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PETER CAW S
of overthrowing the society. After De Gaulle's massive victOlY at the
polls this is hard to remember, but it is by no means the most bizarre
of the truths about this extraordinary episode. Two others, equally
implausible on their face but equally borne out by the evidence, are
that the whole thing was an indirect product of the war in Vietnam,
and that France was saved for democracy at the very brink of collapse
by the Communist Party. The conjunction of these last two points has a
kind of sickening irony in the light of America's postwar foreign policy,
but their lesson is too obvious for me to have to drive it home here.
Having come so close to success, however, the revolutionary move–
ment may have spoiled its chances of pulling off anything similar again
for a long time. In a way its hand was forced; the student activists,
who did not expect at this stage to have much impact outside the
university, had intended to wait until the fall for their big manifesta–
tion. That events would grow to such proportions in May was unfore–
seen: so was the general strike. Some left-wing theorists, encouraged
by the magnitude of the disturbance, are now developing a new theory
of revolution for advanced industrial societies, societies in which classical
revolutionary theory concluded that Sllccess was impossible (whence the
preference of the Communists in France for parliamentary action).
According to the new theory, the initiative will be taken by students,
the one group not successfully integrated into the mechanism of society
and not yet having a collective stake in it; their lead will be followed
by the workers in a general strike; then, however, instead of sitting stub–
bornly in the factories, the workers will start the processes of production
and distribution up again under the direction of their own revolutionary
committees, with which the public will be forced to deal for the neces–
sities of life; meanwhile the old government can do what it likes: it
will eventually be seen to be a nonfunctioning appendage (the real
business being conducted directly between the workers and the people)
and will die a natural death.
This theory is beautiful but absurd. It would not have been absurd
if it had been formulated a few months ago, for the position of the
Communists was then not as clear as it is now.
If
in May the Com–
munist Party and the unions had called for a real take-over of the fac–
tories and for their operation as revolutionary enterprises, instead of
behaving like respectable democratic oriranizations, it is hard to guess
what would have happened. Probably the Army would eventually have
broken the movement, but that would have amounted to civil war. Now
however it is evident that the Fifth Republic has undergone a kind of
catharsis in its body politic, and another general strike in the near future,
or even a successful large-scale manifestation, seems out of the ques-
