Wind from the East (1970) - full transcript
As usual every May, we
went to see my father's family.
Near Dodge City,
my uncle now managed aluminum
exploitation for the Alcoa company.
We stayed some way out of town,
on an estate he had bought
from the bank manager.
The house was in a park,
surrounded by a white fence.
It wasn't big, but was so diverse
I never finished exploring it.
We dined every night at eight.
On Friday, my uncle didn't
return home - we waited all night.
It was Saturday lunch when we heard
the miners had locked him in his office.
Strike.
Strike.
Strike.
Listen, madam, you're
jumping to conclusions.
Think it over. Things
don't happen by themselves.
There was already general discontent
about the bad working conditions.
The union delegate.
My father wouldn't
let us go out anymore.
The workers were very restless
and anything could have happened.
One night in the library, I overheard a
conversation between Dad and Uncle Sam.
My father said that times had changed,
that the workers worked
much less and earned much more,
and that since the formation of unions,
the real exploited one was the employer.
Father said the workers even "suffered"
from eating chicken every Sunday.
They were used to the hard
work and uncomfortable homes,
they didn't suffer from it
as much as we would.
Anyway, father continued, shrugging
his shoulders, nobody died of hunger.
And if the workers hate the bourgeoisie,
it must mean they are jealous.
And jealousy, Dad said,
is a mean feeling.
Uncle Sam agreed
in theory but not in practice:
he reckoned the
trade union was useful,
that you had to negotiate,
but with the right people.
The union delegate.
The real workers were
against any kind of unrest.
We want to explain in public
the illegitimacy of...
Revisionism.
We do not support violence.
We will not break
the rules of democracy.
We believe, on the contrary,
that it is possible to
change society peacefully.
Yes, but listen,
in spite of everything...
incredible things are happening.
I know you have no part in them.
Who poisoned the horses?
Who set fire to the printing works?
Who looted the Nixon Hotel, because
the proprietor denounced them?
Then there's a teacher who's said to be
open to new ideas. She lives by them.
Want to know what I think?
She's a whore.
But madam, if things
had not been so serious,
the talk and activities of these pseudo-
revolutionaries would seem ludicrous.
But you're right really.
We shouldn't underestimate the
effect of their shameful activities,
which create unrest,
doubt and scepticism
among a lot of the workers,
especially the younger ones.
In fact, their activities are part
of a series of lies
uttered without the consent of the true
representatives of the people's interests.
Yes, but listen, as I said,
there are still strange things happening,
which were unthinkable 3 months ago.
- The active minorities.
- The people are afraid.
It's difficult to tell
whether or not the
revolution is going to spread.
Like all reasonable people,
I'm very puzzled by all this.
My servant said to me this morning:
"Stop, we've had enough violence. "
General assembly.
In what we've heard, there are two
voices which lie and two which stammer.
The stammering voices talk about
striking, social democracy and revisionism,
active minorities
and general assemblies.
The lying voices talk about the
desperate state of affairs,
general dissatisfaction, good people
who are frightened, and honest workers.
Quite right. But where will
all this stupid violence get us?
They've destroyed the printing works.
Result: no more objective news.
They've set fire to the Nixon Hotel.
Result: the businessmen
are frightened
and have formed armed groups,
supported with money from the banks.
In fact, it's all
the leftists' fault
that the monopolists have
gained control of everything.
Stop these provocateurs, they're
the reactionaries' best agents.
Repression.
We condemn the brutal repression
of the workers.
We demand the immediate cessation
of this repression,
the liberation of prisoners...
Repeat this phrase.
... the disarmament...
the disarmament of armed bands,
and the reopening of discussions
about the future...
about the future of the city.
In response to the shooting
on Saturday night,
we have decided to open...
to open the fight against authority
by calling...
by calling a general strike
of two hours.
And organizing demonstrations
in which the whole population
will not fail
to participate massively.
Stop the repression.
Freedom.
Freedom. Democracy.
Active strike.
But what's going on? What?
You block work, in front of the
factory, without telling your comrades?
You are behaving like children!
If you go on like this,
you'll end up worse off,
if not dead!
Is this what you want?
Civil war?
Stop fooling around. Trust those
responsible for you. That's why we're here.
Active strike.
I told you things were
going from bad to worse.
You'll be completely
overpowered, too.
If it comes to that,
there's only the army left.
It can't last.
The two voices
have continued to lie,
the two others
have continued to stammer.
Which one is ours? How can
we find out? What to do?
The two voices have continued to lie,
the two others have continued to stammer.
Which one is ours? How can we
find out? What to do?
Today, the question
"What to do?"
poses itself forcefully
to the militant filmmaker.
He no longer agitates
for people to choose a course,
he agitates for them to determine
to determine what must
be done practically, practically.
on a road the history of revolutionary
struggle teaches them to understand.
On a road which history
teaches them to understand.
Yes, what to do?
Make a film, for example.
That means asking oneself,
"Where are we?"
And what does it mean to ask the question
"Where are we?" for a militant filmmaker?
And what does it mean to ask the question
"Where are we?" for a militant filmmaker?
It means first of all
opening a parenthesis
and devoting yourself to the
history of revolutionary cinema.
Of revolutionary cinema.
Victory of revolutionary
cinema, July 19, 1920.
After the speech by Comrade Lenin at the
2nd Congress of the 3rd Internationale,
on the main stage of
the International Communist
Comrade Dziga Vertov
declares to the tribune:
"We bolshevist filmmakers know it
is impossible for a film to exist
"outside the context of
the class system.
"We know film production is a secondary
task, and our program is very simple:
"to see and show the world in the
name of the people's world revolution.
"The people make history.
"The films of the
Western hemisphere
"only portray elegant
ladies and gentlemen.
"The requirement is always
imposed on the actors,
"under the pretext they must
accent feelings and instincts,
"to manifest only ideas
accepted by the bourgeoisie,
"to unscrupulously represent
"the degenerate bourgeois way of life,
under the cover of their makeup. "
Defeat for revolutionary
cinema, November 18, 1924.
A few days after
the death of Lenin,
Sergei Eisenstein was deeply moved
by a performance of Intolerance,
a film by the American
imperialist Griffith.
Result: in 1925,
mistaking primary duty
for secondary duty,
Eisenstein made a film about the
sailors of the battleship Potemkin,
instead of glorifying the
people's struggle of the moment.
Result: in 1929,
in The General Line, on the
subject of agrarian reform,
while Eisenstein uses new terms
to describe the Tsarist oppression,
he still uses old expressions
to talk about collectivism.
In his case, the old triumphs
definitively over the new.
Result: Five years later,
Hollywood pays for his journey
to film the Mexican revolution,
while in Berlin, Dr. Goebbels
urges the directors of UFA
to produce a Nazi Potemkin.
"The Future of the
French Communist Party"
The dialectic of history is such that
the theoretical triumph of Marxism
forces its enemies
to pose as Marxists.
To pose as Marxists.
To pose as Marxists.
To pose as Marxists.
To pose as Marxists.
Defeat of revolutionary
cinema, November 17, 1935.
Speech by Comrade Stalin at the 1st
Conference of Russian Stakhanoviks:
confused by the
obscurity of this speech,
Comrade Dziga Vertov forgets that
politics commands the economy.
His film The Eleventh Year
became a hymn to economic progress, not the
11-year-old dictatorship of the proletariat.
The dictatorship of the proletariat.
It was then that revisionism finally
found its way into the Soviet cinema.
The revolution advances in disguise.
False victory of revolutionary
cinema, August 29, 1962.
Renouncing all initiative,
the progressive states of Africa elect
to rely on the West for their films,
thus giving white Christians the right
to talk about Negroes and Arabs.
Algiers - Pontecorvo, Klein;
Konakry - Soci?t? Coma?ico.
While civil wars and popular
movements bring the imperialists down,
the imperialists
creep back via the camera,
thus endangering the revolution.
The ideas of the ruling class always
dominate the rest of the population.
In other words, the class which is the
dominant material power in society
is also the dominant cultural power.
The class controlling the material means
of production controls at the same time
the intellectual
means of production.
Thus the ideas of those people
who are deprived of the
intellectual means of production
can be said to be
repressed by the ruling class.
Victory of revolutionary
cinema, February 2, 1966.
Editorial in Red Flag.
Comrade Tian-Tsin denounces the theory
that the truth must be written,
denounces the great road of realism,
denounces the theory of "average" characters,
denounces the theory of opposition
to the decisive role of the subject.
February 2, 1966: birth of
the materialist feature film.
We are never completely the
contemporaries of our own times.
History advances in disguise.
It fills the screen with the
mask of the preceding sequence,
and we no longer recognize
anything about the film.
The fault is not with history, but our
vision, cluttered with images and sounds.
We see and hear the past
superimposed on the present,
even though the
present is a revolution.
Wind from the East
Today the question "What to do?" poses
itself forcefully to the militant.
He no longer agitates for
people to choose a course,
he agitates for them
to determine, to determine
what must be done
practically, practically
on a road the history of revolutionary
struggle teaches them to understand.
On a road which history
teaches them to understand.
This road -
strikes, social democracy,
general meetings, repression.
This road -
what have we achieved?
Daring to recognize it, thinking,
means knowing what to do.
1 - The Strike
Tuesday, June 3, 14:00 hours.
On several workers' initiative, and after
a good deal of discussion among the workers,
a general strike has been decided,
whose aims have been
explained in a leaflet.
Water.
For most workers,
the overtime allowance varies
from 0 to 20 hours in two weeks.
Some of us
worked in pretty
rough conditions to get...
Water.
... between 0 and 10
hours allowance,
which comes to about
350 francs for two weeks.
From the beginning,
the strike was supported by 80%
of the workers on the night shift,
13:00 - 22:00 hours.
Water.
On Wednesday at 4:30
in the morning,
the workers demanded that
the second-shift workers, who had
not taken part in the discussions,
should join the movement.
A bit later, it was reported that a
meeting of the second-shift workers
had also decided to strike,
supported by 90% of the workers.
On Thursday the 5th,
at 5 in the morning,
the strike committee decided
to go on with the strike.
Leaflets were distributed.
"Appeal to the workers:
"We will carry on the
strike until we win.
"They are trying to
divide the two shifts.
"Let's take our decisions together.
"Our grievances are the same. "
What do you want?
What does he want?
He wants better working conditions.
And more pay.
You see, he is a poor Indian.
His wife is sick, his sons are sick.
In my opinion, we can even
come to an agreement.
I can look into it, but...
once we get to the camp...
As you like. You are
responsible for that.
As long as he is taken
to the concentration camp.
There are rumors of a strike.
The rumors say that
their claims will be met.
Who started these rumors?
The union delegate.
They say that 80% of the workers
have gone back to work,
that only a few are
carrying on with the strike.
Who started this rumor?
The union delegate.
They talk about "agitators" - the bosses'
word for the workers starting the struggle.
Who uses this word?
The union delegate.
The delegate translates the working class
struggle into the language of the bosses.
When the union delegate
translates, he betrays.
This cannot be explained as pure chance, or
as the fault of some individual or group,
or as the result of circumstances
or national traditions.
There are definite reasons
inherent in the economic regime
in the development
of all capitalist countries
which make this treachery possible.
The union delegate's failure is the
failure of socialistic opportunism,
the failure of social democracy:
this is revisionism.
This is a product of the
so-called peaceful phase
in the development
of the workers' movement.
During this period, the working class
acquires weapons for the struggle:
recourse to the process of
parliament and legal possibilities,
creation of economic and
political mass organizations,
as well as the availability
of a large workers' press.
On the other hand, this period risks
the tendency to deny class struggle
and to advance the social peace.
Translation - treason.
Certain groups within
the working classes -
the bureaucrats and aristocrats
of the workers movement
who benefitted from the fruits of
the Third World's exploitation
and the advantageous position of their
own country in the world markets -
certain groups within
the working classes,
and their petit-bourgeois associates
from the heart of the Communist Party,
form the main social
support for this tendency.
And they have become the bearers of
bourgeois influence on the proletariat.
2 - The Delegate
Not only have military and repressive forces
in no way disbanded,
but the mass of people are opposed
to continued revolutionary exploits.
Many of their grievances
have been satisfied.
Today, to prepare work is a victory.
Translation - treason.
When the union
delegate speaks, he lies.
Example:
"The task of the new political
power of the working class
"and its allies is the creation of a
new economy and a new way of life,
"that is, a socialist way of life.
"The realization of this
grand and gigantic task
"requires the broadest and most
active participation of the masses
"in the management of public affairs.
"Socialism does not only mean
"the liberation of the worker
from capitalist exploitation:
"it represents, and must create,
"a democracy superior
to all bourgeois democracy. "
"Encouraged by the
results achieved so far
"and knowing the road
which is still left to travel,
"we shall put all our
energy into the fight...
"and bring to a victorious end...
"the work of the united
vital forces in the nation. "
3 - The Active Minorities
He talks, he talks, he talks.
Escapades, provocation,
it's always the same.
We were forced to do something
because the person claiming to
represent us never did anything.
All he did was talk to the bosses.
What to do?
We need a different sort of strike.
All you need is to write
a pamphlet for the workers.
Tomorrow, we'll distribute
it at the factory gates.
Then the students will see
that the workers get up early.
Then at least the students will
see that the workers get up early.
Then at least the workers will
see that the students get up early.
What to do? Think left.
Read Lenin's text,
generally used by the revisionists to
denounce those of the Left as agitators.
Note that Lenin does not confuse a
primary danger with a secondary one.
Agree with Lenin
that the primary danger
lies in social-democratic treason
and the secondary danger in leftism,
the childish, infantile
illness of Communism.
Note that Lenin spoke of workers'
leftism and not student leftism.
Starting from this, attack,
whenever and wherever it occurs,
leftism in Leninist positions.
For the good of all, we
we must learn from past faults.
There are always people who
struggle against the innovations
of a mass revolution,
believing always and above all
that none of them will succeed.
One always stands in the way
of a new revolutionary order...
... by looking for help and
guidance in conventional standards
and established customs.
The Active Minorities
This woman is called Suzanne Monet,
wife of the famous painter Claude Monet.
In 1903 she publishes in the Figaro
an open letter to the
President of the Republic,
protesting against the striking
railwaymen who kept her husband
from entering the Gare St. Lazare
to finish his painting.
In 1925, this woman is called
Scarlett Faulkner from
Louisville, Alabama.
A known nymphomaniac, she
accuses farmhand Eldridge Cleaver
of having raped her several times.
The local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan
carries out the immediate
execution of the horrible criminal.
In 1936, this woman
is called Ines Mussolini.
married to the Spanish representative
of the Schneider-Krupp group.
She welcomes Franco's
troops into Barcelona
after liberating Catalonia from the
Anarchists and the workers' councils.
In 1969, she is
called Rachel Darnev,
graduated in chemical analysis from the
Vise-Farben University in Nuremberg.
She specializes in the napalming
of Palestinian farmers
in the Naplouse and Gaza area,
who refuse to leave their land.
This man's name is Ren? Andrieu.
He is editor-in-chief of l'Humanit?.
In 1871 he proposes to the Central
Committee of the Paris Commune
that the red flag and
the tricolor should be united.
In response, a worker called
Varland proposes that he be shot.
Disappointed, Ren? Andrieu
escapes to Versailles.
In 1933, this man's
name is Luigi Dubcek.
As a member of the
Politburo of the KPD,
the German Communist Party,
he appeals to his Jewish comrades
to react peacefully and sensibly
to the demonstration
organized by Nazi stormtroopers
outside the offices
of the newspaper Vorwelt.
In 1945, this man
is called Maurice Duclos.
He is one of three communist
ministers in de Gaulle's government.
As such, he appeals to all
partisans to lay down their arms.
A year later these weapons are
used by the employers to put down
a strike by European miners.
In 1969, this man's name
is Vladimir Brezhnev.
As commander of the
battleship Potemkin, he offers
his ship to Admiral Foster Dulles
to help locate the remains of American spy
planes shot down over North Korean territory.
The Active Minorities
4 - The General Assembly
During a General Assembly the
camera is at everyone's disposal.
For repression, the proposal is...
a newspaper image...
You are agreeing with me. It's a
form of Soviet realism that you propose.
Well then, let's get
to the bottom of this...
I say that I'm going even further.
So we've got to find the right approach...
Given that the problem - Stalin's
picture - is already in the film...
Don't just say the first thing
that comes into your head.
But the question of Stalin's
portrayal does arise.
He is in the film.
Do you feel repressed by this image?
What do we hear?
What do we see?
Images of people arguing,
confused sounds,
parts of a poster of Stalin and Mao.
Why these images?
Why these sounds?
Why this ever-changing relationship
between images and sounds?
The intention was to talk about
what we experienced in May '68.
In factories, in universities,
in offices, comrades held meetings
and formed organizations.
In spite of confusion during
discussions, they still made progress.
How can we account for this?
How can we discover
truth in this confusion?
How can we get to the
truth correctly?
A number of comrades
quickly turned to film production.
In relation to the rest of the group,
they became an active minority.
When, after the strike,
social democracy, etc. became a matter
of discussing the general assembly,
the comrades immediately
came up with a solution.
To call a general assembly, because
that was the best way to discuss it -
to call one, where the main subject
would be the continuation of the film.
This meant a discussion of the
making of the images and sounds,
which in the film would depict the same
scenes of the general assembly.
In May and June '68 in France,
today in France,
Italy, Spain, Mexico, etc...
the established powers respond to these
revolutionary groups with repression.
The filming of the general assembly was
therefore the filming of a general assembly
which debated the following sequence,
in which the making of images and
sounds of this repression is discussed.
The editing of the corresponding
analyses of this discussion
would make it possible to understand
the working of the general assembly.
Which image of repression did the
comrades immediately propose?
A poster of Stalin and Mao, wanted
for murder by the capitalists.
Why Stalin?
Because for these comrades, what is
usually called the Stalin problem,
like it or not, is part of
the revolutionary movement.
How do you explain that?
I'm not saying that he is Stalin,
but that others accept him as Stalin.
One rejects Stalin, but one finds
oneself in a Stalinist situation.
Stalinist, precisely because...
They've excluded all the characters
who were to have been seen in the film.
But we know that.
Consequently, this is a film which
collaborates with Papadopoulos.
Thus we take as our image,
we take as our image...
we take as our image,
we take as our image...
"Wanted for Murder, " posted
up by Gian Maria Volonte.
And here we should have...
an image which has...
not been used before, give the
discussion you have just witnessed.
Party secretary,
there, for instance,
at that place in the film, is
something that goes back to Stalin,
and which we're up to the neck in -
that is "realism" which...
What is it called now?
Socialist realism.
China. The poor farmers of the
Kiung-Tsing production brigade
meet to denounce the revisionist
counter-revolutionary course being
taken in the medical and sanitary fields.
Egypt. The workers of the armament
factory at Elouan are uniting
to demand punishment for the bureaucrat who
collaborated with the Israeli imperialists.
France. Workers unite at the
C. S. F. in Issyles-Moulineaux
to denounce the behavior of a
permanent representative of the C. G. T.
who threatens to attack the Marxist-
Leninists by name in a pamphlet,
thus exposing them to repressive
measures by the employer.
To see the general assembly
only as a debating society
is to see it as an abstraction.
Because who is speaking
and against whom?
Each general assembly is specific.
It reflects the country's conflicts and is
militant. Who speaks and against whom?
In China: the masses against a handful
of leaders attached to capitalism.
In Egypt: the masses against
the military bureaucracy,
who exploit the people and are
supported by Soviet revisionists.
In France: the masses against
the French revisionists
who are in league with
the capitalist exploiters.
All general assemblies
resemble one another,
because in each country,
in a qualitatively different manner,
the same enemies are confronted.
Each country is a
country of our era -
the era of the crisis of imerialism
and modern revisionism,
the era of the collaboration of
imperialism and modern revisionism,
the era of their common opposition
against revolutionary movements.
Every general assembly asks
today the question of our era -
the question of the history of imperialism,
the question of the history of revisionism,
and to pose the question of
the real history of revisionism
is to pose seriously what is usually
referred to as the Stalin question.
That is, to no longer focus
on the image of Stalin,
but to try to analyze the
classes of Soviet society,
from the beginning of the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
The most disgusting aspect of cinema
is that the bourgeoisie and
Stalin have the same attitude.
This leads to images and sounds
of a particular sort being made.
This can be seen in our own
practice and right here
where nobody feels
like having any fun.
Jean-Luc says that within the party this
problem hasn't been resolved. It's not true.
Yes, it is true. A badly expressed
problem, a wrong solution.
To really put problems forward.
Example: to analyze
in class terms the effect
of the speech of
June 23, 1931, about
"New situations, new tasks for
strengthening the economy. "
Example: '37-'38.
At the request of Comrade Stalin, Sergei
Eisenstein begins shooting Bezhin Meadow,
about the struggle
for rural socialization.
'37-'38. Spanish Civil War.
With anarchist militia, peasant farmers
organize immediate partition of the land.
They are liquidated in the
fight against anarchism
by the political commissars of
the Spanish Communist Party,
who mechanically apply the
directives of the Internationale.
To ask the question "why" is also
to ask the question "against whom?"
Stalinist images. Just
consider the problem.
In everything that's happened, positive
aspect: showing an image is nothing,
that there is no image in itself,
that there is no image outside
the context of the class struggle.
Having shown this
with an image of Stalin.
Negative aspect: not having
found the right image,
that is, necessary and sufficient.
Stalin and Mao wanted
for murder by the capitalists -
that was a necessary, but
inadequate image of repression.
We must find other images of repression,
the only ones we can make at present.
The Humphry laboratories have refused to
develop film about the dockers on strike,
shot by the strikers themselves.
Three days after the Yankee ambassador's
kidnapping, Brazil restored the death penalty.
In Marrakesh, an extremist
right-wing commando
machine-gunned, with full government
support, a progressive students' meeting.
6 - The Active Strike
Marcel, we've been striking 4 weeks. I write
this letter, not knowing if it'll reach you,
because our comrades at the post office
are striking, but not for long, I think.
While the unions are overtly asking
for more support for the movement,
they are exerting influence to
return essential sectors to work.
And when the post and railway
services go back to work,
we'll all go back little by little,
whether we want to or not.
That's clear, anyway. In your
situation you see the same thing.
But what can we do
to make things change?
We've lasted 4 weeks and
that's a victory for us.
Out of 2000, there are roughly
900 continuing the sit-in in shifts.
I say victory, though in fact I
don't know how things are with you.
Anyway, 500 yards from our factory, at Mazda,
Givelaud and Alasef, the situation is different.
The first day the C. G. T.
delegate told the guys:
"Good, we're stopping work. Go home. When
we reach an agreement, we'll let you know. "
Ten or 20 opposed the move and
stayed and occupied the factory.
But they were
deserted by the cowards.
At our place 900 took part in the
occupation. At first this was enough.
About 800 of the guys had worked in
the same factory five or ten years,
though they'd never
participated before.
This made it possible to get things
done and also to start discussions.
Everyone who'd taken part in strikes and
occupations said something had changed.
Sure, some were more concerned with playing
cards and football, and chasing the women.
That too was new -
the many girls that were there.
It lasted three weeks. We
discussed things seriously,
talked politics, not just about demanding
workshop 45's lavatory window be replaced.
All this scared the union officials.
We also met students.
For the strike leaders,
though, all this was good.
They forced the C. G. T. officials
to allow students into the canteen.
Sure, this often didn't mean much, because
they spoke language you couldn't understand.
Some of them would talk for hours,
until everybody got fed up.
That's the negative. The positive is these
people fought, and said interesting things,
and that people from outside
prevented the sit-in from weakening.
But now, after 4 weeks, our
number has hardly increased.
Last weekend some went home, people
who were there from the beginning.
Their wife, their kids...
Sure, that's normal.
Despite this, last weekend there were
still over 100 occupying the factory.
People's interest in the ballot was
pretty low - cards were very popular.
Then I thought of something
one of the students had told us.
At the C. S. F. in Brest, some workers
had apparently gone back to work
to make transistors themselves, and exchanged
them with farmers for vegetables and poultry.
His story sounded a bit strange,
but when we wanted to know
more about it, he got all involved,
which shows it's impossible
to get any information.
He called it active striking, and said it was
the only way to prevent the strike weakening,
the only way to hit employers hard and
pose concrete problems about power.
When I thought of the workshops
and the fighting spirit of the people,
it seemed we should be able to keep the
factory going ourselves, without technicians.
They didn't really know
what to make of it.
Some agreed with it, while
others just said I was dreaming,
but they couldn't really say why.
I thank you for your reply,
and I hope to see you soon.
I better go - Monday, the managers
and scabs will be round again,
shouting they want to get back in,
in the name of freedom to work.
Shit, I hope there'll be enough of
us to shut them up. Good-bye.
Hello, this is Jean-Pierre
Peugeot. Who's speaking?
Strike committee.
Listen, young woman, I'm
being polite. Who are you?
Strike committee.
I've told you who I am: Jean-Pierre
Peugeot. Now who are you?
Strike committee.
I want to know who I'm talking to.
Strike committee.
Jean-Pierre Peugeot here. Are you
frightened of saying who you are?
Strike committee.
Gerard, I got your letter.
As it happened, it came after
we'd started work again.
We think you're mistaken. You say you
want to show you can do without technicians.
You forget it's not just technical division
of labor, but also social-technical division.
and by working only from
your own point of view,
you are doing just what
the capitalists want.
The Chinese say: "Have a revolution
and organize production. "
Good. They also say:
"First make the revolution to
organize production differently. "
Even if you did organize an active
strike so your guys could go on working,
it'd still only be a temporary
strike, though of a different kind.
OK. I read in the papers that our
comrades at Pirelli did the same thing.
But it led to nothing more
than the loss of 50 million
for those in power.
We must organize ourselves to fight
the power of the bourgeois state,
against its cops, its
army which attacks us
to keep us in order -
7 - The Police State
the old order, the same old crap.
Defeat - Provocation
I robbed the First National City Bank -
$50,000.
I shot the driver of the
Lightedfoot to Heroklod train.
I kidnapped the son of
the director of Citro?n.
I shot dead the Sheriff of West Berlin.
So we have the same enemies.
I'd like to get together
with you to find out
why we have the same enemies
and why we must continue the fight.
New Defeat - New Provocation
Speak!
Why do you exploit the
sexuality of the proletariat?
Why do you give back in words what
you've already given back in deeds?
Speak! Speak!
A week of struggle.
Saturday the 17th,
the iron mines of
Anderny-Chevillon.
24-hour strike against
the latest dismissals.
Monday the 19th,
Vendel-Sibelon Ayot.
Strike for a wage increase
of 0. 80 francs an hour.
Three out of nine
blast furnaces are shut down.
Tuesday the 20th,
National Institute of Astronomy
and Geophysics. Strike by 150
technicians for job security.
Wednesday the 21st,
Liquid Air.
The steel-workers strike against
the intrigues of union officials.
Thursday the 22nd,
Maudit paper-mill in Quimper.
Provocation through disorder.
Insult.
New provocation. New insult.
Until their downfall.
That is the logic of the imperialists
and reactionaries of the world.
They'll never change this logic.
New strike against
the dismissal of militants.
Friday the 23rd,
Lyc?e Bergson, Paris 19.
The Lyc?e has been closed by the
Rector of the Academy of Paris
and plain-clothes police
guard the various entrances.
Struggle. Defeat. New struggle. And so
to victory. Such is the people's logic.
The rashness of revolutionaries has
always been the policeman's best ally.
Don't go directly to meeting-places.
Make a detour through a less busy
street to make sure you're not followed.
Write as little as possible.
Train yourself to
remember addresses.
In case of emergency, remember a
Christian name is better than a surname,
and an initial is better
than a Christian name.
Make appointments over the
phone only with small talk.
Don't try to find out what
you should not know.
Remember that the enemy
is capable of anything.
Never be misled when they say:
"We know everything. "
This is never true.
Before the police
or legal authorities,
never give in to the unhealthy,
idealistic bourgeois habit
of establishing or
re-establishing the truth.
In this fight there is no common truth
between the exploiting and exploited class.
Fight, defeat.
Another fight, another defeat.
Another fight, and so to victory.
Such is the people's logic -
the people's logic - and they
will never go against this logic.
But how shall we
recognize one another?
Not only recognize one another,
but also let oneself be recognized.
Right. All we have
to do is make armbands.
May 1st
Struggle:
Madrid Cordoba Peking Watts
Spectacle:
Moscow Paris Bucharest Algiers
Right. But that's not
everything. What color?
Listen. Look.
Second part of the film.
You have shown a mechanism: the strike,
the delegate, the general assembly,
repression, police state, etc.
The real movement,
May '68 France,
'68-'69 Italy,
you have made a film.
How did you make it?
Now critique, now
struggle, now transform.
Don't forget it's difficult for
any individual to avoid mistakes.
Their correction lies in the general
movement towards Marxist education.
Start again at the beginning,
with the people.
Be critical of your lack
of liaison with the people.
Liaison with the People
Pass on the people's ideas, concentrate on...
It's not enough to have an aim,
you've got to solve the methods which
will allow you to accomplish this.
Your method is wrong. You think
that it's enough to quote Mao,
then go to the country and film farm
workers to unite with the rural masses.
... the correct formula for the job,
for production and for the
basic notions of direction.
In every political
activity of our party,
the correct direction must be
based on the following principles.
You still talk in slogans
and poster language,
and you're still apart from
the people, you're not in sync,
you're outside the real struggle.
Think what your situation really is.
Use our Chinese comrades' quotations so
they become effective political instruments,
not a ready-made solution.
You shout, make predictions,
spread opinions, but you
don't really question.
I've been to the people again,
discussing and explaining these words,
so that the people can accept,
approve and apply them.
To verify the correctness of these
ideas in the people's activities.
And again, to bring the ideas of the
people together and spread them.
See, you say you question.
But you do it poorly. As a result
you practice bourgeois sociology.
Instead of trying to expose the real forces
of social class, you make cin?ma v?rit?.
You show the misery of the
people, but not their struggle.
And by not showing their struggle, you
deny them the means of struggling.
Your cinema, images, sounds, are those of
bourgeois television and its revisionist allies.
This debate will be
continued indefinitely,
the ideas becoming clearer, livelier
and more complex. That is the theory.
Listen. You do more than that.
You film blocks of flats and
think you are filming people.
You've never even started
to consider your real position.
You started by making an inquiry,
but from where did you start?
You know there is
no cinema above class,
no cinema above the class struggle.
But what does this mean?
It means that the dominant
material power of the society,
the dominant class, is also the one
which creates, in and with its films,
the dominant images.
It means that these images
are those of its domination.
You are involved in the struggle, but
here and now, how are you struggling?
You make a film. You
make images and sounds.
What to do? You have the means
of making films at your disposal.
What is to be done to
make images and sounds
which do not depict the
hegemony of the dominant class?
Yes, what to do. You must not
be afraid to know where you are.
You must not be afraid to know
where you can start. Where are you?
You are in France,
your are in Italy, in Germany.
You are in an imperialist branch
of the prevailing imperialism.
Where are you? In Prague,
in Warsaw and in Berlin,
in some revisionist
agency of revisionism.
If you're not working for
Brezhnev Studios-Mosfilm,
you are working
for Nixon-Paramount.
It means that ultimately you
are always doing the same thing,
because when you
work for Brezhnev-Mosfilm,
you are in fact a lackey to the
other master, Nixon-Paramount.
You forget this master has been
demanding the same film for 50 years.
You forget this film has
one name - the Western -
and this is not by chance.
You start your investigation,
and you learn that your methods are
influenced by the dominant ideology.
Don't confuse your primary
tasks and secondary tasks.
Though it lasts only the
duration of one sequence,
in this film the principal task is theory.
A - Theory
Hollywood. Producers. Factory.
Hollywood shows the form of cinema
as something wonderful, dreamlike,
to which you must pay admission.
But this dream is also a
weapon in Hollywood's hands.
Hollywood wants you to believe this dream
is reality, more real than reality itself.
Hollywood tries to fool you, and will
use any means to achieve its ends.
Hollywood wants you to believe this
image of a horse is really a horse
and that this image of a horse is more real
than a horse, which it isn't to begin with.
Hollywood makes you believe this
movie Indian is more real than an Indian,
and that the extra on horseback is
more real than a Union soldier.
This extra is called an actor.
This actor is called a character.
The adventures of these
characters are called a film
and the making of
this film is called direction.
To this end,
all means are acceptable:
costumes, make-up,
disguises, performances.
Every year Hollywood decorates and
rewards the best producers in the world.
The game goes on. The imperialist
image of reality passes for reality itself.
The Moscow Film Festival.
The Pesaro Film Festival.
The Leipzig Film Festival.
I am General Motor!
I am General Motor!
What is being done in the
Brezhnev-Mosfilm zone of influence?
What films are made in Algiers?
What films are made in Havana?
There is a struggle against Nixon-
Paramount, but what is really going on?
Progressive cinema has understood film is
the relationship between image and sound.
But is progressive cinema
examining this relationship seriously?
Where does this relationship come from?
How does it work? For whom? Against whom?
No, the progressive cinema
does not ask itself these questions.
Why does it refuse to question in class terms?
Sometimes it modifies sound, sometimes image.
It imagines it creates new relationships,
but mistaking quantity for quality,
it only modifies these
relationships abstractly.
Brezhnev-Mosfilm claims it is
attacking Nixon-Paramount,
but in reality it supports it.
Underground. London. Paris.
Amsterdam. New York.
Here is a cinema
which thinks it is liberated.
Here, for example, a sound which
thinks it is liberating an image.
A cinema which thinks
it is liberated.
A drug cinema. A sex cinema.
A cinema which claims it
has been liberated by poetry.
A cinema without taboos,
except against the class struggle.
A class cinema, the
flunky of Nixon-Paramount,
the flunky of imperialism.
You mentioned at the beginning
a road laid out by the history
of the revolutionary movement.
But where is it?
In front? Behind?
Left? Right? And how?
You have changed your method.
You asked the cinema of
the Third World where it was.
Pardon me for disturbing your
class struggle. I know it is important.
But which is the
way to the political film?
That way is the unknown
cinema, the cinema of adventure.
And that way is
the Third World cinema,
a dangerous cinema,
divine and marvelous.
A cinema of the oppression
of imperialist consumption
is a dangerous cinema,
a marvellous cinema,
a cinema out to repress the
fascist oppression of terrorism.
And there you discovered
the complexities of the struggle.
You discovered that you
lack the means of analyzing it.
You're back to
the concrete situation.
In Italy, in France, in Germany,
in Warsaw, in Prague,
you have seen that the
materialist film emerges only
when it confronts, in terms of class struggle,
the bourgeois notion of representation.
Struggle against the bourgeois
notion of representation.
Struggle against the bourgeois
notion of representation.
Yes. To wrest the means of
production from imperialist hands,
in order to wrest ideological
domination from them.
The bourgeoisie talks about representation.
But what does it mean by that?
In 10 seconds you will be looking at a
character on a bourgeois film screen.
He is a character from a Western,
from a psychological drama,
a police film, or a historical film.
It doesn't matter.
In fact he's always the seducer. He
describes the room where you are sitting.
He says he is in the dark.
He says there are
more people in the balcony.
He says there's an
old man in the fifth row.
He says there's a
good-looking girl at the back.
He says he'd like to lay her.
He'd like to give her flowers.
He asks her to
join him on the screen.
There's lots of green.
Blue skies.
The air is clear.
"Don't you believe it? Then
come here, you bunch of turds!"
"Wonderful summer day. "
"Sunshine. Truth. "
Struggle against the bourgeois
notion of representation.
Wrest the means of production from
the hands of the dominant ideology.
That is to say, maximum program.
Maximum. To be able to say:
this image is red. Red. Red.
Without a workers' and peasants'
triple alliance with the military.
Minimum program, minimum.
Spell it out. Know how to learn. And
knowing how to learn means first, for you,
to look in the face the whole
bitter, absurd, dirty spectacle.
The spectacle of the
revisionist school teacher,
who collaborates in reinforcing the
ideological power of the bourgeoisie.
The Communist Party has
decided to give the people culture.
Miss Althusser, what
people have we got here?
First, the people of the Third World.
Let the people of the
Third World come forward.
Will the people of the Third
World come forward please.
How to read Das Kapital.
Good.
"To the people of the Third World...
"with esteem and friendship."
One moment.
Start at chapter two.
What did the revisionist
school teacher just say?
He said: "Read Das Kapital."
He did not say to use it. Use it.
He criticizes the
defects of the people,
but he does not do this
from the people's point of view.
By treating a comrade like an enemy,
he has taken the position of the enemy.
Struggle
I learned to play music.
Good, no?
It's nice? Isn't it nice? Wait...
Isn't it pretty?
You must like my music!
My music isn't good?
Did you take part
in the class struggle?
Yes. I was at Cl?on.
Were you at Strasbourg?
Were you at Sochaux?
Were you in South America?
Were you at Battipaglia?
I was at Battipaglia.
I did my self-criticism.
Did you take part in the demonstration
against Rockefeller's visit?
Yes, I did that too.
I did my self-criticism,
the class struggle,
and learned to play music.
Were you at the May celebrations
in Madrid, forbidden by Franco?
Yes, I was at the May celebrations
in Madrid. I learned music there too.
- And what did you play there?
- Listen.
Struggle
Not quite right, is it?
No, not quite right.
Maybe I should go on.
I'll go on with the class struggle and
self-criticism. It'll be better afterwards.
Class medicine. France.
Text from a medical school handbook
on industrial medicine for 5th-year students:
"The fatigue index is
less related to objective criteria
"than to subjective
or personality factors.
"For measuring fatigue, the
department chief and the foreman
"are in the best position.
"They are direct witness to diminishing
efforts and lowering production rate.
"For the doctor, the task is to
discover the origins of this fatigue.
"The medical student learns he must
work hand in hand with the foreman
"and thus becomes in a way
his scientific alter ego. "
For these guardian angels of capitalism,
there is a clear division of labor:
one finds the ills,
the other cures them.
Both play the same role
in the social division of labor.
Surveillance and repression.
People's medicine. China.
Transformation of the
medical and sanitary system
is an important part in the transformation
of the social superstructure.
After the founding of the
new China - the new China -
a series of provisions were made to ensure
medical care and hygienic assistance
for the rural population.
The workers' health
improved considerably,
but Lio-Tsa-Tsji, that eternal
renegade, took the revisionist way
in medicine and health care.
He wanted to centralize
the service in the cities.
He entered into the erroneous theory
of hospitals worthy of the name.
The lack of doctors and pharmaceutical
products in the rural areas
was one of the reasons China was not
fundamentally changed for a long period.
The great cultural revolution
of the proletariat - proletariat -
broke up this revisionist
counter-revolutionary tendency.
The poor and semi-poor peasants took
the health system into their own hands.
They have set up medical labs and
they run ambulance services.
Thus the area of medical health in the
countryside was rapidly changed.
Thus in the commune of Yong Fang,
in the Nanking district,
the 79 production groups have many
medical workers at their disposal.
In general, minor wounds and illnesses
are treated within each group,
while minor operations
are carried out in the commune.
A co-operative system
has begun to be enforced,
and poor and semi-poor peasants
are ensured immediate treatment.
Struggle - Critique
Les Beaux Quartiers,
by Marcel Proust, page 145.
Death to bourgeois culture!
"I've never been able to remember the
room which gave onto the street... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
"Thus there exists only one way of speaking.
Once in the hotel, there was no embankment... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
"... not even the San Marco canal,
the crowd and the pigeons... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
"... the sun in the distance on San Giorgio
Maggiore. That was a world in itself, by itself... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
"... and for itself, as they say.
The steps, the passages... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
"... the dreary walls of the room's upper part
in darkness. Due to the lamps, one loses... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
He doesn't listen to the revisionist teacher.
He doesn't start from the second chapter.
He starts from the first chapter
of Das Kapital by Karl Marx.
He reads to serve himself.
"The wealth of societies in which
capitalist means of production are found
"consists of merchandise. Merchandise.
"Merchandise is a thing which
possesses practical value,
"and it exists in all social forms.
"But in capitalist society the utility value
is at the same time the material basis
"of an exchange value. "
Things and words...
Open fire on the revisionist intellectual,
the unwitting ally of bourgeois culture.
... Laurent Leroy, Central Committee
of the French Communist Party.
Open fire on the revisionist intellectual,
the unwitting ally of bourgeois culture.
"Throughout the mercantile experience, the
control of wealth is made up of the same... "
Death, fire, death.
The theory of Marx - Engels -
Lenin has universal value.
It should not be considered as
dogma but as a guide to action.
For example, in France, young workers
in a provincial training center
threw out the Mar?chal factories representative
who had come to supervise examinations.
You must not be satisfied with
learning Marxist-Leninist terminology;
Marxist-Leninism has to be learned
as the science of revolution.
It is not enough just to study the general
laws set down by Marx, Engels and Lenin,
based on their extensive studies
of life and revolutionary experience.
You must also examine the
methods and arguments they use
in studying and solving problems.
For example, in Italy,
deprived of water and electricity
for three days, for having
refused to pay higher rates,
the inhabitants of the small town of
Mezzogiorno occupied the town hall,
stopped the trains and built barricades.
For example, to know how to
arm yourself with self-criticism.
Ten minutes ago, I wanted to educate the
Third World; and now I do my self-criticism.
Paragraph 1:
"And what was the
university in the past?
"The university has frequently been
called a kindergarten for adults.
"It is true that the majority of
those who went to university... "
Quiet!
"... went there because people sent them
and because people wanted to send them. "
I'm doing my self-criticism.
Let me continue!
Paragraph 2:
"And what were the contents of... "
Comrades! I come from Fiat.
Fiat is my university.
The comrades wrote a pamphlet.
With "Commissione Liceo Gioberti"
we made a pamphlet, with five questions.
"What do you think about your work?"
Strike!
"What are your demands?"
Revolution!
"Which form of struggle and organization
do you find most effective?"
Strike!
"What help can the student movement
give to the workers' struggle?"
Strike!
"Would it be useful to form a massive organization
in Italy of young workers and students?"
Time to go - I've got a class at Pirelli.
We have practical tasks at Pirelli -
they've occupied the factory. I'm going.
It's time that teaching
is revealed to the masses
as a weapon in the
hands of the bourgeoisie.
The number of those who tolerate their role
as victims and accomplices will diminish.
The camouflage
no longer hides anything -
neither the nature of our society nor the
special place reserved for those who study
to become servants of the bourgeoisie.
A niche and a status in the comfortable
propriety of the bourgeoisie.
Good. You have developed
your theory of alphabetization.
You've seen this too was a front in the battle.
Good. Now back to practical things.
France, May-June '68.
For several months there was
only one word: "autonomy".
This word has a dark
and confusing history.
Turin '19.
Barcelona '37.
A week in Budapest '56.
You have been theorizing.
You began in May.
Tell me about autonomy.
Find the right words.
Listen, is that what
you call the right terms?
You speak even more
abstractly than before. Think.
The concrete situation. Autonomy.
Example: Yugoslavia.
The restoration of
capitalism in Yugoslavia...
... came into being
because public enterprise...
... which played an important
part in the Yugoslav economy...
... degenerated and changed.
The economy of the workers' self-government
is a special kind of state capitalism.
This state capitalism...
... is not that which exists
for the needs of the proletariat.
It is a variety of state capitalism...
... which exists because of
completely different conditions...
... caused by the degeneration of
the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Since 1950, Tito's clique has passed
a series of resolutions and laws
which are intended to bring about
autonomy of the workers in factories,
mines, the communications media,
commerce, agriculture, public works
and all other state enterprises.
The application of this self-government by
the workers consists of placing enterprises
under the control of
the workers' collectives.
These collectives buy
their own raw materials,
decide which goods they are going
to make, their quantity and their price.
They sell their
products on the market,
fix the wages and decide
on the division of the profits.
From a theoretical point of view,
everyone with even a little knowledge
of Marxism knows that concepts like
"autonomy" and "workers' factories"
have never been Marxist concepts,
but ideas put forward by anarcho-
syndacalists and bourgeois socialists.
In the Communist Manifesto,
Marx and Engels say:
"The proletariat will make
use of its political superiority
"to wrest all monetary power from
the hands of the bourgeoisie
"and to place all means of
production in the hands of the state. "
This is a fundamental
socialist principle.
After the October Revolution, when some
wanted to return factories to the old producers
so they could organize
production directly,
Lenin criticized them, saying this
would lead to a reaction against
the dictatorship of the proletariat.
For all these reasons...
... the "worker autonomy"
initiated by the Tito clique...
... has made public enterprise totally
removed from the orbit of socialist economy.
The main symptoms
of this phenomenon are:
1. Suppression of unified
State economic planning.
2. Profit is considered the main
incentive of the enterprise's program.
Production policy is
decided by the workers...
... but it is not geared to
satisfy the needs of society...
... but serves to realize profits,
exactly as in capitalist enterprises.
3. Favoring a policy
which encourages free trade.
4. The use of credit in banking
to support capitalistic free trade.
Loans are given to those who can
repay in the shortest possible time...
... and the rate of interest is high.
5. The relations between
the various enterprises...
... are not the socialist
bonds of mutual assistance,
but the capitalist and competitive
bonds of a so-called free market.
You see, your ideas are confused.
If you continue, you'll end the film
by saying that socialism
is a bed of roses.
It is true that theory, when it reaches
the people, becomes a material force.
But you need valid ideas.
Think about the concrete situation.
Re-think your theories.
Example: the invention
of photography.
The B Theory
The invention of photography.
For whom? Against whom?
The invention of photography.
For whom? Against whom?
For whom? Against whom?
For whom? France.
Louis Philippe. The banks.
Investment. The beginning
of the industrial revolution.
Accelerated growth of the
proletariat. Class struggle.
The necessity of changing
the dominant ideology.
Class struggle. The necessity of hiding
reality from the people. Class struggle.
The necessity of new means.
Class struggle.
Photography forces literature
and painting into the background.
Against whom?
Against the people in struggle. Photography.
For the bourgeoisie, two functions:
1. Identification of class enemies.
2. Disguising reality.
1. In 1871 the police in Versailles
photographed the insurgents.
2. In 1871, photographs
of shot communards appeared
in bourgeois newspapers.
Today: Paris Match/Vietnam.
Newsweek/Palestine.
L'Espresso/Brazil.
Fight the bourgeois
concept of representation.
Wrest control of the cinema,
photography and television
from the hands of
the dominant ideology.
Don't represent
the problem abstractly.
To make cinema
a revolutionary weapon,
you have to think through and
with the revolutionary struggle.
Think and work out the methods.
Class struggle. Armed struggle.
The Armed Struggle
Learn.
Know how to learn.
Read. Calculate.
Experiment. Chemistry.
Mathematics. Electricity.
Read. Calculate. Learn.
Know how to learn.
Know how to fight.
Good day. Do you
have any ping-pong balls?
Do you have any skates?
Have you got a harpoon?
Have you got any tennis rackets?
Thank you.
Good-bye, madam.
Warning to militants. Watch out.
Warning to militants. Watch out.
Warning to militants. Watch out.
Warning to militants. Watch out.
Reflect. Look ahead.
Withdraw.
Think. Produce. Simplify.
Construct. Wait.
Reflect. Simplify. Think. Wait.
Good day, madam.
A pack of Chesterfields.
I've only got Gitanes
and Gauloises.
No. I want Chesterfields.
There's Luckies,
Players and Winstons.
No. I want Chesterfields. Wait.
Reflect. Simplify.
In this street there
is a barber, a baker,
a druggist, a dairy, a chemist,
a novelty shop, a bookshop, etc.
You can buy jam, coffee, milk,
sugar, thermos flasks, plates. etc.
Think. Produce. Simplify.
It's disgusting. A bomb has been thrown
in a supermarket. There are many injuries.
What have you got out of it?
It's really unheard of
to kidnap Rockefeller's son.
What good did that do?
The boy hasn't done anything.
Think. Manufacture.
Simplify. Reflect. Learn.
Learn.
As I said,
fanatics are sent to do the killings,
gangsters whose only
aim is to kill and destroy,
though no advantage
can be gained from it.
That's what bourgeois
humanitarianism says
when the oppressed get the means of
grasping the exploiter by the throat.
When bourgeois humanitarianism
talks about innocent victims,
unnecessary violence,
what is it hiding?
The daily reality of bourgeois
terror, the reality of the struggle.
Citro?n. Javel. Morning shift.
The brotherhood of classes in opposition.
The fraternity proclaimed in 1789,
1871 and 1968,
written in giant letters
on every wall in Paris,
all over the walls of
the jails and barracks;
that is the real, authentic
expression in prose of civil war -
civil war in its most horrible form,
the war between labor and capital.
Now, let us consider the secondary aspect
of the war between capital and labor.
Why should we think about
that secondary aspect just now?
Because the bourgeoisie are
now making it their main battlefield.
OK. Think about the secondary aspects
of the war between labor and capital.
Think: primary contradiction
and secondary contradiction.
Think: main aspect of the
contradiction and secondary aspect.
OK. Primary contradiction:
civil war between labor and capital.
Secondary contradiction:
division of labor and sex.
The secondary contradiction is one
the bourgeoisie tries with all its might
to present as the primary one -
women's magazines,
dogmatic sociology, etc.
OK. Sex and its division from labor
is the secondary contradiction.
OK. Now for the first aspect
of this secondary contradiction.
The sexual urge is tied to the struggle
for production and the class struggle.
Now for the second
aspect of the contradiction.
The sexual urge is still almost everywhere
the primary property of the bourgeoisie.
Think: primary contradiction
and secondary contradiction.
Think: primary aspects
of the contradiction -
primary and secondary; and secondary aspects
of the contradiction - primary and secondary.
Think: civil war
between labor and capital.
Think: the division of labor and sex.
Think: negative and positive.
Think: union of opposites.
Think: struggle.
Think: change.
Think: eroticism and plus values.
Think: feelings, use value.
Think: feelings, change value.
Think: positive matrimony
plus negative adultery
equals bourgeois unity.
Think: to destroy this unity
today is revolutionary for a woman.
Which revolution? That of 1789.
Think about the meaning of this:
is the feminine problem
more or less different
from the peasant problem?
Think again about this:
why does a medium-poor
Breton peasant marry?
And think: why does a
Paris foundry owner marry?
Keep thinking about this:
in May '68, unmarried C. G. T. workers
blocked workers from entering the factory
in the morning, and at night they laid
students in the Sorbonne and the Od?on.
Think of the most horrifying form of
fraternity between opposing classes.
Think about the civil war
between labor and capital.
Think of subjectivity in class terms.
The end. Beginning
of a prolonged struggle.
What to do? You've made a film, you've
criticized it. You've made mistakes,
you've corrected some of them.
Because of this you know a little more
about making sounds and images.
Perhaps now you know better how
this production can be transformed.
For whom and against whom?
Perhaps you have learned
something very simple.
It's right to rebel.
Marxism consists of a
multiplicity of principles,
which in the last analysis can
be summed up in a single statement:
it's right to rebel.
A single statement:
it's right to rebel.
No. Marxism consists of...
Marxism consists of a
multiplicity of principles...
... which can be summed up
in a single statement...
No. Which, in the last analysis,
can be summed up...
Marxism consists of
a multiplicity of principles,
which in the last analysis can be
summed up in a single statement:
it's right to rebel.
"The policy of peaceful co-existence
"thus translates into
present-day terms
"the problem of
maintaining world peace.
"The transformations of the
"October Revolution and the continuing
development of socialism in many countries
"has created in the
world, in this respect,
"a radically new situation.
"Imperialism has lost nothing
of its aggressive nature
"and events only prove this.
"Secondly.
"The growing power
of socialist organizations
"coupled with the upsurge of
national liberation movements,
"the struggle of the working
classes of capitalist countries
"and the general development
of peace-loving forces,
"have thus made it possible
to avoid a new world war
"and a thermo-nuclear catastrophe.
"The policy of peaceful co-existence
is a method for regulating...
"... is a method for regulating
relations between states. "
To dare to rebel -
for us, here and now, this
means fighting on two fronts.
To dare to rebel - for you, here and
now, this means fighting on two fronts.
Fighting against the
eternal lies of the bourgeoisie.
The modernization of our economy
is a vital task, and if we fail,
we are left with
a limited independence
and stagnation which
will lead to rebellion.
Only a flourishing and efficient economy
will enable us to strengthen our foundations
and give us real stability.
But to succeed
in this difficult enterprise,
our habitual ways of acting and thinking
must drastically change.
It is everyone's duty to
help bring about this change.
In this technological society, with its complex
mechanisms so difficult to understand,
participation is the right way
to involve people in recognizing
that they are masters
of their own destiny.
Death to the bourgeoisie!
To dare to rebel - for us, here and now,
this means fighting on two fronts,
against the bourgeoisie and
against its ally, revisionism.
There are in the world today two winds -
the east wind and the west wind.
The east wind actually prevails over
the west wind. The revolutionary forces
have achieved an overwhelming
superiority over the imperialist forces.
went to see my father's family.
Near Dodge City,
my uncle now managed aluminum
exploitation for the Alcoa company.
We stayed some way out of town,
on an estate he had bought
from the bank manager.
The house was in a park,
surrounded by a white fence.
It wasn't big, but was so diverse
I never finished exploring it.
We dined every night at eight.
On Friday, my uncle didn't
return home - we waited all night.
It was Saturday lunch when we heard
the miners had locked him in his office.
Strike.
Strike.
Strike.
Listen, madam, you're
jumping to conclusions.
Think it over. Things
don't happen by themselves.
There was already general discontent
about the bad working conditions.
The union delegate.
My father wouldn't
let us go out anymore.
The workers were very restless
and anything could have happened.
One night in the library, I overheard a
conversation between Dad and Uncle Sam.
My father said that times had changed,
that the workers worked
much less and earned much more,
and that since the formation of unions,
the real exploited one was the employer.
Father said the workers even "suffered"
from eating chicken every Sunday.
They were used to the hard
work and uncomfortable homes,
they didn't suffer from it
as much as we would.
Anyway, father continued, shrugging
his shoulders, nobody died of hunger.
And if the workers hate the bourgeoisie,
it must mean they are jealous.
And jealousy, Dad said,
is a mean feeling.
Uncle Sam agreed
in theory but not in practice:
he reckoned the
trade union was useful,
that you had to negotiate,
but with the right people.
The union delegate.
The real workers were
against any kind of unrest.
We want to explain in public
the illegitimacy of...
Revisionism.
We do not support violence.
We will not break
the rules of democracy.
We believe, on the contrary,
that it is possible to
change society peacefully.
Yes, but listen,
in spite of everything...
incredible things are happening.
I know you have no part in them.
Who poisoned the horses?
Who set fire to the printing works?
Who looted the Nixon Hotel, because
the proprietor denounced them?
Then there's a teacher who's said to be
open to new ideas. She lives by them.
Want to know what I think?
She's a whore.
But madam, if things
had not been so serious,
the talk and activities of these pseudo-
revolutionaries would seem ludicrous.
But you're right really.
We shouldn't underestimate the
effect of their shameful activities,
which create unrest,
doubt and scepticism
among a lot of the workers,
especially the younger ones.
In fact, their activities are part
of a series of lies
uttered without the consent of the true
representatives of the people's interests.
Yes, but listen, as I said,
there are still strange things happening,
which were unthinkable 3 months ago.
- The active minorities.
- The people are afraid.
It's difficult to tell
whether or not the
revolution is going to spread.
Like all reasonable people,
I'm very puzzled by all this.
My servant said to me this morning:
"Stop, we've had enough violence. "
General assembly.
In what we've heard, there are two
voices which lie and two which stammer.
The stammering voices talk about
striking, social democracy and revisionism,
active minorities
and general assemblies.
The lying voices talk about the
desperate state of affairs,
general dissatisfaction, good people
who are frightened, and honest workers.
Quite right. But where will
all this stupid violence get us?
They've destroyed the printing works.
Result: no more objective news.
They've set fire to the Nixon Hotel.
Result: the businessmen
are frightened
and have formed armed groups,
supported with money from the banks.
In fact, it's all
the leftists' fault
that the monopolists have
gained control of everything.
Stop these provocateurs, they're
the reactionaries' best agents.
Repression.
We condemn the brutal repression
of the workers.
We demand the immediate cessation
of this repression,
the liberation of prisoners...
Repeat this phrase.
... the disarmament...
the disarmament of armed bands,
and the reopening of discussions
about the future...
about the future of the city.
In response to the shooting
on Saturday night,
we have decided to open...
to open the fight against authority
by calling...
by calling a general strike
of two hours.
And organizing demonstrations
in which the whole population
will not fail
to participate massively.
Stop the repression.
Freedom.
Freedom. Democracy.
Active strike.
But what's going on? What?
You block work, in front of the
factory, without telling your comrades?
You are behaving like children!
If you go on like this,
you'll end up worse off,
if not dead!
Is this what you want?
Civil war?
Stop fooling around. Trust those
responsible for you. That's why we're here.
Active strike.
I told you things were
going from bad to worse.
You'll be completely
overpowered, too.
If it comes to that,
there's only the army left.
It can't last.
The two voices
have continued to lie,
the two others
have continued to stammer.
Which one is ours? How can
we find out? What to do?
The two voices have continued to lie,
the two others have continued to stammer.
Which one is ours? How can we
find out? What to do?
Today, the question
"What to do?"
poses itself forcefully
to the militant filmmaker.
He no longer agitates
for people to choose a course,
he agitates for them to determine
to determine what must
be done practically, practically.
on a road the history of revolutionary
struggle teaches them to understand.
On a road which history
teaches them to understand.
Yes, what to do?
Make a film, for example.
That means asking oneself,
"Where are we?"
And what does it mean to ask the question
"Where are we?" for a militant filmmaker?
And what does it mean to ask the question
"Where are we?" for a militant filmmaker?
It means first of all
opening a parenthesis
and devoting yourself to the
history of revolutionary cinema.
Of revolutionary cinema.
Victory of revolutionary
cinema, July 19, 1920.
After the speech by Comrade Lenin at the
2nd Congress of the 3rd Internationale,
on the main stage of
the International Communist
Comrade Dziga Vertov
declares to the tribune:
"We bolshevist filmmakers know it
is impossible for a film to exist
"outside the context of
the class system.
"We know film production is a secondary
task, and our program is very simple:
"to see and show the world in the
name of the people's world revolution.
"The people make history.
"The films of the
Western hemisphere
"only portray elegant
ladies and gentlemen.
"The requirement is always
imposed on the actors,
"under the pretext they must
accent feelings and instincts,
"to manifest only ideas
accepted by the bourgeoisie,
"to unscrupulously represent
"the degenerate bourgeois way of life,
under the cover of their makeup. "
Defeat for revolutionary
cinema, November 18, 1924.
A few days after
the death of Lenin,
Sergei Eisenstein was deeply moved
by a performance of Intolerance,
a film by the American
imperialist Griffith.
Result: in 1925,
mistaking primary duty
for secondary duty,
Eisenstein made a film about the
sailors of the battleship Potemkin,
instead of glorifying the
people's struggle of the moment.
Result: in 1929,
in The General Line, on the
subject of agrarian reform,
while Eisenstein uses new terms
to describe the Tsarist oppression,
he still uses old expressions
to talk about collectivism.
In his case, the old triumphs
definitively over the new.
Result: Five years later,
Hollywood pays for his journey
to film the Mexican revolution,
while in Berlin, Dr. Goebbels
urges the directors of UFA
to produce a Nazi Potemkin.
"The Future of the
French Communist Party"
The dialectic of history is such that
the theoretical triumph of Marxism
forces its enemies
to pose as Marxists.
To pose as Marxists.
To pose as Marxists.
To pose as Marxists.
To pose as Marxists.
Defeat of revolutionary
cinema, November 17, 1935.
Speech by Comrade Stalin at the 1st
Conference of Russian Stakhanoviks:
confused by the
obscurity of this speech,
Comrade Dziga Vertov forgets that
politics commands the economy.
His film The Eleventh Year
became a hymn to economic progress, not the
11-year-old dictatorship of the proletariat.
The dictatorship of the proletariat.
It was then that revisionism finally
found its way into the Soviet cinema.
The revolution advances in disguise.
False victory of revolutionary
cinema, August 29, 1962.
Renouncing all initiative,
the progressive states of Africa elect
to rely on the West for their films,
thus giving white Christians the right
to talk about Negroes and Arabs.
Algiers - Pontecorvo, Klein;
Konakry - Soci?t? Coma?ico.
While civil wars and popular
movements bring the imperialists down,
the imperialists
creep back via the camera,
thus endangering the revolution.
The ideas of the ruling class always
dominate the rest of the population.
In other words, the class which is the
dominant material power in society
is also the dominant cultural power.
The class controlling the material means
of production controls at the same time
the intellectual
means of production.
Thus the ideas of those people
who are deprived of the
intellectual means of production
can be said to be
repressed by the ruling class.
Victory of revolutionary
cinema, February 2, 1966.
Editorial in Red Flag.
Comrade Tian-Tsin denounces the theory
that the truth must be written,
denounces the great road of realism,
denounces the theory of "average" characters,
denounces the theory of opposition
to the decisive role of the subject.
February 2, 1966: birth of
the materialist feature film.
We are never completely the
contemporaries of our own times.
History advances in disguise.
It fills the screen with the
mask of the preceding sequence,
and we no longer recognize
anything about the film.
The fault is not with history, but our
vision, cluttered with images and sounds.
We see and hear the past
superimposed on the present,
even though the
present is a revolution.
Wind from the East
Today the question "What to do?" poses
itself forcefully to the militant.
He no longer agitates for
people to choose a course,
he agitates for them
to determine, to determine
what must be done
practically, practically
on a road the history of revolutionary
struggle teaches them to understand.
On a road which history
teaches them to understand.
This road -
strikes, social democracy,
general meetings, repression.
This road -
what have we achieved?
Daring to recognize it, thinking,
means knowing what to do.
1 - The Strike
Tuesday, June 3, 14:00 hours.
On several workers' initiative, and after
a good deal of discussion among the workers,
a general strike has been decided,
whose aims have been
explained in a leaflet.
Water.
For most workers,
the overtime allowance varies
from 0 to 20 hours in two weeks.
Some of us
worked in pretty
rough conditions to get...
Water.
... between 0 and 10
hours allowance,
which comes to about
350 francs for two weeks.
From the beginning,
the strike was supported by 80%
of the workers on the night shift,
13:00 - 22:00 hours.
Water.
On Wednesday at 4:30
in the morning,
the workers demanded that
the second-shift workers, who had
not taken part in the discussions,
should join the movement.
A bit later, it was reported that a
meeting of the second-shift workers
had also decided to strike,
supported by 90% of the workers.
On Thursday the 5th,
at 5 in the morning,
the strike committee decided
to go on with the strike.
Leaflets were distributed.
"Appeal to the workers:
"We will carry on the
strike until we win.
"They are trying to
divide the two shifts.
"Let's take our decisions together.
"Our grievances are the same. "
What do you want?
What does he want?
He wants better working conditions.
And more pay.
You see, he is a poor Indian.
His wife is sick, his sons are sick.
In my opinion, we can even
come to an agreement.
I can look into it, but...
once we get to the camp...
As you like. You are
responsible for that.
As long as he is taken
to the concentration camp.
There are rumors of a strike.
The rumors say that
their claims will be met.
Who started these rumors?
The union delegate.
They say that 80% of the workers
have gone back to work,
that only a few are
carrying on with the strike.
Who started this rumor?
The union delegate.
They talk about "agitators" - the bosses'
word for the workers starting the struggle.
Who uses this word?
The union delegate.
The delegate translates the working class
struggle into the language of the bosses.
When the union delegate
translates, he betrays.
This cannot be explained as pure chance, or
as the fault of some individual or group,
or as the result of circumstances
or national traditions.
There are definite reasons
inherent in the economic regime
in the development
of all capitalist countries
which make this treachery possible.
The union delegate's failure is the
failure of socialistic opportunism,
the failure of social democracy:
this is revisionism.
This is a product of the
so-called peaceful phase
in the development
of the workers' movement.
During this period, the working class
acquires weapons for the struggle:
recourse to the process of
parliament and legal possibilities,
creation of economic and
political mass organizations,
as well as the availability
of a large workers' press.
On the other hand, this period risks
the tendency to deny class struggle
and to advance the social peace.
Translation - treason.
Certain groups within
the working classes -
the bureaucrats and aristocrats
of the workers movement
who benefitted from the fruits of
the Third World's exploitation
and the advantageous position of their
own country in the world markets -
certain groups within
the working classes,
and their petit-bourgeois associates
from the heart of the Communist Party,
form the main social
support for this tendency.
And they have become the bearers of
bourgeois influence on the proletariat.
2 - The Delegate
Not only have military and repressive forces
in no way disbanded,
but the mass of people are opposed
to continued revolutionary exploits.
Many of their grievances
have been satisfied.
Today, to prepare work is a victory.
Translation - treason.
When the union
delegate speaks, he lies.
Example:
"The task of the new political
power of the working class
"and its allies is the creation of a
new economy and a new way of life,
"that is, a socialist way of life.
"The realization of this
grand and gigantic task
"requires the broadest and most
active participation of the masses
"in the management of public affairs.
"Socialism does not only mean
"the liberation of the worker
from capitalist exploitation:
"it represents, and must create,
"a democracy superior
to all bourgeois democracy. "
"Encouraged by the
results achieved so far
"and knowing the road
which is still left to travel,
"we shall put all our
energy into the fight...
"and bring to a victorious end...
"the work of the united
vital forces in the nation. "
3 - The Active Minorities
He talks, he talks, he talks.
Escapades, provocation,
it's always the same.
We were forced to do something
because the person claiming to
represent us never did anything.
All he did was talk to the bosses.
What to do?
We need a different sort of strike.
All you need is to write
a pamphlet for the workers.
Tomorrow, we'll distribute
it at the factory gates.
Then the students will see
that the workers get up early.
Then at least the students will
see that the workers get up early.
Then at least the workers will
see that the students get up early.
What to do? Think left.
Read Lenin's text,
generally used by the revisionists to
denounce those of the Left as agitators.
Note that Lenin does not confuse a
primary danger with a secondary one.
Agree with Lenin
that the primary danger
lies in social-democratic treason
and the secondary danger in leftism,
the childish, infantile
illness of Communism.
Note that Lenin spoke of workers'
leftism and not student leftism.
Starting from this, attack,
whenever and wherever it occurs,
leftism in Leninist positions.
For the good of all, we
we must learn from past faults.
There are always people who
struggle against the innovations
of a mass revolution,
believing always and above all
that none of them will succeed.
One always stands in the way
of a new revolutionary order...
... by looking for help and
guidance in conventional standards
and established customs.
The Active Minorities
This woman is called Suzanne Monet,
wife of the famous painter Claude Monet.
In 1903 she publishes in the Figaro
an open letter to the
President of the Republic,
protesting against the striking
railwaymen who kept her husband
from entering the Gare St. Lazare
to finish his painting.
In 1925, this woman is called
Scarlett Faulkner from
Louisville, Alabama.
A known nymphomaniac, she
accuses farmhand Eldridge Cleaver
of having raped her several times.
The local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan
carries out the immediate
execution of the horrible criminal.
In 1936, this woman
is called Ines Mussolini.
married to the Spanish representative
of the Schneider-Krupp group.
She welcomes Franco's
troops into Barcelona
after liberating Catalonia from the
Anarchists and the workers' councils.
In 1969, she is
called Rachel Darnev,
graduated in chemical analysis from the
Vise-Farben University in Nuremberg.
She specializes in the napalming
of Palestinian farmers
in the Naplouse and Gaza area,
who refuse to leave their land.
This man's name is Ren? Andrieu.
He is editor-in-chief of l'Humanit?.
In 1871 he proposes to the Central
Committee of the Paris Commune
that the red flag and
the tricolor should be united.
In response, a worker called
Varland proposes that he be shot.
Disappointed, Ren? Andrieu
escapes to Versailles.
In 1933, this man's
name is Luigi Dubcek.
As a member of the
Politburo of the KPD,
the German Communist Party,
he appeals to his Jewish comrades
to react peacefully and sensibly
to the demonstration
organized by Nazi stormtroopers
outside the offices
of the newspaper Vorwelt.
In 1945, this man
is called Maurice Duclos.
He is one of three communist
ministers in de Gaulle's government.
As such, he appeals to all
partisans to lay down their arms.
A year later these weapons are
used by the employers to put down
a strike by European miners.
In 1969, this man's name
is Vladimir Brezhnev.
As commander of the
battleship Potemkin, he offers
his ship to Admiral Foster Dulles
to help locate the remains of American spy
planes shot down over North Korean territory.
The Active Minorities
4 - The General Assembly
During a General Assembly the
camera is at everyone's disposal.
For repression, the proposal is...
a newspaper image...
You are agreeing with me. It's a
form of Soviet realism that you propose.
Well then, let's get
to the bottom of this...
I say that I'm going even further.
So we've got to find the right approach...
Given that the problem - Stalin's
picture - is already in the film...
Don't just say the first thing
that comes into your head.
But the question of Stalin's
portrayal does arise.
He is in the film.
Do you feel repressed by this image?
What do we hear?
What do we see?
Images of people arguing,
confused sounds,
parts of a poster of Stalin and Mao.
Why these images?
Why these sounds?
Why this ever-changing relationship
between images and sounds?
The intention was to talk about
what we experienced in May '68.
In factories, in universities,
in offices, comrades held meetings
and formed organizations.
In spite of confusion during
discussions, they still made progress.
How can we account for this?
How can we discover
truth in this confusion?
How can we get to the
truth correctly?
A number of comrades
quickly turned to film production.
In relation to the rest of the group,
they became an active minority.
When, after the strike,
social democracy, etc. became a matter
of discussing the general assembly,
the comrades immediately
came up with a solution.
To call a general assembly, because
that was the best way to discuss it -
to call one, where the main subject
would be the continuation of the film.
This meant a discussion of the
making of the images and sounds,
which in the film would depict the same
scenes of the general assembly.
In May and June '68 in France,
today in France,
Italy, Spain, Mexico, etc...
the established powers respond to these
revolutionary groups with repression.
The filming of the general assembly was
therefore the filming of a general assembly
which debated the following sequence,
in which the making of images and
sounds of this repression is discussed.
The editing of the corresponding
analyses of this discussion
would make it possible to understand
the working of the general assembly.
Which image of repression did the
comrades immediately propose?
A poster of Stalin and Mao, wanted
for murder by the capitalists.
Why Stalin?
Because for these comrades, what is
usually called the Stalin problem,
like it or not, is part of
the revolutionary movement.
How do you explain that?
I'm not saying that he is Stalin,
but that others accept him as Stalin.
One rejects Stalin, but one finds
oneself in a Stalinist situation.
Stalinist, precisely because...
They've excluded all the characters
who were to have been seen in the film.
But we know that.
Consequently, this is a film which
collaborates with Papadopoulos.
Thus we take as our image,
we take as our image...
we take as our image,
we take as our image...
"Wanted for Murder, " posted
up by Gian Maria Volonte.
And here we should have...
an image which has...
not been used before, give the
discussion you have just witnessed.
Party secretary,
there, for instance,
at that place in the film, is
something that goes back to Stalin,
and which we're up to the neck in -
that is "realism" which...
What is it called now?
Socialist realism.
China. The poor farmers of the
Kiung-Tsing production brigade
meet to denounce the revisionist
counter-revolutionary course being
taken in the medical and sanitary fields.
Egypt. The workers of the armament
factory at Elouan are uniting
to demand punishment for the bureaucrat who
collaborated with the Israeli imperialists.
France. Workers unite at the
C. S. F. in Issyles-Moulineaux
to denounce the behavior of a
permanent representative of the C. G. T.
who threatens to attack the Marxist-
Leninists by name in a pamphlet,
thus exposing them to repressive
measures by the employer.
To see the general assembly
only as a debating society
is to see it as an abstraction.
Because who is speaking
and against whom?
Each general assembly is specific.
It reflects the country's conflicts and is
militant. Who speaks and against whom?
In China: the masses against a handful
of leaders attached to capitalism.
In Egypt: the masses against
the military bureaucracy,
who exploit the people and are
supported by Soviet revisionists.
In France: the masses against
the French revisionists
who are in league with
the capitalist exploiters.
All general assemblies
resemble one another,
because in each country,
in a qualitatively different manner,
the same enemies are confronted.
Each country is a
country of our era -
the era of the crisis of imerialism
and modern revisionism,
the era of the collaboration of
imperialism and modern revisionism,
the era of their common opposition
against revolutionary movements.
Every general assembly asks
today the question of our era -
the question of the history of imperialism,
the question of the history of revisionism,
and to pose the question of
the real history of revisionism
is to pose seriously what is usually
referred to as the Stalin question.
That is, to no longer focus
on the image of Stalin,
but to try to analyze the
classes of Soviet society,
from the beginning of the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
The most disgusting aspect of cinema
is that the bourgeoisie and
Stalin have the same attitude.
This leads to images and sounds
of a particular sort being made.
This can be seen in our own
practice and right here
where nobody feels
like having any fun.
Jean-Luc says that within the party this
problem hasn't been resolved. It's not true.
Yes, it is true. A badly expressed
problem, a wrong solution.
To really put problems forward.
Example: to analyze
in class terms the effect
of the speech of
June 23, 1931, about
"New situations, new tasks for
strengthening the economy. "
Example: '37-'38.
At the request of Comrade Stalin, Sergei
Eisenstein begins shooting Bezhin Meadow,
about the struggle
for rural socialization.
'37-'38. Spanish Civil War.
With anarchist militia, peasant farmers
organize immediate partition of the land.
They are liquidated in the
fight against anarchism
by the political commissars of
the Spanish Communist Party,
who mechanically apply the
directives of the Internationale.
To ask the question "why" is also
to ask the question "against whom?"
Stalinist images. Just
consider the problem.
In everything that's happened, positive
aspect: showing an image is nothing,
that there is no image in itself,
that there is no image outside
the context of the class struggle.
Having shown this
with an image of Stalin.
Negative aspect: not having
found the right image,
that is, necessary and sufficient.
Stalin and Mao wanted
for murder by the capitalists -
that was a necessary, but
inadequate image of repression.
We must find other images of repression,
the only ones we can make at present.
The Humphry laboratories have refused to
develop film about the dockers on strike,
shot by the strikers themselves.
Three days after the Yankee ambassador's
kidnapping, Brazil restored the death penalty.
In Marrakesh, an extremist
right-wing commando
machine-gunned, with full government
support, a progressive students' meeting.
6 - The Active Strike
Marcel, we've been striking 4 weeks. I write
this letter, not knowing if it'll reach you,
because our comrades at the post office
are striking, but not for long, I think.
While the unions are overtly asking
for more support for the movement,
they are exerting influence to
return essential sectors to work.
And when the post and railway
services go back to work,
we'll all go back little by little,
whether we want to or not.
That's clear, anyway. In your
situation you see the same thing.
But what can we do
to make things change?
We've lasted 4 weeks and
that's a victory for us.
Out of 2000, there are roughly
900 continuing the sit-in in shifts.
I say victory, though in fact I
don't know how things are with you.
Anyway, 500 yards from our factory, at Mazda,
Givelaud and Alasef, the situation is different.
The first day the C. G. T.
delegate told the guys:
"Good, we're stopping work. Go home. When
we reach an agreement, we'll let you know. "
Ten or 20 opposed the move and
stayed and occupied the factory.
But they were
deserted by the cowards.
At our place 900 took part in the
occupation. At first this was enough.
About 800 of the guys had worked in
the same factory five or ten years,
though they'd never
participated before.
This made it possible to get things
done and also to start discussions.
Everyone who'd taken part in strikes and
occupations said something had changed.
Sure, some were more concerned with playing
cards and football, and chasing the women.
That too was new -
the many girls that were there.
It lasted three weeks. We
discussed things seriously,
talked politics, not just about demanding
workshop 45's lavatory window be replaced.
All this scared the union officials.
We also met students.
For the strike leaders,
though, all this was good.
They forced the C. G. T. officials
to allow students into the canteen.
Sure, this often didn't mean much, because
they spoke language you couldn't understand.
Some of them would talk for hours,
until everybody got fed up.
That's the negative. The positive is these
people fought, and said interesting things,
and that people from outside
prevented the sit-in from weakening.
But now, after 4 weeks, our
number has hardly increased.
Last weekend some went home, people
who were there from the beginning.
Their wife, their kids...
Sure, that's normal.
Despite this, last weekend there were
still over 100 occupying the factory.
People's interest in the ballot was
pretty low - cards were very popular.
Then I thought of something
one of the students had told us.
At the C. S. F. in Brest, some workers
had apparently gone back to work
to make transistors themselves, and exchanged
them with farmers for vegetables and poultry.
His story sounded a bit strange,
but when we wanted to know
more about it, he got all involved,
which shows it's impossible
to get any information.
He called it active striking, and said it was
the only way to prevent the strike weakening,
the only way to hit employers hard and
pose concrete problems about power.
When I thought of the workshops
and the fighting spirit of the people,
it seemed we should be able to keep the
factory going ourselves, without technicians.
They didn't really know
what to make of it.
Some agreed with it, while
others just said I was dreaming,
but they couldn't really say why.
I thank you for your reply,
and I hope to see you soon.
I better go - Monday, the managers
and scabs will be round again,
shouting they want to get back in,
in the name of freedom to work.
Shit, I hope there'll be enough of
us to shut them up. Good-bye.
Hello, this is Jean-Pierre
Peugeot. Who's speaking?
Strike committee.
Listen, young woman, I'm
being polite. Who are you?
Strike committee.
I've told you who I am: Jean-Pierre
Peugeot. Now who are you?
Strike committee.
I want to know who I'm talking to.
Strike committee.
Jean-Pierre Peugeot here. Are you
frightened of saying who you are?
Strike committee.
Gerard, I got your letter.
As it happened, it came after
we'd started work again.
We think you're mistaken. You say you
want to show you can do without technicians.
You forget it's not just technical division
of labor, but also social-technical division.
and by working only from
your own point of view,
you are doing just what
the capitalists want.
The Chinese say: "Have a revolution
and organize production. "
Good. They also say:
"First make the revolution to
organize production differently. "
Even if you did organize an active
strike so your guys could go on working,
it'd still only be a temporary
strike, though of a different kind.
OK. I read in the papers that our
comrades at Pirelli did the same thing.
But it led to nothing more
than the loss of 50 million
for those in power.
We must organize ourselves to fight
the power of the bourgeois state,
against its cops, its
army which attacks us
to keep us in order -
7 - The Police State
the old order, the same old crap.
Defeat - Provocation
I robbed the First National City Bank -
$50,000.
I shot the driver of the
Lightedfoot to Heroklod train.
I kidnapped the son of
the director of Citro?n.
I shot dead the Sheriff of West Berlin.
So we have the same enemies.
I'd like to get together
with you to find out
why we have the same enemies
and why we must continue the fight.
New Defeat - New Provocation
Speak!
Why do you exploit the
sexuality of the proletariat?
Why do you give back in words what
you've already given back in deeds?
Speak! Speak!
A week of struggle.
Saturday the 17th,
the iron mines of
Anderny-Chevillon.
24-hour strike against
the latest dismissals.
Monday the 19th,
Vendel-Sibelon Ayot.
Strike for a wage increase
of 0. 80 francs an hour.
Three out of nine
blast furnaces are shut down.
Tuesday the 20th,
National Institute of Astronomy
and Geophysics. Strike by 150
technicians for job security.
Wednesday the 21st,
Liquid Air.
The steel-workers strike against
the intrigues of union officials.
Thursday the 22nd,
Maudit paper-mill in Quimper.
Provocation through disorder.
Insult.
New provocation. New insult.
Until their downfall.
That is the logic of the imperialists
and reactionaries of the world.
They'll never change this logic.
New strike against
the dismissal of militants.
Friday the 23rd,
Lyc?e Bergson, Paris 19.
The Lyc?e has been closed by the
Rector of the Academy of Paris
and plain-clothes police
guard the various entrances.
Struggle. Defeat. New struggle. And so
to victory. Such is the people's logic.
The rashness of revolutionaries has
always been the policeman's best ally.
Don't go directly to meeting-places.
Make a detour through a less busy
street to make sure you're not followed.
Write as little as possible.
Train yourself to
remember addresses.
In case of emergency, remember a
Christian name is better than a surname,
and an initial is better
than a Christian name.
Make appointments over the
phone only with small talk.
Don't try to find out what
you should not know.
Remember that the enemy
is capable of anything.
Never be misled when they say:
"We know everything. "
This is never true.
Before the police
or legal authorities,
never give in to the unhealthy,
idealistic bourgeois habit
of establishing or
re-establishing the truth.
In this fight there is no common truth
between the exploiting and exploited class.
Fight, defeat.
Another fight, another defeat.
Another fight, and so to victory.
Such is the people's logic -
the people's logic - and they
will never go against this logic.
But how shall we
recognize one another?
Not only recognize one another,
but also let oneself be recognized.
Right. All we have
to do is make armbands.
May 1st
Struggle:
Madrid Cordoba Peking Watts
Spectacle:
Moscow Paris Bucharest Algiers
Right. But that's not
everything. What color?
Listen. Look.
Second part of the film.
You have shown a mechanism: the strike,
the delegate, the general assembly,
repression, police state, etc.
The real movement,
May '68 France,
'68-'69 Italy,
you have made a film.
How did you make it?
Now critique, now
struggle, now transform.
Don't forget it's difficult for
any individual to avoid mistakes.
Their correction lies in the general
movement towards Marxist education.
Start again at the beginning,
with the people.
Be critical of your lack
of liaison with the people.
Liaison with the People
Pass on the people's ideas, concentrate on...
It's not enough to have an aim,
you've got to solve the methods which
will allow you to accomplish this.
Your method is wrong. You think
that it's enough to quote Mao,
then go to the country and film farm
workers to unite with the rural masses.
... the correct formula for the job,
for production and for the
basic notions of direction.
In every political
activity of our party,
the correct direction must be
based on the following principles.
You still talk in slogans
and poster language,
and you're still apart from
the people, you're not in sync,
you're outside the real struggle.
Think what your situation really is.
Use our Chinese comrades' quotations so
they become effective political instruments,
not a ready-made solution.
You shout, make predictions,
spread opinions, but you
don't really question.
I've been to the people again,
discussing and explaining these words,
so that the people can accept,
approve and apply them.
To verify the correctness of these
ideas in the people's activities.
And again, to bring the ideas of the
people together and spread them.
See, you say you question.
But you do it poorly. As a result
you practice bourgeois sociology.
Instead of trying to expose the real forces
of social class, you make cin?ma v?rit?.
You show the misery of the
people, but not their struggle.
And by not showing their struggle, you
deny them the means of struggling.
Your cinema, images, sounds, are those of
bourgeois television and its revisionist allies.
This debate will be
continued indefinitely,
the ideas becoming clearer, livelier
and more complex. That is the theory.
Listen. You do more than that.
You film blocks of flats and
think you are filming people.
You've never even started
to consider your real position.
You started by making an inquiry,
but from where did you start?
You know there is
no cinema above class,
no cinema above the class struggle.
But what does this mean?
It means that the dominant
material power of the society,
the dominant class, is also the one
which creates, in and with its films,
the dominant images.
It means that these images
are those of its domination.
You are involved in the struggle, but
here and now, how are you struggling?
You make a film. You
make images and sounds.
What to do? You have the means
of making films at your disposal.
What is to be done to
make images and sounds
which do not depict the
hegemony of the dominant class?
Yes, what to do. You must not
be afraid to know where you are.
You must not be afraid to know
where you can start. Where are you?
You are in France,
your are in Italy, in Germany.
You are in an imperialist branch
of the prevailing imperialism.
Where are you? In Prague,
in Warsaw and in Berlin,
in some revisionist
agency of revisionism.
If you're not working for
Brezhnev Studios-Mosfilm,
you are working
for Nixon-Paramount.
It means that ultimately you
are always doing the same thing,
because when you
work for Brezhnev-Mosfilm,
you are in fact a lackey to the
other master, Nixon-Paramount.
You forget this master has been
demanding the same film for 50 years.
You forget this film has
one name - the Western -
and this is not by chance.
You start your investigation,
and you learn that your methods are
influenced by the dominant ideology.
Don't confuse your primary
tasks and secondary tasks.
Though it lasts only the
duration of one sequence,
in this film the principal task is theory.
A - Theory
Hollywood. Producers. Factory.
Hollywood shows the form of cinema
as something wonderful, dreamlike,
to which you must pay admission.
But this dream is also a
weapon in Hollywood's hands.
Hollywood wants you to believe this dream
is reality, more real than reality itself.
Hollywood tries to fool you, and will
use any means to achieve its ends.
Hollywood wants you to believe this
image of a horse is really a horse
and that this image of a horse is more real
than a horse, which it isn't to begin with.
Hollywood makes you believe this
movie Indian is more real than an Indian,
and that the extra on horseback is
more real than a Union soldier.
This extra is called an actor.
This actor is called a character.
The adventures of these
characters are called a film
and the making of
this film is called direction.
To this end,
all means are acceptable:
costumes, make-up,
disguises, performances.
Every year Hollywood decorates and
rewards the best producers in the world.
The game goes on. The imperialist
image of reality passes for reality itself.
The Moscow Film Festival.
The Pesaro Film Festival.
The Leipzig Film Festival.
I am General Motor!
I am General Motor!
What is being done in the
Brezhnev-Mosfilm zone of influence?
What films are made in Algiers?
What films are made in Havana?
There is a struggle against Nixon-
Paramount, but what is really going on?
Progressive cinema has understood film is
the relationship between image and sound.
But is progressive cinema
examining this relationship seriously?
Where does this relationship come from?
How does it work? For whom? Against whom?
No, the progressive cinema
does not ask itself these questions.
Why does it refuse to question in class terms?
Sometimes it modifies sound, sometimes image.
It imagines it creates new relationships,
but mistaking quantity for quality,
it only modifies these
relationships abstractly.
Brezhnev-Mosfilm claims it is
attacking Nixon-Paramount,
but in reality it supports it.
Underground. London. Paris.
Amsterdam. New York.
Here is a cinema
which thinks it is liberated.
Here, for example, a sound which
thinks it is liberating an image.
A cinema which thinks
it is liberated.
A drug cinema. A sex cinema.
A cinema which claims it
has been liberated by poetry.
A cinema without taboos,
except against the class struggle.
A class cinema, the
flunky of Nixon-Paramount,
the flunky of imperialism.
You mentioned at the beginning
a road laid out by the history
of the revolutionary movement.
But where is it?
In front? Behind?
Left? Right? And how?
You have changed your method.
You asked the cinema of
the Third World where it was.
Pardon me for disturbing your
class struggle. I know it is important.
But which is the
way to the political film?
That way is the unknown
cinema, the cinema of adventure.
And that way is
the Third World cinema,
a dangerous cinema,
divine and marvelous.
A cinema of the oppression
of imperialist consumption
is a dangerous cinema,
a marvellous cinema,
a cinema out to repress the
fascist oppression of terrorism.
And there you discovered
the complexities of the struggle.
You discovered that you
lack the means of analyzing it.
You're back to
the concrete situation.
In Italy, in France, in Germany,
in Warsaw, in Prague,
you have seen that the
materialist film emerges only
when it confronts, in terms of class struggle,
the bourgeois notion of representation.
Struggle against the bourgeois
notion of representation.
Struggle against the bourgeois
notion of representation.
Yes. To wrest the means of
production from imperialist hands,
in order to wrest ideological
domination from them.
The bourgeoisie talks about representation.
But what does it mean by that?
In 10 seconds you will be looking at a
character on a bourgeois film screen.
He is a character from a Western,
from a psychological drama,
a police film, or a historical film.
It doesn't matter.
In fact he's always the seducer. He
describes the room where you are sitting.
He says he is in the dark.
He says there are
more people in the balcony.
He says there's an
old man in the fifth row.
He says there's a
good-looking girl at the back.
He says he'd like to lay her.
He'd like to give her flowers.
He asks her to
join him on the screen.
There's lots of green.
Blue skies.
The air is clear.
"Don't you believe it? Then
come here, you bunch of turds!"
"Wonderful summer day. "
"Sunshine. Truth. "
Struggle against the bourgeois
notion of representation.
Wrest the means of production from
the hands of the dominant ideology.
That is to say, maximum program.
Maximum. To be able to say:
this image is red. Red. Red.
Without a workers' and peasants'
triple alliance with the military.
Minimum program, minimum.
Spell it out. Know how to learn. And
knowing how to learn means first, for you,
to look in the face the whole
bitter, absurd, dirty spectacle.
The spectacle of the
revisionist school teacher,
who collaborates in reinforcing the
ideological power of the bourgeoisie.
The Communist Party has
decided to give the people culture.
Miss Althusser, what
people have we got here?
First, the people of the Third World.
Let the people of the
Third World come forward.
Will the people of the Third
World come forward please.
How to read Das Kapital.
Good.
"To the people of the Third World...
"with esteem and friendship."
One moment.
Start at chapter two.
What did the revisionist
school teacher just say?
He said: "Read Das Kapital."
He did not say to use it. Use it.
He criticizes the
defects of the people,
but he does not do this
from the people's point of view.
By treating a comrade like an enemy,
he has taken the position of the enemy.
Struggle
I learned to play music.
Good, no?
It's nice? Isn't it nice? Wait...
Isn't it pretty?
You must like my music!
My music isn't good?
Did you take part
in the class struggle?
Yes. I was at Cl?on.
Were you at Strasbourg?
Were you at Sochaux?
Were you in South America?
Were you at Battipaglia?
I was at Battipaglia.
I did my self-criticism.
Did you take part in the demonstration
against Rockefeller's visit?
Yes, I did that too.
I did my self-criticism,
the class struggle,
and learned to play music.
Were you at the May celebrations
in Madrid, forbidden by Franco?
Yes, I was at the May celebrations
in Madrid. I learned music there too.
- And what did you play there?
- Listen.
Struggle
Not quite right, is it?
No, not quite right.
Maybe I should go on.
I'll go on with the class struggle and
self-criticism. It'll be better afterwards.
Class medicine. France.
Text from a medical school handbook
on industrial medicine for 5th-year students:
"The fatigue index is
less related to objective criteria
"than to subjective
or personality factors.
"For measuring fatigue, the
department chief and the foreman
"are in the best position.
"They are direct witness to diminishing
efforts and lowering production rate.
"For the doctor, the task is to
discover the origins of this fatigue.
"The medical student learns he must
work hand in hand with the foreman
"and thus becomes in a way
his scientific alter ego. "
For these guardian angels of capitalism,
there is a clear division of labor:
one finds the ills,
the other cures them.
Both play the same role
in the social division of labor.
Surveillance and repression.
People's medicine. China.
Transformation of the
medical and sanitary system
is an important part in the transformation
of the social superstructure.
After the founding of the
new China - the new China -
a series of provisions were made to ensure
medical care and hygienic assistance
for the rural population.
The workers' health
improved considerably,
but Lio-Tsa-Tsji, that eternal
renegade, took the revisionist way
in medicine and health care.
He wanted to centralize
the service in the cities.
He entered into the erroneous theory
of hospitals worthy of the name.
The lack of doctors and pharmaceutical
products in the rural areas
was one of the reasons China was not
fundamentally changed for a long period.
The great cultural revolution
of the proletariat - proletariat -
broke up this revisionist
counter-revolutionary tendency.
The poor and semi-poor peasants took
the health system into their own hands.
They have set up medical labs and
they run ambulance services.
Thus the area of medical health in the
countryside was rapidly changed.
Thus in the commune of Yong Fang,
in the Nanking district,
the 79 production groups have many
medical workers at their disposal.
In general, minor wounds and illnesses
are treated within each group,
while minor operations
are carried out in the commune.
A co-operative system
has begun to be enforced,
and poor and semi-poor peasants
are ensured immediate treatment.
Struggle - Critique
Les Beaux Quartiers,
by Marcel Proust, page 145.
Death to bourgeois culture!
"I've never been able to remember the
room which gave onto the street... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
"Thus there exists only one way of speaking.
Once in the hotel, there was no embankment... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
"... not even the San Marco canal,
the crowd and the pigeons... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
"... the sun in the distance on San Giorgio
Maggiore. That was a world in itself, by itself... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
"... and for itself, as they say.
The steps, the passages... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
"... the dreary walls of the room's upper part
in darkness. Due to the lamps, one loses... "
Death to bourgeois culture!
He doesn't listen to the revisionist teacher.
He doesn't start from the second chapter.
He starts from the first chapter
of Das Kapital by Karl Marx.
He reads to serve himself.
"The wealth of societies in which
capitalist means of production are found
"consists of merchandise. Merchandise.
"Merchandise is a thing which
possesses practical value,
"and it exists in all social forms.
"But in capitalist society the utility value
is at the same time the material basis
"of an exchange value. "
Things and words...
Open fire on the revisionist intellectual,
the unwitting ally of bourgeois culture.
... Laurent Leroy, Central Committee
of the French Communist Party.
Open fire on the revisionist intellectual,
the unwitting ally of bourgeois culture.
"Throughout the mercantile experience, the
control of wealth is made up of the same... "
Death, fire, death.
The theory of Marx - Engels -
Lenin has universal value.
It should not be considered as
dogma but as a guide to action.
For example, in France, young workers
in a provincial training center
threw out the Mar?chal factories representative
who had come to supervise examinations.
You must not be satisfied with
learning Marxist-Leninist terminology;
Marxist-Leninism has to be learned
as the science of revolution.
It is not enough just to study the general
laws set down by Marx, Engels and Lenin,
based on their extensive studies
of life and revolutionary experience.
You must also examine the
methods and arguments they use
in studying and solving problems.
For example, in Italy,
deprived of water and electricity
for three days, for having
refused to pay higher rates,
the inhabitants of the small town of
Mezzogiorno occupied the town hall,
stopped the trains and built barricades.
For example, to know how to
arm yourself with self-criticism.
Ten minutes ago, I wanted to educate the
Third World; and now I do my self-criticism.
Paragraph 1:
"And what was the
university in the past?
"The university has frequently been
called a kindergarten for adults.
"It is true that the majority of
those who went to university... "
Quiet!
"... went there because people sent them
and because people wanted to send them. "
I'm doing my self-criticism.
Let me continue!
Paragraph 2:
"And what were the contents of... "
Comrades! I come from Fiat.
Fiat is my university.
The comrades wrote a pamphlet.
With "Commissione Liceo Gioberti"
we made a pamphlet, with five questions.
"What do you think about your work?"
Strike!
"What are your demands?"
Revolution!
"Which form of struggle and organization
do you find most effective?"
Strike!
"What help can the student movement
give to the workers' struggle?"
Strike!
"Would it be useful to form a massive organization
in Italy of young workers and students?"
Time to go - I've got a class at Pirelli.
We have practical tasks at Pirelli -
they've occupied the factory. I'm going.
It's time that teaching
is revealed to the masses
as a weapon in the
hands of the bourgeoisie.
The number of those who tolerate their role
as victims and accomplices will diminish.
The camouflage
no longer hides anything -
neither the nature of our society nor the
special place reserved for those who study
to become servants of the bourgeoisie.
A niche and a status in the comfortable
propriety of the bourgeoisie.
Good. You have developed
your theory of alphabetization.
You've seen this too was a front in the battle.
Good. Now back to practical things.
France, May-June '68.
For several months there was
only one word: "autonomy".
This word has a dark
and confusing history.
Turin '19.
Barcelona '37.
A week in Budapest '56.
You have been theorizing.
You began in May.
Tell me about autonomy.
Find the right words.
Listen, is that what
you call the right terms?
You speak even more
abstractly than before. Think.
The concrete situation. Autonomy.
Example: Yugoslavia.
The restoration of
capitalism in Yugoslavia...
... came into being
because public enterprise...
... which played an important
part in the Yugoslav economy...
... degenerated and changed.
The economy of the workers' self-government
is a special kind of state capitalism.
This state capitalism...
... is not that which exists
for the needs of the proletariat.
It is a variety of state capitalism...
... which exists because of
completely different conditions...
... caused by the degeneration of
the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Since 1950, Tito's clique has passed
a series of resolutions and laws
which are intended to bring about
autonomy of the workers in factories,
mines, the communications media,
commerce, agriculture, public works
and all other state enterprises.
The application of this self-government by
the workers consists of placing enterprises
under the control of
the workers' collectives.
These collectives buy
their own raw materials,
decide which goods they are going
to make, their quantity and their price.
They sell their
products on the market,
fix the wages and decide
on the division of the profits.
From a theoretical point of view,
everyone with even a little knowledge
of Marxism knows that concepts like
"autonomy" and "workers' factories"
have never been Marxist concepts,
but ideas put forward by anarcho-
syndacalists and bourgeois socialists.
In the Communist Manifesto,
Marx and Engels say:
"The proletariat will make
use of its political superiority
"to wrest all monetary power from
the hands of the bourgeoisie
"and to place all means of
production in the hands of the state. "
This is a fundamental
socialist principle.
After the October Revolution, when some
wanted to return factories to the old producers
so they could organize
production directly,
Lenin criticized them, saying this
would lead to a reaction against
the dictatorship of the proletariat.
For all these reasons...
... the "worker autonomy"
initiated by the Tito clique...
... has made public enterprise totally
removed from the orbit of socialist economy.
The main symptoms
of this phenomenon are:
1. Suppression of unified
State economic planning.
2. Profit is considered the main
incentive of the enterprise's program.
Production policy is
decided by the workers...
... but it is not geared to
satisfy the needs of society...
... but serves to realize profits,
exactly as in capitalist enterprises.
3. Favoring a policy
which encourages free trade.
4. The use of credit in banking
to support capitalistic free trade.
Loans are given to those who can
repay in the shortest possible time...
... and the rate of interest is high.
5. The relations between
the various enterprises...
... are not the socialist
bonds of mutual assistance,
but the capitalist and competitive
bonds of a so-called free market.
You see, your ideas are confused.
If you continue, you'll end the film
by saying that socialism
is a bed of roses.
It is true that theory, when it reaches
the people, becomes a material force.
But you need valid ideas.
Think about the concrete situation.
Re-think your theories.
Example: the invention
of photography.
The B Theory
The invention of photography.
For whom? Against whom?
The invention of photography.
For whom? Against whom?
For whom? Against whom?
For whom? France.
Louis Philippe. The banks.
Investment. The beginning
of the industrial revolution.
Accelerated growth of the
proletariat. Class struggle.
The necessity of changing
the dominant ideology.
Class struggle. The necessity of hiding
reality from the people. Class struggle.
The necessity of new means.
Class struggle.
Photography forces literature
and painting into the background.
Against whom?
Against the people in struggle. Photography.
For the bourgeoisie, two functions:
1. Identification of class enemies.
2. Disguising reality.
1. In 1871 the police in Versailles
photographed the insurgents.
2. In 1871, photographs
of shot communards appeared
in bourgeois newspapers.
Today: Paris Match/Vietnam.
Newsweek/Palestine.
L'Espresso/Brazil.
Fight the bourgeois
concept of representation.
Wrest control of the cinema,
photography and television
from the hands of
the dominant ideology.
Don't represent
the problem abstractly.
To make cinema
a revolutionary weapon,
you have to think through and
with the revolutionary struggle.
Think and work out the methods.
Class struggle. Armed struggle.
The Armed Struggle
Learn.
Know how to learn.
Read. Calculate.
Experiment. Chemistry.
Mathematics. Electricity.
Read. Calculate. Learn.
Know how to learn.
Know how to fight.
Good day. Do you
have any ping-pong balls?
Do you have any skates?
Have you got a harpoon?
Have you got any tennis rackets?
Thank you.
Good-bye, madam.
Warning to militants. Watch out.
Warning to militants. Watch out.
Warning to militants. Watch out.
Warning to militants. Watch out.
Reflect. Look ahead.
Withdraw.
Think. Produce. Simplify.
Construct. Wait.
Reflect. Simplify. Think. Wait.
Good day, madam.
A pack of Chesterfields.
I've only got Gitanes
and Gauloises.
No. I want Chesterfields.
There's Luckies,
Players and Winstons.
No. I want Chesterfields. Wait.
Reflect. Simplify.
In this street there
is a barber, a baker,
a druggist, a dairy, a chemist,
a novelty shop, a bookshop, etc.
You can buy jam, coffee, milk,
sugar, thermos flasks, plates. etc.
Think. Produce. Simplify.
It's disgusting. A bomb has been thrown
in a supermarket. There are many injuries.
What have you got out of it?
It's really unheard of
to kidnap Rockefeller's son.
What good did that do?
The boy hasn't done anything.
Think. Manufacture.
Simplify. Reflect. Learn.
Learn.
As I said,
fanatics are sent to do the killings,
gangsters whose only
aim is to kill and destroy,
though no advantage
can be gained from it.
That's what bourgeois
humanitarianism says
when the oppressed get the means of
grasping the exploiter by the throat.
When bourgeois humanitarianism
talks about innocent victims,
unnecessary violence,
what is it hiding?
The daily reality of bourgeois
terror, the reality of the struggle.
Citro?n. Javel. Morning shift.
The brotherhood of classes in opposition.
The fraternity proclaimed in 1789,
1871 and 1968,
written in giant letters
on every wall in Paris,
all over the walls of
the jails and barracks;
that is the real, authentic
expression in prose of civil war -
civil war in its most horrible form,
the war between labor and capital.
Now, let us consider the secondary aspect
of the war between capital and labor.
Why should we think about
that secondary aspect just now?
Because the bourgeoisie are
now making it their main battlefield.
OK. Think about the secondary aspects
of the war between labor and capital.
Think: primary contradiction
and secondary contradiction.
Think: main aspect of the
contradiction and secondary aspect.
OK. Primary contradiction:
civil war between labor and capital.
Secondary contradiction:
division of labor and sex.
The secondary contradiction is one
the bourgeoisie tries with all its might
to present as the primary one -
women's magazines,
dogmatic sociology, etc.
OK. Sex and its division from labor
is the secondary contradiction.
OK. Now for the first aspect
of this secondary contradiction.
The sexual urge is tied to the struggle
for production and the class struggle.
Now for the second
aspect of the contradiction.
The sexual urge is still almost everywhere
the primary property of the bourgeoisie.
Think: primary contradiction
and secondary contradiction.
Think: primary aspects
of the contradiction -
primary and secondary; and secondary aspects
of the contradiction - primary and secondary.
Think: civil war
between labor and capital.
Think: the division of labor and sex.
Think: negative and positive.
Think: union of opposites.
Think: struggle.
Think: change.
Think: eroticism and plus values.
Think: feelings, use value.
Think: feelings, change value.
Think: positive matrimony
plus negative adultery
equals bourgeois unity.
Think: to destroy this unity
today is revolutionary for a woman.
Which revolution? That of 1789.
Think about the meaning of this:
is the feminine problem
more or less different
from the peasant problem?
Think again about this:
why does a medium-poor
Breton peasant marry?
And think: why does a
Paris foundry owner marry?
Keep thinking about this:
in May '68, unmarried C. G. T. workers
blocked workers from entering the factory
in the morning, and at night they laid
students in the Sorbonne and the Od?on.
Think of the most horrifying form of
fraternity between opposing classes.
Think about the civil war
between labor and capital.
Think of subjectivity in class terms.
The end. Beginning
of a prolonged struggle.
What to do? You've made a film, you've
criticized it. You've made mistakes,
you've corrected some of them.
Because of this you know a little more
about making sounds and images.
Perhaps now you know better how
this production can be transformed.
For whom and against whom?
Perhaps you have learned
something very simple.
It's right to rebel.
Marxism consists of a
multiplicity of principles,
which in the last analysis can
be summed up in a single statement:
it's right to rebel.
A single statement:
it's right to rebel.
No. Marxism consists of...
Marxism consists of a
multiplicity of principles...
... which can be summed up
in a single statement...
No. Which, in the last analysis,
can be summed up...
Marxism consists of
a multiplicity of principles,
which in the last analysis can be
summed up in a single statement:
it's right to rebel.
"The policy of peaceful co-existence
"thus translates into
present-day terms
"the problem of
maintaining world peace.
"The transformations of the
"October Revolution and the continuing
development of socialism in many countries
"has created in the
world, in this respect,
"a radically new situation.
"Imperialism has lost nothing
of its aggressive nature
"and events only prove this.
"Secondly.
"The growing power
of socialist organizations
"coupled with the upsurge of
national liberation movements,
"the struggle of the working
classes of capitalist countries
"and the general development
of peace-loving forces,
"have thus made it possible
to avoid a new world war
"and a thermo-nuclear catastrophe.
"The policy of peaceful co-existence
is a method for regulating...
"... is a method for regulating
relations between states. "
To dare to rebel -
for us, here and now, this
means fighting on two fronts.
To dare to rebel - for you, here and
now, this means fighting on two fronts.
Fighting against the
eternal lies of the bourgeoisie.
The modernization of our economy
is a vital task, and if we fail,
we are left with
a limited independence
and stagnation which
will lead to rebellion.
Only a flourishing and efficient economy
will enable us to strengthen our foundations
and give us real stability.
But to succeed
in this difficult enterprise,
our habitual ways of acting and thinking
must drastically change.
It is everyone's duty to
help bring about this change.
In this technological society, with its complex
mechanisms so difficult to understand,
participation is the right way
to involve people in recognizing
that they are masters
of their own destiny.
Death to the bourgeoisie!
To dare to rebel - for us, here and now,
this means fighting on two fronts,
against the bourgeoisie and
against its ally, revisionism.
There are in the world today two winds -
the east wind and the west wind.
The east wind actually prevails over
the west wind. The revolutionary forces
have achieved an overwhelming
superiority over the imperialist forces.