FIFTY years ago, Parisian students sparked off protests that would lead not only to the biggest general strike in history but also to copycat actions that would spread across Europe and much of the world. These events made 1968 synonymous with rebellion. They undoubtedly mark the beginning of the modern era of protest culture, but for that reason their impact remains contested and even leftists can’t fully claim their legacy without reservations.
Among 1968’s critics, conservatives have the most obvious motives. Their entire ideological history is bound up with stamping down the working class, both at the ballot box and in industry, and the May rebellion brought all their traditional fears together with new ones.
Previously, striking workers were painted as the main threats to social order, but, for that reason, trade unionists were often at pains to emphasise their respectability. They took pride in their work ethic. Even as conservatives screamed about Communist takeovers in industry, factory labourers were pictured as down to earth, solid, the “salt of the earth”.
But 1968 added something very new and contagious to working-class protest, a counterculture that deliberately broke moral and sexual norms, experimenting with drugs and hailing self-expression and even bunking off. It thus anticipates the modern era of conservative moral panics, where youth cultures replaced the trade union agitator as the tabloid bugbear of choice.
Reactionaries, however, aren’t alone in their scepticism. Ultimately, the hopes raised by the protests and strikes came to little. This dejection led leading players to become dubious about the Marxist idea of changing the world. Many famous 1968 radicals found roles in the French state or in the commercial world; others turned on their old leftist comrades and came to rejoice in a Ronald Reagan-style mixture of consumerism and traditional moral conservatism.
For those who remained true to their leftist convictions, 1968 ended in a great sell-out. Some began to see the roots of this betrayal in the protests themselves. They felt that beneath the collectivism of protest was an underlying, disquieting individualism that anticipated the coming of an Americanised world of McDonald’s, blockbuster movies and self-help manuals. Selfishness, in other words, had overwhelmed solidarity, and to a large extent the protesters were to blame. These fears were arguably realised in the victory of a post-1968 generations of politicians like Tony Blair, emerging from the traditional left but hailing the free market as the liberator of society.
The year 1968 also brought the first stirrings of the identity politics that would become, for many, the dominant form of protest. Included in that legacy are contemporary Scottish nationalism, feminism and environmentalism. These new political cultures have had strained relationships with traditional forms of collectivism like socialism, social democracy and the trade unions. Often, they seem equally adapted to the neoliberal world of marketplaces and personal fulfilment.
This is one reason why few people today celebrate 1968 without hesitation. So much of its legacy has been poisoned by the post-Thatcherite world of “market freedom” that even protests aimed at the power structures in society seem to reinforce the inevitability of capitalism.
Nonetheless, I prefer to see 1968 as a missed opportunity. It’s too simplistic to write off the record factory strikes of that era as the last gasp of a dying working-class culture. Factory rebellions didn’t ease off in the 1970s: in many cases they accelerated, particularly in Britain. The Upper Clyde work-in represented one famous offshoot of that tangled relationship between traditional industrial solidarity and the rebellious youth counterculture.
In Scotland, and elsewhere, women coming into the workforce weren’t simply compliant: indeed, they often put their male colleagues to shame as industrial organisers. It took until the 1990s to tame industrial protest completely.
Today, we see 1968 through the lens of defeat, betrayal and sell-outs. However, it’s important to remember how contingent that was. Margaret Thatcher’s government, for example, came very close to surrendering to Arthur Scargill and the striking miners, and that defeat could have not only damaged her government but also undermined the whole project of free market “reforms”. If neoliberalism had lost, and it could have, then our whole perception of 1968 would change accordingly.
It’s true, of course, that 1968 did anticipate the inevitable end of post-war leftism. The culture of male industrial employment, Keynesian management and the old patriarchal family was being weakened by the new freedom of teenage life and the growing role of white-collar work. At some stage, a reckoning with the social movements was inevitable. What wasn’t inevitable was the Thatcherite victory and the subsequent collapse of all the forces of working-class strength.
In recent months, French students have been reviving the culture of sit-ins and street fights, while rail workers are preparing for three months of strikes.
What’s most interesting is their choice of enemy. All the betrayals of European leftism seem to be converging on Emmanuel Macron. His celebration of the unbridled Anglo-American marketplace, added to his coiffured, consumerist image and his official respect for the linguistic norms of identity politics, makes him the perfect embodiment of what 1968 failed to achieve.
For those liberals who have given up on protest, and simply wish for a return to “normality”, Macron is the perfect politician. His policy expertise, added to his distrust for ideology, make him the ideal centrist to gather together establishment forces and hold off Marine Le Pen.
If the protests continue and gather strength, many will argue that striking only aids the fascists. And, unless the French left can recapture the utopian energies of 1968, maybe it’s true: maybe it’s Macron’s European free market or Le Pen’s nationalist fascism.
But that’s precisely why this movement is important. It will test whether leftism is mature enough to face down the blackmail which says that rebellion simply encourages fascism. Until we’ve regained that boldness of spirit, we’re doomed to repeat 50 years of mistakes and sell-outs.
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