On The 50th
Anniversary of the May Days in France in 1968
By Frank Jackman
Allan Jackson labeled
the post-World War II generation that came of age in the 1960s the “Generation
of ’68.” A lot of things happened that year, including our respective draft call
notices for induction in those days when a whole generation of young men, pro
or anti-war had decisions to make not always easy or right). We both in
retrospect should have refused to do so but you learn a few things in this
wicked old world and that is worth something. This publication in any case has
publicized a fair part of the world-historic occasions from Tet 1968 in January
on through to the seminal 1968 elections.
A lot of the reason that
Allan tagged us as the Generation of ’68 though was not for the jangle of
events in general but in homage to the events in France in May and June of 1968
which kind of got everything shifted to the left-for a while. There, in Paris
first as usual and then the outlying areas, the radicalized students first and
then the students and workers came within a hair’s breathe of turning the world
upside down, of making the newer world we were all looking for and which the
many times mentioned Markin, the Scribe, whose name Allan had used as a moniker
on this site in honor of his fallen friend mentioned many times not always to
good effect. You cannot look at the period without seeing the treacherous role
of the Communist Party, the organization which was supposed to represent the
workers, in the stillborn nature of what happened. Unfortunately “almost” is
usually not good enough when you are trying to overthrow the “king” and the
moment which might have shifted Western history a little bit differently on its
axis passed. That notion is history in the conditional of course but a definite
possibility. Certainly in the objective sense if nothing else revolution was in
the air-if you could keep it. We now know two things about that Paris and French
uprising. Revolutionary moments are few and far between and, at least in the
United States where nothing even close to a revolutionary period was in play whatever
a small chunk of the radicalized young thought, defeat has put us in a forty
plus year cultural war against the accumulated night-takers which we have not
won and are still fighting almost daily.
The Paris days though
have a more personal frame of reference since at the time, in 1968, neither
Allan nor I were anything but maybe left liberals and not much interested in
revolutions and the like. We come by our “Generation of ’68” credentials by a
more roundabout way although the events in Paris, the visual example possibilities
of revolution play a role later. As mentioned above both Allan and I accepted
induction into the Army at different points in 1969 after receiving our draft
notices in 1968 (which puts us in a different class of ’69 connected with Vietnam
which I won’t go into now). We both came out of the Vietnam War experience very
changed in many ways but most directly by a shift in our political
perspectives. Neither of us whatever our feelings about the war in Vietnam
while students were active in the anti-war movement. Mostly after the Summer of
Love experiences out in California in 1967 we were what might be called
life-style hippies or some such. Like I said the Army experience changed that.
Mainly before that we cared about girls, having sex with girls, and getting an
occasional drug connection.
When we got our
respective discharges we were all over the place both as to life style and
political seriousness. That is where the Paris days in 1968 came into play. It
was obvious by 1971 that massive, mostly student-led, peace marches were not
going to end the war. What to do next preoccupied the minds of many of the
better elements of that movement. That is where 1968 came in. A cohort of
radicals and others started thinking about something like a united front
between students and workers strange as that sounded then, and now come to
think of it, like what almost brought the French government down.
Maybe because we were
from the working class, really a notch below, the working poor, this idea
sounded good to us although knowing what working class life was really like
unlike many of the middle class students we had our doubts about the viability
of the strategy. As it turned out not only are revolutionary moments fleeting
but mass action moments short of that are as well and so nothing really ever
came of that idea. Still if you think about it today if you could get the kids who
are in political motion these days not matter how inchoate to join up with some
radical workers (leftist workers not though who gave their endorsements by
voting against their immediate and long term interests to one Donald J. Trump,
POTUS in tweet speak) we could shake things up. History doesn’t really repeat
itself but if something rises up out of all of this current movement by the
young which is where you have to look for starters looking back at the Paris
days, looking back to those barricades in 1968 would not be a bad idea.
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