Paris May 68
Source: Supplement to L’Humanité Nouvelle no 104, May 10, 1968;
Source: The May Events Archive of Simon Fraser University;
Translated: by Mitchell Abidor.
The capital element of May 24 wasn’t De Gaulle’s speech, but thousands of revolutionary demonstrators in Paris and throughout France taking to the streets.
A new situation is solidifying: power is no longer in parliament, or in the government of bank director Pompidou, or even at the Elysee: it is manifesting itself on the streets.
On one side: the power of the monopolies in the form of the CRS and Gardes-Mobiles who unleash class violence. On the other side: the popular power of the workers, students and farmers who want revolution.
Victory will belong to the people on the indispensable condition that unity in combat is realized. This unity can only find its strength in unity and action at the base so as to oppose revolutionary violence to the fascist violence of the power structure and the big bourgeoisie.
At the current moment the revisionist leaders of the PCF and the CGT are deploying all their energies towards the division of popular forces, systematically attempting to set the workers against the students.
What is more, they limit the working class struggles strictly to the realm of demands, when the immense mass of workers aspire to socialism. The objective of such maneuvers is that of saving the dominant class that’s in power, i.e., the monopolist bourgeoisie, but they are coming up against the growing resistance of the membership at the base of the French “Communist” Party and the CGT, as well as certain leading militants at all levels.
The Central Committee of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of France renews its call for the constituting of popular action committees in the quarters, in factories, in villages, in the faculties, high-schools and colleges. Such organizations should allow for the expression of the revolutionary aspirations of the people and the organization of the actions needed to ensure their triumph.
It’s by the overthrowing of the power of the monopolies, and not by a plebiscitary referendum that the way will be opened to great historic changes in our society.
– THE FRENCH PEOPLE REJECT OPPRESSIVE CAPITALISM
– IT WANTS LIBERATING SOCIALISM!
Paris, May 25, 1968, 16h
The Central Committee of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of France