To respond to the 100,000
leftists at Charlety, the CGT...

distributes 100,000 demonstrators
from the Bastille to St. Lazare.

Guy Debord to Raoul Vaneigem:

In societies where modern
conditions of production prevail...

all of life presents itself as an
immense accumulation of spectacles.

Everything that was directly lived
has moved away into representation.

Raoul Vaneigem to Guy Debord:

When theory escapes from
the makers of a revolution...

it turns against them.

The theory developed by the
strength of the armed people...

now develops the strength of
those who disarm the people.

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.

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

...administered by the state...

The Renault
family is always...

the Renault children
are always...

So it's always a society for
maximizing the stock market...

...where the state is the
principal stockholder.

Indeed, this proves,
if you like...

this proves that...

take the demands of the CP...

when the problem of
nationalization arises...

it poses a problem of management
of the capitalist economy...

but the question never arises
of the condition...

the condition of work and
working conditions.

They approach the problem from
the capitalist regime's view...

saying:
"The economy could improve...

the workers could be
more satisfied...

because 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."

But they don't consider any
criticisms against them.

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

the problems of the working
conditions in our society.

That's what raises the
level of consciousness...

when the guy
comes home dead tired.

He'll respond that the day
they're in power will be better...

but he doesn't know why
he should be confident...

given what happened
during these events.

It's what we said before
about the role of unions.

In fact, the union has
its own problems...

its own problems to
consider, that is...

they're problems about
how the workers live...

which should
interest them first.

We know what
it means to earn...

to earn 80,000 francs or
whatever per month.

We know it's difficult, but...

But we believe they live
like we do...

just a bit less well.

In fact a worker doesn't live
like a bourgeois, only less well.

He lives totally differently.

Monday the 30th.

You can't scream,
you can't sink any lower...

"Renault to work," miserable slogan
shouted on the Champs Elys�es.

With no danger:
"Renault to work..."

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

"Renault to work,"
"Workers to the line..."

"Damned unemployed,"
"Peasants to..."

Guy Debord to Raoul Vaneigem:

The spectacle is not a
supplement to the real world...

an additional decoration.

It is the heart of the
real society's unrealism.

In the spectacle, image of
the ruling economy...

the goal is nothing,
development everything.

The spectacle aims at
nothing other than itself...

and under the
spectacular oppositions...

hides a unity of misery.

Raoul Vaneigem to Guy Debord:

An analysis of revolutions
past or present...

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

plays into the
hands of the enemy...

...except that we too
have learned, we learn...

- Everyone learns...
- Yes, every man for himself...

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

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

what is the life of a worker.

I can certainly
plant myself, look...

I may look, but I don't
see them clearly.

And it seems to me that it's true,
the problem that you posed...

which is the demands,
how have we made them ?

They've been made in
the following way:

we had demands,
we said we were Marxists...

revolutionaries,
of whatever stripe...

and then we said...

Thursday the 30th.

After the closure of the OS...

follows the formation
of action committees.

The French CP denies
the popular government...

and places it with
the sliding wage scale...

and the abrogation of
social security ordinances.

How to know, how to know what
vision assaulted you in the night?

White or black, Harlem or Dallas?

Which is the worst of the two, and
which has been caught doing wrong?

How to know? Reflect,
America, and meditate a bit.

Perhaps you understand
why we're in Vietnam.

Here DJ, champion
of the disc-jockeys...

spoke to you about America-
Vietnam, the bloody mess.

Guatemala.

The far right has made R�gis into
a traitor to his class, 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
it's about a political struggle.

Dear comrades, don't let them
make of me something else...

different from what I am
and all I want to be:

a revolutionary fighter.
Hasta la victoria siempre."

Mich�le Firk.

...it's helping
the workers, above all.

I don't know if it's been
well perceived...

by everyone,
by all the students.

No, it's not just that.

Because here, I think
we stand at a perspective...

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

to the extent that to me
it seems too close...

what the Marxist-Leninist
comrades say.

The students, it's true
that they're favored above...

above the proletariat,
the workers.

And they make demands
that are remote from the students.

For example, as a student...

I can say I want to earn
200,000 francs per month...

take my studies and then
be an executive, no matter...

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...

students to be heard, better
conditions, more teachers, etc."

I see things that don't work
and I know that, finally...

my interests
and the interests of...

the interests of...

of the working class
are the same...

Exactly because
of that, a worker...

we asked you to take the floor,
because we believed...

that what you had to say concerns
the same basic conditions...

Wednesday, June 5.

Railworkers, postmen
and textile employees...

RATP public transportation,
the food industry, AGF insurers...

return to work victorious
in unity, says L'Humanit�...

while the ORTF calls an army
of private technicians.

"Citizens, apparently
crimes are being hatched...

among the king's men...

who still show insolence
after their defeat."

Perhaps they've renounced
their project of losing us.

We can't believe it,
it seems crazy.

Look now, making use
of common sense...

and those who give you
extreme advice...

...something happens, obviously
there's no common language.

But who, for what is...
well, not for what, but...

- To whom and for what?
- No.

Who can enter the House
of Culture? Everyone?

In principle, everyone, yes.

In fact, it's 7% worker participation
while the majority is bourgeois.

It's exactly the
same problem that...

You can't ask someone who does
10 hours of physical labor a day...

you can't ask...

...a guy who assists
in a theater piece.

...at the same time, we must
also change the form of theater.

Something has to change,
if not, it's not possible.

You learn there are film classics,
there are good and bad films.

On French television, they
have to show only good films.

That is, films which aren't
intellectual poison...

to keep people in a state
of passivity and satisfaction.

When we see a program
called "Au th��tre, ce soir"...

"Th��tre de Boulevard"...

it's enough to make you cry.

This doesn't matter
to the workers.

Yes it does!

Look at the movies that
we see every night on TV.

They're not films to
make you cry.

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, it's a nuisance.

We watch them
like brushing our teeth.

Exactly because of that...

In the Houses of Culture...

...we don't realize what we see.
We're there anyway.

I bought a TV because
I was bored at home.

Bored as hell.

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

- It's not normal?
- No.

Not emotionally,
but it's not normal...

to have a job which
makes you bored at home...

...as soon as
you don't have work.

Yes, I agree.

But if I'm not at work...

like on Saturday, I'm bored
because I don't know what to do...

if I have some household
chores, I can distract myself.

But it's not amusement.

I realize that, but I
prefer it to being pissed off.

I won't be bothered at home.

I get pissed off
when I'm bored.

Yes, it's like that, I have to
work to distract myself.

Since I have children
who are small...

I can't go anywhere
with them.

I can't take my children,
and bring them to the movies.

If I brought them, people
would say, "oh, stay at home."

Because of that I paid for a TV
and it screeches so I can relax.

The trouble is that...

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

Wednesday, June 5.

Water, gas, electricity...

gasoline, supplies,
price controls.

In Nantes, the inter-union
committee still sits in City Hall...

and practically runs the city.

These 6 months of victory
have been characterized...

by strong coordination
between 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 own contents
from themselves.

The social revolution must let
the dead bury the dead...

and liquidate all
superstition about them.

To realize its own project, it must
take its poetry from the future.

In other times, the form
overwhelmed the content...

now the content
overwhelms the form.

You don't get bored
planting lettuce.

Also it's more
expensive to buy it.

It's the influence
of the bourgeoisie.

In short, the culture we endure
is essentially a bourgeois culture.

To work on cars, if you
actually participate...

if you create them, elaborate
them, it's not boring at all.

Or if airplanes
interest you more...

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

Let's go back to the system
of exchange again...

between general creation
and particular participation...

that is, from the moment
the work you do...

is a specialized, limited job
in the general creation...

it's a part of the work.

Since you're responsible
in the overall scheme...

you participate much more.

So from the moment
there is participation...

you return to a
totally different scheme.

That's right,
the worker might say:

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

So I go to the pool,
for example.

I stop at noon
and go to the pool."

There are Houses of Culture...

to which we can go as well
for the day or afternoon.

Actually what can we offer,
supposing it were possible...

that the guy with one free
half-hour per day wants...

to go to cultural events?
What can we offer?

I know I've burned bridges and
I'm not going anywhere, it bugs me.

...or playing soccer...

The struggle is an event which is
a cultural phenomenon itself.

The political struggle...

the free tribunes like those
of the Od�on or the Sorbonne...

have truly been cultural
phenomena of great importance.

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

- No.
- No?

I've been past the Sorbonne,
but I've never entered.

- But you entered the Fine Arts.
- Yes.

That's not true, we were at the
Sorbonne together. You told me:

"I've walked past it for 14 years
and I've never entered."

Ah, no, when I was
with you, we walked past.

- It was at the City University, no?
- No, I've never entered the Sorbonne.

I was in, where was it, Censier.

It was in Fine Arts
that you told me.

It was in Fine Arts,
in Censier.

I've never entered
the Sorbonne.

I'd walk past it
almost every Saturday...

and 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 with a...

a worker."

Precisely because of that.

Perhaps it's inferiority
when you say we have to...

create an environment,
for example...

Sunday, June 9.

Call of the 153rd regiment
of mechanized infantry:

"We give you a gun, take it.

Long live the solidarity of workers,
soldiers, students, graduates.

Long live worker democracy...

long live joy, love,
and creative work."

The house was under siege
until 4 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.

Monday, June 10.

The workers entrenched
themselves in the paint shop.

There were 700 or 800.

They fought hard.

The police threw
tear gas grenades.

After a certain time, half
the comrades passed out...

Achilles: "Patroclus...

why do we men say,
to give ourselves courage...

"It can't get worse," when we
should say: "The worst will come"?

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

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

Achilles:
"But I do know you!

At night, I know after all...

there is no difference
between us and the cowards.

The worst exists for everyone,
and the worst comes at the end.

It comes after all and hits you
in the mouth like the earth's fist.

It's always good to remember
'I've seen this, I've seen that...'

but isn't it strange that
precisely the hardest things...

we can't remember?"

...I'm talking about
the people who worked...

and who tried hard
in the month of May...

for several months.

The guys, if it's
to enter the school...

and listen to so-and-so talk
and go home and say...

"But what he said might
not be entirely true..."

and take notes on
little slips of paper...

and say that one ends up
making a radical critique...

of bourgeois knowledge...

and returns the next day
to listen again, just so...

How do you envision it?

One can envision it
to the extent that...

that one attempts,
attempts to block it.

For example?

For example, you can impede
the normal operation...

of the university
institution, impede...

a knowledge that
it wants to give as...

as the one true thing...

By discussing
with the professor?

- No.
- No!

- It's a question.
- No, not necessarily.

By stopping, that is...

In the university
we can make terrorism.

That is, we can
do two types of work:

one of political education
of certain students...

Monday, June 10.

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 will have to...

organize our supplies,
we students...

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

ten times it's shot down.
How many are there at noon?

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

...try to contact the farmers
so that if there's a strike...

general or no, we can provision
the strikers and their families.

I think if something like that were
carried out, they couldn't tell us...

well, we'd be helping the working
class to win their strike, and so...

to win the struggle. At that time,
faced with a fact like that...

it's stupid to say: "Yes, but these
guys, when they get their diplomas...

they'll be executives then...

and give the same work conditions."
What counts is what they do...

during the strikes.

Because of that, the condemnation
of the Communist Party is ridiculous.

Instead of condemning them,
they could employ them...

but they never use them.

- Well, that's the theory.
- But the CP has already shown...

This is a response to give
to those who tell you:

"Yes, but later..."

Later, if there are failures...

later they may
be obliged to do it...

but it's up to each individual
that 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 artillerist
of the army, gone over...

to the people on March 18th,
was surrounded.

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

He shrugged:
"We can only die once."

Farther on, an old man struggled.
The officer by refinement of cruelty...

wanted to shoot him
upon a heap of filth.

"I fought bravely,"
said the old man...

"I have the right
not to die in the mire."

...those who participated
in the May movement...

in all the events,
were convinced...

that we could do
extraordinary things...

that we could go farther,
and the guys followed!

That was important, that the guys
followed and had confidence.

Now they may bail out
because they lose confidence.

All historical movements have
been carried out by minorities...

or have benefited them.
The proletarian movement...

and the spontaneous movement,
by the vast majority...

for the benefit
of the vast majority.

We realize that Lenin...

had to escape spontaneity,
establish a training...

a revolutionary organization
capable of leading.

Today...

we have the reverse.

Ironically...

corresponding to the
ministers' spontaneity...

are the French Communist Party and
the General Confederation of Labor...

and corresponding to Lenin's
revolutionary vanguard are...

And the Movement of 22 March
had this objective, not direction...

or organization of the proletariat
or revolutionary forces...

but the interpretation
of spontaneity.

...last year
in the last elections...

I think everyone was
more or less agreed...

that if one day we have a
change in this French society...

it certainly won't be by
putting a ballot in a box.

I think that people,
even if they never said it...

in reality
they understood this.

Because when they voted for...

massively to the right,
for De Gaulle...

it's because the communists had
nothing original to offer. In fact...

they simply said that once they
were in power, it would be better...

but they gave nothing precise.
No specific objective at all.

While the students,
well, yes...

because there had been a lot
of excitement in the street...

Tuesday, June 11.

- The Peugeot management...
- calls the riot police:

two workers dead,
shot in the street at Sochaux.

- According to Le Monde...
- a colonization of the situation.

Palais des Sports.

The CP office is a mix of the
"International" and "Marseillaise".

- The police arrest high schoolers...
- leaving the metro at night.

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

there are numerous barricades
to protest against repression.

According to Shakespeare, men are
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 last don't create history,
but also fall victim to it.

The first are the kings,
the second...

the kings' confidants
who execute their orders...

the last are the common
citizens of the kingdom.

...like we said this morning,
it's not a real failure...

Sorry, but that's
absolutely possible.

We're still in a utopia...

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

No, you'd have 50,000...

...or of 50,000 students,
the boycott of universities...

Don't boycott the universities,
empty the universities.

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

So you empty the
universities, and you let...

you let the bourgeoisie...

make their executives
quietly in the university...

and you do your job, because
you think that's the main thing...

and do political
work in the factory.

This supposes
that the 50,000 guys...

let's say this
truly is a utopia...

let's think
about this rationally...

since we have a
moment to spare...

but these 50,000 guys...

have no training, and
are unable to intervene.

Or pretend...

We have to know
where the problem is.

It's in the realm of society,
in the activity everyone does...

where one must,
first, be revolutionary.

That is, first, for the students
to not accept, for example...

they've put into question a certain
way of running the classes...

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

- Not at all!
- We'll reform peacefully...

we won't accept the
didactic course.

We'll discuss with the boss
and when this is over...

when the university
is reformed...

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

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

if we have these requirements...

first thing, like I said
at the beginning...

if we want to obtain the university
that we claim, it's necessary...

to question the workings of the
country's economy, it's basic.

It's obvious...

When we start to be
politicized...

it's the first argument
we say to someone:

the guys are very unhappy...

about their working
conditions in the college...

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

We want to believe that the
university is a public service...

but it's not at all.

It's basic.
Don't try to tell me that...

if I do political agitation
work in the college...

if I conceive it politically
just as I intend to conceive it...

reform will be achieved.
This is false.

Because my work of
agitation in the college...

I see it precisely as a
work of information...

that can't be separated
from the social agitation...

which also exists in the world
of work, industrial or agricultural.

And at this moment...

the reformist mission
disappears...

in this link which occurs
between the agitations.

At first, they would only be
relations of information...

but at least people
will have to come and see.

Maybe we could participate
more often in the agitation...

make exchanges, because if we
agitate in the universities...

the first thing
we can start to say...

is that the university
is open to everyone...

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

There's something
that bothers me.

We're talking about
the university...

we're talking and...

...that one or another
are completely closed...

that all the college
comes to the factory...

or that all the factory
comes to the college...

The politics of Wall Street
govern in the end.

Terrorism as a
single world system...

must appear as such
worldwide...

and especially
in the Third World.

Five men comprise
the group called Oujda.

Formed through
political commissary...

not the maquis' hard life...

they found in Ben Bella the
symbol of revolutionary purity...

but not a
strong head of state.

Faced with reality,
they move their hopes...

to the only force to survive
the vagaries of independence...

and grow stronger when faced
with difficulties: the army.

When clouds darken the sky...

we've noted that this
darkness is only temporary...

and the sun
will shine again.

Tuesday, June 18.

15,000 workers return
to Renault after a...

- short tour....
- in the streets of Billancourt.

But where do these
subsidies come from?

- From capitalism... - quite simply
the budget... - from you and me.

Miehn Lai said:

"If the silkworm spun to
prolong its life as a worm...

it would be a
real wage-earner."

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

But you can go to
college as if it were...

But after work...

Not after,
absolutely not after.

Why don't you watch
movies at the university...

rather than at the cinema?

- You go to the cinema
sometimes in Paris. - No.

This too is a utopia.

History, which threatens
this twilight world...

is also the force which could
subject space to lived time.

Proletarian revolution is the
critique of human geography...

through which individuals
and communities...

have to create
places and events...

no longer just for their labor,
but for their total history.

What I said is that
we have to ask...

Monday, June 24.

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

Unlike those at the CSF in Brest
who make walkie-talkies...

for their comrades in struggle...

the Paris audio-visual strikers...

have been unable to call an active
strike, to speak with their own voice...

in a language distinct from the
government which rejects them.

He was silent for a long
moment and began again.

"It's good that they didn't
execute him with a shot.

He wanted to hang others.
He should be hung."

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

"Do you think
Nicholas recognized?

Did he understand
the workers were judging?"

"I think so."

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

Having finished this task,
Rutenberg said to the workers:

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

"We will remember," they said.

When art, become independent...

depicts its world
in dazzling colors...

a moment of life
has grown old...

and it cannot be rejuvenated
with dazzling colors.

It's true that
art is the vanguard...

but also true that this vanguard
is no more than its disappearance.

...but when you came to the factory,
you had someone from the union.

When the unions are approached
by a student, they say:

"No students here."

But that's the
job of the workers...

it's a job to do with the unions,
since they keep quiet.

Since for the students, when
there's a strike at the factory...

they can enter, visit the factory
with the workers, etc...

it's a job that strictly belongs
to us, not the students.

It's not the student's job to say
to the union head in the factory...

to say open the factory to us,
the law says reopen.

It's not the student's job.

The job of the
student is to say:

"We want to open the
university to the workers."

The same way,
the worker should say:

"We want to open the
factory to the students."

July 1968.
Appearance of bulletin no. 1...

autocritique of the
Marxist-Leninist groups.

The Girondists had declared war, but
feared that appeals to the people...

essential for fighting the
aristocracy and the coalition...

would end up compromising
their own influence.

Roland restored freedom
of the grain trade...

after Barberou
denounced the fanatics...

who burned the transports.

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 Monnaies,
our own houses."

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

Unless...

I mean an apprenticeship, if the
intellectuals had an apprenticeship...

why can't they profit
exactly the same way?

My brother-in-law earns
30,000 francs a week.

These types of problems can be...
should be considered.

These are problems
of organization...

whereas corporate problems or
reform problems interest me more.

Calling the workers to
the university restaurants...

is a reform problem?

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

Social democracy...

that means, once, alright...

it's not just to obtain...

the opening of university
restaurants to the workers.

It's simply about
having the means...

to meet one another
easily like that.

Because before, being
Marxist-Leninist meant...

going to the factories
and saying to the workers:

"We're leftist
revolutionary intellectuals.

We want revolution, we're at
the service of the people."

Then the guys are left with their
mouths open saying: Oh, okay...

But if you eat with
the people 15 times...

maybe one day, the 15th time,
you can talk with them...

July 1968. The police
appear in the Fine Arts.

The Fine Arts appear
in the street.

It's the poor who create language
and constantly renew it.

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

August 1968. At the Avignon Festival,
the prostitute National Theatre...

and the Theatre La Monnaie
united with rugby team A-13...

to prevent by force the Living
Theatre from performing.

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 organization
didn't ask for money.

All the others
asked for 100 francs.

All the CGT workers...

automatically purchase
a newsletter subscription.

Really, all?

- All, no 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 paratroop lieutenant...

cuts the hair of an American
student distributing leaflets.

Well, the problem of money is
very important in an organization.

Well, the unions have
many problems, for example...

the problem of
gasoline at Renault.

You know, right?
We told you already...

September 1968.
At the F�te de l'Humanit�...

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

Peking and Tirana...

call Eastern Europe to the sacred
battle for freedom and socialism.

Plaza of the Three Cultures.

The Mexican army deliberately
opens fire on the demonstrators:

- men, women, children.
- September 1968.

Unable to purchase Skoda,
Fiat comes down on Citro�n.

Proposition 1:

The weapon of criticism cannot
replace criticism of the weapon...

but theory becomes
a material force...

once it grips the masses.

Variation 26:
Possession is condemned.

"When we let husbands and wives
live or die, sons and daughters...

fathers and mothers,
brothers and sisters...

no one can say my or mine."

Thesis 3:

Eroticism is the luxury of sexuality
like leisure is the luxury of work.

In the Interior
Minister's office...

the only map of France
on the wall...

is neither the prefects,
nor the elections...

but the distribution
of security forces.

Autocritique 3:
Students, workers...

if violence leaves the streets,
it will return to words...

to keep doing
violence to us...

even if only with
spoken language.

Proposition 27: Construct
millions of parking lots...

so that children can play
marbles on the sidewalks.

Banality 11:

The law is a justification
of existing structures.

Existing structures find
their justification in the law.

No one can remove
this contradiction.

Autocritique 7:

Assimilate or replace economic
needs with sexual needs...

or vice versa, is to speak
of the same nothing...

the need is no more than the
most reactionary figure necessary.

Banality 15:

Transformation of the
university cannot occur...

without radical transformation
of class relations...

subclass,
privilege of every kind.

It's not always with violence
that we get something.

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

Yes, but still.

Proposition 22:

Give your child 7 blocks
with the letters...

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

He will know to re-write...

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

...was against violence
to fix certain problems.

To reject
repression in France...

are you for non-violence
or for violence?

Against non-violence.

- Against non-violence?
- Yes.

Because I think we shouldn't...

If when...

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

But if they make us promises
and then we have nothing...

I'm against non-violence.

Imagine if De Gaulle was
in power right now...

and was against the
workers, that's for sure.

With an attack, killing him,
you won't get anything.

Those who remain in
government will do the same...

so you'll have to eliminate
everyone in the government.

But then it's a civil war.

And you're against it?

Why a civil war?

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

- Do you agree?
- Yes.

But they won't let them go.

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

But it's the masses.

If the strike had continued
in the whole of France...

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

- Yes.
- I don't think so, it's not true.

I think yes.

- I don't think a mere recruit...
- Wait! Not a recruit.

- Not a recruit.
- A soldier by profession.

During the first days of May...

when the situation
was already heated...

he sent the recruits, like so,
from one day to the next...

to do large maneuvers
in the countryside.

Because in fact, the recruits,
as we know, won't shoot...

but it's possible the police...

whom we've seen in action...

the cops and the
professional army...

are directly at the service
of the bourgeoisie.

So if we continued the strike,
they couldn't do anything...

but it was a desperate
attempt, I think...

a desperate attempt
to regain control...

through strong repression
in certain places.

Dreyfus resorted to riot police
for the return to work...

that was a violent action.

Yes, it was a
violent action, but...

The two dead
at Sochaux died by...

- ...by gunfire.
- They were shot.

In Latin America, for example...

...you're talking about workers
who exercise violence...

At some point, workers
have to respond...

to violence
with violence, right?

Sometimes, it could be that
you have to give rise to it.

That's precisely the
fear of the workers...

to have responsibilities.

Fighting is very nice...

but you have responsibilities
to your children.

It's about knowing to decipher
immediately what belongs...

by its form to idealism, that is,
the discourse proper to it...

after a series
of transformations...

designed to put brute dumb
force to work in a field...

that instead of giving them situated,
provisional, scenic sanctions...

detours them poetically, steals them
from contradictory dispersion...

synthesizes them, sublimates them,
gives them always a bourgeois head.

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

and the rot it comes from...

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

It dreams of sexually
exploiting the proletariat...

that is, to take back in words
what it has given in force.

The link between revolutionary
intellectual practice...

and the proletariat's struggle...

should be thought of at
this level of depth:

a deadly war waged by
idealists and materialists.

...we're obliged to fight...

Then you don't reject
the principle of violence.

Dare to act,
dare to think...

dare to fight,
dare to win.

No one to deceive,
no one to seduce.

Blows received, blows given.

Taking charge of
ideological education...

this is the central task if we
want to unite all the parties...

Taking charge of
ideological education...

this is the central task if we
want to unite all the parties...

in view of these
great political struggles.

The constitution of a
communist nucleus...

is a long journey...

a difficult undertaking,
a continuous process.

Skipping a step is
absolutely damaging...

see that you don't
skip one, either.

The filmed image belongs
to those who watch it...

as well as those who make it.

I think now we're looking to
go farther than the slowdown.

We're looking directly
at the active strike.

The strike is a
continuation of the work...

but in a completely
different circuit.

But isn't it easier to
do this type of strike...

instead of sabotage?

Meeting the demands
isn't the problem.

Yes, for now, for the workers...

what interests them is
meeting their demands.

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

I, not just as a worker,
but even as a revolutionary...

I think the first thing is to
obtain our demands.

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

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

the 40-hour law that was voted
long ago and hasn't happened...

and everything that happened
in May and didn't succeed.

I don't think if they
strike in September...

it will be because they want
a revolution. Far from it.

What they want are their demands
because once you get them...

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

Exactly, if the guys
make demands...

either about the hours
or the wages, finally...

it's all the same, no problem.

There's always a recuperation,
one way or another...

increasing the pace of work...

if they obtain 40 hours
instead of the 45 they had...

if they get 40 hours,
it's no problem...

there's a recuperation
with work that's...

that's faster, more
alienating and all that.

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

In the United States...

The United States
is completely different.

Because we don't have
Latin America...

to serve as our slaves!

How come in
the United States...

they can offer 40 hours per week
and pay 150,000 francs a month?

Because they have
Latin America...

Latin America, where they get
raw material for half price.

So the benefits aren't resented.

To see a bit,
start in Latin America.

You should see what happens
in Chile, in Bolivia...

It is a class made
of benches with trunks...

and tables of small
branches tied with fibers.

Against a tree, the blackboard.

Of 40 students, 25 girls
of about ten years.

Half a dozen can read
and write fluently.

Others read slowly
with many errors.

The teacher, in uniform,
with a gun at her waist...

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 laugh,
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 the
difference between then and now."

It's the first step that
should be suggested...

the problem of power
in the company.

There are demands
which could be different.

There are demands
which could be different.

There are immediate
material demands...

which have their interest and
shouldn't be discarded, obviously.

It's the old problem...

between qualitative and
quantitative demands.

One leads to the other.

Yes, but not necessarily.

A problem of quantitative...
qualitative demands...

for example, the
company's union situation...

it's something important and we
haven't even scratched the surface.

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

I don't know.

I think that...

the combatitivity is sufficient
among the workers, for example.

The people are
sufficiently resolved to...

to launch a demand of a
purely quantitative kind...

that is, higher wages,
reduction in working hours.

Well, okay...

but in the very development
of the strike, for example...

one can directly raise
the question of power...

inside the factory.

This is a question we
can address by raising...

the question of
structural reform.

For example...

if they give us
a certain raise...

if the government
gives us this or that...

with no modification
of the structure...

it's worth exactly nothing;
that is, it'll be gone...

everything achieved will be
gone in two or three months.

As if it never existed.

But for me, the advantages...

For me, the advantages
obtained by the unions...

don't represent quantitative
or qualitative change...

or at least not qualitative.

For me, the union is
a tool in a legal fight...

which thus
recognizes implicitly...

the existence of an
employer, of employees.

The problem for me
is to remove them both.

No, but one can recognize...

well, I recognize the real
existence of the employer.

Legality is something else.

In the fight I have against him,
for me it's not a question of legality.

No, but it's a question
of his actual existence.

Yes, he's real and my
struggle tries, in fact...

and my actions are determined
by his real existence...

and my objective
is his disappearance.

And it won't be within legal
limits that you'll succeed...

That doesn't mean that
to make a political action...

you're always obliged
to pass into illegality.

You can exercise...

a part of your political
action in legality...

if the bourgeoisie is
stupid enough for that.

If the bourgeoisie is stupid
enough for that, sure.

But the union will be auto-
matically limited in its action...

as it has been, by legality.

It's recognized,
it's legal...

and nothing will happen until its
dissolution, which it doesn't want.

It's doesn't want to self-destruct.

It'll be automatically
limited by this legality.

So for me, everything gained
through union action...

inside a factory,
is relatively negative.

That's debatable,
for example, as a tool...

which has served the
workers movement, the union...

that is, discussing the
union as an organization...

and saying from the moment
this organization is recognized...

it's rotten, that's false.

It's the policy of
the organization...

that should be analyzed,
not the organization as such.

An organization isn't
something abstract:

recognized organization,
then reformist...

non-recognized organization...
there aren't equations like that.

There's a rather
obvious parallel.

You might make a parallel,
but with a bad method.

Just because you declare
from one day to the next...

you're going to work in illegality,
doesn't make valid political work.

It's no longer true.

That is, if you can, through
a union for example...

make agitation...

do the work of political
propaganda in the factories...

about social problems,
about cultural problems...

Against the advice in every factory,
every school, every high school...

every administration,
every metro station...

every neighborhood, no police,
however fierce, can do anything.

It all comes down to aesthetics
and political economy.

BLUE / RED