France’s Erupting Student Revolt and the Political Lessons of 1968: A Warning Against the SWP’s Spontaneity Myths

 Mass student protests across France mark a new phase in the breakdown of European capitalism. Beginning with lycée blockades in Créteil on 18 September, the movement has spread at extraordinary speed. By mid-October, the main student union reported that around 90 per cent of France’s universities were blockaded or closed; unions claimed 480,000 demonstrators nationwide; and protests had already spread to Belgium, Albania, Greece and Italy. One demonstrator has been killed, more than 2,000 arrested, and Limoges’ 143-year-old town hall burned. Macron is preparing to address the nation- a sign of the ruling class’s fear, not its strength.

The crisis unfolding in France is not an isolated national event. It is part of a global rise in class struggle, driven by war, austerity, and the collapse of the post-Cold War order. Across Europe, governments are cutting social spending to fund rearmament, militarising domestic policing, and preparing for confrontation with Russia. The eruption of youth anger in France is one expression of this broader crisis. Still, you can't understand the political questions it raises without confronting the lessons of France’s last great revolutionary crisis: May–June 1968.

In a recent article, Socialist Worker (SWP) asks whether the present revolt is “our 1968.” It is a legitimate question, but their answer is politically evasive. Their account suppresses 1968’s central lesson: the Stalinist bureaucracy's decisive role in betraying the general strike, and the need to build an independent revolutionary leadership before mass upheavals. This suppression is no accident. It follows from the SWP’s own political orientation: its adaptation to the trade-union apparatus, its glorification of spontaneity, and its refusal to confront the bureaucracies that strangle every major working-class movement.

Murden’s article repeats a familiar mythology: students fought, workers joined them, the president “fled,” and the movement ultimately lost because socialist parties focused too much on elections. This narrative is politically convenient because it obscures the real forces that determined the outcome. The May–June 1968 general strike, involving ten million workers, was not defeated by “electoralism.” The French Communist Party (PCF) and the CGT trade-union bureaucracy it controlled betrayed it. These forces negotiated the Grenelle accords behind the strikers’ backs, broke the strike factory by factory, and led the working class into the June elections, which the Gaullists won by a landslide.

De Gaulle did not flee. He flew to Baden-Baden to secure the army’s support, then returned to dissolve the Assembly and call elections, confident that the PCF would keep the workers in line. This betrayal was no aberration; it was the predictable outcome of Stalinism’s nationalist, reformist programme and hostility to workers’ power. The SWP refuses to name this betrayal because its own state-capitalist tradition has always adapted to the bureaucracies- Stalinist, social-democratic, or trade-union that sit atop mass movements.

The Role of the Unions Today

The SWP’s silence on the unions is not merely a matter of history; it directly affects the present movement. Youth anger has not erupted in a political vacuum. It confronts a trade-union apparatus with a decade-long record of systematic demobilisation, fragmentation, and defeat. Any serious analysis of the current struggle must begin with this fact. Murden’s article omits it because acknowledging it would require breaking with the SWP’s entire political orientation.

The Intersyndicale’s record is well known. In 2023, it led millions in a series of isolated “days of action” as Macron’s pension reform passed. These demonstrations were deliberately designed to prevent a general strike. With weeks of inactivity between each “day,” the government could wait out the movement while the unions kept control of the calendar. Last autumn’s Bloquons tout movement dissipated similarly. Youth and workers repeatedly called for indefinite action, only to be told to wait for the next scheduled march. Many participants objected that the unions were setting the protest calendar and called for dates independent of the bureaucracies. Their demands were ignored.

By December 2025, the consequences of this strategy were clear. A CGT–FSU–Solidaires strike day drew just 31,900 protesters, according to interior ministry estimates, and caused little disruption. Years of controlled, symbolic protest had worn workers down and convinced many that union-led mobilisations were futile. The bureaucracies had achieved their real aim: preventing a unified national movement from emerging to challenge the state.

Today, the unions have joined the marches “to protect pupils and limit violence.” This wording is revealing. Their role is not to lead a struggle against the state, but to contain it, regulate it, and ultimately channel it back into parliamentary politics. They appear at demonstrations as stewards, not fighters. Their presence is a warning, not a promise.

Murden’s article says nothing about this. Workers and young people are not warned that the same apparatus is preparing the same outcome. They are not told that the unions are already negotiating with the interior ministry, discussing “security,” and preparing the next controlled march. Nor are they told that the bureaucracies will oppose any attempt to connect lycée blockades with strikes in transport, health, logistics, or industry. They are not told that the unions will fight rank-and-file organisation harder than they fight Macron.

Most importantly, they are not urged to build rank-and-file committees independent of the union bureaucracies, linking schools, factories, transport and hospitals across France and internationally. These committees are the only organisational form capable of coordinating a general strike, resisting bureaucratic sabotage, and articulating the working class's political demands. They embody the lessons of every major struggle of the past century, from the factory occupations of 1936 to the mass strikes of 1968.

This silence is political. It reflects the SWP’s refusal to break with the trade‑union apparatus, which it treats as a vehicle for “pressure from below” rather than as an instrument of state control over the working class. The SWP’s state‑capitalist tradition has always adapted to whatever bureaucracy sits atop a movement. It insists that militancy can force unions into action, even though their function is precisely to keep militancy from becoming political. It celebrates “the streets” while refusing to confront the organisations that police them.

Mélenchon and the Electoral Trap

Murden warns that “the logic of the system” will try to channel street anger into electoral politics. In the next breath, she praises Jean‑Luc Mélenchon for showing up at protests. The warning and the endorsement cancel each other out. It is impossible to denounce the diversion of mass anger into parliamentary channels while simultaneously legitimising the politician whose central function is to carry out that diversion.

Mélenchon’s role is clear. In 2024, La France Insoumise (LFI) entered a “New Popular Front” with the Socialist Party, the party responsible for Hollande’s austerity, labour‑market deregulation, and entrenching the state of emergency. LFI then withdrew candidates in run‑offs to benefit Macron’s camp under the banner of a “republican front.” This was not a tactical misstep but the logical expression of LFI’s programme: defence of the Fifth Republic, French nationalism, and the preservation of capitalist order through parliamentary manoeuvres.

With the 2027 election approaching, LFI faces the same challenge the PCF faced in June 1968: turning a mass movement into votes. In 1968, the PCF broke the general strike factory by factory, then led ten million workers to the polls, where they delivered a landslide victory for the Gaullists. Today, Mélenchon’s presence at demonstrations serves a similar purpose: presenting himself as the “responsible” left alternative, channelling youth anger into electoral support, and preventing the emergence of independent organs of working-class power.

Presenting Mélenchon as an ally repeats the political logic that destroyed 1968. Murden’s article concludes by declaring that “the power to change the system lies in the streets.” This is spontaneism dressed up as revolutionary rhetoric. In 1968, the streets did not lack militancy. They lacked a party fighting for workers’ power against the Stalinists. The general strike was defeated not because workers failed to act, but because they acted under the leadership of a bureaucracy committed to preserving the capitalist state.

Celebrating “the streets” while remaining silent on programme and leadership leaves the field open to the bureaucracies and to Mélenchon. It is a politics of mood, not strategy. It replaces emotional identification with protest with the hard, necessary work of building independent rank-and-file committees and a revolutionary leadership capable of confronting the state and breaking the union apparatus's grip. This is the lesson of 1968and the lesson Murden’s article refuses to draw.

What Is Required

Conditions today may be more explosive than in 1968. The crisis is global, the ruling class has nothing left to concede, and the movement is already crossing borders. The French protests are not an isolated national disturbance but part of a worldwide breakdown of capitalist stability: war in Europe and the Middle East, austerity budgets across the continent, collapsing public services, and a generation of youth confronting a future of permanent insecurity. Under these conditions, even movements that begin in schools and universities can quickly take on a broader social character. The SWP avoids the question of leadership, but it becomes decisive.

The ruling class is acutely aware of the danger. Macron’s preparations to address the nation, the mass arrests, and the deployment of riot police are not signs of confidence but of fear. The state understands that social anger among youth can ignite broader layers of workers whose living standards have eroded over more than a decade. The unions understand this too, which is why they have intervened not to escalate the struggle but to contain it. The pseudo‑left parties understand it, which is why they are already positioning themselves as electoral safety valves. The only force that is not being prepared is the working class itself.

What is needed is the independent political mobilisation of the working class, internationally and on a socialist programme, against Macron, the RN, and the bureaucratic and pseudo-left apparatuses that will seek to block it. No movement can move forward while confined to the organisational structures that have repeatedly sabotaged struggles in France: the trade-union bureaucracies, the parliamentary left, and nationalist frameworks that divide workers by race, religion or citizenship. The youth blockades have shown courage and initiative. Still, without a deliberate strategy to connect their actions with workplaces, hospitals, transport hubs and logistics centres, their struggle will remain isolated and vulnerable.

The lessons of 1968 are clear. A general strike, prepared by rank-and-file committees, democratically controlled by workers, and coordinated across sectors and borders, is the only way to break the union apparatus’s grip. A revolutionary leadership, built in advance, rooted in the international working class, and armed with a Marxist programme, is the only force capable of turning mass anger into a struggle for power. An article that omits these lessons offers a miniature version of the PCF’s road a road that leads not to victory, but to defeat.

Bibliography

Trotskyist and Marxist Analysis

• Trotsky, Leon. The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution. New York: Pathfinder Press.
• Trotsky, Leon. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. New York: Pathfinder Press.
• North, David. The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century. Mehring Books.
• North, David. The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo‑Left. Mehring Books.
• Steiner, Alex and David North. The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo‑Left: A Marxist Critique. Mehring Books.
• International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The Heritage We Defend. Mehring Books.

May–June 1968: Historical Studies

• Seidman, Michael. The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968. Berghahn Books.
• Singer, Daniel. Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968. Hill and Wang.
• Ross, Kristin. May ’68 and Its Afterlives. University of Chicago Press.
• Williams, Philip. Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic. Penguin.
• Dreyfus, François. Histoire de la CGT. Seuil.
• Kriegel, Annie. Les Communistes Français: Essai d’histoire du mouvement communiste français. Seuil.

French Trade‑Unionism and the CGT

• Mouriaux, René. Le Syndicalisme en France. La Découverte.
• Andolfatto, Dominique and Dominique Labbé. Histoire des syndicats: 1906–2010. Seuil.
• Tartakowsky, Danielle. Les Manifestations de rue en France: 1918–1968. Publications de la Sorbonne.
• Lefranc, Georges. Les Syndicats en France. Presses Universitaires de France.

Contemporary French Politics and the Pseudo‑Left

• Amable, Bruno and Stefano Palombarini. L’Illusion du Bloc Bourgeois. Raisons d’Agir.
• Mélenchon, Jean‑Luc. L’Ère du Peuple. Fayard.
• Perrineau, Pascal. La France au Front. Fayard.
• Chrisafis, Angelique. The Rise of the French Far Right. Guardian reporting (summaries only).
• WSWS Editorial Board. The Pseudo‑Left and the Crisis of Capitalism. Mehring Books.

Youth Movements, Policing, and the Banlieues

• Fassin, Didier. Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing. Polity Press.
• Beaud, Stéphane and Michel Pialoux. Retour sur la condition ouvrière. Fayard.
• Hmed, Choukri. Les Mouvements des Banlieues. Presses de Sciences Po.

European Austerity, War, and Capitalist Crisis

• Tooze, Adam. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. Allen Lane.
• Varoufakis, Yanis. Adults in the Room. Bodley Head.
• WSWS International Editorial Board. The Return of Great‑Power Conflict and the Crisis of World Capitalism. Mehring Books.

General Works on Marxism, Revolution, and Class Struggle

• Luxemburg, Rosa. The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions.
• Lenin, V.I. State and Revolution.
• Lenin, V.I. What Is To Be Done?
• Harman, Chris. The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After. Bookmarks (critical reference only).
•