Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Daniel Bensaïd on the protests in France posted by bat020
Latest Socialist Worker includes an interview with Daniel Bensaïd, the Marxist philosopher, longstanding LCR activist and author of the fascinating book Marx for Our Times. Here's an edited excerpt:As someone who took part in the mobilisations of May 1968, what do you think are the principal similarities and differences between those events and what’s happening today?
In 1968, the spark was a demonstration against the war in Vietnam. The themes were very internationalist – solidarity with Vietnam, and with the German and Polish students. Along with these issues were others like the question of mixed university halls of residence.
The present movement is directly based on a social question – the destruction of workplace regulations and the generalised casualisation of employment, which is common both to youth in education and to workers. The question of the link, and not just solidarity, between the two is therefore immediate.
The link is natural, and the labour movement is less closed, or even hostile, than it was towards students in 1968. At the time this hostility, or wariness, was fostered in particular by the workerist demagoguery of the Communist Party and of the CGT trade union federation, which controlled the big bastions of the labour movement. Today relations are not so closed.
Read the whole thing here. And there's shitloads more coverage here.