Society of the Spectacle #9
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- Опубликовано: 9 сен 2024
- @Exploring the Situationists is an ongoing series of Zoom sessions where I (Ken Knabb) comment on various situationist texts, followed by Q&A and discussion. The sessions are being recorded and posted on RUclips. From September 2023 to January 2024 we went through the "Situationist International Anthology: Revised and Expanded Edition" (10 sessions). Following a short break, we have resumed with Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle." We are are doing a close reading of my annotated translation of the book, and it will probably take us around 12-15 sessions to get through it (after which we will view and discuss Debord's film of the same title).
Participation is free. If you're interested in joining the live sessions (which take place every other Sunday, 5:00-7:00pm Pacific Time) please contact me at knabb AT bopsecrets DOT org
During this session #9 (July 14, 2024) we read and discussed the final sections of Chapter 4.
The text of the book can also be found online at www.bopsecrets...
One of the most influential books of the 20th century and yet ignored by the masses. Difficult though. Debord wasnt a pedagogist. Kind of cryptical and concentrated. Still a source of thought and inspiration.
I like how Ken calls it a prism, that was helpful for me. The meaning is revealed through successive viewings from different angles.
Debord wrote, "But when the proletariat discovers that its own externalized power contributes to the constant reinforcement of capitalist society, no longer only in the form of its alienated labor but also in the form of the labor unions, political parties, and state powers that it had created in the effort to liberate itself, it also discovers through concrete historical experience that it is the class that must totally oppose all rigidified externalizations and all specializations of power."
This has not happened. Why?
The left never calls on workers to abolish wage labour, to emancipate themselves from class rule and to change the mode of production from commodified wealth for sale to production for use and need.The left is most interested in establishing top down political power through the best leaders with the most correct line.
The class conscious proletariat would be the material content of the forms it creates for its emancipation i.e. 'councils', 'assemblies', 'committees', 'parties' or 'unions'. The working class is already the content of all those forms of organisation, but it remains politically ignorant about their production of the collective product of labour. The mystifications which are generated and reinforced by commodified labour power producing commodified wealth for sale by its owners all legitimised with moralistic notions about fair wages and achieving the Ideal of Justice by doing a fair day's work, lead to absurd conclusions e.g. 'wage-slavery is freedom' and dreams of becoming bourgeois. Meanwhile, there is no "abundance" of decent homes, decent food, decent healthcare, decent education. However, there is an 'abundance' of trash, desires for commodities which are planned to become obsolete.
The question is: Why aren't the proles, even the 'rebels' amongst them, concentrating on the collective product of labour they produce?
Debord wrote, "The appearance of workers councils during the first quarter of this century was the most advanced expression of the old proletarian movement, but it was unnoticed or forgotten, except in travestied forms, because it was repressed and destroyed along with all the rest of the movement. Now, from the vantage point of the new stage of proletarian critique, the councils can be seen in their true light as the only undefeated aspect of a defeated movement. The historical consciousness that recognizes that the councils are the only terrain in which it can thrive can now see that they are no longer at the periphery of a movement that is subsiding, but at the center of a movement that is rising."
All true and I should like to add that the IWW was a workers' council. The Preamble to its Constitution calls on workers to organise One Big Union with the strategic goal of abolishing the wage system. The IWW was first organised in 1905. Daniel DeLeon was at that first IWW Convention and spoke to workers gathered in Minneapolis after becoming an IWW member himself. DeLeon was also the editor of the Socialist Labor Party's newspaper. He said,:
"It is exactly the reverse with the ;political power.' That is to be taken for the purpose of abolishing it. It follows herefrom that the goal of the political movement of labor is purely destructive.
"Suppose that, at some election, the classconscious political arm of labor were to sweep the field; suppose the sweeping were done in such a landslide fashion that the capitalist election officials are themselves so completely swept off their base that they wouldn’t, if they could, and that they couldn’t, if they would, count us out; suppose that, from President down to Congress and the rest of the political redoubts of the capitalist political robber burg, our candidates were installed - suppose that, what would there be for them to do? What should there be for them to do? Simply to adjourn themselves, on the spot, sine die. Their work would be done by disbanding.
"The political movement of labor that, in the event of triumph, would prolong its existence a second after triumph, would be a usurpation."
full: www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/works/1905/050710.htm
One more thing which I would like to point out is that both Marx and Engels advised workers to abolish the wage system. Marx in an 1865 speech to workers said:
"Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system."
full: www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch03.htm#c14
Engels wrote in 1877: "With the seizing of the means of production by society production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer."
full: www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm
After Engels carked it in 1896, Bernstein and the rest of the left basically erased what Marx and Engels were trying to get across, namely that socialism or communism (they used those concepts interchangeably) could be envisioned like this:
"Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour power of the community. All the characteristics of Robinson’s labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Everything produced by him was exclusively the result of his own personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use for himself. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time. Labour time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also to distribution."
from CAPITAL volume I, chapter one
Dilettante
Dilettante
"Capital pre-supposes wage-labour, and wage-labour pre-supposes capital. One is a necessary condition to the existence of the other; they mutually call each other into existence. Does an operative in a cotton-factory produce nothing but cotton goods? No, he produces capital. He produces values that give fresh command over his labour, and that, by means of such command, create fresh values."
- Marx, 1849
So when is the last time you saw a leftist party or a leftist newspaper (even the ones calling themselves "Marxist") call on workers to emancipate themselves from the wage system?