French Student Revolution

Dunia Kaakati
Lebanese International University

Monday, December 2, 2013

During May 1968, students and workers in France united in the biggest strike and the largest mass movement in French history. Protesting capitalism, American imperialism, and Gaullism, nine million people from all walks of life, from shipbuilders to department store clerks, stopped working. The protests started on May the 3rd when students, motivated by their exotic and revolutionary ideas rebelled against the struggles that were associated with the capitalistic system of France and were soon joined by young workers. The nation was paralyzed—no sector of the workplace was untouched. The revolution had such a strong impact on the political leaders that all the conditions were maturing for a successful, even peaceful, overthrow of capitalism. The working-class’ leaders, the Parti Communiste Français however, were not as motivated in the people’s power. They feared the French working class engaging in a struggle that might push them aside. They feared workers replacing capitalism with a genuinely democratic form of socialism. Therefore, the PCF used the media’s power to influence the masses perception of the situation. The PCF press peddled the lie that the mighty capitalistic state could not be overthrown. There would have been violence, it argued. But even the bourgeois papers were commenting that to use the army against the workers’ movement would have been to break it. Moreover, the PCF press blamed the students for the situation that had developed and for the violence. The students were ‘agitators’ and ‘trouble-makers’, and only a small minority of workers were interested in political change. De Gaulle, the French President at the time of the revolution, took comfort from the inability of the ‘communists’ to lead a rebellion. Within hours he