Peer-reviewed
Workers in a Repressive Society of Seductions: Parisian Metallurgists in May-June 1968
An examination of the actions of Parisian metallurgists in May-June 1968 reveals a working class uninterested in the global political and social project proposed by student and other revolutionaries. Instead, workers demonstrated their limited adaptation to what may be called the repressive society of seductions. Wage earners took advantage of the momentary weakness of state power in May to initiate the largest strike wave in French history. By June, state repression and the seductions of consumer society induced metal workers to return to their jobs. Thus a combination of coercion and the appeal of consumption forced and persuaded wage earners to reenter the factories. With the expansion of the mass market during the Fifth Republic, French workers entered an era where demands for commodities largely replaced any lingering revolutionary yearnings and proved much more popular than workers' control or autogestion
Article, 1993