ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how Sartre was one of the first French intellectuals to support the student revolt of May 1968 through his writings, interviews, and meeting the students occupying the Sorbonne; yet, as he would admit in 1972, it was not until almost a year later that he understood its significance. This gradual understanding was accelerated by his disgust at the behavior of the French Communist Party during the events of May–June 1968 and his final break with “orthodox (i.e. Russian-style) Communism” over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. His reflections of the May ’68 caused him to question his role as a “classic intellectual,” who articulated support for the exploited and marginalized in France and further afield and led him to embrace the role of the “revolutionary intellectual” who was personally and actively involved in the struggle for radical change and not just shouting support from the side-lines. Drawing on contemporaneous newspaper and magazine articles, interviews, and various studies of this period, the chapter continues by analyzing in some detail how Sartre found an expression for his new-found role through his close association with the revolutionary Maoist organization La Gauche prolétarienne when he assumed legal responsibility for its newspaper La Cause du Peuple. It proceeds to identify what it was about the Maoists’ politics that appealed to Sartre while highlighting differences between Sartre and his young comrades, before assessing to what extent Sartre was successful in his drive to become a “revolutionary” intellectual. The chapter concludes by examining Sartre’s political activity following the auto-dissolution of the Maoist organization in 1973, as well as his close relationship with former GP leader Benny Lévy (Pierre Victor) who became his personal secretary and encouraged Sartre to become more active in searching for a solution to the impasse posed by the Israel/Palestine problem. It concludes with a reference to Sartre and Lévy’s joint writing project published as L’Espoir Maintenant (Hope Now) which is discussed in more detail in Chapter 23.
