Classic Communist dogma makes revolution the private preserve of those with nothing to lose but their chains: the workers. In this revolutionary spring of 1968, however, it is the studentsmost of them from comfortable middle-class backgroundswho have proclaimed themselves the vanguard of a new order. Quite apart from their political impact in the streets, youthful activists are putting the theology of orthodox Communism in a curious pinch: they are revolutionaries from the wrong side of the tracks.
From the barricaded buildings of Rome University to Britain's Porton Down Microbiological Research Center, the protests of those revolutionaries continued to agitate Western Europe...