St. Nazaire, May 18th

IF YOU SAY the students are sons of bourgeois you are right. But a minority of them have made a complete break with their class. They are ready to join up with the workers. Where? In the street, where we can argue and can act. People talk about civil war. But on one side there are the workers, the peasants, the students, on the other the bourgeois. The bourgeois will not fight in the streets. And their police are tied down in Paris. There are not enough of them to go round. The first phase of the advanced struggle we are leading must be the occupation of the factories. Then the setting up of revolutionary councils. We must find new forms of management. We must be masters of the means of production. Equality of wages, that is very important. Wages must be equal in an egalitarian society.

It is not a question of attacking the trade union movement, but of creating the conditions for a workers' democracy, where each, whatever his slogans or his banners, can have his say. I attack the leaders of the union organisations, I do not attack the ordinary union members. Unity of the labour movement will be achieved by the young. Shop by shop the young unionists must unite. Unity won't come from the top.

*******

Frankfurt, May 23rd

Q: How do you describe your political position?

A: Basically I am an anarchist . . . a Marxist-anarchist.

Q: Some journalists have described you as the leader of the revolution . .

A: Let them write their rubbish. These people will never be able to understand that the student movement doesn't need any chiefs. I am neither a leader nor a professional revolutionary. I am simply a mouthpiece, a megaphone.

Q: What is the reason for your expulsion from France?

A: I don't begin to understand why de Gaulle had me expelled. Can he really be so stupid?

Q: You talk as if you have a personal hatred for General de Gaulle....

A: It is a tactic, naturally. Above all to defend myself against the accusations of the Party, which wants to pass me off as an agent- provocateur of the regime. And this is because at the moment they do not want de Gaulle to be defeated.

Q: Would you support a Popular Front?

A: A Popular Front at the moment would be an extremely positive step in clarifying the situation: the masses would end up by under- standing better the nature of the trade-union bureaucracy and the traditional working-class parties and then an alternative on the left of the Communist Party could very easily be formed.

Q: Isn't that a little bit of an over-simplification?

A: Not at all. Look, there are two extreme possibilities: on the one hand the victory of a fascist-type reaction and the relative defeat of the proletariat for at least a decade. On the other hand there might be the development of a situation like that in Russia at the beginning of this century: 1905 or else February 1917. If it turns out to be a February 1917 situation, say we have a so-called Popular Front with a Kerensky by the name of Mitterand or Waldeck-Rochet. Certainly there is no shortage of Mensheviks: the difficulty is to find any Bolsheviks!

Q: But is it possible to have a French revolution in a vacuum?

A: No. The revolution in one country is certainly not feasible. Also from an economic point of view. An economic crisis, caused for example by social conflict, cannot remain isolated in one country. Nor a financial crisis, a dollar crisis, transcends as you know all countries. The system is international. However we have to begin by undermining each particular part of it, and in Paris that's what we have begun. In Paris the situation could truly be described as pre-revolutionary.

Q: What is the role of the Communist Party in all this?

A: The Party is one of the two power-structures which at the moment are propping each other up. De Gaulle and his State on the one

defensive, and he is defending his position of power in the State. The Party is on the defensive because it is obliged to defend its position of power within the working-class movement. Our action, by contrast, is offensive: that is its advantage. All these intermediate and transitory objectives arising from the present situation, all the strong pressures from below, are pushing away at the old structures of power. You know, in this situation, the Party hasn't very much will to take the reins of the bourgeois state into its hands. Moscow is certainly against it: they have very much more reliance on the General than on the little bureaucrats of the French Communist Party.

Q: Consequently a Popular Front would detach the masses from the Party?

A: Yes, that's more or less the idea, but don't forget that in reality the whole thing is very much more complex. The existence of the Party is an objective reality, one can't decide from one day to another to eliminate it. It is thanks to the Party and the CGT that the concept of the class-struggle has kept its significance in the working-class consciousness. Our accomplishment will be to make conscious the divisions which exist between the declarations of the Party and its actual reformist politics. In the struggles of the last few days we have made enormous strides.

Q: But the workers haven't let you enter the factories.

A: It's not true. The functionaries of the Party have only partially succeeded in closing the factory gates on us. They have had to do this so as not to lose their position of power, but this has cost them and is going to cost them a great deal.

Q: Do you think of the student movement as a new International?

A: At the moment there are individual contacts and group contacts on an international level, but it is not yet possible to speak of common action. Action is born from below, from the actual situation. It's just the same as in the struggle against capitalism.

Q: Are you thinking, then, of intensifying contact?

A: Certainly, but that is not the central problem. Co-ordination would be a positive gain, but a Student International doesn't interest me. It doesn't interest me at all. What we need to form is a new revolutionary left, of which the student movement would be a component. Otherwise the student movement will remain isolated, within the limits of a movement of protest. But we may already be overcoming this. In France, in Italy, and to some extent in Germany, there are already links with the working class, even if they are only at a local level.

Q: What do you think will be the organisational form of the new revolutionary movement?

A: It isn't yet possible to say.... We are creating groups at the bottom: workers and students who collaborate for local action. But I don't think it's possible to be more precise than this.

Q: Perhaps they are already the Bolsheviks of the new revolution, perhaps they have already decided to institute the dictatorship of the proletariat?

A: No, not the dictatorship of the proletariat. We are against all authority.

*******

London, June 12th

Q: What exactly do you stand for? Are you a communist?

A: I am supporting those who form workers' councils, for self- determination for workers and for students. If this is communist you can call me a communist. But I do not agree with Russian politics. Politics today is not so simple. I am somebody who fights for the self-government of the workers. But when I say that I disagree with the policy of the government in Russia, remember that I disagree also with the policy of the governments in Britain, France, Germany, the USA, etc.

Q: Danny, you are regarded as the leader of the student movement in France . .

A: Excuse me, I will never lead anything. I will never tell people what to do. What they want to do they will do, and what they don't want to do they won't.

Q: It has been reported that you said you want to seek political asylum in this country.

A: It's true I said this. It is a matter of political finesse. I said before that in France there is a pre-fascist situation. Now there was another man who came to this country and asked for asylum when France had a pre-revolutionary situation. This was in 1940 and his name was de Gaulle. He wanted asylum . . .

Q: De Gaulle was a Frenchman. Now Danny, you are not a Frenchman .

A: I do not want to compare myself with de Gaulle, you understand. With the young people it does not matter if you are a Frenchman or a German. We don't bother about borders. I was born in France and I lived there, and I consider myself in this sense a Frenchman. This is how young people think. It is important to me that sixty to seventy thousand people all shouted "We are all German Jews".

Q: But Danny, I may be thick, but I still don't understand what sort of government you want.

A: We want a workers', peasants', and students' self-government: the people in the factories to control the place where they work and the students to control the place where they work.

Q: But in the Sorbonne you have got what you were after. Why are the students still demonstrating?

A: The students are supporting the working-class. One and a half million workers are still on strike, and they are not striking for the money, they want control of what they do.

Q: What is your reaction to the way you have been received in England?

A: Well, not astonished. It seems that all the governments want to show that we are right in saying that we live in a repressive society. I arrive in England and they don't want to let me in. Two years ago I came here and nobody said a word. Strange. I don't have to ask Mr. Wilson and his Home Office if I want to see some people in England . . .

Q: You wouldn't want to give the students here some advice on how to make a revolution?

A: You don't export revolution. No, you don't export protestation against society. You can explain what has been done in France but it's not advice, you only explain it. You can exchange information abou!t how to play soccer, but you don't export soccer games.

Q: It was said in the House of Lords that you had the intention of using force to carry out plans in this country.

A: A lot of people know more than I know. It's very interesting how all sorts of people know what I'm doing and organising. I must really be better than Batman or Superrnan, just travelling around and organising world revolution. I think it's because people are afraid because of the situation in England. And then they are afraid that a little thing can explode because people are not happy in this country. Perhaps this is the problem.

London June 13th (BBC TV)

THE ACTION COMMITTEES born throughout France at the end of May transcend half a century of left-wing political activity. Drawing their militants from every left-wing sect and party, from sociaI democrats to anarchists, the Action Committees give new life to goals long forgotten by the socialist movement; they give new content to forms of action which existed in Europe during the French Revolution - they introduce into the socialist movement altogether new forms of local participal and creative social activity.

This article will trace the development, during the last ten days of May of a committee (the 'Workers-Students Action Committee-Citroen') whose primary task was to connect the 'student movement' with the workers of the Citroen automobile plants in and around Paris.

On Tuesday, May 21, a strike committee representing the workers of the Citroen plants called for a strike of unlimited duration. The factory owners immediately called for 'state powers to take the measures which are indispensable for the assurance of the freedom of labour and free access to the factories for those who want to work.' (Le Monde, May 23.)

The same day that the owners called for police intervention, students, young workers and teachers who, on previous days had fought the police on the streets of Paris, formed the 'Citroen Action Committee' at the Censier centre of the University of Paris. The first aim of the Action Committee was to co-operate with the factory's strike committee in bringing about an occupation of the factory. The Action Committee's long-term goal was to help bring about a revolutionary situation which would lead to the destruction of capitalist society and the creation of new social relations.

Action Committee Citroen is composed of young French and foreign workers and intellectuals who, from the committee's inception, had equal power and equal voice in the formulation of the committee's projects and methods. The committee did not begin with, and has not acquired, either a fixed programme or fixed organizational structure. The bond which holds together former militants of radical-left organizations and young people who had never before engaged in political activity, is an unconpromising determination to dismantle the capitalist society against whose police forces they had all fought in the streets.

The committee has no fixed membership: every individual who takes part in a daily meeting or action is a participating member. Anyone who thinks enough people have gathered together to constitute a meeting can preside; there is no permanent president. The order of the discussion is established at the beginning of the meeting; the subjects to be discussed can be proposed by any member. The committee is autonomous in the sense that it does not recognize the legitimacy of any 'higher' body or any 'external authority'. The committee's projects are not realization of predetermined plans, but are responses to social situations. Thus a project comes to an end as soon as a situation changes, and a new project is conceived, discussed, and put into action in response to a new situation.

INTERNATIONALISM
Another leaflet was the first public announcement of the committee's uncompromising internationalism. 'Hundreds of thousands of foreign workers are imported like any other commodity useful to capitalism, and the government goes so far as to organize clandestine immigration from Portugal, thus unveiling itself as a slave-driver.'

The leaflet continues: 'All that has to end. The foreign workers contribute, through their labour, in the creation of the wealth of French society.... It is therefore - up to revolutionary workers and students to see to it that the foreign workers acquire the totality of their political and union rights. This is the concrete basis for internationalism.' ('Travailleurs Etrangers', Comite d'Action, Censier.)

At 6 a.m. on the morning of the occupation, when the Citroen workers approached their factories, they were greeted by young workers, students and teachers distributing the orange and green leaflets. On that morning, however, the young Action Committee militants were greeted by two surprises. First of all, they found the functionaries of the CGT (the communist union) calling for the occupation of the factory, and secondly, they were approached by the union functionaries and told to go home.

On previous days, the CGT had opposed the spreading strike wave and the occupation of the factories. Yet on the morning of the occupation, arriving workers who saw the union functionaries reading speeches into their loudspeakers at the factory entrances got the impression that the CGT functionaries were the ones who had initiated the strike.

However, the union, unlike the student movement and unlike the workers who had initiated the strike, was not calling for expropriation of the factories from their capitalist owners, or for the creation of a new society. Thus the functionaries of the communist union were calling for higher wages and improved working conditions, within the context of capitalist society. Thus the functionaries strenuously opposed the distribution of the Action Committee's leaflets, on the ground that their distribution would 'disrupt the unity of the workers' and would 'create confusion'.

The union functionaries did not spend too much time arguing with the Action Committee militants because the factory occupation did not take place as they had 'planned' it.

Sixty per cent of the labour force of the Citroen plants are foreign workers, and the vast majority of them are not in the CGT (nor in the smaller unions). When a small number of union members entered the factory in order to occupy it, they were kept out of the workshops by factory policemen placed inside by the owners. The vast majority of the foreign workers did not accompany the union members into the factory; the foreign workers stood outside and watched. The union officials made a great effort to translate the written speeches into some of the languages of the foreign workers. The foreign workers listened to the loudspeakers with indifference and at times even hostility.

FUNCTlONARIES MANOEUVRE
At that point the union offlcials stopped trying to chase away the Action Committee agitators; in fact, the officials decided to use the agitators. Among the agitators there were young people who spoke all the languages of the foreign workers, and the young people mingled freely with the foreign workers. On the other hand, the union offlcials, seasoned bureaucrats, were institutionally unable to speak directly to the workers: years of practice had made them experts at reading speeches into loudspeakers, and their loudspeakers were not leading to the desired effects.

Thus the functionaries began to encourage the young agitators to mix with the workers, to explain the factory occupation to them; the functionaries even gave the loudspeakers to some of the foreign members of the Action Committee. The result was that, after about two hours of direct communication between the foreign workers and the Action Committee members, most of the foreign workers were inside the factory, participating in its occupation.

Proud of their contribution to the occupation of Citroen, the Action Committee people went to the factory the following morning to talk to the occupying workers. Once again they found themselves unwelcome. A large red flag flew outside the factory gate, but the young militants found the gate closed to them. At the entrances to the factories stood union officials who explained they were under strict orders (from the union's-and the CP's-central committee) not to let students or other outsiders inside the factory. The young agitators explained that they had played a crucial role in the factory's occupation, but the expression on the faces of the union functionaries merely hardened.

That evening the Citroen Action Committee had an urgent meeting. The committee's members were furious. Until now, they said, they had co-operated with the union; they had avoided an open confrontation. Their co-operative attitude had made no difference to the union officials; the committee militants had merely let themselves be used by the functionaries, and once used up, they were rejected. It was about time to confront the union openly. The Committee drafted a new leaflet, one which called on the workers to push past the union and take control of the factory into their own hands.

THE LEAFLET
'Workers, now you are the masters of your factory. You are no longer controlled by the owner or by the state. Be careful not to fall under the control of a new power,' the leaflet begins. All of you, French as well as foreign workers, have the right to talk. Don't let the loudspeakers talk for you.... Only you can decide what to produce, how much, and for whom. Don't let anyone take that power from you. If a group makes your decisions instead of you, if a group uses loudspeakers to yell to you what decisions "we" reached, then this group does not seek to help you, but to control you.' ('Travailleurs!' Comite d'Action Travailleurs-Etudiants, Censier.)

Due to the presence of union guards at the factory entrances, a relatively small number of workers read the leaflet. However, among these workers there were some who resented the union take-over inside the factory, and some who began attending the meetings of the Citroen Action Committee and participating in the political discussions at Sorbonne and Censier.

At this point the Citroen Committee, together with other action committees at the Sorbonne and Cellsier, composed a call for action of the workers inside the factories, 'The policy of the union is now very clear; unable to oppose the strike, they try to isolate the most militant workers inside the factories, and they let the strike rot so as to be able, later on, to force the workers to accept the agreements which the unions will reach with the owners,' the leaflet explains. However, the leaflet continues, 'the political parties and the unions were not at the origin of the strike. The decisions were those of the strikers themselves, whether unionized or not. For this reason, the workers have to regain control over their work organizations. All strikers, unionized or not, unite in a Permanent General Assembly! In this Assembly, the workers themselves will freely determine their action and their goals.'

This call for the formation of General Assemblies inside the factories represents all appeal to expropriate the capitalist class, namely an appeal for insurrection. With the formation of a General Assembly (sometimes also called a Constituent Assembly) as the decision-making body inside the factory, the power of the state, the owner as well as the union, ceases to be legitimate. In other words, the General Assembly of all the workers in the factory becomes the only legitimate decision-making power; the state is bypassed, the capitalist is expropriated, and the union ceases to be the spokesman for the workers and becomes simply another pressure group inside the General Assembly.

Unable to communicate these ideas to the workers at the factory, the Citroen Action Committee drafted a new project. Since 60% of the factory's workers are foreign, and since the foreign workers live in special housing projects provided for them by the factory owners, the Citroen Action Committee decided to reach the foreign workers at their homes. The foreign workers were spending their days at their living quarters since they were no longer able to transport themselves to the factories (the transport to the factories is also furnished by the factory owners, and was obviously not being furnished during the strike).

Since this project was conceived during a period when transport was scarce in Paris, most of the participants had to hitch-hike to the housing centres. Several related projects were suggested by the Action Committee militants to the foreign workers. First of all the foreign workers were encouraged to help those strikers who were calling for worker-control of the factories, and not merely for wage rises. And secondly, the foreign workers were encouraged to organize themselves into action committees in order to cope with their own specific problems.

ACTION COMMITTEE PROJECT
The Action Committee's project initiated and stimulated various kinds of activities among the foreign workers. Courses were organized for foreign workers who knew no French. At Nanterre for example, the occupation committee of the University there granted a room to a newly-formed action committee of Yugoslav workers. The room was used for political meetings and French lessons. In another centre, the workers organized to protect themselves collectively from abuses by the landlord's (namely Citroen's) agent at the housing centre. In some of the ghettos around Paris where workers had run out of food for their families trucks were found to transport food from peasants who contributed it at no cost. Contacts were established between the foreign workers and thc revolutionary workers inside the factories. Foreign workers were encouraged to join French workers in the occupation of the factories. On each excursion to the living quarters, the Citroen Action Committee members told the foreign workers not to let themselves be used as strike breakers by the factory owners.

In all of the contacts between the Citroen Action Committee and foreign workers, the committee's internationalism was made clear to the foreign workers. When the committee members called for expropriation of the owners and the establishment of workers' power inside the factories, they emphasized that the power would be shared by all labourers who had worked in it, whether French or foreign. And when some foreign workers said they were only in France for a short time and would soon return home, the Action Committee militants answered that the goal of their movement was not to decapitate merely French capitalism, but to decapitate capitalism as such, and that thus, for the militants, the whole world was home.

FOR DAYS FRANCE teetered on the edge of revolution. May we be forgiven for saying that it was the absence of a substantial anarchist movement there which enabled the bourgeoisie to pull it back?

Revolutions are like lettuces-for best results they must be kept growing quickly without check. In France the incipient revolution had the greatest pest of all to check its growth-the big fat rats of the Communist CGT who ate away at the roots.

For all the ingredients were there the moment the industrial workers joined the students in mass protest, strike and occupation of the factories. It would not have taken much to have tumed the general strike into a social general strike and to have turned that into a social revolution-had that in fact been what any sizeable section of the anti-Gaullist forces wanted.

But was it? It was certainly among the students that the most revolutionary ideas were to be found. Correspondents tell us of the high level of heated discussion which went on day and night in the Sorbonne and the entire Latin Quarter - discussion interspersed with action in the bitter nightly battles with the hated CRS.

It may be said that when you are actually on the barricades it is a bit late to be trying to clarify your ideas-but no doubt the students en masse were just as surprised at what they were doing as anybody else. This is how it is with your actual spontaneous revolution. We may be quite sure that Daniel Cohn Bendit and his 40 comrades in Nanterre whose action first sparked the whole thing off could have had no idea that they would end up with eight million workers on strike, the economy at a standstill and de Gaulle, if not on his knees, at least toppled from his pedestal and made to face the seething unrest beneath the surface of his State.

For this has been the great suprise for the world and perhaps even for the French people themselves: the extent of discontent, even of hatred for the regime, that exists under the surface of an apparently stable and orderly society. And the great achievement of the French students has been to bring this out into the open, to carry their own struggle into the factories and workshops, to offer a great gulp of fresh air to the French workers and deliver a great kick to the fat backsidc of French bourgeois society. The regime, even if it survives the general election, can never be the same again. Some degree of student control must be allowed in the universities, some degree of hope, if nothing else, must persist for the French workers.

For it is the workers who are in the sorriest plight. Contrary to Marxist mythology, the industrial workers in modern industrial countries are not- and never have been -the spearhead of social revolution. They should be, perhaps. They could be, certainly. But having been sold on reformist trade unionism, they are given no encouragement by their own organisations to think in terms of responsibility, of workers' control.

In France their condition is even worse than in this country. Here, for political reasons, the Communists will agitate as an opposition to the reformist unions; there the Communists are the reformist unions. The counter-revolutionary role the Communists have played in many revolutions has never been more perfectly exemplified than in the events in France these last three weeks, and the only comforting thought that can emerge from this is that surely they must now be completely discredited among all those French workers who were prepared to occupy their factories and shops-for what?

IF THEY HAD TAKEN OVER!

It was at the point of the occupation of the factories that the revolution was almost on. When the Bourse was fired; when the students began to change their tactics from mass confrontation to smaller, guerilla-type sorties to wear down the police and as a result the police began to show signs of disaffection and the civil service began to crack up, and de Gaulle apparently just sat and sat-then, if the occupation of the factories had swung into operation of the factories by the workers; if they had demonstrated their ability to organise their work without their bosses, if revolutionary co-ordinating councils had emerged to run the economy, distribute goods, maintain services-then the social revolution would have been on! If! If!

But no. Just as the petrified leaders of the TUC in the British General Strike of 1926 went to talk to King George V, so the slimy Communist leaders of the CGT went to talk with Pompidou -and came back triumphant with ten per cent!

Surely no one imagined the workers would accept this? But it was not primarily intended for acceptance. It was no more than a talking point - a means towards taking the strikes off the boil, to give the poliiticians time to put their clammy hands over the hot aspirations of the people.

And so it worked. Everything went off the boil. The students took a hell of a beating and calmed down, the workers sat and sat and the politicians waited. Having been served by the unions perfectly, de Gaulle chose just the right moment and jumped. With a show of force, and just the right bait-a general election! - to cool all but the 'extremists', like the cunning old cat he is, he jumped. And that was it.

But we are sure the lessons of 1968 will not be lost. The sincere revolutionaries among the students will have learnt valuable lessons of tactics and theory; the workers will have seen where their real friends lie; the divisions between intellectuals and workers must have closed, between them and the politician/trade union bureaucrat widened.

What of the anarchist movement? Well, isn't it the same old story? Not enough anarchists among the workers! In all the student unrest around the world now anarchists are setting the pace-or at least anarchistic methods of direct action are having effect. The French event is the only instance we have so far of workers joining in a struggle with the students, and events show that there was not a sufficient leavening of anarchist workers to get the message of workers' control across in the way that student power has been put across.

THE TASK BEFORE US

It is of course a different set of problems. The bourgeoisie may moan about having to pay taxes to keep hooligan students in grants, but radical tampering with the economy at factory floor level is a really serious matter. Furthermore the workers themselves are not interested in ideas as the students are, and they are much more bogged down with the 'responsibilities' of domesticity, with noses to the grindstone and only superficial leisure activities as relief.

Nevertheless the task is before us as it has always been: the creation of a widespread anarchist movement in all levels of society; the creation of an anarcho-syndicalist movement in industry to educate workers in revolutionary aims and tactics so that the maximum advantage can be taken of any situation whenever the opportunity presents itself; the creation of an anarchist international for mutual aid across the frontiers.

One thing the French students and workers have done. They have put revolution back on the agenda in Western Europe. It is not over yet-it has simply been adjourned.