Series of six posters produced by the Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations (CMDO) during the May 68 riots in Paris. “The Council for the Maintenance of Occupation (CMDO) was formed on the evening of May 17 [1968] by those supporters of the first Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne who had left with it and who proposed to uphold for the rest of the crisis the program of council democracy which was inseparable from a qualitative expansion of the occupation movement…The CMDO was more or less constantly made up of about ten situationists and Enrages (among them Debord, Khayati, Riesel and Vaneigem) and as many workers, high school students or ‘students’, and other councilists without specific social functions” (Rene Vienet, Enrages and Situationists in the Occupation movement, p.95-96). On June 15 [1968], the CMDO dissolved itself, with “some of [its members] among them, who recognized in the Situationist International the extension of their own activity, continued to work together in that organization.” (ibid, pp. 104-105)
The posters’ message can be translated as follows: “Down with the Spectacle-Commodity Society”; “Abolition of Class Society”; “Occupation of Factories”; “End of Universities”; “Power to Workers Councils”; and “What Can the Revolutionary Movement Do Now? Everything. What Does It Become in the Hands of the Parties and the Unions? Nothing. What Does the Movement Want? The Realization of a Classless Society through the Power of the Workers Councils.”
For more on the CMDO, see Vienet, Rene. Enrages and Situationists in the Occupation Movement. New York / London: Autonomedia / Rebel Press, 1992. This is the translation from the French original (Paris: Gallimard, 1968). In particular, see chapter 6 (“The Council for the Maintenance of Occupations” and councilist tendencies), pp. 95-106.
OCLC locates three institutions with holdings (BnF, Yale, Michigan)
Interesting tidbit: five of the six posters (all large ones) once greeted visitors to Yale’s Beinecke library. See below (from a documentary on the Voynich Manuscript, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awGN5NApDy4, 4’47)
Individual items below:
Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations [CMDO]. A Bas la Societe Spectaculaire-Marchande! n.p. [Paris, France]: n.p. [CMDO], n.d. [May 1968]. 36.5 x 49.5 cm.; offset-printed in black and white inks
Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations [CMDO]. Abolition de la Societe de Classe n.p. [Paris, France]: n.p. [CMDO], n.d. [May 1968]. 36.5 x 49.5 cm.; offset-printed in black and white inks
Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations [CMDO]. Fin de l’Universite. n.p. [Paris, France]: n.p. [CMDO], n.d. [May 1968]. 36.5 x 49.5 cm.; offset-printed in black and white inks
Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations [CMDO]. Le Pouvoir aux Conseils de Travailleurs. n.p. [Paris, France]: n.p. [CMDO], n.d. [May 1968]. 36.5 x 49.5 cm.; offset-printed in black and white inks
Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations [CMDO]. Occupations des Usines. n.p. [Paris, France]: n.p. [CMDO], n.d. [May 1968]. 36.5 x 49.5 cm.; offset-printed in black and white inks
Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations [CMDO]. Que Peut le Mouvement Revolutionnaire Maintenant? . n.p. [Paris, France]: n.p. [CMDO], n.d. [May 1968]. 24.5 x 15 cm.; offset-printed in black and white inks
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