Obsolete Communism Book

"In May 1968 a student protest at Nanterre University spread to other universities, to Paris factories, and in a few weeks, across most of France. On May 13, a million Parisians marched in protest of the government's brutality in the previous days' street fighting. Ten million workers went out on strike." "At the center of the fray from the beginning was Daniel Cohn-Bendit, expelled from Nanterre for his agitation. Obsolete Communism was written in 5 weeks immediately after the French state regained control, and no account of the events of May '68, or indeed of any rebellion, can match its immediacy or urgency, and no writer was in a better position than Daniel Cohn-Bendit to describe the dynamics of an emerging revolutionary movement." "Daniel's gripping version of the revolt is complemented by brother Gabriel's biting criticism of the collaboration of the state, the trades union leadership and the French Communist Party in restoring order, defusing the revolutionary energy, and handing the occupied factories back over to their owners. Leninism and the unions come under fire as top-down bureaucracies whose need to manage and control are perpetually at odds with revolutionary action." At a time when tens of thousands of 'leaderless' demonstrators are taking over the streets across the globe, this matchless account of one of the greatest of the leaderless revolts couldn't be more timely.