Aujourd'hui Issue Number 1 JCR, Paris May 1968

Paris May 1968

Aujourd’hui – Issue Number 1

Source: The May Events Archive of Simon Fraser University;
Source: Simon Fraser University, The May Events Archive;
Translated: by Mitchell Abidor.

This is the first issue of a paper that we will regularly put out. The rapid evolution of the political situation made us choose this formula. We will day by day present here the point of view of the JCR [Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire] on the latest developments in the situation.

The JCR

Through the direct, often violent struggles that we have carried out we have shown:

that capitalism has not resolved its contradictions. This is the proof that those who, in order to do nothing, invoked the “objective conditions” have failed. A handful of enragés were enough to tear down the myth of the stability of the regime and to open the crisis that long-standing electoral and parliamentary traditions were never able to bring about.
that in the crisis the working class leadership in place wanted, through negotiations, to save the regime rather than destroy it. Today the reformism of the PC[F] can no longer hide itself behind the fig leaf of peaceful coexistence. Many working class militants feel or know this, and the popular assembly at Charlety proves this. For the first time several tens of thousands of young workers and students demonstrated together for working class power, and this despite the disavowal on the part of the CGT.
that the system’s social crisis could not be resolved in keeping with capitalist norms. Even the crumbs granted today to the working class by negotiations put in question the Fifth Plan and the “harmonious equilibrium of the economy.” If the bourgeoisie attempts to catch up in prices what it surrendered in wages French products, when customs barriers will be opened, will no longer be competitive on the market.

When the working class, whose combativeness constitutes the unknown that no capitalist plan can master, goes on the advance and disturbs predictions, it is obvious that the solving of problem is no longer in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Today, when the PC is retreating and fleeing from the perspective of taking power along with its allies at the end of a popular movement of factory occupation rather than as a result of an electoral maneuver, Mitterand is proposing a broad government with the collaboration of Mendes. In the same way that we refused the recuperation of the movement by the PC, we refuse it to modernists like Mendes. The political meaning of Charlety is, for us, fundamentally positive, under the table we sensed the appearance of the specter of Mendes, who incidentally was present at the edge of the stage. It’s not enough to denounce the operation that is being planned: the means to parry it are necessary.

In order to do this the action committees need, and quickly, a provisional and revocable leadership capable of representing them so that the personalities in place not usurp the right to speak in the name of the movement. In order to do this we must refuse the referendum operation that will legalize a discredited government that is only maintaining itself in place through the billy-club of its organisms and the flight of its bureaucrats. In order to truly, and not verbally, boycott the referendum we make act in such a way that the class struggle doesn’t evolve into a war of positions. The workers must henceforth assure production, transport, and supply on their own, thus beginning the de facto constitution of workers’ power. If the strike in this way passes from occupation to an active strike, the problem of a boycott will no longer be posed. If the strike continues in this way then de facto the referendum will not take place.