This year sees the 40th anniversary of the May events of France 1968,
which culminated in the biggest general strike in history, involving
more than 10 million workers. TV programmes and newspaper columns will
mark the occasion but few, if any, will give a real reflection of the
role played by the main actors and actresses, the working class.
In August 1968 Ted Grant drew a balance sheet
of the revolutionary crisis ignited in France with the May events. In this
important article he carefully analysed the main problems facing the
revolution, exposing the treacherous policies of the Stalinist CP leaders, who
gave De Gaulle the possibility to recover from his earlier paralysis, and the
sectarian mistakes of the leaders of the "revolutionary left".
"…the French events
suddenly brought home to me the reality of socialist revolution and how we had
entered a new stormy period, which the tendency had predicted. Within a couple
of years, the Labour government had fallen and Britain entered a convulsive
period including a near general strike. The French events of 1968, after a
short delay, had even found an echo in Britain. Those days of 40 years ago will
return again. This time we can be better prepared. Without doubt, 1968 will be
forever remembered as a political turning point by all those who were touched
by those historic events. That was certainly my experience."
Che Guevara was a dedicated revolutionary and Communist. He was also an
internationalist and understood that to defend the Cuban revolution it
was necessary to spread it to other parts of the world. He attempted
this in Africa and Latin America. This was his strong side. His weak
side was that he saw the revolution fundamentally as a peasant
guerrilla struggle and did not fully understand the central role of the
working class in the socialist revolution.
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was executed by Bolivian troops near the town of La Higuera on 9 October 1967, following an ambush. The operation was planned by the CIA and organized by US Special Forces. On the 40th anniversary of his death it is appropriate that we make a balance sheet of this outstanding revolutionary and martyr. Alan Woods in a two-part article looks at the evolution of Che Guevara from his early days to the day he was killed.
Forty years ago this month, in a small school hut in La Higuera,
Bolivia, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was brutally executed by the Bolivian
army. Since Che’s death, the popular media have tried to
assimilate his image and turn it into a harmless symbol. They have,
however, not succeeded in burying the memory of Che, just as they have
not managed to solve the problems of poverty and destitution in the
third world.
On April 26th 1937 General Franco commissioned from the German High
Command, against Republican Spain, the aerial bombardment of the small
and defenceless Basque town of Guernica,
visiting a hell on earth in the form of bombs weighing up to 1000lbs
across the town of 10, 000 people. Two months later, seventy years
ago, Pablo Picasso unveiled Guernica. Despite his enormous prestige the
establishment rarely tell us that Picasso was a man of the left.
The titantic events in Germany between 1917 and 1923 constitute a tragic and bitter chapter in the international workers' movement. Golden opportunities, in which the German working class could have repeatedly taken power, were lost, eventually ending up in the ghastly victory of the Nazis in 1933 and the obliteration of the workers' movement. A book review by Rob Sewell.