On 31 March, he began occupying a place in Paris called by journalist François Ruffin and Weekly Fakir, director of Merci Patron!, the most viewed militant film ever, at the end of the great trade union demonstration against the labour reform of François Hollande. Since then, Nuit Debout has become the most important event in France, has spread to many capitals, has been compared to the indignados in Spain and with the M-15, has managed to appear in the main media, has burned social networks, has put on the table the bad police aggressions…

To gather different views on what Nuit Debout could or should do from now on, it was Fakir himself who organised a long night of debate on 20 April at the former headquarters of the Paris Stock Exchange, bringing together different personalities who call themselves on the French left.

For historian Emmanuel Todd, Nuit Debout can be a small thing, but something in the middle of nowhere so far. “Look at Occupy Wall Street. In surveys published in the United States months after their occurrence, young people tended towards the state and protectionism. It is true that today Bernie Sanders has lost against Hillary Clinton, but he has claimed ‘socialism’ in the United States and the issues that Occupy has raised today are part of the campaign.”

Todd denies that bobo [pijo, hipster…] is a thing of people from Nuit Debout. Today, 40% of the population of a given age has a higher diploma, is the mass. The repetition of the stags in practice, the corrupt contracts, the very low wages that are paid to those with high qualifications… all of that and the closure of factories or the rope of precarious contracts of low-class young people, all of it is the same. The decline in the standard of living is for a whole generation.

Finally, a mobilization, says Todd, 65 years old, who is finally in the hands of the young. “Universal suffrage has become an instrument for the old to dominate the young, the old to decide on a future they will not know. I fight to kill my generation.”

But organizational phobia is the drama of this youth, Todd cares. The people of 68 – in the French slang Soixantehuitards, in the famous May 1968 – have discovered the joys of individualism, but behind them were their families, with a solid formation acquired in groups: The Communist Party, the Church, the unions. On the other hand, current generations are “the first sixty-two”, almost ontological individualists. The desire not to organize itself has almost become a religion.

“But that’s terrible, because if young people knew to what extent the types in front of them are organized, the bosses, the state, the Socialist Party, the banks… they are machines. And as a moderate man, Keynesian, a supporter of domesticated capitalism, I remember what Lenin taught. There is no revolution without organization!

Do not fall in love with yourself!

The economist Frederic Lordon told those of Nuit Debout, since he is one of the promoters, that they have not met to do social animation, some kind of dialogue of coexistence. “We are here to make politics, not to make peace with everyone, we are not seeking democratic uniqueness.”

In the seats in France, for Lordon, they have not met to claim anything. “Doing whatever demonstrations we want to increase the minimum wage, extend the 32 hours or social aid, makes no sense if we do not question the structures of neoliberalism.”

Caught between funding, shareholder capacity, free trade, relocations and austerity at European level, the global demands of wage systems have no choice. Within the system there is no alternative, the alternative is to change the whole system. Lordon has marked two lines.

On the one hand, taking the words of a member of Plaza Republique, the “grains of sand” have spread, all the mechanisms with sand in the mechanics have been stuck. On the other hand, while underlining the strongest ideas: solidarity, solidarity among the people of urban hulls, the workers and the youth of the slums, “once all gathered together in a force, no one will be able to face them”. And the need to rebuild the system, to avoid speculation by banks, to limit the capacity of shareholders, to eliminate international murderous treaties…

Le Monde's director, Serge Halimi, reminded Nuit Debout that Slavoj Zizek told Occupy Wall Street: “Don’t fall in love with you. We are at ease here. But most importantly, the next day, we're going to come back to our everyday lives. Will we find something changed?” If they refused the strategies and tactics that until then had proved effective, Halimi proposes doing the opposite.

What do the rich do besides getting richer? The elite is well coordinated, aware of their interests, mobilized, owner of the gambling area and public violence. Instead, it has before it a lot of associations, unions and parties from all over the world, defending each one their space, their uniqueness, their autonomy. “The truth, the organization is the reason why it is suspected that the institutions, the professionals of politics, the powers, are assimilated. But without alliances, with a spontaneous revolt, action will not be able to get society to change.”

Halimi has proposed two priorities based on the choice of priorities for housing training. The repeal of El Khomri's law and the closure of the passage to TTIP and other international Lebanese treaties. By chance, by coinciding, Halimi believes that workers, environmentalists, farmers and consumers may come together in the opposite alliance. “In the United States, municipal officials and firefighters have also joined together. Because in the end everyone realizes that losing the rights of some helps others also lose them.”

Ruffin himself, the pirate, seems to be concerned, in particular, about the Republique Square in Paris: “Our intention was to transfer the word of the worker from small village supermarkets to women who, like the unemployed in the capital, work on cleaning and assistance in invisible and forgotten peripheral France, and it is paradoxical that Nuit Debout is back covering them. There is a certain anti-union smell, thinking that the unions are not young, new and cool enough.”

And they hung from Fakir a speech by Pablo Iglesias de Podemos in 2014 to give a hint: The fight for common sense.