1968 was a crucial turning point in the economic history of France. After 1968 France enjoyed almost 20 years when the working class saw large gains in wages. Income inequality shrunk dramatically. See here:

http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/05/08/may-1968-and-inequ...

an excerpt:

In France the years 1945-1967 are marked by high rates of growth, but also by a movement of reconstitution of inequalities, with, at one and the same time, a steep rise in the share of profits in national income and the reconstitution of highly ranked salary scales. The share of the 10% highest incomes which was barely 31% of total income in 1945 gradually rose to 38% in 1967.

...The break came in 1968. As a way out of the crisis, General de Gaulle’s government signed the Grenelle Agreements which included, in particular, a rise of 20% in the minimum wage. The minimum wage was officially indexed on average wage gains in 1970 and, most importantly, all the successive governments from 1968 to 1983 felt obliged to grant very high ‘special hikes’ almost every year in a social and political climate far from stable. The result was that the purchasing power of the minimum wage rose in all by over 130% between 1968 and 1983, whereas at the same time the average salary only rose by about 50%, whence a very strong compression of pay inequalities. The break with the previous period was clean and wide-ranging; the purchasing power of the minimum wage had risen by barely 25% between 1950 and 1968, whereas the average salary had more than doubled. Driven by the strong rise in low salaries, throughout the years 1968-1983, the total payroll rose significantly faster than did production; as a result there was a considerable fall in the share of capital in the national income. All this took place at the same time as a reduction in the number of hours worked and an increase in paid holidays.

I found these reflections interesting. Since she was there at the time and doesn't draw any simplistic conclusions, I thought the essay might make an interesting HN post. It's a political site, but the article is not so politicized.

This one is slightly more ideological but still more personal and also quite interesting: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2018/05/some-reflecti.... I found it pretty consistent with Diana Johnstone's piece.

I've never understood how May 68 is so important. What was changed afterward that makes this period so important to be remembered 50 years later? Could someone explain this?

French posters and Spanish civil war posters were so great. The events (the Spanish Civil War) was terrible, but man the art in the posters is always very compelling.

I see it as a irony that in 68 there were many communist activists in the West, while Czechoslovakia - socialist country - was invaded by 'allied' eastern bloc armies. Reason was that local politics shifted towards what was called "communism with a human face", meaning it introduced freedom of expression.

Any attempt to implement Marx ideas resulted in unimaginable amount of suffering and injustice, scarring nations for decades to come. I am dismayed that he still has so many followers, and quite a lot of them seem to be Westerners.

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I don't think that any of those countries were prosperous before Communism either.

- Gulag-style camps and secret police already existed in the Russian empire. USSR managed to have an "industrial revolution" over 20 years and beat Nazi Germany, then was the first country to space and was one of the world's superpowers right up until the end.

- If you look at the history of both Koreas post-WWII, you will see that the economic system has little to do with how DPRK is now.

- Cuba has done OK considering the embargo. Cf Haiti

- Colonialism and the Vietnam War did more damage to Vietnam than Marxism could have

- Again if you look at how poor the situation in China was pre-civil war you will see that the claim that Marxist policies "destroyed" China is false.

> What is certain is that the Soviet Union has been the worst reeking charnel house of this whole awful twentieth century, worse even than the one the Nazis created

I think it is hypocritical to call the USSR worse than the Nazis when at least 80% of the German casualties of the war were on the Eastern Front, thanks to Stalin's brutal policy to industrialize the country.

Not to defend Stalin but, those 26 million died during WWII. 8 million in the fighting alone, another 3 million in POW camps. It's a bit of a stretch to say Stalin murdered people who in fact died of starvation sitting in German occupied territory. And rather creative to imagine they would have died anyway, Nazi invasion or not.

Compare to the Taiping Rebellion, in which roughly 20-70 million died in a religious war. The Cato institute chooses not cite this as proof that religion is more violent than Nazi carnage. I suppose because both claims are equally ridiculous but only one matches Cato's coldwar ideology.

As the aricle notes, May 1968 was not a Marxist uprising. If anything, established Marxist forces are blamed for deflating the momentum of May '68 and, through the unions, simply being content with extracting some concessions for workers.

You do know that France has a tradition of citizens going to the barricades going back to the 18th century :-)

Let alone the French revolutions role in supporting the AWI

Every time this argument is made I wonder how capitalism would look if a fair comparison were made. All the mortality and cruelty of the slave trade and it's aftermath, all the genocide around the world that accompanied colonialism. Marx's ideas would not have created the defacto religious fervor they did if they had not created hope for an alternative to the horrors of 1800's capitalism. The real problem is that humans are too easily swayed by men seeking power who offer simplistic purist solutions. We are better off recognizing that we will always be in an unstable equilibrium where we work constantly creating changing complex mixtures of insights from Marx and Smith and wise humans of all stripes in a never ending battle against entropy and human nature.

Hard to know what the outcome would be.

I would argue that any violent revolution has great risks. You just never know who will come to power and what their choices will be...

The slippery slope argument seems to come out quickly against Socialist policies. The danger of any populist/mob revolt is the unsavory type that wins out and the tactics they use to consolidate and retain power.