A Genealogy and Critique of Guy Debord's Theory of Spectacle - PhD Thesis

Cover of the 1983 edition of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle

PhD Thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2011

Tom Bunyard
This thesis addresses Guy Debord's theory of spectacle through its primary philosophical and theoretical influences. Through doing so it highlights the importance of his largely overlooked concerns with time and history, and interprets the theory on that basis. The theory of spectacle is shown to be not simply a critique of the mass media, as is often assumed, but rather an account of a relationship with history; or more specifically, an alienated relation to the construction of history. This approach thus offers a means of addressing Debord’s Hegelian Marxism. The thesis connects the latter to Debord’s interests in strategy, chance and play by way of its existential elements, and uses these themes to investigate his own and the Situationist International’s (S.I.) concerns with praxis, political action and organisation.
Addressing Debord and the S.I.’s work in this way also highlights the shortcomings of the theory of spectacle. The theory is based upon the separation of an acting subject from his or her own actions, and in viewing capitalist society under this rubric it tends towards replacing Marx's presentation of capital as an antagonistic social relation with an abstract opposition between an alienated consciousness and a homogenised world. Yet whilst the theory itself may be problematic, the conceptions of time, history and subjectivity that inform it may be of greater interest. Drawing attention to Debord's claims that theories should be understood as strategic interventions, and also to the S.I.'s calls for their own supersession, the thesis uses its observations on the nature of Debord's Hegelian Marxism to cast the theory of spectacle as a particular moment within a broader notion of historical agency. It thus contends that Debord's work can be seen to imply a model of collective political will, and offers initial suggestions as to how that interpretation might be developed.

Publication Name: PhD Thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2011

How the Situationist International became

 what it was

Anthony Hayes

The Situationist International (1957-1972) was a small group of
communist revolutionaries, originally organised out of the West
European artistic avant-garde of the 1950s. The focus of my
thesis is to explain how the Situationist International (SI)
became a group able to exert a considerable influence on the
ultra-left criticism that emerged during and in the wake of the
May movement in France in 1968. My wager is that the pivotal
period of the group is to be found between 1960 and 1963, a
period marked by the split of 1962. Often this is described as
the transition of the group from being more concerned with art to
being more concerned with politics, but as I will argue this
definitional shorthand elides the significance of the
Situationist critique of art, philosophy and politics.
The two axes of my thesis are as follows. First, that the
significant minority in the group which carried out the break of
1962, identified a homology between the earlier Situationist
critique of art — embodied in the Situationist ‘hypothesis of
the construction of situations’ — and Marx’s critique and
supersession of the radical milieu of philosophy from which he
emerged in the mid- 1840s. This homology was summarised in the
expression of the Situationist project as the ‘supersession of
art’ (dépassement de l’art). Secondly, this homology was
practically embodied in the resolution of the debates over the
role of art in the elaboration of the Situationist hypothesis,
which had been ongoing since 1957. However, it was the SI’s
encounter with the ultra-left group Socialisme ou Barbarie that
would prove decisive. Via Guy Debord’s membership, the group
was exposed to both the idea of a more general revolutionary
criticism, but also ultimately what was identified as the
insufficiently criticised ‘political militancy’ of this
group. Indeed, in the ‘political alienation’ found in
Socialisme ou Barbarie, a further homology was established
between the alienation of the political and artistic
avant-gardes. This identity would prove crucial to the further
elaboration of the concept of ‘spectacle’.
By way of an examination of the peculiar and enigmatic ‘Hamburg
Theses’ of 1961, and the relationship between these
‘Theses’ and the Situationist criticism of art and politics
worked out over the first five years of the group, I will argue
that the break in 1962 should be conceived as one against
politics as much as art (rather than just the latter, as it is
more often represented). Additionally, I will outline how the SI,
through the paradoxical reassertion of their artistic origins,
attempted to synthesise their criticism of art with the recovery
of the work of Marx beyond its mutilation as Marxism. Indeed, it
was the synthesis of these critiques that enabled the
considerable development of the concept of ‘spectacle’,
opening the way to the unique influence the SI exerted in the
re-emergence of a revolutionary movement at the end of the 1960s.

Toward the realisation of philosophy: The Situationist International 

between 1957 and 1960

Three Situationists walk into a bar - Or, the peculiar case of the Hamburg Theses
Anthony Hayes

Guy Debord, filmmaker, Situationist and author of The Society of the Spectacle, called The Hamburg Theses ‘the most mysterious of all the documents that emanated from the Situationist International.’ What makes the Hamburg Theses most enigmatic, apart from the fleeting and elusive references made to them in the Situationist journal, is that they were never published — left to fade along with the memories of their ‘co-authors’. Nonetheless their significance to the group was paramount. The Theses were formulated in response to the crisis regarding the role of art and artistic practice within the group. In essence their apparent failure to appear was intended to reflect the Situationist project itself: the rejection of the fetish of objects and other forms of reified human activity beloved of capitalism. In the Hamburg Theses, then, we have the Situationist project expressed in its most concise and impossibly elusive form, making it one of the most vital works of the Situationist International.

Art, ideology, and everyday space: subversive tendencies from Dada to situationism

Alastair Bonnett

This is a paper about the transgression of the boundary between art and everyday
space. It traces the development of a practical and theoretical critique of this divide from
Dada and surrealism to situationism and postmodernism, whilst showing how these movements
have themselves often perpetuated a specialized notion of cultural production. The ultimate
failure of these movements, with the exception of situationism, to develop a coherent and
effective challenge to the dualism art—everyday space is related to their reliance upon the
artistic ideologies of antiart, indifference, and spontaneism.

More Info: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1992, volumo 10, pagos 69-86

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SITUATIONISM

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SITUATIONIST+INTERNATIONAL

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SI

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=GUY+DEBORD

 

Society of the Spectacle: WTF? Guy Debord, Situationism and the Spectacle Explained |

 Tom Nicholas

Tom Nichola

Need The Society of the Spectacle explained? Well, in this episode of What the Theory?, we’re doing just that. The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord (a key member of the Situationist International) argues that contemporary capitalist society has become obsessed with images and appearances over all else. Debord argues that “the spectacle” has invaded our everyday lives not just in the form of image-based advertising but also in the way that we interact with one another. In this Society of the Spectacle summary video, I provide a brief introduction to Debord’s concept of the spectacle, taking a brief look at the context in which the book was written (including both situationism and the May ’68 Paris uprisings) and unpacking the key arguments included within. Further Reading Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord US: https://amzn.to/2BWg9jO​ UK: https://amzn.to/2SBnzOP​ Comments on the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord US: https://amzn.to/2IJvt9i​ UK: https://amzn.to/2NJJvqx​ The Gulf War Did Note Take Placeby Jean Baudrillard US: https://amzn.to/2HaOGyi​ UK: https://amzn.to/2NAGjNA​ [The above are affiliate links. I receive a small kickback from anything you buy which, in turn, helps to support the channel.] Bibliography Debord, Guy (2004 [1967]) The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Ken Knabb. London: Rebel Press. Available online: http://rebels-library.org/files/socie...​ Debord, Guy (1988) Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Malcom Imrie. [Online] https://libcom.org/files/Comments%20o...​ [5 February 2019]. Marx, Karl (1867) ‘Chapter One: Commodities’. in Capital: Volume One. [Online] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...​ [5 February 2019] The Editors of Encyclopedia Britainnica (2019) ‘Situationist International’. Encyclopedia Britannica. [Online] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Situ...

Society of the Spectacle (Part 2): WTF? Recuperation and Capitalist Realism | Tom Nicholas

Tom Nicholas

In my previous video on the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, I focussed on creating a summary of the Society of the Spectacle, explained in a fairly general sense, particularly placing within the context of the Situationist International, May 1968 and Debord's wider work on situationism. In today's follow-up, I focus on a specific aspect of Debord's concept of the Spectacle: récupération (sometimes translated into English as recuperation and sometimes as cooption) with reference to "simulacra" as defined by Jean Baudrillard and "capitalist realism" as defined by Mark Fisher and explored through Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits and the Alfonso Cuarón film Children of Men. In particular, I discuss the manner in which Debord suggests the Spectacle interacts with radical or subversive ideas and movements and how the Spectacle might work to protect late stage capitalism from critique. As I mention in the video, if you'd like to download a free copy of the script for today's video complete with references and footnotes, you can do so for free over on my Patreon page (and, while you're there, I would really appreciate you considering supporting my work): https://www.patreon.com/tomnicholas​ Further Reading Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord US: https://amzn.to/2BWg9jO​ UK: https://amzn.to/2SBnzOP​ Comments on the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord US: https://amzn.to/2IJvt9i​ UK: https://amzn.to/2NJJvqx​ Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher US: https://amzn.to/2HkwEt2​ UK: https://amzn.to/2Jm1jIR​ [The above are affiliate links. I receive a small kickback from anything you buy which, in turn, helps to support the channel.] Bibliography Jean Baudrillard. "Simulacra and Simulations." Translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman. In Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster, 169-87. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Bernie 2016, "America | Bernie Sanders." 2016, accessed 14 May, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nwRi...​. Cuarón, Alfonso. "Children of Men." 1:49​Universal Studios, 3 September 2006. Guy Debord. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. London: Verso, 1998. 1988. ———. "Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency’s Conditions of Organisation and Action." Edited and Translated by Ken Knabb. In Situationist International Anthology, 25- 43. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006. ———. Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Ken Knabb. London: Rebel Press, 2005. 1967. Mark Fisher. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Alresford: Zero Books, 2009. "M&S Launch Lgbt Sandwich and It’s Dividing Opinion." Pink News, 2019, accessed 13 May , 2019, https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/05/02...​ sandwich-dividing-opinion. Ken Knabb. "Notes." In Situationist International Anthology, edited by Ken Knabb, 479-92. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006. 17 Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (London: Verso, 1998), 19. Horacio N. Roque Ramírez. "Gay Latino Cultural Citizenship: Predicaments of Identity and Visibility in San Francisco in the 1990s." In Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader, edited by Michael Hames-García and Ernesto Javier Martínez, 175-97. London: Duke University Press, 2011. Charlie Brooker and Konnie Huq. Black Mirror, Season 1, episode 2, "Fifteen Million Merits." Aired 11 December 2011, 2011, on Channel 4. If you've enjoyed this video and would like to see more including my What The Theory? series in which I provide some snappy introductions to key theories in the humanities as well as PhD vlogs in which I talk about some of the challenges of being a PhD student then do consider subscribing. Thanks for watching! Twitter: @Tom_Nicholas Website: www.tomnicholas.com

B  I  B  L  I  O  T  H  E  Q  U  E ~ V  I  R  T  U  E  L  L  E

 
Tom VagueThe Boy Scout's Guide
to the
Situationist International
 

The Effect The S.I. Had On Paris '68 And All That, Through The Angry Brigade And King Mob To The Sex Pistols

 

DEFINITIONS:

Constructed Situation: a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and game of events.

Situationist: having to do with the theory or practical activity of constructing situations. One who engages in the construction of situations. A member of the Situationist International.

Situationism: a meaningless term improperly derived from the above. There is no such thing as situationism, which would mean a doctrine of interpretation of existing facts. The notion of situationism is obviously devised by anti- situationists.

Psychogeography: the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour on individuals.

Psychogeographical: relating to psychogeography. That which manifests the geographical environment's direct emotional effects.

Psychogeographer: schoolteacher who hacks up his pupils...Sorry! One who explores and reports on psychogeographical phenomena.

Derive: a mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of transient passage through various ambiances. Also used to designate a specific period of continuous deriving.

Unitary Urbanism: the theory of the combined use of arts and techniques for the integral construction of a milieu in dynamic relation with experiments in behaviour.

Detournement: short for: detournement of pre-existing aesthetic elements. The integration of present or past artistic production into a superior construction of a milieu. In this sense there can be no situationist painting or music, but only a situationist use of these means. In a more primitive sense, detournement within the old cultural spheres is a method of propaganda, a method which testifies to the wearing out and loss of importance of those spheres.

Culture: the reflection and prefiguration of the possibilities of organization of everyday life in a given historical moment; a complex of aesthetics, feelings and mores through which a collectively reacts on the life that is objectively determined by it's economy. (We are defining this term only in the perspective of the creation of values, not in that of the teaching of them.

Decomposition: the process in which the traditional cultural forms have destroyed themselves as a result of the emergence of superior means of dominating nature which enable and require superior cultural constructions. We can distinguish between an active phase of the decomposition and effective demolition of the old superstructure - which came to an end around 1930 - and a phase of repetition which has prevailed since then. The delay in the transition from decomposition to new constructions is linked to the delay in the revolutionary liquidation of capitalism.

You'll find the term 'Situationist' liberally sprinkled throughout contemporary agit-prop/pop culture. A lot of people name drop it but what it actually means and where it comes from is never properly explained and mapped out for people. This particular effort is going to be no exception to that. However "Situationist" is most definitely not some arty term that Malcolm Mclaren dreamed up to con people. It goes back many years before Talky Malky's reign of terror and had already been used to far greater effect.

The term came to the attention of certain sectors of the British populus, 5 years before Malcolm Mclaren borrowed some situationist ideas for the Sex Pistols, when on the night or January 12th, 1971 the country, and more specifically the house of Robert Carr, Ted Heath's Secretary of State for Employment, was rocked by two bomb explosions. Old Blighty had, of course, already felt the anti-imperialist anger of the I.R.A. in a similar way. But this was different. The IRA used bomb attacks for very specific purposes; troops out and home rule. The Carr Bombing was undoubtedly connected with Carr's controversial industrial relations bill, but the people responsible were not part of any traditional revolutionary group. All Special Branch had to go on was a communiqué from an organization calling itself "drumroll." "The Angry Brigade- Robert Carr got it tonight. We're getting closer."

Special Branch had heard or them before, but always dismissed them as (relatively) harmless anarchistic cranks. After the Carr Bombing they took them rather more seriously, asking themselves if this was the beginning of something big - the Revolution that people had been predicting throughout the 60's? Special Branch informants and files on political groups were useless. In fact the only real clue they had was a list of targets included in an earlier communiqué: "Embassies, High Pigs, Spectacles, Judges, Property." The third from last term "Spectacles" intrigued one enterprising Special Branch sergeant, who started visiting Liberatarian bookshops and sifting through underground magazines and literature.

The enterprising Special Branch sergeant found that the word Spectacle was a popular slogan, used by a Paris based group known as Situationists, to describe capitalism, the state, the whole shooting match. Owing as much to the Surrealists and Dada as Marx and Bakunin, the Situationists starting point was that the original working class movement had been crushed, by the Bourgeoisie in the West and by the Bolsheviks in the East; Working class organizations, such as Trade Unions and Leftist political parties had sold out to World Capitalism; And furthermore, capitalism could now appropriate even the most radical ideas and return them safely, in the form of harmless ideologies to be used against the working class which they were supposed to represent.

Unlike the Special Branch sergeant, Malcolm Mclaren obviously did'nt do his homework properly (Or maybe, schoolboy prankster that he is, he did'nt care about the exam results as long as he became a personality cult). However in 1957 the soon to be Situationists did not accept this as the way things would remain, not if they had anything to do with it. In opposition to this process they formed 'the Situationist International': a group consisting mostly of artists, intellectuals and the like (it has to be said), which set out to develop a new way of interpreting society as a whole. (Prior to the S.I. the Lettrists, who predated Punk by almost 30 years sporting trousers painted with slogans).

On the surface the Situationists appear as extremely cynical fatalists. They began by condemning as redundant and articulately destroying anything that came before them. Everything from the Surrealists and the Beat Generation fell in their wake. Yet they had a fundamental, utopian belief that the bad days will end. Their criteria was basically, "if we explain how the nightmare works, everyone will wake up!" An inevitable optimism absent, by the very fact of their existence, from traditional political groups: who always operate on the premise that people are too thick to decide for themselves.

This was how (and why) leading Situationist, Guy Debord formulated his theory of The Spectacle. He argued, in their journal ('Internationale Situationniste') that through computers, television, rapid transport systems and other forms of advanced technology capitalism controlled the very conditions of existence. Hence the World we see is not the Real World but the World we are conditioned to see: THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE (the name of Debord's book). The Spectacle's audience is the lumpen proletariat, the bourgeoisie, even the bosses now merely look at the Show: Real Life: thinking about it as spectators, not actually participating or experiencing it.

Debord saw the end result as Alienation. Separation of person from person; crowds or strangers, laughing and crying together but ultimately isolated from everybody and everything. The Spectacle makes spectators of us all, because we've been conned into substituting material things for Real experiences. However, Debord felt this feeling of alienation could eventually break the stranglehold of the Spectacular society. People were already rebelling against being kept apart by mass culture/ commodity/ consumer society. In the early 60s thousands of young americans questioned their role in middle morality America and dropped out in the anonymous tenements of Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. In 1965, in the Watts suburb of Los Angeles, thousands of black kids burnt down their schools and factories.

To Debord these unconscious revolts against the Spectacle were evidence of it's vulnerability. It wasn't as invincible as it seemed. But before the Spectacle could be overcome it's safety net, Recouperation, had to be dealt with: to survive Spectacular Society has to have strict social control. This is retained, without much fuss, by it's ability to recouperate a potentially revolutionary situation. By changing chameleonlike it can resist an attack, creating new roles, cultural forms and encouraging participation in the construction of the world of your own alienation into the bargain.

For example alternative lifestyles can be turned into commodities. The Haight- Ashbury hippies were eventually packaged off into commodity culture, as, of course, the London punk rockers were a decade later. And, with a lifestyle safely recouperated, after a certain amount of time it can be dusted off and sold back to people, inducing a yearning for the past. The Spectacle had gone that whole step further. For those bored with the possession of mere things, it was now capable of packaging even the possession of experiences: package holidays, community schemes, pop culture.

Spectacular Society is made complete by the recuperation of the environment in which all this must be experienced: The Recouperators realized that people would no longer accept the damage the growth of the Spectacle: heavy industry: was doing to their physical surroundings: the world. Hence environmental recuperation or "Urbanism." This consists of replacing disordered urban-sprawl with more manageable structures; factory-towns, new-towns, shopping-malls, super-markets. Huge areas designed solely for the purpose of work and the creation of profit, with total disregard for the needs or the people forced to service it. The workers kept apart in 'new architecture, traditionally reserved to satisfy the ruling class...for the first time, directly aimed at the poor: 'Dwelling Unit, Sweet Dwelling Unit.' Rabbit hutches designed soullessly to isolate and instill formal misery.

The Situationists' answer to "Urbanism" 'was the reconstruction or the entire environment, according to the needs of the people that inhabit it. Their answer to modern society was to be nothing short of the "REVOLUTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE" (the title of the companion book to 'The Society Of The Spectacle' by Raoul Vaneigem). Unlike traditional revolutionary groups, the Situationists were not concerned with the improvement of existing society, or reforming it. They were interested in destroying it completely and pulling something new and better in it's place. No half measures. No gestures. No immediate solution.

The Situationist programme began where art ended. They argued that mechanization and automation had potentially eliminated the need for all forms of traditional labour: leaving a gaping hole, now known as leisure time. Rather than fill this hole with 'Specialist Art', the Situationists wanted a new type of creativity to come out of it, which would be inseparable from everyday life. This new environment has to be brought about by the 'construction of situations'. Never an easy one to grasp that. Basically it's confronting the Spectacle with it's own irrelevance;

"To make the World a sensuous extension of man rather than have man remain an instrument of an alien world, is the goal of the Situationist Revolution. For us the reconstruction of Life and the rebuilding of the World are one and the same desire. To achieve this the tactics of subversion have to be extended from schools, factories, universities, to confront the Spectacle directly. Rapid transport systems, shopping centers, museums, as well as the various new forms of culture and the Media, must be considered as targets for scandalous activity."

Areas For Scandalous Activity; Strasbourg University, 1966.

So by appropriating a bit of Marx, a bit of anarchist practice, plenty of Dadaism (Situationist practice owes more to Groucho Marx than Karl), even some Rimbaud, and by refusing absolutely to have anything to do with traditional hierarchies and the transfer of power from one ruling elite to another, the Situationists were ready to become a social force. By the mid-60's they were looking around for opportunities to intervene in existing radical situations; in order to speed up the inevitable collapse of the Spectacular Society.

Their first major opportunity arose in 1966 at Strasbourg University; a notoriously inactive careerist student body but with a leftist student union. 5 Pro-situ students infiltrated the union and set about scandalizing the authorities. They formed an anarchist appreciation society, appropriated union funds for situationist inspired flyposters and invited the SI to write a critique of the university and society in general. The resulting pamphlet, "On The Poverty Of Student Life (Ten Days That Shook The University)" was designed to wind up the apathetic students by confronting them with their subservience to the Family and the State. And it was none too subtle about it;

"The whole of (the Student's) life is beyond his control, and for all he sees of the World he might as well be on another planet...Every student likes to feel he is a bohemian at heart; but the student bohemian clings to his false and degraded version of individual revolt. His rent-a-crowd militancy for the latest good cause is an aspect of his real impotence...he does have marginal freedoms; a small area of liberty which as yet escapes the totalitarian control of the Spectacle; his flexible working hours permit adventure and experiment. But he is a sucker for punishment and freedom scares him to death: he feels safer in the straightjacketed space-time of the Lecture Hall and the weekly essay. He is quite happy with this open prison organized for his benefit...The Real poverty of his Everyday Life finds it's immediate phantastic compensation in the opium of cultural commodities...he is obliged to discover modern culture as an admiring spectator...he thinks he is avant-garde if he's seen the latest Godard or 'participated' in the latest 'happening'. He discovers modernity as fast as the market can provide it: for him every rehash of ideas is a cultural revolution. His principal concern is status, and he eagerly snaps up all the paperback editions of important and 'difficult' texts with which mass culture has filled the bookstore. Unfortunately, he cannot read, so he devours them with his gaze.'"

The pamphlet went on to dismiss the university as "The Society for the propagation of ignorance...high culture with the rhythm of the production line...With out exception the lecturers are cretins...bourgeois culture is dead...all the university does is make production-line specialists. But on the positive side, it pointed out that away from student life, in the Real World, working class kids were already rebelling against the boredom of everyday life;

"...the 'delinquents' of the world use violence to express their rejection of society and its sterile options. But their refusal is an abstract one: it gives them no chance of actually escaping the contradictions of the system. They are it's products - negative, spontaneous, but none the less exploitable. All the experiments of the new social order produce them: they are the first side- effects of the new urbanism; or the disintegration of all values; or the extension of an increasingly boring consumer leisure; of the growing control of every aspect of everyday life by the psycho-humanist police force; and of the economic survival of a family unit which has lost all significance.

"The 'young thug' despises work but accepts the goods. He wants what the spectacle offers him - but NOW, with no down payment. This is the essential contradiction of the delinquent's existence. He may try for a real freedom in the use of his time, in an individual assertiveness, even in the construction of a kind of community. But the contradiction remains, and kills (on the fringe old society, where poverty reigns, the gang develops it's own hierarchy, which can only fulfill itself in a war with other gangs, isolating each group and each individual within the group). In the end the contradiction proves unbearable. Either the lure of the product world proves too strong, and the hooligan decides to do his honest day's work: to this end a whole sector of production is devoted specifically to his recuperation. Clothes, records, guitars, scooters, transistors, purple hearts beckon him to the land of the consumer. Or else he is forced to attack the laws of the market itself either in the primary sense, by stealing, or by a move towards a conscious revolutionary critique of commodity society. For the delinquent only two futures are possible: revolutionary Consciousness, or blind obedience on the shop floor."

However existing student rebels, such as The Dutch Provos, the British 'Committee of 100' and the Berkeley students got the thumbs down: Basically for fighting the symptoms (Nuclear Arms/ the Vietnam war/ Racism/ Censorship) not the disease: And specifically for their tendency to sympathize with western society's apparent enemies; China especially whose cultural revolution pamphlet considered "a pseudo-revolt directed by the most elephantine bureaucracy of modern times." (it did begrudgingly have a good word for the Committee of 100's "Spies for Peace" scandal: where, in 1963 the anti-nuke movement invaded secret fallout shelters reserved for the British government.)

Summing up, "On the Poverty..." outlined the solution as confronting the present social system with the negative forces it produces;

"We must destroy the Spectacle itself, the whole apparatus of the commodity society...We must abolish the pseudo-needs and false desires which the system manufactures daily in order to preserve it's power."

Using appropriated union funds, 10,000 copies of the pamphlet were printed and handed out at the official ceremony, to mark the beginning of the Strasbourg academic year. There was an immediate outcry. The local, national, and international press condemned it as incitement to violence, which of course it unashamedly was. The Rector of the University said they should be in a lunatic asylum. The students responsible were expelled and the student union closed by court order.

The presiding Judge pronounced; "The accused have never denied the charge of misusing the funds of the student union. Indeed, they openly admit to having made the union pay some 650 pounds for the printing of 10,000 pamphlets, not to mention the cost of other literature inspired by the 'International Situationniste'. These publications express ideas and aspirations which, to put it mildly, have nothing to do with the aims of a student union. One only has to read what the accused have written, for it is obvious that these five students, scarcely more than adolescents, lacking all experience of real life, their minds confused by ill-digested philosophical, social, political and economic theories, and perplexed by the drab monotony of their everyday life, make the empty, arrogant and pathetic claim to pass definitive judgements, sinking to outright abuse, on their fellow students, their teachers, God, religion, the clergy, the governments and political systems of the whole world, rejecting all morality and restraint, these cynics do not hesitate to commend theft, the destruction of scholarship, the abolition of work, total subversion and a worldwide proletarian revolution with 'Unlicensed pleasure' as it's only goal.

"In view of their basically anarchist character, these theories and propaganda are eminently noxious. Their wide diffusion in both student circles and among the general public, by the local, national and foreign press, are a threat to the morality, the studies, the reputation and thus the very future of the students of the University of Strasbourg."

Areas For Scandalous Activity; Paris '68 And All That.

"This work is part of a subversive current of which the last has not yet been heard. It's significance should escape no one! In any case, as time will show, no one is going to escape its implications!"

-Raoul Vaneigem, "The Revolution Of Everyday Life"



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