The Long 68: A Distortion

Richard Vinen: The Long 68. Radical Protest and Its Enemies.
Penguin Books, UK, 2018.

I am beginning to develop a certain dislike of historians who cover a comprehensive topic every other year, casting the disdainful eye that typifies their approach: the prerequisite of academic research seems to imply the reduction of real life and real people to a ‘thing’, a thing to be manipulated so as to reveal the truth, viz. the historian’s truth.

Professor Richard Vinen clearly presents the subject of his research as an… object called ‘The Thing’, this thing being ‘The Long 68’: the pivotal year 1968 and its aftermath. As is now admitted by most, the relevance of the 1968 revolts is to be found in later years. Hence, ‘the long 68’.

Vinen’s thing-like vision on history is made clear from the onset. Noting that many participants of 'the long 68' have written accounts of their lives and works or autobiographies (e.g. Dany Cohn-Bendit, Henri Weber, Tariq Ali, Abbie Hoffman), the author stipulates he ‘(sees) no reason why participants in 68 should claim a special right to be spared the cold scalpel of historical autopsy’ (p. xviii).

The Cold Scalpel

Did the participants of the Long 68 really claim a special right when publishing their autobiographies? Why does Mr. Vinen think so? In view of history and Academia? I don’t think these participants ever considered being taken seriously by College professors and I know a few who still couldn’t care less. Lola Miesseroff, for one, recently published her account of a particular anarchist movement as told by the participants themselves exclusively, because fifty years on no-one had ever bothered to take a decent look at the subject.

Surely, Mr Vinen has the right to handle a scalpel. It is, indeed, the historian’s duty to be critical, especially when studying a conflict – and ‘the long 68’ was a major one. Of course, President de Gaulle and the rebelling students tell different stories. Naturally, the captains of industry didn’t share the strategy of the communist union. A conflict of world views is at stake here, which can roughly be defined as a cluster of opposites: left-right, young-old, open-closed, progressive-conservative. This collision simply means that there is no truth to be found, only different points of view, choices and commitments. President de Gaulle was sincere about his conservative, catholic values. He even thought he was modernizing France. Equally, Maoists such as Alain Geismar and Benny Lévy were convinced of the validity of violent revolution. The communist party (PCF) and its union (CGT) opposed both de Gaulle and the students, only to make a deal that derailed the movement. Where is the truth?
There is no truth to be found when studying the clash between capitalism and communism, liberalism versus socialism. Only different world views.

Historians like Mr Vinen, however, seem to think that the truth must be somewhere in the middle. That is why he feels he must dissect this Thing pinned under his microscope, using the ‘cold scalpel of autopsy’. Regretfully, the thing called ‘the long 68’ was about world views held by real people in real life. Or rather: still is about real life and real people, since Vinen’s conclusion reads that ‘the long 68’ is still alive and quite kicking.

CHAPTER ONE: 'YOUTH CULTURE'

The best way to test an academic work is to turn its methodology against itself and see if it survives. I therefore apply said ‘cold scalpel’ to the sub-chapter on ‘Youth Culture’ and more particularly on pop music (pp. 43 and following). The writer puts the title between quotation marks – ‘Youth Culture’ – indicating his doubt, suspicion and lack of real interest in the subject.

Obviously, the writer hasn’t the faintest idea what ‘Youth Culture’ is about, so he dismisses it with pleasure. Referring to The Who and The Rolling Stones, conveniently forgetting the other 90% of the pop world, pop groups are said to be anti-political.

The Who
The Who can be called ‘anti-political’ in the sense that they didn’t choose between Labour and the Conservatives. Their 1965 hit ‘My Generation’ isn’t ‘political’ in the strict meaning of the word. ‘My Generation’ does, however, deeply capture the adult’s angst, just like their songs ‘Pictures Of Lily’ and ‘I’m A Boy’ reflect a teenager’s sexual frustration and uncertainty. ‘My Generation’ is the pop song abstract of existentialism for teenagers who lived under the threat of nuclear disaster – as brilliantly explained by Jeff Nutall in his ‘Bomb Culture’. The Who never turned ‘political’. When they played ‘La fête de l’Humanité’ (the powerful French Communist Party’s annual fest in Paris) in 1972, they shocked the young interviewer by declaring they didn’t give a fuck about ‘politics’, i.e. political parties, party politics, strategic games and power play. Their stage act was their political statement.

The Stones
Mr Viven also calls The Rolling Stones to the anti-political witness stand.
True, The Rolling Stones’ world-wide number one ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ doesn’t support the revolution. It does, however, express discontent about a purely materialist life – the affluent, but empty society.
Both ‘My Generation’ and ‘Satisfaction’ were hits in 1965. Anyone who was around in Europe at that time, will testify that the Revolution didn’t occupy the young’s minds. They were, however, beginning to riot, disobey, rebel and provoke – think of the Provo’s in Amsterdam. And they turned away from ‘politics’ in the old sense of the word. If politicians had grasped these lyrics in 1965, then 1968 might have looked different. But they didn’t. And Mr Viven still doesn’t.
As for The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger made progressive stands on morality on various occasions and, like Lennon, helped the alternative English press. When three Stones (Jagger, Richards and Jones) were arrested and jailed for ‘drug abuse’, the scandal was such that it turned them into counterculture heroes overnight. The Rolling Stones were rebels and never claimed to be revolutionaries. Still, ‘Street Fighting Man’ expresses their disillusion about the lack of action in Great Britain, compared to the US and mainland Europe. As to be expected, Viven sees this as anti-political.

Comically apolitical
Mr Viven takes his thesis one step further by claiming that political references in rock songs were ‘rare’ and in any case ‘rarer than they had been in the folk music of the 1950s’ (p. 44). The ‘folk music of the 1950s’ certainly was a committed genre, think of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, but at the same time its influence was quite restricted and its audience wasn’t exactly fighting in the street. Does the author understand that 60s pop musicians actually picked up this tradition and revived it? There are countless versions of ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’ and Donovan worshipped Guthrie to the point of dedicating songs to him and copying the phrase ‘This machine kills fascists’ (the machine being an acoustic guitar). Following the author, one must assume that the lyrics of Dylan, Baez, Donovan, Buffy St. Marie, Melanie, Judy Collins, Laura Nyro, Phil Ochs, Fairport Convention, Barry McGuire, CSN&Young, Buffalo Springfield, Antoine (France), Boudewijn de Groot (Holland), Armand (same), Flanders’ very own Miek & Roel, etc. are not ‘political’!

Maybe the author sees these as ‘folk’ songs, in which case they do not count as ‘rock’ songs. Fine, let’s turn to rock then.
One may not like The Rolling Stones’ tale of disillusion in ‘Street Fighting Man’, but they treated topics that had never been treated in commercial pop before – like their critique of the dull consumerist society in ‘Mother’s Little Helper’.
The Kinks painted the hypocrisy and the very dark sides of the English ‘condition humaine’ (‘Waterloo Sunset’), The Jefferson Airplane criticised American policy, The Grateful Dead advocated a different lifestyle, The Who symbolised the aggressiveness that would flood the streets, the MC5 mingled music and riot, countless black American soul and funk musicians wrote the soundtrack to the Black protest movement.

All these artists had huge hits and were highly influential, but Richard Vinen quickly disposes of them as being part of an industry that was ‘comically’ apolitical.

In short, an artist is apolitical when he sells a million records with a poetic message for peace.
Revealing himself as a true cynic, Mr Viven also dismisses artists who opt for a non-commercial circuit. And fail. His example is French singer Dominique Grange, who used a proven format (French ‘chanson’) and Marxist-Leninist lyrics to get her message across. She never scored a hit (Prof. Viven forgets to add that Grange and her husband became successful and influential in the world of graphics and cartoons, but maybe this is a comically apolitical industry?).

Politics and Arts

What does Viven want when he dismisses both the commercial and the non-commercial circuit? Basically, he doesn’t grasp the relation between ‘politics’ and artistry.

Many 60s rock songs did carry clear messages. If these lyrics didn’t reflect some party line, this is simply because artists of some stature do not usually choose sides, that’s to say they avoid identifying their work with a particular point of view or a party line. This is true for music as well as painting, for sculpting as well as poetry. In fact, it is the artist’s role to remain critical and thoughtful, to go beyond the superficial, to test the verity of everyday talk. When Maoists, Trotskyists and other communists were talking about working conditions and wages, Jim Morrison of The Doors challenged sexual repression and bigotry in public. And got arrested. He also sang about ‘The Unknown Soldier’ and could silence an auditorium with ‘The End’. This type of rock was highly successful. And yes, it was part of an industry.
In Mr Viven’s view, Albert Camus probably is ‘anti-political’ and he surely was part of an industry, selling millions of copies of his humanist message.

If Richard Viven knows of a formula to create huge success without being commercial or belonging to some industry, let him step forward. Microsoft and Apple are listening already. Meanwhile, Viven is happy to let us know that a non-political record was no. 1 in France in May 1968. I must say that this sort of statement escapes me entirely. I wonder why Viven ridicules himself by pointing out that the Melody Maker’s only reference to the invasion of Czechoslovakia was the announcement that the tour of a band called ‘Fluff’ was disrupted. Melody Maker being a music paper, they reported exactly what could be expected of them.

It is normal for a historian to take nothing for granted, but it is a bit of an obsession to dig deep for exceptions, mad hatters and wittily told anecdotes to try and counterbalance anything and everything.

The problem is: ‘youth culture’ doesn’t seem to count in Viven’s eyes. It only exists between quotation marks. In his book, there is no entry on ‘underground press’, nor is there a mention of ‘fashion’.

CHAPTER TWO: BELGIUM

The second way to test a work of academia, is to check facts. Viven’s book doesn’t treat the revolt in Belgium. He does, however, write exactly one sentence about Belgium and the conflict at the University of Leuven (p.22), which is sufficient to talk nonsense. According to Viven, that conflict was ‘partly’ about defending the rights of Flemish speakers. In reality, just like everywhere else, the conflict at Leuven university was about challenging conservatism and authoritarian structures: at this catholic university, the students protested against the influence of the conservative Church and the bishops, who took sides with the Belgian, mainly French-speaking establishment. In just two years’ time, the repression, the backwardness and the stubbornness only highlighted the call for more Flemish autonomy and gave birth to the Maoist movement in Belgium.

The problem is that Mr Viven, who is a professor of History (!) at King’s College in London, by his own admittance did little research himself. In other words, he compiled a book from what we call ‘secondary sources’, read: other people’s writings.

CHAPTER THREE: SYMBIOSIS

To give his compilation some academic backbone, Mr. Viven introduces a thesis, namely that both parties involved in the long 68 - the establishment and the 68ers - define themselves more in terms of what they opposed, rather than what they proposed. He calls this a ‘curious symbiosis between 68 and its enemies’. In plain English: the 68ers protested against the state of affairs, but didn’t know quite well what they wanted instead. Similarly, the establishment held on to its position, values and privileges because these were challenged – thus pretending any other option was simply inconceivable.

I must admit that the trick to turn the conflict of the Long 68 into a symbiosis, leaves me speechless. It is astonishing to see how a historian dismisses the alternative called communisms (in the plural), it is unbelievable that this historian doesn’t take into account all the alternatives that were created in a short space of time (education, consumerism, sexuality, etc. ) and it is unacceptable that a historian doesn’t want to know that a protest movement is first of all against something, piecing together the alternative along the way. These alternatives were often built, invented or conceived on the spot, as the struggle went on.

CONCLUDING

This book has pleased the liberal press a lot. It didn't please me. It’s the sort of history book that can’t go wrong: of course the 68ers weren’t entirely wrong and naturally they can’t be entirely right. It’s called small-talk and it is the fare that successful talk-shows are made of, because no-one nowadays wants to hear clear points of views, those that disrupt and disturb, that make you angry and trigger four-letter words and not-so polite expressions. Everyone wants to hear "the truth", as dissenting views are unacceptable. Alas, there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden (Bob Dylan).

Reference:
Richard Vinen: ‘The Long 68. Radical Protest and Its Enemies’.
Penguin Books, UK, 2018.