SITUATIONISTS AND THE 1£CH MAY 1968

. of the rue Gay lussac. We are not referring to their
leader Chisseray who claimed it was "necessary above
all to preserve the revolutionary vanguard from an
unnecessary massacre". Nor are we referring to the
repeated maoist criticisms of the students' struggle,
uttered as late as 7 May. What we are referring to is the
inability of any Trotskyist or Maoist group to raise the
real issues demanded in a revolutionary situation, ie to
call for workers' management of production and the
formation of workers' councils. None of these groups
even touched on the sort of question the revolutionary
students were discussing day and night: the relations
of production in the capitalist factory, alienation at
work whatever the level of wages, the division between
leaders and led within the factory hierarchy or ' within
the 'working class' organisations themselves. All that
Humanite Nouvel/e could counterpose to the constantly
demobilising activities of the CGT was the immensely
demystifying slogan: "Vive le CGT" ("The· CGT isn't
really what it appears to be, comrade"), All that Voix
Ouvriere could counterpose to the CGT's demand for a
minimum wage of 6oo francs was ... a minimum wage of
1000 francs. This kind of revolutionary auction (in purely
economic demands), after the workers had been
occupying the factories for several weeks, shows the
utter bankruptcy of revolutionaries who fail to recognise
a revolution. Avant Garde correctly attacked some
of the ambiguities of auto-gestion (self-management)
as advocated by the CFDT, but fa iled to point out the
deeply revolutionary implications of the slogan.