Paris May ‘68
Source: The May Events Archive of Simon Fraser University;
Source: Simon Fraser University, The May Events Archive;
Translated: by Anonymous and Mitchell Abidor.
Popular anger is advancing without cease among workers and students. It has begun among farmers. Everywhere, it has the same foundation: the rejection of a capitalist and centralized society, the contesting of the autocratic powers of government, of the employers and of large-scale farming capital.
The movement that took off from the Latin Quarter successfully called into question the power structure in current society. Action must now find its outlet in the generalizing of workplace sit-ins and the adoption of specific slogans for the establishment of real popular power:
– FOR THE STUDENTS, It’s a question of organizing their power in the high schools, the universities, the higher education establishments
– FOR THE WORKERS, It’s a question of imposing their power and creating the necessary conditions for its exercise by trade union organizations
– FOR THE FARMERS, It’s a question of creating a collective regional organization of the conditions of production and commercialization of products.
All those who no longer accept submission to laws of a reactionary state must take matters into their own hands. They must form POPULAR ACTION COMMITTEES, Teacher and Student Committees in the universities and high schools, Worker’s Committees inside businesses, Farmer’s Committees in the countryside, Committees of the Villages, districts, etc ...
The PSU calls on its militants, and all of those who grant them confidence, to join existing Committees or form committees where none exist.
It is through such committees, through discussion and confrontation, but also through putting in place effective power structures, that the forms of a new power structure must develop.
To those who want to hold back the popular movement or limit its objectives in order to better control it; to those who believe they can answer a general contesting of capitalist society through the simple modification of parliamentary balance or a government formulas; to those who still hesitate after not having believed in the student revolt, after having doubted the connection between the struggles of the students and those of the workers, we must now answer by opening up new perspectives:
The P.S.U. Propose
I. WORKER POWER
IN ADDITION TO THE NECESSARY POLITICAL AND UNION FREEDOMS:
The right to veto employers’ decisions concerning employment and working conditions. Discussion of real wages and the work day. Employee control of benefits and investments.
The right of functionaries to negotiate with the state as employer their wages and working conditions. The creation of business committees in the public administration offices and public institutions.
Management of public business by representation of the State and the workers.
Increasing the means of action of national enterprises through the nationalization of the centers of economic decision making.
Worker management of Social Security.
2. FARMER POWER
For the farmers, represented by their unions and cooperatives: management of regional organs of economic planning. Control of the means of transformation and commercialization of agricultural products.
3. STUDENT POWER
For the students, the essential objectives are those of the UNEF: immediate establishment of real student power in the Faculties with the right to veto any decision made. Subordinate to this first point, the autonomy of universities and Faculties. fight for the recognition of High-School Action Committees and for their freedom of expression and actions.
We MUST DEMAND:
INFORMATION in the service of workers: transformation of the ORTF to a public, autonomous office, independent of the state, democratically managed. Nationalization of the means of the press: printers, mail services, advertising by the creation of national offices, managed by worker representatives, and putting the technical means of information at the disposal of diverse currents of opinion.
CULTURAL POLICY of a socialist character:
a) the transformation of the Centers for Youth and Cultures’ activities into centers of free debate and creativity managed by young workers.
b) taking control of other aspects of cultural life by the writers and artists who take a position in opposition to bourgeois culture.
A REGIONAL ORGANIZATION to fight against underdevelopment and authoritarian centralization. It is indispensable that the Popular Action Committees coordinate their actions with the regional counterparts.
In place of the agents of Gaullist power (prefects and CODER) regional popular powers must be born, the beginnings of deliberative assemblies capable of resolving the problems of cultural and economic development (training, employment, industrialization)
THE PSU SUBMITS THIS SET OF PROPOSALS TO THE OPEN DEBATES OF THE POPULAR ACTION COMMITTEES
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