A Legacy of Protest: The Events of May in Retrospect (1984)

French workers, and a parallel sample of American workers, both originally interviewed in 1967, were reinterviewed in 1973 to examine (1) changes in alienation—chiefly, feelings of powerlessness and self-estrangement in work; and (2) the relation of the original level of alienation to subsequent engagement in the French Events of May (1968). The results indicate that (1) low powerlessness (but not work alienation) in 1967 correlated with strike participation; (2) postcrisis (1973) levels of alienation were not significantly related to either participation in, or attitudes concerning, the May events; (3) patterned overall changes in political powerlessness occurred in the United States, but not in France; (4) participants in the French strikes exhibited a modest increase in powerlessness; and (5) those most favorable to May tended to be both low in powerlessness and from the political left. The discussion centers on the relative importance of powerlessness as against work alienation, the necessary distinctions regarding domains of powerlessness, and the purported changes in authoritarian styles of interaction in France.