Sixties EuropeStudent Revolt in 1968: France, Italy and West Germany

Abstract

Timothy Scott Brown’s Sixties Europe is a book one should start reading at the very end, with the afterword rather than the introduction. ‘Today, 1968 still matters because, in a world marked by the persistence of war, poverty, racism, and the threat of environmental collapse—not to mention insurgent right-wing extremism—the questions it posed about the proper organization of human society refuse to go away. Fifty years on, the questions posed around 1968 remain more open than ever’, the book’s final two sentences read (p. 224). They give a sense of the spirit the book is written in, of its intellectual and—even more so—its political agenda. It seems to be written for a generation of young radicals in the early twenty-first century who reject neoliberal ideals, show a renewed interest in questions of class, and rediscover socialist politics freed from its negative Cold War associations. These radicals might find inspiration if...