Only a few years ago it: seemed to most comrades on the left, that the prospect of revolution in the West was little more than a forlorn hope, if not a forgotten dream; that our modern consumer society had developed walls that were impregnable to any radical change and deaf to the miffied ery of its victims,
Capitalism in the 1960's seemed to say that the revolution was no more than a thing of the dim and distant past.
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This book vividly describes the death of this myth, and how all the complacent assumptions about the modern era were devastatingly shattered by the events of May in France - which represented one more of history's great spontaneous upheavals, "when the unpredictable has happened, and the
seemingly impossible is at hand".
Once more the attention of vast numbers of' radically-minded people has been drawn away from the prosaic and mundane tasks which accompany a commit~ ment merely to reform the system, and onee more a wider political horizen is 3 visible to the mass of people, who in times of ideological depression oscillate between despair of change on the one hand, and the fetishistic acceptance of half-baked reforms on the other’, which contribute little to * serving the people for whom they are: intended,
The strength of this book is the degree to which it succeeds in
capturing the spirit of this dramatic stage in the development of Western society - a stage in which man the creator was rediscovered in France, the creator struggling to be free in the Sorbonne, in the factories, in offices, and in the streets; struggling to seize control of his environment, of his - work, his leisure, and his life.
This was the general will against the will of the General and his_ plutocratic friends, advisors, accomplices, and allies.
Yes this was most certainly the revolutionary renaissance - the shape of things to come. In this respect Tom Nairn's analysis is particularly important in posing new factors and new contradictions operating in this, 3 the final stage of capitalism.
The events of France will undoubtedly prove to be the single most important suestion in provoking the long-awaited development of 20th
century thesry of revolution in modern advanced societies. It is surely time to cease from clinging on to the revolutionary skeletons of the past as blueprints for the future - the bones of Lenin and Trotsky both haunt and hinder this re-birth of Marxist theory, (as well as help it}. So many revolutionary groups have contributed to the ideological sterility of the recent past, that now they have much to atone for in combatting the mighty gulf between theory and practice, which has clearly been opened up by the student revolt, which displays not only a refreshing spontaneity that is so effective in mobilizing enormous numbers of people against the drab mediocrity of capitalism in 1968, but also a distressing lack of political strategy, which leaves the vast numbers of people readily vulnerable to disillusionment after the first revolutionary upsurge has failed. Blind heroism guided only by revolutionary purpose is not enough. The essence of Marxism is to understand not only where we are now, and where we are trying to go - but further some analysis of how we get there, this is the whole point of * developing among ourselves a theory of revolution in the West for the 1970's.
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These questions are raised by the book, and some intimations are given but these are only a beginning. Another merit of this little volume is the way it highlights the failure of the many revolutionary "groupuscules" to keep abreast of the spontaneous tide, which swept over many traditional concepts of revolution, and revolutionary organisation.
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The revolution failed - not surprisingly, but. before we draw the rather complacent conclusion that this only confirms our own pet hypotheses con- ' demming the role of a revolutionary party, a vanguard, or some other instrument set up to lead the masses to the promised land, we might consider a bit more deeply why it failed.
Spontaneity may not be enough ~ yet in France last May it could have been much more, but for the containment role of the Communist Party. Much of the evidence suggests that without this policing of the French working class the general strike could have developed a more offensive nature, with the workers actually re-starting work in some factories on the basis of workers' control, and emerging Soviets. Organisation itself, arose spon~ taneously out of the revolution in Hungary in 1956.
By substituting the leadership of one small group for the counterrevolutionary leadership of the C.P. do we thereby achieve a suocessfull revolution? Like the authors of this book, I very much doubt it. At the moment the workers probably suffer from too much leadership, not too little. Once the yoke of C.P. leadership has been overthrown, another stage in the rebirth of the revolutionary movement will have begun - and this will truly be the “Beginning of the End": and let us hope that the "groupuscules" will learn enough lessons in modern revolution so that next time their theories are in tune with the “prexis" of the moment, instead of being only in harmony with the "praxis" of the past.
I need hardly edd the final comment, that if you have not yet read this book,then in the interests of the next revolution in the West, run out and grab hold of a copy without delay. It is too important to miss!
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* The Beginning of the Bnd. France, May 1968: Angelo Quattroochi and Tom Nairn. Panther Books Ltd. 1968.