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•
Guy Debord
SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE
a Black & Red translation unauthorized DETROIT 1970
No copyright No rights reserved
CONTENTS
Paragraph
Chapter
Separation Perfected II
Commodity As Spectacle
35
III
Unity And Division Within Appearance
54
IV
The Proletariat As Subject And As Representation
73
V
Time And History
125
VI
Spectacular Time
147
VII
The Organization Of Territory
165
VIII
Negation And Consumption Within Culture
185
IX
Ideology Materialized
212
No copyright No rights reserved
And WI out doubt ou r epoch ...prefers the image to the thing, copy to the original the representation to the rea l i ty, appearance to bein g ... What i s sacred for it i s o n l y illusion, but what is profane-路 is truth . M ore than that, the sacred grows in its eyes to the extent that truth d i m i n ishes and i l l usion i ncreases, to such an extent that the peak of illusion is for i t the peak of the sacred.
FEUE R BACH
The entire l ife of societies i n whi ch modern conditions of product ion reign a nnou nces itself as an i m mense accu m u lation of spectacles. Every thing that was direct l y l ived has moved away i nto a represen tat i on. 2
The i mages which detached themselves from every aspect of l ife fuse i n a common stream where the u n ity of l ife can no longer be reestab l i shed. R ea l ity considered partially deploys itself i n its own genera l u n i ty as a pseu do-worl d apart, an object of contemplation on ly. The spe cial i zation of i mages of the worl d is redi scovered, perfected, i n the worl d of the autono m ized i mage, where the liar has l ied to h im self. The spectacle i n genera l , a s the concrete i nversion of l i fe, is the autonomous movement of the non-l iving. 3
The spectacle presents itself si mu ltaneou sly as society itself, as a part of society, a n d as instrumen t of unifica tion. As a part of society i t i s specifica l l y t h e sector which concentrates a l l look ing a n d a l l con sciousness. Because of the very fact that th i s sector is separa te, it is the location of the abused look and of fal se consciou sness; a n d the u n i fi cat i on wh ich it accompl i shes i s not h i n g other than an official language of genera l ized separation.
4 The specta c l e is not a co l l ecti on of i mages but a soc i a l relation a mong peo p l e med iated by i mages.
5 The spectac l e can not be u nd e rstood as the abuse of a wo r ld of vi sion, as the prod uct of the tec h n i q u es of mass d issem ination of i mages. It is, rather, a Weltanschauung w h i ch has become actu a l , m ateria l l y translated .
It is a vision of the world w h i ch has become objecti fied.
6 T h e spectacle, understood i n its tota l ity, is si m u ltaneously the re sult a nd the project of the ex isti n g mode of prod uct i o n . pl ement to the real wor l d , its added d ecorat ion. u n real ism of the real society.
It i s n ot a su p
It is the h ea rt of the
In a l l its specific forms, as i n fo rmation or
propaganda, advert isement or d i rect consu m ption of ente rta inments, the spectac l e is the present model of soci a l l y d o m i na nt l ife.
It is the
o m n i p resent affi rmation of the cho ice already made in p rod uction and its coro l lary consu m ption.
The form a nd the content of the spectacle
are identica l l y the tota l just i f i cation of the con d it ions and t he ends of the exist i n g syste m . The spectacle is a lso the permanent presence of this j ust ificat i on , to the extent that it occu pies the p r i nc i p a l part of the time l ived o u tside of modern prod u ct i o n.
�
7 Separation is itself part of the u n ity of the wo r l d , of the g lobal soc i a l pra x i s which i s sp l it i nto rea l ity a nd i mage. T h e soci a l practice i n front of w h ich the autonomous spectacle parades i s a lso the real tota l ity w h i c h co nta ins the spectacle. But the gash w i t h i n t h i s tota l i ty m u t i l ates it to t h e po int of mak i n g the spectacle appear to be its goa l . T h e Ian· guage of the spectacl e consists of signs of the r u l i n g prod uction, w h i ch at the same t i m e are the u l t i m ate goa l of t h i s prod uction.
8 O n e can not abstractly contrast t he spectac le to actual soc i a l activity: such a d ivision is itse l f d i vi ded. T h e spectacle wh ich inverts t he rea l is i n fact prod uced .
At the same t i me l i ved rea l ity i s m ater i a l l y i nvaded by
the conte m p lation of the spectacl e, and it takes up t he specta c u l a r order with i n itself, g i v i n g it a pos it ive a d h esion. on both s ides.
Objective rea l ity is present
Every notion f i x ed this way has no other basis than its
passage into the opposite : spectacle is rea l .
rea l i ty r i ses u p with i n the specta cle, and the
T h is reci proca l a l ienation is the essence a nd the s u p
port of the ex ist i n� soci ety.
9 W i t h i n a world really on its head, the true is a moment of the fa l se .
10 The concept of the spectacle u n i fi es a n d e x p l a i n s a great d iversity of a pparent pheno mena.
The d iversity and the contrasts are the a p pear
ances of t h i s soc i a l l y organ i zed a ppearance w hi c h m u st itse l f be recog n i zed i n its gen era l truth.
Cons ide red in its own terms, the spectacle is
the affirma tion of appearance and the aff i rmation of a l l h u m a n , n a m e l y soci a l l i fe, as m ere a ppea rance. B ut t h e c r i t i q u e w h i ch reaches t h e truth of the spectacle u n covers it as the v i s i b l e nega tion of l ife; as a negation of l i fe wh ich has become visible.
11 To descri be the spectacle, its for mation, its fu nctions, and the forces wh ich tend to d issolve it, one m u st artific ia l l y d i stinguish some i nsep ara b l e e l ements.
W hen ana l y z i n g the specta cle one speaks, to so m e ex
tent, the la nguage of the spectacu l ar itself in the sense that one m oves across the m et hodologica l terra i n of the soc iety w h ich expresses itsel f i n the spectacle. But the spectacle is noth i n g other tha n t h e sense o f the total practice of a socia l-econom ic format i o n , its use of time.
It is the
h ist orical moment which conta ins us.
12 The spectac le presents itse lf as an enormous u nuttera b l e and i nac cess i b l e actual ity.
It says noth i ng more than "that wh ich appears is
good , that w h i ch is good a p pears . "
T h e att itude w h i ch it demands i n
pri n c i p l e i s thi s passive acceptance, w h ich i n fact it h a s a l read y obta i n ed by its manner of appea r i n g without rep ly, by its monopo l y of a p pear ance.
13 The basica l l y tautologica l character of the spectacle flows from the s i m ple fact that its means are at the sa me t i me its goa l .
I t is the s u n
w h ich never sets over t h e e m p i re of modern passivity . I t covers the en tire su rface of the wo rld and bathes end l ess l y in its own glory.
14 The society wh ich rests on modern ind ustry is not acc identa l l y or superfici a l l y spectacu lar, it is funda menta l l y spectaclist.
I n the spec
tacle, i mage of the ru l i ng econo m y , the goa l is not h i ng, d evelopm ent is a l l . T h e spectacle wants to get to n ot h i ng oth er than itself.
15 As the i nd ispenab l e decorat ion o f the obj ects prod uced today, as the general expose of the rational ity of the system, as the ad vanced eco nomic sector w h i ch d i rect ly shapes a grow i ng m u ltitude of i mage objects, the spectacle is the main production of present-day society.
16 The spectacle subj ugates l i v i n g men to itse lf to the extent that the economy has tota l l y subjugated the m . It is no more than the eco nomy develo p i n g for itself.
I t is the true ref l ection of the prod u ction of
t h i n gs, and the fa lse objectif ication of the prod u cers.
17 The fi rst phase of the d o m i nation of the econo m y over soci a l l i fe had brought i nto the d ef i n it i on of a l l h u man rea l ization an obvious degrad ation of being i nto having.
The present phase of total occu pa
tion of social l i fe by the acc u m u lated results of the econ o m y l eads to a genera l i zed
sl i d i ng of ha ving i nto appearing, from which a l l actu al
" hav i ng" must d raw its i m med iate prest ige and its u l t i mate fu nction. At the same t i me al l i n d i v i d u a l rea l ity has become socia l , d i rect l y de pendent on social force, shaped by it. cause it is not.
It is a l l owed to appear on l y be
18 When the rea l world changes i nto s i m p l e i mages, s i m p l e i mages be com e rea l beings a nd effective mot ivat ions of a hypnotic behavior. The spectacle as a tendency to make one see the world by means of various spec i a l i zed m ed iations ( it can no longer be gras ped d i rect l y ) , n atural l y finds v ision to b e t h e priv i l eged h u ma n sense wh ich the sense o f touch was for other epochs; the most abstract, the most m yst ifiab l e sense cor responds to the genera l i zed a bstraction of present-day society. B u t the spectacle is no longer identifiable with the mere look, even com b i ned with h ea r i ng.
It is that w h i ch escapes the activ ity of m e n , that w h i ch
escapes reconsideration a nd correct ion by their work.
It is the o ppos ite
of d ia logue. Wherever there is ind ependent representation the spectac le reconstitutes itself.
19 T h e spectacle is the heir of a l l th e wea k n esses of the Western ph i l o soph i ca l project w h i ch was to u nd erstand activity, dom i nated by the categories of seeing; i n d eed , it is based on the i n cessa nt dep loyment of the precise tech n ical rational ity wh ich grew out of t h i s thou ght.
It d oes
not rea l ize p h i l osophy, it ph i l osoph izes rea l it y . I t is th e concrete l i fe of a l l w h i c h is d egraded i nto a speculative u n iverse.
20 P h i losophy, the power of separate thou ght a nd the thou ght of sep a rate power, cou l d never by itsel f overco m e theology. The spectac l e is the materia l reconstruction of the rel i g ious i l lusion.
Spectacu l a r tech
nol ogy has not d issi pated the relig ious c l ouds where men had p l aced their own powers d etached from themselves; it has o n l y tied them to an eart h l y base. T h u s it is the most earth l y l ife wh ich beco m es opaq ue a nd u nbreath a b l e .
I t no longer throws i n to the sk y but houses w it h i n it
self i ts abso l ute d e n i a l , its fa l lacious parad ise. The spectac l e is the tech n ica l rea l ization of th e e x i l e of human powers i nto a beyond ; separation perfected within the i nterior of man .
21
To the extent that necessity i s soc i a l l y dreamed, the drea m becomes necessary. The spectacle is the n ightmare of i mprisoned modern so c iety which u lt i mate l y expresses noth ing more than its desi re to sleep. The spectacle is the gua rdian of sleep.
22
The fact that the practica l power of modern society detached itself and bu i lt itself a n i n depen dent empire i n the spectacle can only be ex plai ned by a nother fact, the fact that thi s practical power cont i n u ed to lack cohesion a n d remai ned i n contra diction with itself.
23
T h e o l dest social specialization, t h e spec i a l i zation of power, i s at t h e root of t h e spectacle. T h e spectacle i s thu s a speci a l i zed activity w h i ch speak s for the ensemble of the others. I t i s the diplomatic representa tion of h i erarchic society in front of itself, where a l l other expression i s ban i shed. H ere t h e most modern i s a l so t h e most archaic.
24 The spectacle i s the u n i nterru pted conversation wh ich the present order mainta i n s about itself, its lau datory monologue. It is the self portrait of power in the epoch of its total itarian management of the
•
conditions of existence. The feti shi st appearance of pure objectiv ity i n spectacular relations hi des their character of relations a mong men a n d a mong c lasses: a secon d nature seem s t o dom in ate our environment with its fata l laws. B u t the spectacle is not the necessary product of technical development seen as a natural development. The society of the spectacle is on the contrary the form wh ich chooses its own tech nical content. If the spectacle, taken in the l i m ited sense o f " means of mass com m u n ication," wh ich are its most glaring su perficia l man ifesta tion, may seem to invade society as a si m ple i n stru mentation , this in stru mentation i s in fact nothi ng neutra l but is the very instru mentation wh ich i s su ited to the tota l self-movement of the spectacle. If the social nee ds of the epoch in which such techn iques are devel oped can onl y be satisfied through their mediation, if the a dm in i stration of this society and a l l contact among men can no longer take place except through the intermediary of this power of instanta neou s com mu n icati on, it is be cau se this " com m u n ication" is essenti a l l y unila teral. As a resu lt the concentration of " co m m u nication" accu m u lates within the h a n ds of the a dm i n i stration of the existing system the means which a l low it to carry on th is particular adm i n i stration. The genera lized cleavage of the spec tacle i s i n separable from the modern State, namely from the general form of cleavage within society, the product of the division of social labor and the organ of c lass dom ination.
25 Separation i s the a l pha a n d the omega of the spectacl e . The institu tional ization of the social division of labor, the formation of classes, had
constructed a f i rst sacred contemplation, the myth i ca l order with wh ich every power covers i tself from the begi nni ng. The sacred h as j u stified the cosm ic and ontological order wh i ch corresponded to the i nterests of the masters, it has ex plained and embe l l i shed that which society could not do. T h u s a l l separate power has been spectacu lar, but the adherence of a l l to an i m mobi l e i mage on l y sign ified the com mon acceptance of an i magi nary prolongation for the poverty of real social activity, sti l l large ly felt as a u n itary cond ition. The modern spectacle, on the contrary, expresses what soc iety can do, but in th i s ex pression the permitted i s abso l u tely opposed t o t h e possible. T h e spectacl e i s t h e preservation of u nconsciousness with i n the practica l change of the condit ions of ex i stence. It is its own product, a nd it has made i ts own ru les: it is a pseudo-sacred . It shows what it is: separate power developing with i n itself, i n the growth of productivity b y m ea n s of the i ncessant refi ne ment of the d iv i sion of labor i nto a parce l l ization of gestures w h i ch are then dom inated by the i ndependent movement of mach i nes; a nd work i ng for an ever more expanded market. A l l commu nity and a l l critical sense are d i sso lved d u r i ng th is movement in which the forces which cou ld have grown have separated anrl have not yet been red i scovered.
26
With the general ized separation of the worker from his produ ct every u nitary viewpoi nt of accom p l i shed activity and a l l d irect personal com m u n ication among producers, are lost. Acco m panying the progress of the accu mu lation of separate prod ucts and the concentration of the pro d u ctive process, u nity and com m u n i cation become exc l u sively the at tri bute of the d irectorate�of the system . The success of the econo m ic sy stem of separation i s the proletarianization of the world.
27 T h rough the very su ccess of separate prod uction i n the sense of pro d u ction of the separate, the basic experience rel ated i n pri m itive socie ties to a principal work is in the pr ocess of being d i splaced by no n-work, by i nactivity, at the po l e of the system's deve l o pment_
B u t t h i s i nac
tivity is in no way l iberated from prod uctive activi ty:
it depends on
produ ctive activity, it is an uneasy a nd ad m i ri ng su b m issi on to the n ec essit ies a n d the res u l ts of pro d u ct i o n ; i t is itsel f a product of i ts rati on a l ity.
There can be no l i berty outside of activi ty, and in the context
of the spectac l e a l l act ivity is negated , j u st as real activity has been cap tured in its entirety for the gl oba l erection of t h i s resu l t. T h us the pre sent " l i beration from labor," the a ugmentat i o n of leisure, is in no way a l i berat ion with i n labor, nor a l i beration of the wor l d sh aped b y th is l abor.
Non e of the activity stolen w i t h i n l a bor can be red iscove red i n
t h e s u b m ission t o its resu lt.
28 The econom ic system fou nded o n isolation is a circular production of
isolation.
The techno logy is based on isolat i o n , and the tech n ical pro
cess isolates i n turn.
F ro m the a utomob i l e to televisi o n , a l l the goods selected by the spectac u l ar system a re a l so i ts weapons for a constant reinforcement of the cond itions of isolation of "Ionely crowds."
The
spectac l e consta ntly red iscovers its own assu m ptions more concret e l y .
29 The origin of the spectacle i s the loss of the u nity of the world , and the gigantic expansion of the modern spectacle expresses the tota l ity of this loss:
the abstraction of a l l specific labor and the general abstrac
tion of the entirety of produ ction are perfectly translated i n the spec tacle, whose mode of being concrete is precisely abstraction.
I n the
spectacle, one part of the world represents itself before the world and is superior to it.
The spectacle is noth ing more than the common l an
guage of th is separation.
What ties the spectators together is no more
than an i rreversible relation at the very center which mai ntains their isolation. The spectacle reun ites the separate, but reun ites it as separate.
30 The alienation of the spectator to the profit of the contemplated abject (wh ich is the resu lt of h is own unconscious act ivity) is expressed
in the fo l lowing way :
the more he contemplates the less he l ives; the
more he accepts recogn izing h i mself in the domi nant i mages of need,
t!;e Ips::: he ��nderstands his own existence and his own desi res. The ex· ternal ity of the spectacle in relation to the active man appears i n that his own gestures are no longer h i s but those of another who represents them to h im. This is why the spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because t he spectacle is everywhere.
31 The worker does not prod uce h i mself; he produces an i ndependent power.
The success of this production, ils abundance, returns over the
producer as an abundance of dispossession. A l l the time a n d space of h i s world become strange to h i m with the accumu lation of h i s a l i enated products. The spectacle is the map of th i s new worl d, a map which covers precise l y its territory, The very powers which escaped u s show themselves to u s i n a l l their force.
32 The spectacle with i n society correspon ds to a concrete manufactu re of a l i enation. Economic expansion i s mai n l y the expansion of preci se l y thi s i n du stria l production. That wh ich grows with the economy moving for itsel f can on l y be the a l i enation which was prec i se l y at its origi n . 33 T h e m a n separated from h i s product h i mself produces a l l t h e deta i l s o f his wor l d with ever i ncreasing power, and t h u s f i n ds h i mself ever more separated from h i s worl d. The more h i s l ife is now h i s product, the more he is separated from h i s l ife. 34 The spectacle i s capital to such a degree of accu mu lation that it be足 comes an i mage.
II.
THE COMMODITY
ASA
SPECTACLE
For it is only as the universal category of to tal social being that the commodity can be understood in its au then tic essence. It is onlv in this context tha t reifica tion which arises from the commoditv rela tion acquires a decisive meaning, as much for the objective evolu tion of so足 ciety as for the a ttitude of men to wards it, for the submission of their consciousness to the forms in which this reifica tion is expressed. . .. This submission also gro ws be足 cause of the fact tha t the more the ra tionaliza tion and mechaniza tion of the work process increases, the more the activity of the worker loses its character as activity and becomes a contemplative a ttitude.
Lukacs H istory and Class Con sciousness.
35 In the essential movement of the spectac l e, wh ich consists of tak i ng u p with i n itself a l l that existed i n h u m a n activity in a fluid sta te, i n order t o possess i t i n a coagul ated state, as thi ngs wh i ch h ave become the exc l usive val ue by their formulation in 'negative of l ived value, we recogn i ze our old enemy, the commodity, who knows so wel l how to seem at first glance somet h i n g trivia l and obvious, wh i le on the con足 trary it is so complex and so fu l l of metaphysical subtleti es.
36 This is the principle of commodity fetish ism, the dom ination of society by " i ntangible as wel l as tangible thi ngs, " w h i ch reaches its absol ute fulfi l l m ent i n the spectacle, where the tangible wor l d is re足 placed by a selection of i mages which exist above it, and wh ich at the same t i me are recogni zed as the tangible par excellence.
37 The wor l d at once present and absent wh ich the spectacle makes visible is the wor l d of the commodity dom i nati ng a l l that is l ived. A n d t h e worl d o f t h e com m odity is thus shown as it is, because its move足 ment is i dentical to the estrangement of men among themselves and vis-a-vis their globa l product.
38 The loss of qual ity so evident at a l l levels of spectacu lar language,
of the objects it praises and the behavior it reg u l ates, merely translates the fu ndamental traits of the real production which brushes rea l ity asid e :
the commod ity-form is through and through equal to itself, the
category of the quantitative.
I t is the quantitative which the com
mod ity-form develops, and it can only develop with i n the q u antitative.
39 This' development wh ich excl udes the qual itative is, as development, itself subject to a passage i nto the qual itative:
the spectacle signifies
that it has crossed the threshold of its own abundance; this is as yet true only loca l l y at some po ints, b ut is already true on the u niversal sca l e which is the original context of the commod ity, a context wi;;.;ii its practical movement, encompassing the Earth as a world market, :, ' ver ified .
40 The development of productive forces has been the real �'-lcon!:id�u;i h istory wh ich bu i lt and mod ified the cond itions of existence of hum::.n groups as cond itions of surviva l , and extended these conditionseconomic basis of a l l their enterprises.
:ncc
With i n a natural economy, the
commodity sector represented a surpl us of surviva l . T he prod u ction of commodities, which impl ies the exchange of varied prod ucts am,--_ ";' i ndependent producers, cou l d for a long t i me remain craffproductinn contained with in a marginal economic fu nction where its q uantitative truth was sti l l masked.
However, when commodity prod uction met
the social cond itions of large sca le commerce and of the accu m u l ation of capitals, it seized the total dom i nation of the economy. The cillir� economy then became what the commodity had shown itself to be d u r i n g the course of this conquest: a process of quantitative development. This incessant deployment of economic power in the form of the com modity, which tran sformed h u man labor i nto commodity-labor, into wage-labor, cu m m u l atively l ed to an abundance in which the pri mary
question of survival is u ndoubted l y resolved, but in such a way that it is constantly rediscovered; it is posed over again each t i me at a h i gher l evel.
Economic growth frees societies from the natural pressure which
demanded their d i rect struggle for surviva l, but at that point it is from their l i berator that they are not l iberated.
The independence of the
com modity was extended to the entire economy over wh ich it ru les. The economy transforms the world, but transforms it on l y into a world of economy.
The pseudo-natu re with i n which h u man labor is a l ienated
demands that it be served
ad infinitum, and this service, being judged
and absolved only by itse l f, in fact acq u i res the total ity of socially perm issible efforts and projects as its servants. The abundance of com-
modities, that i s, the com modity relation, can be no more than aug mented surviva l .
41 The dom i nation of the com modity was at first exerted over the economy i n an obscu re manner; the economy itself, the material basis of social l i fe, remained u nperceived and not u n derstood, l ike the fa m i l iar wh ich rema ins u nknown. In a society where the concrete com modity is rare or u n u sual, it is the apparent domi nation of m oney which presents itself as an emissary armed with fu l l powers w h i ch speak s i n the name of an u n known force. With the i n du stria l revo l u tion , the division of labor i n manufactu res, a n d mass production for the world market, the com modity appears in fact as a power wh ich comes rea l l y to occupy social life. It is then that pol itical economy takes shape, as the dom i nant science and as the science of dom ination.
42 The spectacl e is the moment when the com modity has atta ined the total occupation of social l ife. The relation to the commodity is n ot o n l y visible, but one n o longer sees a nyth i ng but it: t h e world one sees is its worl d. M o dern economic produ ction extends its dictatorshi p ex tensively a n d intensively. I n the least i n dustrial ized p laces, its domina-
t io n i s a lready present with a few star commodities and as i m peria l i st dom i nation by zones which a re a head i n the development of produc t ivity. In these a dvanced zones, social space is invaded by a conti nuous su perimposition of geo l ogica l layers of commodities. At this point i n t h e "secon d i ndu strial revolution," al ienated con su mption becomes for the masses a su pplementary duty to a l i enated production. It is all the sold labor of a society which globa l l y becomes the total commodity for which the cycle m u st be con t i n u ed. For this to be do ne, it is necessary for t h i s total com modity to return as a fragment to the fragmented i n di vidu a l , abso l utely separated from the produ ctive forces operat ing as an ensemble. T h u s it i s here that the special i zed sci en ce of dom i nation must in t u rn special ize: it fragments itself i nto sociology, psycho tec h n ics, cybernet ics, sem i o l ogy, etc. , watc h i ng over t he sel f-regu lation of all the level s of the process.
43 Whereas i n the pri m itive phase of capita l i st accu mu lat i o n , "po l itical economy sees in the proletarian only the worker," who m u st receive the m i n i m u m i n di spen sable for the conservation of his labor power without ever considering h i m "i n his leisu re, in h i s h u ma n ity," this position of the i deas of the dom i nant class is reversed as soon as the degree of abun dance attai ned i n the production of commodities demands a surpl u s of col laboration from the worker. T h i s worker sudde n l y washed of the total scorn wh ich i s clearly shown to h i m by a l l the moda l it i e s of organ ization a n d surve i l lance of production, f i n ds h i m se l f each day, outsi de of production, see m i ngly treated as a grown u p, w ith a zea lous pol ite ness u n der the mask of a con su mer. Then the humanism of the com modity takes charge of the "Ieisure and h u m a n ity" of the worker, si m ply becau se political economy can and m u st now dom i nate these spheres as political economy. T h u s the "perfected den i a l of man " has taken charge of the total ity of h u man ex i stence.
44 The spectacle is a permanent opi u m war whose a i m is to make ac ceptable the identification of goods with com mod ities, and of satisfac tion with survival augmenting accord i ng to its own laws.
But if con
su mable survival is something wh ich must a lways increase, th is is be cause it never ceases to contain privation.
I f there is noth ing beyond
augmented survival , no point where it m ight stop its growth, this is be cause it is not beyond privation, but is privation become enriched.
45 W it h automation, w h ich is both the most advanc.ed sector of modern industry and the mod el where its practice is perfectly su m med up, the world of the commodity must su rmount the following contrad iction: the technical i nstrumentation wh ich objectively e l i m inates labor must at the same time conserve labor as a commodity and as the only source of the commod ity.
I n order for automation (or any other l ess extreme
form of i ncreasing the prod uctivity of labor) not to d i m i n ish the actual social labor n ecessary for the enti re society, new jobs must be created . The tertiary sector, services, represents an i m mense extension of con tinuous rows of the army of d istri bution, and a eu logy of present-d ay commodit ies:
the tertiary sector is thus a mobil ization of supplemen
tary forces wh ich opportunely encounters the n ecessity for such an organ ization of rear-guard labor in the very artificial ity of the needs for such commodities.
46 Excha nge v a l u e cou ld origi nate o n l y as a n agent of use va lue, but its victory by means of its own weapons created the con d i t ions for its a utonomous d o m i nation.
Mobi l i z i ng a l l h u man use a nd se i z i n g the
monopol y of its sat isfaction, exchange va l u e has ended u p by directing
use.
T h e process of exchange beca m e identified with a l l poss i b l e use
and redu ced use to the mercy of exchange.
Excha nge value is the
condotti ere of use va l Lie, w h i ch ends u p carry i ng on the wa r for itse lf.
47
The tendency of use value to fall, this constant of cap ital ist econ omy, develops a new form of privat ion w i th i n augmented su rviva l . T he new p r ivation is not l i berated to a n y extent fro m the old pen u ry s i n ce it req u i res the part i c i pation of most men as wage work ers i n the end less purs u i t of i ts atta i n m ent, and si nce everyone k nows h e m u st su b mit or d i e.
The rea l ity of t h i s b l ack m a i l l ies in the fact that use i n its
most i mpover ished form ( eat ing , i n ha b it i n g ) ex ists o n l y to the extent that it is i mpri soned within t h e i l l usory wea l th of augmented surviva l , the rea l basis for the acceptance o f i l l usion irl general i n the consu m p tion of modern co m mod it ies. of i l l u sions.
The r ea l consu mer becomes a consu mer
The com mod ity is t h is factua l l y real il l u s ion, and the
spectac l e is its genera l manifestat i o n .
48 Use val ue, w h i c h was i m pl i c i t l y conta i n ed in exchange v a l u e, m u st now be expl i c i t l y proc l a i m ed , in t h e i nverted rea l ity of the spectac le, precise l y because its factua l rec> l ity is erod ed by the overdeve l oped commodity econom y ; and because a pseudo-ju st ification becomes nec essary for counterfeit l ife.
49 The spectacle is the other side of money: eq u iva lent of a l l com m od i t i es_
i t is the general a bstract
B u t if money h as d o m i nated soc i ety as
the representation of the cen tra l eq u iva l ence, n a m e l y as t h e exchange a b l e property of the various goods whose uses rem a i n ed incomparable,
the spectacle i s its developed modern com plement, in wh i ch the totality of the com mod ity world a ppears as a whole, as a general equ ivalen ce for what the totality of the society can be and do. The spectacle i s the money w h i ch one only looks a t, beca u se in the spectacle the totality of u se is already exchanged for the totality of abstract representation. The spectacle i s not only the servant of pseudo-use, it is already in it self the pseudo-use of life.
50
At the moment of economic abundance, the concentrated resu lt of social labor becomes visible and su bju gates all reality to a ppearance, wh ich is now its prod u ct. Capital is no longer the i nv i sible center wh i ch d irects the mode of product ion : accu mulat ion spreads it to the peri phery i n the form of tangible objects. The enti re expanse of society is its portrait.
51
The v i ctory of the autonomou s econom y m u st at the sa me t i m e be its defeat. The forces which it has unleashed eli m i nate the economic necessity w h i ch was the i m mutable basi s of earlier societies. When econ o m i c necessity is replaced by the necessity for bou nd less econo m i c d evelopment, t h e sat i sfaction o f pri mary h u man needs is replaced b y un u n i nterru pted fabrication of pseudo-need s w h i ch are red u ced to the si ngle pseudo-need of mainta i n i ng the reign of the autonomous econ omy. But the autonomou s economy separates itself forever from basic need to the extent that it emerges from the social unconscious w h i ch depended on it without knowing it. " A I I that i s conscious is u sed u p. That w h i ch i s u nconscious remains u nalterable. B u t once freed , does it not fall to ru i n s in its turn?" (Freud)
52
When society d iscovers that it d epend s on the econom y , the econ omy, in effect, depend s on it. T h i s subterranean power, w h i ch has grown to the point of seem ing to be sovereign, has lost its power. That wh i ch was the econom i c it must become the I. The su bject can only emerge from society, namely from the struggle within it. The subject 's possible existen ce hangs on the outcome of the class stru ggle w h i ch shows itself to be the prod u ct a nd the produ cer of the econ om i c fou n dation of h i story.
53 The consciousness of d esire and the desire for con sciou sness are identica l l y the project w h i ch , in its negative form, seeks the abol it ion of classes, that i s, the d irect possession by the workers o ver a l l the mo足 ments of their act i vity. Its opposite is the society of the spectacle, where the com mod ity contemplates itself in a world w h ich it has created.
� new animated polemic isunfol.ding in the
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osophical front, with respect to the cOncepts nOne and "two fuse in to one. " This debate is a struggle are against the ma terialist dialectic" a struggle between two coi1(3ep,�id(J.$? : :;< ;;,j�:����;:; "of the world: the proletarian conception and the bourgeois concept{«((f::: ;}<:,/!��'F;i�' Those who maintain that "one divides into two" is the fundartfof lJl f8; L,i�� }l 1 i :: /o of things are on the side of the materialist dialectic; those whomiiin,tBm , !;,:; ;:::,;c;f: '/ that the fundamen tal law of things is that ,"two fuseif}:ti:). e�1 · .. against the materialist dialectic. ,The' two sides have dr.awn.'� clfJ,ii;lliui:" <' >:f�{�': of demarcation between them, and theirfJrgurntmtsarec ' opposed. This polemic reflects, on theideol,(jiJiC;811eve!/t!,e_ :a-c��"a,�q",L ; , (hb complex class struggle which is un folding in Chinaam:11r.: Jheworl(i. '5c ' \ ';i ; ", The Red Flag 01 Pe�irig
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54 The spectacle, like modern society, i s at once u n ified and divided . Li ke society, i t bu i ld s i t s u n ity on tearing apart. B u t t h e contrad i ction, when it emerges i n the specta cle, i s i n tu rn contrad icted by a reversal of its mea n i ng, so that the demonstrated d iv i si o n is u n itary, w h ile the demonstrated u n ity is d ivided . 55 The struggle of powers con stituted for the management of the same socio-economic syste m spreads as an offi cial con trad i ction but is i n fact a real u n i ty-on a world sca le a s well a s w i th i n every nat ion .
56 The spectacu lar sham struggles of riva l forms of separate power a re at the same time real i n that they tran slate the unequal and confl i ctual development of the system , the relatively contrad i ctory i nterests of classes or su bd ivisions of cla sses w h i ch a ck now l edge the system and define themselves a s part i ci pants with i n its power. Ju st as the develop ment of the most advanced economy is a confrontation between priori ties, the total itarian management of the economy by a State bu reau cra cy, and the cond ition of the cou ntries within the sphere of col o n i zation or semi-co l on i zation, a r e defined by con siderab le specificities i n t h e modalities o f prod u ction a n d power. These d ifferent oppositions can be presented , in the spectacle, by com p letely d ifferent criter ia, a s abso l utely d i sti nct form s of society. But in terms of the factual real ity of their specific sectors, the truth of their specifi city resides in the un iversal system wh ich encompasses them , the u nique movement w h i ch has made the planet its field: capital i sm .
57 T h e society w h i ch carries t h e spectacle does n o t domi nate t h e u nder developed regions only by its econo m i c hegemony. I t dom i nates them as the society of the spectacle. Where the material base i s as yet absent, modern society has already i nvaded the socia l surface of each conti n ent by means of the specta cle. I t defi nes the program of a ru l i ng class and presides over its formation. Ju st a s it presents pseudo-good s to be coveted , so it offers to loca l revolutionaries false model s of revolution. The spectacle of burea u crat i c power, w h i ch hold s sway over some i n-
d ustr i a l cou ntries, is precisely a part of the tota l spectacle, its general pseud o-negation and its su pport.
The spectac l e in its var i ed localiza
tions bri n gs to vi ew the tota l i tarian spec ia l i zations of social com m u n i ca· t i o n and ad m i n istrat ion ; these bei ng to d issolve at the l evel of the funct i o n i n g of the enti re system i nto a
tasks.
world division of spectacular
58 The d i vis i o n of spectacular tasks wh ich preserves the ent i rety of the exist i n g order, preserves i n pa rti c u l a r the dom i n a n t pole of its deve l o p ment.
The root of the spectacle is w i t h i n the terra in' of the abu ndant
economy, w h i ch is the sou rce of the fru its wh ich d o m i nate the spec tacu l a r market, in spite of the ideo logico-po l i ce protection ist barriers of l oca l spectacles with autark ic pretenti ons.
59 The movement of
banalization,
u nder the sh i m mer i n g d i versio ns of
the spectacle, dom in ates modern soci ety the world over a nd at every po i nt wh ere t h e d eve lo ped consu m pt i o n of com mod ities has m u l t i p l i ed the roles and the obj ects to choose from i n a ppea rance.
T h e rel ics of
rel i g i o n and of the fa m i l y (wh ich rema i n the pr i n ci pa l form of the heri tage of class power) and the mora l repress ion wh ich they assure, can
be co m bi ned i n to one with the repeated a ff i rmation of the joy of this world-t h i s wor ld oniy being produ ced precisely as a pseud o-joy w h ich conta i ns repression with i n it.
T h e s m u g acceptance of that which ex
ists ca n a l so be co mbi ned i nto one, with pu rel y spectacu l a r rebe l l i on: t h is trans lates the s i m p l e fact that d issatisfaction itse l f beca me a com mod ity as soon as econo m ic abu nda nce was a b l e to extend its prod u c tion to the treatment of such a raw mater i a l .
60 By concentra t i n g :n h i m self or h erself the i mage of a possi b l e ro le, the ce l ebr ity, the spectac u l a r representat ion of a l iv i n g h u ma n being, concentrates this banal ity. t ion of the
seemingly lived,
The con d i t i on of the sta r is the spec i a l iza the obj ect of identification w i t h apparent
l ife wi thout depth, w h i c h mu st com pensate for the fragme nts of pro d uctive spec i a l i zations which a re rea l l y l ived .
Celebrit ies ex ist i n order
to represent va r i ed types of l ife styles a nd styles of com prehend i ng soc iety, free to e'Spress themselves g l o ba l ly. cess i b l e resu lt of social
labor
They i n ca rnate the i nac
by m i m i n g the su b-prod ucts of t h is labor
which are magica l l y transferred a bove it as its goa l:
tions,
power
and
vaca
decision and consu mption, w h ich a re a t the beg i n n i n g and a t the
end of a n u nd iscu ssed process. There, it ' s the govern mental power wh i ch personalizes itself in a pseudo-ce l ebrity; here it's the star of con su m ption w h i ch popularizes itself as a pseudo-power over the ex足 perienced . B u t j u st as the activities of the star a re not rea l ly g l obal , they are not rea l l y varied .
61 The agent of the specta cle, put on stage as a star, i s the opposite of the individ ua l ; he is the enemy of the ind ivid u a l i n h i m self a s obviously a s in others. Passing into the spectacle as a model for identification, the agent has renoun ced all autonomous qual ities in order to identify him self with the general law of obed ience to the course of th ings. The star of con sumption, wh i l e being external l y the representation of d ifferent types of personality, shows each of these types having eq ual access to the tota l ity of con su mption and find ing si m ila r happiness there. T he celebrity of decision m u st po ssess a complete stock of rec足 ogn ized h u man qual ities. T h us between stars off icia l d ifferences a re wiped out by off i cial si mil iarity, the presu pposition of the i r excel lence in everything. Khrushchev became a general so as to decide on the batt le of K u rsk , not on the spot, but at the twentieth anniversary, when he was master of the State. Kennedy remained a n orator even to the point of pro claiming the eu logy over his own tomb, si nce Theodore Sorensen con t i n ued to ed it speeches for the successor in the sty le which had characterized the personal ity of the deceased. The adm irable peo足 ple in which the system person ifies itself are well k nown for not bei ng what they are; they became great men by descending beneath the rea l ity of the sma l l est ind ivid u a l l ife, and everyone knows it.
62 False choice wit h i n spectacu lar abu ndance, a choice which consists of the j uxtaposition of com peting a nd u nited spectacles and in the j u x taposition of roles (signified and carried ma inly by th ings) which are at once exclusive and overlapping, develops into a struggle of fantastic q ua l ities destined to give passion to adhesion to q uantitative triviality. I n this manner, false archaic oppositions are reborn; regionalisms or racisms a re charged with transform ing the vu l ga rity of h ierarch i c places into a fantastic ontological superiority. I n this manner, the i n terminable series of laughable confrontations is recom posed , mobili z i ng a sUb- l ud i c interest, from t h e sport o f com petition t o that o f elections. Wherever abundant consum ption is installed , the spectac u la r opposition between youth and adu l ts gains i mportance among the fal laciou s roles. T here a re no ad u lts, masters of their lives. Youth, the transformation of what exists, is in no way the character i st i c of those who are now young; it is a property of the econom ic system , the dyna m i sm of capitalism. It is things which' rule and are young; wh ich confront and replace each other.
63 It is the unity of misery wh ich h ides u nder the spectacu lar opposi tions. If varied forms of the same al i enation stru ggle u nd er mask s of total cho i ce, it i s becau se they are a l l bu i lt on real contrad i ctions w h i ch are repressed. The spectacl e ex i sts i n a concen tra ted or a diffuse form depend ing on the necessities of the particular stage of m isery w h i ch it d i n ies a nd su pports. In both cases, it i s the same i mage of happy u n i f i cation surrounded by desolation and horror, in t h e tranqu il center of u nhappiness.
64 The concentrated spectacle essential ly bel ongs to bureau cratic cap i tali sm, even though it m a y be i m ported a s a techn ique o f state power in m i xed backward econom ies, or at certai n moments of cri si s in ad vanced cap ital i sm. I n fact, burea u crati c property itself is concentrated in the sense that the i nd ividual bureau crat relates to the ownersh i p of the global economy only through an intermed iary, the bu reau crati c com m u n i ty, and only a s a member o f th is com m u n i ty. Fu rthermore, less developed commod ity produ ction a l so takes on a concentrated form: the com mod ity wh ich the bu rea u cracy possesses is the tota l socia l labor, and that wh i ch it sel l s to society is su rvival as a whole. The d i ctatorsh ip of the bureau crat i c economy cannot leave the ex-
ploited masses any sign ificant marg i n of choice, si nce the b ureau cra cy itself m u st choose everythi ng; external choi ces, whether they concern food or m u sic, already represent the cho i ce of the total destru ction of the bureau cracy. This m u st be acco m panied by permanent violence. The i mage of the good wh i ch is imposed with in this spectacle gathers up the totality of what officially exists, a nd is u sually concentrated in one man, who is the guarantee of totalitarian cohesion . Everyone m u st magi cally identify with this absolute celebrity, or d i sa p pear. M aster of non-consu m ption, he is the hero i c i mage of an acceptable d irection for absolute ex ploitation wh i ch is in fact prim itive accu m u lation a c celerated by terror. I f every Chinese m ust learn Mao, and th u s be Mao, it is beca u se he can be nothing else. Wherever the con centrated spec tacle ru J�s, the police also rules.
65 The d iffu se spectacle acco m panies the abundance of com mod ities, the u n pertu rbed d evelopment of modern cap italism. H ere every com mod ity taken a lone is j u stified in the name of the grandeur of produ c ing the totality of objects of w h i ch the spectacle is an apologetic cata logue. I rreconcilable cla i m s seize the stage of the affluent economy' s u nified spectacle; d ifferent star- co mmod ities si m u ltaneou sly support contrad ictory projects for the management of society : the spectacle of a utomobiles demands a perfect transport network w h i ch d estroys old cities, w h i le the spectacle of the city itself req u i res m u seu m-cities. Therefore the a lready problematic sati sfaction which is su pposed to come from the consump tion of the ensemble, is i m med iately falsified sin ce the real con su mer can d irectly tou ch on ly a su ccession of frag ments of t h i s com modity happiness, fragments in w h i ch the q uality attributed to the ensemble is obviou sly m i ssing every t i me.
66 Every given com mod ity fights for itself, cannot acknowledge the others, a nd attempts to i m po se itself everywhere as if it were the only one. The spectacle, then, is the epic poem of this struggle, an epic whi ch cannot be concluded by the fall of any Troy. The spectacle does not sing the prai ses of men and the i r weapons, but of com m od ities and their passion s. In this blind struggle every com mod ity, pursu ing its pas sion, u n con sciou sly realizes something h igher : the beco m i ng-world of the com mod ity, which i s also the becom:,lg-commod ity of the world. Thus, by means of a ruse o f commodity reason, the specific of the com mod ity-form moves on toward s its abso lute reali zation .
67 The satisfaction no longer given by the u se of the abu ndant com足 mod ity is now sou ght in its value as a commod i ty: it is the u se of the commodity being sufficient to itself; for the con su mer there i s religious fervor for the sovereign l i berty of the commod ity. Waves of enthu siasm for a g iven prod u ct, su pported and spread by a l l the means of informa足 tion, a re thus propagated with lightning speed . A clothing style emerges fro m a f i l m ; a magazine promotes n ight spots which launch varied fad s. The gadget expresses the fact that, at the moment when the mass of com mod ities sl ides toward aberration, the aberrant itself becomes a special com mod ity. Supplementary gifts accompanying prestigiou s ob足 jects which are sold or which flow from exchange in thei r own sphere, represent a man ifestation of a mystical aba ndon to the tra nscendence of the com mod ity. One who collects the g ifts wh i ch have j u st been manu factu red for col lection, accumu lates the indulgences of the com足 modity, a glorious sign of his real presence a mong the faithful. R e ified man adverti ses the proof of h is intimacy w i th the commod ity. As i n the convu lsions o r m iracles o f the old religious feti sh ism , the fet i sh i sm of the" commod ity someti mes reaches moments of fervent exaltation. The on ly u se which is still expressed here i s the fundamental u se of sub m i ssion.
68 W ithout doubt, the pseudo-need i mposed by modern consu m ption cannot be opposed by any genu ine n eed or d esi re w h i ch is not itself shaped by society and its h i story . But the abu n dant commod ity i s an abso l u te rupture of a n orga n i c development of socia l needs. I ts me足 chan i ca l accu mu lation l iberates u n l i m ited artifici a lity, in t he face of wh i ch l iv ing desire is d i sarmed . The cu m u lat ive power of i ndependent artificial ity is fol l owed everywhere by the falsification of social life.
69 I n the i mage of the soci ety happi l y u n ified by consum pt ion , real division is only suspended until the next non-accom p l i sh m ent in the consu mable. Every specific produ ct w h i ch m u st represent the hope for a d a zzl i n g shortcut to the pro m i sed land of total consu m ption, i s ceremoniously presented a s t h e deci sive u n it. B u t as in the case of the i n stantaneous d iffu sion of fad s of apparent l y aristocrati c first names w h i ch are carr ied by nearly a l l i nd ividuals of the same age, the object from w h i ch one e xpects a si ngu lar power cou l d not have been sug足 gested for the devotion of masses u n less it had been produ ced in n u m足 bers large enough to be consu med massivel y . The prestig i o u s character of a product comes to it on l y from its hav ing been placed for a m o足 ment at the center of social l ife, as the reveal ed mystery of the f i na l goa l of prod u ct i on. T h e object w h i ch was prestigious i n the spectacle
becom es v u l ga r the moment it enters the house of the co nsu mer, at the sa me time that it ente rs the house of a l l the others. Too late it revea ls its essential poverty, w h ich natura l l y comes to it from the mis ery of its prod uct ion . B u t it is a l read y another object wh ich carries the j ust ification of the system and the demand to be ack nowledged .
70 The i m postu re of satisfaction d enou n ces i tself by replacing itsel f, by fo llow i ng the change of produ cts and the change of the genera l con d itions of product io n . That w h ich affirmed its own d ef i n itive excel l en ce w i th the most perfect i m pudence n evertheless changes, both i n the d i ffuse spectacle a n d i n the concentrated spectacle, a n d i t is the system a l on e which m u st contin u e : Sta l i n as well as the outmod ed co mmod ity are denounced p recise l y by those who i m posed them. Every new lie of advert isin g is a l so a n avowal of the previous l ie. E very fa l l of a figure of tota l i ta rian power revea ls the illusory community wh ich a p proved h i m u n a n i mously, and w h ich was noth i n g more than a n agglomeration of sol i tudes w ithout i l l usions.
71 What the spectacle gives a s eternal i s fou nded on cha nge, and must change with i ts base. The spectacle i s absolute l y dogmatic and at t h e sa me time cannot rea l l y achi eve any so lid d ogma. Noth ing stops f o r it: t h i s is the state wh i ch i s natura l to it and n evertheless the most con trary to its i n cl ination.
72 The u nreal u nity proclai med by the spectacle is the mask of the class d iv i sion on w h i ch the real u n ity of the cap i ta l i st mode of produ ction rests. That which obl iges the produ cers to parti ci pate in the constru c tion of the world i s a l so that which separates them from it. That wh i ch creates relations a mong men l iberated from their loca l and n ational l i m its is a l so that which pu l l s them apart. That w h i ch req u i res a more profou nd rational ity is a l so that w h i ch nourish es the irrational ity of h ierarchic exploitation and repression. T hat wh ich creates the a bstract power of society creates its concrete non-liberty.
IV. THE PROLETARIAT AS SUBJE CT AND AS RE PRE SE NTATION
"
The equal right of all to the goods and joys of this world, the destruction of all authority, the negation of all moral
UUOitur".
cles-- there, if one goes to the bottom of things, is the reason for
the insurrection of March 18th and the charter of the suspicious association which furnished it with an army.
Parliamentary inquest on the insurrection of March 18th.
73 The real movement w h i ch su ppresses existi ng cond it ions ru l es over society from the moment of the victory of the bourgeoi sie within t h e economy, a nd v i si b l y after t h e polit i ca l translation o f th i s v i ctory. The development of productive forces made the old relations of production explode, and a l l static order fal l s to d u st. Whatever was absolute be comes h i storica l .
74 It is by being thrown i nto h istory, by having to participate in the work and the struggles wh i ch make up h i story, that men find them selves obl iged to see their relations in a clear manner. This history has no object wh ich is d i sti nct from that wh ich tak es place wit h i n it, even though the last u nconscious metaphysical v i sion of the h i sto rical epoch could loo k at the productive progression through wh ich h i story is de p loyed as h i story's goa l . The subject of h i story can be none other than the l iv i ng produ cing itself, beco m i ng master and possessor of its world wh ich is h i story, a nd exist i ng a s consciousness of its game.
75 The class struggles of the long revolutionary-epoch ina ugurated by the rise of the bourgeoi sie, develop together with the though t of history, the dia lect i c, the thought which no longer stops to look for the mean ing of what i s, but r i ses to a knowledge of the d i ssol ution of a l l that is, and in its movement d i ssolves a l l separation.
76 Hegel no longer had to in terpret the worl d , but th e transformation of the worl d . By interpreting only the transformati on, H egel i s onl y the philosophical compl etion of phi losophy. H e wants to und erstand a world which makes itself. This historica l thought is a s yet only the con sciou sness w h i ch a lways arrives too late, a nd which pronou nces the j ustification after the fact. Thus it has gone beyond separation only in though t. The paradox which consists of mak i ng the meani ng of a l l rea l ity depend o n i t s h i storica l com p l etion, and a t the same time of revea l ing this meaning a s it constitutes itself into the com p l etion of h is tory, flows from the simp le fact that the t h i nker of the bou rgeois revo l u tions of the 17th a nd 18th centuries sought in h i s p h i l oso phy onl y a reconcilia tion with the resu lts of th ese revol u t ions. "Even as a ph il -
0sophy of the bou rgeo i s revolution, it does not express the ent ire pro cess of th i s revolu tion, but only its final conclu sion. I n th i s sen se, it i s not a philo sophy o f the revolu tion, b u t o f the restoration. " ( Karl Korsch, Theses on Hegel and Revolu tion). H egel d i d , for the last time, the work of the ph i losopher, lithe glorification of what ex i st s;" but what exi sted for h i m could alread y be nothing less than the totality of h i s tori ca l movement. The external position of thought having in fact been preserved, it cou ld only be masked by the identification of thought with an earlier project of Spirit, absolute hero who d id what he wanted and wanted what he d id, and whose accompli shment co incides with the present. Thus philosophy, w h i ch d ies in the th ou ght of h i story, ca n now glorify its world only by renou n cing it, si nce in order to speak, it m u st presuppose that th is total h i story to wh ich it has reduced everything i s a lready complete, a nd that t h e only tribu nal where t h e j u dgmen t of truth cou ld be given is closed .
•
77 When the proletariat man ifests by i t s own ex i stence t h rough acts that t h i s thought of h i story is not forgotten , the exposure of the con clu sion is at the same time the co nfirmation of the method.
78 T h e thought o f history can o n l y b e saved b y beco m i n g practical thought; and the practice of the proletariat as a revolutionary class cannot be l ess than h i storical consc io usness operating o n the tota l ity of i ts wor l d. A l l the theoretical currents of the revolutionary workers' movem ent grew out of a critical confro ntation with Hegelian thought Marx as wel l as Stirner a n d Bak u nin.
79
The inseparable character of Marx 's theory a n d the H egel ian m ethod is itself inseparable from the revo l ut ionary character of this theory, namely from its truth. T h is relationship has been m isunderstood and even denou nced as the weakness of what fal laciously becam e a marx ist doctrine. B ernstein, in h is Theoretical Socialism and Social-Democratic Practice, perfectly reveals the connection between the dia lectical meth od a n d h istorica l partisanship, by deploring the u nscientific forecasts of the 1 847 Manifesto on the i m m inence of proletarian revolution i n Germa n y : " This h istorical auto-suggestion, so erroneous that t h e first pol i tical visionary who arrived cou l d hardly have fou n d better, woul d be i ncom p rehensib l e in a Marx, who at that time had already seriously stu died economics, if o ne cou l d not see in th i s the product of a rel i c o f t h e antithetical H egelian dial ectic from which M arx, no l ess than E ngels, cou l d never com p l etely free h im se lf. I n those times of general effervescence, this was all the more fatal to h i m . "
80 The overturning which M arx brings about for a " recovery t h rough transfer" of the thought of bourgeois revol u tions does not trival ly con sist of putting the m aterial ist development of pro du ct ive forces in the place of the journey of the Hege l i a n Spirit movin g towards its encounter with itself in time, its objectification being i dentical to its a l i enation, and its h istorical wou nds leaving no scars. H istory become real no long er has an end. Marx has ruined the separate position of H egel in the face of what happens, a n d the contempla tion of a ny supreme external agent. Theory must now k now o n l y what it does. However, the con templation of the movement of the economy in the dom i nant thought of the present society is the untranscended heritage of the undialectical part of H egel ' s search for a close d system : it is a n approbation wh ich has lost the dimension of the concept a nd which no lon ger needs a H egelianism to justify itself, because the movement wh ich it seeks to praise is no more than a sector without a worldly thought, a sector •
whose m echan i ca l development effectively dom i nates everyth i ng. Marx ' s project i s the project of a consciou s h i story. The quantitative which a r i ses in the bl i nd development of m ere l y econo m ic produ ctive forces m u st be transformed into a q ua l itative h i stor i ca l appropriation. The critique of political economy is the f irst a ct of t h i s end of prehistory: " Of a ll the i n stru ments of production the greatest produ ct ive power i s t h e revo l u tionary class itself."
81 That wh i ch clo sel y l i nks M a rx ' s theory with scientific th ought is the rational u nd erstand i n g of the forces w h i ch in fact exert themselves in But M arx' s theory is fundamenta l l y outside of scientific society. thought, and i t preserves scienti f i c thought only by transcending it: what is i n q uestion is a n u nderstand i ng of struggle, a nd not of law. " We recognize only one science: the science of h istory," sa y s The German Ideology.
82 The bou rgeo i s epoch , wh ich wants to give a scientific fou ndation to h i story, overloo k s the fact that the economy f ir st had to give a h i stori cal fou ndation to this science. I nversely, h i story rad i ca l l y depends on economic k nowledge o n l y to the extent that i t rem a i n s economic his tory. The degree to wh ich the rol e of h i story i n the economy (the globa l process wh i ch modifies its own basi c scientif i c pre m i ses) cou l d b e overlooked by the v i ewpoint o f scientif i c observation i s shown by the vanity of those soci a l i st cal cu lations whi ch thought they had estab l i sh ed the exact periodicity of crises. When the con stant i ntervention of the State succeeded in com pensati ng for the effect of tenden cies toward crisis, the sa m e type of reasoni n g sees in th i s equ i l i b r i u m a d ef i n itive economic harmony. The project of surmou nting the econom y, the p ro ject of tak i n g possession of h i story, if it m u st k now-and take into it self-the science of society, cannot itself be scien tific. I n the movement wh i ch th i n k s it can dominate present h i story by mea n s of scientific knowledge, the revolutionary point of v i ew rema ins bourgeois.
83
The uto p ia n currents of social i sm , a l though themselves h i storica l ly grounded i n the critique of the e x i sting social orga nization , can rightly be called utopian to the extent that they reject h istory-namely the real struggle taking place-as well as the movement of t i m e beyond the i m m u table perfection of their picture of a happy society-but not because
they rejected sc ience.
On the contrary , the uto p i an th i n kers a re com
p lete l y d o m i nated by the scientific thought of earl ier centu ries. sou ght the completion of this general ratio n a l system :
They
they d i d not in
a n y way consider themselves d isarmed prophets, si nce they bel ieved in the soc ia l power of sc ientific proof a nd even, in the case of S a i n t- S imon ism, in the se i z u re of power by sc i ence. H ow, asked Somba rt, " d i d they want to seize throu gh stru gg l e what m u st be proved?" Neverth e less, the scie n t i f ic concept ion of the utop ian s d id not extend to the k nowled ge that so m e social gro u ps h ave in terests i n the ex ist i ng situation, the forces to m a inta i n it, and a lso the forms of false consciousness corres pon d in g to su ch positions.
Th is conception rema i ned ou tside of the
h isto r ical rea l ity of the development of science i tse lf, wh ich was large l y orien ted b y t h e social demand w h i ch came from such grou ps who selec ted not o n l y what cou ld be a d m itted, but a l so what cou ld be stu d ied. The u to p ian soc ia l ists, rema in i n g p r ison ers of the mode of exposition of scientific tru th, conceived t h is tru th in terms of its p u re a bstract image an i mage w h ich had been im posed at a m u ch ear l ier stage of society. As Sorel observed, it is on the model of astronomy that the u to p ians thought they wou l d d iscover and demonstrate the laws of society. The harmony envisaged by them, host il e to h istory, flows from an attempt to a p p l y to soc iety the sc ience l east dependent on h istory.
T h is har
mony t r ies to m a k e itse lf v isible w ith the experimenta l i n nocence of N ewto n ia n ism, and the happy destiny consta n t l y postu lated " pl ays i n the ir social science a role a na l ogou s to that w h ich fa l l s t o inertia in ratio n a l m ec h a n ics. " (MatfHiaux pour une th fl orie du proletaria t).
84 T h e determ in ist ic-sc ient if ic s id e in the thought of Marx was precise l y t h e gap through which t h e process o f " ideologization " pen etrated into the th eoretical h e r itage left to the workers' m ovement when he was stil l a l ive.
The com ing of the h istorical su bject is sti l l pushed off u n t il later,
and it is econom ics, the h istorical science par excel l ence, w h ich tends in creasingly to guara ntee the n ecessity of its own futu re negation.
But
what is p u sh ed out of th e fie l d of theoretica l v ision in t h is m a n ner is the revolu tionary practice wh ich
is the on l y tru th of th is negation.
What becomes importa nt is to patiently stu dy econom ic deve l opment, and to cont inue to accept suffer ing w ith a H ege l ian tranqu i l ity , so that the resu lt rema ins a "cemetery of good intentions. " O n e d i scovers that now, accord ing to the sc ience of revo l u t ions, consciousness always
comes too soon, and has to be ta u gh t . " H istory has show n that we, and a l l who thought as we d id, were wrong. H istory has c l ea r l y shown that the state of eco n o m ic development on the continent at that time was
;
fa r from bein g r ipe . . :
E ngels was to say in 1895. Th roughout his l ife,
Marx had m a inta ined a u n itary point of v iew in h is theory, but the ex position of the theory was carr ied out over the terrain of th e d o m inant
thought by becom ing precise I n the for m of critiques of particu lar d is cipl i nes, principa l l y the critique of the fu ndamenta l science of bou r geo is society, pol itica l economy. I t is this muti lation, later accepted as def i n itive, which has constituted " marx ism . " 85 The shortcom ing of Marx's theory is natura l l y the shortco m i ng of the revol u tionary struggle of the prol etariat of his ti me. The work i ng class d i d not set off the permanent revo l u t ion i n the Germany of 1848; the Com mune was defeated in isolation . R evolu tionary theory thus cannot yet ach ieve its own total existence. Marx's being red uced to de fending and clarifying it with in the separation of scho larly work, in the British M u seu m , i m p l ied a loss in the theory itself. It is precise l y the scientific justifications drawn about the futu re of the deve lopment of the working class, and the orga n i zational practice com b i ned w ith these justifications, wh ich- were to become the obsta cles to proletar ian con sciousness at a more advanced stage. 86 Al l the theoreti ca l insufficiency of the scien tific defense of prole tar ian revolution can be traced , in terms of content as well as form of exposition, to an identification of the proletariat with the bou rgeo isie from the standpoin t o f the revolutionary seizure of po wer.
87 The tendency to base a proof of the scientific valid ity of proletarian power on repeated experiments in the past obscures Marx ' s h istorical thought, from the Manifesto on, forcing Marx to support a linear i mage of the development of modes of production brought on by class strug gles which end, each ti me, "w ith a revolut ionary transformation of t he entire society or with a mutual destruction of the classes i n struggle. " But in the observable real ity of h i story, as Marx observed elsewhere, the " Asiatic mode of production " preserved its immobi l ity in spite of a l l the confrontations among classes, j u st as the serf u prisings oever defeated the landlords, nor the slave revo.lts of Antiqu ity the free men.
The
l inear schema loses sight of the fact that the bourgeoisie is the only revolutionary class that eyer won; at the same time it is the only class for wh ich the development of the economy was the cau se and the con sequence of its taking hold of society. The sa me simpl ification led Marx to neglect the eco no m ic role of the State in the management of a class society.
If the rising bou rgeoisie seemed to l i berate the eco nomy from
the State, t h i s only took place to the extent that the former State was the instru ment of class oppression in a static economy. The bourgeoisie developed its autonomous economic power in the medieval period of the weaken ing of the State, at the moment of feudal fragmentation of balanced powers.
But the modern State wh ich, through M ercant i l ism,
began to support the development of the bou rgeoisie, a nd wh ich fi n a l ly became its State at the time of " Iaisser fa ire, la isser passer, " was to re veal later that it was endowed with a central power in the calcu lated management of the economic process.
M arx was neverthe less able to
descri be, in Bonapartism, the out l i ne of the modern statist bureaucracy, the fusion of cap ital and the State, the formation of a " nat ional power of capital over labor, a pu blic force organized for social enslavement, "
in which the bou rgeo isie renou nces a l l h i storica l l ife which is not its reduction to the economic h istory of things, and wou ld l i ke to " be con demned to the same po l itical noth i ngness as other classes. " Here the socio-po l itica l fou ndations of the modern spectacle are a lready estab l ished, negat ively def i n i n g the proletariat as the only pretender to his torical life.
88 The o n l y two classes wh ich effectively correspond to Marx's theory, the two pure classes towards wh ich the entire a na l ysis of Capital leads, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, are also the omy two revolutionary classes in h i story, but in very d ifferent cond itions: the bou rgeois revo l ution is over; the proletarian revolution is a project born on the foun dation of the preced ing revol ution but d ifferi n g from it q u a l i tat ively. By neglect i n g the originality of the h istorical role of the bou rgeoisie,
one masks the con crete origi n a l ity of the pro l eta rian project, wh ich can atta i n noth ing if n ot by carryi n g its own fl ags and by know i n g the " i m mensity of its tasks."
The bou rgeo isie ca me to power because it is
the c lass of the developing eco n o m y . the power except by becom i ng the
The pro l etariat can n ot itself be
class of consciousness.
The growth
of productive forces can n ot guarantee such a power, even by the detour of the i n creasing depossession w h i ch it creates. power cannot be its i nstru ment.
No
ideology
A Jacobin se i z u re of
can serve the proletariat
to d isgu ise its partial goa ls i nto general goals, because it can n ot preserve any partial rea lity which is rea l l y its own.
89 I f M arx, i n a given period of h is participation i n the struggle of the pro letariat, expected too much fro m scientific forecasting, to the point of creating the i ntel lectual fou ndation for the i l lusions of econo m ism, it is k nown that he d i d not perso n a l l y succu m b to them .
I n a wel l
k nown l etter of December 7 , 1867, accompany i ng an article where he h i mself criticized
Capital,
a n article wh ich E ngels wou ld l ater present to
the press as the work of an adversary, Marx clearly ex posed the l i mits of h is own science :
" . . . The
sUbjective
tendency of the author (wh ich
was perhaps i mposed on h i m by h i s pol itical position and h i s past) , namely the manner in wh ich he sees and presents to others the u lti mate resu lts of the real move ment, the real social process, has no re lation to h is own actu al ana lysis."
Thus Marx, by denouncing the "tendentious
concl u si ons" of h is own objective analysis, and by the irony o f the " perhaps" with reference to the extra-scientific cho ices i m posed on h i m , a t the sa me time shows the methodological key of th e fusion of the two aspects.
90 T h e fusion o f knowl edge and action m u st be rea l i zed i n the h istorical struggle itself, so that each of these terms p laces the guara ntee of its truth in the other . The formation of the proletarian class i nto a subject means the organ ization of revolutio nary stru ggles and the orga n ization
of society at the revolu tionary moment: it is then that t h e practical conditions of consciousness m ust ex ist, co nd itions in wh ich the theory of praxis i s confi rmed by beco m i n g practical theory.
H o wever, this
central question of orga n ization was the question least developed by revolutionary theory at the time when th e workers' movement was fou nded, namely when th is theory st i l l had th e u n itary character wh ich came from the thou ght of h istory.
(Theory had u ndertaken prec isely
this task i n order to develop a u n itary h istorical is in fact the l ocus of
inconsistency
practice. )
Th is question
of th is theory, a l low ing the retu rn
of statist a n d h ierarc h i c methods of a p p l ication borrowed from the
bour geo is rev o l u tion .
The forms of orga n i zation of t h e wor kers' move
ment developed on t h e basis of t h i s ren u n ciation of t h eory h ave I n turn
prevented t h e mai ntenance o f a u n i tary theory , sepa rati n g it
i n to varied
speci a l i zed
and
parti a l
d i sc i p l i n es.
Th i s ideological es
trangement from theory can then no l onger ad m i t t h e p ractical verifi cation of the u n itary h istor ical thought wh ich i t had betr ayed w h e n this verif icat ion ar ises out of the spontaneous stru ggle of the wor kers; i t can o n l y co m p et e in repressi n g the m a n i festat ion and the m e m o ry of it. Yet these h istor ica l forms wh i c h appeared i n stru ggle are p re c i se ly the prac t ical m i l ieu wh ich th e theory needed in order to be tru e .
T h ey a re re
q u i re m en ts of t h e th eory wh i ch have not been form u l ated th eoret i ca l l y . T h e so vie t was n o t a theoretical d i scovery. Y et i ts ex iste nce i n practice was a l ready the h i ghest theoret ical tru th of the I nter nat ion al Wor k i n g m e n ' s Assoc iation .
91 The f i rst successes o f the struggle of the I nternat ional led i t t o free itself from the confu sed i nf luences of the dom i nant ideo l ogy which sur v ived i n it.
But the defeat and repression wh ich it soon e ncountered
bro u ght to the foregro u nd a confl ict between two conceptions of the proletarian revolution. Both of these conceptions contai ned an authori tarian d i mensi o n through wh ich the conscious self-emancipation of the work i n g class is a bandoned .
I n effect, the quarre l wh ich became i r
reconci lable between M arx ists and Bak u n i n ists was two-edged, referr i ng at once to power in the revolutionary society and to the orga n izat ion of the present movement, and when the positions of the adversaries passed from one aspect to th e other, they reversed themse lves. Baku n i n fought the i l l u sion of a bo l ish ing c lasses by the au thoritarian use of state power, foreseeing the reconstitution of a dom i nant bureaucratic c l ass and the
d i ctatorsh i p of the most knowledgeable, or those who wou l d be reputed to be su ch. Marx, who thou ght that a matu ring process inseparable from economic contrad i ctions, and democratic edu cation of the work· ers, wou ld redu ce the ro le of the proletarian State to a simple phase of legitimating the new social relations i m posing themselves objectively, denou nced Bak u n i n a nd h is fol lowers for the au thoritarianism of a con spiratorial elite wh ich deliberatel y placed itself above the I nternational and formu lated the extravagant design of imposi ng on society the ir responsi ble d i ctatorsh ip of those who a re most revolutionary, or those who wou ld designate themselves to be such . Baku n in , i n fact, recru ited followers on the basis of such a perspective : " I nv isible p ilots i n the center of the popu lar storm, we must d i rect it, not with a v isible power, but with the col lective d i ctatorsh ip of a l l the allies. A d ictatorsh ip without badge, without title, withou t off ici a l r ight, yet a l l the more powerfu l because it will have none of the a ppearances of power. " Thus two ideologies of the workers' revolution opposed each other, each con tain i ng a partially tru e cr itique, bu t losing the u n i ty of the thought of history, and instituting themselves into ideo logica l au thorities. Power fu l organizations, like German Social- Democracy and the I berian Anar ch ist Federation fa ithfu l I y served one or the other of these ideologies; and everywhere the result was greatly d ifferent from what had been desired .
92
The fact of look i n g at the goal of proletarian revolu t ion as immed ia tely presen t marks at once the greatness and the weakness of the rea l anarch ist struggle ( i n i ts ind iv idualist variants, the pretentio ns of anar ch ists are lau ghable). Collectivist anarch ism retai ns only the conclusion of the histori ca l thought of modern class struggles, and its a bsolute de mand for th is conclusion is also translated i nto a deliberate contempt for method. Thus its critique of the political struggle has rema ined ab stract, wh i le its choice of econom ic struggle is affirmed on ly as a func tion of the i llusion of a definitive solution brought about by one single blow on this terra in, on the day of the general strike or the insu rrection. The anarchists have an ideal to realize. Anarch ism is still an ideologi cal negation of the State and of classes, namely of the socia l cond itions of separate ideology. It is the ideology of pure liberty wh i ch equates everyth ing and wh i ch does away with a ll idea of h istorica l ev i l. T h is v iewpoint which fuses a ll partial desires has given anarch ism the merit of representing the rejection of exist i ng conditions i n favor of the whole of life, and not around a privileged critica l specialization; but th is fusion being considered in the absolute, a ccording to i n d iv idual caprice, before its a ctual rea lization, has a lso condemned anarchism to an incoherence too easily seen throu gh. Anarch ism has m erely to say over a ga in and to
put i nto p lay the same si mple, total con clu sion in every si ngle struggle, becau se t h i s first concl u sion was from the begi n n i ng iden t i ca l to the entire goal of the movement. Thu s Bak u n i n cou l d wr ite in 1 873, when · he left the Fed eration Jurassienne: " D u r i n g the past n i ne years, more ideas have been developed with in the I nternational than wou l d be needed to save the world, if ideas a lone cou ld save i t, and I cha l lenge anyone to invent a new one. I t is no longer the t i me for ideas, but for facts and acts. " There i s no doubt that th i s con ception preserves, from the h i stor ical thou ght of the proletariat, the certa inty that ideas m u st become practice, but it leaves the h i storica l terra in by a ssu m ing that the adequate forms for th i s passage to practice have a lready bee n fou n d a nd w i l l never change.
93
The anarch i sts, who d i stingu i sh themse lves expli citly from the en semble of the workers' movement by their i deological conviction, re produce t h i s separation of competences among themselves; they pro vide a terra i n favorable to informal dom i nation over all anarch i st organ izations by propagandists and defenders of their ideology, spec ial i sts who are genera l l y more mediocre the more their inte l l ectual ac tivity strives to rehearse certain defin itive truths. I deological respect for u n a n i m i ty of decision has on the who le been favorable to the u n con trol led authority, with i n the organ ization itself, of specialists in lib erty; and revol utionary anarch i sm expects, from the l iberated popu la tion, the same type of u na n i m ity, obta ined by the same means. Fur thermore, the ref u sa l to take into a ccount the opposition between the con d ition s of a m inor ity grou ped i n t he present strugg le and the so ciety of free indiv iduals, has nou rished a permanent separation among anarch i sts at the moment of com mon deci sio n , as i s shown by an i n fin ity of a narch i st i n su rrections i n Spain, l i m ited and destroyed on a loca l lev e l .
94
The illu sion entertai ned more or less exp l i citly by genu ine anarch i sm i s the permanent i m m inence of a n i n stan ta neou sly accompli shed revolu tion w h i ch will prove the truth of the ideology a nd of the mode of prac tica l organ ization der ived from the ideology. Anarch i sm i n fact led, in 1 936, to a social revolu tion a nd the most adva n ced foresh adowing i n all t i me o f a proletarian power. I n t h i s context i t m u st be noted that the signal for a general i n su rrection had been i mposed by a proclamation of the army. Furthermore, to the extent that th i s revolu tion was not
com p leted during the first days ( becau se of the ex istence of Franco ' s power i n half the cou ntry, strongly su pported from abroad w h i le the rest of the international proletar ian movement wa s a l ready defeated, and becau se of su rv ival s of bou rgeois forces or other sta t i st wor kers' parties with in the camp of the R epu bl i c) the orga n i zed anarch i st move ment showed i tself u na ble to extend the dem i-victor ies of the revolu tion, or even to defend the m . I ts known ch iefs became m in i sters and hostages of the bourgeo i s State which destroyed the revolu t ion onlv to l o se the civ i l war_
95 The " orthodox Marx i sm " of the Second I nternational is the scien t if i c ideology of the sociali st revolution : it identifies i ts whole tru th with objective processes in the economy and with the progress of a re cogn ition of th i s necessity by the work ing class edu cated by the o rgan i zation. T h i s ideology red i scovers the �onf idence in pedagogical demo n stration wh ich had characterized utopian socialism, but m ix es i t w ith a con templative reference to the cou rse of h i story : th i s attitude has lost a s m u ch of the Hegelian d i mension of a total h i story as it has,lost the i mmobile i mage of totality in the utopian critique ( mo st h igh� y devel oped by Fou rier ) . T h i s scientific attitude can do no I'nore 'ttl'an rev iv e a sym metry of eth i ca l cho ices; it i s from th i s att itude that theo n:6 nsense of H i lferd ing spri ngs when he states that recogn i z i rtg the nece ssity of sociali sm gives " no i n d i cation of the pract ical attitud� to be adopted. For it i s one th ing to recogn ize a necessity, and it is qu ite a n other thi ng to put oneself at the servi ce of th i s necessity." (Finanzkapita/). Those who fai led to recogn ize that, for Marx and for the revolutio nary pro l e tariat, the u n itary thou ght of h i story was in no way distin ct from the practical attitude to be adop ted, regularly became v icti m s of the prac t i ce they si m u ltaneou sly adopted.
96 The ideology of the social-democratic organ ization gave power to ' professors who edu cated the working class, and the form of o rgan i zation wh i ch was adopted was the form most su itable for th is passive appren t i cesh ip. The participation of social i st s of th e Second I nternational in political and econ o m i c struggles was adm i ttedly concrete but profoundly uncritical. I t was conducted in the name of revolutionary illusion by mea n s of a n obviou sly reformist practice. Thu s the revolut ionary ideol ogy wa s to be shattered by the very success of those who h eld it. The separation of deputies and journalists i n the movement drew toward a bou rgeo i s mode of life those bourgeoi s i n tellectuals who had a lready
been recru ited to the movement.
The u n io n bu reaucracy s ha ped even
those who had been recru ited from the struggles of i n d u str ial workers, and who were themse lves workers, i nto brokers of l abor power who sold labor as a com modity, for a just pr ice.
I f their activity was to retai n
some appearance of being revo l u t ionary, i t wou ld have been necessary for capita l ism to find itself conven iently u nable to support eco n o m i ca l l y t h i s reform ism wh i ch it to l erated po l itica l l y i n t h e l ega l istic agitation of the social-democrats.
Th is type of i ncompat ib i l ity was gu aranteed by
their science; bu t h istory constantly gave the l ie to it.
97 Bernste i n , the soc i a l -democrat furth est from pol it ica l i d eology a n d most ope n l y attached t o t h e m ethodology o f bourgeois sc ience, h a d t h e honesty t o want t o demonstrate the rea l i ty o f ttris contrad i ction. The Engl ish workers ' reform ist movement had a l so demo nstrated i t, by de privi ng itself of revolutionary i deology. H owever, the contrad iction was def i n itivel y demonstrated o n l y by h istorical development itse lf. Thou gh fu II of i l lusions in other respects, B ernste i n had denied that a crisis of capita l i st prod uction wou ld m iracu lousl y force th e hand of soc i a l i sts who wan ted to i n her i t the revo l u tion o n l y by this legitimate r ite. The mo ment of profou nd social u ph eava l wh ich arose w i th the f i rst wo rld war, though fert i l e with the awakening of consc iou sness, twice demon strated that the social-democratic h ierarchy had not educated revo l u tionar i l y , and had i n no way re ndered the German workers theoreti
cians:
the first time when the vast majority of the party ra l l i ed to the
i mperial ist war , and then, i n defeat, when it squashed th e Spartakist revo l utionar ies.
The ex-worker E bert sti l l believed in sin, since he ad
m itted that he hated revo lution " I i ke si n . " And the sa me leader sh owed h i m self a good precursor of the soc ial ist represen tation wh ich shortl y after opposed itself to the R u ssian proletariat a s its abso l ute enemy, moreover formu lat ing exactly the same program of th is new a l i enation : "Social ism m eans wor k i ng a lot."
98 As a Marx ist th in ker Lenin was no more than a faithful and consis tent Kau tskyist who app l ied the revolu tionary ideology of t h i s "ortho dox Marx ism" to R u ssian cond itions, co nd itions wh ich did not a l l ow the reformist practice carr i ed on by the Second I n ternatio n a l .
I n the
R u ssian context, the ex ternal d i rection of the proletariat, acting by mea n s of a disc i p l i ned clandest i n e party su bord i nated to i ntel lectu als who had become "professi ona l revolutionaries," becomes a profession w h i ch w i l l not negotiate with a n y lead i n g profession of cap ita l ist so ciety (the Czar ist pol it ical reg i m e bei ng in any case u nable to offer such an opening, wh ich is based on a n advanced stage of cap ita l ist power ) . I t therefore became the profession o f the absolute direction of soc iety.
99 The authoritarian ideological rad ica l ism of the Bolshev iks deployed itself a l l over the world w ith the war and the col l a pse of the social足 democratic i nternational in the face of the war. The bloody end of the democratic i l l u sions of the workers' movement transformed the ent i re wor l d into a R u ssia, and Bolshev ism, reigning over the f i rst revolu tion足 ary breach brought on by th is epoch of crisis, offered to pro letarians of a l l lands i ts h ierarc h ic and ideological model, so that they cou l d " speak R u ssian " to the ru l ing class. Leni n did not reproach the Marxism of the Second I nternationa l for being a revolutionary ideology, but for ceasing to be one.
1 00 The sa me h i stor ical moment when Bo lshev ism tri u m phed for itself in R ussia and when soc ial-democracy fou ght v ictoriously for the old world marks the com plete birth of the state of affa irs which is at the heart of the do m i nation of the modern spectacl e : the represen tation of the working class has opposed itself rad ical l y to the work i ng class.
1 01 " I n a l l prev ious revolutions, " wrote Rosa Luxemburg in Rote Fahne of December 21 , 1 91 8, "the combatants faced each other d i rectly : class aga inst c lass, program against progra m . I n t h e present revol u t ion, the troops protecting the old order d id not intervene u nder the insignia of the ru l i ng class, but u nder the f la g of a 'social-democratic party.' I f the central question of revol u t ion had been posed open ly and honest l y : capita l ism or socia l ism ?-the great mass of t h e proletariat wou ld today have no dou bts and no hesitations. " Thus, a few days before its destruc足 tion the rad ical cu rrent of the German proletariat d iscovered the secret
of the new con d it io n s w h ich had been created by the preced i ng process ( toward w h ic h the representation of the work i n g c lass had greatly con tributed ) : the spectacu l ar orga n i zation of defense of the existing order, the soc ial rei g n of appearances where no "cen tral q uestion" can any longer be posed " open ly a nd honest l y . " The revo l u t ion ary representa tion of the pro letariat had at this stage become both the m a i n factor and the cen tra l resu lt of the genera l falsification of society.
1 02 The orga n i zation of the pro letar iat o n the B o l shev i k model , born out of R u ssian backward ness a n d out of the resi gnation from revol uti onary stru ggle of the workers' movement of advanced cou n tries, fou nd in t he bac kwardness of R u ssia a l l the co n d i t ions wh ich ca rr ied t h i s form of orga n izatio n toward the cou nter-revo l u t ionary reversa l w h i c h it u ncon siously co nta ined a t i ts sou rce. The repeated retreat of the mass of t he Eu ropea n workers' movement i n the face of the Hie Rhodus, hie sa lta of the 1 9 18- 1920 period, a retreat wh ich i n c l u ded the v i o lent destruc t ion of its radical m i nori ty, favored the com p letion of the B o lshev i k development a n d let t h i s false resu l t p resent itself to the world a s the o n l y pro letarian so l u t i o n . The sei z u re of a state monopo ly of represen tation and of the defense of the wor kers' power, which j u stified the Bolshev i k party, made the pa rty become what i t was, the party of the proprietors of the proletaria t, esse n t i a l l y e l i m i nat i n g the ear l ier forms of property.
103 For twenty years the var ied tendenc ies of R u ssian soc ia l - democracy had exami ned a l l the co n d it ions for the l iqu idation of Czarism in a theo ret ica l debate that was never sa tisfactory_ They had po i nted to the wea k ness of the bou rgeoisie, the weight of the peasant major ity, t he dec isive role of a concentrated and com bative but hard l y n u merous proletariat. These conditions f i n a l l y fou nd the i r sol utio n in practice, but becau se of a g iven w h ic h had n o t been p rese nt in the hypotheses of the theoret ic ia n s : the revo l utio nary bureaucracy wh ich d irected t he pro letariat seized State power and gave society a new class do m i nation . Str ictly bou rgeois revolution h a d been i m possi ble; the "democratic d i c tatorsh i p of workers a n d peasants" had no mean i ng. The proletarian power of the Sov iets cou l d not mainta i n itse l f si m u l taneo u s l y against the cl ass of sma l l landowners, a ga inst the national and i nternat ional W h ite reaction, and agai nst its own representat ion exter n a l i zed and a l ienated i n the form of a workers ' party of abso l u te masters of the State, of the economy, o f expression, and soon of thought. The theory of permanent revol ution of Trotsky and Parvus, w h i c h Len i n
ado pted i n Apri l 1 9 1 7 , was the o n l y theory which becam e true for cou ntries where the social deve lopme n t of the bou rgeo isie was re tarded, but th is theory became true o n l y after the i n trodu cti o n of the u n k nown factor : the c lass power of the bureaucracy . The concentra tion of d ictatorsh i p in the hands of the su preme representa t ion of ideo l ogy was defended most consisten tly by Lenin i n the n u m erous confron tations of the Bo lshev i k d irectorate. L e n i n was right every t i m e aga inst h is a dversaries i n that he su pported the so l u t ion i m p l ied by ear l ier cho ices of abso l u te m i n ority power. The democracy which was kept from peasants by means of the sta te wou Id have to be kept from wo rk ers as we l l , whi ch led to k eep in g it from co m m u n ist l eaders of u n io ns, and in the entire party, and f i na l l y u p to the top of th e party h ierarchy. At the 1 0th Congress, when th e Kronstadt Sov iet had been defeated by arms a nd bur ied u nder c a l u mny, Len i n pronou nced the fo l l ow ing con c l u sion a ga i nst the l eftist bu rea u crats o rga n ized in a "Work ers' Opposi t i o n , " the logic of wh ich Sta l i n wou ld later extend to a perfect d iv ision o f the wor ld : " H ere or down there w ith a rifle, but not w i th the op posi t io n . . . We've had enough o pposi t i o n . " 1 04 After Kronstadt, at the t i m e of the " new eco no m i c po l icy, " the bu rea ucracy, re ma i n in g so l e proprieto r of a State Capitalism, assured i ts power i n terna l l y by m eans of a temporary a l l ia nce w i th the peasan try. E xterna l ly it defended its power by u si n g workers regimented i nto the b ureaucratic parties of the 3rd I nternational as su pports for R u ssian d i p l o macy, thus sabota g i n g the ent ire revo l ut ionary movement and su p porting bou rgeo is govern ments whose a id it needed in i nternationa l po l i tics (the power of the Kuom i n ta n g i n C h i na i n 1 925-27, the Popu l ar F ro n t i n Spa in a n d i n France, etc. ) . B u t the b ureau cratic society was to cont i n u e its comp letion by exert i n g terror on the peasantry i n order to rea l ize the most bruta l prim itive capital ist acc u m u lation in h istory. The industria l i zation o f the Sta l i n epoch revea ls the rea l ity beh ind the bu reaucracy: it is the con t i n u at io n of the power of the eco nomy, the
salyagi ng of the essentials of commod i ty society preservi n g commod i ty l abor. I t is the proof of the i ndependent economy, wh ich dominates society to the point of recreating for its own ends the class domination i t requ ires. I n other words the bou rgeoisie has created an a utonomous power wh ich, so long as its autonomy lasts, can even do without a bou rgeoisie. The total itarian bureaucracy is not " the last owni ng class i n h istory " i n the sense of Bruno R izzi; it is only a substitute ruling class for the com modity economy. Dec l i n i ng capitalist private property is replaced by a s i m p l if ied su bproduct, one which is less d i versified, wh ich is concentrated into the col l ective property of the bureaucratic class. This u nder-developed form of ru l ing class is a lso the expression of eco nomic u nder-development, a nd it has no other perspective than to over come the retardation of t h is development in certa in regions of the worl d . I t was t h e workers ' party organized accord i ng t o t h e bourgeo is model of separation wh ich furn ished the h ierarch ical-statist cadre for this su pple mentary edition of a ru l i n g class. Anton C i l iga observed i n one of Sta l i n ' s pr isons that "technical questions of orga n i zation tu rned out to be social questions. " (Lenin and the Revolution). 1 05
Revol utionary ideology, the coherence of the separate, of wh ich Len in ism represents the greatest volu ntaristic attempt, mainta i n i ng con trol over a real ity which rejects it, re turns to its truth in incoherence with Sta l i nism . At that poi nt ideo logy is no longer a weapon, but a goal . The l ie which i s n o longer cha l lenged becomes lu nacy. R ea l ity as well as the goa l dissolve i n the total i tarian ideological procla mation: a l l it says is all there is. It is a loca l pri mitivism of the spectacle, whose role is nevertheless essential i n the development of the wor l d spectacle. The ideology which is material ized in this context has not economica l ly transformed the wor l d, as has cap ita l i sm which has arrived at the stage of abundance; it has merely transformed perception by m eans of the pol ice.
1 06
The tota l itarian-ideolog ica l class in power is the power of an over turned world : the stronger it is, the more it clai ms not to exist, a nd its force serves above a l l to affirm its i nex istence. It is modest only on t h is po int, because its officia l inex istence must a lso coi ncide with the nec plus ultra of h istorica l development wh ich one si m u l taneou sly owes to its i nfa l l i ble com mand. Extended everywhere, the bureaucracy m u st be the class in visible to consciousness; as a resu lt a l l social l ife becomes fa lse. The social organ ization of absol ute fa lsehood flows from th is fu nda menta l contradiction.
1 07 Sta l i n ism was the reign of terror within the bureaucratic class itself. The terrorism at the base of the power of this class must a l so stri k e this class because it possesses no j u r id ica l guarantee, no recogn ized existence as own ing class, which it cou l d extend to every one of its members. I ts real
property
is
d issimu lated;
the
bureaucracy
became
proprietor
through the path of fa lse consciousness. F a l se consciou sness preserves its a bso l u te power o n l y by means of a bso l ute terror, where a l l real motives are fina l l y lost.
The mem bers of the bu reaucratic class in power have a
right of ownersh i p over society on l y co l lectively, as part i c i pants in a fu ndamental l ie :
they have to pl ay the role of a lea d i ng pro letariat in a
socia l i st society ; they have to be actors loyal to a scr ipt of ideo l ogical d i sloya lty.
But effective participation in this lying bei ng m u st see itself
recogn ized as a rea l participation.
No bu rea ucrat can support h i s right
to power ind ividu a l ly, si nce provi n g that he ' s a social ist proletarian wou l d mea n presenting h i mself as the opposite of a bureaucrat,
and
prov ing that he's a bureaucrat is i m possi ble since the official truth of the bureaucracy is that it does not ex ist. Thus every bureaucrat depends a bso l u tely o n the cen tral guaran tee of the ideology which recognizes the co l l ective participation in its "social ist power" of all the bureaucrats
it does not annihilate.
I f a l l the bu reaucrats taken together d eci de
everyth i ng, the cohesion of their own cl ass can o n l y be assured by the concentration of their terrorist power in a single person . I n th i s person resides the o n l y practica l truth of fa l sehood in po wer: the i nd isputable permanence of its constantly adj usted frontier.
Sta l i n deci des without
appea l who is f i na l ly to be a possessi n g bureaucrat; in other words who shou ld be named "pro l etarian in power" or "traitor in the pay of the M i kado or of Wa l l Street."
The burea ucratic atoms find the common
essence of their r ight o n l y i n the person of Sta l i n .
Sta l i n is the wor ld
sovere ign who in th is man ner k nows h i mself as the a bsol ute person for the co nsciousness of wh ich there is no higher sp irit. "The sovere i gn of the world has effective consciousness of what he is-the u n iversa l power of eff icacy-in the destructive v io lence w h ich he exerts a ga i nst t he Se lf of h is su bjects, the contrasting ot hers."
Just as he is the power that
def i nes the terra in of domi nation, he is "the power wh ich ravages th is terra i n . "
1 08 When ideology, having become a bso l ute th rough the possession of a bso lute power, changes from partia l knowledge into tota l itarian fa lse足 hood, the thought of h istory is so perfectl y ann i h i lated that history itse l f can no l onger ex ist at the leve l of the most empirical knowledge. The tota l itarian bu reaucrat ic society l ives in a perpetual present where everyth ing that happened exists for it o n l y as a place accessi ble to its
pol ice. The project a l ready formu lated by N apoleon of "d i rectin g the energy of memory from the throne " has fou nd its total concretization in a permanent man ipu l ation of the past, not only of meani ngs but of facts as wel l . But the price paid for this emancipation from a l l h istorical rea l ity is the loss of a l l rational reference wh ich is indispensible to the historical society, cap ital ism. I t is known how much the scientific a p足 p lication of insane ideology has cost the R ussian economy, if only through the i mposture of Lysenko. The con tradiction of t he total itar足 ian bureaucracy administering an industria l ized society, caught between i ts need for rationa l ity a n d i ts rejection of the rational, is one of its main deficiencies with regard to normal cap ita l ist devel op ment. The bureaucracy cannot resolve the question of agricul ture the way capi足 tal ism had done, and u ltimately i t is inferior to cap i ta l ism i n i nd u strial production, p lanned from the top and based on general ized u nrea l i ty a nd falsehood.
1 09 Between the two world wars, the revo l u tionary workers' movement was a n n ih i lated by the j o i n t action of the Sta l i n ist bu reaucracy a nd of fascist tota l i tari a n i sm which had borrowed its form of orga n i zat ion from the tota l itarian party tried out i n R u ssia.
Fa scism was a n extre mist de
fense of the bou rgeois econ omy threatened by crisis and by pro letar ian su bversion.
Fasc ism is a
state of siege
in capita l ist soc iety, by means of
which t h i s society saves i tse lf a n d gives i tse lf stop-gap rat ion a l izat i o n by ma k i n g the State intervene massive l y i n its management.
B u t th is ra
tiona l ization is itse lf marked by the i m mense i rratio n a l ity of its mea ns. Fasc is m ra l l ies to the defense of the m a i n po i n ts of a bourgeo is ideology wh ich has become co nservative (the fa m i ly, property, the mora l order, the n a ti o n ) , reu n it i n g the petite- bou rgeoisie and the u n empl oyed routed by crisis or dece ived by the i m potence of social ist revo l ut i on . H owever, fasc ism is not i tself fu ndamenta l l y i d eologi ca l . a v io l e n t resurrect ion of
myth
It presents itself as it is:
which demands part i c i pa t i o n in a com
mu n ity d ef i ned by archa ic pseu do-va l u es : race, bl ood , the l eader. cism is
technically-equipped archaism.
I ts decom posed
ersatz
F as
of myth
is rev ived i n the spectacular co ntext of the most mod ern m eans of con d ition i n g and i l lu sion .
Thus i t is one of the factors in the formation of
the modern spectacle, an d its role in the destru ction of the o l d wo rkers' movement makes it one of the fu ndamen ta l forces of present-day so ciety.
H owever, since fasc ism is a l so the most costly form of preserv i n g
t h e cap ital ist order, i t m u st natura l l y leave t h e front of t h e stage t o t h e great ro les p layed b y cap ita l ist States; i t i s e l i m i nated by stronger a n d more rati onal f o r m s of the sa me order.
1 10 When the R u ssian bureau cracy f i n a l l y does away w i th the rema i ns of bou rgeo is property wh ich ham pered its ru l e over the economy, when i t develo ps this property f o r i t s o w n u s e , and w h e n i t is rec ogn i zed ex terna l l y among the great powers, i t wa nts to enjoy its world ca l m l y a nd to su p press the arb itrary e le ment which had been exerted over it. nounces the Sta l i n ism of its orig i n .
I t d e
B u t the denu nciation remai n s Sta
l i n ist, arbitrary, u ne x p l a i ned a n d con t i nu a l l y corrected, because
ideological lie a t its origin can never be revealed.
the
Thus the bu reaucracy
can l i bera l i ze ne ither c u l tu ra l l y nor pol itica l l y beca u se its ex istence as a c lass depends on its i deo logica l m o n o p o l y wh ich, whatever its weight, is its o n ly title to property. The i deo logy h as no dou bt l ost the passion
of its positive affirmation, but what sti l l su rvives of i n d iffere nt trivia l i ty sti l l has the repressive fu nction of pro h i b i t i n g the sl ightest co mpet ition, of h o l d i n g the tota l i ty of thought captive.
Thus the bureau cracy is
bou n d to a n ideology wh ich is no l o nger bel ieved by a n yone. What u sed to be terrorist has become a laugh i n g m atter, but th is laughter i tse l f can
preserve i tself as a last resort, o n l y by h o l d i n g on to the terror i sm it wo u l d l i ke to be rid of. Thus precise ly at the moment when the bu reau cracy wants to demonstrate i ts superior ity on the terra i n of capita l i sm it revea l s itself a poor rela tive of ca p ita l ism.
J u st as i ts actu a l h i story
contrad icts i ts r i gh t and i ts v u lgarly en terta i ned i gnorance contra d icts i ts sc ientific pretention s, so its p roject of beco m i ng a r ival to the bour geo isie in the prod uction of a co m mod ity a bunda nce is b l ocked .
This
project is blocked by the fact that t h i s abu ndance . carr ies its implicit ideology w i th in itself, and i s u sua l l y accom pan ied by a n i nd e f i n i te l y ex tended freedom in spectacular fa l se c h o i ces, a pseudo-freedo m wh ich re m a i n s i rreco ncila ble with the bureau crat ic ideo logy .
111 At the present moment of its devel opment, the bu reau cracy's t itle of i deo logica l property is a l ready co l l apsi n g i n terna t i ona l l y. The power w h i c h esta b l ished itself nationa l ly as a fu ndamenta l l y i nternational ist model m u st a d m i t that it can no lo nger pretend to u ph o l d its fa l se co hesio n beyond every nationa l fro n tier. The u nequ a l econom i c dev el op ment of some bu reaucracies with compet i n g i nterests who succeeded i n possess i n g t h e i r " soc i a l ism " outs ide of a si ngle cou ntry h a s l e d t o the pu b l i c and total confrontation between the R u ssian l ie and t he C h i n ese l ie.
From t h i s po int on, every b u reaucracy i n power, or every tota l i
tar i a n party w h i c h is a cand idate to the power left beh i nd by the Sta l i n ist per i od in some nationa l work i n g c lasses, must fo l low its own pat h . The g l oba l deco m posi t i o n o f t h e a l l iance o f bureaucrat i c m ystifi cat ion is fu rther aggravated by manifesta tions of interna l negation w hich began to be v is i ble to the worl d w i th the E ast Berl i n workers' revo l t, o pposi ng the bu reau crats with the demand for " a govern ment of steel workers," man ifestations wh ich a l ready once led a l l the way to the power of work ers' cou n c i l s in H u ngary.
H owever, the g l o ba l deco m posi t i o n of the
bureau cra t ic a l l iance i s i n the l ast a n a l ysis the l east favorable factor for the present deve l o pment of capita l ist society. The bo u rgeo isie i s i n the
process of losi ng the adversary wh ich objectively supported it by pro v i d i ng an i l lusory u n ificatio n of a l l negation of the ex isting order. This d ivision of spectacu lar labor comes to an end when the pseudo-revo lu tionary role in tu rn d ivides. The spectacu lar element of the col la pse of the workers' movement wi l l itself col lapse.
112
The Leni nist i l lusion has no contemporary base outside of the various Trotskyist tendencies. H ere the identification of the pro l etarian project with a h ierarch ic organization of ideology unwaveri ngly survives the experience of a l l its resu l ts. The distance which separates Trotskyism from revo lutionary critique of the present society also f,Jerm its the re spectable d istance which it keeps with regard to positions which were a l ready false when they were used in a rea l com bat. Trotsk y remained basica l l y in sol i darity with the h igh bureaucracy u nt i l 1 927, seek ing to capture it so as to make it u ndertake a genu inely Bolshevik action ex ternal l y ( it is k nown that in order to d i ssi mu late Len in's fam ou s "testa ment" he went so far as to slanderously disavow h is supporter Max Eastman, who had made i t publ ic) . Trotsky was condem ned by his basic perspective, because at the moment when the bureau cracy recog n izes i tself in its resu lt as a counter-revolutionary class i n terna l ly, it must a lso choose to be effectively counter-revo lutionary externa l l y in the na me of revolution, just as it is a t home. Trotsky's subsequent struggle for a Fou rth I nternational contains the same inconsistency. A l l h i s l i fe h e refused t o recognize the power of a separate class i n the bu reaucracy, because d u ring the second R ussian revolution he became an u ncond itional su pporter of the Bolshevik form of organ ization. When Lukacs, in 1 923, showed that th is form was the long-so u gh t m ed iation between theory and practice, in wh i ch the proletarians are no longer " spectators" of the events wh ich happen i n their organization, but con sciously choose and l ive these events, he described as actua l merits of
the Bolshev i k party everything that the Bolshev i k party was not. Ex cept for h is profound theoretical work , Lu kacs was sti l l an ideologue speak ing in the name of the power most grossly externa l to the prole tarian movement, bel ievi n g and mak i n g bel ieve that he fou nd h imself, with h is entire personal i ty within this power as if it were his own. The rest of the story made it obvious just how this power disowns and sup presses its lackeys. Lukacs, repud iati ng h i mse l f wlthout end, made v is i ble with the clarity of a caricature exactly what he had identified with : with the opposite o f h i mself and of what h e had su pported i n History and Class Consciousness. Lu kacs is the best proof of the fu ndamental rule wh ich j udges a l l the intel lectua ls of th is century : what t hey respect exactly measu res their own despicable rea l ity. However, Len i n had hard ly ca l led for this type of i l l usion about h is activity; in h is view " a pol itical party cannot examine its members to see if there are contrad ic tions between their phi losophy and the party program . " The real party whose i maginary portrai t Lu kacs had presented was cohere nt only for one precise and partial task : to seize State power. 1 13
The neo- Len i n i st i l lusion of present-day Trotskyism, constantly ex posed by the real ity of modern bou rgeois as wel l as bureaucratic capital ist societies, natu ral l y f inds a favored fie ld of appl ication in " u nder developed" cou ntries which are formal ly independent. Here the i l lusion of some sort of state and bu reaucratic social ism is consciously d ished out by loca l ru l ing classes as simply the ideology of economic de velop men t. The hybrid composition of these classes is more or less clearly related to a level on the bourgeois-bureaucratic spectrum . Their games with the two poles of existing capita l i st power i n the i n ternational arena, and thei r ideological compro m i ses ( notably with Isla m ) , wh ich express the hybrid rea l i ty of their social base, remove from t h is final su b-produ ct of ideologica l soc ia l ism everyth ing serious except the po l i ce. A bureaucracy is able to form by u n iting a nationa l struggle with an agrarian peasant revolt; from that point on, as i n China, it tends to apply the Stal i n ist model of i ndustr i a l i zation in soc ieties less developed than R ussia was in 1 9 1 7. A bureaucracy able to industrial ize the nation is able to constitute i tself out of the petite-bou rgeoisie, or out of army cadres who seize power, as in Egypt. On certain po ints, as in A l geria at the beginn i n g of its war of independence, the bureaucracy wh ich con stitutes i tself as a para-statist leadersh i p during the struggle seeks the equ i l ibrium poi nt of a comprom ise in order to fuse with a weak na tional bou rgeoisie. F inal ly in the former colonies of black Africa which remai n open ly tied to the American and European bourgeo isie, a bour geoisie constitutes i tsel f (usu a l ly on the basis of the power of tradi tional triba l chiefs ) , by seizing the State. These cou ntries, where foreign i m perial ism remains the rea l master of the economy, enter a stage where the compradores have gotten an i nd igenous State as com pensation for
their sa le of ind igenous products, a State which is i ndependent i n the face of the local m asses but not in the face of i mperi a l ism. This is an artificial bou rgeoisie wh ich is not able to accu m u l ate, but w h ich simply dilapida tes the share of surplus value from local labor which reaches it as wel l as the foreign su bsidies from the States or corporations whi ch protect it. Because of the obvious inca pacity of these bou rgeois c lasses to fu lfi l l the normal econom ic fu nction of a bourgeoisie, each of them faces a subversion based on the bureaucratic model, more or less adapted to loca l pecu l iarities, and eager to seize the heritage of this bourgeoisie. But the very success of a bureaucracy in i ts fundamental project of in dustrial ization necessarily contains the perspective of i ts h istorical de feat : by accumu lating capital it accu m u lates a proletariat and thus creates i ts own negation in a cou n try where it did not yet exist.
114 I n th is complex and terrible development which has carried the epoch of class struggles toward new cond itions, the proletariat of the i ndustrial cou ntries has comp letely l ost the affirmation of its positive perspective and a l so, in the l ast anal ysis, its illusions, but not i ts being. I t has not been suppressed. It remains i rreducibly in existence with i n the i nten sified a l i enation of modern capita l ism : it is the i mm ense majority of workers who have lost a l l power over the use of their l ives and who, once they know this, redefine themselves as the proletariat, the negation to the core within this society. The proletariat is obj ectively enlarged by the movement of disappearance of the peasantry and by the extension of the logic of factory labor to a large sector of "services " a nd intellec tual professions. I t is subjectively that the proletariat is sti l l far re moved from its practical c lass consciousness, not only among white col lar workers but also among wage workers who have as yet discovered only the i mpotence and mystification of the old pol itics. N evertheless, when the proletariat d iscovers that i ts own externa l i zed power competes constantly to reinforce cap ital ist society, not only i n the form of its l abor but also in the form of u n ions, of parties, or of the state power it had bu i l t to emancipate i tself, it a lso d iscovers from conc rete h istori cal experience that it is the class tota l ly opposed to all congealed ex ternal ization and a l l specia l ization of power. It carries the revolution which can leave nothing external to it, the demand for the permanent domination of the present over the past, and the tota l critiqu e of sep aration. I t is th is that m ust find its su itable form in action . No quan titative a mel ioration of its m isery, no i l lusion of h ierarchic integration is a last i n g cure for its dissatisfaction, because the proletariat cannot tru l y recognize itself in a particu lar wrong it received nor in the repara tion of a particular wrong. I t can not recogn ize itself in the reparation of a large n u mber of wrongs either, but only i n the absolute wrong of being relegated to the margin of l ife.
115 F rom the new signs of negation wh ich mu ltiply in the economica l ly most advanced countries, signs wh ich are m isu nderstood a nd falsified by spectacu lar arrangement, one can a l ready draw the concl usion that a new epoch has begu n . After the first attempt at workers' su bversion, it is now capi talist abundance which has failed. When anti-u n i on struggles
of Western workers are repressed first of a l l by u n ions, and when rebel l ious cu rrents of youth lau nch their first informed protest wh ich d i rectly i m p l ies a rejection of the old special i zed politics, of art a nd of da i ly l ife, we see two sides of a new spontaneous struggle wh ich begins u nder a criminal gu ise.
These are the signs of foreru nners of a second pro
letarian assau lt against the class society.
When the lost ch i ldren of this
sti l l i m mobile army reappear on this terra in, become other and yet re main the sa me, they fo l l ow a new "General Ludd" who, this time, throws them i nto the destruction of the machines of permi tted con sumption.
116 "The pol itical form at last discovered i n which the economic l i bera tion of labor cou ld be rea l ized" has in this century acqu i red a clear out l ine in the revol utionary workers' Counci ls which concentrate in them selves a l l the fu nctions of decision and execution , and federate with each other by means of delegates responsible to the base and revocable at any moment.
Their actu al existence has as yet only been a brief
sketch, i m mediately fought and defeated by different forces of defense of the class society, among which one must often count the i r own fa lse consciou sness.
Pannekoek rightly insisted on the fact that the cho ice
of a power of workers' Councils "poses problems" rather than bri nging a so lution .
But th is power is precisely where the problems of the revo
lution of the proletariat can f i nd their rea l so lution .
Th is is where the
objective cond itions of historica l consciousness are reu n i ted.
This is
where direct active commun ication is rea l ized, where specia l ization, h ierarchy and separation end, where the existi ng cond itions are tra ns formed " i nto cond itions of u ni ty."
Here the proletarian subject can
emerge from h is stru ggle agai nst contemplation :
h i s consciou sness is
equ a l to the practical organization wh ich it u ndertakes �ecause this consciousness is itself i nseparable from coherent intervention in history.
117 I n the power of the Cou ncils, which must internationa l ly su pplant a l l other power, the proletarian movement is its own product and this product is itse lf the producer.
I t is to itself its own goal. O n l y there is
the spectacu lar negation of l ife negated in its turn .
1 18
The a ppearance of the Councils was the h ighest rea l i ty of the p ro letarian movement i n the first q uarter of th is century, a reality which was n ot seen or was travestied because i t disappeared with the rest of the movement wh ich was denied and e l i mi nated by the enti re h istorical experience of the time. In th is new moment of proletarian critique, this resu l t returns as the only u ndefeated point of the d efeated move ment. The h istorical consciousness which k nows that this is the only m i l ieu where it can exist can now recogni ze it, no longer at the peri phery of what is ebbing, but at the center of what is rising.
1 19
A revolutionary organization exist i n g before the power of the Coun cils ( i t wi l l find its own form through struggle) , for a l l these historical reasons, already knows that it does no t represen t the work ing class. It must only recognize i tself as a rad ical separation with the world of sepa ration.
1 20
The revolutionary orga n ization is the coherent expression of the theory of praxis entering i nto non-un i lateral com m u n i cation with prac tical struggles, in the process of becoming practical theory. I ts own practice is the general ization of comm u n i cation and of coherence i n these struggles. At the revolutionary moment of d issolution of social separation, th is organization must recognize i ts own disso lution as a separate organization.
1 21 The revo l u tionary orga n i zation can be n oth ing less tha n a u n itary critique of society , namely a critiqu e w h i ch does not comprom ise with any form of separate power anywhere i n the wor l d , and a c r itique pro clai med globa l l y aga i n st a l l the a spects of a l ienated soc ial l ife_ I n the struggle of the revo l u tionary orga n i zation aga inst the cl ass society, wea pons are noth ing oth er than the essence of the com batants them selves : the revol u tionary orga n i zation cannot reproduce w ithin itse l f t h e cond itions o f se paration and h ierarchy o f t h e dom inant society. I t m ust struggle consta ntly aga i n st its deformation in the r u l i ng spec tacle. The o n l y l i m it to partici pation in the total democracy of the revo lut ionary orga n i zation is the recognition and self-appro pr iation of the coherence of its critique by a l l its members, a coh erence which must be proved i n the critical theory as such and i n the relation between the theory and p ractica l activity.
1 22 Ever- in creasi ng cap ital ist a l ienation at a l l l evels makes it i ncreasingl y d ifficu lt for workers t o recognize and name the i r o wn m isery, thus placing them i n front of the a lter nat ive of rejecting the totality of their misery or no thing. F rom this the revol u tionary organ ization must learn that it can no l o nger comba t aliena tion with aliena ted forms.
1 23 Pro letarian revo l u tion depends entirely on the condition that, for the first t i me , theory a s i n te l l i gence of hu man practice be recogniz ed and l ived by the masses. I t requ ires workers to become d ia l ecticians and to i nscri be their thought i nto practice. Thus it demands more of men withou t quality than the bou rgeois revolution demand ed of the qual ified men which it delegated to its task ( the parti a l ideological con sciousness bu i l t by a part of the bou rgeois class had the economy at its basis, th is central part of soc ia l l ife in wh ich th is class was already in power ) . The very development of cl ass society to the point of the spec tacu lar orga n i zation of non - l ife thu s leads the revolutionary project to become visibly what it a l ready was essen tially.
1 24 R evolutionary theory is now the enemy of a l l revolutionary ideology and knows it.
1 25 Man, "the negative being who is u n iquely to th e extent that he sup presses Bei ng, " is i dentical to ti me. Man's appro pr iation of h is own na ture is at the sa me time h is sei z u re of the deployment of the u n iverse. " H istory is itself a real part of na tural history, of the transfo rmation of nature i nto ma n . " (Marx ) . I nversely this "natural h i story " has no actual existence other than through the process of human history, the only part which captures this h istorica l tota l ity, l ike the moder n telescope whose sight captures, in time, the retreat of n ebu lae at the periphery of the u n iverse. ca l form.
H istory has a lways ex isted , but not a l ways in a h istori
The temporal izat io n of man as effected tl:lrough the med i a
tion of a society is eq u iva l ent to a h u ma n ization of t i me.
The u ncon
scious movement of time man ifests itself and becomes true w ith i n h is torical consciou sness.
H istorica l movement as such, though sti l l h i dden, beg ins i n the slow a nd i nta ngible formation of the "real nature of man," th is "nature born wi th i n h u man h i story-w ith i n the generating action of hu man society-", yet the society, which has developed a technol ogy and a language, is conscious only of a perpetua l present, though it is itself a l ready the pro duct of its own history.
A l l k n owledge l i m ited to the memory of the
oldest is a l ways carried by the living.
N either death nor procreation a re
grasped as a law of ti me.
Time remains immobile, l i k e a closed space.
When a more com plex society becomes conscious of t i me, its task is rather to negate it because it does not see in time that wh ich happens, but that which is repeated.
A static society organ izes time in terms of
its i mmediate experience of nature, on the model of cycl ical time.
Cycl ical t i me a l ready dominates the experience of nomad ic popu la足 tions because the same cond itions repeat themselves before the nomads at every moment of their jou rney :
H egel notes that l ithe wander i ng of
nomads is only formal because it is l i m ited to u n iform spaces. "
The
society which, by fixing itself in place loca l ly, gives space a content by arranging i n d ividuali zed places, thus finds itself enclosed with in the i n足 terior of this loca l ization.
The temporal return to si m i lar places now
becomes the pure return of t i me in the same place, the repetition of a series of gestu res.
The transition from pastoral nomadism to sedentary
agricu lture is the end of the lazy l i berty w ithout content, th e beg i n n i ng of labor.
The agrarian mode of prod uction in genera l , domi nated by
the rhythm of the seasons, is the basis for fu l ly constituted cyclical t ime.
Etern ity is in ternal to it; it is the retu rn of the same here on
earth.
M yth is the u n itary construction of the thought wh ich guaran足
tees the entire cosm ic order surround i ng the order wh ich this society has in fact al ready real ized with i n its frontiers.
1 28 T he social appropriation of t i me, the prod uction of m a n by h u man labor, develop with i n a society d ivided i nto classes. The power which const ituted itself a bove the pen u ry of the society of cycl ical time, the c lass w h i c h orga n i zes th is social labor and appropriates the l i m ited sur p lus va lue, at the same time a ppropriates the temporal surplus value of its organ ization of social time: it possesses for itself a lo n e the i r reversi b le time of the l iv i ng. The o n l y wea lth wh i ch ca n ex ist i n con centrated form w ith i n the rea l m of power is materi a l l y spent in sum p tuous feasts a nd a l so in the form of a sq uandering of the historical time at the surface of society. The owners of h istor ica l surplus va lue pos sess the knowledge and the enjoyment of l ived events. Th is time, separated from the co l l ective orga ni zation of time wh ich pred o m i nates with the repetitive prod uct i o n at the basis of social l ife, flows a bove its own static com m u n ity. This is the time of adventu re and war in wh ich the masters of the cycl ical society traverse their personal h istory, a nd it is a l so the time which a ppears i n confro ntati o ns with foreign com m u n i ties, i n the dera ngement of the u nchangea b l e o rder of the society. H is tory then passes before men as a n a l ien factor, as that wh ich they never wanted a nd aga inst which they thought themselves protected. But through this detour a l so returns the negat ive a n x iety of the human, wh ich had been at the very origi n of the entire development wh ich had fal l en asleep.
1 29 Cycl ical time in itself is time without confl i ct. But co nf l i ct is i n sta l l ed wit h i n this infancy of ti m e : h istory fi rst of a l l struggles to be h istory wit h i n the practical activity of the masters_ Th is h i story super ficia l l y creates the irreversible; its movement constitutes precise l y the time it uses u p within the i nterior of the i n exhaustib le t i m e of cyc l ical society. 1 30 " F rozen soc iet i es" are those w h ich slowed d ow n their h i storical ac tiv ity to the l i m it, th ose w h ich k ept their opposition to the natura l a nd h u ma n environ ment, and their i nternal o ppositions, i n a constant equ i l i br i u m. If the extreme d iversity of i nst itutions establ ished for this pur pose demonstrates the f lex i b i l ity of the self-creation of h u man natu re, th is demonstration becomes obvious o n l y for the externa l observer, for the eth nolog ist who returns from h i storica l t i me. I n each of these so ciet i es a defin it ive stru ctu ring excl u d ed change. Abso l ute conformism i n existing social practices, w ith w h i ch a l l h u m an possi b i l ities are identi fied for a l l t ime, has no externa l l i m it other than the fear of fal l ing back i nto form less a nim al ity. H ere, in order to remai n h u m a n , men must remain the same. 1 31 The b i rth of pol itica l power, which seems to be related to the last great tec hnolog ica l revo lutions (cast iro n ) , at the thresh o l d of a period wh ich wou ld not experience profo u nd shocks u n t i l the ap pearance of industry, a lso marks the moment when blood ties beg i n to d isso lve. From then on, the succession of generations leaves the sphere of pure cyc l i ca l nature and becom es oriented to events, to the succession of powers. I rreversi b le t i m e i s now the ti m e of those w h o rule, and dynas t ies are its f irst measure. Writi ng is its weapon. I n writi ng, l anguage at tains its fu l l independent rea l ity of med iating between consciousnesses . But this in d ependence is identical to the gen era l i ndependence of sep arate power as th e med iation which forms soc iety. With writing th ere a ppears a co nsciousness which is no longer carried and transm itted d i rectl y among the l iv i n g : a n impersonal memory, the m em ory of the adm i n istration of soc iety. "Writings are the thou ghts of th e State; ar c h ives are its memory." ( N ova l is ) . 1 32 The c hro n ic le is the expression of the i rreversible time o f power. I t i s a l so the instrum ent which preserves the vo luntaristic progression of t h is time. T im e beg i ns with the end of the predecessor, since th is or ien-
tation of time co llapses with the force of every pa rticu lar power, fal l ing back to the indifferent o b l iv i o n of the o n l y cyclical time known to the peasant masses w ho, during the col la pse of empires and their chronolo g ies, never c hange. The owners of history have given time a meaning: a d i rection which i s a lso a sign ification. But th is h istory d ep loys itself and succu mbs separately ; it leaves the u nderly ing society u ncha nged be cause it is precise l y that which rema i ns separated from com m on real ity. T his is why we reduce the h i story of O r iental empires to the h istory of religions: the chronologies wh ich have fa l len to ru ins l eft no more than the a pparently autonomous h istory of the i l lusions wh ich enveloped them. The masters who make history their priva te property, u nder the protection of myth, possess f i rst of a l l a p rivate ownersh ip o f the mode of i l lusio n : i n C h ina a nd E gypt they l ong held a mon opo ly over the im morta l ity of the sou l ; their f i rst known d y nasties are an i magi nary ar rangement of the past. But this i l l usory possession of the masters is a l so the entire possible possession, at that mo ment, of a common h istory a nd of their own h istory. The growth of their rea l h istorica l power goes to gether with a popu la r i zation of m yth ica l and i l l u sory possession. A l l t h is flows from t h e si m p l e fact that, to the extent that t h e m asters took it u po n themselves to guara ntee the permanence of cycl ica l time m yth ica l ly, as in the rites of the seasons of C h i n ese emperors, they them selves ach ieved a relative l i beration from cycl ical ti me.
1 33
The d ry u nexpla ined ch ronology of d iv i ne power spea k i ng to its servants, wh ich wants to be u nderstood o nly as the earth l y execution of the com mandm ents of m yth, can be surmou nted a nd becom e conscious h i story; t h is req u i res that rea l participation in h istory be l ived b y ex tended groups. O ut of th i s practica l com m u n ication among those who recognized each other as possessors of a singu lar present, who exper ienced the qual itative rich ness of events as their activ ity and as the p lace w here they l ived-th e i r epoch-arises the general language of h is torical com m u n i cation. T hose for whom i rreversible time has ex isted d iscover within it the memorable as wel l as the menace of forgetting: " H erodotus of H a l icarnassus here presents the resu lts of h is study, so that time may not abolish the works of men . . . "
1 34
R ea so n i ng about h i story is inseparab ly reasoning about power. G reece was the moment when power a nd its change were d i scussed a nd understood : the democracy of the masters of society. Greek cond itions were the i nverse of the cond itions k nown to the despoti c State, where power settles its accou nts o n l y with itself with in th e i naccessible o b-
scu r ity of its densest poi n t : t h rough palace revolution, w h i c h is p laced beyo nd t h e pa l e of d iscu ssion by success or fa i l u re a l i ke. H owever, the power shared a mo n g th e G reek co m m u n i ti es ex isted only w ith the ex penditure of a social l ife whose production rema i ned separate a nd static w i t h i n the serv i l e class. O n l y those who do not work l ive. I n the divi sion among t h e G reek com m u n it i es, a n d i n the struggle to exploit for e i gn c i t i es, the principle of separation w h i c h i n terna l l y gro u nded each of them was exter na l i zed. G reece, w h i ch h ad d ream ed of u n iversal h istory, d id not succeed in u n ifying itself in the face of i nvasio n ; or even in u n i fy i n g the calendars of its i ndependent cities. I n G reece h istorica l time beca m e consci ous, but n ot yet co nscious of itself. 1 35 After the d isappearance of the loca l l y favorab le cond itions k nown to the G reek co m m u n it i es, the regression of western h istorical t h ought was not acco mpanied by a rehabi l itation of a nc i en t myt h ic o rgan izatio ns. Out of t h e confro n tations of t h e Med iterranean popu lations, out of the format ion a nd col la pse of the R oman State, appeared sem i-historical religions wh ich becam e f u ndamental factors i n the n ew co nsciousness of t i me, a nd i n t h e new armor of separate power. 1 36 The monotheistic rel igions were a com prom ise between myth a nd h ; story, between cycl i ca l t i m e w h i c h sti l l d o mi nated production a nd ir reversible ti m e where popu lat i o ns confront each other and regrou p. The rel igio ns wh ich grew o u t of Judai sm are a u n iversal abstract recog n it i o n o f i rreversible t i m e w h ich is democratized, opened to a l l , but i n t h e r ea l m o f i l l usion. T i m e i s total l y oriented toward a single final event: "The K in gd om of God is near. " These rel ig ions were born on the thres hold of h i story, a nd esta b l i shed themselves there.
But there they sti l l
preserve t h e mse lves i n radical opposition to h istory .
Sem i-h istorical
rel i g ion esta bl ishes a qual itative po i nt of departure in t i m e :
the birth
of Christ, the fl i ght of M oham med, but its i rreversible time- i ntroducing a n actual accu m u latio n w h ich in I slam can take the shape of a conquest, or in C h r istian ity of the Reformation the shape of an i ncrease of capital -is in fact i nverted in rel igious thought:
the expectation, in the time
which d i m i n ishes, of entrance to the genu i ne other worl d; t h e expecta
tion of the last Judgment. E ternity came out of cyclical t i m e. I t is out side.
It is the element which holds back the i rreversib i l ity of t i m e,
wh ich suppresses h i story with i n h istory i tself by placing itself on the other side of irreversible time as a pure pu nctual e l em ent i n w h ich cy
cl ica l time entered a nd abo l ished itself. Bossuet w i l l sti l l say : "And by means of the time that passes we enter i nto the eternity w h ic h does not pass."
1 37 The m idd l e ages, this incomplete m yth ical world whose perfection lay outside it, is the moment when cyc l ical t i me, w hich sti l l reigns over the greater part of production, is rea l l y chewed away by h istory. A cer tai n irreversible tempora l ity is recognized i nd ivid u a l l y in everyone, in the succession of stages of l ife, i n the consideration of l ife as a journey, a passage with no return through a world whose mea n i ng l ies else where :
the pilgrim is the man who leaves cycl ical time to be actu a l ly
this travel ler that everyone is symbo l ica l ly.
Personal h i storica l life
sti l l finds its fu l fi l l ment in the sphere of power, with in participation in the struggles led by power and in the struggles of d ispute over power; but the irreversi ble t i me of power is shared to infinity u nder the general u n i fication of the oriented time of the Christian era, in a world of armed faith, where the game of the masters revolves around fidelity and the cha l lenge of owed fidel ity.
This feudal society, born
out of the encounter of "the organ izational structure of the con quering army as it developed during the conquest " and of "the produc tive forces found i n the conquered country " (German Ide % gy) -and i n the organization o f these productive forces one m ust coun t their reli gious language-divided the domination of society between the Church and the state power which was in turn su bdivided i n the co mplex rela tions of suzereinty a nd vassalage of territorial ten u res a nd urban com munes.
Within this d iversity of possible h istorical l i fe, the irreversible
time wh ich u nconsciously carried the u nd erlying society, th e t i me l ived by the bourgeo isie in the production of commod ities, the foundation and expansion of cities, the commercial d iscovery of the Earth-practi cal experimentation wh ich forever destroyed a l l myth ical organization of the cosmos-slowly reveal ed itself as the u nknown work of th is epoch , when t h e great official h i storical u nderta k i ng of t h i s world col lapsed with the Crusades.
1 38 At the decl ine of the m iddle ages, the irreversible time wh ich invades society is felt , by the consciousness attached to the a ncient order, in the form of an obsession with death. I t is the melanch o l y of the d isso lution of a world, the last in wh ich the security of myth sti l l gave balance to history; and for this melanchol y everything eart h l y ends up merely by bei ng corrupted.
The great revolts of tt'e E u ropean peasants are also
their attempt to answer history, wh ich violently pu l l ed them out of the patriarchal sleep wh ich had guara nteed the feudal tutelage.
This is the
m i l l enarian utopia of terrestrial realization of paradise, wh ich revives
what was at the origi n of sem i-historical rel igion, when Christian com m u n ities, l i k e the Judaic messianism from which they arose (as answers to the troubles and u n happi ness of the epoch ) expected the i m m i nent rea l ization of the rea l m of God a nd added a disqu ieting and subversive factor to a ncient society.
When Christian ity reached the po int of shar
i ng power with i n the empi re, it exposed as a si mple superstition what sti l l survived of this hope: that is the mea n i ng of the August i n ia n affir mati on, archetype of a l l the satisfecit of modern ideology, accord ing to wh ich the establ ish ed Ch urch has already for a l ong time been t h is k i ng dom one spoke of.
The social revolt of the m i l l enarian peasantry is
natura l l y defi ned first of a l l as a wi l l to destroy the Church.
But m i l
lenarian ism plays itself out in the historical world, and not on the ter ra i n of m yth. M odern revol utionary expectations are not irrational con t i nuations of the rel igious passion of m i l l enarianism, as Norman Coh n thought he had demonstrated in The Pursuit o f the Millenium. O n the contrary, m i l lenaria n ism, revolutionary class struggle speak i ng the l a n guage of rel igion for the l ast t i me, is a l ready a modern revolutionary tendency which as yet lacks the consciousness that it is historical. The m i l lenaria ns had to lose because they cou ld not recogn ize th e revo l ution as their own operation.
The fact that they waited to act on the basis
of an external sign of God 's decision is the translation i nto thought of a practice in w h ich the insu rgent peasants fol lowed chiefs taken from out side their ranks.
The peasant class cou ld not atta i n a n adequate con
sciousness of the fu nctio n i ng of society and of the manner to l ead its own struggle; it is becau se it lacked these cond itions of u ni ty in its ac tion and i n its consci ousness that it expressed its project and led its wars with the i magery of a terrestrial parad i se.
1 39 The new possession of h i storical l ife, the R ena issance which finds its past a nd its l egit i macy in Antiquity, carries with it a joyous r u pture w ith etern ity.
I ts irreversible ti me is that of the i n f i n ite accu m u lation of
knowledge, a nd the h istorica l consciousness wh ich grows out of the ex perience of democratic com m u n i ties and of the forces which ru i n them w i l l take up, with M ach iave l l i , the analysis of desanctified power, saying the u nspea kable a bout the State.
I n the exuberant l ife of the I ta l ian
c ities, in the art of the festival , l ife is experienced as enjoying the pas sage of time. ment.
But this enjoyment of passage is itself a passing enjoy
The song of Lorenzo di M ed ici considered by Burc khardt to be
the expression of the "very spirit of the R en aissance" is the eul ogy wh ich this fragile feast of h istory pronounces on itself: "How beautiful the spring of l ife-which vanishes
so qu ick ly."
1 40 The co nstant m ovement of monopo l i zation of h i stor ical l ife by the State of the a bso lute monarchy , transitional form toward com p l ete do m i nation by the bou rgeoi s c lass, brings i nto clear view the new i r reversible t i m e of the bou rgeo isie. The bou rgeo isie is tied to labor time, wh ich is o n l y now l i berated from the cycl i cal . W ith the bou rgeoisie, work becomes labor which transforms historical conditions. The bou r¡ geo isie is the f i rst dom inant class for which labor is a value. And the bou rgeo isie wh ich su ppresses all priv i l ege, wh ich recogn i zes n o va lue wh ich does n ot f lo w from t he explo i tatio n of labor, has just l y identified w ith labor its own va l u e as a d o m i na nt class, and has made the progress of labor its own progress. The class wh ich accumu lates commod it ies and capita l continual ly modifies natu re by modifying labor itself, bV u n l eash in g its produ ctivity. A l l social l i fe has a l ready been co ncentrated with i n the ornamental poverty of the Court, tr i m m i ngs of the cold state a d m i n istratio n wh ich c u l m i nates i n l ithe vocation of k i ng; " and a l l particu lar h isto r ical l i berty has had t o consent t o b e lost. The l iberty of the i rreversible temporal game of the nobles is consumed in their l ast l ost battles w ith the wars of the F ronde o r the insurrection of the Scotch for Charles- Edward. The world has changed at its roots.
141 The v i ctory of the bou rgeo isie i s t h e v i ctory o f profoundly historical time, because it is th e t i me of eco n o m i c produ ction wh ich tra nsforms society, co ntinuously and fro m the bottom up.
So long as agrarian pro
duct i o n rema ins the principa l l abor, the cyc l ica l t im e wh ich rem a i ns present at the root of society n o u r i shes the coagu lated forces of tradi
tion w h ich stop movement.
B ut the i rreversible t i me of the bou rgeo is
economy extirpates th ese vest iges on every co rner of the globe. H isto ry. wh ich u nt i l then had seemed to be o n ly the movement of ind iv id u a l s of the d o m i n ant class, and t h u s was written as the h istory of events, i s now und erstood as the general movemen t, and in t h is severe movement i n d iv i d u a ls are sacrif iced.
The h istory w h ich d iscovers its fou ndation in
po l itical economy now k nows of t h e existence of that w h ic h h ad been its u n conscious, but it neverthel ess rem a i ns the u nco nscious wh ich it cannot bring to the l ight of day.
It is o n l y t h is bl ind prehistory, a new
fata l i ty do m i nated by no one, that the co m mod ity eco nomy has d emoc rat ized .
1 42 The h istory which is present i n a l l the depths of society tends to be lost at the surface. The tri u m p h of i rreversi b l e t i m e is a l so its m etamor p hosis i n to the time of things, because the weapon of i ts v ictory was preci se l y the mass production of obj ects accord i n g to the laws of the com mod ity.
The m a i n product wh ich eco nom ic developmen t has trans
fered fro m l u xu rious scarcity to da i l y consu m ption i s th erefore history, but on l y in the form of the h istory of the abstract movement of t h ings wh ich d o m inates a l l q u a l itative use of l ife.
W h i l e the ea r l ier cyc l ica l
t i me had su pported a grow i n g part of h istorica l t i m e l ived by ind iv i d u a l s a nd grou ps, the d o m i nation o f the i rreversi b l e t i me o f produ ction tends to soc ia l ly e l i m inate t h is l ived t i me.
1 43 Thus the bou rgeo isie made known to society and i m posed on it an irreversible h istor ical ti me, but refuses society its use.
"There was h is·
tory, but there is no more, "because the class of owners of the eco nomy, wh ich cannot break with economic history, must a l so push back as a d i rect menace a l l other irreversib l e use of ti me.
The dom inant class,
made up of specialists in the possession of things who are themselves therefore a possession of th i ngs, must l i nk its fate with the preservation of this reified h istory, with the permanence of a new immob i l ity within
history.
For the first time the worker, at the base of society, is not
materia l l y a stranger to history, because it is now the base that irrever sib l y moves society.
I n the demand to live the h istorica l time wh ich ii.
ma kes, the proletariat f inds the si m p l e u nforgetta ble center of its revo l utionary project; and every o ne of the attempts u nt i l n ow broken to rea l ize th is project marks a po i nt of possible departure for new h istori cal l ife.
1 44 The irreversible time of the bourgeoisie, master of power, at f irst pre sented itself under its proper name, as an absolute origin, Y ear 1 of the Republ ic.
But the revo lutionary ideology of general l iberty wh ich had
destroyed the last remai nders of the myth ica l orga n ization of val u es a nd the entire trad itional regu lation of society, a lready made visible the real w i l l wh ich it had cl oth ed in Roman dress:
commerce.
the liberty of generalized
The com modity society, now d iscovering that i t had to re
construct the passivity which it had shaken fundamenta l l y to establ ish its own pure re ign, finds that " Chr ist ia n ity with its cultus of abstract man . . . is the most fitt i ng form of rel igion. " (Capita/). Thus the bour
geoisie establ ishes a compro m ise with this rel igion, a compro mise wh ich also expresses itself i n the presentation of time: its own cal endar aban don ed , its irreversibl e t i me returns to u nw i nd with i n th e C h ristian era whose succession it conti nues.
1 45 With the development of capita l ism, irreversible time is unified on a
world scale.
U n iversal h istory becomes a rea l ity because the entire
world is gathered u nd er the development of this time. But this h istory which is everywhere at one time the sa me, is sti l l only the inter-h istori cal refusal of h istory. I t is the time of economic production cut up into equal abstract fragments wh ich is manifested over the entire planet as
the same day.
U n ified irreversible time i s the time of the world market
and, as a corol lary, of the world spectacle.
1 46 The i rreversible t i m e of production is fi rst of a l l the measure of com路 mod it i es.
Therefore the t i m e off i c i a l l y affirmed over the ent ire expanse
of the globe as the general time of society, sign i fy i ng on ly the special颅 ized i nterests which constitute it, is only a particular time.
We ha ve nothing of our o wn but time, which is even enjoyed by those who have no rest.
Balthasar G RACIAN L'Hom me de cour.
VI .
SP ECTAC U LA R TI M E
1 47 The time of prod uction, commodity-ti me, is a n i nfinite accu mu l a tion of equ ivalent intervals. I t is the abstraction of i rreversible t i me where a l l the segments of the chronometer m ust only prove their quan titative equality. This time is in rea l ity exactly what it is in its ex changeable character. I t is in this social domination by com m od ity-time that "time is everyt h ing, man is nothing; he is at most the carcass of ti me." (Poverty o f Philosophy). It is devalued ti me, the com plete i n version of time as "the field of human development."
1 48 The general time of hu man non-development a l so exists i n the com plementary form of a consumable time which returns to the d a i l y l ife of the society with this determined produ ction as a pseudo-cyclical time.
1 49 Pseudo-cyclical time is i n fact no more than the consumable disguise of the com m od ity-ti me of production. I t contai ns the essential proper ties of commod ity-time, namely homogeneous exchangeabl e u nits and the suppression of the q u a l i tative dimension. B ut being the sub-produ ct of commod ity time, destined to reta rd ing concrete dai l y l i fe-and to maintaining this retardation-it m ust be charged with pseudo-val uations and must seem to be a sequence of falsely i nd ividual ized moments.
1 50 The pseudo-cycl ical time of modern economic survival is the t i me of consum ption, of augmented survival , where what is l ived d a i l y is d e prived of decision and is subject, no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature developed in alienated labor; and thus this time naturally rediscovers the a ncient cycl i ca l rhythm which regu lated the survival of pre-industrial societies. Pseudo-cycl ical time leans on the natural remains of cyclical time and at the sa me time com poses new homologous combinations: day and night, work and week ly rest, the recurrence of vacations.
151
Pseudo-cycl ical time is a t i me transformed by industry. The time wh ich has its basis i n the produ ction of commod ities is itself a con su mable com m od ity which includes everything previously (du r i n g the phase of d issolu tion of the old u nitary society) d isti ngu ished into p ri vate l ife, economic l ife, pol itical l ife. Al l the consumable t i m e of mod ern society comes to be treated as a raw material for varied new prod ucts which i mpose themselves on the market as u ses of social ly organ ized t i me. "A prod uct whi ch al ready exists in a form which makes it su itable for consu mption can nevertheless in its turn beco m e a raw m a terial for another produ ct." (CapitalJ.
1 52
I n its most advanced sector, concentrated capital ism orients itself towards the sale of blocks of "completely equ i p ped" t i m e, each of wh i ch constitutes a single un ified commodity whi ch has integrated a certain n u mber of varied com m od ities. I n the expanding economy of "services" and leisure, this gives rise to the form u la of calculated pay ment in which "everything 's included" for a spectacu lar environment, the col lective pseudo-d isplacement of vacati ons, subscr i ptions to cul tural consum ption, and the sale of sociabil ity itself in the form of " pas sionate conversations" and "encounters with personal ities." This sort of spectacular com mod ity, which can obviously pass only as a function of the acute poverty of corresponding rea l it ies, j ust as obviously fits a mong the p i l ot-articles of the modernization of sa les by bei ng payable on cred it.
1 53
Consumable pseudo-cycl ical t i me i s spectac u l ar ti me, at once as the time for the consumption of i mages i n the l i m ited sense, and as the i m age of the consum ption of time in the broad sense. T i m e for the con su m ption of i mages, the m ed i u m of a l l commod ities, is inseparably t l · ·� field where the instru ments of the spectacle ful ly take over, as well as the goa l which these instru ments present globa l l y as the p lace and the central aspect of a l l particu lar consumptions: i t is k nown that the sav ing of t i m e constantly sought by modern society-whether in the for m o f the speed o f transport vehicles or in the use o f dried so u ps-is posi tive l y translated for the popu lation of the United States by the fact that
mere ly the conte m plation of television occu p i es an average of three to six hours a day. The socia l i mage of the consu m ption of t i me, i n turn, is excl usively d o m i nated by moments of leisure and vacation , moments represented at a distance and desirable by postu late, as are a l l spectac u lar co m mod it ies. This com mod ity is here exp l icitly given as the mo ment of real l ife whose cyclical return is awa ited . B u t even in these as signed mo ments of l ife, it is aga i n the spectacle which is to be seen and reproduced , atta i n i ng a more i ntense degree. That wh ich was repre sented as gen u i ne l i fe is ex posed as simply more genuinelv spectacular life.
1 54 This epoch which shows itsel f its time as being essential l y the sudden retu rn of m u ltiple festivities is at the sa me time an epoch wi thout festi vals. What had been the m oment of partici pation of a co m m u n ity i n t h e luxurious expenditure o f l if e wit h i n cyc l ical t i m e i s i m possible for the society without com m u n ity and without l u x u ry . When its v u l gar ized pseudo-festivals, parod ies of the d ia l ogue and the g i ft, incite a surplus of economic expen d itu re, they o n l y l ead to d ecepti on a lways com pensated by the pro m ise of a new d ecept ion . The m ore its use valu e- is red u ced, t he h igher the claims of modern survival time are i n t h e spectacle. The rea l ity of time h as been rep laced by the advertise men t of t ime.
1 55
W h i l e the consum ption of cycl ical time i n ancient societ i es was con sistent with the real labor of these soc i e ti es the pse udo-cyc l i ca l con sum ption of the d eveloped economy is in contrad iction w ith the ab stract irreversible t i m e of its produ ction. While cycl ical t i m e was the time of i m mobile i l l usion, real ly l ived, spectacu lar time is the t i me of changing reality, l ived in i l lusion. ,
1 56
That wh ich is constantly new in the process of production o f thi ngs is not found i n consum ption, which remains the expanded r e peti tion o f the same. Because dead l a bor conti n u es to d o m inate l iving l abor, in spectac u l ar t i me the p ast dominates the present.
1 57 Another side of the defi ciency of general h i stori cal l ife is that i n d i足 vidual l ife as yet has no h i story. The pseudo-events which take place i n the spectacu lar dramatization have not been l ived b y those i nformed of them ; f u rthermore they are lost in the i nflat i o n of their sudden replace足 ment at every p u l se of the spectacu l ar mach i nery.
F u rthermore, that
wh ich i s rea l ly l ived has no relat i o n to the off i c i a l irrevers i b l e t i m e of society and is in d irect opposition to the pseudo-cycl i cal rhythm of the consu mable subproduct of this t i m e.
Th i s i nd iv i d u a l exper i ence of
seperate d a i l y l ife rem a i ns without l a nguage, without concept, without critical access to its own past w h i c h has been left nowhere. com m u n i cated.
It is not
I t i s not u nd erstood and is forgotten to the profit of
fa lse spectacu lar memory of the u n m emorab l e.
1 58 The spectacle, as the present social organ i zation of the paralysis of h i story and memory, of the abando n ment of h i story b u i l t on the foun足 dation of historica l t i me, i s the false consciousness of time.
1 59 T h e cond ition req u ired for red ucing workers to the status of " free" produ cers and consu mers of com mod ity t i m e was the violen t expropria
tion of their time.
The return of t i m e as spectacu l ar t i m e d id not be
come poss i b l e unt i l after t h i s fi rst depossession of the produ cer.
1 60 The irred u c i b l e biological part wh ich rema ins w ith i n lab or, as much in the dependence on the natural cycle of wak i ng and sleep as in the fact of i nd ividua l l y irreversible t i m e i n the expend iture of a l i fe, beco me no more than incidental from the viewpo i n t of m od ern prod uction .
As
su ch , these e l e m ents are negl ected i n the off i c i a l proclamations of the movement of prod uction and i n the consu mable troph ies w h ich are the ava i l a b le translation of t h i s i n cessant v i ctory.
I m mob i l i zed i n the fa lsi
fied center of the movement of its worl d , the consci ousness of the spectator no l onger k nows i n its l i fe a passage towards i ts rea l i zation and towards its d eath .
W h oever has renounced the expend iture of h is l i fe
can no l onger adm it h i s death .
L i fe- i nsurance advertisements m erely
suggest that he is gu i l ty of d y i n g w ithout hav i n g i nsu red the regu lation of the system after this econ o m i c l oss; and the advertisem ent of the
american way of de,3 th in sists on his capacity to mai ntain in t h is en cou nter the greatest poss i b l e n u m ber of appearances of l i fe. On a l l other fronts o f advertising bom bardm ent, it i s str ictly forb idden to grow o l d .
O ne wo u l d have to a rrange, for each and for a l l , a "youth
cap ita l " wh i c h , for having been used i n a med iocre way, ca n not pretend to acqu i re the d u ra b l e and c u m u l ative rea l i ty of fi nanci a l ca pita l . This social a bsence of death is i d entical to the social absence of l i fe.
161 T i me is the necessary a l i enation, as H ege l showed ; it i s t h e env iron ment where the su bj ect rea l izes h i mself by losing h i m self, w here he be comes other in ord er to become tru l y h i mself.
But i ts opposite is pre
c isely the dom i nant a l ienation w h ich is u nd ergone by the prod u cer of an alien present.
I n this spa tial alienation, the society that at the root
separates the subject fro m the activity it takes from h i m , separates h i m first o f a l l from h is own t i me.
Surmou n ta b l e social a l ienation i s pre
c isel y that w h i ch pro h i b its a nd petrifies the poss i b i l ities and risks of
living a l ienation in t i me.
1 62 U nd er the apparent modes which a n n u l and recompose themselves at the fut i l e surface of contemplated pseudo-cycl i ca l time, the grand style of the epoch i� a lways w ith in that wh ich is oriented by the o bvious and secret necessity of the revolution.
1 63 The natu ra l basis of t i me, the experienced given of the f l ow of t i m e, becomes hu man and social by ex isting for man.
I t is the l i m ited state
of h u ma n practice, labor at d i fferent stages, that has unt i l now hu man ized and a lso dehu man ized ti me as cycl ical t i me and separate irrever sible t i m e of econo m i c prod uction . classless society, of a genera l ized
The revo lutionary p roject of a
h istorical
l ife, is the project of a
wither i n g away of the social measure of t i me, to the benefit of a play ful model of irreversible t i m e of i nd ividuals a nd grou ps, a model i n which independent federated times are simu ltaneously present.
I t i s the
program of a total real ization, with i n the context of time, of com m u n ism w h i ch suppresses " a l l that exists independent l y of i nd ivid uals."
1 64 The world a l ready possesses the dream of a time wh ose consc ious ness it must now possess in order to actu a l l y l ive it.
1 65 Capita l ist prod u ction has u n ified space, which is no l onger bound ed by externa l societies. This u n ification is at the sa me time an extensive and inten sive process of banaliza tion . The accum u l ation of commod i t ies prod u ced o n the assembly l i ne for the abstract space of the market, w h i ch broke through a l l regional and l egal barriers and a l l th e corporate restrictions of the m i d d l e ages that preserved the quality of craft pro duction, a lso destroyed the autonomy and q ual ity of places. This pow er of homogen i zat ion is the heavy art i l l ery wh ich brought about the fal l of al l the wal ls of China. .
1 66 I t is in order to becom e ever m ore identical to itself, i n order to con tinue moving toward i m mo b i l e monotony, that the free space of the commodity is n evertheless constantly mod ified and reconstructed .
1 67 This society which e l i m i nates geograph ical d istance reprod uces d is tance i nternal l y as spectacular seperation.
1 68 A by-prod uct of the circu lation of commodities, tourism, h u man c ir cu lation consid ered as consu m ption, is basica l ly red uced to the leisure of going to see what has beco me bana l . The economic organ i zation of the freq uentation of d ifferent places is a l read y i n itself the guarantee of their equivalence. The sa me m odernization wh ich h as rem oved t i me fro m travel has a lso removed from it the rea l ity of space.
1 69 The soc iety w h ich shapes its ent i re environ ment has constru cted its specia l tech n i q u e for work ing the concrete base of this co l lect ion of tasks- its own territory. U rban ism is this tak i ng hold of the natu ra l and h u ma n environ ment by capita l ism; develop i ng log ica l l y into abso lute d o m i nation, it can and m ust now rema k e the tota l ity of space as its o wn stage-setting.
1 70 T he capital ist necessity satisf ied by urbanism as a v isible freezing of l ife can be expressed -by the u se of H egelian terms-as the abso l u te pre d o m i na n ce of " the peacef u l coex istence of space " over the " restl ess be com i n g in the passage of ti me. "
171 I f a l l the tech n ical forces of cap ita l ism can be understood as too ls for the mak i n g of separatio ns, in the case of u rban ism we confront the basis of these tec h n i ca l forces, the treatment of the earth w h ich is su it able for their deployment, the very tech ni que of separa tion.
1 72 U rban ism is the mod ern acco m p l ishment of the u n interru pted task w h i ch safeguards class power : the preservation of the ato m i zatio n of workers whom urban cond itions of prod uction had dangerou sly brought together. The constant strugg l e w h ich had to be fought agai nst a l l as pects of the possibi l ity of encounter fi nds i ts priv i l eged field i n urban ism. The exertion of a l l estab l ish ed powers, after the ex per iences of the F rench R evo l ut io n, to en large the means of m a i nta i n ing o rder in the
streets, fi nal l y cu l m i nates i n the su ppress ion of the street . " W ith the mass med ia of com m u n i cation over great d i stances, the iso lation of the population showed itself a much more efficient means of contro l , " says Lewis Mumford in The City in History, descr i b i ng " hen ceforth a one way worl d . " But the general movement of isolation, which is the real ity of urbanism, m ust a l so contai n a control l ed rei ntegration of workers i n terms o f t h e necessit ies of production a n d consu m pt ion subject to pla n n i ng. I ntegratio n i nto the system must recapture iso lated indi viduals as i nd iv id uals isolated toge ther: factories as wel l as cu lture houses, resort towns as wel l as grand ensembles are especia l l y orga n i zed for the ends of this pseudo-co l l ectivity wh ich a l so acco m pa n ies the iso l ated i nd ividual with i n the family cell. The genera l i zed use of receivers of the spectacu lar message makes it possible for the i n d iv idual to re po pulate his iso lat ion w ith d o m inant i mages, i mages wh ich acqu ire their fu l l power only because of this isolation.
1 73 F o r the first time a new architecture, wh ich i n a l l prev ious epochs
had been reserved for the satisfact ion of the dom i nant cl asses, is d i rectl y a i m ed at the poor. The forma l poverty and the gigantic spread of th is new ex perience of hab itat both come from its mass character, wh i ch is co nd iti oned both by its dest ination and by mod ern cond i-
t ions of construction. A uthoritarian decision, which abstract ly or gan izes territory i nto territory of abstraction, is obviously a t the heart of these modern cond itions of construction. The same a rch itecture ap pears wherever the industria l ization of cou ntries backward in th is re spect beg i ns; they are a su itable terrai n for the new type of social ex istence which is to be i m planted there. Just as clearly as in q uestions of thermonuclear armament or of b i rth-wh ich a l ready approaches the possibil ity of a manipu lation of hered ity-the threshold crossed by the growth of society ' s material power, and the retardation of conscious dom ination of this power, are d isplayed i n urba nism.
1 74
The present moment is a l ready the moment of the self-destruction of the urban m i l ieu . The expansion of cities over countrysides covered with " u nformed masses of urban residues" ( Lewis M u mford ) is d i rect l y off iciated by the i m peratives of consu mption. The d i ctatorsh i p of the automob i le, p i l ot-produ ct of the first phase of com mod ity abu nd ance, i nscribed itself on the earth with the dom i nation of the h ighway, which d isl ocates ancient centers and req u ires an ever- larger d ispersion. At the same t im e, the moments of i ncompleted reorga n i zation of the urban tissue polarize tem pora r i l y around "d istr i bution factories, " enormous su permarkets constru cted on bare gro u nd , on a park ing lot; and these temples of h u rr ied consu m ption themselves flee w ith i n the centr ifugal movement which rejects them when they in turn become overbu rdened secondary centers, because they brought about a partial recomposit ion of agglomeration. But the tech n ical orga n i zation of consu mption is on l y the fi rst element o f the general d issolution which has l ed the city t o the po int of consuming itself.
1 75 E conomic h istory, which developed entirely aro u nd the opposition between town and country, has arrived at a l evel of su ccess which si m u l taneously ann i h i lates both terms. The cu rrent paralysis of total h istorica l movement, to the profit of the so l e p ursu it of the i nd epen d ent movement of the economy, makes the mo ment when town and cou ntry beg i n to disappear, not the transcendance of their cl eavage, but their sim ul ta neous co l l apse. The reciproca l erosion of tow n and cou n try, prod uct of the fa i l u re of the historica l movement through wh ich existing urban rea l ity sho u l d have been su rmou nted , app ears i n the ecl ectic mel ange of their deco m posed elements, which covers the zones most advanced in industrial ization.
1 76 U n iversa l h i story is born i n the cit ies and comes of age at the mo ment of the decisive v i ctory of city over country.
Marx considers i t one
of the greatest revo l u tionary m erits of the bourgeoisie that " it subjected the vi I l age to the city" whose air emancipates.
B u t if the h istory of the
city is the h istory of l i berty, it is a l so the h istory of tyran ny, of state ad m i n istration w h i ch contro ls the country and the city itse l f . As yet the city was o n l y able to be the terra i n of the str uggle for h istorica l l i berty, and not its possess ion.
The c ity is the milieu of history because it is at
once concentration of soc i a l power wh ich makes the h i sto rica l u nd er tak i n g possible , a nd consciousness of the past.
The presen t tendency
toward the l i q u i dation of the city thus expresses i n a d i fferent way the retardation of the subord i nation of the economy to h istorical con sci ousness, the u n i fi cation of soc iety tak i ng back the powers w h ich be ca m e detached from it.
1 77 "The co untryside shows precisely the opposite : arat ion" (German Ideology).
iso l at i o n a nd sep
The u rban ism wh ich destroys c i t i es re
composes a pseudo-coun tryside w h i ch l oses the natural relations of the ancient countryside as well as the d i rect soc i a l relations d i rectly put i n to q u estion by the h i storical city.
I t is a new a rtificial peasantry w h ich is
re-created by the cond i tions of dwe l l i n g a nd of spectacu la r control w i t h i n the present "organ i zed territory";
the scattering in space and
the l i m i ted menta l i ty w h ich had a lways prevented the peasantry from u n d ertak i n g an i nd ependent action and from affirm i ng i tse l f as a crea tive h i storical force, become characteristics of the producers-the move ment of a wor l d w h i c h t h ey themselves fabricate rema i n ing as com plete l y out of their reach as the natu ral rh yth m of tasks was for the agra rian society.
But when t h i s peasa ntry, wh ich was the un movable
base of "Oriental despotism" and whose very fragmentati o n c a l l ed for burea u cratic centra l izati on, reappears as the prod uct of cond i ti ons of growth of the modern state bureaucracy, i ts apathy must now be h is
torically fabricated and m a i ntai ned ; natural ignorance has been replaced by the orga n ized spectac l e of error.
The " n ew cities" of the techno
l ogica l pseudo- peasantry c l ea r l y i nscribe i nto the gro u nd t h e i r ru pture w i t h the h i storica l t i m e on w h i c h they were constructed; the i r motto cou ld be : "On th is spot noth i n g w i l l ever happen, and nothing has ever happened. " It is o bviously because the h istory w h i ch must be l i berated i n the cities has not yet been l i berated that the forces of historical ab sence beg i n to com pose their own exclusive l andscape.
1 78 The h istory wh ich threatens this twi l ight world is also the force wh ich could su bject space to l ived ti me. Pro letarian revol ution i s the critique of human geography through wh ich i nd ividuals and comm uni ties must construct the places and the events correspond ing to the ap propriation, no l onger o n l y of their labor, but of their total h i story. Within this moving space of the game and of freely chosen variations of ru les of the game, the autonomy of place can be rega ined without re i n trod ucing an excl usive attachment to the land , th us bri ngi ng back the rea l i ty of the jou rney a nd of l ife u nd erstood as a journey conta i n i ng within i tself a l l of i ts sense.
1 79 The greatest revolut ionary idea with reference to u rban ism i s not it self urbani stic, technological or esthetic. It is the d ecision to recon struct the environ ment com p letel y in accordance with the n eed s of the power of t he Workers' Counci l s, ()f the an ti-statist dictatorship of the proletar iat, of enforcea ble d ia l ogue. A nd the power o f the Coun c i ls, wh ich can o n l y be effective by transforming the tota l ity of ex isting con d itions, cannot assign itself a smaller task if it wants to be recog n ized and to recognize itself i n its world .
VI I I . N E GATI ON AND CO NSUMPT I O N W I TH I N CU LTU R E
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!I I
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We're going to live long enough to see a poli tical revolution?
we,
the contemporaries of those
Germans? My friend, you believe what you desire •
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•
Since I judge Germany in terms of its present
history, you cannot object that its whole history is falsified and all its present public life does not re present the real condition of the people. Read any newspaper you want, convince yourself that one does not cease-and you will concede that censor ship stops no one from ceasing-to celebrate the liberty and national happiness we possess. R uge, letter to Marx
March 1 844.
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1 80
Cu ltu re is the general sphere of the knowledge and the representa tions of the l ived, in the h istorica l society d ivided i nto classes; wh ich is to say t hat cu lture is the power of genera l ization ex isting apart, as a d ivision of i ntel lectua l labor and as the intellectu a l labor of d iv ision. Cu lture d etaches itself from the u nity of the society of myth "when the power of un ification d i sappears fro m the l ife of man and when oppo sites lose their relation and their I iving interaction a nd acq u i re auto " nomy . . (Difference des systems de Fich te et de Schelling). By gai n i ng its independence, cu lture begins an im peria l ist movement of enrich ment which is at the same time the d ec l i ne of its independ ence. The h istory wh ich creates the relative a utonomy of c u l tu re and the ideo logica l i l lu sions about th is autonomy also expresses itself as h i story of culture. And a l l the conquer ing h istory of c u l tu re can be u nderstood as the h istory of the revelation of its inadequacy, as a march towards its self-suppression. Cu lture is the location of the search for lost u n ity. I n this search for u nity, cu lture as a separate sphere is obl iged to negate itself. .
1 81
The struggle between trad ition a nd i n novation, which is the prin ciple of interna l development of cu lture i n h istorica l societ ies, can only be carried on through the permanent victory of i nnovation. Yet innova t ion in cu lture is carried by noth ing other than the tota l h istorical move ment which , by becoming conscious of its tota l ity, tends to go beyond its own cu ltura l presu ppositions and moves toward the suppression of a l l separation.
1 82
The rise of stud ies of soc iety wh ich contain the u nderstanding of history as the heart of culture, takes from itself a k nowled ge without retu rn, wh ich is expressed by the d estruction of God. But this " first cond ition of a l l critique " is a l so the f irst obligation of a cr itique with out end. When it is no longer possible to ma intain a single ru le of con duct, every result of cu lture forces cu lture to advance towards its d is sol u t ion. L i ke ph i losophy at the moment when it ga i ned its fu l l auto nomy, every d iscipl ine which becomes autonomous has to fal l a part, first of a l l as a pretention to explain social tota l ity coherently, and fina l l y even as a fragmented instrumentation wh ich can be used i n its own bou ndaries. The lack of ra tionality of separate culture is the ele ment wh ich condemns it to d isappear, because within it the victory of the rationa l is a l ready present as a req u i rement.
1 83
Cu lture grew out of the h istory wh ich abol ished the ty pe of l ife of the o ld world, but as a separate sphere it is sti l l no more than sensible inteUigence and com m u nication, which remai n partial in a partially his足 torical society. I t is the sense of a world which has too l ittle sense.
1 84
The end of the h istory of culture man ifests itself on two opposite sides: the project of its transcendence in total history, and the organ足 ization of its preservation as a dead object in spectacu lar contemp lation. One of these movements has t ied its fate to social critique, the other to the defense of c lass power.
185 Each of the two sides of the end of cu lture-al l the aspects of the sciences as wel l as a l l the aspects of tangible representat ions-ex ist in a u n itary manner in what u sed to be art in the most general sense. I n the case of the sciences, the accum u lation of fragmentary learni ngs, wh ich become unusable because the approval of existing cond itio ns m u st fi nal l y renounce knowledge of itself, confronts the theory of praxis wh ich alone holds the truth of them a l l by being the only one that holds the secret of their use.
I n the case of representations, the critical self-de
struction of society's ancient common language and its artif icial reco m position in the commod ity spectacle confronts the i l l usory representa tion of the not- lived.
186 By losing the com m u nity of the society of myth, society m u st lose a l l the references of a rea l ly common language, up to the moment when the separat ion of the inactive com m u nity can be su rmou nted by ac cession to the real h istorical com m u nity.
Art was the common lan
guage of social inaction; from the moment when it constitutes itself into independent art in the modern sense, emerging from its orig i na l rel i gious u n iverse and becom i ng i nd ividua l production of c:: eparate works, it k nows, as a special case, the movement which dominates the h i story of the ensemble of separate culture.
I ts i ndependent affirmatl o r: is t�€
beginn ing of i ts destruction.
187 The fact that th e language of com m u n ication is lost-th is is what is
positively expressed by the modern movement of decomposition of a l l art, its formal a n n i h i lation.
What t h i s movement expresses negatively
is the fact that a common language must be red iscovered-no longer i n the u n i lateral conclusion which always arrived too late in t h e art o f the historical society, spea k i ng to others about what was l ived w ithout real d ia logue, and ad m itting this deficiency of l ife-but it must be red is covered in prax is, which gathers with i n it a l l d irect activity and its lan guage. The problem is to effectively possess the community of d ia logue and the game with time wh ich have been represented by poetico-artistic works.
1 88
When art wh ich has become independent represents its world with dazzling colors, a moment of l ife has grown o ld and it ca nnot be re juvenated with dazzl ing colors. I t can only be evoked i n memory. The greatness of art only begins to appear at the fa l l of l ife.
1 89
The h istorica l t i me which i nvades art ex pressed i tself first of a l l i n the sphere of art itself, start ing w ith the baroque. Baroque is the art of a world wh ich has lost its center: the last myth ical order in the cosmos and in the terrestrial government accepted by the M iddle Ages-the u n ity of Christianity and the phanto m of an E m pire-has fal len. The art of change must carry with in it the ephemeral principle wh ich it d is covers i n the world. I t has chosen, says E ugen io d ' Ors, " l ife aga i nst etern ity. " Theater and the feast, the theatrica l feast, are the dominant moments of baroqu e real ization within which a l l particu lar artistic ex pression becomes mea n ingfu l only t hrough its reference to the setti ng of a constructed p lace, to a construction wh ich must be its own center of u n ificatio n ; and this center is the passage, wh ich is inscribed as a threatened equ i l ibriu m with in the dynamic d isorder of the whole. The somewhat excessive i m portance g iven to the concept of the baroq ue in the contemporary d iscussion of esthet ics translates the grow ing aware ness of the i m possibi l ity of artistic classicism : for three centuries the at tempts to rea l ize a normative classicism or neo-classicism were no more than brief artificial constructions spea k i n g the externa l language of the State, of the a bsolute monarchy, or of the revo lutionary bo urgeo isie i n Roman clothes. F rom romanticism t o cu bism, it is i n t h e last analysis an ever more i nd ividual ized art of negation, perpetua l l y renovati ng i t· self u p to the po int of the crum b l i n g and complete negation of the artis tic sphere wh ich fol lowed the general course of the baroqu e. The d is appearance of h i storical art, which was tied to the i nterna l comm u n ica tion of an elite, which had its sem i- independent social basis i n the partly playfu l conditio ns sti l l l ived by the last aristocracies, also translates the fact that capital ism experiences the f irst class power wh ich confesses it self bare of any ontologica l q u a l ity, and whose root of power in the simple management of the economy is equa lly the loss of a l l h u man mastery. The baroque ensemble, which is itself a long- lost u n ity for ar t istic creation, is red iscovered i n some manner i n the present consump tion of the tota l ity of the a rtistic past. H isto r ical knowledge and recog n ition of a l l the art of the past, retrospectively constituted into a world a rt, relativizes it i nto a g l obal d isorder wh ich i n its t u rn co nstitutes a
baro q u e edif ice on a h igher l ev e l , an ed if ice w i t h i n wh ich the prod uc tion of baroque art itself, and a l l its rev iva l s, d isso lve. The arts of a l l c iv i l izations and a l l epochs can for the f irst time be k nown and a d m itted together.
I t is a " reco l l ect ion of souve n i rs" of the history of art wh ich
by beco m ing possi ble, is a l so the end of the world of art.
It is in t h i s
epoch of m u seu ms, when a rt i st i c com m u n i cation ca n n o l o nger ex ist, that a l l the ancient mo ments of a rt ca n be eq ua l l y adm itt ed , because none of them suffer more from the loss of their particu l a r cond itions of co m m u n ication than from the present loss of co nd itio ns of com m u n i cation in general.
1 90 Art i n the epoch of its d isso l u tion, a negative movement wh ich seek s the transcendence of a r t i n a h i storical society where h istory is n ot yet l ived, is s i m u l ta neously an art of change a nd the pure expression of i m possible change.
The m ore gra nd iose its reach, the more its true rea l i
zat i o n is beyond it.
Th is art is forci b l y in the vanguard, and it is not.
I ts vanguard is i ts d isa ppearance.
191 Dada ism and surrea l ism are the two cu rrents w h ich cou ld mark t h e end of modern art. Thou g h on ly i n a relatively conscious m a n n er, they are contemporaries of the last great assa u l t of the revol u t i o nary pro l e tar ian move ment; and the defeat of this movement, w h i c h l eft them i m pr isoned i n the sa m e artist i c field whose d ecay they had a n nou nced , is the basic reaso n for their i m m ob i l ization.
Dad a i sm and surrea l ism
are at o nce h istorica l l y related and opposed .
T h i s opposition, wh ich
const itutes the most i m porta nt and rad ical part of the contr i bu t i o n of each , revea ls th e i nterna l i nadequ acy of their critique, develo ped o n e s ided ly by each.
Dadaism wanted to suppress art witho ut realizing it;
surrea l i sm wanted to realize art without suppressing it.
The critical
positi o n later elaborated by the situa tionists has shown that the su p pression a nd the rea l izat i o n of art are i n separa b l e aspects of the same
o vercoming of art.
1 92 Spectacular co nsu mption which preserves con gea l ed ancient cu Itu re, i nc l u d i ng the
recu perated
repetition
of
its negative man ifestat i o n s,
open l y becomes i n the cu ltural sector what it is i m p l ic i t l y i n its total ity; the communication of the incommunicable.
The extreme destru ction
of lan guage ca n here be fou nd acknow l edged flatly as a n offi cial posi tive va l u e, s i nce the task is to advertise a reco nc i l iation with the dom i nant state of t h i ngs, where a l l c o m m u n ication is joyousl y procl a imed abse nt.
The crit ica l truth of t h i s d estruction w it h reference to the real
l ife of poetry a nd modern art is obv iously h idden, si nce th e spectac l e, whose fu nction i s to make history forgotten within culture, appl ies i n the pseu do-novelty o f its moder n i st means t h e very strategy wh ich con st itutes it in dept h . T h u s a school of neo- l iterature, wh ich si m p l y a d m its that it co ntemplates what is written for its own sa ke, ca n present itself as so met h i ng new.
F urther more, a l ongside the s i m p l e proc lamation of
the suff ic ient beauty of the d isso l u t io n of the co m m u nica b l e, the most modern tendency of spectacu lar cu l tu re-and th e one most close l y t i ed to the repressive practice of the general orga n i zation of society-seeks to reco m pose, by means of " i ntegral workS," a com p lex n eo-artist i c en viro nm e n t made up of d ecom po sed elements; nota bly in the researches of i ntegration of artistic garbage o r of est h etico-tech n i ca l hybrids i n u rba n ism.
T h is is a tra nslation o n the level o f spectacu lar pseud o-cu l
ture of the gen era l project of d evel oped cap ita lism, wh ich a i m s to re-
capture the fragmented worker as a "personal ity wel l integrated in the group, " a tendency recently described by American sociologists ( R ies man, Whyte, etc. ) . I t is everywhere the same project of a restructuring without community.
1 93
C u l tu re turned completely i nto com modity must a l so tu rn into the star com mod ity of the spectacular society. Col in Kerr, one of the most advanced ideologues of t h is tendency, has calcu lated that the complex process of production, d istribution and consumption of knowledge al ready gets 29% of the yearly nationa l product in the U n i ted States; and he pred icts that in the second half of th is century cultu re w i l l hold the key ro le in the development of the economy, a role played by the auto mobi le i n the f irst half, and by rai l roads in the second half of the: �:-2 vious century.
1 94
The ensemble of learni ngs which continue to develop today as the thought of the spectacle m u st justify a society without justifications, and must const itute themselves i nto a general science of fal se con sciousness. Th is thought is com p l etely cond itioned by the fact that it cannot a nd does not want to think of its own material basis i n the spec tacu lar system.
1 95
The thought of the social orga n ization of a ppearance is itself ob scured by the general i zed sub-communication which it defends. I t does not k now that conf l ict is a t the origin of a l l things i n its world. The specialists of the power of the spectacle, a n abso lute power w ithin the context of its system of language without a nswer, are abso lu tely cor rupted by their experience of contempt a nd the success of contempt; they find their contempt confirmed by the k nowledge of the contempt ible man who the spectator rea l ly is.
1 96 W i t h i n the specialized thought of the spectacu lar system a new d ivi足 sion of tasks takes place to the extent that the i m provement of this sys足 tem itself poses new problems: on one hand the spectacular critique o f the spectacle i s undertaken b y modern sociology which stu d ies separa足 tion by the so le means of the conceptual and material i nstruments of separat i o n ; on the other hand the apology for the spectacle constitutes itself i nto the thought of no n-thought, into the official forgetting of h istorical pract ice, with in a l l the va r ious d iscipl i nes where structural ism takes root. Nevertheless, the fal se despa ir of non-d i a l ectical critique a nd the false optim ism of pure advertising of the system are identi cal as subm issive thought.
1 97 The soc io logy wh ich bega n, fi rst of a l l i n the U n ited States, to focus d i scussion on the cond itions of existence brought about by present development, was able to b r i ng to v i ew much empirical data, but cou ld
i n no way know the truth of its own object because it does not f i nd within it the critique immanent to it. The resu l t is that the sincerely re formist tendency of this sociology lea ns on moral ity, on com mon sense, on completel y senseless a ppea ls with regard to measure, etc. Becau se t h is type of critlq u e is not fam i l iar with the negative which is at the heart of its world, it only i nsists o n the descript ion of a type of negative surp lus which seems d eplora b ly to h inder it on the surface, l i k e an ir rationa l parasitic pro l iferation. Th is ind ignant good w i l l , wh ich even as such arrives at bla m i n g o n l y the externa l consequences of the system , t h i n ks itself critica l , forgetting t h e essentia l l y apologetic character of its assu mptions and its method.
1 98
Those who denounce the absurdity or the per i ls of inc itement to waste in the society of economic abu ndance do not k now the purpose of waste. They condemn with ingratitude, in the name of econom ic rational ity, the good irrational guard�ans without whom th e power of this economic rationality wou l d co l la pse. And Boorstin, for example, who i n The Image d escribes the com mod ity consu mption of the A meri can spectacle, never reaches the concept of spectacle because he t h i n ks he can leave private l ife, or the notion of " the honest com m od ity," out side of this d isastrous exaggeration. H e does n ot understand that the com m od ity itself made the laws whose "honest " appl icati on leads to the d isti nct real ity of private l i fe and to its u l terior reconquest by the socia l consumption of i mages.
1 99
Boorsti n describes the excesses of a world wh ich has become foreign to us as if they were excesses foreign to our wor l d . B ut the " normal" basis of social l ife, to which he i mpl icit l y refers when he q ua l ifies the superfici a l reign of i mages in terms of psychologica l and moral j u d g ments as the produ ct of "our extravagant pretentions," has no rea l ity either in his book or in h is epoch. It is because the real hu man l i fe Boor sti n speaks of is for h i m in the past, wh ich includes the past of rel ig ious resignation, that he cannot u nderstand a l l the profund ity of a society of i ma ges. The truth of th is society is nothing other than the negation of this society.
200
The soc iology wh ich thinks it can isolate from the w ho le of soc i a l l ife an ind ustr ial rational ity functioning a part can g o s o far a s t o i so late from the general i nd u strial movement the techn iques of reprodu ct ion and transm ission. It is thus that Boorst in finds that the resu lts he de足 picts are caused by the u n happy, a l most fortu itous encou nter of an oversized tech n ica l apparatus for the d iffusion of i mages w ith an ex足 cessive attract ion to the pseudo-sensational on the part of the people of our epoch. Thus the spectacle wou ld be cau sed by the fact that modern man is too much of a spectator. Boorsti n does not understand that the pro l iferation of the pre-fabricated " pseudo-events" wh ich he denou nces f lows from the s i m p l e fact that, in the massive rea l ity of p resent social l ife, men do not themsel ves l i ve events. I t is because h i story itself hau nts modern soc iety l i ke a spectre that one finds the pseudo- h istory constructed at every level of co nsu mption of I ife, to preserve the threat足 ened equ i l ibr i u m of the present frozen time.
201
The affirmation o f the def i n itive sta b i l ity of a short period of frozen h i stor i ca l time is the u ndeniable basis, u nconsc iously and consciously procla i med , of the present tendency toward a structuralist systematiza足 tion. The vantage poi nt from wh ich anti-h istorical structu ra l ist thought v i ews the wor ld is that of the eternal presence of a system which was never created a nd wh ich w i l l never end . The d rea m of the d ictatorsh i p
of a pre-existing unconscious structure over a " social praxis was abusive ly d rawn from models of structures elaborated by l ingu ist i cs a nd eth nology (see the analysis of the funct ion ing of capita l ism) , models al ready abusively understood in these circumstances, simply because the academic imagination of average functionaries, q u ickly f i l l ed, an i ma g ination completely entrenched in the celebration of the existing sys tem, flatl y reduces a l l real ity to the existence of the system.
202
As i n all h istorica l socia l science, in order to u nderstand "structur a l ist" categories it m ust always be kept in m ind that the categories ex press forms of existence and cond itions of existence . J ust as one cannot appra ise the va lue of a man i n terms of the conception he has of h i m self, one cannot appraise-and ad m i re-a determi ned society by tak ing as ind isputably true the language it speaks to itself; " . . . so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary; th is consciousness m ust rather be explained from the con tradictions of material l ife. . . " Structu re is the daughter of present power. Structural ism is the though t guaranteed by the State which thinks the present cond itions of spectacu lar "communication" as an absolute. I ts method of study i ng the code of messages is itself noth ing but the product, and the recogn ition, of a society where com mu nication exists i n the form of a cascade of h ierarch ic signals. Consequently it is not structural ism wh ich serves to prove the transh istorical valid ity of the society of the spectacle; it is on the contrary the society of the spectacle i m posing i tself as massive real ity wh ich serves to prove the cold dream of structura l ism .
203
Undoubted ly the critical concept of spectacle can also be vu lgarized i nto some k i nd of hol low formu la of sociologico-pol itical rhetoric to ex pla i n a nd abstractly denounce everyth ing, and thus serve as a defense of the spectacular system . It is obvious that no idea can lead beyond the existing spectacle, but only beyond the ex isting ideas on the spectacle. For an effective destruction of the society of the spectacle, what is needed is men putting a practica l force into action . The critical theory of the spectacle can only be true by u n iting w ith the pract ical cu rrent of negation in society ; a nd this negation, the resum pt ion of the revolu tionary class struggle, wi l l become conscious of itself by developing the critique of the spectacle wh ich is the theory of its real cond itions, practical conditions of present oppression, and inversely by u nveil i ng
the secret of what it ca n become. T his theory does not expect m i racles from the wor k i ng c lass. I t env isages the new formu lation and the rea l i zation of proletarian wan ts as a l o ng-range task. To make an arti ficial d i sti nction between theoretical stru ggl e and pract ica l struggle since on the basis here defi ned, the very constitution and the com m u n icat ion of such a theory can not even be conceived wi thout a ri g orous practice- it is certai n that the obscu re and d iff i cu l t path of criti cal theory shou ld a lso be the lot of the pract ica l movemen t acting o n t h e sca le of soc iety . 204 Critica l theory must be communicated in its own language. This is the language of contrad ict i o n , w h i ch must be d i a lect ical in i ts form as it is i n its content. I t is critique of the tota l ity and h i storical critique. It i s not a "zero d egree of writ i n g " but its overcom i ng. It is not a nega tion of sty le, but the sty l e of negation .
205 I n its very sty l e, the exposition of d ia lectical theory is a scandal and a n abom i nation in terms of the r u les of the do m inant language and for the taste which they have educated, because in the positive u se of exist i n g concepts it at the same t i me i n cl u d es the k nowl ed ge of their red is covered fluidity, of their necessary d estruction.
206 T h is sty l e which conta ins i ts own critique m ust ex press t he d o m i na t i o n of the present critique over its entire past. Through it the mode of exposition of d ia l ectical theory makes visible the negative spirit with in it. " Truth is not l ike a produ ct in which o ne can no l on ger find a n y trace of the i m pl ement. " ( H egel ) . T h is t h eoretical consci ousness of movement with in which the very trace of movement must be p resent, manifests itself by o verturning the establ ished relations between con cepts and by displacement of a l l the acqu isit i o ns of previous critiqu e. The overturn ing of the genitive is this expression of h istorica l revo lu t i o ns, consigned to the f o r m of thought, wh ich was considered the epi gra m matic sty l e of Hege l . The you n g Marx, advocating the rep lace ment of t h e subject by the pred icate after the systematic use F euerbach made of th is, ach ieved the most consistent use of t h is insurrectional style which, out of the phi l osophy of m isery, d rew the m i sery of ph i l osophy. D i sp lacement l eads to the subv ersion of past critica l conclu s i o n s which were frozen i nt o respectable truths, namely t ransformed
i nto l i es.
K i erk egaard a l read y u sed it d e l i berately, ad d i ng h is own d e
nu nciation of i t :
" B ut d espite a l l the tours and d etours, j u st as j a m al
ways returns to the pantry, you a l ways end u p by s l i d i n g i n a l ittle word wh i ch isn ' t you rs and wh ich bothers you by the memory it awa kes. "
(Philosophical Fragmen ts).
It is the ob l igation of distance toward that
wh i ch was fa lsified i nto official truth wh ich determ i nes the u se of d is placement, as was acknow l ed ged
by K i erkegaard i n the sa m e boo k :
" O n l y o n e more co m ment on you r n u merous a l l usions a i m i n g a t a l l t h e grief I m i x i nto m y statem ents of borrowed su bjects.
I do not d e n y it
here nor w i l l I deny that it was v o l u ntary and that in a new continua tion to t h is brochu re, if I ever write it, I i ntend to n a m e the o bj ect by its rea l name and to clothe the prob lem i n a h i storica l atti re. "
207 Ideas i m prove. ment.
The mea n ing of words part i c i pates in the i m prove
Plagiarism is n ecessa ry.
Progress i m p l i es it.
It sq ueezes the
phrase of a n author, makes use of its expressions, rubs out a fa lse idea, replaces it w ith a true idea.
208 D i sp l acement is the opposite of citat i o n , of the theoretical a u thority w h i ch is a l ways fa lsified by the m ere fact of becom ing a ci tation ; a frag ment torn out of its context, its move m ent, and fina l ly its epoch as a gen era l reference and as a precise cho ice w h i ch it was w i th i n t h is refer ence, exactly recogn i zed or erroneous. guage of anti- ideo l ogy.
D isp lacement is the f l u id lan
It a ppears within commun icat ion w h ic h k nows
that it cannot pretend to h o l d a n y guara ntee i n itsel f a nd d e f i n it ivel y . I t is, at its h i g h est po i nt, t h e language wh ich cannot be con f i rmed by a n y ancient a nd supra-cr itical reference.
O n t h e contrary, it is its own
coherence, with i n itse l f and w it h pract icable facts, which can confirm the ancient gra i n of truth w h i ch it b r i ngs out.
D isp l acement has not
gro u nded its cause on a nyth i ng external to its own truth as present crit ique.
209 That w h i c h , in t h eoretical formu lation, open l y presents i tself as dis
placed, ex posing a l l d urable autonomy of the sphere of the t h eo ret ica l l y expressed , through this violence bri n g i ng about t h e i n tervention of ac-
tion which dera nges and carries away the entire ex isting order, is a re足 m i nder that t h is ex istence of theory is noth i ng i n itself, and can o n l y k now itself w i t h h istorical act i on a nd t h e historical correction wh ich i s i ts rea l loyalty.
210 The real negation of cu lture i s the o n l y preservation of its meani ng. I t can no longer be cultural. As a resu lt it is what remains i n some way at the level of cu ltu re, although i n a com pletely different sense.
21 1 I n the langu age of contrad ict io n, the critique of cul ture presents it足 self unified: in the sense that it d o m i n ates the whole of cu ltu re-its k nowled ge as wel l as its poetry-, and i n the sense that it no l onger separates itself from the critique of the soc ial total ity. It is this uni足 fied theoretical critique which goes a lone towards the encounter with unified social practice.
212 I d eology is the basis of the thought of a cl ass society with i n the con fl ictua l cou rse of h istory. I deol og ical facts have n ever been simple chi maeras, but d eformed consciousness of rea l i ties, and as such t h ey have been real factors in turn exerting rea l d eform ing act i on. A l l the more reason why the materializa tion of ideo lo gy brought about by the con crete success of autono m i zed eco no m ic prod uction, in the form of the spectacle, is i n pract ice confused with the soc ial real ity of an ideo logy wh ich was able to red uce everyth i ng rea l to its own model .
213 When i deo logy, wh ich i s the abstract w i l l of the u n iversa l a nd its i l l usion, f i nds itself legitimated by the u n iversa l abstract i o n and the ef fective d ictatorsh i p of i l lu sion i n modern soc iety, it is no l o nger a volun taristic struggle of the part ia l , but its vi ctory. From th is point, id eo log ica l pretention acq u i res a sort of flat positiv istic exactitu d e : it is no longer a h istorica l cho ice but a fact. With i n such an aff irmation, the part icular names of ideo logies have d isa ppeared. The very ro l e of pro per l y ideo logica l labor in the service of t h e system no lo nger conceives of i tself as more than the recogn i t ion of an "ep istemologica l p latform" which wa nts to be outside of a l l ideo log ica l phenomena. M ater i a l i z ed i deo logy is itself nameless, j u st as it i s without an ex pressible h istorica l progra m. T h is is a nother way o f say ing that t h e h isto ry of ideologies is over.
214 I d eo logy, whose who l e i nternal logic l ed to "tota l ideo logy" i n Mann hei m' s sense, the d espotism of t h e fragment wh ich i m po ses itself as a pseudo-know l edge of a frozen to tality, t h e to talitarian vision, i s now acco m pl ished with i n the i m mo b i l ized spectacle of non-h i story. Its com pletion is a l so its co l lapse with i n the whole of society. I deology, the last unreason wh ich b locks access to h i storica l l ife, must d isappear with the practical col/apse of t h i s soc iety.
215 The spectac l e is ideo l ogy par exce llence, because it exposes a nd ma n i足 fests i n its fu l l ness the essence of a l l ideo logica l systems: the i mpover足 i sh ment, the servitude and the n egation of rea l l ife. The spectacle is mater i a l l y "the expression of the separation and estrangement between man a nd ma n . " Through the " new power of fraud " concentrated at the basis of the spectacle in this society, " . . . the new doma i n of al ien be足 i n gs which man serves grows together with the mass of objects. " I t is the h ighest stage of an expansion wh ich has turned need aga i nst l ife. " The n eed for mo ney is thus the rea l need produced by po l itical econ足 omy, and the o n l y need it produces" (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts). The spectacle extends to a l l of soc ial l ife the principle wh ich H egel ( in the Realphilosophie of Jena ) con ceives as the principle of mo ney : it is "the l ife of what is dead, mov ing with i n itself. "
216 I n opposition to t h e project su m mara i zed in the Theses on Feuerbach ( the rea l izati o n of p h i losophy i n pra x is which overcomes the o pposition between idea l ism and materia l is m ) , the spectac l e simu lta n eo u sly pre serves and i mposes (with i n the pseud o-co ncrete of its u n iverse) the ideo logical character of material ism a n d of idea l i sm . The conte m p la t ive side of the old mater ial ism wh ich conceives the world as represen tation and not as activity-and w h ic h u lt i mately i d ea l izes matter-is com p l eted i n the spectacle, where co ncrete th i ngs are automatica l l y the masters of socia l l i fe. R ec iproca l ly, the dreamed activity of idea l ism is equa l l y completed i n the spectacle, through the tec h n ical m ed iation of signs and signals-wh ich fina l ly materia l ize a n abstract idea l .
217 The para l lel between ideo l ogy and sch izo phren ia establ ished by Gabel (La Fausse Conscience) m u st be pl aced with i n the econom ic pro cess of materia l i zation of ideology. Soci ety has beco me what ideology a lread y was. The remova l of prax is and the anti-dia lect ica l false co n sc iousness which acco m pa n ies it are i m posed d u r i n g each hour of d a i l y l i fe subj ected t o the spectacl e ; th is must b e u n derstood a s a systematic orga n i zation of the "fa i l u re of the facu lty of enco u nter " and as its re placement by a hallucina tory social fac t: the fa l se co nscio usness of the enco u n ter, the " i l lusion of the enco u n ter." I n a soc iety where no o ne can any lo nger be recognized by others, every i nd ividual becomes u n able to recogn ize h is own rea l ity . I d eo l ogy is at home; separation has b u i lt i ts own world.
218 " I n the c l i n ica l b u l letins of sch izophren ia," says Gabel, "the d eca dence of the d ia lectic of tota l i ty (with i ts extreme form in d issociatio n ) a nd t h e d ecad ence of t h e d ia l ectic of beco m i n g (with i ts extreme for m in catato n ia ) seem so l id l y u n ited ." The consciousness of the spec tator, prisoner of a fl attened u n iverse, l i m ited by the screen of the spec tacl e, beh i nd wh ich h is own l ife has been deported , k n ows o n l y the fic tional speakers who en terta i n h i m u n i latera l ly with their com mod ity a nd w i th th e pol i t i cs of their commo d ity. The spectacle, in a l l i ts ex tent, is h is "sign in the m i rror." The stage is h ere set with a false ex it from a genera l i zed aut ism.
219 The spectacle, which i s the e l i m i nation of the l i m its between self and world through the destruction of the se lf besieged by the presence足 absence of the world, is equa l l y the el im ination of the l i m its between true a nd fa l se through the repression of a l l truth l ived u n der the real presence of the l ie ensu red by the orga n ization of appeara nce. O ne who subm its passively to his al ien d a i l y fate is thus pushed toward a fo l ly wh ich reacts i l lusor i l y toward this fate by turn ing to magica l techn iques. The accepta nce a n d consu mption of com mod it ies are at the heart of this pseud o- respon se to a co m m u n icat ion without response. The need to i m itate wh ich is felt by the consumer is prec isel y the i nfa nt ile need cond itioned by a l l the aspects of h is fu ndamental d ispossession. I n the terms appl ied by Gabel to a co m pletel y d ifferent pathological level, "the abnormal need for representati o n h ere compensates for a tortur足 i ng fee l i ng of being o n the margin of ex istence. "
220 I f the logic of fa lse consciousness ca nnot tru l y k now itself, the search for critica l truth about the spectacle must also be a true critique. I t m ust stru ggle i n practice among the irreconc i la ble enem ies of the spec足 tacle a nd admit that it is absent where they are absent. I t is the laws of the r u l i ng thought, the exclusive point of view of the here and no w, that accept the abstract w i l l of im med iate efficacy when the rul i ng thought throws itself i nto the comprom ises of reform ism or i nto the common act ion of pseudo- revolutionary garbage. I n this way delirium reco nsti tutes itself with i n t h e very position wh ich pretends to co mbat it. On the contrary, the critique which goes beyo nd the spectacle must kno w how to wait.
221 E ma nc i pation from t h e materi a l bases o f i nverted truth-this is what the sel f-ema ncipation of our epoch consists of. This " h istorica l m ission of i nsta l l i ng truth in the world " ca nnot be acco mpl ished either by the i so lated i nd ivid ua l, or by the ato m i zed mass subjected to m a n i p u lation, but sti l l and a lways by the class wh ich is able to be the destruct io n of a l l classes by ta k i ng a l l power into the dea l ienati ng form of rea l ized democracy, the Council in which practical theory contro ls itself and sees its own action. O n l y t here are i n d ividuals " d i rect ly tied to u n iversal h istory;" o n l y th ere does d ia l ogue arm itself to make its own cond i足 tions co nquer .
E R RATA
Chapter I I I , Title page: the second sentence of the quotation from The
Red Flag of Peking should read:
"This debate is a struggle between
those who are for and those who are against the materialist dialectic, . . . " Chapter I I I , paragraph 63: line six begins with "denies,"