Though barely half over, 1968 is destined to be recorded in history as the
year of massive and militant student demonstrations. While the worldwide wave
of protests, rallies, marches, sit-ins, and battles with the police have brought
consternation to the capitalist establishment of the West and the bureaucratic es-
tablishment of the deformed workers' states of the East, they have brought hope
and inspiration to truly revolutionary socialist forces everywhere.
A characteristic commonly remarked by observers regardless of the im-
mediate occasions of the protests - which range from the Vietnam War, racism,
censorship, and police brutality to educational procedures and university admin-
istrations - is the students' expression of deep dissatisfaction with the quality
of life, the established values, the system, i.e., with their societies as present-
ly c"nstituted. The students, in brief, are possessed of a revolutionary or pre-
revolutionary temper.