Is there a practical importance to The Coming Insurrection and Situationist writing?

[VILemon]

While reading through The Coming Insurrection (I guess I should italicize, unless there's an MLA standard for political manifestos) and having had a recent conversation on the significance of Adbusters I started thinking.

These texts (along with Revolution of Everyday Life and other situationist and lifestyleish stuff) seem to be only relevant to first-world petit bourgeois anti-capitalists and Marxists and appear to have genuine potential for fostering an anti-capitalist consciousness among those for whom capitalism might actually be an immediate benefit. But, conversly, these types of pieces seem to come under serious scrutiny from revlefters as irrelevant or merely poetic.

I mean, in The Coming Insurrection they actually write (I'm paraphrazing) "there is no problem of immigration...who actually works where they were born?" and it just begs the response "Much of the world." Still, for the middle-class Europeans it was clearly intended for, it seems poignant.

My question is, then:

Do things like Adbusters, Revolution of Everyday Life, The coming insurrection, The society of the spectacle etc. have any redeeming purpose for leftists?

[spiltteeth]

I think so. Haven't read the coming insurrection but the situationist can largely can considered the seed which grew the '68 insurrection. It is not exactly intellectual in the sense of practical strategy, but it relates to peoples emotions. One of the reasons the Right is so much better at mobilizing people is their emotional, passionate pleas instead of dry intellectualizing.
Also, I fell much of the situationist stuff is very close to art, so it gives the 'soul' a language, it is the soul of theory.
It certainly impacts consciousness but of course theory and practicality need to be there too.
Any revolution must also change things culturally, offer a vision.
Remember the puck scene? Imagine if all that energy could have been channeled into a political cause?

[The Ungovernable Farce]

While reading through The Coming Insurrection (I guess I should italicize, unless there's an MLA standard for political manifestos) and having had a recent conversation on the significance of Adbusters I started thinking.

These texts (along with Revolution of Everyday Life and other situationist and lifestyleish stuff) seem to be only relevant to first-world petit bourgeois anti-capitalists and Marxists and appear to have genuine potential for fostering an anti-capitalist consciousness among those for whom capitalism might actually be an immediate benefit. But, conversly, these types of pieces seem to come under serious scrutiny from revlefters as irrelevant or merely poetic.
...
My question is, then:

Do things like Adbusters, Revolution of Everyday Life, The coming insurrection, The society of the spectacle etc. have any redeeming purpose for leftists?
Woah. There's a massive difference between Situationist stuff and Adbusters/lifestylism. Adbusters is rooted in a liberal reformist critique of capitalism, the situs wanted revolutionary organisation to overthrow the whole thing, and offered tactical advice on how the revolution could be effective. TCI I've not read, so I can't really comment.

[Pogue]

Situationist were revolutionary libertarian Marxists who actually criticised petit-bourgeois first world culture saying we needed to fight against it as part of the emancipation of the world proletariat, as has already been stated this has nothing in common with modern, lifestylist, liberal horse shit.

[VILemon]

Woah. There's a massive difference between Situationist stuff and Adbusters/lifestylism. Adbusters is rooted in a liberal reformist critique of capitalism, the situs wanted revolutionary organization to overthrow the whole thing, and offered tactical advice on how the revolution could be effective. TCI I've not read, so I can't really comment.



Situationist were revolutionary libertarian Marxists who actually criticized petit-bourgeois first world culture saying we needed to fight against it as part of the emancipation of the world proletariat, as has already been stated this has nothing in common with modern, lifestylist, liberal horse shit.

I'm aware of these facts. I should have seen this coming, as I did a lot of lumping-together here. So let's forget the Adbusters, as I have enough to ask to begin with. I am actually a fan of Vaneigem and Debord along with other situationist stuff. I will clarify my question.

Even though I think that the situationists and The Coming... are quite good and interesting in certain respects the messages seem to be inapplicable (at best) for global emancipation. Again...I like this stuff, but the message seems only applicable to middle-class students in the first-world. Here are some examples:

1. The idea that giving up work is an option for people (both situation/the coming...) I think my disquiet here requires no explanation

2. The extensive writing on just wandering around aimlessly for days at a time - derive (Situationists) How is this related to the worker's councils? Who would this appeal to but comfortable first-worlders with well-paying employment?

3. The emphasis on changing daily life...with attacks on how impoverished the life of the most well-off people is...constant attacks on how much of daily life is spent on consumption and commute to and from work etc. (Both) I agree but again this seems so specific to North American and European middle-class youth who have nothing better to complain about (I agree that the shopping mall is taking over suburbia and that life in the first-world under capitalism is becoming intolerable, but if I was out of work or impoverished I would look at these critiques as more than a little Utopian at this stage in the game)

I am still concerned that my questions are unclear, but I think that this is a better summation. I guess what I'm expressing is a general discomfort with how bourgeois it sounds when both the situationists and the coming insurrection have a lot more writing about how boring our comfortable consumer lives are and how revolution requires this to change than they do about the actual workings of the councilist program. It's a lot of "shopping centers rule the landscape, family/professional life are shallow and servile, most of freetime is wasted in consumption of products which no one wants etc."



Again, I restate, I am sympathetic to much of their critiques of daily life in late-capitalism on both accounts but is the problem for most of the world that their lives are boring and unfulfilling or that they are being exploited economically and exert no political influence? Is the revolutionary potential of this work only for preparing the petit-bourgeois and proletarian of the most developed capitalist countries or is it wider in application?

[The Ungovernable Farce]

3. The emphasis on changing daily life...with attacks on how impoverished the life of the most well-off people is...constant attacks on how much of daily life is spent on consumption and commute to and from work etc. (Both) I agree but again this seems so specific to North American and European middle-class youth who have nothing better to complain about (I agree that the shopping mall is taking over suburbia and that life in the first-world under capitalism is becoming intolerable, but if I was out of work or impoverished I would look at these critiques as more than a little Utopian at this stage in the game)

I dunno how to respond to the first two (although derive is certainly something that the unemployed can do during a recession or suchlike, being free it's one of the very few activities we can do). But 3 I don't think is just relevant to middle-class youth. It may have less relevance outside the third world, but I think it is applicable to most working-class people, of all ages, in Europe and North America as well.

[which doctor]

VILemon,


1. The idea that giving up work is an option for people (both situation/the coming...) I think my disquiet here requires no explanation
I think you may be confusing post-leftist ideas with situationist ideas. I may be wrong, but I don't remember the SI ever calling for people en masse to give up working. In fact, they had always been quite supportive of workers' councils and worker self-organization. Some later post-leftists, undoubtedly influenced by the situationists, did argue for a more anti-work attitude and encouraged lifestylism. That said, if you can get by without working, then that's great. I think it was Guy Debord who, when asked how he made a living, replied with "I live off my wits!" His wife supported herself by writing horoscopes for race horses, an activity she described as really not being work at all.


2. The extensive writing on just wandering around aimlessly for days at a time - derive (Situationists) How is this related to the worker's councils? Who would this appeal to but comfortable first-worlders with well-paying employment?

First off, they didn't write that extensively on the derive. Most of their ideas about the derive come from pre and early SI activities dealing with urbanism and pyschogeography. Second, the derive is not accurately described as "wandering around aimlessly for days." Debord wrote that the "average duration of a derive is one day,...the time between two periods of sleep." Far from aimless wandering, the derive is described as being "drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there." The derive involves abandoning the usual reasons for movement and action and giving in to your pyschogeographical impulses. While its revolutionary potential is surely debatable, it, above all, remains a geographical experiment with the intention of elucidating the psychological effects of the city's terrain.


3. The emphasis on changing daily life...with attacks on how impoverished the life of the most well-off people is...constant attacks on how much of daily life is spent on consumption and commute to and from work etc. (Both) I agree but again this seems so specific to North American and European middle-class youth who have nothing better to complain about (I agree that the shopping mall is taking over suburbia and that life in the first-world under capitalism is becoming intolerable, but if I was out of work or impoverished I would look at these critiques as more than a little Utopian at this stage in the game)
I think you may be confusing Adbusters with the SI and they are far from being equatable. Keep in mind that the SI was writing to the inhabitants of advanced, capitalist nations, not those in the third-world. This keeps in line with Marx's belief that it takes a developed capitalist society for a serious communist revolution to come to fruition. One of the greatest contibutions of the SI was that they applied Marxist ideas to the spectacle-commodity society. The situationists didn't specifically attack consumerism like Adbusters does, but they elaborated on the position the commodity has taken in today's society. Consumerism, by no means, exists only within the bourgeoisie, but affects a large portion of society.

[Pogue]

I'm aware of these facts. I should have seen this coming, as I did a lot of lumping-together here. So let's forget the Adbusters, as I have enough to ask to begin with. I am actually a fan of Vaneigem and Debord along with other situationist stuff. I will clarify my question.

Even though I think that the situationists and The Coming... are quite good and interesting in certain respects the messages seem to be inapplicable (at best) for global emancipation. Again...I like this stuff, but the message seems only applicable to middle-class students in the first-world. Here are some examples:

1. The idea that giving up work is an option for people (both situation/the coming...) I think my disquiet here requires no explanation

2. The extensive writing on just wandering around aimlessly for days at a time - derive (Situationists) How is this related to the worker's councils? Who would this appeal to but comfortable first-worlders with well-paying employment?

3. The emphasis on changing daily life...with attacks on how impoverished the life of the most well-off people is...constant attacks on how much of daily life is spent on consumption and commute to and from work etc. (Both) I agree but again this seems so specific to North American and European middle-class youth who have nothing better to complain about (I agree that the shopping mall is taking over suburbia and that life in the first-world under capitalism is becoming intolerable, but if I was out of work or impoverished I would look at these critiques as more than a little Utopian at this stage in the game)

I am still concerned that my questions are unclear, but I think that this is a better summation. I guess what I'm expressing is a general discomfort with how bourgeois it sounds when both the situationists and the coming insurrection have a lot more writing about how boring our comfortable consumer lives are and how revolution requires this to change than they do about the actual workings of the councilist program. It's a lot of "shopping centers rule the landscape, family/professional life are shallow and servile, most of freetime is wasted in consumption of products which no one wants etc."



Again, I restate, I am sympathetic to much of their critiques of daily life in late-capitalism on both accounts but is the problem for most of the world that their lives are boring and unfulfilling or that they are being exploited economically and exert no political influence? Is the revolutionary potential of this work only for preparing the petit-bourgeois and proletarian of the most developed capitalist countries or is it wider in application?

Firstly the Situationists didn't advocate dropping out of work. They advocated its transformation, which is the goal of socialism.

Secondly, I don't see how you can criticise a French group for talking about the influence of capitalism on French society. They did live in France after all. I agree some of it could be perceived to come from a middle class, student viewpoint, but it was aimed primarily as a critique of the social alienation produced by capitalism. They considered all of the issues relating to work to be of obvious primacy and felt no need to comment on it as much. I think the style and background oo the writing is clearly middle class and based upon privilige and intellectualism but I think the message is relevant to everyone. All working class people are alienated by capitalism.

I think the difference is between their ideas and who wrote them and how. They offered a solid critique of capitalist culture and social interactions which if you refine is good, but obviously from a very particular background. I am working class and I find what they had to say very interesting and relevant, especially as I am a student/part time worker and am facing the prospect of a whole life under capitalism.

[VILemon]

Firstly the Situationists didn't advocate dropping out of work. They advocated its transformation, which is the goal of socialism.

Secondly, I don't see how you can criticise a French group for talking about the influence of capitalism on French society. They did live in France after all. I agree some of it could be perceived to come from a middle class, student viewpoint, but it was aimed primarily as a critique of the social alienation produced by capitalism. They considered all of the issues relating to work to be of obvious primacy and felt no need to comment on it as much. I think the style and background oo the writing is clearly middle class and based upon privilige and intellectualism but I think the message is relevant to everyone. All working class people are alienated by capitalism.

I think the difference is between their ideas and who wrote them and how. They offered a solid critique of capitalist culture and social interactions which if you refine is good, but obviously from a very particular background. I am working class and I find what they had to say very interesting and relevant, especially as I am a student/part time worker and am facing the prospect of a whole life under capitalism.

I find nothing in what you've said to disagree with. In fact, I think that your reading of the situationists' analysis of work is quite in line with mine. The Revolution of Everyday Life is, I think, quite a good example of libertarian Marxist writing and has turned more than a few people I know onto a Marxist analysis of capitalism (where they might have earlier harbored more Utopian socialist leanings).

On the other hand, I have to take issue with your response in one respect. I am not critiquing the situationists for writing from the perspective of de Gaulle's France, that's what a good Marxist analysis does; analyzes the current historical and contextual conditions and criticizes them. Instead, I was worrying aloud about the possible limitations of their (I would say) bourgouis origins.

After all, some crap that is supposedly situationist (crimethinc, for example, or situationist-inspired-anarchists I've known whose rebellion from work consists of asking working people for money on the street to finance their poverty adventure). Do these, admittedly limited and more complex, outcomes of situationist writing highlight a problem in the work or merely show that people have been misreading/misapplying?

[VILemon]

VILemon,



I think you may be confusing Adbusters with the SI and they are far from being equatable. Keep in mind that the SI was writing to the inhabitants of advanced, capitalist nations, not those in the third-world. This keeps in line with Marx's belief that it takes a developed capitalist society for a serious communist revolution to come to fruition. One of the greatest contibutions of the SI was that they applied Marxist ideas to the spectacle-commodity society. The situationists didn't specifically attack consumerism like Adbusters does, but they elaborated on the position the commodity has taken in today's society. Consumerism, by no means, exists only within the bourgeoisie, but affects a large portion of society.

I think that this is a good point. About the derive, I was mostly being a smartass.

About Adbusters, though, I was under the impression that the magazine was somewhat explicitly inspired by the situationists. In any case, the whole project is essentially that of detournement (sp?) mixed with a campaign of personal revolution through not buying things. I mean, they seem not to be advocating anything other than not-capitalism and have specifically begun to promote the idea that the collapse of the world economy is desirable or progressive in itself...and this creeps me out. :crying:

Still, for the purposes of this thread, I should have left adbusters out.