open Democracy News Analysis - 1968 - Comments

Anthony Barnett on "The 1968 debate in Germany"

Anthony Barnett — Fri, 02 May 2008 23:35:54 +0000

This is very well judged - many thanks. The obsession with the sectarians and the violence is in effect an agenda. It needs serious analysis. Germany, I should perhaps say West Germany, had the most important and constructive 68 and the whole of Europe today should be grateful to it.

live_life on "May ‘68: France's politics of memory "

live_life — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:23:59 +0000

"Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose".

C. Wright Mills

www.thefaithdebate.com

Anthony Barnett on "May ‘68: France's politics of memory "

Anthony Barnett — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:36:30 +0000

Like Patrice, Regis Debray missed the barricades because he was abroad, only on his case it was a Bolivian jail. He later argued on its tenth anniversary that "France's route to Americanisation lay through May 68". While this is too simplistic a view (though it explains Sarkozy) 68 was an uprising against the French Communists as well as de Gaulle. Its political appropriation by gauchists hides the call for freedom that was not sectarian and was indeed in part an expression of the democracy of the market place and consumer society.

Roger Manser on "The Polish March: students, workers, and 1968"

Roger Manser — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:19:14 +0000

I found this filled in a gap in my understanding. But there remains the whole question of the killings on the Baltic coast in 1970, which - as far as I know - remains unexplored in English. There is of course more on the 1980 deaths in Gdynia. And the article encouraged me to dig out my old copy of Kuron and Modzelewski's "A revolutionary socialist manifesto," originally published in 1964 - four years before the students' March events. Where - if anywhere - does this fit in?

Jan Kavan on "The Polish March: students, workers, and 1968"

Jan Kavan — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:54:04 +0000

Neal´s article is excellent. At least there are some people who understood that despite the hugely different historical experience and different lessons learned there was a common denominator between our protests in Poland and Czechoslovakia and those in Berlin, Paris, Berkeley or Chicago. We rejected all forms of authoritarianism and the repressive or manipulative nature of institutions on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In March 1968 we agreed with Rudi Dutschke in Prague to illustrate this point by organising a simultaneous demonstration in Prague and Berlin and hopefully elsewhere in favour of "march through the instiutions" towards socialist democracy and real freedom for people, including basic producers, ie workers. It did not take place only because Rudi was shortly afterwards shot by J.Bachman. Our solidarity with Polish students was unquestionable. It was no coincidence that in the 1970s exiled Czechs and Poles began to cooperate closely in London with each other but also with those Western sixtyeighters, who understood the roots of a common struggle.

John Engel on "The Polish March: students, workers, and 1968"

John Engel — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:16:14 +0000

Superb work. . . filling in many of the lost and important connections. A powerful testament to the role of theatre and civic faith in the pro-democracy movement. I wish there had been space for a closer treatment of what now I hope might be another essay -- the actual personal and associational connections between those who led the 1968 movements throughout the world. I think a richer vision of cultural democracy was shared than Neal suggests in his characterization of their shared socialist economic goals -- at least this was my experience/view from Chicago at the time. Finally, to speak as in an earlier post of "untrammeled state brutality" as the only means to realize economic, political, cultural, and yes, spiritual democracy, could not be more contradictory and self-defeating, as is the dismissal of these often highly idealistic students as "well-heeled" revolutionaries.

agentmancuso on "The Polish March: students, workers, and 1968"

agentmancuso — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:19:24 +0000

Quote:

the last thing revolutionaries like Rudi Dutschke in Berlin or Daniel Cohn-Bendit in Paris wanted was to imitate the Communist systems of east-central Europe, which they scorned as brutal dictatorships based on a Stalinist distortion of Marxism.

Maybe so, but stated intention is of little consequence compared to predictable outcome. The only possible way to establish an egalitarian socialist republic based on direct workers' control of production is through untrammeled state brutality. The inability or unwillingness of the well-heeled and well-read revolutionaries of '68 to face this fact has to bring into question either the sincerity of their much-vaunted 'good intentions' or their basic political competence.