Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire, a French Trotskyist organization, wrote this piece, describing the transition from a student revolt into a general strike of workers contesting capitalist society during the May 1968 events. The organization included a list of demands and called on other workers and students to join them in the future actions they will take in their fight against the current system.
This document is a firsthand account of the events that occurred in Paris, France during the May 1968 time of unrest. The anonymous author describes the various strikes, occupations, and other actions taken by workers and students between the period of May 3rd to May 18th.
Paris, France, beginning in May of 1968, was a city filled with general strikes, demonstrations, and occupations of universities and factories by students and workers. In this piece, the Enragé-Situationist International Committee Council for Maintaining the Occupations calls for the creation of workers councils as the solution to gain working-class autonomy in the proletariat revolutionary project. They reflect on the way in which their occupation of factories and public buildings has brought the economy to a halt and led to a widespread questioning of society, calling on the international proletariat to join in the fight for this transformation.
“This is the beginning of a revolutionary movement, a movement which lacks nothing but the consciousness of what it has already done in order to triumph.”
This document, written by the Parti Socialiste Unifié in May 1968, explains the unity between the struggles of workers and students.
“because the student’s struggle against the bourgeois university is the same as that of the workers against the capitalist regime… because only the unified action of students, workers and farmers can allow the popular movement to realize its final goal: the establishment of a power in the service of workers.”
In this document, students and workers in Paris in May 1968 explain that reforms are not enough. Destruction and permanent revolution is necessary for the people to prevail.
We currently live in a pre-revolutionary time, hence one of destruction. This permanent struggle, engine of all true progress, will arrive at the revolution, a positive reality, but in no way definitive, for there is no established revolution. And so we say that THE REVOLUTION WILL BE PERMANENT OR IT WILL NOT BE AT ALL.
This document, written during the events in Paris during May 1968, calls for students and workers to continue the resistance, continue the occupations, and keep their power.
“We must continue to the very end!
We occupy the faculties, the offices, the factories!
We will stay there!