May 68 revisited
There’s much activity around the May 68 fortieth anniversary at the moment.
I’m undecided on it all, its an important period to remember, but is remembering May 68 in the spirit of it?
I’m adverse to taking part in a spectacular recuperation by the ‘revolution industry’, after all this is 2008 thats what matters so lets not be distracted.
That said May 68 was an odd period of torn polarities, utopian students and communist trade unionists, with all five members of the Situationist International trying to find a common voice between them. In the end it fell back on tired old Marxism and not surprisingly failed. Lost in ideals with no ground in reality or society.
Meanwhile across the Atlantic the Other 68 was going strong until its dreams caved in at Altamont.
The two polarised strands had met previously when the beatnik ancestors of the freaks and hippies had set up camp in Paris. But the two could not see eye to eye, the beats living their alternative lives with no ideas to give them direction, the radicals full of utopian ideals largely unlived, perhaps unliveable. The true proletariat torn apart and divided against itself.
In the end the Americans were the ones to carry the 60s intto the 70s and beyond, its legacy is their legacy with all its gains and damage. A vision of a free life with no mind to guide it could only end in a recuperated libertinage. Just as the ungrounded ideals of the Parisians saw them float off from history.
This is all a useful lesson, but the real need is to truely live now and to live consciously.
