[matilda] HUMANITY WON’T BE HAPPY TILL THE LAST BUREAUCRAT IS HUNG WITH THE GUTS OF THE LAST CAPITALIST

[Amparo P Gutierrez]

I thought dear folks you'd hate the length but would appreciate, at 
least some of you, the contents and good intention behind.

The graffitti images may be smashing!

Have a look at

http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/graffiti.htm

(some of these May 68 slogans have inspired the international 
situationists...hmm)

Amp
_--------------------- DOCUMENT STARTS HERE----------------
(leaflets, announcements over microphones, comic strips, songs, 
graffiti, balloons on paintings in the Sorbonne, announcements in 
theaters during films or while disrupting them, balloons on subway 
billboards, before making love, after making love, in elevators, each 
time you raise your glass in a bar):

     OCCUPY THE FACTORIES

     POWER TO THE WORKERS COUNCILS

     ABOLISH CLASS SOCIETY

     DOWN WITH SPECTACLE-COMMODITY SOCIETY

     ABOLISH ALIENATION

     TERMINATE THE UNIVERSITY

     HUMANITY WON’T BE HAPPY TILL THE LAST BUREAUCRAT IS HUNG WITH THE 
GUTS OF THE LAST CAPITALIST

     DEATH TO THE COPS

     FREE ALSO THE 4 GUYS CONVICTED FOR LOOTING DURING THE MAY 6TH RIOT

OCCUPATION COMMITTEE OF THE
PEOPLE’S FREE SORBONNE UNIVERSITY
16 May 1968, 7:00 pm

Telegrams


PROFESSOR IVAN SVITAK PRAGUE CZECHOSLOVAKIA
     THE OCCUPATION COMMITTEE OF THE PEOPLE’S FREE SORBONNE SENDS 
FRATERNAL GREETINGS TO COMRADE SVITAK AND OTHER CZECHOSLOVAKIAN 
REVOLUTIONARIES STOP LONG LIVE THE INTERNATIONAL POWER OF THE WORKERS 
COUNCILS STOP HUMANITY WON’T BE HAPPY TILL THE LAST CAPITALIST IS HUNG 
WITH THE GUTS OF THE LAST BUREAUCRAT STOP LONG LIVE REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM

ZENGAKUREN TOKYO JAPAN
     LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE JAPANESE COMRADES WHO HAVE OPENED 
COMBAT SIMULTANEOUSLY ON THE FRONTS OF ANTI-STALINISM AND 
ANTI-IMPERIALISM STOP LONG LIVE FACTORY OCCUPATIONS STOP LONG LIVE THE 
GENERAL STRIKE STOP LONG LIVE THE INTERNATIONAL POWER OF THE WORKERS 
COUNCILS STOP HUMANITY WON’T BE HAPPY TILL THE LAST BUREAUCRAT IS HUNG 
WITH THE GUTS OF THE LAST CAPITALIST STOP OCCUPATION COMMITTEE OF THE 
PEOPLE’S FREE SORBONNE

POLITBURO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE USSR THE KREMLIN MOSCOW
     SHAKE IN YOUR SHOES BUREAUCRATS STOP THE INTERNATIONAL POWER OF THE 
WORKERS COUNCILS WILL SOON WIPE YOU OUT STOP HUMANITY WON’T BE HAPPY 
TILL THE LAST BUREAUCRAT IS HUNG WITH THE GUTS OF THE LAST CAPITALIST 
STOP LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE KRONSTADT SAILORS AND OF THE 
MAKHNOVSHCHINA AGAINST TROTSKY AND LENIN STOP LONG LIVE THE 1956 
COUNCILIST INSURRECTION OF BUDAPEST STOP DOWN WITH THE STATE STOP LONG 
LIVE REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM STOP OCCUPATION COMMITTEE OF THE PEOPLE’S 
FREE SORBONNE

POLITBURO OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY GATE OF CELESTIAL PEACE PEKING
     SHAKE IN YOUR SHOES BUREAUCRATS STOP THE INTERNATIONAL POWER OF THE 
WORKERS COUNCILS WILL SOON WIPE YOU OUT STOP HUMANITY WON’T BE HAPPY 
TILL THE LAST BUREAUCRAT IS HUNG WITH THE GUTS OF THE LAST CAPITALIST 
STOP LONG LIVE FACTORY OCCUPATIONS STOP LONG LIVE THE GREAT CHINESE 
PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION OF 1927 BETRAYED BY THE STALINIST BUREAUCRATS 
STOP LONG LIVE THE PROLETARIANS OF CANTON AND ELSEWHERE WHO HAVE TAKEN 
UP ARMS AGAINST THE SO-CALLED PEOPLE’S ARMY STOP LONG LIVE THE CHINESE 
WORKERS AND STUDENTS WHO HAVE ATTACKED THE SO-CALLED CULTURAL REVOLUTION 
AND THE MAOIST BUREAUCRATIC ORDER STOP LONG LIVE REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM 
STOP DOWN WITH THE STATE STOP OCCUPATION COMMITTEE OF THE PEOPLE’S FREE 
SORBONNE

17 May 1968

Report on the
Occupation of the Sorbonne


The occupation of the Sorbonne that began Monday, May 13, has opened a 
new period in the crisis of modern society. The events now taking place 
in France foreshadow the return of the proletarian revolutionary 
movement in all countries. The movement that had already advanced from 
theory to struggle in the streets has now advanced to a struggle for 
control of the means of production. Modernized capitalism thought it had 
finished with class struggle — but it’s started up again! The 
proletariat supposedly no longer existed — but here it is again.

By surrendering the Sorbonne, the government hoped to pacify the student 
revolt, which had already succeeded in holding a section of Paris behind 
its barricades an entire night before being recaptured with great 
difficulty by the police. The Sorbonne was given over to the students in 
the hope that they would peacefully discuss their university problems. 
But the occupiers immediately decided to open it to the public to freely 
discuss the general problems of the society. This was thus a 
prefiguration of a council, a council in which even the students broke 
out of their miserable studenthood and ceased being students.

To be sure, the occupation was never complete: a chapel and a few 
remaining administrative offices were tolerated. The democracy was never 
total: future technocrats of the UNEF [National Student Union] claimed 
to be making themselves useful and other political bureaucrats also 
tried their manipulations. Workers’ participation remained very limited 
and the presence of nonstudents soon began to be questioned. Many 
students, professors, journalists and imbeciles of other professions 
came as spectators.

In spite of all these deficiencies, which are not surprising considering 
the disparity between the scope of the project and the narrowness of the 
student milieu, the exemplary nature of the best aspects of this 
situation immediately took on an explosive significance. Workers were 
inspired by the free discussion and the striving for a radical critique, 
by seeing direct democracy in action. Even limited to a Sorbonne 
liberated from the state, this was a revolutionary program developing 
its own forms. The day after the occupation of the Sorbonne the 
Sud-Aviation workers of Nantes occupied their factory. On the third day, 
Thursday the 16th, the Renault factories at Cléon and Flins were 
occupied and the movement began at the NMPP and at Boulogne-Billancourt, 
starting at Shop 70. Three days later 100 factories have been occupied 
and the wave of strikes, accepted but never initiated by the union 
bureaucracies, is paralyzing the railroads and developing into a general 
strike.

The only power in the Sorbonne was the general assembly of its 
occupiers. At its first session, on May 14, amidst a certain confusion, 
it had elected an Occupation Committee of 15 members revocable by it 
each day. Only one of the delegates, a member of the Nanterre-Paris 
Enragés group, had set forth a program: defense of direct democracy in 
the Sorbonne and absolute power of workers councils as ultimate goal. 
The next day’s general assembly reelected its entire Occupation 
Committee, which had as yet been unable to accomplish anything. In fact, 
the various specialized groupings that had set themselves up in the 
Sorbonne all followed the directives of a hidden “Coordination 
Committee” composed of self-appointed organizers, responsible to no one, 
doing everything in their power to prevent any “irresponsible” extremist 
actions. An hour after the reelection of the Occupation Committee one of 
these “coordinators” privately tried to declare it dissolved. A direct 
appeal to the people in the courtyard of the Sorbonne aroused a movement 
of protests that forced the manipulator to retract himself. By the next 
day, Thursday the 16th, thirteen members of the Occupation Committee had 
disappeared, leaving two comrades, including the Enragés member, vested 
with the only delegation of power authorized by the general assembly — 
and this at a time when the urgency of the situation demanded immediate 
decisions: democracy was constantly being flouted in the Sorbonne while 
factory occupations were spreading all over the country. At 3:00 p.m. 
the Occupation Committee, rallying to itself as many Sorbonne occupiers 
as it could who were determined to maintain democracy there, launched an 
appeal for “the occupation of all the factories in France and the 
formation of workers councils.” To disseminate this appeal the 
Occupation Committee had at the same time to restore the democratic 
functioning of the Sorbonne. It had to take over or recreate from 
scratch all the services that were supposed to be under its authority: 
the loudspeaker system, printing facilities, interfaculty liaison, 
security. It ignored the squawking complaints of the spokesmen of 
various political groups (JCR [a Trotskyist group], Maoists, etc,), 
reminding them that it was responsible only to the general assembly. It 
intended to report to the assembly that very evening, but the Sorbonne 
occupiers’ unanimous decision to march on Renault-Billancourt (whose 
occupation we had learned of in the meantime) postponed the meeting 
until 2:00 p.m. the next day.

During the night, while thousands of comrades were at Billancourt, some 
unidentified persons improvised a general assembly, which broke up when 
the Occupation Committee, having learned of its existence, sent back two 
delegates to call attention to its illegitimacy.

Friday the 17th at 2:00 p.m. the regular assembly saw its rostrum 
occupied for a long time by self-appointed marshals belonging to the FER 
[another Trotskyist group]; and then had to interrupt the session for 
the second march on Billancourt at 5:00.

That evening at 9:00 the Occupation Committee was finally able to 
present a report of its activities. It was, however, completely unable 
to get its actions discussed and voted on, in particular its appeal for 
the occupation of the factories, which the assembly did not take the 
responsibility of either disavowing or approving. Faced with such 
indifference, the Occupation Committee had no choice but to resign. The 
assembly proved equally incapable of protesting against a new invasion 
of the rostrum by the FER troops, whose putsch seemed to be aimed at 
countering the provisional alliance of JCR and UNEF bureaucrats. The 
partisans of direct democracy realized, and immediately declared, that 
they had no further interest in the Sorbonne.

At the very moment that the example of the occupation is beginning to be 
taken up in the factories it is collapsing at the Sorbonne. This 
development is more serious since the workers have against them a 
bureaucracy infinitely more powerful and entrenched than that of the 
student or leftist amateurs. To add to the confusion, the leftist 
bureaucrats, echoing the CGT [the Communist Party-dominated labor union] 
in the hope of being accorded a little marginal role alongside it, 
abstractly separate the workers from the students. (“The workers don’t 
need any lessons from the students.”) But the students have in fact 
already given an excellent lesson to the workers precisely by occupying 
the Sorbonne and briefly initiating a really democratic debate. The 
bureaucrats all tell us demagogically that the working class is grown 
up, in order to hide the fact that it is enchained — first of all by 
them (now or in their future hopes, depending on which group they’re 
in). They counterpose their lying seriousness to the “festivity” in the 
Sorbonne; but it was precisely that festiveness that bore within itself 
the only thing that is serious: the radical critique of prevailing 
conditions.

The student struggle has now been left behind. Even more left behind are 
all the second-string bureaucratic leaders who think it’s a good idea to 
feign respect for the Stalinists at the very moment when the CGT and the 
so-called “Communist” Party are terrified. The outcome of the present 
crisis is in the hands of the workers themselves, if only they succeed 
in accomplishing in their factory occupations the goals toward which the 
university occupation was only able to hint at.

The comrades who supported the first Sorbonne Occupation Committee — the 
Enragés-Situationist International Committee, a number of workers, and a 
few students — have formed a Council for Maintaining the Occupations. 
The occupations can obviously be maintained only by quantitatively and 
qualitatively extending them, without sparing any existing regime.

COUNCIL FOR MAINTAINING THE OCCUPATIONS
Paris, 19 May 1968

For the Power of the
Workers Councils


In the space of ten days workers have occupied hundreds of factories, a 
spontaneous general strike has brought the country to a standstill, and 
de facto committees have taken over many state-owned buildings. This 
situation — which cannot last but must either extend itself or disappear 
(through repression or defeatist negotiations) — is sweeping aside all 
the old ideas and confirming all the radical hypotheses on the return of 
the revolutionary proletarian movement. The fact that the whole movement 
was actually triggered five months ago by a half dozen revolutionaries 
of the “Enragés” group reveals even better how much the objective 
conditions were already present. The French example is already having 
repercussions in other countries, reviving the internationalism that is 
inseparable from the revolutions of our century.

The fundamental struggle is now between the mass of workers — who do not 
have direct means of expressing themselves — and the leftist political 
and labor-union bureaucracies that (even if merely on the basis of the 
14% of the active population that is unionized) control the factory 
gates and the right to negotiate in the name of the occupiers. These 
bureaucracies are not workers’ organizations that have degenerated and 
betrayed the workers; they are a mechanism for integrating the workers 
into capitalist society. In the present crisis they are the main 
protection of this shaken capitalism.

The de Gaulle regime may negotiate — essentially (even if only 
indirectly) with the PCF-CGT [French Communist Party and the labor union 
it dominates] — for the demobilization of the workers in exchange for 
some economic benefits; after which the radical currents would be 
repressed. Or the “Left” may come to power and pursue the same policies, 
though from a weaker position. Or an armed repression may be attempted. 
Or, finally, the workers may take the upper hand by speaking for 
themselves and becoming conscious of goals as radical as the forms of 
struggle they have already put into practice. Such a process would lead 
to the formation of workers councils making decisions democratically at 
the rank-and-file level, federating with each other by means of 
delegates revocable at any moment, and becoming the sole deliberative 
and executive power over the entire country.

How could the continuation of the present situation lead to such a 
prospect? Within a few days, perhaps, the necessity of starting certain 
sectors of the economy back up again under workers’ control could lay 
the bases for this new power, a power which everything is already 
pushing to burst through the constraints of the unions and parties. The 
railroads and printshops would have to be put back into operation for 
the needs of the workers’ struggle. New de facto authorities would have 
to requisition and distribute food. If money became devalued or 
unavailable it might have to be replaced by vouchers backed by those new 
authorities. It is through such a practical process that the 
consciousness of the deepest aspirations of the proletariat can impose 
itself — the class consciousness that lays hold on history and brings 
about the workers’ power over all aspects of their own lives.

COUNCIL FOR MAINTAINING THE OCCUPATIONS
Paris, 22 May 1968

Address to All Workers


Comrades,

What we have already done in France is haunting Europe and will soon 
threaten all the ruling classes of the world, from the bureaucrats of 
Moscow and Peking to the millionaires of Washington and Tokyo. Just as 
we have made Paris dance, the international proletariat will once again 
take up its assault on the capitals of all the states and all the 
citadels of alienation. The occupation of factories and public buildings 
throughout the country has not only brought a halt to the functioning of 
the economy, it has brought about a general questioning of the society. 
A deep-seated movement is leading almost every sector of the population 
to seek a real transformation of life. This is the beginning of a 
revolutionary movement, a movement which lacks nothing but the 
consciousness of what it has already done in order to triumph.

What forces will try to save capitalism? The regime will fall unless it 
threatens to resort to arms (accompanied by the promise of new 
elections, which could only take place after the capitulation of the 
movement) or even resorts to immediate armed repression. If the Left 
comes to power, it too will try to defend the old world through 
concessions and through force. The best defender of such a “popular 
government” would be the so-called “Communist” Party, the party of 
Stalinist bureaucrats, which has fought the movement from the very 
beginning and which began to envisage the fall of the de Gaulle regime 
only when it realized it was no longer capable of being that regime’s 
main guardian. Such a transitional government would really be 
“Kerenskyist” only if the Stalinists were beaten. All this will 
ultimately depend on the workers’ consciousness and capacities for 
autonomous organization. The workers who have already rejected the 
ridiculous agreement that the union leaders were so pleased with need 
only discover that they cannot “win” much more within the framework of 
the existing economy, but that they can take everything by transforming 
all the bases of the economy on their own behalf. The bosses can hardly 
pay more; but they can disappear.

The present movement did not become “politicized” by going beyond the 
miserable union demands regarding wages and pensions, demands which were 
falsely presented as “social questions.” It is beyond politics: it is 
posing the social question in its simple truth. The revolution that has 
been in the making for over a century is returning. It can express 
itself only in its own forms. It’s too late for a 
bureaucratic-revolutionary patching up. When a recently de-Stalinized 
bureaucrat like André Barjonet calls for the formation of a common 
organization that  would bring together “all the authentic forces of 
revolution . . . whether they march under the banner of Trotsky or Mao, 
of anarchy or situationism,” we need only recall that those who today 
follow Trotsky or Mao, to say nothing of the pitiful “Anarchist 
Federation,” have nothing to do with the present revolution. The 
bureaucrats may now change their minds about what they call 
“authentically revolutionary”; authentic revolution will not change its 
condemnation of bureaucracy.

At the present moment, with the power they hold and with the parties and 
unions being what they are, the workers have no other choice but to 
organize themselves in unitary rank-and-file committees directly taking 
over the economy and all aspects of the reconstruction of social life, 
asserting their autonomy vis-à-vis any sort of political or unionist 
leadership, ensuring their self-defense and federating with each other 
regionally and nationally. In so doing they will become the sole real 
power in the country, the power of the workers councils. The only 
alternative is to return to their passivity and go back to watching 
television. The proletariat is “either revolutionary or nothing.”

What are the essential features of council power?

     * Dissolution of all external power
     * Direct and total democracy
     * Practical unification of decision and execution
     * Delegates who can be revoked at any moment by those who have 
mandated them
     * Abolition of hierarchy and independent specializations
     * Conscious management and transformation of all the conditions of 
liberated life
     * Permanent creative mass participation
     * Internationalist extension and coordination

The present requirements are nothing less than this. Self-management is 
nothing less. Beware of all the modernist coopters — including even 
priests — who are beginning to talk of self-management or even of 
workers councils without acknowledging this minimum, because they want 
to save their bureaucratic functions, the privileges of their 
intellectual specializations or their future careers as petty bosses!

In reality, what is necessary now has been necessary since the beginning 
of the proletarian revolutionary project. It’s always been a question of 
working-class autonomy. The struggle has always been for the abolition 
of wage labor, of commodity production, and of the state. The goal has 
always been to accede to conscious history, to suppress all separations 
and “everything that exists independently of individuals.” Proletarian 
revolution has spontaneously sketched out its appropriate forms in the 
councils — in St. Petersburg in 1905, in Turin in 1920, in Catalonia in 
1936, in Budapest in 1956. The preservation of the old society, or the 
formation of new exploiting classes, has each time been over the dead 
body of the councils. The working class now knows its enemies and its 
own appropriate methods of action. “Revolutionary organization has had 
to learn that it can no longer fight alienation with alienated forms” 
(The Society of the Spectacle). Workers councils are clearly the only 
solution, since all the other forms of revolutionary struggle have led 
to the opposite of what was aimed at.

ENRAGÉS-SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE
COUNCIL FOR MAINTAINING THE OCCUPATIONS
30 May 1968

Translated by Ken Knabb (slightly modified from the versions in the 
Situationist International Anthology).

No copyright.

[The Beginning of an Era]   [May 1968 Graffiti]


I thought dear folks you'd hate the length but would appreciate, at 
least some of you, the contents and good intention behind.

The graffitti images may be smashing!

Have a look at

http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/graffiti.htm