Critique of the Situationist International - Jean Barrot

Critique of the Situationist International (6)

Positive Utopia

The S.I. allows the recognition at the level of revolutionary activity of the implications of the development of capital since 1914, already recognized by the communist left insofar as this development involved reformism, nations, wars, the evolution of the state, etc. The S.I. had crossed the path of the communist left.

The S.I. understood the communist movement and the revolution as the production by the proletarians of new relations to each other and to "things". It rediscovered the Marxian idea of communism as the movement of self-creation by men of their own relations. With the exception of Bordiga, it was the first to connect again with the utopian tradition. This was at once its strength and its ambiguity.

The S.I. was initially a revolt which sought to take back the cultural means monopolized by money and power. Previously the most lucid artists had wanted to break the separation between art and life : the S.I. raised this demand to a higher level in their desire to abolish the distance between life and revolution. "Experimentation" had been for surrealism an illusory means of wrenching art out of its isolation from reality : the S.I. applied it in order to found a positive utopia. The ambiguity comes from the fact that the S.I. did not know exactly whether it was a matter of living differently from now on or only of heading that way.

"The culture to be overthrown will not really fall except along with the totality of the socio-economic formation which upholds it. But, without further ado, the S.I. proposes to confront it throughout its length and breadth, up to and including the imposition of an autonomous situationist control and experimentation against those who hold the existing cultural authority(ies), i.e. up to and including a state of dual power within culture... The center of such a development within culture would first of all have to be UNESCO once the S.I. had taken command of it : a new type of popular university, detached from the old culture; lastly, utopian centers to be built which, in relation to certain existing developments in the social space of leisure, would have to be more completely liberated from the ruling daily life ... would function as bridgeheads for a new invasion of everyday life." (#5, 1960, pp. 5 & 31).

The idea of a gradual liberation is coherent with that of a self-management spreading everywhere little by little : it misunderstands society as a totality. Besides this, it grants privilege to "culture", the "center of meaning of a meaningless society" (#5, p. 5).

This exaggeration of the role of culture was later to be carried over into workers' autonomy : the "power of the councils" was supposed to spread until it occupied the whole of society. These two traits have deep roots in the origins of the S.I.. The problem, then, is not that the S.I. remained too "artistic" in the Bohemian sense, lacking in "rigor" (as if the "Marxists" were rigorous), but that it applied the same approach throughout.

The projects for "another" life were legion in the S.I.. I.S. #6 (1961) dealt with an experimental town. At the Goteborg conference, Vaneigem spoke of constructing situationist bases, in preparation for a unitary urbanism and a liberated life. This speech (says the account of the proceeding) met with no opposition (#7, 1962, p. 27).

One makes an organization : revolutionary groups "have no right to exist as a permanent vanguard unless they themselves set the example of a new style of life." (#7, p. 16). The overestimation of organization and of the responsibility of living differently now led, obviously, to a self-overestimation of the S.I.. Trocchi declares in #7 :

"We envisage a situation in which life is continually renewed by art, a situation constructed by the imagination ... we have already gone through enough experiences in a preparatory direction : we are ready to act." (pp. 50 & 53).

A significant fact : the critique of this article in the following issue did not pick up on this aspect (#8, pp. 3-5). Trocchi was to realize this program in his own way in Project Sigma : the S.I. did not disavow it, but only stated that Trocchi was not undertaking this project in his capacity as a member of the S.I. (#9, p. 83).

The ambiguity was brought to a head by Vaneigem who in fact wrote a treatise on how to live differently in the present world while setting forth what social relations could be. It is a handbook to violating the logic of the market and the wage system wherever one can get away with it. La Veritable Scission... has some harsh words for Vaneigem and his book. Debord and Sanguinetti were right to speak of "exorcism" :

"He has said so as not to be" (p. 143).

No doubt. But the critique is belated. Vaneigem's book was a difficult work to produce because it cannot be lived, threatened with falling on the one hand into a marginal possibilism and on the other into an imperative which is unrealizable and thus moral. Either one huddles in the crevices of bourgeois society, or one ceaselessly opposes to it a different life which is impotent because only the revolution can make it a reality. The S.I. put the worst of itself into its worst text. Vaneigem was the weakest side of the S.I., the one which reveals all its weaknesses. The positive utopia is revolutionary as demand, as tension, because it cannot be realized within this society : it becomes derisory when one tries to live it today. Instead of hammering away at Vaneigem as an individual, The Real Split... could have drawn up the balance sheet of the practice which had produced Vaneigem, but there was no such balance sheet (see below).

The reformism of the everyday was later transferred to the level of work; arriving late for work, writes Ratgeb [12] is the beginning of a critique of wage labor. We are not seeking to make fun of Vaneigem, unhappy theoretician of an art of living, "la radicalite". His brio only succeeds in giving the Treatise an empty pretension which makes one smile. The Real Split... is ill inspired to mock the attitude of Vaneigem in May 1968, when he left for his vacation as planned even though the "events" had begun (he quickly returned). This personal contradiction reflected the theoretical and practical contradiction sustained by the S.I. from its beginnings. Like every morality, Vaneigem's position was untenable and had to explode on contact with reality. The S.I. in denouncing his attitude gave itself over also to a moralistic practice : it judged acts without examining their causes. This revelation of Vaneigem's past, whether it troubles or amuses the radicalists, has besides something unpleasant about it. If Vaneigem's inconsistency in 1968 was important, the S.I. should have drawn conclusions from it, as it did not fail to do in a host of other cases, and should not have waited until four years later to talk about it. If Vaneigem's default was not important, it was useless to talk about it, even when he broke with the S.I.. In fact the S.I., to use its own expression, exorcised the impotence of its morality by denouncing the individuals who failed in upholding this morality, thus saving at one blow both the morality and itself as the S.I.. Vaneigem was the scapegoat for an impossible utopianism.

[12] Translator's footnote : Ratgeb : pseudonym used by Vaneigem for his book, De la greve sauvage a l'autogestion generalisee Editions 10/18, Paris, 1973.
[John Gray note : Translated into english minus the preface as 'Contributions to the revolutionary struggle intended to be discussed, corrected, and principally put into practise without delay'. (Bratach Dubh, 1981). Online at james's coffeehouse reading room site ]