In May 1968 students occupy the Sorbonne, ten million workers join a general strike, and the walls of Paris fill with the slogans of a libertarian Marxism against party and state alike. The events fail as revolution and succeed as culture: May 1968 becomes the tradition's romantic memory in the West and the seed of its postmodern heirs.
Tagged: Marxism
The Event
- Date
- 1968 (exact)
- Era
- Crisis and After; Standard periodization of Marxist history
- Location
- Paris; today Paris, France
- Traditions
- Marxism
- Streams
- Marxism
- Key figures
- Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Primary Sources
- The posters and tracts of the Atelier Populaire and the Sorbonne occupation committees, Paris, May 1968.
Secondary Sources
- Anderson, Perry. Considerations on Western Marxism. London: New Left Books, 1976.
- Kolakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
- McLellan, David. Karl Marx: A Biography. London: Palgrave Macmillan, fourth edition, 2006.
Provenance: HIST-1465; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.
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World View
Marxism
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