Freedom in Solidarity

Chapter 7

To Be the Best Activists, We Had to Study, Study More, Study Always

Our discussions and actions clarified a shortcoming among most, if not all of us: our knowledge was inadequate to change things as we collectively wished.

There were many urgent questions to resolve. How to convince the majority of students who were indifferent or hesitant? How to relate to manual and intellectual workers? How to gain the active solidarity of those who were interested? How to confront effectively the ideas of the small conservative groups? How to avoid being victims of violent and terrorist actions committed by the small fascist groups? How to win over police officers, these children of the working class? In case of a worsening situation, how to gain the solidarity of soldiers who would be ordered to repress us?

Other questions also demanded solutions. How to establish correct relations between guys and girls, thus to avoid hearing more of the latter’s justified complaints: “Hey, revolutionary males, who washes your socks?” Or to hear their reproach: “Hey, dear lover! Did you know that a woman would also like an orgasm when making love?”

So vast and total was the project at hand, every question seemed important and was linked to all the others. “Everything and now!” Many suggested making this program concrete. But when some suggested priority actions before others, whistles and groans often dissuaded them from continuing to speak. It was difficult to reason calmly and coolly when in the midst of too many people, where eager emotions dominated, especially when we’d discarded every form of authority.

Every tendency expressed itself, competing for approval by a majority: Maoist Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists, socialists of every variety, social Catholics, Protestants, anarchists, Situationists, and so on and so forth.

Like most of the unaffiliated students, I defended the self-management option. I thus had to study to know how to act. In an educational sense, we were all more or less insufficient, even the best among us.

So, among those in the group I belonged to, every other night we didn’t sleep.

Each of us used our rest time to read in the quiet of our rooms, to study with great attention and dedication: newspaper articles on current events, brochures concerning how to organize militants, essays on revolutionary tactics and strategy, books on the history of revolutions in both the Third World and metropoles.

Other nights were dedicated to meetings to discuss what we read so that we could work together to understand what wasn’t clear or convincing.

One comrade really astonished us. He was a third-year history student. We admired how his face resembled that of a pre-revolutionary Russian anarchist. Because of this, in honor of Mikhail Bakunin, we affectionately named him Baku. He was characterized by his large, half-shaved, bearded face, his black eyes shining with intelligence, his modest behavior, his voice mild but firm. For him, one night was enough to read an essay of two or three hundred pages.

The next day, at our meeting, he would present a detailed summary and comments. On the manuscript pages he held with delicate hands, I noticed his writing style: thin letters, hasty, nervous, very compressed, fully filling the page. His facial expression showed feverish intensity in the process of learning and communicating his insight. Yet he stated only what was necessary, with an even tone and absolute simplicity, without affectation, never encouraging us to feel his intellectual superiority. He made me think of a splendid flower offering its fragrance naturally. What a marvelous specimen of a comrade, of a human being!

Even at the student bar, if the discussion didn’t interest him, he discreetly went over to an unoccupied table, removed a book from his pocket, and plunged into reading, always with a pencil at hand for taking notes. We let him do it, knowing that when we met again, his reading would be for the gain of all of us.

Sometimes, when our brains were exhausted by intellectual effort, we relaxed by drinking beer, wine, and especially Cuban rum with cigars, for their taste and “to assist the Cuban economy.” Some among us accompanied this pleasure with a game of chess or go to exercise our minds through cleverly combating the enemy.

At this time, I learned how to play the latter game, a sort of Asiatic chess. It was said to have inspired Mao Zedong in developing his tactics and strategy for revolutionary struggle. Essentially, the game consists of encircling the enemy elements, then eliminating them one by one or all together. In contrast to the classic chess game, there is no hierarchy: no king, no queen, and no simple soldier, only identical pawns. The two adversaries differ by colors, white and black.

This process reflected two visions of the times. On the one hand, Mao Zedong demonstrated the strategy for world revolution. The “countryside” (the oppressed peoples of the “Third World”) needed to “encircle” the “towns” (the developed countries); afterward, the latter would rejoin the revolutionary movement, especially because the developed nations no longer could access the primary resources, stolen from the world’s “periphery,” that had made possible their capitalist domination.

On the other hand, Che Guevara had begun the struggle in Latin America. Despite his death, revolutionary turbulence was boiling over in several other nations of the region, as well as in Africa and Asia. “A single spark can start a prairie fire,” wrote Mao. He proved this with the glorious struggle of the Chinese people, culminating in the famous Long March against internal feudalism supported by foreign imperialism.

This was why the game of go interested some of us, including myself.

A few words about how we acquired books. Like I said, my financial resources were extremely limited. Aside from the wages I gained during the summer of 1967 working in the Kronenbourg beer factory, my money came solely from my work at the student restaurant. That job had the advantage of providing me free meals.

However, buying books was a real problem. Curiously, the practice of lending books to each other was rare. “A book lent was a book lost!” was the justification. I understood.

My friend Nigrohimself voluntarily gave me free range of his rich library. As to the works of Mao, they were provided to me for free by my Marxist-Leninist group, which received them from an organism linked to the Chinese embassy. At the bookstore of the French “communist” party, I bought several other books. Their price was affordable, and the manager was a simple man, a militant, so nice and trusting in me that I wouldn’t allow myself to take books without paying.

Yet I needed to gain others as well. The bookstores sold them at a price beyond my economic resources. Thus, I proceeded, like other comrades, with “expropriation.” I stole them. And I took so many, sometimes four or five at a time, though always fearing I would be discovered. Happily, that never happened. Sometimes I carried out the operation with the complicity of another comrade who served as a lookout. Afterward, I would serve him in the same way.

Our justification for this act was simple. Knowledge is not a product to be sold for a profit. It should be free. Furthermore, capitalist bookstores set their prices to take account of a certain number being stolen. Thus, my conscience and that of my comrades were absolutely at ease. In addition, I knew a young guy, not a student, who offered to provide us with any book, whatever the value or size, at half the sale price. All we had to do was tell him the place where it was sold. In contrast to other comrades, I refused his services.

The nights devoted to educating ourselves or having fun, in line with our ideal, were the most beautiful of my life. I don’t think I’m wrong to say that this was the same for my comrades. However, from time to time, the body made its demands. At night it demanded of us to stay in bed for the needed biological rest.

The reason for this “tactical retreat” was not only the energy spent for study and pleasure. We also had other activities every day: organizing then participating in small meetings and in general assemblies; editing tracts aimed at students, at factory workers, at the general population, and so forth; printing those tracts on the mimeograph; and finally distributing the same documents while talking with those we encountered.