SITUATIONISTS AND THE 1£CH MAY 1968

"Communist" Party are trembling. The outcome
of the present crisis is in the hands of the work·
ers themselves if they succeed in accomplishing
in the occupation of their factories the goals
toward which the university occupation was only
able to make a rough gesture.
The comrades who supported the first
Sorbonne Occupation Committee - the Enrages­
Situationist International Committee, a number
of workers and a few students - have formed a
Council for Maintaining. the Occupations: the
maintaining of the occupations obviously being
conceivable only through their quantitative and
qualitative extension, which must not spare any
existing regime.
· Council fo r maintaining the occupations, Paris,
19 May 1968
For the power of the Workers
Councils
In the space of ten days workers have occupied
hundreds of factories, a spontaneous genl'!ral
strike has totally interrupted the activity of the
country, and de facto committees have taken
over many buildings belonging to the state. In
such a situation -which in any event cannot last
but must either extend itself or disappear
(through repression or defeatist negotiations) -
all the old ideas are swept aside and all the radical
hypotheses on the return of the revolutionary,
proletarian movement are confirmed. The
fact that the whole movement was really triggered
five months ago by a half dozen revolutionaries
of the "Enrages" group reveals even
better how much the objective conditions were
already present. At this very moment the French
example is having repercussions in other countries
and reviving the internationalism which is
indissociable fr.om the revolutions of our century.
The fundamental struggle today is between,
on the one hand, the mass of workers - who do
not have direct means of expressing themselves
- and on the other, the leftist political and union
bureaucracies that (even if merely on the basis
of the 14°/o of the active population that is
unionised) control the factory gates and the
right to negotiate in the name of the occupiers.
These bureaucracies are not workers' organisations
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
(if only indirectly) with the PCF-CGT - for
the demobilization of the workers in exchange
for some economic advantages; 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 rankand-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.
In what way could the prolongation 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 ahd
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 becomes devalued
it might have to be replaced by vouchers backed
by those new authorities. lt is through such a
practical process that the consciousness of the
profound will of the proletariat can impose itself
- the class consciousness that lays hold on history
and brings about the workers' domination
over all aspects of their own lives.
Council for maintaining the occupations, Paris,
22 May 1968