Critique of the Situationist International (2)
| True and False |
| What are the consequences for the revolutionary movement of the "the function of social appearances in modern capitalism" (I.S. 10, p. 79) ? As Marx and Dejacque [3] put it, communism has always been the dream of the world. Today, the dream also serves not to change reality. One cannot content oneself with "telling" the truth : this can only exist as practice, as relationship between subject and object, saying and doing, expression and transformation, and manifests itself as tension. The "false" is not a screen which blocks the view. The "true" exists within the false, in Le Monde or on television, and the "false" within the true, in texts which are revolutionary or which claim to be. The false asserts itself through its practice, by the use which it makes of the truth : the true is so only in transformation. Revolutionary activity that locates itself in what it says on this side of what the radio says is a semi-futility. Let us measure the gap between words and reality. The S.I. demanded that revolutionaries not dazzle with words. Revolutionary theory is not made revolutionary by itself, but by the capacity of those who possess it to put it to subversive use not by a sudden flash, but by a mode of presentation and diffusion which leaves traces, even if scarcely visible ones. The denunciation of Leftists, for example, is secondary. Making it the axis of activity leads to not dealing with fundamental questions for the purposes of polemic against this or that group. Acting in this way modifies the content of ideas and actions. One addresses the essential only through denunciations, and the denunciation quickly becomes the essential. |
| Face to face with the multiplication of individuals and texts with radical pretensions, the S.I. obliges one to ask : is this theory the product of a subversive social relation seeking its expression, or a production of ideas being diffused without contributing to a practical unification ? Everyone listens to the radio, but radio sets unify proletarians in the service of capital - until the day when these technical means are seized by revolutionary proletarians, at which time one hour of broadcasting will be worth years of previous "propaganda". [4] |
| However, the "end of ideology" does not mean that there could be a society without ideas, functioning automatically, like a machine : this would presuppose a "robotized" and thus a non-"human" society, since it would be deprived of the necessary reaction of its members. Having become an ideology in the sense of The German Ideology, the imaginary develops exactly along these lines. There is no dictatorship of social relations which remote-controls us, without reaction and reflection on our part. This is a very partial vision of "barbarism". The mistake in descriptions of completely totalitarian societies (Orwell's 1984 or the film THX 1138) is that they do not see that all societies, even the most oppressive, presuppose the intervention and action of human beings in their unfolding. Every society, including and especially capitalist society, lives on these tensions, even though it risks being destroyed by them. The critique of ideology denies neither the role of ideas nor that of collective action in propagating them. |
| [3] Translator's footnote : Joseph Dejacque : French communist artisan active in the 1848 rising. A collection of his writings is available under the title A Bas les chefs (Champ Libre, Paris 1974). |
| [4] Translator's footnote : The struggle over Radio Renascensa in Portugal during 1975 bears out this point. |