The Explosion: Marxism and the French Upheaval

Contents: 1. Events and situations. 2. On Marxist thought. 3. On the need for theory. 4. The revolutionary crisis. 5. French society in 1968. 6. Three tendencies. 7. Contestation, spontaneity, violence. 8. Strategies for outflanking and the outflanking of strategies. 9. On dual power. 10. On self-management. 11. The world situation. 12. Urban phenomena. 13. “Mutation”. 14. Alternative or Alibi? 15. Old and new contradictions: theses and hypotheses. 16. The twofold status of knowledge (social and theoretical).

“Events belie forecasts,“ the author begins, and the French events of the spring of 1968 laid waste the forecasts of sociologists and political scientists throughout the world. In this remarkable analysis, Henri Lefebvre took hold of both the immediate importance and the long-range significance of the movement which began at Nanterre, where he taught sociology at the University of Paris. Professor Lefebvre rehearses for the reader the full sweep of Marxist thinking about social change, and investigates carefully and critically the work of Herbert Marcuse in the light of the French explosion. His thought ranges far beyond the streets of Paris, taking as the starting point issues raised by the radical student movement and ultimately presenting a significant new theory about the nature of power and politics under condition of modern capitalism.”