The Melancholy Left by Bruno Bosteels

Under this subheading, borrowed from the Belgian Situationist Raoul Vaneigem, I would first like to present a series of facts and working hypotheses whose logic informs my analysis of 1968 as part of a critical history of the present. Though apparently trivial or banal, these facts and hypotheses, taken together, project a fairly consistent picture, as should be obvious from other attempts at conceptualization, such as Fredric Jameson's "Periodizing the 60s. "14 In each case, I indicate as much as possible the singularity of the student-popular movement in Mexico.

1. The understanding of 1968 requires a major revision of the Marxist-Leninist theory of the class struggle, according to which the masses make history but only classes organize the masses, just as politics would be the concentrated expression of economics according to a famous statement from Lenin. Instead of the party of vanguard intellectuals, the student movement proposes a series of spontaneous tactics, such as the mitines-relámpago (literally "meetings that strike like lightning") or "exemplary actions," based on the structure of the group, or grupúsculo, as the principal detonating mechanism-a concept on which the model of the foco of Guevara's guerrilla warfare left deep imprints, as did the Sartrean theory of the group in fusion. In Mexico, however, not all revolutionary thinkers share the global criticism of the party, even though they are witnesses to the various experiments in participatory democracy such as the brigadas or asambleas of the National Strike Council (CNH). Thus, as we saw, Revueltas in several posthumous texts from México 68: Juventud y revolución, still insists on the need for an authentic working-class party in the Marxist-Leninist sense, since no such party can be found in the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), let alone in Vicente Lombardo Toledano's Popular Socialist Party (PPS). Even so, starting in 1968, this theoretician of the Mexican Spartacists also expresses serious doubts about the structure of political organization as a result of the student movement. These are the typical unresolved doubts with regard to the alternative between party centralism and the autogestión of a council, assembly, or brigade; between direction from the outside or mobilization from below; or between the need for disciplined organization and the spontaneous capacities of the masses. The struggle, in other words, between Marx and Bakunin, or between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. "Even though the concept of autogestión was not explicitly developed as such by the Movement of the Generation of '68, it constitutes nevertheless its essential theoretical conquest," notes Revueltas. "I firmly believe that the Leninist theory of the party-as well as the theory of the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat-in light of the experiences of this second half of the twentieth century must and can be overcome. "15 The general trend of the student base, indeed, distances itself from the class struggle in the strict sense so as to approach new forms of spontaneous activism on the multiple fronts of direct democracy.