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HORIA BRATU
Puvis de Chavannes' murals by volunteer artists. The discussion was \
heated and bitter, and unanimity was never reached. The opposition
- in the minority - stated that the murals were of historical value,
and that the students would be treated like vandals, etc. But the major.
ity, in their action committee, nonetheless decided not to paint the \
walls of the Sorbonne. Instead, during- the following days, excellent
graffiti were posted, while at Nantcrre the cold modern walls were
literally covered by horrible daubs. The reactions to the professors
were the most varied of all. Aragon, for example, was booed and
Garady listened to. Sartre, who was "rehabilitated" late in the game as \
a result of his interview with Cohn-Bendit, suffered fewer insults than
someone like Ricoeur, who in the very beginning (more for academic
than for religious reasons) rallied to the movement almost without \
reservation.
One thing is certain: the motivations of such a movement can't be
reduced to one common denominator. There are some groups who act
out of despair; there are some who fight for their beefsteak the way \
others act to bring the human order closer to the Kingdom of God.
Christians young and old rallied to the confrontation in France. Taking
a position against the actual objective class situation, they cleared a
path which no doubt the young Marx would have traveled. That is to
say, the inference of values in this case - religious, ethical, etc. - was
accomplished in a way difficult for a "marxist-leninist" to understand:
not through a dependence on politics but independently of it.
• For revolution is as real as art. In modern industrial society, talking
revolution doesn't mean talking politics - it means talking ethics or
esthetics or religion. From Lenin's point of view, in which politics is
understood in economic terms, revolution is much less possible than
radical reform of structures. (This is due to the irreversibility of tech.
nical progress, which is slowed down or speeded up only as a function
of the differing ends that society as a whole assigns to it,) As a theor·
etical concept, revolution goes beyond class war (an idea which is itself
in need of revision). Revolution means a challenge to the style of life
created by the affluent society, a return to natural needs, universal
satisfactions. It applies equally to all social strata and all classes. That
is, the idea of revolution tends to universalize itself. As Marcuse has
shown, the reason why workers participated so little in the revolts in
Germany was that they were so well integrated into the system. In
France, a more stringent economic situation caused a great number of
workers to strike. This doesn' t mean that their objectives were at all
