Militant Chez Renault. Daniel Mothé. Editions du Seuil
The chief merit of Daniel Mothé’s report from the Renault car factory at Billancourt is to point out that for the production workers involved the union is no longer—if it ever was—a pure instrument of their will but that it is one more of the large organizations which attempts to use them for its ends while they more weakly attempt to use it for their’s. The alienation of the product is a completed process for the youngest generation of workers with no memory of a past of glorious struggle to construct the union: for them it is a social fact in the Durkheimian sense. For the militant, it is an ongoing process which he serves while he fights against it. It is from the vantage point of a militant chez Renault that Mothé describes life at the grass roots, where in order to get concessions from the management the unions have to involve themselves in a hamstringing web of complicit obligations to them, where both unions and management police their agreements by attacking the wreckers, adventurists, saboteurs and irresponsible elements who call them—and therefore the nation and even the norms of civilized life—into question.