The Politics of Protest [week 9]

Bringing the Workers Back In:Worker Protest from 1968

The associations that initially come to mind when 1968 is mentioned more closely

approximate notions of cultural revolution or even sexual revolution than they do the

traditional idea of a workers’ revolution.

Gerd Rainer Horn

Contours and societal relevance

- Spain (1967)- France (1968)- Italy (1968-9)

Characteristics of workers’ protests from 1968

- General assemblies-A system of worker delegations- What were the effects?

We'd start a half hour short but were still expected to get the mail up and out and be back on time. And once

or twice a week, always beaten . . . we had to make the night pickups, and the schedule on the board was impossible—the truck wouldn't go that fast. You had to skip four or five boxes on the first run and the next

time around they were stacked with mail and you stank, you ran with sweat jamming it into the sacks.

Charles Bukowski

Our atrophied brains reminded me of those caged birds which, when we let them go free, to let them escape, do not know how to fly. I was overcome by sadness. I told myself, ‘God made our brains not to make us think’. Then suddenly, in ’69 they stated to function again. We broke the cage, and we began to

fly again.

Rino Brunetti

Self-management tendencies

-Call to action in France, May 1968- The LIP debacle- Autogestion

- What were the effects?