Episode Transcript
Antifascist Dad Episode 53: Elders Support the Children's Revolt in France
Guest: Michael Löwy
Matthew Remski: Hey everyone, this is Matthew Remski with Antifascist Dad. Episode 53 elders support the Children's Revolt in France with Michael Löwy.
Michael Löwy: Just in front of me there is a university in front of my apartment, on the other side there's a university and the students are blocking the entrance and I go speak to them, encourage them and bring them food for them.
And they are very happy that they see people giving support to them.
So that's the minimum what we can do.
Matthew Remski: It's the minimum we can do. You can find me on Bluesky and Instagram under my name. I'm at YouTube and TikTok as antifascistdad. The Patreon for this show is antifascistdadpodcast, where subscribers get early access to a second weekly episode. And this is one of those second weekly episodes. If that's you listening to it on the day that it's dropped, thanks a million for your support. If you're listening to it shortly thereafter in the feed, know that this is an educational project.
Everything gets unlocked. So support to the Patreon is really just to try to keep this going. I'm not paywalling things per se.
I'd also direct you in my show notes to the link for my book, which is called Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times.
I felt extremely lucky that the 88 year old scholar of revolutionary coalitions answered this random email I sent on the 15th, just two days after the initial nationwide surge of protests across France and two days before the events of the 17th. For more on that timeline, you can scroll back to episode 52 in which I chatted with Danielle Duncan, an American professor living in Paris.
Michael Löwy was born May 6, 1938 in São Paulo. He's French-Brazilian. He's a Marxist sociologist and philosopher. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Vienna and he became a committed socialist at the age of 16. Appropriately enough, after reading Rosa Luxemburg at the University of São Paulo, he studied social sciences and then he taught sociology for many years. He traveled to Israel, where his family had emigrated, and later wrote his doctoral thesis in Paris under Lucien Goldmann.
Now, in 1969, he returned to Paris to work with Nicos Poulantzas at the University of Paris VIII, where he taught until 1978. And by the way, I've been thrilled to discover Poulantzas myself recently.
At the dawn of neoliberalism, he articulated a theory of liberal state authoritarianism that I found very useful in my attempts to understand what Mark Carney is up to now. Until the mid-1980s.
Löwy's work focused on the history of Marxist thought, including books like The Marxism of Che Guevara. But he also turned to Central European Jewish culture and Romanticism. And he wrote works on Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka and Georg Lukács. His The War of Gods is a standard work on liberation theology and politics in Latin America. So you can see how this guy really pulls together so many of the threads that I have been obsessed about.
His most visible political legacy is ecosocialism. With Joel Kovel. He co wrote the International Ecosocialist Manifesto and he helped organize the first international ecosocialist meeting in Paris in 2007.
Now I really hope that I get to talk with Michael again at some point because his work has brought Marxism into contact with, as I said, religion, romanticism, ecology, traditions. A lot of the orthodox left have treated as opposed to it, but which I don't think they are. But for today I was just happy to get his report on the manif from his apartment in Paris. Michael Löwy, welcome to Antifascist Dad, thank you so much for taking the time. You're in Paris right now and I'm wondering if you can hear the manif from where you are.
Michael Löwy: Yes, I'm in Paris and sometimes the manifestation go almost below my window and sometimes I go down and I take part in the demonstration.
Matthew Remski: You have a very long experience with this.
Some have said that these gatherings outnumber those that were seen in 1968. I'm wondering if you feel that's true and what you would say might be similar to 1968 and what might you say is different.
Michael Löwy: Look, I wasn't here in 68, I arrived in Paris in 69.
But I think there are similarities. But there are obvious differences. The similarity is the mass mobilization of young people.
In '68 there were the students, now the high school students, yes, also some university students. But the mass of the demonstrations and of the movement is the Lyceum High School. Right, that's.
But the main difference is that the movement in May 68 had from the beginning a very strong political character.
It was against government, against capitalism, solidarity with Vietnam and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it was very, very political.
And the leadership were the so called gauchistes, that means revolutionary left, small groups, Trotskyists, Maoists, anarchists, etc. Etc. Etc. Who played a very important role.
Now the movement now is of a very different character.
It's more a mass movement around concrete issues.
High schools, no teachers, no chairs, no tables, crumbling walls, unbearable heat during the summer.
Matthew Remski: Can I just say that this is not an exaggeration that there's literally no furniture in some of the schools?
Michael Löwy: It's true, it's true.
And so on and so on. So this is the starting point. Very concrete material issues. But beyond this came a general, more broader issue, which is the government doesn't give a damn to education because it refuses to tax the rich, because it wants to invest all the money in the military, etc. Etc.
So there is a general critique of the policies of the government.
And beyond that, many of the young people, perhaps not all, but many of them, identify as antifascist.
And so antifascist slogans and kind of sing song which is very popular in Europe.
Antifascisti, you probably know that hands, etc. They do this very much. So there is a kind of general antifascist atmosphere.
It is also political, but not in the same way as in 68. And the starting point and the main issue are the material conditions for education.
Matthew Remski: When we see that it is antifascist slogans that are now audible in the streets, does that give you the sense that this particular generation of protesters is associating the kind of state authoritarianism of Macron and similar governments with the kind of incipient fascism?
Michael Löwy: Some of them may consider the way the police is treating them as similar to fascism, but I think most of them, they are extremely worried by the perspective that the far right or the neo fascist Rassemblement National of the Le Pen family will win the elections, the presidential election. So this is big worry for these young people.
So when they say Siamo tutti antifascisti, it's also aimed against this danger of the Le Pen party.
Matthew Remski: Now this is a long time in coming because as in many places in the global north, there's been a several decades long history of austerity that has attacked institutions like public education.
And I'm wondering, what do you think was the tipping point?
Was was it the absence of the furniture or was there a certain sort of just blatant disregard for student well being as we see the money get shipped off to private colleges or to wealthier suburbs. What was the breaking point, do you think?
Michael Löwy: Difficult to say.
I think one element was that during the summer, the heat wave was terrible, terrible. Thousands of people died. Yeah.
Matthew Remski: Hundreds of deaths or thousands.
Michael Löwy: I think 8,000 deaths. 8,000 deaths. Officially. Officially the students, the high school students suffered very much because the schools are completely inadapted to such temperatures. And the government had theoretically a plan to adapt the schools to this, but they didn't do anything.
So maybe have been one of the things which was weighing.
But there was also the police repression.
As soon as the movement started in a few schools, the police immediately came down in a very violent way.
The police violence in France is really unbelievable. There's nothing equivalent in other countries in Europe.
There have been hundreds of students injured and some of them were very seriously injured. They lost one hand or one eye and things like that. So. But since the beginning there was this repression. So there was an outrage against the repression also. Yeah. And of course these material conditions, which are really unbearable.
So there is a moment when people say enough is enough.
Matthew Remski: I'm wondering whether, given the fact that the government has begun describing the movement as like an operation run by La France Insoumise or ultra left proxies of this party, and now there's talk of banning the party.
How do you read this framing? They're obviously trying to avoid the fact that this is a revolution or social movement from below.
Does this suggest that the government is going to develop this strategy in preparing to manage dissent before the elections next year?
Michael Löwy: Well, the government is trying desperately to identify the movement with La France Insoumise, saying that La France Insoumise provoked it. In fact, members of parliament and leaders of La France Insoumise went to the schools to support the students and to protect them against the police and sometimes negotiating with the police. But they are not at the origin of the movement. They are not leading the movement. The movement doesn't have really leaders.
It's an upset from below.
So this argument of the government is really not very credible.
But it has been used insistently by the far right and by the government because they cannot accept that the movement emerged spontaneously.
And they want, with this accusation, both present La France Insoumise as irresponsible and provoking violence, etc.
And smear the movement as being, how to say, led by political forces who are just manipulating them, etc. But it's completely absurd. The movement emerged spontaneously and La France Insoumise didn't have any role, only they came and supported it because their line is to support social movement.
Matthew Remski: I mean, the accusation is a very big risk, but that it's, you know, Mélenchon and. And others sort of fomenting this. But I think they have to also get away from the prospect that it is children driving the actual movement, because this is a terrible, terrible thing to contemplate.
And I think it works against a lot of propaganda that I believe we hear about younger people being, you know, at sea or, you know, buried in their phones or somehow disconnected or depoliticized and so on. And I'm wondering if that's being disproven, that in fact, even amidst this kind of educational vacuum and this over technologized landscape and you know, the prevalence of their digital lives, that there is still this capacity to actually feel. Feel for young people as though they're actually a class. And that's something that's actually rare.
Michael Löwy: Yeah, that's very important.
It is true that digital links, etc.
They have a negative influence, etc.
But still it shows that in spite of all this, the students, the young people, the high school, almost children, as you said, are perfectly able to develop, to organize, to act, to protest and to achieve political consciousness. So it's really a very turning point. Yeah, and really turning point because there hasn't been such a movement in France for the last 30 years, probably.
So it's something really extraordinary.
And it's going on. Yeah, it's going on. It didn't stop the movement. The government every day say, okay, now it's finished. Okay, it's finished. No, it's not finished. It's going on and on. Right.
Matthew Remski: There is a lot of recent theory that's quite despairing about the capacity for. For people after 30, 40 years of neoliberalism and the precariat and gig work and the bashing of unions, to be able to find common ground or even the time in which to organize, or the spaces in which to organize. But it seems as though the lycée, you know, even the middle schools are places where actually people gather.
And that seems to be incredibly important. It reminds me of the fact that some of the primary resistance organizing spaces that I'm encountering now are amongst tenant unions within apartment buildings who are striking against rent. And so I'm wondering if you're also seeing that it's very important that the physical space and the capacity to gather is an essential part of this.
Michael Löwy: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's absolutely. The schools are a place where young people come together, discuss, talk, exchange ideas, experiences. And the same applies to tenants.
All this shows that the class struggle is not limited to the factory.
Many times the left thinks that the class level is only in the workers in the factory, otherwise it's not relevant or doesn't exist. Now it shows that class struggle is something much broader. Yeah, much broader, which includes high school youth, includes tenants and so on and so on. Yeah, women fighting for their life and so on.
So I. We need to have this broader understanding of what means class struggle
Matthew Remski: I'm very, very moved by this, even though I'm 6,000km away, because I believe that our own here in Canada, our own educational system is maybe, I don't know, five to 10 years behind. The austerity decline that we are witnessing now come to a head in France.
And I can see it. I can see it happening. There are moves to sell off the real estate upon which the schools are built. The unions are being continually battered.
There's money that's being funneled to private education. And what's interesting to me is that I think that there is no mass movement in the streets now. But I think what we have to look at is what happens slightly historically forward of our position and to see that actually, well, children will probably start to organize themselves. So I think that it seems to be instructive for the rest of the world.
Do you think that it will be influential?
Michael Löwy: Yes, of course. I think it will have an international impact, but I don't know which form this will take. I cannot predict. But I would like to add something about the movement in France. It started with the high school youth, the children, if you want. Then the students joined, the teachers joined, the school children parents associations joined, the unions joined. Yes, first the teachers unions, now the workers union, the CGT. Yeah. So it became something really.
The whole society mobilized in solidarity with them, together with them. So this is what the government is really terrified.
Matthew Remski: My very good friend Richard Gilman-Opalsky is a communist theorist in the States who's written a beautiful book called Revolution of Love and many other books about the revolutionary frontier.
And he put me onto this. He said, you have to follow the manif very closely.
And we have this ongoing discussion about what we do as journalists or scholars or observers.
When, you know, I'm 54, he's in his 50s, I believe you are a little bit older than we are.
And he says he has this idea that, well, at this point, we ride sidecar to the revolution in a very supportive role, you know, beside the fast vehicle. We are attached, but maybe we can give directions, but we're not driving. Do you think that's an appropriate metaphor?
Michael Löwy: Well, it depends. Each one has its own way of taking part. I take part by going in the streets with the students.
Just in front of me, there is a university. In front of my apartment. On the other side, there is a university.
And the students are blocking the entrance. And I go speak to them, encourage them, and bring them food for them.
And I try to. And they are very happy that they see people giving support to them.
So that's the minimum what we can do.
And of course we should write and talk and help to popularize and make the movement known and explain it. So I think we have a role.
I'm only 88 years young, but I try to participate as much as I can.
Matthew Remski: Michael, I don't know whether you have children or not. Can I ask you that?
Michael Löwy: Yes. I have children who are now grown ups. They are 50 years old. I have grandchildren and my grandchildren are taking part in the strike and maybe they are coming to the demonstration on Saturday.
Matthew Remski: So I guess the last question I have for you is as a parent, everybody has concerns for the safety of their child.
And I'm wondering from your history and experience with revolutionary movements, what your best advice is to other parents who want to support their children and who also want to sort of manage their own fear and make sure that it doesn't inhibit what children need to do in order to express themselves.
Michael Löwy: Of course we should let the youth mobilize, organize and everything. Yes, it's wrong to try to keep them close at home, but at the same time there is danger because the repression, the government repression is really terrible, terrible, monstrous.
So what many parents are doing is going to the demonstration to protect their children.
They stay with them, they protect them. And I think this is important.
I will try to do this on Saturday.
Matthew Remski: Professor Michael Löwy, thank you so much for doing this on such short notice. Thank you for going out into the street and providing food and of course you're giving good advice and I hope you have a, a wonderful and safe time. Maybe not so safe, but a good
Michael Löwy: time on Saturday and continue the antifascist fight.
Matthew Remski: Thank you so much.
So once again, thank you to Michael Löwy for chatting about the manif in Paris. I do hope that I speak with him again for Patreons who have, through your support, been able to listen to this on the day that it dropped. Please know how grateful I am for your contributions.
It really helps keep this work going for everybody else. Thank you for your support as well. Please share this podcast around and until next week, keep safe and take care of each other.
