Original subtitles

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