By Yascha Mounk.
“Let us drop the deluded pretense that the defense of intellectual property is inherently conservative, or even reactionary.”
Why our society would be less egalitarian and artistic without intellectual property rights.
by: Thomas Meaney and Yascha Mounk
Religion, politics, and ignorance past: philosopher Charles Taylor in discussion with The Utopian.
By Nadia Urbinati.
(Translated by Yascha Mounk)
Race riots, Italian style. Why recent confrontations between immigrant workers and mafia clans might strengthen Italian democracy.
By Yascha Mounk.
The Utopian in dialogue with Gary Sick, former member of the US National Security Council; Richard Bulliet, Professor of History at Columbia University; and Dr. Eden Naby, Iranian dissident and commentator.
By Jürgen Habermas and Paolo Flores d’Arcais.
Habermas: “It’s not at all a forgone conclusion which party - the Church or I - can can invoke the right moral intuitions.”
An exchange between Jürgen Habermas and Paolo Flores d’Arcais.
By Yascha Mounk.
On the 40th anniversary of May 1968, a conversation with Dany Cohn-Bendit, Stanley Hoffmann and Irena Gross.
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Dany Cohn-Bendit, known as Dany le Rouge during his time as a leader of the May ‘68 protests in Paris, now is the Co-President of the Greens in the European Parliament.
Stanley Hoffmann, the leading supporter of student activists during the 1969 revolt at Harvard, is Paul and Catherine Buttenweiser University Professor at Harvard University.
Irena Gross, a student activist in Warsaw in 1968, is Executive Director of the Institute for Human Sciences at Boston University.
Do you feel that there was a global youth revolt in 1968, or were the goals of protestors in Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Cambridge (MA) very different?
STANLEY HOFFMANN: It always fascinated me that no great historian has written on the subject of contagion. When I think of revolution, that concept seems central. Certainly, when Harvard students rebelled in 1969, there was a constant reference backward: the spur, the incentive was 1968 in France. This contagion happened even before the age of the internet.
DANY COHN-BENDIT: First of all, 1968 was the first global media revolt. You didn’t need the internet to have mutual contamination. Secondly, the revolt of the 1960s was the revolt of the generation born after World War II, a revolt against the world built by the war generation. Even in communist countries it was the revolt of the generation born after the war against the form of communism instituted by the war generation. This is the core common element. That’s what the two types of anti-authoritarian revolt had in common.
Dany Cohn-Bendit, you recently said that we should forget ‘68, that ‘68 is over. Is the original meaning of 1968 lost? Should it be lost?
DANY COHN-BENDIT: Neither is it lost, nor should it be lost. We live in another world. ‘68 was a revolt in the world of the ’60s. That was the world of the Vietnam War. It was a very authoritarian, morally hypocritical society. That’s the world against which we revolted. And we succeeded. We succeeded culturally. We succeeded socially. And we lost politically. … I always say: ‘thank God!’
Today I say ‘forget ‘68’ not because I want to deny something, but because I don’t want to look back. We have to live, to fight in the world of today. In the 1960s, we were Promethean. The future was ours. We didn’t fear the future. We didn’t know unemployment - it didn’t exist. AIDS we didn’t know. Global warming we didn’t know. Globalisation as it now exists we didn’t know. So if today we talk about the necessity for a new political movement, we have to forget ‘68 because we live in a different world.
Why do you thank God you lost politically?
DANY COHN-BENDIT: Politically… there was a certain madness about ‘68. To fight for a free society and to have in mind the Cultural Revolution, you must be mad. Or if you want to fight for a better society and you have in mind Bolshevism, Leninism, Trotskyism or whatever, you must be mad. Or if you like, we were the anarchists, the libertarians…
STANLEY HOFFMANN: You cannot say ‘libertarian’ in America! It’s no good!
[Laughter]
DANY COHN-BENDIT: I’ll say it in French. We libertaires were for the Spanish Republicans in 1936, for the workers’ councils in the 1917 Revolution. We were for all the movements in history which lost. We were very sympathetic, but we already identified ourselves with the losers. We had the political part all muddled: our model was backward, crazy.
The anti-globalisation movement today, what is it saying? They’re saying that they want another world. But the question is: what is this other world? What is the future? To answer this question, it is wrong to look back at ‘68. Which doesn’t mean that ‘68 wasn’t important; it doesn’t mean that Carla Bruni’s husband is right in bashing the 1960s. But in our defence, we shouldn’t make the mistake of making ourselves nostalgic for the ’60s.
IRENA GROSSS: I want to ask you a question, Dany: we in Poland were immediately accused by the government of being the dupes of provocation. Even now people tell us: ‘you were being used, you were not really the actors’. So I wanted to ask you: did you feel that you were a real actor in history?
DANY COHN-BENDIT: Yes, we completely were. At that time, for us, we were making history. Most of … your life, history is making you. And this time, in our own minds… we thought we stopped the machine, and then we had the impression that we were going where we wanted to be going. But this charge of being manipulated, it’s very funny. I was accused by the communists of being an agent for the CIA. I was accused by de Gaulle of being an agent for the KGB. Later, when I went to Israel, I was accused of being an agent of the Arabs, and the Arabs accused me of being a Zionist agent. I was the perfect agent. It was wonderful!
But there’s something else behind this argument about being manipulated: they couldn’t stand that suddenly young people had their own ideas. This was out of their world. It was impossible. So behind it, they thought there must be another power.
STANLEY HOFFMANN: It’s still going on. Now you have the poor Tibetans who are accused of being manipulated by the Dalai Lama. To accuse their opponents of being manipulated is always the reaction of people in power.
Did the ‘68 movement fail because it had no clear political objective?
STANLEY HOFFMANN: I agree that politically ‘68 failed. If anything, then the immediate consequence, at least in France, was to consolidate the right. Yet I agree with Dany that at a cultural and social level, there were tremendous achievements.
DANY COHN-BENDIT: But this is the wrong question, and when you ask the wrong question, you get a wrong answer. In Germany and in the United States, you had a revolt: protests against the Vietnam War, against the structure of universities, etc. etc. But at no moment was the power question on the table. It was a revolt, a transformative process, and it still goes on. In France, you had a workers’ movement and it didn’t start with the unions. Factory by factory, the young workers went on strike. And then at the end, you had everybody with their own problems coming out with their demands against this society. By the end, you had the soccer players who stood up against the French Federation of Soccer and told them: ‘Soccer for the soccer player!’ This is a crucial demonstration of what happened to French society. And those in power didn’t understand what was really going on.
The problem is that power did not interest the majority of people in the streets. The police were in so much trouble that they didn’t even protect the ministries. You could have stormed the Finance Ministry, but that didn’t interest anyone except the lefties. The lefties had it in their dreams that you must take the Winter Palace. And de Gaulle, too, saw that the question of power was on the table. He was thinking about power. But not the people: the people just wanted to take power over their own lives. Political power was not their problem.
De Gaulle’s genius move was to call elections. You had de Gaulle on one side, and on the other side you had the Communists - the socialists hardly existed at that time, and we said ‘election is betrayal.’ So de Gaulle said ‘it’s me or the Communists.’ So of course he won politically.
We lost politically because the political outcome of the movement was not the question for us. Though, if you like, this started a complete transformation of political life in France. The result of ‘68 in France was Mitterand, but it took twelve years.
IRENA GROSS: If I may add another aspect to this: even though it was leftist and paid lip-service to Trotskyism and all those ideologies, ‘68 really was an anti-communist movement. In Poland, in 1968, communism was finished off: with the invasion of Czechoslovakia, communism committed suicide. It was a real victory - our victory, in a sense - because this proved to us that state communism was not modifiable, that it needed to be abandoned. Within two or three years the movement towards workers’ defence councils started.
DANY COHN-BENDIT: Communism started to die in 1968, but it took another twenty years.
IRENA GROSS: Look at the difference between Gomulka and Gerek. The Gerek government, which started in 1970, was already completely non-ideological. There was not a single communist in Poland in 1970, not a single one. People who joined the Communist Party joined it only for opportunistic reasons. Until 1968, communism was a corpse with some vitality, but afterwards it was just dead. So, despite everything, I consider 1968 a huge victory.
What was special about 1968 in Germany, in view of its history?
DANY COHN-BENDIT: It’s very interesting that it is in Germany that you have the harshest books about ‘68. Götz Aly - who was part of it all in the ’60s - wrote a book called Unser Kampf, which argues that the ‘68 movement were Hitler’s children.
The 1968 movement in Germany challenged a closed society. It was an anti-authoritarian movement, and it was a movement against the handling of Germany’s history by their parents. This was one of the most difficult things. It wasn’t merely abstract: for most people, it was about their own parents, their own grandparents. What does it mean to ask your own mother, your own father what they did? It sounds easy, but if you’re at the dinner table, and you start this debate….
That’s what was special about the German movement. The French never did this. The French never asked questions about the collaboration; every Frenchman was part of the Resistance. The French Maoists in the ’60s called themselves la nouvelle resistance; they could identify themselves with the good parts of French history.
What do you see as the legacy of 1968 for political and social action today? What role does the street have to play in this?
STANLEY HOFFMANN: I don’t see any political or social action happening today. I really don’t. In any case, nothing of any substance. But I am not too pessimistic about that. There are periods in art, in music, when nothing happens. Then, suddenly, there is a revival. Afterwards, everybody explains why it was inevitable.
DANY COHN-BENDIT: I don’t agree that because the discourse is empty today, nothing will happen. For example, you could say that in the United States today, you have symptoms of something new. I don’t want to overcharge Barack Obama, but what stands behind him is interesting because it is a movement of people who want real change. They believe in it. If America elected a black Democrat man, that has a real significance forty-five years after civil rights. I was in New York in 1964 and if you would have said at that time ‘in fifty years you’ll have a black president’, everyone would have said that you were completely mad. And this is a big change in society. It’s a positive sign in a negative time.
Isn’t it striking, though, that each of you is putting your hopes for change on a figurehead rather than on a social movement?
STANLEY HOFFMANN: But Lincoln was a candidate for elections, and FDR was a candidate for elections. There are moments when it’s important to win elections.
DANY COHN-BENDIT: I don’t know where America would be without the New Deal, and the New Deal was not started by trades unions!
But first, there is a movement. You have a lot of people. Even against the war in Iraq, you have people - more and more people - who say it’s enough. And in an election year it’s possible, suddenly, for the hopes of all people to converge. There’s a whole lot of people working with Obama. This is not just about one man: there is a momentum - not his momentum - in American society.
STANLEY HOFFMANN: There’s certainly an enthusiasm among volunteers which has not happened for a long time.
DANY COHN-BENDIT: When you compare things, you always get things wrong. But there is one example. Remember when, after the 1960s, all the hope for reform in Germany was on Willy Brandt? A lot of young people were mobilised by him, by his speech ‘mehr Demokratie wagen’ [‘dare more democracy’]. This was a movement the significance of which was also the hope for change at a political level.
Finally, with the title of this magazine in mind, do you think there’s a role for utopianism today?
DANY COHN-BENDIT: I think we need utopia. I can tell you utopian things about how to regulate globalisation, socially and ecologically; about how to transform the governments of the world, and the United Nations. I could talk to you about how you can organise work differently. I have a lot of utopian ideas.
My problem is that if you want to go to parliament, don’t tell me that you are a utopian. In parliament, you have to organise a daily majority. In the political struggles with the Fundis [the left wing of Germany’s Green Party], it wasn’t about whether I’m for or against utopia: it’s about what it means to be a utopian in parliament - nothing!
What, then, could be the role of utopia in politics today?
STANLEY HOFFMANN: To think of a different organisation of work remains as important today as it always was for the socialists. And environmental problems. And the reform of the UN. So there are all kinds of things which require utopian thinking. Some will never be done: others will be done piecemeal.
There, too, I think the American elections will be very important. It will affect the willingness of the American establishment to recognise that the West can’t dictate everything, because the world has changed completely.
DANY COHN-BENDIT: I can give you one utopian dream. Imagine Obama or Hillary [as president] goes to the United Nations and says: ‘we have to reform the UN and as a sign of goodwill we would accept the suppression of our veto.’ This would be a bombshell. Then you really are at the heart of the question of how to govern the world in this and the next century…
This is a dream. But to say ‘I wish this. I can’t say whether it will be. I don’t want to discuss whether it’s realistic. I want to discuss whether it’s just or unjust to suppress the veto right.’ That’s utopian.
STANLEY HOFFMANN: One might imagine moving piecemeal - to say that there should be no veto in certain situations, such as when there are massive violations of human rights. You could still use a veto when national security is at stake, or…
DANY COHN-BENDIT: Ok. Then you start to talk about how you can make it happen. But… I was astonished about a lot of lefties’ reactions to the Kosovan issue. They said that you can’t recognise Kosovo because it is against international law, that it had to go through the UN. I said: ‘Ok, to the Security Council! So if you do it like this, you say that international law is made by Putin.’ You could say the same about Israel. If you want to condemn Israel for the occupation, you can’t because international law is made by the US. You have to get away from this. I was astonished that so few of us, concerning Kosovo, suggested that we should vote for it in the General Assembly - like Israel was voted for.
STANLEY HOFFMANN: Amusingly enough, in 1950, the Americans went to the General Assembly in order to be able to intervene in North Korea.
DANY COHN-BENDIT: So you have to be utopian, and then you have to do politics. I want you to put utopia where it should be. But if you are bargaining in a parliament, don’t talk to me about being utopian, because it’s not true, you know.
STANLEY HOFFMANN: It can still inspire the little steps…
The interview was conducted by Yascha Mounk, co-founder and editor of The Utopian.
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The Utopian is a critically acclaimed, cutting-edge magazine on philosophy, politics and culture.Our past contributors have included Jürgen Habermas, Michel Houellebecq and Michael Walzer, among many others.
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