Global Imagination of 1968

George Katsiaficas

Description

This book brings to life social movements of the 1960s, a period of world-historical struggles. With discussions of more than fifty countries, Katsiaficas articulates an understanding that is neither bounded by national and continental divides nor focused on “Great Men and Women.” Millions of people went into the streets, and their aspirations were remarkably similar. From the Prague revolt against Soviet communism to the French May uprising, the Vietnam Tet offensive, African anticolonial insurgencies, the civil rights movement, and campus eruptions in Latin America, Yugoslavia, the United States, and beyond, this book portrays the movements of the 1960s as intuitively tied together.

Student movements challenged authorities in almost every country, giving the insurgency a global character, and contemporary feminist, Latino, and gay liberation movements all came to life. A focus on the French general strike of May 1968 and the U.S. movement’s high point in 1970—from the May campus strike to the revolt in the military, workers’ wildcat strikes, the national women’s strike, the Chicano Moratorium, and the Black Panther Party’s Revolutionary Peoples’ Constitutional Convention in September—reveals the revolutionary aspirations of the insurgencies in the core of the world system. Despite the apparent failure of the movements of 1968, their profound influence on politics, culture, and social movements continues to be felt today. As globally synchronized uprisings occur with increasing frequency in the twenty-first century, the lessons of 1968 provide useful insights for future struggles.

Sujets

• Student activism
• Participatory democracy
• Social movement
• New Left

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629634609
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Praise for The Global Imagination of 1968
A well-informed survey of the global New Left of 1968.
-Eric Hobsbawm, author of The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991
George Katsiaficas s work presents an understanding how we of the New Left used our education as a practice of freedoms: confronting the racist, warmongering status quo with the objective of creative participatory democracy. As we continue to work toward cooperational humanism here at home and the world over, this insightful analysis provides a useful backdrop for social activism and the struggle for future democratic human rights.
-Bobby Seale, former chairman and cofounder of the Black Panther Party
This is the best book on the New Left, the only truly global history that historicizes the social movements of the 1960s. It is both a cautionary tale and a guide for dark times that require imaginative resistance. This new edition could not have come at a better time.
-Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975
By including feminism prominently in the global insurgency of 1968, this book gives us comprehensive understanding of the broad mobilization that was at the heart of the movement. Everywhere in the world, people simultaneously challenged wars, racism, and archaic politics and also patterns of domination in everyday life.
-Mariarosa Dalla Costa, professor emerita, University of Padua, and theorist of Wages for Housework
Of all the many studies of the wave of radicalism marking the so-called long sixties, The Global Imagination of 1968 ranks among the very best. Nothing else rivals the lucidity and succinctness with which Katsiaficas captures not only the liberatory vision but the sheer vibrancy with which the period s global movement was imbued. The book should be considered essential reading by all who seek transformative change.
-Ward Churchill, author and activist
The year 1968 stands out as a pivotal moment in history, a high point of worldwide revolutionary consciousness, an unbreakable chain of resistance and rebellion. Whether in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, or the belly of the imperialist beast (USA), oppressed people were reclaiming their dignity and humanity. When 1968 is mentioned, I think most profoundly of our party-the original Black Panther Party, which raised to new heights the multiracial slogan of All Power to the People! Read this book and you too will discover the eros effect or revolutionary love that is so necessary in the age of neoliberalism and global capitalist tyranny.
-Shaka Zulu, chairman, New Afrikan Black Panther Party
It is heartening to see how George Katsiaficas, a radical who has neither dropped out nor burned out, and whose scholarly research grew out of his own activism as a student in the late 1960s and early 70s, has incorporated in his vision an enlarged sense of the necessity for genuine revolution [to be] based upon the universal interest of the human species and all life.
-Denise Levertov, poet and activist
Here the New Left is convincingly portrayed for what it was, a profoundly influential world-historical movement.
-Stewart Edward Albert and Judith Clavier Albert, editors of The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade
This book is a must for those contemplating future struggles for change. It gives a vivid picture of what actually took place as well as an idea of where we fell short so that in the next stage of struggle we can build on strengths and weaknesses and grapple with the even more profound questions that face us.
-James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs
I met George Katsiaficas in Berlin in the early 1990s and we took part in the demonstrations of revolutionary May 1 in Kreuzberg. His book on the New Left and 1968 gave me long-lasting connections between the West Berlin Autonomists and the theory and practice of the global revolt at the end of the 1960s. This book has at least a convincing message: Beyond your own plate! This shall be the life-elixir of every autonomous individual in the world. To this the free intellectual George Katsiaficas has made a compelling contribution.
-Geronimo, author of Fire and Flames: A History of the German Autonomist Movement

The Global Imagination of 1968: Revolution and Counterrevolution
2018 George Katsiaficas
All proceeds received by the author will be donated to the Eros Effect Foundation.
ISBN: 978-1-62963-439-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017942912
Cover by John Yates/stealworks.com
cover photo from Photo , hors-s rie no. 128: Sp cial: Les in dits de Mai 68 (May 1978).
Layout by Jonathan Rowland
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
Contents
Tables and Maps
Foreword by Carlos Mu oz
Preface by Kathleen Cleaver
Introduction
Chapter 1: The New Left as a World-Historical Movement
World-Historical Moments
1848, 1905, 1968: Historical Overview
The New Left: A Global Definition
Chapter 2: A Global Analysis of 1968
The Tet Offensive
Che s Foco Theory
Student Movements of 1968
Asia
South Korea
China
Japan
The Philippines
Thailand
India
Pakistan
Bangladesh
Sri Lanka
Iran
The Arab World
Tunisia
Egypt
Iraq
Turkey
Pacific
Australia
New Zealand
Africa
Nigeria
Senegal
South Africa
Congo-Kinshasa
Ghana
Zimbabwe
Zambia
Ethiopia
Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau
Burkina Faso
Europe
West Germany
Italy
Spain
The Netherlands
Denmark
Belgium
England/UK
Greece
Portugal
Eastern Europe: New Left vs. Old Left
Yugoslavia
Czechoslovakia
Poland
Latin America
Mexico
Columbia
Peru
Venezuela
Argentina
Uruguay
Brazil
Chile
Theology of Liberation
North America
Canada
The Caribbean
Jamaica
Barbados
Trinidad and Tobago
Bermuda
The United States
Onset of Counterrevolution
From Civil Rights to Revolutionary Internationalism
Emergence of Latino Opposition
The Working Class
Global Women s Liberation
Chapter 3: Revolution in France? May 1968
Global Connections
Roots of the May Events
The Workers
The New Working Class
Capitalist Relations of Production
Cultural Poverty of Consumer Societies
The Political Meaning of May 1968: Internationalism and Self-Management
Patriotism and Internationalism
Authoritarianism and Self-Management
Limits of Spontaneity
Some Implications of May
Chapter 4: Revolution in the United States? May to September 1970
The Largest Strike in U.S. History
Black Panthers Go to Yale
The Campuses Erupt
Murder at Jackson State University
Form of the Strike
Legitimation Crisis
Tactical Innovations
Cultural Dimensions of the Crisis
Revolt within the Military
Women s General Strike
Latinos Mobilize
The Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention
The Panthers Split
Workers and the Crisis
Restoration of Order
Chapter 5: The Global Imagination after 1968
Global Uprisings after 1968
Some Questions for Revolutionaries
A Centralized Party?
Premature Armed Struggle?
Psychic Thermidor
Reforms and Revolution
Rebellion or Revolution?
Documents: Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention
Index
F OR H ERBERT M ARCUSE AND J ANG D OO-SOK, MY TEACHERS, FRIENDS, AND COMRADES
T ABLES AND M APS
The Development of World-Historical Social Movements
Map of Major Student Disruptions, 1968-69
Numbers of Protesting Students Killed by State Violence, 1967-73
Incidents of Student Protest as Reported in Le Monde
Black Power Organizations in the Caribbean, 1968-70
The Black Liberation Movement in the United States
Map of Guerrilla Attacks in the U.S., 1965-70
Comparing the Black Panther Party s 1966 Program and 1970 RPCC Proposals
Global Insurgencies after 1968
F OREWORD
by Carlos Mu oz
I T IS A PLEASURE TO BE PART OF THE SECOND EDITION OF G EORGE Katsiaficas s book The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 . I consider it to be a classic study of the social movements that became dramatically visible in what is widely considered the key year of the 1960s. During that era I became a leader of one of those movements that came to be known as the broader Chicano movement. Prior to the publication of the first edition of the book, it was an invisible movement because previous books on the New Left had ignored its existence. The Katsiaficas book was the first to acknowledge it.
The book s focus on 1968 is personally very significant to me because I had a life-changing experience that year. I was a Vietnam War-era veteran attending college on the GI Bill and a first-year graduate student activist involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement. I was also president of the United Mexican American Students (UMAS) and became one of the organizers of student walkouts to protest the racism Chicano students faced in the barrio high schools of East Los Angeles. The protest turned out to be the first major Chicano mass protest action against racism in U.S. history, and it ignited