Originally posted by
[email protected] 5 2005, 08:57 PM
As a political ideology I find it humorous.
I wouldn't be quite as damning. Beyond the abstract dialogues on the simulataneous realisation and supression of art (some ferociously dialectical lets not forget) lies a misty but tight political thoery.
The reason why The Society of the Spectacle, aside from being an uncomromsing work of high-thoery, has first chapters so impenetrable is because they are so deeply involved with the Hegelian-Marxist tradition. (Indeed I whall have to reread the work after having become proeprly acquainted with Hegel's philosophy.)
And let one not forget that the considerably largest chapter, The Proletariat as Representation, is a debate on the political and ideological nature of Marxism, an analysis of the Bakunin split, of Leninism (after that 'Kautskyite'), the party and state etc...
see this as another articulation of a common nilihistic-anarchist mistake
Although it is the Anarchist tendency that has always taken them to heart, this is perhaps incongruous. They are immensely attracted by the creativity, empahsis on leisure - 'a bas le travail' - and all that ground but ignore the fact that their actual political thoery is die-hard Hegelian-Marxist.
In a way this perhaps is one of the strengths of the Situatinosit project, that its truth and resonance can be understood by so many and amalgamated into such personal outlooks. Though of course this is also why it is confusing and diluted, especially since after the emergence of the 'pro-situ' fanclub.
The SI was never supposed to be like a Trotskyist organisation, recruiting and all. It was a network of people to carry out their experimentalism, and yes indulge in arrogant elitism too. They said their mission was not to tell people what to think, but to get to think for themselves. Debord collaborated and I believe was a member for a while of a Trotskyist group called Socialism ou Barbarie. From them he adopted the definition of a proletarian as one who has no control over their lives, for example.
The time has come for Situatinosit ideas to become the subject of proper, widespread, academic analysis and criticism. Through this its nature as a truly Marxist theory, and one firmly placed on the scientific revealing of truthes, will emerge. Perhaps more importantly it will bring an end to the polarisation between apostolic reverence and blank negativism. Perhaps for these purposes we should really talk about Debordianism a phrase I have never heard but one that would knock down I think a great barrier for universal understanding, by elevating it to a purely theoretical plane and divorcing it from the pseudo-anarchist bed-in where it currently rests.
As far as I am concerned I see the change of the proletarian role of worker to consumer a very true and very true-to-Marxist analysis. The logic to the capitalist classes weening the lower stratas into consumers of their own surplus is totally dialectical. The Spectacle too, is so deeply Hegelian-Marixst a concept that I can't get my head the whole way round it. The first line runs, as an ad-lib translation:
'All societies in which the modern mode of production reigns presents itself as a mass accumulation of spectacles'
This hopefully should remind one of a certian opening line of a particular book by the man Marx...
Because in the end, the spectacle is the accumualtion of capital par excellence. Long live its downfall.
I agree with you.