I am translating an article appeared in Argentina regarding the consequences of the May 1968 uprising in Paris, and its consequences in our country and elsewhere. I am prepared for receiving harsh comments from the members of this forum.
The 50th anniversary of the famous May '68 has just been celebrated, during which important and serious student protests took place in Paris; university revolts that had finally go against the established order and provoke a cultural revolution, whose terrible consequences continue to this day, half a century later.
Let's say first of all that the matrix of the French university "reaction" -which later spread to other countries, including ours- (Argentina), was clearly Marxist. The revolt was, both in its genesis and in its development, as well as the undeniable militancy of its protagonists, undoubtedly Marxist.
How could it be otherwise, the socialist world pays tribute to the "French May" presenting it as "a feat" of Maoist tone, progressive and without political connotations
particular.
There is talk of an "explosion of rebellion, of poetry and, of youthful
love, before a materialistic and exploitative world". That supposed
"poetry full of life, and ideals", will be, however, and
unfortunately, the model that will imitate a part of our Argentine university
youth in the bloody years of the 1970's, changing the Parisian cobblestones for
the ERP (Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo) and Montoneros bombs. (both of Argentina).
To better understand what happened, let us first consider what was the world context of that time: the world was living the so-called "Cold War", and Communism exported the guerrillas to the Third World; Mao Tse-Tung had already launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China; in the West, the hippie movement, psychedelia and Sartrian existentialism dominated the intellectual and university environments; and far away, on the Indochina Peninsula, the tremendous Vietnam War was going on, which would conclude with the communist triumph and the American withdrawal.
What were the events that occurred in Paris in May'68? After months of conflicts between students and authorities at the University of Nanterre in Paris, the administration closed the university cloisters on May 2. Then, the students of the Sorbonne in Paris, as a sign of solidarity, gathered in the Latin Quarter on May 3 and held a protest. The police intervened; the students responded by throwing cobblestones, which would later become one of the symbols of the return, along with the barricades.
On May 6 the students called for a march to protest against the police invasion of the Sorbonne. More than 20,000 students, teachers, and sympathizers marched to the University, still closed by the police. The confrontation began. The fight lasted until midnight: barricades, burning cars, cobbles, Molotov cocktails and chains were the preferred means of confronting the police. 1,150 wounded between both sides and 24 hospitalized police clearly show the "harmlessness" of the young people, who invited to think, and to debate about the future of the human race ".
Similar events occurred during the following weeks, when workers began to occupy the factories and to strike. The central workers called a general strike of 24 hours for May 13. This event will mark a new milestone in the history of disagreements that will star workers and students. One million protesters gather; unemployment is absolute throughout France; the workers march on one side and the students on the other.
Since it was occupied, the Sorbonne became the headquarters of revolutionary students. Posters of Mao, Stalin, of "Che" Guevara, Lenin, Trotsky, decorated the walls of the University. It was "liberated zone". They painted the walls with the slogans: "Nothing will be claimed, nothing will be asked, it will be taken, it will be occupied"; "Imagination to the power"; "Take your dreams for realities"; "Enjoy here and now"; "The more I make love, the more I want to make revolution"; "Forbidden to forbid"; "Forget everything you have learned"; "Neither God nor teacher"; "Long live the revolution"; "Down with the State"; "Never work", etc.
French President Charles de Gaulle, faced with the situation of chaos, dissolved the National Assembly, called for elections, and ordered workers to return to their jobs, threatening to establish a state of emergency if they did not. Immediately after his speech, many of his supporters marched down the Avenue de Champs-Élysées waving the national flag. The communists accepted the call for elections, and the threat of revolution dissipated. The street demonstrations stopped and the police resumed the Sorbonne on June 16. It was two months of great turbulence.
The Gaullist party won with a large majority the legislative elections in June. All of which made it believe that the old regime had won and that the young rebels had lost the challenge. Big mistake! The young revolutionaries implanted a new way of being and living, "free from all ties" that would spread throughout the world.
May '68 had his heirs, and if he did not succeed immediately, he did succeed in the medium term. From these facts the University became the most important hunting ground of Marxism, and will become the quarry for thousands of guerrillas in Latin America.
At first it seemed like a spontaneous revolt of the young, but in reality it was a revolution carefully planned by the ideological laboratories that guided the transformation of the society. The "guru" of '68 was, not coincidentally, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, the last exponent of the Frankfurt School, born in the 20s, to accompany the cultural plan of the Bolshevik political revolution.
The basic idea of '68 is the "liberation of the instincts". This goes back to the time of the French Revolution, when the Marquis de Sade theorized, the first of all, a social regeneration through the liberation of the most turbulent passions. The main victim of this ideology was, unfortunately, the family, which at the end of the 60s constituted a social bulwark against the revolutionary forces and that today, after so many attacks against it, has been very damaged, as the whole society.
It was about freeing man from the bonds of traditional morality, to build a non-repressive civilization, "where erotic energy could be freely expressed in a new social creativity." The 68 uprising was first and foremost a revolution in morals; sexual revolution and changes in educational systems, to undermine the foundations on which education is governed: the family and the school.
The May 1968 was not a failed revolution. Fifty years later, we realize how his philosophy has permeated, slowly but progressively, the customs and mentality of Western society. The cultural revolution that burst forth at that time has inexorably followed its course. It is enough to think about the cultural and moral relativism that characterizes the society in which we live. To the cry of "Prohibited to prohibit" is being allowed and reaching the lowest and most corrupt of man, even considering a good what has always been considered an evil.
The revolution of May 68, after all, rebelled against the created order, the concrete human nature, the origin and the identity of man. At the heart of this Cultural Revolution is the rejection of the origin, not only biological (the family) and social (the community), but also the cultural origin (tradition) and metaphysical (human nature). Because admitting that a person has a transcendent origin, would mean renouncing the utopia of self-generation, and absolute autonomy. According to this ideology, - it would be necessary, then, to engage in the integral liberation of man, denying one's own origin and one's nature, fighting with obstinacy the limits and the links that come from our condition as creatures. If "I am mine" then I decide my identity and nature, here is the diabolic ideology that they are already imposing in our schools!
