50th Anniversary of May 1968, Paris: Memories of an Illusory Revolution | Hacker News Reader

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

consortiumnews.com

57 pointsbehoove39 comments

1968 was a crucial turning point in the economic history of France. After 1968 France enjoyed almost 20 years when the working class saw large gains in wages. Income inequality shrunk dramatically. See here:

http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/05/08/may-1968-and-inequ...

an excerpt:

In France the years 1945-1967 are marked by high rates of growth, but also by a movement of reconstitution of inequalities, with, at one and the same time, a steep rise in the share of profits in national income and the reconstitution of highly ranked salary scales. The share of the 10% highest incomes which was barely 31% of total income in 1945 gradually rose to 38% in 1967.

...The break came in 1968. As a way out of the crisis, General de Gaulle’s government signed the Grenelle Agreements which included, in particular, a rise of 20% in the minimum wage. The minimum wage was officially indexed on average wage gains in 1970 and, most importantly, all the successive governments from 1968 to 1983 felt obliged to grant very high ‘special hikes’ almost every year in a social and political climate far from stable. The result was that the purchasing power of the minimum wage rose in all by over 130% between 1968 and 1983, whereas at the same time the average salary only rose by about 50%, whence a very strong compression of pay inequalities. The break with the previous period was clean and wide-ranging; the purchasing power of the minimum wage had risen by barely 25% between 1950 and 1968, whereas the average salary had more than doubled. Driven by the strong rise in low salaries, throughout the years 1968-1983, the total payroll rose significantly faster than did production; as a result there was a considerable fall in the share of capital in the national income. All this took place at the same time as a reduction in the number of hours worked and an increase in paid holidays.

I found these reflections interesting. Since she was there at the time and doesn't draw any simplistic conclusions, I thought the essay might make an interesting HN post. It's a political site, but the article is not so politicized.

This one is slightly more ideological but still more personal and also quite interesting: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2018/05/some-reflecti.... I found it pretty consistent with Diana Johnstone's piece.

Thank you for this. It sad that these protests came to nothing. Marx is more relevant than ever.

Do you have any good french language sources?

[flagged]

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. The parent dipped a toe in that tarpit, but that's no reason to jump in.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry was merely stating why I was greatful for the source. Perhaps I should have phrased differently. Sorry :)

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

http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/05/08/may-1968-and-inequ...

But I don't why this is so important that this particular months has to be commemorated, long after any economic changes has faded away.

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

I see it as a irony that in 68 there were many communist activists in the West, while Czechoslovakia - socialist country - was invaded by 'allied' eastern bloc armies. Reason was that local politics shifted towards what was called "communism with a human face", meaning it introduced freedom of expression.

Any attempt to implement Marx ideas resulted in unimaginable amount of suffering and injustice, scarring nations for decades to come. I am dismayed that he still has so many followers, and quite a lot of them seem to be Westerners.

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

[flagged]

I don't think that any of those countries were prosperous before Communism either.

- Gulag-style camps and secret police already existed in the Russian empire. USSR managed to have an "industrial revolution" over 20 years and beat Nazi Germany, then was the first country to space and was one of the world's superpowers right up until the end.

- If you look at the history of both Koreas post-WWII, you will see that the economic system has little to do with how DPRK is now.

- Cuba has done OK considering the embargo. Cf Haiti

- Colonialism and the Vietnam War did more damage to Vietnam than Marxism could have

- Again if you look at how poor the situation in China was pre-civil war you will see that the claim that Marxist policies "destroyed" China is false.

> What is certain is that the Soviet Union has been the worst reeking charnel house of this whole awful twentieth century, worse even than the one the Nazis created

I think it is hypocritical to call the USSR worse than the Nazis when at least 80% of the German casualties of the war were on the Eastern Front, thanks to Stalin's brutal policy to industrialize the country.

>USSR managed to have an "industrial revolution" over 20 years and beat Nazi Germany, then was the first country to space

That's just half the story. Space exploration was built on slave labor (everybody knows Gagarin, but who would remember Korolev and Ghlushko?) and all the industry largely rots because it proved to be not competitive after USSR collapse, so eastern block is poor in the end and still has to bear the cost of forced aspect of it.

This. A space program is not very impressive if your population has to live under dystopian conditions.

> Gulag-style camps and secret police already existed in the Russian empire. USSR managed to have an "industrial revolution" over 20 years and beat Nazi Germany, then was the first country to space and was one of the world's superpowers right up until the end.

You either deliberately choose to ignore all the atrocities that Lenin, Stalin, and subsequent Soviet leaders committed against Soviet citizens and the complete lack of freedom, or are completely ignorant of the topic.

"But the previous guy did it too!" is not an argument. Also, the famines caused by the Soviet policies are unmatchable in World history, especially considering the timeframe.

Not to speak about the many violations of basic human rights, such as the abolition of private property.

Life was hard for most people around the globe at the time of the Russian revolution, however, those countries that chose democracy and capitalism managed to improve considerably, while those who chose Marxism have today much to regret.

One might argue that Marxism can't be possibly blamed for this, but (and this is something many have a hard time understanding) Marxism does inevitably lead to these conditions. Karl Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies" is a good start at why.

> Cuba has done OK considering the embargo. Cf Haiti.

Comparing Cuba with Haiti is the equivalent of comparing Southern Europe with Northen Africa. Very close to each other but still two worlds apart.

Pre-Castro Cuba was, by most standards, far ahead most of Latin America and the rest of the world. [1][2]

[1] https://ascecuba.org//c/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/v08-30smi...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNixpGx4AV8

> "But the previous guy did it too!" is not an argument. Also, the famines caused by the Soviet policies are unmatchable in World history, especially considering the timeframe.

Famines were still common at that time in a lots of parts of the world, it wasn't "unmatchable", have a look at Africa, Asia and India, you will be surprised. A lot of countries were really undeveloped at that time. That's why you can't find soviet famines after the 50s.

> Life was hard for most people around the globe at the time of the Russian revolution, however, those countries that chose democracy and capitalism managed to improve considerably, while those who chose Marxism have today much to regret.

History needs to be analysed in it's own context, you are applying modern knowledge to past politics, this cannot work.

At that time, no other country managed to develop as quickly as the soviet union, capitalism was a failure in Asia, in Africa and in latin america as well.

> Pre-Castro Cuba was, by most standards, far ahead most of Latin America and the rest of the world

Pre-castro cuba was a shitty fascist-like dicatorship, it wasn't ahead of anything. I can't believe you still have people defending that shithole just to be against Castro, the red scare is real... You can be against both you know.

Not to defend Stalin but, those 26 million died during WWII. 8 million in the fighting alone, another 3 million in POW camps. It's a bit of a stretch to say Stalin murdered people who in fact died of starvation sitting in German occupied territory. And rather creative to imagine they would have died anyway, Nazi invasion or not.

Compare to the Taiping Rebellion, in which roughly 20-70 million died in a religious war. The Cato institute chooses not cite this as proof that religion is more violent than Nazi carnage. I suppose because both claims are equally ridiculous but only one matches Cato's coldwar ideology.

I'm not sure what exactly you are talking about, but there was an intentional famine in Ukraine in the 1930's from Soviet policy which killed millions. Well before the USSR entered into WW2.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Absolutely, and Stalin is absolutely an indefensible monster. But this "worse than hitler stuff" and "worst man in history" is cold war propaganda and as such clouds reality.

Both Franco and the Rwanda genocide killed a larger percentage of their population. Hong Xiuquan's war killed multiples more people than Stalin did.

Stalin ran his country just like Kim Il-sung and co. Which is obviously deeply evil but not "worse than hitler"

Perhaps out of pragmatism, the cold war US found itself allying itself Franco, Pinochet etc as part of containment. So to get the public on board, certain think tanks decided to do a bit of embellishing to the historical record. Regrettably, the debris from this is still floating around.

Consider the implication of this narrative: the US should have allied with Hitler to fight Stalin. I don't think anyone but right-wing extremist with go along with that.

This is not true. Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 3 million children in the famine of 1934 alone. There were around 6-7 million deaths in the famines of the early 30s. Then there were the purges of the late 30s. Stalin was about to start a pogrom when he died. It was his policies of destroying the Kulaks (an elastically defined scapegoat) that resulted in most of the deaths. It was Stalin's extension of Lenin's murderous tendencies that caused this. Because the system ate itself (guards became prisoners after around 18 months, and prisoners tended to die), and because the Soviet Union was never overrun like Germany some people seem to be able to ignore that the USSR was the most murderous regime in history.

As the aricle notes, May 1968 was not a Marxist uprising. If anything, established Marxist forces are blamed for deflating the momentum of May '68 and, through the unions, simply being content with extracting some concessions for workers.

That could not be more true. Mai 68 is now considered in some thought circles to be the first “color revolution”. The main figureheads come from French upper middleclass bourgeoisie (Cohn-bendit, Sauvageot, Geismar, Goupil) and derailed legitimate blue collar upsets to push their liberal/libertarian agenda in order to shake up the conservative government led by General de Gaulle.

At that very moment, losing ground, de Gaulle flees France for Baden-Baden to regroup with General Massu. After that meeting de Gaulle decides to resign, leaving the room to the banker Pompidou, much more open to the Anglo-saxon “weltanshauung” that the General spent his life fighting.

Sounds like a replay of the events of a century before, during the French revolution of 1848 and the subsequent June Days.

You could argue the upper middleclass bourgeoisie figureheads were agent provocateurs helping to restabilize the status quo

You do know that France has a tradition of citizens going to the barricades going back to the 18th century :-)

Let alone the French revolutions role in supporting the AWI

Yes! In particular, I knew about the message behind their gift of the Statue of Liberty.

Every time this argument is made I wonder how capitalism would look if a fair comparison were made. All the mortality and cruelty of the slave trade and it's aftermath, all the genocide around the world that accompanied colonialism. Marx's ideas would not have created the defacto religious fervor they did if they had not created hope for an alternative to the horrors of 1800's capitalism. The real problem is that humans are too easily swayed by men seeking power who offer simplistic purist solutions. We are better off recognizing that we will always be in an unstable equilibrium where we work constantly creating changing complex mixtures of insights from Marx and Smith and wise humans of all stripes in a never ending battle against entropy and human nature.

It's perfectly legal to set up communist communes in the US, and there have been no shortage of attempts. They all failed. It's hard to claim they haven't been given a chance.

There are plenty still in operation. However, any of the attempts which actually posed a threat to the system were usually violently suppressed. See for example the unlawful assassination of Fred Hampton or the MOVE bombing. There is often a big difference between what is legal and what is practically implemented when it comes to these issues.

> There are plenty still in operation.

Feel free to join one.

> what is legal

What are you claiming is making communes illegal?

A great deal of the slave trade and colonialism happened under mercantilism, not capitalism.

The parts that happened under capitalism were incredibly terrible, leaving tens of millions dead.

Hard to know what the outcome would be.

I would argue that any violent revolution has great risks. You just never know who will come to power and what their choices will be...

The slippery slope argument seems to come out quickly against Socialist policies. The danger of any populist/mob revolt is the unsavory type that wins out and the tactics they use to consolidate and retain power.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com