Critique of the Situationist International (5)
| The S.I. and Socialisme ou Barbarie |
| In order to attain "the transparency of inter-subjective relations", the S.I. wound up with the councilism supported by S ou B. The council is the means of rediscovering unity. Debord met the S ou B through Canjuers and joined it for several months. His membership was not mentioned in the S.I. journal. On the contrary : La Veritable Scission [8] , speaking of Khayati, excludes on principle "a double membership (in both the S.I. and another group) which would immediately border on manipulation" (p. 85). However that may be, Debord participated in the activities of S ou B, throughout the time he was a member, notably taking part in the team that was sent to Belgium during the great strike of 1960. At the end of an international meeting organized by S ou B, which was at once deceptive and revealing of the lack of perspectives, and which concluded with a pretentious speech by Chaulieu on the tasks of S ou B, Debord announced his resignation. Not without irony, he declared that he was in accord with the vast perspectives outlined by Chaulieu, but that he did not feel equal to so immense a task. |
| I. S. #6 (1961) adopted the idea of the councils, if not councilism; in any case it adopted the thesis of the division between "order-givers" and "order-takers". The project which the S.I. set for itself in I.S. M, comprising among others "the study without illusions of the classical workers' movement" andof Marx, was not to be realized. The S.I. was to remain ignorant of the reality of the communist left, particularly Bordiga. The most radical of the revolutionary movement would always be an improved S ou B. It saw theory through this filter. |
| Vaneigem's Banalites de base cheerfully bypasses Marx. and rewrites history in the light of S ou B, while adding to it the critique of the commodity. The S.I. criticized S ou B but only in terms of degree : for the S.I., S ou B limited socialism to workers management, while in fact it meant management of everything. Chaulieu confined himself to the factory, Debord wanted to self-manage life. Vaneigem's procedure is close to that of Cardan. He looks for a sign (evidence) : no longer the shameless exploitation of workers on the shop-floor, but the misery of social relationships, there is the revolutionary detonator : |
| The feeble quality of the spectacle and of everyday life becomes the only sign. |
| La Veritable Scission... would also speak of a sign of what was unbearable. Vaneigem is against vulgar marxism, but he does not integrate marxism into a critique. He does not assimilate what was revolutionary about Marx that established marxism has obliterated. In I.S. #9 (1963), the S.I. still acknowledged that Cardan was "in advance" of it. |
| Like Society of the Spectacle, Banalities de base situates itself at the level of ideology and its contradictions. Vaneigem shows how religion has become the spectacle, which obliges revolutionary theory to criticize the spectacle as it once had to start out from a critique of religion and philosophy. But in this way one obtains only the (pre) condition of revolutionary theory : the work remains to be done. The S.I. at first hoped for a lot from Lefebvre [9] and Cardan, then violently rejected them. But it kept in common with them the lack of both a theory of capitalism and a theory of society. Toward 1960, it opened up to new horizons but did not take the step. The S.I. confronted value (c.f. Jorn's text on political economy and use value) but did not recognize it for what it was. Its theory had neither centrality nor globality. This led it to overestimate very diverse social movements, without seeing the kernel of the problem. |
| It is, for example, incontestable that the article on Watts (#9, 1964) [10] is a brilliant theoretical breakthrough. Taking up in its own way what might have been said about the exchange between Mauss and Bataille, the S.I. posed the question of the modification of the very substance of capitalist society. The article's conclusion even takes up once again Marx's formulation about the link between Man and his generic nature, taken up at the same time by Camatte in the P.C.I. [11] (c.f. #1 of Invariance). But staying at the level of the commodity, the S.I. was incapable of differentiating between the levels of society, and of singling out what makes a revolution. When it writes that |
"a revolt against the spectacle situates itself at the level of the totality. . ." |
| it proves that it is making the spectacle into the totality. In the same way its "management-ist" illusions led it to distort the facts concerning Algeria after Boumedienne's coup d'etat : |
"The only program of the Algerians socialist elements is the defense of the self-managed sector, not only as it is, but as it ought to be." (#9, 1964, p. 21). |
| In other words, without revolution, that is to say, without the destruction of the State and key transformations in society, the S.I. believed that there could be workers' management, and that revolutionaries should work for its extension. |
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[8] Translator's footnote : La veritable scission dans
I'Internationale : Editions Champ Libre. Documents by various members of the S.I. concerning
the splitting and dissolution of the group.
[John Gray note : An english translation was published in 1974 entitled "The Veritable Split in the International"] |
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[9] Translator's footnote : Henri Lefebvre : at one
time the most sophisticated philosophical apologist for the French CP (c.f. his Dialectical
Materialism, Cape Editions, London). Lefebvre broke with the Party and during the late '50's and
early '60s began to construct a "critical theory of everyday life". His work was
important to the S.I. although he never transcended a fundamentally academic and sociologistic
viewpoint. The S.I. denounced him after he published a text on the Paris Commune which was largely
stolen from the S.I.'s earlier "Theses" on the same topic. [John Gray note : Lefebvre denies this and also makes some interesting charges of his own in an interview which you can find on line here on the Not Bored site] |
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[10] Translator's footnote : Published in the U.S. as
Decline and Fall of the Spectacular Commodity Economy.
[John Gray note : online at the Bureau of Public Secrets site] |
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[11] Translator's footnote : Internationalist Communist
Party (founded in 1943). Their English journal is Communist Program.
[John Gray note : Splits over the years have led to the formation of a number of Internationalist Communist Parties. Details of the current contenders can be found at the International Library of the Communist Left site. The best available history of this current is by Philippe Bourrinet - online in french and in english as pdf files. The english translation was originally published by the International Communist Current, of which Bourrinet used to be a member, as The Italian Communist Left 1926-45. (ICC, 1992)] |