Daniel Cohn-Bendit's Alternative

...The French students, at the time, said yes...

...Still, in spite of the book's title, the American reader probably will pick it up not to learn about Communism, obsolete or infantile, but to find out more about the events of May 1968 in France that brought the name Cohn-Bendit to the foreground...

...In this Notice the local student organization, without embroidering the request, "calls on all students of psychology to abandon their studies...

...There are long summaries of unjustly forgotten books and pamphlets that an inquiring student is happy to discover on library shelves...

...Your face changed, because this was too much, you know, that one could think, you know, that the people who are ruling the world was treated like— like the grocer from my street...

...They called it la societe de consommation...

...Alas, this where the book proves a total letdown...

...Recorded in Frankfurt, Germany, and conducted by Mike Wallace, the interview was quite interesting...

...Perhaps the first line of the first chapter ("A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of student revolt") should be shrugged off as nothing more than a campus pastiche of Karl Marx...

...Even in their most pompous statements, their tongues always seemed near their cheeks...

...Daniel Cohn-Bendit reprints at length and with great relish a "Notice" that he proudly tells us was plastered all over the walls of Nantes, a city in western France known until then for its factories and shipbuilding yards rather than for its university...

...But was there, as in the case of the American New Left, a whole society that French students were willing both to rebel against and to atone for...

...or in West Berlin, where the hostility has never relented...

...But it soon became clear that satisfying these demands would not curb the students' determination to go on "contesting...

...After all, for a short time in 1959, the Cuban Revolution wanted to be that...

...Has it ever occurred to you," he exploded, "that you are a very arrogant young man...

...They could say no...

...One tantalizing sentence on page 33 observes that "there was much to criticize in the National Liberation Front [of South Vietnam] and in the regime of North Vietnam and, for that matter, in Castro's Cuba...

...Castro, of course did exactly that in 1960 not to one union but to all of them...

...He will not receive a clear view of what happened in France last May, or of why it happened, or of what went wrong with it...

...This is where Cohn-Bendit's Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative could and should have made a major contribution...

...The "spectre of student revolt" today only haunts Eastern Europe —Prague at the moment, and perhaps soon again Warsaw or Budapest or East Berlin...

...French students had good cause to protest against their crowded classrooms, the archaic teaching methods, the whole conception of an educational system that dates back to Napoleon and is completely out of step with the evolution and the preoccupations of the outside world...

...There is no official place for Castroism in his Left-wing alternative...

...This is true even for most Left-wing intellectuals...

...Daniel Cohn-Bendit and his friends in Nanterre were no mas-ochists, solemn or otherwise, and though they never missed an occasion to quote Freud, they really did not need him personally...

...Well, he will find a number of interesting documents that would have been of greater value to the reader, if not to the author, in an annex at the end of the book...

...A little later, he returns to the minstrels, with more leniency, though no less disapproval: "Nobody can understand what many writers, whose intelligence I respect, have written in May-June, unless one remembers that men of the Left, deprived of their Utopia by Stalinism, thought they had met again their old dream, a libertarian revolution, a revolution which would not be tyranny and bureaucracy...

...To the workers, whom the students tried so ardently to woo and to win, things looked quite different...

...His conclusion has style, pace and panache, if not grandeur, but it betrays the weakness of a movement more adept at coining phrases than at solving problems, or even understanding them: "A man is more than a mere consumer, he can not only get fed, he can get fed up as well...

...It is true that they fought with extraordinary courage when they were faced with the specially recruited peasant-soldiers of the crs riot-police, who got a personal kick out of beating up fils a papa...

...They may also believe that their fawning and cringing provides a particularly self-denying and therefore effective manner of demonstrating the unbending steadfastness of their revolutionary purpose...

...There are also verbatim excerpts from tracts and leaflets...

...Daniel Cohn-Bendit suddenly becomes very cautious, treading softly like a cunning politician, when he reaches that slippery ground...

...But it is Raymond Aron, the author of some of the most penetrating comments on the political, social and moral problems of our time, who gives us the sharpest, harshest analysis of the events of May '68 in France in his latest book, La Revolution Introuvable...

...retelling, for instance, the story of Nestor Makhno's libertarian movement in the Ukraine, or how the rebellion of the Kronstadt sailors was ferociously suppressed not by Stalin but by Leon Trotsky...

...So anxious are they, in fact, that they are prepared to pay for the privilege through the nose in the short run, offering me a vast sum of money before I have written a single line He then adds, with a childish boastfulness that would make him sound completely ridiculous if we could not hear him chuckling mischievously: "They do not even seem to be bothered by the fact that their cash will be used for the next round of Molotov cocktails Unfortunately, Daniel Cohn-Bendit soon stops chuckling and his book (despite the coauthorship, it doesn't hesitate to use Danny's "I") offers only occasional flashes of the wit and gift of repartee always present when he is talking rather than writing...

...There student aspirations directly reflect the aspirations of the workers: for individual freedom, national independence and, yes, more consumer goods for everyone...

...In a certain sense I regret this, for we need both Cohn-Bendit and Aron...

...This was a mistake...

...Daniel is even more sarcastic in explaining why—together with his brother Gabriel, 36, Professor of Literature in Saint-Nazaire—he authored the book just published in the United States under the title: Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative (McGraw-Hill, 256 pp., $5.95...

...Lest we need further proof of Cohn-Bendit's courage, it was provided at the Anarchist Convention in Carrare, Sicily, last summer...

...that is, with being promised everything the societe de consommation had to offer but in France had hardly begun to deliver...

...insofar as they have ideas, they are returning to pre-Marxism, to Utopian Socialism...

...Johnson can be clever, a clever politician, but not an intelligent man," Wallace lost patience with "Daniel Cohn-Bendit, 23 years old, blue-eyed, red-haired cherub that you are...

...Since they went out into the streets, too, they cannot be called revolutionnaires de salon anymore...

...The bulk of this ambitious undertaking, however, is simply a compilation of other people's writings, with precious few original ideas—in fact, not many more than one might find in the term paper of a diligent bourgeois second-year sociology student...

...During the demonstration from the Place de la Re-publique to the Place de la Bastille that marked the strike last March 11 in Paris, union members physically prevented a group of several hundred students from joining the march, pushing them toward the rear...

...May 1968 brought, first of all, a startling discovery: They really did not have to be the passive cows, the 50 million, veaux—adolescent cows—"Big Charles" is reported to have called them...

...Aron is right, but that does not mean the dream is wrong, or even completely Utopian...

...And today in Cuba he advocates and officially enforces a rigid militarization of labor...

...All the others present, including Norman Mailer and Paul Goodman, clearly did not...

...The answer was never in doubt, for there were hardly ever any subleties in the raging confusion of the enrages: To everybody and to everything...

...He is neither arrogant nor cherub enough when it comes to the real issues to be honest with himself and face them...

...PERSPECTIVES Daniel Cohn-Bendit's For the French people, who under Charles de Gaulle had returned to a Louis XlV-style monarchy without noticing it (because at the same time, they were busy assimilating American-style living in the form of refrigerators, television serials, and cars, cars, cars...

...They were fed up with not being fed enough...

...True, what he is plagiarizing has long been kept hidden behind Communist-organized and liberal-accepted distortion...

...And so, regretfully, we have to close the book —and the books—on "Danny the Red," the "23-years-old, blue-eyed, red-haired, arrogant cherub...

...This is especially true of Daniel Cohn-Bendit himself, or "Danny the Red," as the press in this country likes to call him The American public had an opportunity to meet Daniel Cohn-Bendit last February on 60 Minutes, a cbs television interview program...

...all they want is something they can sell—a revolutionary gadget with marketable qualities...

...Indeed, to make sure they wouldn't have to shop around for pretexts later, they had carefully included several inflammatory and wild requests that they knew no sane person could accept...

...The product, simply, of a few tape-recorded conversations, it is nevertheless so implacably logical that it may well constitute the final answer to "Danny the Red...

...Obviously somewhat annoyed by the smiling casualness of his subject's responses, when he stated with unruffled self-assurance that "Mr...

...If that sounds kind of nihilistic, as far as the French students are concerned, it was...

...For the most startling discovery one makes reading Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative is brought about by its incredible but obviously deliberate refusal to discuss Castro and Castroism...

...Yet the most extravagant mots d'ordre of the Nanterre campus, Leo Sauvace is New York correspondent of the Paris daily Le Figaro...

...But the very title of the book—especially if one is aware that the expression "senile disease" is used in the French and German versions— shows that Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit's Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative pretends to be nothing less than a rejoinder to Lenin's Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder...

...Since "individual capitalists are perfectly willing to pave the way for their own destruction, to broadcast revolutionary ideas, provided only that these help to fill their pockets," Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit apparently thought they could contribute a major theoretical work to the "revolutionary struggle" in general...

...Many of the "enraged" students, of course, were fed up with mama's regular mealtimes and papa's inadequate allowance—or his reticence in letting them take the car, or his reluctance to buy them one of their own...

...And their most outrageous acts contained glints of humor rather than signs of sinister brooding and of imminent nervous breakdowns...

...Though the dream soon became an oppressive nightmare, it is not absolutely imperative to resign oneself to the despairing idea —favored in different terms but with a common conclusion by Communist as well as reactionary logic —that such an evolution is historically unavoidable...

...And they were always ready to quote Che Guevara to the Spanish maid, although not to facilitate her work by leaving their rooms in a little less of a mess...

...In countries like France and Italy, where the elite of the workers remain prisoners of the monstrous fraud which was the tragic outcome of the Russian Revolution, Daniel Cohn-Bendit might have started something quite important precisely by bringing back the dream of a libertarian revolution, without tyranny and bureaucracy...

...And yet, toward the end of his book, Daniel Cohn-Bendit writes with indignation about the Communist leader who advocated "militarization of labor" and who, to silence his critics, "ousted the elected leaders of the union and appointed others who were willing to do his bidding...

...Their intention, though, is unmistakable...

...The cbs transcript then continues (and we should remember that the French-born, French and German educated Paris sociology student had to defend himself in unfamiliar English): Cohn-Bendit: "I—look, it's very funny, you know, when I make such an argument, you know...

...Quite a few of them, furthermore, were careful to park their cars in a safe place, far from the trouble spots before manning the barricades built with other people's cars...

...They even could say merde...

...He taunts in his Introduction: "Such was the impact of the events of May and June, and so wildly has the name of Cohn-Bendit been bandied about that, far from my having to go down on my knees to them, the publishers now come chasing after me, begging me to write about anything I choose, good or bad, exciting or dull...

...I laugh always because it's really funny, you know...

...Why...

...On his own, Cohn-Bendit belabors all those—"liberals, Stalinist bureaucrats and reformists alike"— who "reduce the evils of capitalism to economic injustice, and exploitation to the unequal distribution of the national income...

...some of these may have carried Daniel Cohn-Bendit's unsigned imprint, but they nevertheless occupy so much of the book's 256 pages that one must speak of "padding...

...The student movement started with a number of quite justified demands for reform of the obviously outdated and outgrown French University...

...Among other reasons, but this one is near the top, because "psychology is increasingly being forced into the mould of American psycho-sociology, aimed at perfecting the system by conditioning the workers to consume more and more rubbish while acquiescing in economic exploitation...

...Wallace: "Don't take what seriously...

...Daniel Cohn-Bendit does not mention the matter, but his friends in Nanterre and at the Sorbonne recently showed they were aware of it when they eliminated drug addicts from their ranks and insisted on being called enrages (very angry), not cingles (crazy...

...When half a dozen minions of the Living Theater, masquerading as "crazies," broke up a recent debate at the Theater for Ideas in New York, Judith Malina, with her husband Julian Beck's doddering approval, found them "beautiful...

...So, Castro is taboo...

...Merde to whom...

...Elsewhere, while the theoretical or mystical or mythical slogans of the students have utterly failed to impress what Marx, Lenin and Cohn-Bendit like to call "the toiling masses," the sexual circus that usually accompanies this type of protest has never failed to disgust them...

...Cohn-Bendit: "Such an interview, you know...

...And Danny is just a little bit too clever when he tries to forestall any criticism of his lack of originality by smugly stating in his Introduction: "I am not, and do not want to be, anything but a plagiarist when it comes to the preaching of revolutionary theory and practice...

...There the students are the avant-garde of the workers...

...He called a Mexican delegate a cia agent because the Mexican had mentioned the jailing of Anarchists in Cuba...

...Takeover by hippies fatally isolates the student revolt—and sends its "spectre" flying—because their antics appear ridiculous, if not repulsive, to most of the population...

...they forget a century of history and they ignore the necessities of enterprise and economy...

...It is easier, naturally, to summarize a pamphlet on the Makhno movement of 1918-21 than to speak, as a libertarian with Castro-ite friends, about what has happened to liberty in Cuba over the last 10 years...

...That was the fundamental contradiction between the two groups...

...I suppose they have convinced themselves that their masochistic enjoyment is a way of making up for the injustices committed by their fathers...

...He sent David Salvador, his devoted labor organizer, to slow death in the dungeons of El Morro...

...The complex-ridden American New Leftists who submit with solemn humility to black racist abuse are carrying the heavy burden of white America...

...In France, besides the common challenge represented by de Gaulle's authoritarian and contemptuous paternalism, the students' exceptional success in temporarily carrying along millions of workers may be due in part to their not looking too much like the hippies...

...Wallace subsequently tried to embarrass his insolent guest by reminding him that he had said it was time for him to "disappear back down into the movement," and yet "here you are, on television, answering questions...

...Courageous Danny, however, does not aim at Castro...

...He prefers to denounce Trotsky for taking over the Commissariat of Transport in 1920 in Moscow...

...The riposte followed promptly: "I didn't come to you to say make an interview with me, I know a lot of things...

...By Leo Sauvage the Sorbonne Commune, or the Odeon Theater talk-ins cannot compare with the sick proclamations of, say, the Chicago New Left convention in the late summer of 1967...

...The minstrels of the May revolution," Aron writes angrily, "believe they are going beyond Marxism...

...But that's all...

...They had even better cause to protest against the regime of Charles de Gaulle, which for 10 years, though all-powerful, had done nothing to bring the reforms it now suddenly recognized as necessary and urgent...

...Frederick Praeger, I am told, will soon publish it here in English as The Elusive Revolution...

...And therefore, we appear arrogant, you know, because it's true we don't take this very seriously...

...To what...

...You come to me and say we want to interview you...

...Thus I, for one, am not going to complain because the young man and his brother are reminding today's youth of "the degeneration of the Russian Revolution" practically from the beginning...

...The chasm between students and workers is deepening everywhere in the Western world...

...At the Bastille the workers dispersed, leaving the students alone to be immediately attacked and beaten up by the riot squads waiting for them...

...This is no less the case in France, where for a short time young men like Daniel Cohn-Bendit believed they had bridged it, than in the U.S...

...Forgetting about Marx and Lenin, it should have tackled Fidel Castro and Regis Debray, who pretend to offer the real Left-wing alternative in practice as well as in theory...

...No official exclusion either...

...The two brothers clearly have not set out merely to make a fast buck, either for good meals or for Molotov cocktails...

...But while some of them broke with their families for weeks or months or even for good, the majority returned home to continue enjoying—and despising—the advantages of the societe de consommation...

...It explains the diffidence that marked the workers' initial reaction to the students and remains alive now, even after their impressive joint fighting and striking during the second round in May...