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Documents from May 1968

Documents from May 1968

Category Archives: CMDO

Tract – 2 Altered Comic Strips (May 1968 – CMDO, Situationist International)

20 Sunday May 2018

Posted by biffbang in CMDO, Internationale Situationniste, Tract

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This is the first of many detourned (altered) comic strips issued as tracts by the CMDO (a group mostly made up of members of the Situationist International and the Nanterre Énrages).

Comic Strip #1

1. All power to the Workers’ Councils! The Unions are only a tool for integration into capitalist society.
(Signature) The Striking Workers.

2. – Something has changed, Mr. President!
– Yes. The workers want to run their own affairs!

3. – The best thing we can do is to bugger off!

Comic Strip #2

1. (Caption) The “leftist” minister picks up the phone.
– Whore! Hijacker!

2. – I’ve been EXPOSED! The scheme won’t work any more!

3. (Caption) Meanwhile…
– I should never have married a minister! I’m off to a factory that’s on strike!

Poster – “Down with the Spectacular-Market Society” (May 1968 – CMDO, Situationist International)

15 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by biffbang in CMDO, Internationale Situationniste, Poster

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“Down with the Spectacular-Market Society”

(May 1968 – CMDO)

Black & white offset

36.5 x 49.5 cm

Documented In:

Gasquet p.15; Mesa p.72

Online Resources:

Tract – “To all Workers” (7 June 1968 – Internationale Situationniste/CMDO)

07 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by biffbang in CMDO, Internationale Situationniste, June 3-9 1968, Tract, Uncategorized, Workers

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National Council of French Employers
31 rue Pierre 1er de Serbie – Paris 16e

To all Workers:

Ladies,
Gentlemen,

In an agreement with the majority of your unions we have granted you many dozens of hours of extra paid leave along with significant increases in wages.

Therefore, on the eve of the summer holidays, we suggest that you leave for Club Med and no longer concern yourself with “workers’ councils” and “class struggle” . 

Would you also please steer clear of occupying the factories.

Yours Sincerely,
Paris, 7 June 1968
For the C.N.P.F., the president
P. HUVELIN

Poster – “Address to All Workers” (30 May 1968 – Comité Enragés/Internationale Situationniste/CMDO)

30 Monday May 2016

Posted by biffbang in CMDO, Enragés, Internationale Situationniste, May 27-June 2 1968, Poster, Tract, Uncategorized, Workers

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“Address to All Workers”

(30 May 1968 – CMDO)

Black offset on offset paper

28.5 x 44.5 cm

This is a larger poster-format version of a tract published by the CMDO.   

(Translated by Ken Knabb)

Address to All Workers

Comrades,

What we have already done in France is haunting Europe and will soon threaten all the ruling classes of the world, from the bureaucrats of Moscow and Beijing to the millionaires of Washington and Tokyo. Just as we have made Paris dance, the international proletariat will once again take up its assault on the capitals of all the states and all the citadels of alienation. The occupation of factories and public buildings throughout the country has not only brought a halt to the functioning of the economy, it has brought about a general questioning of the society. A deep-seated movement is leading almost every sector of the population to seek a real transformation of life. 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.

What forces will try to save capitalism? The regime will fall unless it threatens to resort to arms (accompanied by the promise of new elections, which could only take place after the capitulation of the movement) or even resorts to immediate armed repression. If the Left comes to power, it too will try to defend the old world through concessions and through force. The best defender of such a “popular government” would be the so-called “Communist” Party, the party of Stalinist bureaucrats, which has fought the movement from the very beginning and which began to envisage the fall of the de Gaulle regime only when it realized it was no longer capable of being that regime’s main guardian. Such a transitional government would really be “Kerenskyist” only if the Stalinists were beaten. All this will ultimately depend on the workers’ consciousness and capacities for autonomous organization. The workers who have already rejected the ridiculous agreement that the union leaders were so pleased with need only discover that they cannot “win” much more within the framework of the existing economy, but that they can take everything by transforming all the bases of the economy on their own behalf. The bosses can hardly pay more; but they can disappear.

The present movement did not become “politicized” by going beyond the miserable union demands regarding wages and pensions, demands which were falsely presented as “social questions.” It is beyond politics: it is posing the social question in its simple truth. The revolution that has been in the making for over a century is returning. It can express itself only in its own forms. It’s too late for a bureaucratic-revolutionary patching up. When a recently de-Stalinized bureaucrat like André Barjonet calls for the formation of a common organization that would bring together “all the authentic forces of revolution . . . whether they march under the banner of Trotsky or Mao, of anarchy or situationism,” we need only recall that those who today follow Trotsky or Mao, to say nothing of the pitiful “Anarchist Federation,” have nothing to do with the present revolution. The bureaucrats may now change their minds about what they call “authentically revolutionary”; authentic revolution will not change its condemnation of bureaucracy.

At the present moment, with the power they hold and with the parties and unions being what they are, the workers have no other choice but to organize themselves in unitary rank-and-file committees directly taking over the economy and all aspects of the reconstruction of social life, asserting their autonomy vis-à-vis any sort of political or unionist leadership, ensuring their self-defense, and federating with each other regionally and nationally. In so doing they will become the sole real power in the country, the power of workers councils. The only alternative is to return to their passivity and go back to watching television. The proletariat is “either revolutionary or nothing.”

What are the essential features of council power? Dissolution of all external power; direct and total democracy; practical unification of decision and execution; delegates who can be revoked at any moment by those who have mandated them; abolition of hierarchy and independent specializations; conscious management and transformation of all the conditions of liberated life; permanent creative mass participation; internationalist extension and coordination. The present requirements are nothing less than this. Self-management is nothing less. Beware of all the modernist coopters — including even priests — who are beginning to talk of self-management or even of workers councils without acknowledging this minimum, because they want to save their bureaucratic functions, the privileges of their intellectual specializations or their future careers as petty bosses!

In reality, what is necessary now has been necessary since the beginning of the proletarian revolutionary project. It’s always been a question of working-class autonomy. The struggle has always been for the abolition of wage labor, of commodity production, and of the state. The goal has always been to accede to conscious history, to suppress all separations and “everything that exists independently of individuals.” Proletarian revolution has spontaneously sketched out its appropriate forms in the councils — in St. Petersburg in 1905, in Turin in 1920, in Catalonia in 1936, in Budapest in 1956. The preservation of the old society, or the formation of new exploiting classes, has each time been over the dead body of the councils. The working class now knows its enemies and its own appropriate methods of action. “Revolutionary organization has had to learn that it can no longer combat alienation by means of alienated forms of struggle” (The Society of the Spectacle). Workers councils are clearly the only solution, since all the other forms of revolutionary struggle have led to the opposite of what was aimed at.

ENRAGÉS-SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE
COUNCIL FOR MAINTAINING THE OCCUPATIONS
30 May 1968

Poster – “What can the Revolutionary Movement do now?” (May 1968 – CMDO)

27 Friday May 2016

Posted by biffbang in CMDO, Internationale Situationniste, Poster, Uncategorized

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WHAT CAN THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT DO NOW?
EVERYTHING.

WHAT WILL IT BECOME IN THE HANDS OF THE PARTIES AND UNIONS?
NOTHING

WHAT DOES IT WANT? THE REALISATION OF A CLASSLESS SOCIETY THROUGH THE POWER OF WORKERS’ COUNCILS.

Council for the Maintenance of Occupations

(May 1968 – Council for the Maintenance of Occupations)

Black offset

18 x 24.5 cm

Tract – “Reproduction of some tracts distributed in the Sorbonne on May 16” (19 May 1968 – CMDO)

19 Thursday May 2016

Posted by biffbang in CMDO, Internationale Situationniste, Students, Tract, Uncategorized

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(Translated by Ken Knabb except for “Vigilance!” – taken from “Enragés & Situationists in the Occupation Movement, France May ’68” – Viénet (Autonomedia/Rebel Press, 1992) )

Comrades, hundreds of tracts are published every day. Choose the best and reproduce them yourselves or send them to the printers who are on strike.

—————————————————————————————————–
REPRODUCTION OF SOME TRACTS DISTRIBUTED IN THE SORBONNE ON MAY 16.
—————————————————————————————————–

Comrades,

Considering that the Sud-Aviation factory at Nantes has been occupied for two days by the workers and students of that city…
and that today the movement is spreading to several factories (Nouvelles Messageries de la Presse Parisienne in Paris, Renault in Cléon, etc.),
THE SORBONNE OCCUPATION COMMITTEE calls for
the immediate occupation of all the factories in France and the formation of Workers Councils.

Comrades, spread and reproduce this appeal as quickly as possible.
Sorbonne, 16 May 1968 – 3:30 pm
—————————————————————————————————–

SLOGANS TO BE SPREAD NOW 
by EVERY MEANS

(leaflets, announcements over microphones, comic strips, songs, graffiti, speech bubbles on paintings in the Sorbonne, announcements in theatres during films or while disrupting them, speech bubbles on subway billboards, before making love, after making love, in elevators, each time you raise your glass in a bar):

OCCUPY THE FACTORIES
POWER TO THE WORKERS’ COUNCILS
ABOLISH CLASS SOCIETY
DOWN WITH THE SPECTACLE-COMMODITY SOCIETY
ABOLISH ALIENATION
END THE UNIVERSITY
HUMANITY WON’T BE HAPPY UNTIL THE LAST BUREAUCRAT IS HUNG WITH THE GUTS OF THE LAST CAPITALIST
DEATH TO THE COPS
ALSO FREE THE 4 GUYS CONVICTED FOR LOOTING ON MAY 6TH

OCCUPATION COMMITTEE OF THE
PEOPLE’S FREE SORBONNE UNIVERSITY
16 May 68, 7pm
—————————————————————————————————–

VIGILANCE!

Comrades,

The supremacy of the revolutionary assembly can only mean something if it exercises its power.
For the last 48 hours even the capacity of the general assembly to make decisions has been challenged by a systematic obstruction of all proposals for action.
Up until now no motion could be voted on or even discussed, and bodies elected by the general assembly (Occupation Committee and Coordinating Committee) see their work sabotaged by pseudo-spontaneous groups.
All the debates on organisation, which people wanted to argue about before any action, are pointless if we do nothing.

AT THIS RATE, THE MOVEMENT WILL BE BURIED IN THE SORBONNE!

The prerequisite of direct democracy is the minimum support that revolutionary students can give to revolutionary workers who are occupying their factories.
It is inexcusable that yesterday evenings incidents in the GA should pass without retaliation.
The priests are holding us back when anti-clerical posters are torn up.
The bureaucrats are holding us back when, without even giving their names, they paralyse the revolutionary awareness that can take the movement forward from the barricades.
Once again, its the future that is sacrificed to the re-establishment of the old unionism.
Parliamentary cretinism wants to take over the rostrum, as it tries to put the old, patched-up system back on its feet again.

Comrades,
The reform of the university alone is insignificant, when it is the whole of the old world which is to be destroyed.
The movement is nothing if it is not revolutionary.

OCCUPATION COMMITTEE OF THE SORBONNE, May 16, 1968, 4:30 P.M.
—————————————————————————————————–

WATCH OUT FOR MANIPULATORS! 
WATCH OUT FOR BUREAUCRATS!

Comrades,

No one should be unaware of the importance of the General Assembly this evening (Thursday, May 16). Over the last two days several individuals, recognisable from having previously been seen peddling their various party lines, have succeeded in sowing confusion and in smothering the GAs under a barrage of bureaucratic manipulations whose crudeness clearly demonstrates the contempt they have for this assembly.

This assembly must learn how to make itself respected or disappear. Two points must be discussed above all:
– WHO CONTROLS THE SECURITY MARSHALS? whose disgusting role is intolerable.
– WHY IS THE PRESS COMMITTEE — which dares to censor the communiqués that it is charged to transmit to the news agencies — composed of apprentice journalists who are careful not to disappoint the ORTF bosses so as not to jeopardise their future job possibilities?

Apart from that: Considering that the workers are beginning to occupy several factories in France, FOLLOWING OUR EXAMPLE AND WITH THE SAME RIGHT WE HAVE, the Sorbonne Occupation Committee issued a statement approving of this movement at 3pm this afternoon. The central problem of this evening’s GA is therefore to declare itself by a clear vote supporting or disavowing this appeal of its Committee.

Tract – “For the Power of the Workers Councils (22nd May 1968 – CMDO/SI)

13 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by biffbang in CMDO, Internationale Situationniste, May 20-26 1968, Tract, Worker

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Tags

Guy Debord, SI, Situationist

IMG_0989.JPG

(Translated by Ken Knabb)

FOR THE POWER OF THE WORKERS COUNCILS

In the space of ten days workers have occupied hundreds of factories, a spontaneous general strike has brought the country to a standstill, and de facto committees have taken over many state-owned buildings. This situation — which cannot last, but must either extend itself or disappear (through repression or defeatist negotiations) — is sweeping aside all the old ideas and confirming all the radical hypotheses on the return of the revolutionary proletarian movement. The fact that the whole movement was actually triggered five months ago by a half-dozen revolutionaries of the “Enragés” group reveals even better how much the objective conditions were already present. The French example is already having repercussions in other countries, reviving the internationalism that is inseparable from the revolutions of our century.

The fundamental struggle is now between the mass of workers — who do not have direct means of expressing themselves — and the leftist political and labor-union bureaucracies which (even if merely on the basis of the 14% of the active population that is unionized) control the factory gates and the right to negotiate in the name of the occupiers. These bureaucracies are not workers’ organizations that have degenerated and betrayed the workers; they are a mechanism for integrating the workers into capitalist society. In the present crisis they are the main protection of this shaken capitalism.

The de Gaulle regime may negotiate — essentially (even if only indirectly) with the PCF-CGT [French Communist Party and the labor union it dominates] — for the demobilization of the workers in exchange for some economic benefits; after which the radical currents would be repressed. Or the “Left” may come to power and pursue the same policies, though from a weaker position. Or an armed repression may be attempted. Or, finally, the workers may take the upper hand by speaking for themselves and becoming conscious of goals as radical as the forms of struggle they have already put into practice. Such a process would lead to the formation of workers councils, making decisions democratically at the rank-and-file level, federating with each other by means of delegates revocable at any moment, and becoming the sole deliberative and executive power over the entire country.

How could the continuation of the present situation lead to such a prospect? Within a few days, perhaps, the necessity of starting certain sectors of the economy back up again under workers’ control could lay the bases for this new power, a power which everything is already pushing to burst through the constraints of the unions and parties. The railroads and printshops would have to be put back into operation for the needs of the workers’ struggle. New de facto authorities would have to requisition and distribute food. If money became devalued or unavailable it might have to be replaced by vouchers backed by those new authorities. It is through such a practical process that the consciousness of the deepest aspirations of the proletariat can impose itself — the class consciousness that lays hold on history and brings about the workers’ power over all aspects of their own lives.

Paris, 22 May 1968
COUNCIL FOR MAINTAINING THE OCCUPATIONS

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