Taking advantage of my visit to Paris, I went to Place de la République for the first time since the establishment of “Nuit debout.”
In summary, I would say that if Lenin defined communism as “the Soviets plus electricity,” “Nuit debout” is a bit like commissions plus Facebook. Both instruments were regularly mentioned this Wednesday by the three hundred people sitting on the northern part of the square to fight against the media-economic-political conspiracy serving international finance and the El Khomri law (obsessively mentioned). Thus, there is even an anti-commission commission, and a few hundred likes can be a decisive step towards universal revolution.
The audience is youthful (“young white middle class” according to a self-description by a speaker). The marginalized stay apart to play music or smoke under igloo tents. These latter form the hardcore of the “Nuit Debout” delegations for the flash operations in support of the CGT. A few hours earlier, I witnessed a tense standoff between them and the police in Bercy, near my hotel.
The parallel with the May ’68 general assemblies is not absurd, some slogans attest to it (“enjoy rather than reproduce”), but this is purely formal. Indeed, as sympathetic as the speeches may be, they most often consist, if not always, of pushing at open doors. In this anti-capitalist discourse, not a single argument or proposal hasn’t been articulated in the 1970s by the self-management movement, in the 2000s by the theorists and practitioners of participatory democracy (it was even a very important part of my municipal program in 2001), and by the alter-globalists of ATTAC a few years later.
Moreover, the gap is massive between these speeches and the real people the speakers want to represent; one can be moved, but that’s how it is. For example, the accumulation of mandates is the leitmotif of speeches when it comes to discussing a new political ethic. The apathy with which the people of Nice responded to their notables’ latest game of musical chairs attests to this gap.
To change the world, another framework will be necessary. Meanwhile, this movement allows hundreds of probably politically inexperienced young people to become aware. That’s not so bad already, and as we say in my country, “It doesn’t put bread on the table,” even if these long sessions are a bit “boring”!
By Patrick Mottard
