tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/paris-1968-49125/articlesParis 1968 – The Conversation2018-09-04T13:26:00Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1022912018-09-04T13:26:00Z2018-09-04T13:26:00ZHow a Beatles song about ‘revolution’ helped Nike become a billion dollar brand<p>Fifty years ago the Beatles released a single that sold over 8m copies – their highest selling 45rpm – Hey Jude. While Hey Jude made the greater impression, it was the B-side – Revolution – in which John Lennon addressed the <a href="https://theconversation.com/revolution-starts-on-campus-102243">global political upheaval of 1968</a> that has the more interesting story. Rare as it was for a pop song to address politics, the message in Revolution – which I outline in <a href="https://repeaterbooks.com/product/advertising-revolution-the-story-of-a-song-from-beatles-hit-to-nike-slogan/">my book</a> – attracted fierce resentment within the radical left before re-appearing in 1987 in one of the most seminal and <a href="https://vimeo.com/89811766">ground breaking advertisements ever made</a>.</p>
<p>Lennon wrote Revolution in India where the Beatles were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/09/indian-retreat-where-the-beatles-learned-to-meditate-is-opened-to-the-public">meditating with the Maharishi</a> while the Vietnam War and Chinese Cultural Revolution raged on. There was a major <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/march/17/newsid_4090000/4090886.stm">riot in London</a> and Paris was brought to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/may-1968-the-posters-that-inspired-a-movement-95619">brink of another revolution</a> in May of that year. </p>
<p>Upon their return to London, the Beatles recorded the song with Lennon lying down to sound serene. In one line he sings: “You say you want a revolution … but if you’re talking about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out.” And then, after a pause, he sings “in” (because he hadn’t made his mind up).</p>
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<p>The rest of the band argued that the slow bluesy number was insufficiently commercial and so a faster, rockier version with distorted guitars needed to be re-recorded. Lennon reluctantly agreed, despite worrying that the political message would be more difficult to understand.</p>
<p>The first version (Revolution No. 1) appeared on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/4b8c/">the White Album</a>, which was released later that year. The faster version, simply named Revolution, became the flipside to Hey Jude. A third version – Revolution No. 9 – was also included in the White Album. This was just a scramble of noise, static, and nonsensical phrases – though an early example of electronic mixing.</p>
<h2>‘A lamentable petty bourgeois cry of fear’</h2>
<p>Hey Jude was proclaimed as one of the Beatles’ <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/aug/21/how-hey-jude-became-our-favourite-beatles-song">best songs</a> by the pop media which largely ignored Lennon’s more political offering. Yet the radical underground media railed, with Ramparts, the American literary and politcal journal, declaring “Revolution preaches counter-revolution”. </p>
<p>The New Left Review called it a “lamentable petty bourgeois cry of fear”, while the Village Voice wrote: “It is puritanical to expect musicians, or anyone else, to hew the proper line. But it is reasonable to request that they do not go out of their way to oppose it.” The Berkeley Barb sneered “Revolution sounds like the hawk plank adopted in the Chicago convention of the Democratic Death Party” and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/mar/15/popandrock.pressandpublishing">Black Dwarf dismissed the song</a> as “no more revolutionary than Mrs. Dale’s Diary”.</p>
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<p>Then in 1987 the song reappeared when the small advertising agency, <a href="http://wklondon.com/">Wieden+Kennedy</a>, selected it for a Nike advert. It was the first major television advert Nike ever made. Wieden+Kennedy had previously attracted industry attention by featuring Miles Davis and Lou Reed in their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK6y9_0gsEg">adverts for Honda scooters</a> and were becoming the agency that could deliver coups. </p>
<p>They also managed to <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-sports/story-behind-nikes-controversial-1987-revolution-commercial-192421/">secure Yoko Ono’s support</a>. She explained that she didn’t “want to see John deified” nor for “John’s songs to be part of a cult of glorified martyrdom”. Instead she wanted his songs to be enjoyed by a “new generation” who would “make it part of their lives instead of a relic of the distant past”. So Revolution was licensed for a media campaign that cost between US$7m and US$10m.</p>
<p>The advert consisted of a jerky black and white, hand-held camera film that showed Nike athletes and ordinary people participating in a variety of sports at various levels of seriousness. It became a massive success. Nike sales doubled in two years and the advert’s theme of empowerment and transcendence with a personal philosophy of everyday life formed the basis of Nike’s branding for the following years and allowed them to dominate the newly emerging “sign economy” of brand culture (how brands started to gain value at a more cultural and aesthetic level). </p>
<p>By 1991, Nike held 29% of the global athletic shoe market and its sales had exceeded US$3 billion.</p>
<h2>Selling out?</h2>
<p>Yet the ad attracted controversy. Time magazine wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mark David Chapman killed him. But it took a couple of record execs, one sneaker company and a soul brother to turn him into a jingle writer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Chicago Tribune described the advert as “when rock idealism met cold-eyed greed” and the New Republic said: “The song had a meaning that Nike is destroying.” </p>
<p>Revolution, it seems, had apparently morphed from a “petty bourgeois cry of fear” into a sacred text, twisted and spoiled by a sneaker company. The most significant response was the US$15m lawsuit <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/05/arts/nike-calls-beatles-suit-groundless.html">filed by Apple Records</a> in an attempt to halt the commercial. Apple claimed that the advert used the Beatles “persona and good will” without permission. Reportedly, the action was settled out of court after the campaign had run its course, with Apple, EMI and Capitol agreeing that no Beatles version would ever be used again to sell products – truly the Nike Revolution was a one off.</p>
<p>Yet the critical attention generated by the advert appears to have had long term consequences for Nike. The <a href="https://business.nmsu.edu/%7Edboje/nikerpts.html">negative press coverage</a> on the brand accumulated, focusing on allegations of a “patriarchal culture” and <a href="https://qz.com/1042298/nike-is-facing-a-new-wave-of-anti-sweatshop-protests/">labour abuses</a>. The Nike Revolution advert did not just launch Nike into the stratosphere of brands. It singled it out for critical attention.</p>
<p>Yet it also helped normalise the everyday wearing of sports shoes.
Thirty years later, the everyday wearing of shoes designed for professional athletes is a normal part of consumer culture, demonstrating how society can live in the legacy of extraordinary marketing campaigns. Indeed, the possibility that so many people are wearing these shoes because Lennon, meditating in Rishikesh, decided to address the politics of 1968, is a reminder that the collision of culture and politics in the medium of advertising can often create the most unpredictable outcomes imaginable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102291/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Bradshaw is co-author with Linda Scott of Advertising Revolution: The Story of a Song From Beatles Hit to Nike Jingle, published by Repeater.</span></em></p>John Lennon’s Revolution was panned by the radical media as a ‘petty bourgeois cry of fear’ in 1968. Then, in 1987 it was claimed by Nike to be the controversial soundtrack of its most seminal advert.Alan Bradshaw, Professor of Marketing, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/956192018-05-11T14:55:45Z2018-05-11T14:55:45ZMay 1968: the posters that inspired a movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216507/original/file-20180426-175074-15cnam8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C114%2C1523%2C1064&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/12533165@N05/1345676945/in/photostream/">jonandsamfreecycle</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The uprisings that took hold of France in <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/1968-50th-anniversary-48869">May 1968</a> provided a blueprint for the kind of widespread social unrest capable of unifying students and factory workers. Beginning with protests over university reform, action escalated quickly to widespread strikes and occupations. The country’s leaders feared an actual revolution could be about to take place. </p>
<p>The movement also produced an important visual language for protest that still resonates half a century later. While often aesthetically crude in design, posters were pasted up in the streets calling for solidarity in the fight against capitalism.</p>
<p>Emanating from the printing room of Paris’ École des Beaux Arts, a group calling itself Atelier Populaire (“Popular Workshop”) subsequently produced the posters. They called them “weapons in the service of the struggle”. This extensive series depicted the tools of the proletariat, including the hammer, the spanner, the paintbrush, and reclaimed them as objects of power rather than subservience.</p>
<p>To create their posters, the group used a production technique – screen print – that was as immediate as the messages they sought to communicate through the work. It harnessed the kind of grass roots energy that is evident in thousands of hastily-produced banners and placards that continue to challenge the status quo around the globe today.</p>
<p>Atelier Populaire’s approach was to work in an egalitarian way. Each print was attributed to the collective rather than the individual designer. Its approach remains a veritable touchstone for those whose work and activism is driven by disillusion and disenfranchisement with the current system – especially those representing organisations which work anonymously to highlight their grievances.</p>
<p>The output is referenced in a huge number of works from protests movements that have taken place since 1968. Its influence is clear throughout high profile exhibitions of political materials such as <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/disobedient-objects/how-to-guides/">Disobedient Objects</a> and <a href="https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/hope-to-nope-graphics-and-politics-2008-18">From Hope to Nope</a> in London and <a href="https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/get-action/">Get With the Action</a> in San Francisco.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216519/original/file-20180426-175058-1r2kl6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Be young and shut up’: a poster from the movement on display in Paris.</span>
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<p>But this reverence really shouldn’t be the case. Atelier Populaire was clear that it did not want its work to be displayed, or even kept for posterity. “The struggle,” it argued, “is of such primary importance.”</p>
<p>However, these political posters – supposedly mere ephemera – retain power well beyond their original intentions. Perhaps that’s because some of the issues they addressed have refused to go away. In 1968, a single-colour print depicting an officer wielding a baton behind a shield emblazoned with a lightning bolt-like “SS”, raised questions about the heavy-handed police response to protests. </p>
<p>But the same is true today. The image still works as a criticism of police brutality and its associations with totalitarianism at a time when campaigners are seeking an official inquiry into the <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-files-add-weight-to-calls-for-battle-of-orgreave-inquiry-85697">Battle of Orgreave</a> and organisations such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/black-lives-matter-14463">Black Lives Matter</a> highlight cases of police aggression in the US. As one famous design reminds us: “La lutte continue” (the struggle continues). </p>
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<h2>Ink remains</h2>
<p>Still, works on paper may be viewed as a relic from a bygone age. Even in the late-1960s, Atelier Populaire had declared that its posters “should not be taken as the final outcome of an experience, but as an inducement for finding, through contact with the masses, new levels of action both on the cultural and the political plane”. Writing in 2011’s <a href="https://www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/books/beauty-is-in-the-street/">Beauty is in the Street</a> – an essential and comprehensive overview of material by Atelier Populaire – the group’s co-founder Philippe Vermès indeed suggested that “it’d be different now if we ran the same scenario through current times. Twitter and Facebook and cell phones didn’t exist in May ’68”.</p>
<p>Lucienne Roberts, one of the curators of the <a href="https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/hope-to-nope-graphics-and-politics-2008-18">Hope to Nope</a> exhibition in London, seemingly disagrees that those means of communication necessarily require updating. “I can’t help but think print is the best way to disseminate ideas free of surveillance,” she told me.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218595/original/file-20180511-135202-ogl8w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A famous poster from the time depicts a police officer.</span>
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<p>And that is an all-important point in 2018. Yes, digital platforms may be seen as having more reach, but as allegations continue to circulate regarding the online tactics of everything from <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43093390">Russian troll farms</a> to data companies such as <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-of-donald-trump-data-firm-cambridge-analytica">Cambridge Analytica</a>, it’s not just democracy but also dissent that is in danger of being subverted; hijacked, even. And while a trending hashtag or some anonymous <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9a3g97/block-4chan-to-stop-the-alt-right-from-spreading-racist-memes-scientists-say">4chan-sourced meme</a> might then appear to be the bleeding edge of a modern political movement, the lack of transparency and, indeed, physicality offers no indication of the how genuine or widely held any particular affiliation may be.</p>
<p>But 50 years after the ink dried on that very first call for solidarity – “Usines Universités Union” (Factories, Universities, Union) – it’s difficult to find a medium that more reliably encapsulates a true demonstration of discord and resistance than that of the political poster.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Cookney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Atelier Populaire produced many of the iconic images of the student and worker movement that gripped France 50 years ago.Daniel Cookney, Lecturer in Graphic Design, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/958952018-05-09T10:22:19Z2018-05-09T10:22:19ZEmmanuel Macron and echoes of May 1968<p>As France marks the 50th anniversary of the revolts of May 1968, Emmanuel Macron might get more than he bargained for. Instead of celebrating the occasion, the French president appears to be inadvertently recreating it. He has proposed a controversial higher education reform at a particularly inopportune moment, sparking major protests.</p>
<p>May ’68 had a significant impact on French society, politics and culture. Beginning with student protests, civil unrest soon spread and took on a philosophical dimension, touching every social milieu. Today these events have become a globally recognised myth of French culture and social change.</p>
<p>Macron, who has barely completed his first year in power, designated the anniversary an opportunity for France to <a href="https://www.lopinion.fr/edition/politique/l-elysee-reflechit-a-commemoration-mai-68-136101">“come out of the ‘morose’ ways in which the events that contributed to the modernisation of French society are discussed”</a>. For years, this period in French history was talked about in a negative way, and blamed for France’s ongoing social ills, including by <a href="https://www.nouvelobs.com/politique/elections-2007/20070430.OBS4781/nicolas-sarkozy-veut-liquider-l-heritage-de-mai-68.html">former presidents</a>. <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/egalit-libert-sexualit-paris-may-1968-784703.html">Contradictions of aims and demands</a> at the time (clear on the part of the workers, vague and mixed on the part of the students) made May ‘68 a messy affair. Opinions in its wake have been so divided that memory of it is often distorted.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218169/original/file-20180508-5968-1nhh309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Have I … messed this up?</span>
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<p>Macron, as the first French president born after May '68, seemed to want to instill <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/2017/10/20/25001-20171020ARTFIG00161-emmanuel-macron-veut-commemorer-le-cinquantenaire-de-mai-68.php">a more positive attitude</a>. Nevertheless, he soon <a href="https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/finalement-pas-de-mai-68-pour-emmanuel-macron_1957826.html">changed his mind</a>, deciding not to commemorate it at all, but without giving a real reason. It’s against this backdrop that he brought in his reforms, perhaps explaining why he finds himself facing a rerun.</p>
<p>Macron’s proposed reforms include competitive selection and specialisation processes for universities in a bid to tackle oversubscription and high failure rates. The plans have been greeted with outrage among the general population and targeted action on campuses. Universities across France have suffered closures over the last month as students resist these changes, decrying elitism and social injustice. </p>
<p>Students have occupied campuses, set up blockades, and taken to the streets to protest. Banners and placards have taken inspiration from '68 to give a visual voice to the crowds. This is all as exam season enters into full swing, preventing many from sitting assessments. </p>
<h2>Philosophical roots</h2>
<p>France’s education system has its egalitarian roots in the 19th century. A series of <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/constitutional-right-to-an-education/france.php">laws</a> progressively made school education mandatory, secular and free. Central to the higher education system is the rule that anyone holding the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/sep/24/alevels2002.schools">baccalaureate</a> qualification (roughly equivalent to A-Level) is free to attend university. The reform of this qualification is one of the central points of contention in the student protests.</p>
<p>This history adds up to a fierce sense of pedagogical morals, and woe betide anyone who threatens them. If the laws and entry requirements add up to equality and liberty of access, the only remaining strand of the <a href="https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/coming-to-france/france-facts/symbols-of-the-republic/article/liberty-equality-fraternity">French national motto</a> is the fraternity required to stand up and defend the right to education. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, these shining ideals bring with them a different cost: success. While around 90% of pupils pass the baccalaureate, less than 40% of university students complete the degree which they initially began. This discrepancy was what caused Macron’s government to launch a wide reaching reform of the baccalaureate. The <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do;jsessionid=B828BEACEFDAE7DEDFFCFAD017491017.tplgfr21s_2?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000036683777&dateTexte=&oldAction=rechJO&categorieLien=id&idJO=JORFCONT000036683774">new law</a>, introduced in March 2018, will give universities the power to introduce selection criteria and candidate ranking, in the hope of only taking on students equipped to stay the course.</p>
<h2>2018: the anti-May '68?</h2>
<p>Centre-left French newspaper Libération began the year asking <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2018/01/01/2018-sera-t-il-l-anti-mai-68_1619824">“Will 2018 be the anti-May '68?”</a> Singing the praises of May '68’s revolt and revolutionary spirit, the paper presented a counter-revolutionary 2018, in which the freedom, equality and fraternity sought back then are stifled under <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/10/18/16490818/france-me-too-weinstein-sexual-harassment">harassment</a>, threats to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f5309ff8-a521-11e7-9e4f-7f5e6a7c98a2">security </a>, and social <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/opinion/probing-the-heart-of-french-malaise.html">malaise</a>. Little did the newspaper realise that May 2018 would actually bear a striking resemblance to its predecessor.</p>
<p>Social unrest sprang up in similar ways in both cases. Today’s students have been occupying campuses across the country, against a background of <a href="https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2018/04/14/2780166-trains-avions-la-vie-en-temps-de-greve.html">transport strikes</a>, railway workers protesting in the streets, and Air France being grounded as staff strike over pay. The events of May '68, like those of May '18, stem from student resistance to measures to counter chronic oversubscription. Both have been mirrored by protest in other key groups. And both instances have exploded into a fierce defence of French principles.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218148/original/file-20180508-34006-chpt31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Parisian students march in 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The current student protests may sit in a radically different context to those of '68 (with a shift from the socio-cultural to the socio-economic), but there is no denying the continuity of spirit. In both cases, we have a “convergence des luttes” (convergence of struggles) that shows that the threat to the French social model is at stake.</p>
<p>The numbers aren’t looking good for Macron if he wants to avoid a scene. Recent YouGov polls indicate that in the context of the current protests, <a href="https://fr.yougov.com/news/2018/04/09/commemoration-des-evenements-de-mai-68/">52% of French people</a> support a return to the events of May '68. With <a href="https://fr.yougov.com/news/2018/05/03/emmanuel-macron-un-de-pouvoir/">only 28% satisfied with Macron’s first year</a>, the French president could find himself reliving rather than commemorating May '68.</p>
<p>Despite the poor timing of Macron’s reform proposals, the May '68 / May '18 convergence highlights an engagement with socio-political issues that could be used to his advantage. In the same poll that indicated dissatisfaction with the president’s first year, over half of French people estimated that Macron carries out his promises. The French collective voice will clearly not be silenced, and Macron would do well to provide an ear to its message. Revolutionary ideals die hard, especially in France.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Benjamin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 50th anniversary of major student unrest was perhaps not the ideal moment to propose controversial higher education reforms.Elizabeth Benjamin, Lecturer in French, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/779792018-04-18T08:21:16Z2018-04-18T08:21:16ZMacron’s mercenaries: police violence and neoliberal ‘reform’ in France<p>Historians of the May 1968 protests may have rebuffed Emmanuel Macron’s outlandish proposal for an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/15/macron-faces-national-debate-over-anniversary-of-may-1968-protests">official state commemoration</a> of the imminent <a href="https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/finalement-pas-de-mai-68-pour-emmanuel-macron_1957826.html">50th anniversary</a>, but it seems the president is gearing up for his own anti-celebration: total war on France’s social settlement. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/campus/article/2018/04/11/tolbiac-le-president-de-l-universite-demande-l-intervention-des-forces-de-l-ordre_5283823_4401467.html">Students</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/09/france-notre-dame-des-landes-police-anti-airport-activists-teargas">environmentalists</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/22/immigration-macron-liberalism-migrants-refugees">refugees</a>, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/09/striking-french-rail-workers-stage-paris-protest-parliament/">railway workers</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/23f7d806-00ee-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5">workers generally</a> are all under concerted attack by a president who is ready to use the police to force through his neoliberal agenda. In July 2017, he invested <a href="https://www.marianne.net/societe/prevoyant-le-gouvernement-commande-des-grenades-lacrymo-pour-4-ans?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#link_time=1503335740">€22m in teargas</a> and his shock troops have been making <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eurostar-trains-cancelled-trains-police-protests-paris-emmanuel-macron-a8269376.html">ample use of it in recent months</a>.</p>
<p>Macron’s is a war on many fronts but resistance has perhaps been fiercest to his changes to employment law. In Paris, Nantes and other major cities, attempts by the previous Hollande administration (under which Macron served) to force changes to French employment law through parliament led to violent demonstrations through 2016 into early 2017. Police responded with violence against demonstrators, bystanders and <a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-condemns-police-violence-against-journalists-during-demonstrations">reporters</a>. </p>
<p>Then, in September 2017, Macron used <a href="http://droit-finances.commentcamarche.com/download/telecharger-431-ordonnances-macron-texte-des-ordonnances">executive orders</a> to implement <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a9ad1728-9f68-11e7-9a86-4d5a475ba4c5">further “reforms”</a> intended to make the labour market more “flexible” by curbing trade union rights and making it easier to fire workers. Many of Macron’s “reforms” implement the European Commission’s prevailing neoliberal (or <a href="http://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/catalogue/index-Ce_cauchemar_qui_n__en_finit_pas-9782707188526.html">ordoliberal</a>) economic dogma.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178356/original/file-20170716-14287-8c7v5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178356/original/file-20170716-14287-8c7v5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178356/original/file-20170716-14287-8c7v5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178356/original/file-20170716-14287-8c7v5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178356/original/file-20170716-14287-8c7v5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178356/original/file-20170716-14287-8c7v5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178356/original/file-20170716-14287-8c7v5v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests against changes to French employment law, April 29, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mayanais/26677459476/in/photolist-QDcTJC-RJNgNZ-QDcT8C-QDcTAb-FLnTTz-GgDeCN-GzTXB2-GgEFyo-GFKFh2-FLcXjU-GDoi9j-GFKnet-GxxzhL-GxwBTu-GDopPU-GDoUfb-GgEabu-GDoAAy-GxxGZ9-GxxYdq-GFKz76-FLdb1A-GgD5xU-GDpfju-GxwXKJ-GDoXgS-GDp3Gb-GxxRfC-GzTZHM-GDoP1y-FLnNkR-GgE2iq-GFJVN8-UcWjY6-GgDrhu-HKV1Q9-GzUBpM-FLob3D-WuZZVS-T2Ky1D-NFbm3E-TZ2PEn-NFbbP9-NgV4tu-Ny5ty1-NgVf7d-MLpoQx-M83riw-LkFkdi-M83rgC">Maya-Anaïs Yataghène/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, Macron’s changes to the French university system to introduce a limited form of competitive selection have met with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/26/french-university-protests-threaten-to-spread-after-violence">campus occupations</a> and other protests across France, which Macron has countered with <a href="https://www.humanite.fr/paris-la-sorbonne-occupee-encerclee-par-les-crs-653686">police violence</a>. His “reforms” to the SNCF, the state-owned national railway company, are intended to ready the network for competition under EU rules. Macron’s ministers have messaged intensively around the company’s debt, which is significant but comparable to that of other major network operators, and what has been largely misrepresented as the exorbitant special <a href="https://www.marianne.net/economie/reforme-de-la-sncf-les-privileges-du-statut-du-cheminot-sont-surtout-des-fantasmes">privileges</a> of France’s railway workers (“les cheminots”), who are thereby cast in a role similar to the miners in Margaret Thatcher’s earlier drama of neoliberal conquest. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/04/macrons-thatcher-moment-has-arrived/">Some relish this</a> as “Macron’s Thatcher moment”. Yet there are decisive differences which make Macron’s war on many fronts much more of a gamble. Most significantly, perhaps, the French police lack the tactical means and the moral authority necessary to quell the ire of several segments of the population converging in concert. And in this, today’s protests have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2018.1431212">much in common</a> with May 1968.</p>
<h2>Discriminatory policing</h2>
<p>French police have a longstanding reputation for using excessive force, especially against citizens from ethnic minority backgrounds, migrants and protesters. A series of incidents of police brutality going unpunished led Amnesty International to <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2009/04/france-police-above-law-20090402/">denounce</a> a “pattern of de facto impunity” in 2009, with politicians and officials usually far too quick to cover frontline officers. <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-politix-2009-3-page-119.htm">Analysis</a> of complaints against the police in the late 1990s and early 2000s by sociologist Cédric Moreau de Bellaing pointed to an institutional culture which not only condones but encourages the use of violence on the job.</p>
<p>The situation has hardly improved in recent years. In July 2016, after the death in police custody from asphyxiation of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/17/adama-traore-death-in-police-custody-casts-long-shadow-over-french-society">Adama Traoré</a>, on his 24th birthday, the family of the deceased struggled to get officials to investigate the incident properly. They commissioned a second autopsy, which indicated that the official verdict on the cause of death was unreliable.</p>
<p>In February 2017, a police officer “accidentally” pushed his baton 10cm into the anus of 22-year-old <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/06/french-police-brutality-in-spotlight-again-after-officer-charged-with">Théodore L</a> during a violent struggle to arrest him. This caused injuries sufficiently serious for Théo to be signed off work for two months and sparked another wave of protests.</p>
<p>Since the dismantling of the Calais migrant camp in October 2016, police have conducted a very aggressive and <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/liam-barrington-bush/post-jungle-racist-policing-in-calais">arguably racist operation</a> to forcefully dissuade migrants from returning to the area. The operation is largely financed by the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/further-joint-action-between-uk-and-france-in-calais-region">British government</a>, which is outsourcing its security dirty work to French officers. This has involved sending riot police to prevent volunteers feeding migrants outside a 75-minute evening window and <a href="https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/080617/les-migrants-reviennent-calais-la-brutalite-policiere-aussi">pepper-spraying young migrants’ sleeping bags</a>. </p>
<h2>‘Tout le monde déteste la police’</h2>
<p>Demonstrations against police violence, discrimination and changes to employment law began to converge in 2016 around the slogan <a href="https://youtu.be/6ZE_5lA6Nu0">“Tout le monde déteste la police”</a> (“Everyone hates the police”). Protests were increasingly marked by the turbulent presence of militant <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GotLNQuJwS4">black bloc groups</a> attacking police and property belonging to big corporations. Such groups originated in West Germany in the late 1970s in response to mounting police violence. They have become an established part of anti-globalisation demonstrations, most recently at the <a href="http://taranis.news/2017/07/nog20-hamburg-%E2%80%A2-day6-the-battle-of-hamburg/">G20 in Hamburg</a>, and are now very active in France.</p>
<p>Police unions have countered the perceived anti-police sentiment by marching in their own protests against the rise of what they term “<a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2016/05/18/la-police-manifeste-contre-la-haine-antiflic_4921582_1653578.htm">la haine anti-flic</a>” (“anti-cop hate”). Yet by no means everybody in France hates the police. They experienced a significant upsurge in public support within the general population after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2015_%C3%8Ele-de-France_attacks">January 2015</a>
and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks">November 2015</a> terrorist atrocities and have themselves been <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2017/04/20/fusillade-sur-les-champs-elysees-a-paris-un-policier-abattu-et-un-assaillant-tue_5114533_3224.html">directly targeted by terrorists</a>. But the <a href="http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/data/themes.html?t=justice">European Social Survey</a> (2010) suggested that a majority of 57% agree that they treat citizens from ethnic minorities less well. This compares with 37% of German respondents to the same question about their police – a staggering gap.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the suburbs remain particularly hostile, where the police are very visible symbolic representatives of a state which is seen to operate on the ground less by integrating minorities (its official policy) and more through routine practices of “<a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2005/11/15/l-humiliation-ordinaire-par-alain-badiou_710389_3232.html">ordinary humiliation</a>” by overusing the hated “contrôles d’identité”. These are checks by police of identity documents, which must by law be carried at all times in public. The practice disproportionately targets ethnic minority citizens in a manner recalling abuse by British police of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/feb/11/uk-police-forces-still-abusing-stop-and-search-powers">“stop and search” powers</a>. </p>
<p>Sociologist <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Enforcing+Order%3A+An+Ethnography+of+Urban+Policing-p-9780745664804">Didier Fassin’s study</a> of one paramilitary-style policing unit in the suburbs also revealed evidence of significant far-right affiliation among rank-and-file officers. Hostility in the French suburbs has fuelled Islamist radicalisation and made it more difficult for the police to gather intelligence on homegrown terrorist attacks. </p>
<h2>A brighter future?</h2>
<p>The French police are capable of change. A good place to start, as political scientist <a href="http://www.grasset.fr/de-la-police-en-democratie-9782246806141">Sebastian Roché</a> argues, would be an overhaul of basic training to refocus recruits’ priorities on the need to inspire public confidence in them as impartial servants of the public good, rather than paramilitary enforcers of political order.</p>
<p>But this doesn’t seem likely in the current climate. Macron’s use of the police to impose his neoliberal “reforms” across several sectors damages the capacity of the police to build public trust. Yes, there are many courageous, public-spirited, individual police officers serving in France. Yet even those academic specialists of French policing generally favourable to the police <a href="https://www.amazon.fr/Histoire-polices-France-lAncien-R%C3%A9gime/dp/2365833799">admit</a> that its forces as institutions are already held in alarmingly low esteem. </p>
<p>Macron’s reliance on his police to violently suppress the social unrest created by his own aggressively neoliberal programme risks effecting a convergence of protests around anti-police activism. And this is exactly what happened in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09639489.2018.1440198?scroll=top&needAccess=true&">May 1968</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77979/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oliver Davis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Emmanuel Macron is driving through his neoliberal agenda by relying on French police forces renowned for their violence against ethnic minority citizens, protestors and migrants.Oliver Davis, Reader in French Studies, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/873622018-02-15T01:12:26Z2018-02-15T01:12:26ZBe realistic – demand the impossible: the legacy of 1968<p><em>This article is the first of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions</a> series, curated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> as a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and The Conversation. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The events of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/egalit-libert-sexualit-paris-may-1968-784703.html">May 1968</a> in Paris and then France more generally still resonate as a graphic illustration of the potential for relatively peaceful and wealthy societies to explode in spontaneous anger.</p>
<p>May 1968 was not an uprising against tyranny or manifest injustice of a kind that animated the civil rights movement. Starting out as a set of demonstrations against university reform, the French uprisings quickly gathered momentum in a manner that almost defies explanation. </p>
<p>Part student revolt, part disillusionment with various aspects of contemporary existence, part trade union opportunism and part extended street party, everyone’s account of why it “kicked off” seems to differ.</p>
<p>Assessing the legacy of ’68 is just as demanding as providing an explanation for why it happened at all. Little remains in the way of lasting institutional impressions. The uprising disappeared almost as quickly as it had erupted once the militarised police imposed order.</p>
<p>On the surface, then, though this brief and spontaneous episode marked the emergence of “<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/materialism-and-post-materialism/">post-materialist</a>” concerns amongst the young, it was of little consequence for contemporary purposes. Yet scratching beneath the surface of this Wikipedia-style narrative, it is possible and perhaps necessary to mount a more serious defence of the legacy of ’68. </p>
<p>Certain themes and tropes are very evident in today’s politics. Let’s start with some obvious pointers.</p>
<h2>The collapse of grand narratives</h2>
<p>1968 can be seen as the moment when the two dominant narratives on the left – social democracy and communism – were both called into question. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/money-capitalism-and-the-slow-death-of-social-democracy-58703">Social democracy</a> had dominated mainstream progressive discourse since the end of the 19th century. Now it was seen as irredeemably complicit in the maintenance of a status quo that seemed to consecrate a materialist, routine form of life offering very little to the young or to the political imagination.</p>
<p>Social democratic politics was held as “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=SyIuDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT15&lpg=PT15&dq=%22capitalism+with+a+human+face">capitalism with a human face</a>”. It accepted the necessity for the market order and so, as far as ’68 critics of capitalism were concerned, for exploitation, alienation and the division of society into pharaohs and slaves. </p>
<p>Social “democracy” reduces politics to an electoral spectacle, and our place within it to passive recipients of whatever it is a rotating set of elites deems to be in our best interests. The insurgents of 1968 searched for something more than a passive quiescent existence built around consumption.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YCtcD9CfMOI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘The old left thought the new left was out of control – they had impossible dreams.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Historically, the principal alternative to social democracy on the left had been communism, the militant ideology of Lenin and his followers. </p>
<p>But communism according to influential critics on the fringes of ’68 – such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Castoriadis">Cornelius Castoriadis</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_Lyotard">Jean-Francois Lyotard</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Lefort">Claude Lefort</a>, all members of the ultra-left <a href="https://libcom.org/library/socialisme-ou-barbarie-linden">Socialisme ou Barbarie</a> group – had ossified into a debased ideology guarded by a self-interested theocracy. It had gone from a vital credo of insurrection to a doctrine maintained and guarded by bureaucrats.</p>
<p>The communist vision of revolution – an industrial working class led by an intellectual class – was now an anachronism.</p>
<p>By 1968, the working class had given up on the dream of its own emancipation in favour of chatter around holiday pay, generous pensions and the trifles that made existing life more bearable. It had lost its heroic capabilities, settling instead for indolent acceptance of a comfortable “<a href="https://libcom.org/library/redefining-revolution-cornelius-castoriadis-paul-cardan-solidarity">air-conditioned</a>” existence.</p>
<p>So, calls against social democracy and communism exploded on the streets of Paris under joyously enigmatic slogans:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Be realistic: demand the impossible! Under the cobbles, the beach! It is forbidden to forbid!</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194691/original/file-20171114-30020-6zzuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘It is forbidden to forbid!’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Espencat/Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, quite what it was that the demonstrators wanted was often difficult to discern. Much of the discourse of 1968 rotated around the idea of auto-gestion or self-management. But almost implicit in the idea was the rejection of normative ideals or frameworks of a kind that we associate with classical ideologies. </p>
<p>Also implicit was a rejection of the idea of the leading role of intellectuals in terms of that task of framing.</p>
<p>The net result was a politics of refusal – of social democracy, of communism, of capitalism, of elites, vanguards, intellectuals, and so on and so forth. But where, it could legitimately be asked, was affirmation?</p>
<p>Those engaged in the uprising were clear about what they were against; they were less clear in terms of what they were actually for in concrete, institutional terms. Auto-gestion was a difficult term to operationalise. It still is.</p>
<p>So, 1968 represents the end of grand narratives in politics. It was an uprising against something; less for something else. </p>
<p>The sense of ’68 as a refusal lives on in contemporary politics. We don’t have a redemptive ideology to place our hopes on. We don’t believe the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/everyday-makers-defy-populists-false-promise-to-embody-your-voice-78762">experts</a>”. We don’t think there’s a formula for collective planetary happiness. We have individualised politics to the point where refusal is a first, and quite often last, resort.</p>
<p>Lyotard famously described this “incredulity” towards metanarratives as “<a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-postmodern-condition">the postmodern condition</a>”. The result was a kind of political paganism, a politics of the faithless, of those who move from one campaign against injustice to another, only without any certainty that there is another way of life, model or system that could, in a sense, “cure” the ills of modernity.</p>
<h2>The end of the party</h2>
<p>Related to the collapse of dominant narratives was a <a href="https://theconversation.com/european-movements-could-mark-the-end-of-representative-politics-42369">collapse in faith in organisational politics</a>, more familiarly the political party, the dominant form of collective mobilisation since the 19th century. </p>
<p>The party could not, as per Marxist teaching, represent the interests of the working class. Nor could it evade the kind of bureaucratic ossification outlined most famously by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Parties_(book)">Robert Michels</a> and <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/381-critique-of-dialectical-reason-2-volume-set">Jean-Paul Sartre</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps the idea of a permanent or standing organisation of any kind was the problem. 1968 therefore marked the embrace of what later became known as “horizontal” forms of organisation in the search for a kind of being together that celebrated all manner of differences and, at the same time, provided the basis for collective action.</p>
<p>The rejection of inherited organisational politics in 1968 has been felt very clearly in more recent times. Established in 2001, the World Social Forum went as far as banning participation by political parties and their representatives. Parties, it was claimed, contaminated “dialogue” and, hampered by considerations of loyalty or affiliation, prevented the free flow of opinion. </p>
<p>Later, high-profile initiatives such as <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/horizontalism-and-the-occupy-movements">Occupy Wall Street</a> and Spain’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/postcard-from-spain-where-now-for-the-quiet-revolution-43779">#15M</a> also made clear their distance from the inheritance of left progressive politics and, in particular, the “vertical” politics of parties and formalised mechanisms of representation.</p>
<h2>Living with(out) capitalism</h2>
<p>1968 unleashed a wave of “post-materialist” energies directed at capitalism. Capitalism became the object of anger less because it was failing in some distinct fashion, but more because it was succeeding, or more accurately it was succeeding in creating subjects, ourselves, who needed capitalism and who wanted capitalism to succeed.</p>
<p>The consumer age was dawning after the austerity of the post-war years. This meant putting the desiring subject, rather than the producer, at the centre of the system of reproduction. Hitherto radical analyses of capitalism had concentrated on the experience of the producer or worker.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194693/original/file-20171114-29997-1ncklrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Graffiti in a classroom at the University of Lyon that appeared during a student occupation of parts of the campus in May 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Garrigues/Wikipedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many found their origin in Marx’s pungent critique of capitalism in works such as the <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm">1844 Paris manuscripts</a>. These described the alienating properties of capitalist production in almost poetic terms. </p>
<p>But what lurked in these earlier works was an appreciation of the way in which we as consumers were ensnared by the logic of capitalist reproduction through the fetish properties of commodities themselves.</p>
<p>It was this latter aspect that became such a prominent feature of the critiques of capitalism that both inspired and were in turn inspired by 1968. They found their ultimate expression in the work of <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jason-mcquinn-raoul-vaneigem-the-other-situationist">The Situationists</a>, notably via Guy Debord and Raoul Vaniegem. They describe contemporary capitalism as engaging with us at the subliminal level through the manipulation of desire via advertising and the saturation of the visual and aesthetic field with “affirmative” messages designed to encourage further consumption.</p>
<p>Many involved in 1968 turn to psychoanalysis to explain how it was that capitalism appeared so adept at creating followers in the midst of its own inhumanity. Work such as Deleuze and Guattari’s <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/305132/anti-oedipus-by-gilles-deleuze-and-felix-guattari/9780143105824/">Anti-Oedipus</a> and Lyotard’s <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=20853">Libidinal Economy</a> looked for the key to unlocking a joyful subject beneath the cramped subject of consumerist desire.</p>
<p>These critiques reflect and in some cases inspired the approach adopted by many of those taking part in the events of 1968. One of the legacies of the uprisings was the rich use of slogans, posters, films and cartoons to engage the senses.</p>
<p>Out of 1968 came a distinct political strategy, <a href="https://theconversation.com/whither-anarchy-the-fantasy-of-natural-law-60778"><em>detournement</em></a>, in today’s lingo “jamming” or “hacking”. The idea here is to take images of an everyday kind, such as those appearing in advertising, and in some way distort them so they produce an opposite effect – while at the same time reminding us of the chilling manipulation of desire that lies beneath.</p>
<p>The idea is to create a meme that reminds us of the fetish quality of everyday existence and the instrumentalisation of our world in the search for profit. By overturning the integrity of the image or the words we remind ourselves of the contingency of social arrangements, of hierarchies and the mode of exploitation.</p>
<p>This strategy has become a powerful source of inspiration for today’s anti-establishment resistances, from the glossy pages of <a href="https://adbusters.org/">Adbusters</a>, through to the humorous “liberation” of billboards, guerrilla gardening, critical mass and other seemingly spontaneous “laboratories of insurrection”. </p>
<p>Today’s activists feed off and are inspired by the legacy of 1968’s suspicion that the only way to overcome capitalism is to challenge the spectacle of elite domination in the visual field, at the level of affect, and in the very constitution of our subjectivity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194696/original/file-20171114-30005-9lebml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adbusters today practises the distinctly 1968 strategy of <em>detournement</em> as a form of resistance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PBS NewsHour/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Activists are aware of the mediated nature of contemporary existence and therefore of the power of images, sounds and experiences passing through the circuits of the capitalist life world. </p>
<p>A politics that does not engage us at the level of our emotions, our desires and our deeper needs cannot hope to produce that sense of connection to a wider purpose that is the starting point for mobilisation.</p>
<h2>What’s left of 1968’s left?</h2>
<p>1968 did not lead to an overturning of French capitalism, of the domination of elites, or the structures of inequality. Far from it.</p>
<p>But the legacy of 1968 runs deep in terms of how a good part of the left “assemblage” sees its task and goes about seeking to accomplish it. </p>
<p>1968 represents the inauguration of a politics of refusal: refusal to be incorporated into dominant narratives; refusal to conform to a logic of political mobilisation that has been practised for over three centuries; refusal to deploy the organisational forms so familiar from previous models of collective action.</p>
<p>1968 represented a freeing up of politics from the congealed, stodgy and unimaginative understandings that had so dogged the emergence of an oppositional politics after the second world war. It unleashed a wave of joyous experimentation, evanescent and spontaneous efforts to challenge the dull routine of the repetitious lives that had been constructed in and through advanced capitalism.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194699/original/file-20171115-30029-av4192.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘No to the bureaucracy’: street art from the 1968 revolts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IISG/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The rejection of political inheritance and the embrace of a more fluid and experimental style of politics is not without its own pitfalls, challenges and critics. One can almost hear the <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/07/the-power-of-nonsense">Zizeks</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-defence-of-left-wing-populism-55869">Mouffes</a> intoning against forms of politics that dispensed with the militant collectivism associated with the Leninist tradition in particular.</p>
<p>Where is the institutionalisation, or rendering permanent the demands of this assemblage? Where is the attempt to create the necessary counter-hegemonic structure that will provide a genuine force to challenge the state, the ruling class and the repressive apparatus? Where is the desire for seeing through a program designed to ameliorate the conditions of the least well off?</p>
<p>There is a certain obvious way in which this stony-faced realism misses the point. This is that the linearity of politics, the sense of a common collective endeavour undertaken by a mass of like-minded citizens toward a common goal, is precisely what was challenged in 1968. </p>
<p>Those who took to the streets didn’t know what they wanted; they just knew what they were against – routine, elites, boredom, mortgages, certainty. They wanted to construct something new together, but they didn’t have the tools or the vocabularies to do that in the brief window of opportunity that presented itself.</p>
<p>John Holloway gets close to this atmosphere when he notes that politics often starts from “<a href="https://platypus1917.org/wp-content/uploads/readings/Holloway_Change_the_World.pdf">a scream</a>”. 1968 was a scream, an alarm bell going off, a red light flashing. It told us that the certainties that had sustained the post-war order – the promise of more jobs, more stuff to buy, happier and more contended lives – was not enough. It was not exciting, interesting, fulfilling.</p>
<p>But nor was the narrative of emancipation “enough”. It didn’t engage. It too was hostage to a set of expectations that a generation fed on austerity had enough of hearing: the heroism of the working class locked in its cycle of repetitious labour, greasy hands and greasier chips.</p>
<p>1968 was the scream of the “post-materialists”: those in search of colour in a black-and-white world. May 1968 did not change the world, but it made us look differently at the world we have and the world being created. It made us think that maybe – beneath the cobbles – there is another world.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles in this series as they are published <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/revolutions-and-counter-revolutions-49124">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87362/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Tormey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The protesters who took to the streets of Paris didn’t know what they wanted: they just knew what they were against. But they did make us think that maybe there is another, better world.Simon Tormey, Professor of Political Theory and Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.