At a time when supporters and detractors of May 68 occupy the front of the stage and transform the event into myth, Xavier Vigna publishes a test of political history of the factories which tries to give voice to the actors of the workers’ insubordination and to find the material and symbolic configuration which informed their actions.
For historian Xavier Vigna, May 68, or rather the strikes of May and June 68, are to be considered as an event, in the strong sense of the word, insofar as their emergence surprises contemporaries, arouses new representations and inaugurates a cycle which ended at the end of the 1970s, with the failure of these working insubordination practices.
68 workers
Xavier Vigna brands the spotlight not on the Parisian student scene, to which the different facets of spring 68 are too often reduced, but on the workers of the French factories (and not simply Parisian), who went on strike almost general in May-June 68, and on their practices of insubordination during the 1970s. The term insubordination designates the fact that “ Many workers no longer submit, or hardly, to the factory order, to its constraints, to its hierarchies ». By the meticulous examination of various sources, such as police reports, leaflets, written or collected workers ‘memories, documents emanating from trade union organizations, Vigna first endeavors to identify the objective facts of this workers’ insubordination: he describes the main strikes in May-June 68, their actors, by making a place for women and foreigners, often forgotten by women, often forgotten by historiography traditional, and underlines the novelty of action directories. In the same way, he analyzes the various forms of insubordination of the 1970s and their kinship with “ The inaugural event ».
The author is then interested in the speeches that justify and legitimate these insubordinate practices. Workers’ political productions are thus examined: criticism of working conditions, representations of a world in which the “ We “Worker opposes” them »Bosses and chefs. Vigna analyzes the ambiguous position of workers on the one hand in front of students, sociologically associated with “ enemies And whose supposedly dissolved customs shock workers’ ethics, on the other hand in front of the left. Communists are classified in the “ We “, But often criticized, in a mode reminiscent of the proverb” who likes to chastise well ». The author then tries to bring to light what he calls a “ worker charter “, Term improperly improper in the strictly historical sense (the proper of a charter is to be an explicit and existing document, while these principles of good work are not formulated), which refers to a set of values concerning work: the workers valued work, but wish” work well and normally », That is to say that they refuse too high rates, parcelization and yield salary. Their ideal is getting closer to a certain idea of craft work, as shown by the changes introduced in the production processes, when workers implement self -management. Vigna even goes so far as to establish a parallel between the workers’ aesthetics relating to work and the idea of art for art in bourgeois aesthetics. On these points, it is advisable to rent the approach of the author who, far from minimizing the capacity of workers to build a political project and to consider them as minors under guardianship, and/or as objects taken in the game of market alienation, takes their speeches seriously and tries to put in place the constellation of meaning they proceed.
The author is finally interested in the social configuration of workers’ insubordination and the actors who carry it or try to slow it down: unions and their strategies, mainly CGTrather moderate according to the line defined in 1963, and CFDTmore radical ; Participants of the workers’ left, Maoist workers and Trotskyists ; And finally, the State and the employers, which resist insubordination either by trying to prevent it, or by repressing it. In this last part, Vigna tries to understand the failure of the movement: the economic crisis, which began to be really felt in the late 1970s, is the main cause – and this reverse explains the Ouvrière eclipse of the 1980s -, but Vigna also raises the role of the unions, which put everything on the statement of the struggles and the electoral victory of the left. This moderantism, understandable insofar as the unions wish to earn support on their right and no doubt sincerely hope that the improvement of working conditions will only come from the ballot boxes, is considered partially responsible for the end of this cycle of insubordination.
Workers at the center of the company
The interest of such a study must be underlined. Vigna is part of the historiographical trend which has undertaken a return to the event, which no longer focuses on this or that workers’ practice (the strike for example) or on such or such group or organization (the Communists, the CGT…) Or even on this or that aspect of workers’ representations (the idea of the revolution, the idea of work, etc.) but takes as an object an area, the insubordination, which intersects the objective and the symbolic, the practices and the beliefs. The aim is to highlight a social configuration, the interactions between the different parties, and to better understand social change, by emphasizing the role of internal factors in each group, but also the game between groups and society. In this regard, one of the heuristic benefits of the study is to highlight workers’ centrality, that is to say the importance that is both digital and symbolic that workers take in French society in the years 68, characteristic of the period. The workers themselves, but also various political parties (communists for example but also Catholic) or even intellectuals, refer to the working-class world, evoke the conditions of work … in short are inclined to grant him a central place. In the 1980s, the configuration changed: to understand the decline of the workers’ movement, it is necessary to take into account this factor which modifies the balance of power between society as a whole and the working world, which could not be studied focused on the internal aspects to this world.
In the same way, to be interested in workers as a whole, and no longer only in political affiliation (Maoist, Trotskyst, Conservative …) makes it possible to introduce the reader to the game between the different trends specific to this world and the negotiations, compromises and strategies that result from this diversity. The application to unions of the concept of field, borrowed from the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, reports on the various positions and their evolution during the decade. If the previous studies were necessary for Vigna, which could not have carried out his task alone, he has the merit of crossing them, making them the synthesis and offering us a better understanding of the various insubordination practices and the actors who participate. Thus his objective of writing a history of workers’ points of view on the factory universe is widely fulfilled, as well as that of a history of relationships between unions and workers through the question of insubordination.
The forms of insubordination
Regarding the news of the work, a few points should be noted. First, the reader is interested in the width of the action repertoire developed by the workers. At the time of the penalty of the least political illegalism, Vigna draws up the panorama of a world in which the workers could sometimes sequester their bosses (the director of the South Aviation factory of Bouguenais was thus kidnapped in 1968 by workers who spent the international over 36 hours), or implement productive strikes, that is to say, get the machines. Production, form of insubordination invented by workers of the LIP factory. The memory of the LIPs is present these days, but we often forget that this method of struggle had spread during the period, before disappearing in the late 1970s. If Barthes already denounced in 1957 the mythology of the angry user, it should be noted that the speeches condemning the social struggles and the forms of action which are associated with them have been considerably hardened since the late 1970s.
Then, while the main unions are currently implementing punctual control strategies, and advocate a certain moderation of social struggles, the citizen concerned with efficiency and social progress will be attentive to these same orientations of power plants in the 1970s and to the failure of these positions. Without pretending to provide a solution to the current processes, Vigna shows the bankruptcy of this strategy: rupture between the base and the union representatives, disaffection of workers, modification of the balance of power to the disadvantage of the latter, are the consequences, according to him, of this desire for respectability displayed in particular by the CGT in the 1970s, by CFDT in the second half of the decade. Furthermore, while the idea of a statization of struggles was plausible in the context of the 1970s, when the left had never governed under the Ve Republic, this is less so in the 2000s, at a time when the government left has accepted the market economy and when the revolutionary left has lost its credit.
Finally, it is necessary to highlight the conception of history which seems to inspire Xavier Vigna, according to which the course of the world does not proceed from a continuous succession of moments all having the same value, but constitutes a discontinuous function, with ruptures, key moments and phases of maturation. It is in this perspective that Xavier Vigna is resolutely situated by analyzing the decade 1968-1978 through the earthquake of the strikes of May and their successive replicas.