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The May 68 movement, through its power and originality, has left its mark on the four decades that followed it. The general strike and student protest fostered the birth of a self-management myth in the 1970s, based on the great importance of the social movement. This approach nevertheless relied on a reductive reading of the May events as future conflicts, often overestimating ruptures to the detriment of continuities. The early 1980s saw self-management fade from the political and social horizon and the very notion of ‘social movement’ challenged, while a purely ‘cultural’ reading was taking over. The radical transformation of the context did not stop the reference to 1968 from obsessively coming back during the big 1986 and 1995 movements. Looking at them through the May prism clouds the comprehension of the events themselves but highlights the stakes dividing the players and analysts of the social movement.