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which had been channeled and absorbed into the verbal and legal fonns
of protest that the system imposed on it. To the continuous violence of
oppression in the factories, in the pursuit of leisure, in the family,
in
the establishments called "educational," the movement opposes liberty to
speak from equal to equal, ridicule of all hierarchy, courage to pose all
questions, destruction of forced solitude, dialogue and initiative. Our
violence consists in reestablishing the word and the expressive gesture,
for the violence that opposes us sets up reflections. That we are judged
for our violence is simply droll.
4 ) The radical and practical nature of our critique calls forth an
echo from among the workers, especially the young workers. Questioning
begins to come out from the university ghetto; the critique of cultural
alienation begins to merge with the critique of socioeconomic exploitation
and political oppression. An embryonic union of the workers' and stu–
dents' struggles is frmed. It is weak in the face of the enemy to be over–
thrown ; it is formidable if one compares it to the isolation and despair
which presided over the class struggle before May, 1968.
5) The future of the revolution under way depends entirely on the
reinforcement of the union of students and workers. The students bring
to the struggle their denunciation of culture and values; isolated, their
critique would be recuperated by the system, for nothing prevents the
ruling classes from entertaining themselves with the spectacle of the
cultural revolution. The workers contribute their experience and their
denunciation of exploitation ; isolated, and in the absence of a revolu–
tionary sector, their struggle loses its dimension of global questioning,
and remains confined to professional demands. In modern society,
where technical progress increases the importance of intellectual labor,
the student is no longer a young bohemian bourgeois, he is a fraction
in training of the social forces of production. That is why his desertion
from the camp of the ruling class can take on decisive importance.
6)
If
it is to achieve this union, the movement must not let itself
be intimidated by defamation, wherever it may come from, especially
must not lct itself be disalmed from within by self-censorship. That we
are called provocateurs and adventurersl. would not merit a second's
The reference is to the French Communist Party (and the Communist-led
trade unions) which originally denounced the student activists as a
grou–
pusc ule
of provoca teurs and adventurers, a nd throughout the May crisis
maneuvered to foil any revolutionary union of students and workers outside
Party structures, to preserve intact the traditional policy of "no enemies to
the Left" and to maintain its claim to be the exclusive spokesman of the
proletariat. Daniel Cohn-Bendit in turn denounced the Party as a bunch
of "Stalinist slobs."
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