Introduction
Below is Jacques Durandeaux's interview with three students: Paul D., 21, a student at the Ecole supérieure de Commerce; Hubert D., 19, a law student at Nanterre; and François R., 18, a law student at Nanterre.
Document
J.D. – What fundamentally separates us is that the society where you find yourself, even if you think that it is imperfect and requires a certain number of reforms, you find that it can be satisfactory for all those who live inside it, that it can become satisfactory. The trouble is that you are among the privileged. You have had opportunities.
F.R. – I defend capitalist society, not so much because I have opportunities, but especially because I don't know the best society, the most just.
H.D. – It doesn't matter which party the critique or the affirmation of society comes from. The critiques of society formulated by the workers don't have a common point with those formulated by the students who, they, want to destroy everything and not patch anything up.
For me, it is all a case of point of view. Life is nothing by itself. Man must find the direction of his existence and make it happen.
Finally, I don't want the destruction of capitalist society to the extent that each can, within the law, advance.
P.D. – If the revolutionaries propose a satisfactory society, we will accept it, but since they don't propose anything, and satisfy themselves with critique…
H.D. – The only thing that I reproach capitalist society, communist society, or whatever for (and there the distinctions bourgeois-workers no longer hold any meaning): is racism. Not only "racial" racism, but all forms of racism. For example, if a person is stupid, then he is rejected by society; if a person has sexual deviations or whatever else, he is rejected by society.
J.D. – Do you not believe that the ideas that you have developed assume and lead to a radical transformation of society and the spirit of society?
H.D. – I will say first of all that it isn't a radical transformation of society, but an evolution of society toward a more humane one. Then this critique of society has nothing to do with those that have been formulated by the revolutionaries.
Translated by Robert Stephens.
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