Obsolete Communism: The left-wing alternative

by Daniel Cohn-Bendit

In May 68 a student protest spread to other universities, to Paris factories and in a few weeks to most of France. A million Parisians marched; ten million workers went out on strike. At the center of the fray was Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Obsolete Communism was written in 5 weeks immediately after the state regained control, and no account of May 68 can match its immediacy or urgency.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, France, History and Politics

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Cohn-Bendit was born in Montauban, France, to German-Jewish parents who had fled Nazism in 1933. He spent his childhood in Montauban. He moved to Germany in 1958, where his father had been a lawyer since the end of the war. He attended the Odenwaldschule in Heppenheim near Frankfurt, a secondary school for children of the upper middle class. Being officially stateless at birth, when he reached the age of 14 he chose German citizenship, in order to avoid conscription.
Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit (born 4 April 1945) is a German politician, active in France and Germany, and was a student leader during the unrest of May 1968 in France. He was also known during that time as Dany le Rouge (French for "Danny the Red", because of both his politics and the color of his hair). He is currently co-president of the group European Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament, becoming "Dany le Vert" (French for "Danny the Green", because of his new fight for ecology).
In 2010, he was involved in founding JCall, advocacy group based in Europe to lobby the European parliament on foreign policy issues concerning the Middle East.

Reviews

[Carlo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally got around to reading Cohn-Bendit & Cohn-Bendit. It's a great read for many reasons one of which is insight into what French student militants, eg the 22 March Movement, were reading in the 1960s. Cohn-Bendit records the influence of Socialisme ou Barbarie (Castoriadis/Chaulieu/Cardan, Lefort, Gautrat/Mothe, Bourdet, Simon), L'Internationale Situationniste (Debord, Vaneigem), Informations et Liaison Ouvrieres (Lefort, Simon), Noir et Rouge (Bourdet). All these journals advocated workers self-organization in councils--council communism or libertarian socialism (if you prefer)--and were connected to worker militants. The contrast with the reading of US student militants (SDS) is striking--CW Mills, Studies on the Left, Monthly Review, The Guardian (moving from Deweyian pragmatism to Maoism). In Detroit, there was Correspondence and News & Letters, but they were a bit isolated even though Marcuse notes their significance in One Dimensional Man. Not that reading
material changes the world, but the difference between factory occupations and a general strike in France and the Progressive Labor Party and Weather Underground in the US may have have had a relation to "understanding the world".

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you think Debord had a huge importance in the May '68 insurrection you would be wrong. It was Cohn-Bendit and this is the book he wrote throughout it all. There is nothing spectacular about this book, but it is important to set the record as straight as possible as to the goings on of the event--even if Debord is more interesting and fun to read.

[Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary book capturing May 68--arguably the most important worker-student uprising of the 20the century--and an insightful, forceful critique of Leninism and hierarchical parties designed for operating under dictatorial regimes, not open, nominally democratic societies.

[Demetri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating when it comes to learning about May 68. If you're trying to research May 68, I highly recommend this book. It takes you through the ideology behind the movement which is integral to understanding the movement.