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Situationism

ContentsArticles

Introduction 1

Situationist International 1

Key Figures 19

Guy Debord 19

Key Concepts 25

Proletarian internationalism 25

Class consciousness 30

Class struggle 33

Communism 38

Dérive 58

Détournement 59

General strike 62

Recuperation (politics) 72

Spectacle (critical theory) 72

Unitary urbanism 74

Workers' council 76

World revolution 78

Groups 80

Council for Maintaining the Occupations 80

Second Situationist International 81

Report on the Construction of Situations 82

ReferencesArticle Sources and Contributors 85

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 88

Article LicensesLicense 89

1

Introduction

Situationist InternationalThe Situationist International (SI) was an internationalist European revolutionary group founded in 1957, andwhich reached its peak of influence in the general strike of May 1968 in France.

With their ideas rooted in Marxism and the 20th century European artistic avant-gardes, they advocated experiencesof life alternative to those admitted by advanced capitalism, for the fulfillment of human desires. For this purposethey suggested and experimented with the "construction of situations," namely the setting up of environmentsfavorable for the fulfillment of such desires. Using methods drawn from the arts, they developed a series ofexperimental fields of study, including unitary urbanism and psychogeography.

Their theoretical work peaked with the highly influential book The Society of the Spectacle in which Guy Debordargued that the spectacle is a fake reality which masks capitalist degradation of human life. To overthrow thissystem, the SI supported the May '68 revolts, and asked the workers to occupy the factories and to run them throughworkers' councils.

After publishing in the last issue of its magazine, an analysis of the May '68 revolts and the strategies that will needto be adopted in future revolutions,[1] the SI was dissolved in 1972.[2]

EtymologyThe appellation "situationist" refers to one who engages in the construction of "situations" or specifically a memberof the Situationist International.[3] In adjectival form, the term means relating to the theory or practical activity ofconstructing "situations."[3] Situationist theorist Guy Debord defines the term "situation" as "a moment of lifeconcretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events."[3]

According to Debord, the Situationist International is so named because the construction of situations is the centralidea of their theory, a process he describes as "the concrete construction of momentary ambiances of life and theirtransformation into a superior passional quality."[4] In other words, any method of making one or more individualscritically analyze their everyday life, and to recognize and pursue their true desires in their lives. The experimentaldirection of situationist activity consists of setting up temporary environments that are favorable to the fulfillment ofsuch desires.[5]

The Situationist International strongly resisted use of the term "situationism," which Debord called a "meaninglessterm . . . [t]here is no such thing as situationism, which would mean a doctrine for interpreting existingconditions."[3] Situationists were philosophically opposed to all ideology, viewing them as repressive delusions,rendering the idea of "situationism" absurd.[6] In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord asserted ideology is "theabstract will to universality and the illusion thereof," which is "legitimated in modern society by universalabstraction and by the effective dictatorship of illusion."[7]

The concept of the "situation" may originate in Sartre's concept of a Theatre of Situations.[8][9] What Sartre calls asituation in a theatrical play, is what breaks the spectator's passivity towards the spectacle.[10][11][12]

Situationist International 2

History

Origins (1945-1955)Situationist theory first emerged as a smaller tendency within Lettrism, an artistic and literary movement led by theRomanian-born French poet and visual artist Isidore Isou, originating in 1940s Paris. The group was heavilyinfluenced by the preceding avante-garde movements of Dadaism and Surrealism, seeking to apply critical theoriesbased on these concepts to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and political theory.[4]

Among some of the concepts and artistic innovations developed by the Lettrists were the lettrie, a poem reflectingpure form yet devoid of all semantic content, new syntheses of writing and visual art identified as metagraphics andhypergraphics, as well as new creative techniques in filmmaking. Future situationist Guy Debord, who was at thattime a significant figure in the Lettrist movement, helped develop these new film techniques, using them in hisLettrist film Howls for Sade (1952) as well as later in his situationist film Society of the Spectacle (1972).

By 1950, a much younger and more left-wing part of the Lettrist movement began to emerge. This group kept veryactive in perpetrating public outrages such as the Notre-Dame Affair, wherein at the Easter High Mass at NotreDame de Paris, in front of ten thousand people and broadcast on national TV, their member and former DominicanMichel Mourre posed as a monk, "stood in front of the altar and read a pamphlet proclaiming that God wasdead".[13][14][15][16] André Breton prominently came in solidarity of the action in a letter that spawned a large debatein newspaper Combat.[17][18]

In 1952, this left wing of the Lettrist movement, which included Debord, broke off from Isou's group and formed theLetterist International, a new Paris-based collective of avante-garde artists and political theorists. The schism finallyerupted when the future members of the radical Lettrists disrupted a Charlie Chaplin press conference for Limelightat the Hôtel Ritz Paris. They distributed a polemic entitled "No More Flat Feet!", which concluded: "The footlightshave melted the make-up of the supposedly brilliant mime. All we can see now is a lugubrious and mercenary oldman. Go home Mister Chaplin."[19] Isou was upset with this, his own attitude being that Chaplin deserved respect asone of the great creators of the cinematic art. The breakaway group felt that his work was no longer relevant, whilehaving appreciated it "in its own time," and asserted their belief "that the most urgent expression of freedom is thedestruction of idols, especially when they claim to represent freedom," in this case, filmmaker Charlie Chaplin.[20]

During this period of the Letterist International, many of the important concepts and ideas that would later beintegral in situationist theory were developed. Individuals in the group collaboratively constructed the new field ofpsychogeography, which they defined as "the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whetherconsciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals."[3][21] Debord further expanded thisconcept of psychogeography with his theory of the dérive, an unplanned tour through an urban landscape directedentirely by the feelings evoked in the individual by their surroundings, serving as the primary means for mappingand investigating the psychogeography of these different areas.[22] During this period the Letterist International alsodeveloped the situationist tactic of détournement, which by reworking or re-contextualizing an existing work of artor literature sought to radically shift its meaning to one with revolutionary significance.

Formation (1956-1957)In 1956, members of the Letterist International made contact with several different artistic collectives at the FirstWorld Congress of Free Artists in Alba, Italy,[23] finding significant common ground politically and philosophically.In July 1957, the Situationist International was established with the fusion of several of these extremely smallavant-garde artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (anoff-shoot of COBRA), and the London Psychogeographical Association. Later, the Situationist International drewideas from other groups such as Socialisme ou Barbarie.

The most prominent member of the group, Guy Debord, generally became considered the organization's de facto leader and most distinguished theorist. Other members included theorist Raoul Vaneigem, the Dutch painter

Situationist International 3

Constant Nieuwenhuys, the Italo-Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi, the English artist Ralph Rumney (sole memberof the London Psychogeographical Association, Rumney suffered expulsion relatively soon after the formation), theDanish artist Asger Jorn (who after parting with the SI also founded the Scandinavian Institute of ComparativeVandalism), the architect and veteran of the Hungarian Uprising Attila Kotanyi, and the French writer MicheleBernstein. Debord and Bernstein later married.

During the first four years from its formation, the pivot of the Situationist International was the collaborationbetween Guy Debord and Asger Jorn.[24]

In June 1957, Debord wrote the manifesto of the Situationist International, titled Report on the Construction ofSituations. This manifesto plans a systematic rereading of Karl Marx's Das Kapital and advocates a culturalrevolution in western countries.[4]

Artistic Period (1958-1962)During the first few years of the SI's founding, avant-garde artistic groups began collaborating with the SI andjoining the organization. Gruppe SPUR, a German artistic collective, collaborated with the Situationist Internationalon projects beginning in 1959, continuing until the group officially joined the SI in 1961. The role of the artists in theSI was of great significance, particularly Asger Jorn, Constant Nieuwenhuys and Pinot Gallizio.[25]

Asger Jorn, who invented Situgraphy and Situlogy, had the social role of catalyst and team leader among themembers of the SI between 1957 and 1961. Jorn’s role in the situationist movement (as in COBRA) was that of acatalyst and team leader. Guy Debord on his own lacked the personal warmth and persuasiveness to draw people ofdifferent nationalities and talents into an active working partnership. As a prototype Marxist intellectual Debordneeded an ally who could patch up the petty egoisms and squabbles of the members. When Jorn's leadership waswithdrawn in 1961, many simmering quarrels among different sections of the SI flared up, leading to multipleexclusions.

The first major split was the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR, the German section, from the SI on February 10, 1962.[26]

Many different disagreements led to the fracture, for example; while at the Fourth SI Conference in London inDecember, 1960, in a discussion about the political nature of the SI, the Gruppe SPUR members disagreed with thecore situationist stance of counting on a revolutionary proletariat;[27] the accusation that their activities were basedon a "systematic misunderstanding of situationist theses";[26] the understanding that at least one Gruppe SPURmember, sculptor Lothar Fischer, and possibly the rest of the group, were not actually understanding and/or agreeingwith the situationist ideas, but were just using the SI to achieve success in the art market.[26][28] the betrayal, in theSpur #7 issue, of a common agreement on the Gruppe SPUR and SI pubblications.[29][30]

The exclusion was a recognition that Gruppe SPUR's "principles, methods and goals" were significantly in contrastwith those of the SI.[31][32] This split however was not a declaration of hostilities, as in other cases of SI exclusions.A few months after the exclusion, in the context of judicial prosecution against the group by the German state,Debord expressed his esteem to Gruppe SPUR, calling it the only significant artist group in Germany since WorldWar II, and regarding it at the level of the avant-gardes in other countries.[33]

The next significant split was in 1962, wherein the "Nashists," the Scandinavian section of the SI lead by JørgenNash, were excluded from the organization for lacking the theoretical rigor demanded by the Franco-Belgian sectionof SI led by Guy Debord. This excluded group would later declare themselves the 2nd Situationist International,basing their organization out of Sweden. Journalist Stewart Home, who favored the "Nashists" and consideredDebord a "mystic, an idealist, a dogmatist and a liar"[34] wrote that while the 2nd Situationist International sought tochallenge the separation of art and politics from everyday life, Debord and the so-called 'specto-situationists'[35]

sought to concentrate solely on theoretical political aims.[36]

Situationist International 4

Political Period (1963-1968)

French cover of On the Poverty ofStudent Life

By this point the Situationist International consisted almost exclusively of theFranco-Belgian section, led by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, with someexceptions, such as Danish artist and author Asger Jorn. These memberspossessed much more of a tendency towards political theory over the moreartistic aspects of the SI. The shift in the intellectual priorities within the SIresulted in more focus on the theoretical, such as the theory of the spectacleand Marxist critical analysis, spending much less time on the more artisticand tangible concepts like unitary urbanism, détournement, andsitugraphy.[37]

During this period the SI began having more and more influence on localuniversity students in France. Taking advantage of the apathy of theircolleagues, five "Pro-situs", situationist-influenced students, infiltrated theUniversity of Strasbourg's student union in November 1966 and beganscandalising the authorities.[38][39] Their first action was to form an "anarchistappreciation society" called The Society for the Rehabilitation for Karl Marxand Ravachol; next they appropriated union funds to flypost "Return of theDurruti Column", Andre Bertrand's détourned comic strip.[39] They theninvited the situationists to contribute a critique of the University of Strasbourg, and On the Poverty of Student Life,written by Tunisian situationist Mustapha/Omar Khayati was the result.[39] The students promptly proceeded to print10,000 copies of the pamphlet using university funds and distributed them during a ceremony marking the beginningof the academic year. This provoked an immediate outcry in the local, national and international media.[39]

May Events (1968)The Situationists played a preponderant role in the May 1968 uprisings,[40] and to some extent their politicalperspective and ideas fueled such crisis,[40][41][42] providing a central theoretic foundation.[43][44][45][46][47][48] Whilethe SI's member count had been steadily falling for the preceding several years, the ones that remained were able tofill revolutionary roles for which they had patiently anticipated and prepared for. The active ideologists (“enragés”and Situationists) behind the revolutionary events in Strasbourg, Nanterre and Paris, numbered only about one or twodozen persons.[49]

This has now been widely acknowledged as a fact by studies of the period,[50][51][52][53][54][55] what is still wideopen to interpretation is the "how and why" that happened.[40] Charles de Gaulle, in the aftermath televised speech ofJune 7, acknowledged that "This explosion was provoked by groups in revolt against modern consumer and technicalsociety, whether it be the communism of the East or the capitalism of the West."[56]

They also made up the majority in the Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne.[40] An important event leading up toMay 1968 was the scandal in Strasbourg in December 1966.[57] The Union Nationale des Étudiants de Francedeclared itself in favor of the SI's theses, and managed to use public funds to publish Mustapha Khayati's pamphletOn the Poverty of Student Life.[58] Thousands of copies of the pamphlet were printed and circulated and helped tomake the Situationists well known throughout the nonstalinist left.

Quotations from two key situationist books, Debord's The Society of the Spectacle (1967) and Khayati's On thePoverty of Student Life (1966), were written on the walls of Paris and several provincial cities.[57] This wasdocumented in the collection of photographs published in 1968 by Walter Lewino, L'immagination au pouvoir.[1]

Those who followed the "artistic" view of the SI might view the evolution of the SI as producing a more boring or dogmatic organization. Those following the political view would see the May 1968 uprisings as a logical outcome of the SI's dialectical approach: while savaging present day society, they sought a revolutionary society which would

Situationist International 5

embody the positive tendencies of capitalist development. The "realization and suppression of art" is simply the mostdeveloped of the many dialectical supersessions which the SI sought over the years. For the Situationist Internationalof 1968, the world triumph of workers councils would bring about all these supersessions.

Though the SI were a very small group, they were expert self-propagandists, and their slogans appeared daubed onwalls throughout Paris at the time of the revolt. SI member René Viénet's 1968 book Enragés and Situationists in theOccupations Movement, France, May '68 gives an account of the involvement of the SI with the student group ofEnragés and the occupation of the Sorbonne.

The occupations of 1968 started at the University of Nanterre and spread to the Sorbonne. The police tried to takeback the Sorbonne and a riot ensued. Following this a general strike was declared with up to 10 million workersparticipating. The SI originally participated in the Sorbonne occupations and defended barricades in the riots. The SIdistributed calls for the occupation of factories and the formation of workers’ councils,[1] but, disillusioned with thestudents, left the university to set up The Council For The Maintenance Of The Occupations (CMDO) whichdistributed the SI’s demands on a much wider scale. After the end of the movement, the CMDO disbanded.

Aftermath (1968-1972)By 1972, Gianfranco Sanguinetti and Guy Debord were the only two remaining members of the SI. Working withDebord, in August 1975, Sanguinetti wrote a pamphlet titled Rapporto veridico sulle ultime opportunità di salvare ilcapitalismo in Italia (English: The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy),[59] which (inspiredby Bruno Bauer) proported to be the cynical writing of "Censor", a powerful industrialist. The pamphlet argued thatthe ruling class of Italy supported the Piazza Fontana bombing and other covert, false flag mass slaughter for thehigher goal of defending the capitalist status quo from communist influence. The pamphlet was mailed to 520 ofItaly's most powerful individuals. It was received as genuine and powerful politicians, industrialists and journalistspraised its content. After reprinting the tract as a small book, Sanguinetti revealed himself to be the true author. Inthe outcry that ensued [60] and under pressure from Italian authorities Sanguinetti left Italy in February 1976, and wasdenied entry to France.

After publishing in the last issue of the magazine an analysis of the May 1968 revolts, and the strategies that willneed to be adopted in future revolutions,[1] the SI was dissolved in 1972.[2]

Main Concepts

The Spectacle and Spectacular SocietyThe situationist theory of the spectacle is a development and application of the Marxist concepts of commodification,reification and alienation.[61] In the opening of Das Kapital, Marx makes the observation that within the capitalistmode of production we evaluate materials not by what purpose they serve or what they're actually useful for, but weinstead recognize them based on their value in the market.[62] In capitalist society, virtually identical products oftenhave vastly different values simply because one has a more recognizable or prestigious brand name. The value of acommodity is abstract and not tied to its actual characteristics. Much in the same way capitalism commodifies thematerial world, the situationists assert that advanced capitalism commodifies experience and perception.[61]

The spectacle is the unified, ever-increasing mass of image-objects and commodified experience detached fromevery aspect of life, fused in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished.[61]

Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity, as a pseudo-world apart, an object of merecontemplation.[61] The specialization of images of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image,where the liar has lied to himself.[61] The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomousmovement of the non-living.[61]

We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation ofspectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the

Situationist International 6

real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real.It becomes a substitute for experience.

—Images and Everyday Life, [63]

Recuperation

The commercialization of Marxist revolutionaryChe Guevara's image for profit is a prototypical

example of recuperation.

To survive, the spectacle must maintain social control and effectivelyhandle all threats to the social order. Recuperation, a concept firstproposed by Guy Debord,[64] is the process by which the spectacleintercepts socially and politically radical ideas and images,commodifies them, and safely incorporates them back withinmainstream society.[64] More broadly, it may refer to the appropriationor co-opting of any subversive works or ideas by mainstream media. Itis the opposite of détournement, in which conventional ideas andimages are commodified with radical intentions.[64]

Anti-Capitalism

The Situationist International, in the 15 years from its formation in1957 and its dissolution in 1972, is characterized by a Marxist andsurrealist perspective on aesthetics and politics,[65] without separationbetween the two: art and politics are faced together and inrevolutionary terms.[66] The SI analyzed the modern world from thepoint of view of everyday life.[67] The core arguments of theSituationist International were an attack on the capitalist degradation ofthe life of people[4][68][69] and the fake models advertised by the mass media,[4] to which the Situationist respondedwith alternative life experiences.[70][4] The alternative life experiences explored by the Situationists were theconstruction of situations, unitary urbanism, psychogeography, and the union of play, freedom and criticalthinking.[25]

A major stance of the SI was to count on the force of a revolutionary proletariat. This stance was reaffirmed veryclearly in a discussion on “To what extent is the SI a political movement?”, during the Fourth SI Conference inLondon.[27] The SI remarked that this is a core Situationist principle, and that those that don't understand it and agreewith it, are not Situationist. Reactionary forces always try to hinder the still topical power of the working class. Itwas not by chance that May '68, whose main feature was the largest general strike that ever stopped the economy ofan advanced industrial country[71] and the first wildcat general strike in history,[71] was instead depicted by mostmedia outlets as "student protests". That was precisely to mystify the still very topical role of a revolutionaryproletariat.

Art and PoliticsThe SI rejected all art that separated itself from politics, the concept of 20th century art that is separated from topical political events.[4][31] The SI believed that the notion of artistic expression being separated from politics and current events is one proliferated by reactionary considerations to render artwork that expresses comprehensive critiques of society impotent.[4] They recognized there was a precise mechanism followed by reactionaries to defuse the role of subversive artists and intellectuals, that is, to reframe them as separated from the most topical events, and divert from them the taste for the new that may dangerously appeal the masses; after such separation, such artworks are sterilized, banalized, degraded, and can be safely integrated into the official culture and the public discourse, where they can add new flavors to old dominant ideas and play the role of a gear wheel in the mechanism of the society of

Situationist International 7

the spectacle.[4]

According to this theory, artists and intellectuals that accept such compromises are rewarded by the art dealers andpraised by the dominant culture.[31] The SI received many offers to sponsor “creations” that would just have a"situationist" label but a diluted political content, that would have brought things back to order and the SI back intothe old fold of artistic praxis. The majority of SI continued to refuse such offers and any involvement on theconventional avant-garde artistic plane.[31] This principle was affirmed since the founding of the SI in 1957, but thequalitative step of resolving all the contradictions of having situationists that make concessions to the culturalmarket, was made with the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR in 1962.[31]

The SI noted how reactionary forces forbid subversive ideas from artists and intellectuals to reach the publicdiscourse, and how they attack the artworks that express comprehensive critique of society, by saying that art shouldnot involve itself into politics.[4]

Détournement

Détournement is the integration of past or present artistic production into a superior construction of a milieu. In thissense there can be no situationist painting or music, but only a situationist use of these means. In a more primitivesense, détournement with the old cultural spheres is a method of propaganda, a method that testifies to the wearingout and loss of importance of those spheres.

The Construction of SituationsThe first edition of Internationale Situationniste defines the constructed situation as "a moment of life concretely anddeliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events."

As the SI embraced dialectical Marxism, the situation came to refer less to a specific avant-garde practice than to thedialectical unification of art and life more generally. Beyond this theoretical definition, the situation as a practicalmanifestation thus slipped between a series of proposals. The SI thus were first led to distinguish the situation fromthe mere artistic practice of the happening, and later identified it in historical events such as the Paris Commune inwhich it exhibited itself as the revolutionary moment.

PsychogeographyThe first edition of Internationale Situationniste defined psychogeography as "the study of the specific effects of thegeographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals."[3]

The term was first recognized in 1955 by Guy Debord while still with the Letterist International:

"The word psychogeography, suggested by an illiterate Kabyle as a general term for the phenomena afew of us were investigating around the summer of 1953, is not too inappropriate. It does not contradictthe materialist perspective of the conditioning of life and thought by objective nature. Geography, forexample, deals with the determinant action of general natural forces, such as soil composition orclimatic conditions, on the economic structures of a society, and thus on the corresponding conceptionthat such a society can have of the world. Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the preciselaws and specific effects of the geographical environment, whether consciously organized or not, on theemotions and behavior of individuals. The charmingly vague adjective psychogeographical can beapplied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, andmore generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery."- Guy Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography[21]

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Dérive

By definition, psychogeography combines subjective and objective knowledge and studies. Debord struggled tostipulate the finer points of this theoretical paradox, ultimately producing "Theory of the Dérive" in 1958, adocument which essentially serves as an instruction manual for the psychogeographic procedure, executed throughthe act of dérive ("drift").

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action,their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrainand the encounters they find there… But the dérive includes both this letting go and its necessarycontradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of theirpossibilities.

—[72]

In the SI's 6th issue, Raoul Vaneigem writes in a manifesto of unitary urbanism, "All space is occupied by theenemy. We are living under a permanent curfew. Not just the cops – the geometry".[73] Dérive, as a previouslyconceptualized tactic in the French military, was "a calculated action determined by the absence of a greater locus",and "a maneuver within the enemy's field of vision".[74] To the SI, whose interest was inhabiting space, the dérivebrought appeal in this sense of taking the "fight" to the streets and truly indulging in a determined operation. Thedérive was a course of preparation, reconnaissance, a means of shaping situationist psychology among urbanexplorers for the eventuality of the situationist city.

Work, Leisure, and PlayThe situationists observed that the worker of advanced capitalism still only functions with the goal of survival. In aworld where technological efficiency has increased production exponentially, by tenfold, the workers of society stilldedicate the whole of their lives to survival, by way of production. The purpose for which advanced capitalism isorganized isn't luxury, happiness, or freedom, but production. The production of commodities is an end to itself; andproduction by way of survival.

The theorists of the Situationist International regarded the current paradigm of work in advanced capitalist society asincreasingly absurd. As technology progresses, and work becomes exponentially efficient, the work itself becomesexponentially more trivial. The spectacle’s social function is the concrete manufacture of alienation. Economicexpansion consists primarily of the expansion of this particular sector of industrial production. The “growth”generated by an economy developing for its own sake can be nothing other than a growth of the very alienation thatwas at its origin.

Political Theory

Major WorksTwelve issues of the main French edition of journal Internationale Situationniste were published, each issue editedby a different individual or group, including: Guy Debord, Mohamed Dahoiu, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, MauriceWyckaert, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Asger Jorn, Helmut Sturm, Attila Kotanyi, Jørgen Nash, Uwe Lausen, RaoulVaneigem, Michèle Bernstein, Jeppesen Victor Martin, Jan Stijbosch, Alexander Trocchi, Théo Frey, MustaphaKhayati, Donald Nicholson-Smith, René Riesel, and René Viénet.

• Translations of all twelve issues can be found here. [75]

• Situationist International Online Archive [76]

Classic Situationist texts include: On the Poverty of Student Life, Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, and TheRevolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem.

Situationist International 9

The first English-language collection of SI writings, although poorly and freely translated, was Leaving The 20thcentury edited by Christopher Gray. The Situationist International Anthology edited and translated by Ken Knabb,collected numerous SI documents which had previously never been seen in English.[77]

Relationship with MarxismRooted firmly in the Marxist tradition, the Situationist International criticized Trotskyists, Marxism-Leninism,Stalinism and Maoism from a position they believed to be further left and more properly Marxist. The situationistspossessed a strong anti-authoritarian current, commonly deriding the undemocratic pseudo-Marxist bureaucracies ofChina and the Soviet Union in the same breath as capitalism.

Debord's work The Society of the Spectacle (1967) established situationist analysis as Marxist critical theory. TheSociety of the Spectacle is widely recognized as the main and most influential Situationist essay.[78]

Das Kapital by Karl Marx, published in 1867.The situationists were inspired by his theories on

reification and alienation.

The concept of revolution created by the Situationist International wasanti-capitalist,[79][80][81] Marxist, Young Hegelian,[40] and from thevery beginning in the 50s, remarkably differently from the establishedLeft, anti-Stalinist and against all repressive regimes.[82]

Debord starts his 1967 work with a revisited version of the firstsentence with which Marx began his critique of classical politicaleconomy, Das Kapital.[83][84] In a later essay, Debord will argue thathis work was the most important social critique since Marx's work.Drawing from Marx, which argued that under a capitalist society thewealth is degraded to an immense accumulation of commodities,Debord argues that in advanced capitalism, life is reduced to animmense accumulation of spectacles, a triumph of mere appearancewhere "all that once was directly lived has become mererepresentation".[85][86] The spectacle, which according to Debord is thecore feature of the advanced capitalist societies,[87] has its "mostglaring superficial manifestation" in the advertising-massmedia-marketing complex.[88]

Elaborating on Marx's argument that under capitalism our lives and ourenvironment are continually depleted, Debord adds that the Spectacleis the system by which capitalism tries to hide such depletion. Debord added that, further than the impoverishment inthe quality of life,[25][68] our psychic functions are altered, we get a degradation of mind and also a degradation ofknowledge.[89] In the spectacular society, knowledge is not used anymore to question, analyze, or resolvecontradictions, but to assuage reality. Such argument on the Spectacle as a mask[90] of a degrading reality has beenelaborated by many Situationist artists, producing détournements of advertising where instead of a shiny life thecrude reality was represented.

Situationist theorists advocated methods of operation that included democratic workers' councils and workers'self-management,[91][92][93][94] interested in empowering the individual, in contrast to the perceived corruptbureaucratic states of the Eastern bloc. Their anti-authoritarian interpretation of Marxist theory can be identified withthe broader council communist and libertarian Marxist movements, themselves more broadly termed as leftcommunism.

The last issue (1972) of the Situationist International journal, featured an editorial analyzing the events of May 1968.The editorial, written by Guy Debord, was titled The Beginning of an Era,[95] probably as a detournement referenceof Nachalo (The Beginning), a Russian Marxist monthly magazine.

According to Greil Marcus, some found similarities between the Situationists and the Yippies.[96]

Situationist International 10

Former situationists Clark and Nicholson-Smith (British section), argued that the portion of the moderate Left that isthe "established Left", and its "Left opinion-makers", usually addressed contemptuously the SI as 'hopelesslyyoung-Hegelian'.[40]

Relationship with AnarchismThe Situationist International was differentiated from the anarchists, although they have frequently been associatedwith them, and belongs instead to the Marxist tradition. Debord did a critical assessment of the anarchists in his 1967The Society of the Spectacle.[97] In the final issue of the journal they rejected spontaneism and "mystics ofnonorganization," labeling them as a form of "sub-anarchism":[98]

The only people who will be excluded from this debate are... those who in the name of some sub-anarchistspontaneism proclaim their opposition to any form of organization, and who only reproduce the defects andconfusion of the old movement — mystics of nonorganization, workers discouraged by having been mixed upwith Trotskyist sects too long, students imprisoned in their impoverishment who are incapable of escapingfrom bolshevik organizational schemas. The situationists are obviously partisans of organization — theexistence of the situationist organization testifies to that. Those who announce their agreement with our theseswhile crediting the SI with a vague spontaneism simply don’t know how to read.

Relationship with the Established LeftThe S.I. poses a challenge to the model of political action of a portion of the Left,[99] the "established Left" and "Leftopinion-makers".[40] The first challenging aspect is the fueling role that the S.I. had in the up-heavals of the politicaland social movements of the sixties,[42][50] up-heavals for which much is still at stake and which many foresee asrecurring in the 21st century. The second challenging aspect,[42] is the comparison between the Situationists marxisttheory of the Society of the Spectacle, which is still very topical thirty years later,[50][70] and the current status of thetheories supported by the 'established Left' in the same period, like Althusserianism, Maoism, workerism,Freudo-Marxism and others.[50]

The response of a portion of the Left to such challenge, has been an attempt to silence and misinterpret, to "turn theSI safely into an art movement, and thereby to minimize its role in the political and social movements of thesixties."[42][99]

The core aspect of the revolutionary perspectives, and the political theory, of the Situationist International, has beenneglected by some commentators,[100] which either limited themselves to an apolitical reading of the situationistavant-garde art works, or dismissed the Situationist political theory. Examples of this are Simon Sadler's TheSituationist City,[100] and the accounts on the S.I. published by the New Left Review.[40]

The concept of revolution created by the Situationist International was anti-capitalist,[79][80][81] Marxist, YoungHegelian,[40] and from the very beginning in the 50s, remarkably differently from the established Left, anti-Stalinistand against all repressive regimes.[82] The S.I. called in May 1968 for the formation of Workers councils,[1] andsomeone has argued that they were aligned with council communism.

There was no separation between the artistic and the political perspectives.[66] For instance, Asger Jorn neverbelieved in a conception of the Situationist ideas as exclusively artistic and separated from political involvement. Hewas at the root and at the core of the Situationist International project, fully sharing the revolutionary intentions withDebord.[101][102]

Situationist International 11

Reception

CriticismCritics of the Situationists frequently assert that their ideas are not in fact complex and difficult to understand, butare at best simple ideas expressed in deliberately difficult language, and at worst actually nonsensical. For example,anarchist Chaz Bufe asserts in Listen Anarchist! that "obscure situationist jargon" is a major problem in the anarchistmovement.[103]

Influence

evoL PsychogeogrAphix 2003

Situationist ideas have continued to echo through many aspects ofculture and politics in Europe and the USA. Even in their own time,with limited translations of their dense theoretical texts, combined withtheir very successful self-mythologisation, the term "situationist" wasoften used to refer to any rebel or outsider, rather than to a body ofsurrealist-inspired Marxist critical theory. As such, the terms"Situationist," "spectacle," and "detournement" have often beendecontextualised and recuperated. Debord's analysis of the spectaclehas been influential among people working on television, particularlyin France and Italy;[104][105] in Italy, TV programs produced bysituationist intellectuals, like Antonio Ricci's Striscia la notizia, orCarlo Freccero's programming schedule for Italia 1 in the early1990s.[104]

In the 1960s and 1970s, anarchists, communists, and other leftistsoffered various interpretations of Situationist concepts in combinationwith a variety of other perspectives. Examples of these groups include:in Amsterdam, the Provos; in the UK, King Mob, the producers of

Heatwave magazine (who later briefly joined the SI), and the Angry Brigade. In the US, groups like Black Mask(later Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers), The Weathermen, and the Rebel Worker group also explicitly employedtheir ideas.[106]

Anarchist theorists such as Fredy Perlman, Bob Black, Hakim Bey, and John Zerzan, have developed the SI's ideasin various directions away from Marxism. These theorists were predominantly associated with the magazines FifthEstate, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, and Green Anarchy. During the early 1980s, English anarchist LarryLaw produced the Spectacular Times pocket-books series, which aimed to make Situationist ideas more easilyassimilated into the anarchist movement. Later anarchist theorists such as the CrimethInc. collective also claimSituationist influence.[106]

Situationist urban theory, defined initially by the members of the Lettrist International as "Unitary Urbanism," wasextensively developed through the behavioural and performance structures of The Workshop for Non-LinearArchitecture during the 1990s. The re-emergence of the London Psychogeographical Association also inspired manynew psychogeographical groups including Manchester Area Psychogeographic. The LPA and the Neoist Alliancealong with the Luther Blissett Project came together to form a New Lettrist International with a specificallyCommunist perspective. Around this time, Unpopular Books and the LPA released some key texts including newtranslations of Asger Jorn's work.

Around this time also, groups such as Reclaim the Streets and Adbusters have, respectively, seen themselves as"creating situations" or practicing detournement on advertisements.

Situationist International 12

In cultural terms, the SI's influence has arguably been greater, if more diffuse. The list of cultural practices whichclaim a debt to the SI is extensive, but there are some prominent examples:

• Situationist ideas exerted a strong influence on the design language of the punk rock phenomenon of the 1970s.To a significant extent this came about due to the adoption of the style and aesthetics and sometimes slogansemployed by the SI. These were often second hand, via English pro-Situ groups such as King Mob whoseassociates included Malcolm McClaren and Jamie Reid. Factory Records owner Tony Wilson was influenced bySituationist urbanism and Factory Records band The Durutti Column took its name from Andre Bertrand's collageLe Retour de la Colonne Durutti.[107] (Bertrand, in turn, took his title from the eponymous anarchist army duringthe Spanish Civil War). U.S. punk group The Feederz have been acclaimed as exhibiting a more direct andconscious influence. Formed in the late 1970s, they became known for extensive use of detournement and theirintention to provoke their audience through the exposition of Situationist themes.[108] Other musical artists whoselyrics and artwork have referenced Situationist concepts include Chumbawamba, Manic Street Preachers, Nationof Ulysses, Huggy Bear, Joan of Arc, International Noise Conspiracy and Refused. Situationist theoryexperienced a vogue in the late '90s hardcore punk scene, being referenced by Orchid, His Hero Is Gone, andCrimethInc..

• Situationist ideas allegedly continue to influence underground street artists such as Banksy, gHOSTbOY, Borf,NeverWork, and Mudwig, whose interventions and use of practices such as detournement, can be seen onadvertising hoardings, street signs, and walls throughout Europe and the United States.

• One can also trace situationist ideas within the development of other avant-garde threads such as Neoism and theLibre Society, as well as artists such as Mark Divo.

• Some hacker related e-zines, which, like samizdat, were distributed via email and FTP over early Internet linksand BBS quoted and developed ideas coming from SI. A few of them were N0 Way, N0 Route, UHF, in France;and early Phrack, cDc in the US. More recently, writers such as Thomas de Zengotita have echoed Situationisttheories regarding the spectacle of contemporary society.

Notes[1] The Beginning of an Era ( part1 (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ 12. era1. htm), part 2 (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ 12. era2. htm))

Situationist International #12, 1969[2] Karen Elliot (2001-06-01). "Situationism in a nutshell" (http:/ / www. barbelith. com/ cgi-bin/ articles/ 00000011. shtml). Barbelith Webzine.

. Retrieved 2008-06-23.[3] Guy Debord (1958) Definitions (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ definitions. html). Internationale Situationniste #1 (Paris, June

1958). Translated by Ken Knabb.[4] Guy Debord (1957) Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency's Conditions of Organization and

Action (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ report. html). (Paris, June 1957). Translated by Ken Knabb.[5] Guy Debord (1958) Preliminary Problems in Constructing a Situation (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ problems. html).

Internationale Situationniste #1 (Paris, June 1958). Translated by Ken Knabb.[6] Raoul Vaneigem (1967) Traité du savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations (http:/ / library. nothingness. org/ articles/ SI/ en/ display/ 35).

(Paris, June 1967). Chapter 1: The Insignificant Signified.[7] Guy Debord (1967) Society of the Spectacle. (Paris, June 1967). Chapter IX: Ideology in Material Form. (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/

sionline/ si/ tsots09. html)[8] Claire Gilman Asger Jorn 's Avant-Garde Archives, in Guy Debord and the Situationist International, p.201 and note 18 on p.210

quotation:"the situationists' father figure Jean-Paul Sartre" Note 18: "Sartre and his philosophy of the situation are fundamental to the SI'snotion of everyday life authentically experienced. For and excellent clarification of this relationship, see Wollen, 'Bitter Victor,' 30"

[9] Peter Wollen Bitter Victory: The Art and Politics of the Situationist International, published in Elisabeth Sussman (1989) On the passage of afew people through a rather brief moment in Time: The Situationist International 1957-1972

[10] Sartre (1947) Pour un théâtre de situations (For a Theatre of Situations), first published in the journal La Rue, n.12 November 1947, p.8.Then republished in The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre vol.2 (Contat and Rybalka, 1972), and the anthology of most of his theatre essays, Untheatre de situation. The English translation is also available in George W. Brandt Modern theories of drama: a selection of writings on dramaand theatre 1850-1990 (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=bfECtuuavC4C)

[11][11] Sartre, Jean-Paul, «Théâtre populaire et théâtre bourgeois», Théâtre populaire, n° 15, 1955, repris dans Un théâtre de situations, 1973.[12] Dario FoThe tricks of the trade, Third Day, Pinning the Audience to their Seats: the Situation.[13][13] Horn (2007), p.8

Situationist International 13

[14] Greil Marcus (1989) Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, preview (http:/ / books. google. com/books?id=TVAoeipLL38C) at Google books, pp.279-86

[15] "To have done with the judgment of God" (http:/ / www. snarkout. org/ archives/ 2002/ 11/ 24/ ). Snarkout. 2002-11-24. . Retrieved2008-06-23.

[16] Adriano Scianca (2006-05-09). "COSTRUIRE L'UNITA' D'AREA/2" (http:/ / www. mirorenzaglia. com/ index. php?itemid=8). mirorenzaglia. . Retrieved 2008-06-23.

[17] Boucharenc, Myriam (2005) L'universel reportage (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=uYKf2PLK1BgC), pp.94-6[18] Breton, André (1950) Lettre a Louis Pauwels" sur le «"scandale" de Notre Dame» (http:/ / juralibertaire. over-blog. com/

article-le-scandale-de-notre-dame-41681161. html), in Combat, April 12, 1950, OC III, pp.1024-5[19] Serge Berna, Jean-Louis Brau, Guy Debord & Gil J. Wolman (1952) No More Flat Feet! (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ presitu/

flatfeet. html). Internationale Lettriste #1 (Paris, November 1952). Translated by Ken Knabb. Emphasis in original.[20] (1952) Position of the Lettrist International (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ presitu/ position. html). Internationale Lettriste #1 (Paris,

November 1952). Translated by Ken Knabb.[21] Guy Debord (1955) Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ presitu/ geography. html). Les

Lèvres Nues #6 (Paris, September 1955). Translated by Ken Knabb.[22] Guy Debord (1956) Theory of the Dérive (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ presitu/ geography. html). Les Lèvres Nues #9 (Paris,

November 1956). Reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #2 (Paris, December 1958). Translated by Ken Knabb.[23][23] Horn (2007), pp.5-7, 42[24] Anselm Jappe, 1999, p.65 quotation:

For the first four years of the SI's existence, the pivot of the group was the collaboration betweenDebord and Asger Jorn, who complemented each other well precisely because they were so different.

[25] Debord harshly denounced the degradation in the quality of life under capitalism, also in his 1957 Report. Poli 1991 said on Debord'sReport:

Con il suo Rapporto... del 1957, Debord definisce programmaticamente le basi teoriche delsituazionismo. ...Nel Rapporto di Debord si legge inoltre una durissima critica allo sfruttamento capitalistico delle masseanche nel tempo libero attraverso l'industria del divertimento che abbrutisce la gente con sottoprodottidell'ideologia mistificata della borghesia.

[26] (1963) The Exclusion of the Spurists (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ spur-exclusion. html). Internationale Situationniste #8 (Paris, January1963). Translated by Ken Knabb.

[27] The Fourth SI Conference in London (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ SIOnline/ si/ london. html), (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ 5. conf4.htm) Internationale Situationniste #5 (December 1960)

[28] Nothing to talk about (http:/ / www. kurr. org/ t_nothing. php), (essay/interview on Dieter Kunzelmann) Art-Ist 08, Istanbul, Turkey, HalilAltindere and Sezgin Boynik (editors)

[29] The Fifth SI Conference in Göteborg (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ SIOnline/ si/ goteborg. html), (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ 7. conf5.htm) Internationale Situationniste #7 (April 1962)

[30] Letter (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ debord-15March1962. html) from Guy Debord and Uwe Lausen to the journal Vernissage, 15 March1962

[31] (1963) The Counter-Situationist Campaign in Various Countries (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ SIOnline/ si/ counter. html). InternationaleSituationniste #8 (Paris, January 1963). Translated by Ken Knabb.

[32] Letter (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ debord-18June1962. html) from Guy Debord to Rodolphe Gasche (member of the Gruppe SPUR), 18June 1962

[33] Letter (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ debord-28April1962. html) from Guy Debord To the Spur group, 28 April 1962[34] Anselm Jappe (1999) Guy Debord (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=rfguCi3qQasC), p.177[35] Stewart Home (1987) The Assault on Culture Chapter 8 - The Decline and Fall of the Specto-Situationist Critique (http:/ / www.

stewarthomesociety. org/ ass/ sithree. htm).[36] Karen Kurczynski (2005) Beyond Expressionism: Asger Jorn and the European Avant-Garde, 1941-1961 (http:/ / members. chello. nl/ j.

seegers1/ situationist/ bib_jorn. html#criticism) (New York University: New York 2005)[37] Luther Blissett (2002) Guy Debord Is Really Dead (http:/ / library. nothingness. org/ articles/ SI/ en/ pub_contents/ 9)[38] Plant, Sadie (1992). The Most Radical Gesture. New York: Routledge. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-415-06222-0.[39] Vague, Tom (1997). Anarchy in the Uk: the Angry Brigade. Stirling: AK Press. pp. 13–14. ISBN 978-1-873176-98-6.[40][40] Clark and Nicholson-Smith (Winter 1997), quotation:

In particular the key issue, of how and why the situationists came to have a preponderant role in May1968 - that is, how and why their brand of politics participated in, and to an extent fueled, a crisis of thelate-capitalist State - is still wide open to interpretation.

A description of the portion of the Left at clash with the situationists is found in note #4:

Situationist International 14

The word "Left" ... much of the time is used descriptively, and therefore pessimistically, to indicate a setof interlocking ideological directorships stretching roughly from the statist and workerist fringes ofsocial democracy and laborism to the para-academic journals and think tanks of latter-day Trotskyism,taking in the Stalinist and lightly post-Stalinist center along the way.

[41] Lasn, Kalle (2000) Culture Jam. New York: Quill. Quotation:

In May 1968, the Situationist-inspired Paris riots set off "a chain reaction of refusal" against consumercapitalism.

[42] Bandini & 1994 Preface to second edition

L'I.S. diventa il detonatore, il reiferimento spesso taciuto per ragioni settarie, la fabbrica di metaforeentrate nel linguaggio comune che ne ignora molto spesso l'esatto senso: e su tutte valga la metaforadebordiana della nostra societa' come "societa' dello spettacolo".

[43] Rivarol (magazine), 16 March 1984, quotation:

the Situationist International, the political and revolutionary movement that was at the origin of theevents of May 1968

[44] Présent, 10 March 1984, quotation:

...the enragé Guy Debord, the leader of the situationists, the most nihilistic, the most destructive of theanarcho-surrealist movements, probably the principal promoter of subversion of 1968.

[45] Babronski, Lamy, Brigouleix, France-Soir, 9 and 10 March 1984, quotation:

the situationists, a movement of libertarian tendency that was one of the detonators of the May '68events.

[46] Guy Debord (2003-08). "Words and Bullets - The Condemned of the Lebovici Affair" (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ les-mots. html). NOTBORED!. . Retrieved 2008-06-23.. On May '68, it quotes Babronski et al. (1984)

[47] The monthly magazine 20 Ans, June 1968 issue, quotation:

The Situationist International is the vanguard of the student movement.[48] Rivarol (magazine), May 3rd 1968, quotation:

it has largely been forgotten that, as early as February, the riots at Nantes showed the real face of these'situationists,' fifteen hundred students under red and black flags, the Hall of Justice occupied...

[49][49] Atkins 1977[50] Anselm Jappe, 1999, p.81.[51] Richard Gombin(1971).[52] Marie Luise Syring (1998) (editor) Um 1968: konkrete Utopien in Kunst und Gesellschaft, quotation:

By far the greatest influence that the theory of art and aesthetics exercised upon the protest movement ofstudents and left-wing intellectuals was in all likelihood that of the Situationists, something whichpratically nobody recalls today.

[53] Demonet, Michel et al. (1975) Des Tracts en mai 68. Paris: Champ Libre, 1978.[54] Pascal Dumontier (1990) Les Situationnistes et mai 68: Théorie et la practique de la révolution (1966-1972). Paris: Gérard Lebovici.[55] Christine Fauré (1998) Mai 68: Jour et Nuit[56] De Gaulle, Televised speech of June 7th, 1968. Quoted in René Viénet (1968) Enragés et situationnistes dans le mouvement des occupations

(Paris: Gallimard)[57] René Viénet (1968) Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ enrages. html)

(Translated by Loren Goldner and Paul Sieveking, New York: Autonomedia, 1992), sec.1[58][58] Mustapha Khayati (November 1966)[59] complete (translated) texts (http:/ / tangibleinfo. blogspot. com/ 2010/ 08/ gianfranco-sanguinetti-full-text-of. html)[60] Gianfranco Sanguinetti (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ report. html)[61] Guy Debord (1967) Society of the Spectacle. (Paris, June 1967). Chapter I: Separation Perfected. (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/

tsots01. html)[62] Karl Marx (1867) Volume I, Section 4. The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof. Das Kapital (1867).[63] Lawrence Law (2009) Images and Everyday Life (http:/ / www. archive. org/ details/ SpectacularTimesImagespdf).[64] Robert Chasse, Bruce Elwell, Jonathon Horelick, Tony Verlaan. (1969) Faces of Recuperation (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/

faces. html). Situationist International #1 (New York, June 1969).[65] Francesco Poli (1991) p.63. Quotation:

Situationist International 15

Nel 1972, quindici anni dopo la sua fondazione ... l'Internazionale Situazionista si scioglie in quantoorganizzazione. Durante questi anni, il movimento, caratterizzato da un'ideologia dell'estetico e delpolitico di matrice marxista e surrealista, produce una quantita' consistente di scritti teorici, opuscoli,libri, film e lavori artistici nel campo della pittura e della progettazione di interventi nella dimensioneurbana. Di grande rilievo e' il ruolo degli artisti, tra cui in particolare Asger Jorn, Constant e PinotGallizio;

[66][66] Bandini 1977, quotation:

Per la prima volta dopo il surrealismo, arte e politica vengono affrontate insieme in terminirivoluzionari. ... L'idea chiave e' quella della 'costruzione di situazioni' ... L'urbanesimo unitario ...Fondamentale e' la 'ricerca psicogeografica': studio delle leggi esatte e degli effetti precisi che l'ambientegeografico, coscientemente disposto o no, attua direttamente sul comportamento affettivo degliindividui.

[67] Richard Gombin (1971), chap.3, quotation:

the IS was to attempt an analysis of the modern world from the point of view of everyday life. ... Thecritique of everyday life is not intended to be purely an analysis; it is supposed to lead on to arevolutionary praxis. ... On SI analysis of consumerism: This process causes an accelerating degradationof everyday life.

[68][68] Debord G.E. (1967) : thesis 6, 8, 10, 17, 19, 30, 37, 60, 68, 114, 134[69] Bandini & 1998 Preface to second edition, quotation:

[...] reagire all'avvilita condizione dell'uomo nel sistema capitalista.[70][70] Luttazzi 2008

Question: "Le profezie di Guy Debord a proposito della Società dello spettacolo si avverano sotto inostri occhi: il governo si occupa della «percezione» delle cose da parte dei cittadini più che dellasostanza materiale, dei bisogni, dei fatti. L’invenzione dell’«emergenza sicurezza» è un caso lampante.Come pensi ci si debba muovere in questo scenario?"Answer: "Come suggeriva Debord: con pratiche di vita alternative."

[71] The Beginning of an Era (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ beginning. html), from Situationist International No 12 (September 1969).Translated by Ken Knabb.

[72] Knabb, Ken, ed. Situationist International Anthology, Berkley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1995. pg 50.[73] Gray, Christopher, editor, Leaving the 20th Century: the Incomplete Work of the Situationist International, London: Rebel P, 1998. p26.[74] McDonough, Tom, ed. Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents, Boston: October Press, 2004. pg 259.[75] http:/ / libcom. org/ library/ internationale-situationiste[76] http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/[77] "Situationist International Anthology" (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ index. htm). .[78] Giorgio Agamben (1990), "Glosse in margine ai Commentari sulla societa dello spettacolo" in Debord 1990, pp. 233–250:

On book Society of Spectacle: ”l’analisi più lucida e severa delle miserie e della servitù di una società -quella dello spettacolo, in cui noi viviamo - che ha esteso oggi il suo dominio su tutto il pianeta”

[79] Richard Gombin (1971), chap.3, quotation:

The concept of revolution created by the Situationist International is that of total contestation of moderncapitalism.

[80] Guy Debord (1961) Perspectives for Conscious Changes in Everyday Life (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ 6. everyday. htm). This workwas originally presented by tape recording 17 May 1961 at a conference of the Group for Research on Everyday Life convened in Paris byHenri Lefebvre. Its first print appearance was in Internationale Situationniste #6 (Paris, August 1961).

[81] Editorial Notes (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ is8. html), Internationale Situationniste #8, 1963.[82] Bandini & 1998 Preface to second edition

Non a caso l'I.S. sorge ed e' coeva alla denuncia dello Stalinismo.[83] Das Kapital, entry sentence, p.125: "The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an 'immense

collection of commodities'"[84] "The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of

spectacles." Debord G.E. (1967), thesis 1st.[85][85] Debord G.E. (1967) : thesis 17, 42

Situationist International 16

[86][86] Giorgio Agamben, 1989[87][87] Debord G.E. (1967) : thesis 6, 34[88][88] Debord G.E. (1967) : thesis 24[89][89] Debord G.E. (1967) : thesis 25, 192[90] "The real unity the spectacle proclaims masks the class division on which the real unity of the capitalist mode of production is based."

Debord G.E. (1967) : thesis 72.[91] Guy Debord letter (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ debord-12March1969. html) to Italian section of the SI in Milan and to Mario Perniola in

Rome, 12 March 1969[92] Guy Debord letter (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ debord-9December1969. html) to Paolo Salvadori 9 December [19]69[93] Guy Debord letter (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ debord-17March1970. html) To all the sections of the SI, [17 March 1970][94] Guy Debord letter (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ debord-30July1969. html#_edn4) To Rene Vienet, Wednesday 30 July [19]69[95] The Beginning of an Era (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ 12. era1. htm)[96] Greil Marcus The long walk of the Situationist International in McDonough (2004), Guy Debord and the Situationist International[97] Debord (1967) The Society of the Spectacle, chap. 4 The Proletariat as Subject and as Representation, theses 92-4[98] Riesel, René Preliminaries on Councils and Councilist Organization (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ councils. html), International

Situationniste #12 (September 1969)[99] Clark and Nicholson-Smith (Spring 1997), response to Peter Wollen. Quotation:

So far as Wollen is concerned, the anger was provoked by his essay on the history of the SI, andspecifically his three-sentence treatment of the organization in its last decade. We think he should lookagain at these sentences (which conclude some thirty pages of discussion of the SI's place in modernart), and ask himself whether they are not lofty, contemptuous, and dismissive. That's how they read tous. They seem to epitomize—and, in view of their publication history, to enshrine—a certain effort toturn the SI safely into an art movement, and thereby to minimize its role in the political and socialmovements of the sixties. Like Wollen, presumably, we think that those up-heavals are of much morethan historical interest, and every day they are traduced and trivialized by the culture industry. Much isat stake, therefore. We wanted to denounce a loose conspirancy of silence and misrepresentation whichhas been the response of a portion of the Left to the challenge that the SI poses to their model of politicalaction.

[100] Ken Knabb (2006) SI Anthology, Bibliography - Books about the SI - In English, p.498[101] Mario Lippolis (2000) Notizie su Asger Jorn, situazionista iperpolitico in Jorn 2000[102] Mario Lippolis (2000) Un dialogo tra vandali civilizzatori nello sfacelo dell’impero della merce in Jorn 2000[103] Chaz Bufe. "[[Listen Anarchist! (http:/ / www. seesharppress. com/ listen. html)]"]. See Sharp Press. . Retrieved 2008-06-23.[104] Luther Blissett (2002) [1995] Guy Debord Is Really Dead, Sabotage Editions, ISBN 9780951441732 English edition of Guy Debord è

morto davvero (http:/ / www. scienzepostmoderne. org/ DiversiAutori/ Debord/ DebordMortoDavvero. html)[105] Derrida (2002) Q&A session at Film Forum pp.116-7 quote:

I think you probably know that his work [Debord's] is read now more than when he was alive. At least that'sthe case in France. I don't know if he's read in the States, but in France he's read as presenting a precisecritique and political analysis of the media, of the becoming-spectacle, the exploitation of the 'show' in politicsand in the media, and television.

What's interesting is that in France people, especially the writers or the intellectuals who are often asked toappear on TV - sometimes almost every day -- they [reflexively] mention Guy Debord as their master, and Ihate this! So I never quote Debord when I'm on TV, and I'm almost never on TV - so I guess that's how, in myway, I'm true to Debord.

[106] Lang, Daniel (May 2007). ""Give Us the Dumpsters -Or- Give Us Life": Res Derilictae and the Trash of Free Trade" (http:/ / www.othervoices. org/ 3. 1/ dlang/ index. php). Cultural Recycling (Other Voices) 3 (1). .

[107] "Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti" (http:/ / www. cerysmaticfactory. info/ durutti_le_retour_66. html). Cerysmatic Factory. . Retrieved2007-10-23.

[108] Neil Nehring (December 2006). "The Situationist International in American Hardcore Punk, 1982-2002" (http:/ / www. informaworld.com/ smpp/ 911505403-40919005/ content~content=a758328513~tab=send). Popular Music & Society. . Retrieved 2008-06-23.

Situationist International 17

References• Manifestolibri, ed. (2006) [1991] (in Italian). I situazionisti e la loro storia (http:/ / www. manifestolibri. it/

vedi_indice. php?id=409). Roma: Manifestolibri. ISBN 978-88-7285-438-9. OCLC 173233761.• Agamben, Giorgio (July 6, 1989). "Violenza e speranza nell'ultimo spettacolo: Dal maggio francese a piazza Tian

An Men". Il Manifesto (Rome): 1–2.• Atkins, Guy (1977). Asger Jorn, the Crucial Years: 1954-1964 (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ blindmen81.

htm). New York: Wittenborn Art Books. ISBN 978-0-8150-0696-1. OCLC 3260328.• Bandini, Mirella (1988) [1977] (in Italian). L'estetico, il politico. Da Cobra all'Internazionale situazionista

1948-1957. Ancone: Costa & Nolan. ISBN 978-88-7648-344-8. OCLC 42461565.• Clark, T. J.; Donald Nicholson-Smith (Winter 1997). "Why Art Can't Kill the Situationist International" (http:/ /

www. notbored. org/ why-art. html). October (79): 15–31. Retrieved 2009-02-21.• Clark, T. J.; Donald Nicholson-Smith, Peter Wollen (Spring 1997). "Letters and Responses". October (80):

149–151.• Debord, Guy (1990) (in Italian). Commentari sulla società dello spettacolo e La società dello spettacolo. Milan.

OCLC 84945205.• Debord, Guy (1967). The Society of the Spectacle (http:/ / library. nothingness. org/ articles/ SI/ en/ pub_contents/

4). Black & Red. ISBN 978-0-86091-302-3. OCLC 44236857.• Derrida, Jacques (2002) Q&A session at Film Forum, New York City, October 23, 2002, transcript by Gil

Kofman. Published in Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering Kofman, Jacques Derrida (2005) Derrida: screenplay and essayson the film (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=ICD8tI-LSOUC)

• Gombin, Richard (1975) [1971]. The Origins of Modern Leftism (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/20010824131201/ http:/ / www. geocities. com/ CapitolHill/ Lobby/ 2379/ gomlef01. htm). Michael K. Perl.London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-021846-6. OCLC 247811170. Archived from the original (http:/ / www.geocities. com/ CapitolHill/ Lobby/ 2379/ gomlef01. htm) on 2001-08-24.

• Jappe, Anselm (1999) [1992]. Guy Debord (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=rfguCi3qQasC). Berkeley:University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-21205-3.

• Jorn, Asger (2000). Mario Lippolis. ed (in Italian). Asger Jorn, la comunitá prodiga. Rapallo: Zona.ISBN 978-88-87578-08-9. OCLC 79899532.

• McDonough, Tom (July 2002). "The many lives of Asger Jorn". Art in America.• McDonough, Tom, ed. (April 1, 2004). Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents.

Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-63300-0. OCLC 254164446.• Khayati, Mustapha (1966). On the Poverty of Student Life.• Poli, Francesco (1991). "Sulla scia dei surrealisti" (in Italian). I Situazionisti e la loro storia: 63.

Further reading• Balsebre, Gianluigi. Della critica radicale. Bibliografia ragionata sull'Internazionale situazionista. Con

documenti inediti in italiano Grafton edizioni, Bologna, 1995.• Ford, Simon. The Situationist International: A User's Guide (Black Dog, London, 2004) ISBN

978-1-904772-05-7• Sadler, Simon. The Situationist City. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1998. ISBN 978-0-262-69225-0• Vachon, Marc. L’arpenteur de la ville: L’utopie situationniste et Patrick Straram. Les Éditions Triptyque,

Montreal, 2003 ISBN 978-2-89031-476-4.• Wark, McKenzie. 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International (Princeton Architectural Press, New

York, 2008) ISBN 978-1-56898-789-7• Wark, McKenzie. The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist

International Verso, New York, 2011) ISBN 978-1844677207

Situationist International 18

• The Situationist international (1957-1972) In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni. JRP Ringier, Zurich, 2007ISBN 978-3-905770-14-8

External links• Situationist International Online (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline)• The Situationist International Text Library (http:/ / library. nothingness. org/ articles/ SI/ all/ )

19

Key Figures

Guy Debord

Guy Ernest Debord

Full name Guy Ernest Debord

Born December 28, 1931Paris, France

Died November 30, 1994 (aged 62)Bellevue-la-Montagne, Haute-Loire, France

Era 20th century philosophy

Region Western Philosophy

School Marxism, Letterist International, Situationist

Main interests Social theoryReificationCommodity fetishismClass struggle

Notable ideas SpectacleDétournementPsychogeographyDériveRecuperation

Guy Ernest Debord (December 28, 1931 - November 30, 1994) was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker,member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the SituationistInternational (SI). He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.

Early LifeGuy Debord was born in Paris in 1931. Guy's father, Martial, was a pharmacist who died due to illness when Guywas young. Guy's mother, Paulette Rossi, sent Guy to live with his grandmother in her family villa in Italy. DuringWorld War II, the Rossis left the villa and began to travel from town to town. As a result, Guy attended high schoolin Cannes, where he began his interest in film and vandalism.[1] As a young man, Debord actively opposed theFrench war in Algeria and joined in demonstrations in Paris against it.[2]

Involvement with the LetteristsDebord joined the Letterist International when he was 19. The Letterists were led dictatorially by Isidore Isou until awidely agreed upon schism ended Isou's authority. This schism birthed several factions of Letterists, one of whichwas decidedly led by Debord upon Gil Wolman's unequivocal recommendation.[3] In the 1960s, Debord led theSituationist International group, which influenced the Paris Uprising of 1968. Some consider his book The Society ofthe Spectacle (1967) to be a catalyst for the uprising.[4]

Guy Debord 20

After the Situationist InternationalIn 1972, Debord disbanded the Situationist International due to the fact that he had either expelled or lost all of theoriginal members, including Asger Jorn and, in 1972, Raoul Vaneigem, who wrote a biting criticism of Debord andthe International.[5] Debord then focused on filmmaking with financial backing from the movie mogul and publisherGérard Lebovici (éditions Champ Libre) until Lebovici's mysterious death. Debord was suspected of Lebovici'smurder. Distraught by these accusations and his friend's death, Debord took his films and writings out of productionuntil after his death, when he agreed to have his films released at the request of the American researcher, Thomas YLevin.[6] Debord's two most recognized films date from this period: a film version of Society of the Spectacle (1973)and "In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni" (1978). After the dissolution of the Situationist International,Debord spent his time reading, and occasionally writing, in relative isolation in a cottage at Champot with AliceBecker-Ho, his second wife. He continued to correspond on political and other issues, notably with Lebovici and theItalian situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti[7] He focused on reading material relating to war strategies, e.g.Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, and he designed a war game with Alice Becker-Ho.[8]

Debord was married twice, to Michele Bernstein and Alice Becker-Ho. However, these were open relationships.Debord had noted relationships with other women, including Michèle Mochot, the daughter of a surrealist. Bernsteinproduced a vaguely fictional account of the intimate details of her and Mochot's open relationships with Debord inher novel, All The King's Horses".

Debord's alcohol consumption became problematic for his health, giving him a form of polyneuritis brought on byhis excessive drinking. Apparently, in order to end the suffering induced by this condition, he committed suicide,[9]

shooting himself in the heart at his property in Champot, near Bellevue-la-Montagne, Haute-Loire, on November 30,1994. Just before his death, he filmed (though did not publish) a documentary called "Son art et son temps" (His Artand his Time), an "autobiography" that focused primarily on social issues in Paris in the 1990s. It has been suggestedthat this dark depiction of Debord's "time" was a suicide note of sorts.

On January 29, 2009, 15 years after his death, Christine Albanel, Minister of Culture, classified the archive of hisworks as a "national treasure" in response to a sale request by Yale University.[10][11] The Ministry declared that "hehas been one of the most important contemporary thinkers, with a capital place in history of ideas from the secondhalf of the 20th century."[12] Debord similarly once called his book, The Society of the Spectacle, "the mostimportant book of the twentieth century". He continues to be a canonical and controversial figure particularly amongEuropean scholars of radical politics and modern art.

Written WorksGuy Debord's best known works are his theoretical books, Society of the Spectacle and Comments on the Society ofthe Spectacle. In addition to these he wrote a number of autobiographical books including Mémoires, Panégyrique,Cette Mauvaise Réputation... and Considérations sur l'assassinat de Gérard Lebovici. He was also the author ofnumerous short pieces, sometimes anonymous, for the journals Potlatch, Les Lèvres Nues, Les Chats Sont Verts, andInternationale Situationniste.

Debord was deeply distressed by the hegemony of governments and media over everyday life through mass production and consumption. He criticized both the capitalism of the West and the dictatorial communism of the Eastern bloc for the lack of autonomy allowed to individuals in both governmental structures. Debord postulated that Alienation had gained a new relevance through the invasive forces of the 'spectacle' - "a social relation between people that is mediated by images" consisting of mass media, advertisement and popular culture. The spectacle is a self-fulfilling control mechanism for society. Debord's analysis developed the notions of "reification" and "fetishism of the commodity" pioneered by Karl Marx and Georg Lukács. Semiotics was also a major influence, particularly the work of his contemporary, Roland Barthes, who actually coined the term, "the society of the spectacle", which Debord appropriated as the title for his most celebrated book. Debord's analysis of "the spectaclist society" probed

Guy Debord 21

the historical, economic and psychological roots of the media and popular culture. Central to this school of thoughtwas the claim that alienation is more than an emotive description or an aspect of individual psychology: rather, it is aconsequence of the mercantile form of social organization which has reached its climax in capitalism, as theorizedby Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School. The Situationist International (SI), a political/artistic movementorganized by Debord and his colleagues and represented by a journal of the same name, attempted to create a seriesof strategies for engaging in class struggle by reclaiming individual autonomy from the spectacle. These strategies,including "dérive" and "détournement," drew on the traditions of Lettrism. As founder of the SI, it has beensuggested that Debord felt driven to generalize and define the values, ideas, and characteristics of the entire group,which may have contributed to his hand-picking and expultion of members. However, the hierarchical and dictatorialnature of the SI existed in the groups that birthed it, including the Letterists and the Surrealists.

The SI was the fusion of several extremely small avant-garde artistic tendencies: the Letterist International, theInternational Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (an off-shoot of COBRA), and the London PsychogeographicalAssociation in 1957. After an intense period of theoretical analysis, publication and the expulsion of most of its fewmembers, leading to the Second Situationist International, the Situationist Antinational and the Situationist Bauhaus,Debord dissolved the SI in 1972.

Debord's first book, Mémoires, was bound with a sandpaper cover so that it would destroy other books placed next toit.

Debord has been the subject of numerous biographies, works of fiction, artworks and songs, many of which arecatalogued in the bibliography by Shigenobu Gonzalves, "Guy Debord ou la Beauté du Negatif."

It is often suggested that Debord was opposed to the creation of art. However, Debord writes in the SituationistInternational magazine ("Contre la Cinema") that he believes that "ordinary" (quotidian) people should make"everyday" (quotidian) art; art and creation should liberate from the spectacle, from capitalism, and from the banalityof everyday life in contemporary society. In "The Society of the Spectacle," Debord argues that it is the price put onart that destroys the integrity of the art object, not the material or the creation itself. Perhaps this is how Debordjustified his filmmaking. It is imporant to note that Debord does not equate art to "the spectacle."

FilmsDebord began an interest in (or perhaps a hatred for) film early in his life when he lived in Cannes in the late 1940s.Debord recounted that, during his youth, he was allowed to do very little other than attend films. He said that hewould often leave in the middle of a film screening to go home because films often bored him. Debord joined theLettrists just as Isidore Isou was producing films and the Lettrists attempted to sabotage Charlie Chaplin's trip toParis through negative criticism. Debord directed his first film, "Hurlements en faveur de Sade" in 1952 with thevoices of Michele Bernstein and Gil Holman. The film has no actual images; instead, it shows bright white whenthere is speaking and black when there is not. Long silences separate speaking parts. The film ends with 24 minutesof black silence. People were reported to have angrily left screenings of this film. The script is composed of quotesappropriated from various sources and made into a montage with a sort of non-linear narrative. Later, through thefinancial support of Michele Bernstein and Asger Jorn, Debord produced a second film - "Sur le passage de quelquespersonnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps", which combined scenes with his friends and scenes from massmedia culture. This integration of Debord's world with mass media culture became a running motif climaxing with"The Society of the Spectacle". Debord wrote the book The Society of the Spectacle before writing the movie. Whenasked why he made the book into a movie, Debord said, "I don't understand why this surprised people. The book wasalready written like a script". Debord's last film, "Son Art et Son Temps", was not produced during his lifetime. Itworked as a final statement where Debord recounted his works and a cultural documentary of "his time".

• Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howls for Sade) 1952• Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps (On the Passage of a Few Persons

Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time) 1959 (short film, Dansk-Fransk Experimentalfilmskompagni)

Guy Debord 22

• Critique de la séparation (Critique of Separation) 1961 (short film, Dansk-Fransk Experimentalfilmskompagni)• La Société du spectacle (Society of the Spectacle) 1973 (Simar Films)• Réfutation de tous les judgements, tant élogieux qu’hostiles, qui ont été jusqu’ici portés sur le film « La Société du

spectacle » (Refutation of All the Judgements, Pro or Con, Thus Far Rendered on the Film "The Society of theSpectacle") 1975 (short film, Simar Films)

• In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (We Turn in the Night, Consumed by Fire) (Simar Films) 1978 This filmwas meant to be Debord's last one and is largely autobiographical. The film script was reprinted in 2007 in No: ajournal of the arts.[13]

• Guy Debord, son art, son temps (Guy Debord - His Art and His Time) 1994 (a 'sabotage television film' by GuyDebord and Brigitte Cornand, Canal Plus)

Complete Cinematic Works (AK Press, 2003, translated and edited by Ken Knabb) includes the scripts for all six ofDebord's films, along with related documents and extensive annotations.

Bibliography

Works by Debord• Debord, Guy (1957). Report on the Construction of Situations.• Memoires, 1959 (co-authored by Asger Jorn), reprinted by Allia (2004), ISBN 2-84485-143-6.• La société du spectacle, 1967, numerous editions; in English: The Society of the Spectacle, Zone Books 1995,

ISBN 0-942299-79-5. Society of the Spectacle, Rebel Press 2004, ISBN 0-946061-12-2.• La Véritable Scission dans L'Internationale, Champ Libre, 1972 (co-authored by Gianfranco Sanguinetti); in

English: The Real Split in the International, Pluto Press 2003, ISBN 0-7453-2128-3.• Œuvres cinématographiques complètes, Champ Libre, 1978, new edition in 1994; in English: Complete

Cinematic Works: Scripts, Stills, and Documents, AK Press 2003, ISBN 1-902593-73-1.• Considérations sur l'assassinat de Gérard Lebovici, éditions Gérard Lebovici, 1985; in English: Considerations

on the Assassination of Gérard Lebovici, TamTam 2001, ISBN 2-85184-156-4.• Le Jeu de la Guerre, 1987; in English A Game of War, Atlas Press 2008, ISBN 978-1-900565-38-7• Commentaires sur la société du spectacle, éditions Gérard Lebovici, 1988; in English: Comments on the Society

of the Spectacle, Verso 1990, ISBN 0-86091-302-3.• Panégyrique volume 1, 1989; in English: Panegyric, Verso 2004, reprinted 2009, ISBN 1-85984-665-3; in

Portuguese: "Panegírico" [2002], ISBN 85-87193-77-5.• "The Proletariat as Subject and as Representation"[14]

Further reading• egs.edu [15]

• Internationale situationniste, Paris, 1958-1969. Réédition intégrale chez Van Gennep, Amsterdam 1972, chezChamp Libre 1975, et chez Fayard 1997, ISBN 2-213-59912-2; complete translations are available in German:Situationistische Internationale, Gesammelte Ausgabe des Organs der Situationistischen Internationale,Hamburg: MaD Verlag 1976-1977, ISBN 3-921523-10-9; and in Spanish: Internacional situacionista: textoscompletos en castellano de la revista Internationale situationniste (1958-1969), Madrid: Literatura Gris[1999-2001], ISBN 84-605-9961-2.

• The Situationist International by Simon Ford, Black Dog Publishing, 2004, illustrated.• Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, Greil Marcus, Harvard University Press, 1990, ISBN

0-674-53581-2.• Situationist International Anthology, translated and edited by Ken Knabb, Bureau of Public Secrets 1981; Revised

and Expanded Edition 2006, ISBN 978-0-939682-04-1.

Guy Debord 23

• Guy Debord, Anselm Jappe, University of California Press 1999, ISBN 0-520-21204-5.• Guy Debord - Revolutionary, Len Bracken, Feral House 1997, ISBN 0-922915-44-X.• I situazionisti, Mario Perniola, Roma, Castelvecchi 2005, ISBN 88-7615-068-4.•• Della critica radicale - bibliografia ragionata sull' Internazionale situazionista - con documenti inediti in

italiano, Gianluigi Balsebre, Bologna, Grafton 9, 1995.• The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord., Andrew Hussey, Cape 2001, ISBN 0-224-04348-X.• Guy Debord and the Situationist International, edited by Tom McDonough, MIT Press 2002, ISBN

0-262-13404-7.• "The Beautiful Language of my Century": Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France,

1945-1968, Tom McDonough, MIT Press 2007, ISBN 0-262-13477-2.• Guy Debord, Andy Merrifield, Reaktion 2005, ISBN 1-86189-261-6.• 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International, McKenzie Wark, Princeton Architectural Press, New

York, 2008 ISBN 1-56898-789-7• Los Situacionistas y la Anarquía, Miguel Amorós, Bilbao, Muturreko burutazioak, 2008, ISBN

978-84-88455-98-7.

References[1][1] Bourseiller, Christophe. "Vie et Mort de Guy Debord". Agora.[2] http:/ / www. notbored. org/ guillaume. html[3][3] Bourseiller, ibid[4] Andreotti, L. "Review: Leaving the twentieth century: The Situationist International." Journal of Architectural Education, 49(3), p. 197.[5][5] "The Veritable Split in the SI", 1972[6][6] Guy Debord, "Reflections of the Death of Gérard Lebovici"[7] Guy Debord (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ debord. html)[8] Le Jeu de la Guerre: Relevé des positions successives de toutes les forces au cours d'une partie (http:/ / www. amazon. fr/ dp/ 2070776514)

accessed January 14, 2008[9] Hussey, Andrew (28 July 2001). "Situation Abnormal" (http:/ / www. guardian. co. uk/ books/ 2001/ jul/ 28/ biography. artsandhumanities).

London: The Guardian. . Retrieved July 8, 2009.[10] juralibertaire.over-blog.com (http:/ / juralibertaire. over-blog. com/ article-28060152. html)[11] Gallix, Andrew (March 18, 2009). "The resurrection of Guy Debord" (http:/ / www. guardian. co. uk/ books/ booksblog/ 2009/ mar/ 18/

guy-debord-situationist-international). The Guardian (London). . Retrieved May 4, 2010.[12][12] Journal Officiel de la Republique Francaise du 12 fevrier 2009 (texte 120)[13] nojournal.com (http:/ / www. nojournal. com)[14] prole.info (http:/ / prole. info/ articles/ sos_chapter4. html)[15] http:/ / www. egs. edu/ library/ guy-debord/ biography/

External links• Situationist international online (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ index. html)• Letters 1957-1994 (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ debord. html)• Libcom.org/library: Guy Debord archive (http:/ / libcom. org/ tags/ guy-debord)• A brief biography and several texts, including Society of the Spectacle (http:/ / www. nothingness. org/ SI/

debord. html)• "Comments on the society of the spectacle" (1988) (http:/ / www. notbored. org/ commentaires. html)• Guy Debord and the Situationists (http:/ / catless. ncl. ac. uk/ Obituary/ debord. html)• Audio recordings (http:/ / www. ubu. com/ sound/ debord. html) and Films (http:/ / www. ubu. com/ film/ debord.

html) by Guy Debord at Ubu.web• Michael Löwy on Guy Debord (http:/ / www. radicalphilosophy. com/ default. asp?channel_id=2188&

editorial_id=10310), in Radical Philosophy• The Strange Life of Guy Debord (http:/ / www. philippesollers. net/ Debord. html)(French)

Guy Debord 24

• Films (http:/ / members. chello. nl/ j. seegers1/ situationist/ films_debord. html) / Writings (http:/ / members.chello. nl/ j. seegers1/ situationist/ writings_debord. html) and Literature on Guy Debord (http:/ / members.chello. nl/ j. seegers1/ situationist/ bib_debord. html)

• "On Guy Debord’s Films" (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ debord. films/ index. htm)• Guy Debord and the Aesthetics of Cine-sabotage (http:/ / www. sensesofcinema. com/ 2007/ great-directors/

debord/ )• Constructing Situations: Guy Debord's detournement of fiction (http:/ / th-rough. eu/ writers/ plotegher-eng/

constructing-situations-guy-debords-detournement-fiction)• Class Wargames Presents Guy Debord's The Game of War (http:/ / www. classwargames. net/ ?page_id=149:)

25

Key Concepts

Proletarian internationalismInternational socialism redirects here. For the journal of the same name see International Socialism (journal)

Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is a Marxist social class conceptbased on the view that capitalism is now a global system, and therefore the working class must act as a global class ifit is to defeat it. Workers should struggle in solidarity with their fellow workers in other countries on the basis of acommon class interest.

Proletarian internationalism is closely linked to Marxist goals of world revolution, to be achieved through successiveor simultaneous communist revolutions in all nations. Marxist theory is that world revolution would lead to worldcommunism, and later still, stateless communism.[1][2]

Marxists regard proletarian internationalism as the antonym of bourgeois nationalism but the term has been subjectedto different interpretations by various currents of Marxist thought.

Marx and EngelsProletarian internationalism is summed up in the slogan coined by Marx and Engels, Workers of all countries, unite!,the last line of The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. However, Marx and Engels' approach to the nationalquestion was also shaped by tactical considerations in their pursuit of a long-term revolutionary strategy. In 1848, theproletariat was a small minority in all but a handful of countries. Political and economic conditions needed to ripenin order to advance the possibility of proletarian revolution.

Thus, for example, Marx and Engels supported the emergence of an independent and democratic Poland, which atthe time was divided between Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Rosa Luxemburg's biographer Peter Nettlwrites, "In general, Marx and Engels' conception of the national-geographical rearrangement of Europe was based onfour criteria: the development of progress, the creation of large-scale economic units, the weighting of approval anddisapproval in accordance with revolutionary possibilities, and their specific enmity to Russia."[3] Russia was seen asthe heartland of European reaction at the time.

The First InternationalThe trade unionists who formed the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), sometimes called the FirstInternational, recognised that the working class was an international class which had to link its struggle on aninternational scale. By joining together across national borders, the workers would gain greater bargaining power andpolitical influence.

Founded in 1864, the IWA was the first mass movement with a specifically international focus. At its peak, the IWAhad 5 million members, according to police reports from the various countries in which it had a significantpresence.[4] Repression in Europe and internal divisions between the anarchist and Marxist currents led eventually toits dissolution in 1876. Shortly thereafter, the Marxist and revolutionary socialist tendencies continued theinternationalist strategy of the IWA through the successor organisation of the Second International, though withoutthe inclusion of the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movements.

Proletarian internationalism 26

The Second InternationalProletarian internationalism was perhaps best expressed in the resolution sponsored by Lenin and Rosa Luxemburgat the Seventh Congress of the Second International at Stuttgart in 1907. This asserted that:

"Wars between capitalist states are, as a rule, the outcome of their competition on the world market, foreach state seeks not only to secure its existing markets, but also to conquer new ones. In this, thesubjugation of foreign peoples and countries plays a prominent role. These wars result furthermore fromthe incessant race for armaments by militarism, one of the chief instruments of bourgeois class rule andof the economic and political subjugation of the working class.

"Wars are favored by the national prejudices which are systematically cultivated among civilizedpeoples in the interest of the ruling classes for the purpose of distracting the proletarian masses fromtheir own class tasks as well as from their duties of international solidarity.

"Wars, therefore, are part of the very nature of capitalism; they will cease only when the capitalistsystem is abolished or when the enormous sacrifices in men and money required by the advance inmilitary technique and the indignation called forth by armaments, drive the peoples to abolish thissystem."

The resolution concluded that:

"If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentaryrepresentatives in the countries involved, supported by the coordinating activity of the InternationalSocialist Bureau, to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they considermost effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpeningof the general political situation.

"In case war should break out anyway, it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination andwith all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the massesand thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule."[5]

In fact, Luxemburg and Lenin had very different interpretations of the national question. Lenin and the Bolsheviksopposed imperialism and chauvinism by advocating a policy of national self-determination, including the right ofoppressed nations to secede from Russia. They believed this would help to create the conditions for unity betweenthe workers in both oppressing and oppressed nations. Specifically, Lenin claimed “The bourgeois nationalism of anyoppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression and it is this content that weunconditionally support."[6] By contrast, Luxemburg broke with the mainstream Polish Socialist Party (PPS) in 1893on the national question.

Luxemburg argued in that the nature of Russia had changed since Marx’s day. Russia was now fast developing as amajor capitalist nation, while the Polish bourgeoisie now had its interests linked to Russian capitalism. This hadopened the possibility of a class alliance between the Polish and Russian working class.

In the event the leading party of the Second International, the SPD, voted overwhelmingly in support of Germany'sentry into the First World War by approving war credits on 4 August 1914. Many other member parties of theSecond International followed suit by supporting national governments and the Second International was dissolvedin 1916. Proletarian internationalists characterized the combination of social democracy and nationalism as socialchauvinism.

Proletarian internationalism 27

First World WarThe hopes of internationalists such as Lenin, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were dashed by the initialenthusiasm for war. Lenin tried to re-establish socialist unity against the war at the Zimmerwald conference but themajority of delegates took a pacifist rather than a revolutionary position.

In prison, Luxemburg deepened her analysis with the Junius Pamphlet of 1915. In this document she specificallyrejects the notion of oppressor and oppressed states: "Imperialism is not the creation of one or any group of states. Itis the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately internationalcondition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloofat will." [7]

Proletarian internationalists now argued that the alliances of the First World War had proved that socialism andnationalism were incompatible in the imperialist era, that the concept of national self-determination had becomeoutdated, and in particular, that nationalism would prove to be an obstacle to proletarian unity. Anarcho-syndicalismwas a further working class political current that characterised the war as imperialist on all sides, findingorganisational expression in the Industrial Workers of the World.

The internationalist perspective influenced the revolutionary wave towards the end of the First World War, notablywith Russia's withdrawal from the conflict following the Bolshevik revolution and the revolt in Germany beginningin the naval ports of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven that brought the war to an end in November 1918. However, once thisrevolutionary wave had receded in the early 1920s, proletarian internationalism was no longer mainstream inworking class politics.

The Third International: Leninism versus Left Communism

The polyethnic nature of Budapest in 1919. During the HungarianSoviet Republic in 1919 the Millennium Monument was completelycovered by red textile and at the basement of the obelisk a new statue

was erected: Marx with a worker and a peasant. The statues ofHungarian historic national heroes were toppled. The Hungarian

national symbols were banned.

Following the First World War the internationalsocialist movement was irreconcilably split into twohostile factions: on the one side, the social democrats,who broadly supported their national governmentsduring the conflict; and on the other side Leninists andtheir allies who formed the new Communist Parties thatwere organised into the Third International, which wasestablished in March 1919. However, during theRussian Civil War Lenin and Trotsky more firmlyembraced the concept of national self-determination fortactical reasons. In the Third International the nationalquestion became a major bone of contention betweenmainstream Leninists and "left communists". Howeverthe latter soon became an isolated minority, eitherfalling into line or leaving the International.

By the time the Second World War broke out in 1939 only a few prominent communists such as the Italian MarxistAmadeo Bordiga and the Dutch council communist Anton Pannekoek remained true to the principles of proletarianinternationalism as elaborated in the 1907 resolution. But in 1943, following the collapse of the Mussolini regime inItaly, Bordigists regrouped and founded the Internationalist Communist Party (PCInt). The first edition of the partyorgan, Promoteo (Prometheus) proclaimed: "Workers! Against the slogan of a national war which arms Italianworkers against English and German proletarians, oppose the slogan of the communist revolution, which unites theworkers of the world against their common enemy — capitalism."[8] The PCInt took the view that Luxemburg, notLenin, had been right on the national question.

Proletarian internationalism 28

Socialist internationalismSocialist internationalism allegedly regulated relationship between socialist countries.[9] In reality Soviet Unioncontrolled smaller countries using the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, invading Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in1968. The Sino-Soviet split in 1950s and 1960s produced two groups of socialist countries.

Proletarian internationalism todaySome political groupings such as the International Communist Party, the International Communist Current and theInternational Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (which includes the PCInt) follow the Luxemburgist and Bordigistinterpretations of proletarian internationalism, as do some libertarian communists.

Leftist opposition to proletarian internationalismIn contrast, some socialists have pointed out that social realities such as local loyalties and cultural barriers militateagainst proletarian internationalism. For example, George Orwell believed that "in all countries the poor are morenational than the rich."[10] To this, Marxists might counter that while the rich may have historically had theawareness and education to recognize cross-national interest of class, the poor of those same nations likely have nothad this advantage, making them more susceptible to what Marxists would describe as the false ideology ofpatriotism. Marxists assert that patriotism and nationalism serve precisely to obscure opposing class interests thatwould otherwise pose a threat to the ruling class order.

Marxists would also point out that in times of intense revolutionary struggle (the most evident being therevolutionary periods of 1848-9, 1917–1923 and 1968) internationalism within the proletariat can overtake pettynationalisms as intense class struggles break out in multiple nations at the same time and the workers of thosenations discover that they have more in common with other workers than with their own bourgeoisie.

On the question of imperialism and national determination, proponents of third worldism argue that workers in"oppressor" nations (such as the USA or Israel) must first support national liberation movements in "oppressed"nations (such as Afghanistan or Palestine) before there can be any basis for proletarian internationalism. Forexample, Tony Cliff, a leading figure of the British Socialist Workers Party, denied the possibility of solidaritybetween Palestinians and Israelis in the current Middle East situation, writing "Israel is not a colony suppressed byimperialism, but a settler’s citadel, a launching pad of imperialism. It is a tragedy that some of the very people whohad been persecuted and massacred in such bestial fashion should themselves be driven into a chauvinistic,militaristic fervour, and become the blind tool of imperialism in subjugating the Arab masses." [11]

Trotskyists argue that there must be a permanent revolution in third world countries, in which a bourgeoisierevolution will inevitably lead to a worker's revolution with an international scope. We may see this in the BolshevikRevolution before the movement was stopped by Stalin, a proponent of Socialism in One Country. Because of thisthreat, the bourgeoisie in third world countries will willingly subjugate themselves to national and capitalist interestsin order to prevent a proletarian uprising.

Internationalists would respond that capitalism has proved itself incapable of resolving the competing claims ofdifferent nationalisms, and that the working class (of all countries) is oppressed by capitalism, not by other workers.Moreover, the global nature of capitalism and international finance make "national liberation" an impossibility.[12]

For internationalists, all national liberation movements, whatever their "progressive" gloss, are therefore obstacles tothe communist goal of world revolution.

Proletarian internationalism 29

Footnotes[1] N.I. Bukharin, Marx's Teaching and its Historical Importance, Chapter 4: The Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship and Scientific Communism

(http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ bukharin/ works/ 1933/ teaching/ 4. htm) in Nikolai Bukharin and Others, Marxism and Modern Thought(George Routledge & Sons Ltd., 1935), page 1-90.

[2] Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State & the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution (1918), ChapterV: The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ lenin/ works/ 1917/ staterev/ ch05. htm),Collected Works, Volume 25, p. 381-492

[3][3] J.P Nettl, "Rosa Luxemburg", Oxford University Press 1969. Nettl is quoting Hans-Ulrich Wehler's study, "Sozialdemokratie andNationalstaat" (Würzburg, 1962)

[4][4] Payne, Robert. "Marx: A Biography". Simon and Schuster. New York, 1968. p372[5] International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, August 18–24, 1907 Vorwärts Publishers, Berlin, 1907, pp. 64-66.[6][6] Lenin, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination.[7][7] Rosa Luxemburg, "The Junius Pamphlet" 1915.[8][8] Promoteo, 1 November 1943.[9] http:/ / tapemark. narod. ru/ kommunizm/ 198. html[10] George Orwell, Collected Essays, "The Lion and the Unicorn".[11] Israeli society: no possibility of change, Socialist Worker, 2 February 2009 (http:/ / www. socialistworker. co. uk/ art. php?id=17125/ ).[12] International Communist Current, "Nation of Class" 2nd English edition, 1977 (http:/ / en. internationalism. org/ pamphlets/ nationorclass/ )

References and external links• Internationalism and Nationalism (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ reference/ archive/ liu-shaoqi/ 1952/

internationalism_nationalism/ ch05. htm) by Liu Shaoqi• Marxism and Nationalism (http:/ / www. isreview. org/ issues/ 13/ marxism_nationalism_part1. shtml) by Tom

Lewis• The Importance of Ideas in Party Building (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ history/ etol/ document/ fit/ scully01.

htm) Marry Scully discusses proletarian internationalism• Without anti-capitalist theory and practice no anti-capitalist victory is possible (http:/ / www. marxists. org/

archive/ mandel/ 1980s/ fi/ ch05. htm) Ernest Mandel discusses proletarian internationalism• Dan Jakopovich, In the Belly of the Beast: Challenging US Imperialism and the Politics of the Offensive' (http:/ /

www. cc-ds. org/ discussion/ CONFRONTING_US_IMPERIALISM. pdf)• The Proletariat and War (http:/ / en. internationalism. org/ wr/ 265_ir65_prolandwar. htm) by the International

Communist Current (http:/ / en. internationalism. org)

Class consciousness 30

Class consciousnessClass consciousness is a term used in social sciences and political theory to refer to the beliefs that a person holdsregarding one's social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their class interests.[1][2]

Marxist theoryWhile Marx never used the term "class consciousness", he did make the distinction between "class in itself", which isdefined as a category of people having a common relation to the means of production, and a "class for itself", whichis defined as a stratum organized in active pursuit of its own interests.[2]

Defining a person's social class can be a determinant for his awareness of it. Marxists define classes on the basis oftheir relation to the means of production – especially on whether they own capital. Non-Marxist social scientistsdistinguish various social strata on the basis of income, occupation, or status.[3]

Early in the nineteenth century the labels "working classes" and "middle classes" were already coming into commonusage. "The old hereditary aristocracy, reinforced by the new gentry who owed their success to commerce, industry,and the professions, evolved into an "upper class". Its consciousness was formed in part by public schools (in theBritish sense) and Universities. The upper class tenaciously maintained control over the political system, deprivingnot only the working classes but the middle classes of a voice in the political process."[4]

Georg Lukács' History and Class Consciousness (1923)Class consciousness, as described by Georg Lukács's famous History and Class Consciousness (1923), is opposed toany psychological conception of consciousness, which forms the basis of individual or mass psychology (see Freudor, before him, Gustave Le Bon). According to Lukács, each social class has a determined class consciousness whichit can achieve. In effect, as opposed to the liberal conception of consciousness as the basis of individual freedom andof the social contract, Marxist class consciousness is not an origin, but an achievement (i.e. it must be "earned" orwon). Hence, it is never assured: the proletariat's class consciousness is the result of a permanent struggle tounderstand the "concrete totality" of the historical process.

According to Lukács, the proletariat was the first class in history that may achieve true class consciousness, becauseof its specific position highlighted in the Communist Manifesto as the "living negation" of capitalism. All othersclasses, including the bourgeoisie, are limited to a "false consciousness" which impedes them from understanding thetotality of history: instead of understanding each specific moment as a portion of a supposedly deterministichistorical process, they universalize it and believe it is everlasting. Hence, capitalism is not thought as a specificphase of history, but is naturalized and thought of as an eternal solidified part of history. Says Lukács, this "falseconsciousness", which forms ideology itself, is not a simple error as in classical philosophy, but an illusion whichcan't be dispelled.

Marx described it in his theory of commodity fetishism, which Lukács completed with his concept of reification:alienation is what follows the worker's estrangement to the world following the new life acquired by the product ofhis work. The dominant bourgeois ideology thus leads the individual to see the achievement of his labour take a lifeof its own. Furthermore, specialization is also seen as a characteristic of the ideology of modern rationalism, whichcreates specific and independent domains (art, politics, science, etc.). Only a global perspective can point out how allthese different domains interact, argues Lukács. He also points out how Kant brought to its limit the classicalopposition between the abstract form and the concrete, historical content, which is abstractly conceived as irrationaland contingent. Thus, with Kant's rational system, history becomes totally contingent and is thus ignored. Only withHegel's dialectic can a mediation be found between the abstract form and the abstract notion of a concrete content.[5]

Even if the bourgeois loses his individual point of view in an attempt to grasp the reality of the totality of society and of the historical process, he is condemned to a form of false consciousness. As an individual, he will always see the

Class consciousness 31

collective result of individual actions as a form of "objective law" to which he must submit himself (liberalism hasgone so far as seeing an invisible hand in this collective results, making capitalism the best of all possible worlds).By contrast, the proletariat would be, according to Lukács, the first class in history with the possibility to achieve atrue form of class consciousness, granting it knowledge of the totality of the historical process.

The proletariat takes the place of Hegel's Weltgeist ("World Spirit"), which achieves history through Volkgeist ("thespirit of the people"): the idealist conception of an abstract Spirit making history, which ends in the realm of Reason,is replaced by a materialist conception based not on mythical Spirits, but on a concrete "identical subject-object ofhistory": the proletariat. The proletariat is both the "object" of history, created by the capitalist social formation; butit is also the "subject" of history, as it is its labour that shapes the world, and thus, knowledge of itself is also,necessarily, knowledge of the reality and of the totality of the historical process. The proletariat's class consciousnessis not immediate; class consciousness musn't be mistaken either with the consciousness of one's future and collectiveinterests, opposed to personal immediate interests.

The possibility of class consciousness is given by the objective process of history, which transforms the proletariatinto a commodity, hence objectifying it. Class consciousness is thus not a simple subjective act: "as consciousnesshere is not the consciousness of an object opposed to itself, but the object's consciousness, the act of being consciousof oneself disrupts the objectivity form of its object" (in "Reification and the Proletariat's Consciousness" §3, III"The proletariat's point of view"). In other words, instead of the bourgeois subject and its corresponding ideologicalconcept of individual free will, the proletariat has been transformed into an object (a commodity) which, when ittakes consciousness of itself, transforms the very structure of objectivity, that is of reality.

This specific role of the proletariat is a consequence of its specific position; thus, for the first time, consciousness ofitself (class consciousness) is also consciousness of the totality (knowledge of the entire social and historicalprocess). Through dialectical materialism, the proletariat understands that what the individual bourgeois conceivedas "laws" akin to the laws of nature, which may be only manipulated, as in Descartes's dream, but not changed, is infact the result of a social and historical process, which can be controlled. Furthermore, only dialectical materialismlinks together all specialized domains, which modern rationalism can only think as separate instead of as forming atotality.

Only the proletariat can understand that the so-called "eternal laws of economics" are in fact nothing more than thehistorical form taken by the social and economical process in a capitalist society. Since these "laws" are the result ofthe collective actions of individuals, and are thus created by society, Marx and Lukács reasoned that this necessarilymeant that they could be changed. Any attempt in transforming the so-called "laws" governing capitalism intouniversal principles, valid in all times and places, are criticized by Lukács as a form of false consciousness.

As the "expression of the revolutionary process itself", dialectical materialism, which is the only theory with anunderstanding of the totality of the historical process, is the theory which may help the proletariat in its "struggle forclass consciousness". Although Lukács does not contest the Marxist primacy of the economic infrastructure on theideological superstructure (not to be mistaken with vulgar economic determinism), he considers that there is a placefor autonomous struggle for class consciousness.

In order to achieve a unity of theory and praxis, theory must not only tend toward reality in an attempt to change it;reality must also tend towards theory. Otherwise, the historical process leads a life of its own, while theorists maketheir own little theories, desperately waiting for some kind of possible influence over the historical process.Henceforth, reality itself must tend toward the theory, making it the "expression of the revolutionary process itself".In turn, a theory which has as its goal helping the proletariat achieve class consciousness must first be an "objectivetheory of class consciousness". However, theory in itself is insufficient, and ultimately relies on the struggle ofhumankind and of the proletariat for consciousness: the "objective theory of class consciousness is only the theory ofits objective possibility".

Class consciousness 32

Racial identityIn the United States, class consciousness is somewhat conflated with race consciousness. Because racial minoritycorrelates with poverty in that country, members of racial minorities may focus more on racial identities than onidentities arising from economic class.

CriticismErnest Van Den Haag has argued:

“One way is to say that "objectively" people have common class interests and should act according to the class struggle pattern- but that theyare not always "class conscious". They suffer from "false consciousness". But this is (a) not true; nor would it (b) help much if it were. a)There often are conflicts among objective economic interests within a Marxian class- e.g. among workers. Conflicts occur over migration,international trade, religion or race. And workers often have objective interests in common with capitalists and in conflict with the interests ofother groups of workers. Class membership is no more and possibly less decisive than say race membership in determining one's politicalviews. If you insist on the importance of race, you may persuade people to act according to their "racial interests" for a while- as the Nazis did.If you convince people that they should act according to what you tell them are your class interests, they might. The prophecy becomesself-fulfilling. But the action comes from race or class propaganda- not from race or class as objective facts. b) Further if we assume thatclasses are as important as Marx thought but that people do not act accordingly, because not having read Marx, they are not class conscious- if"class consciousness" becomes independent of class membership- and if class membership is neither sufficient nor necessary to bring theexpected class behaviour, then social classes become one of many groups that influence man's action on some occasions. This would be acorrect theory. But the distinctive point of Marxian theory is that class membership is decisive in determining most and particularly politicalactions. This is patently wrong. ”[6]

References[1] Wright, Erik Olin (2006). "Class" (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=c9yEAm0yVaQC& pg=PA62). In Beckert, Jens & Zafirovski,

Milan. International encyclopedia of economic sociology. Psychology Press. p. 62. ISBN 9780415286732. .[2] Borland, Elizabeth (2008). "Class conciousness" (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=mRGr_B4Y1CEC& pg=PT134). In Parrillo, Vincent

N.. Encyclopedia of social problems, Volume 1. SAGE. p. 134. ISBN 9781412941655. .[3] Jon Elster, An Introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge, England, 1986.[4] (http:/ / www. victorianweb. org/ history/ Class. html. )[5] Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness Complete Text. (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ lukacs/ works/ history/ lukacs3. htm)[6] Marxism as pseudo-science (http:/ / www. reasonpapers. com/ pdf/ 12/ rp_12_3. pdf)

Class struggle 33

Class struggleClass struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marxand Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written][1] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle".[2]

Marx's notion of class has nothing to do with social class in the sociological sense of upper, middle and lower classes(which are often defined in terms of quantitative income or wealth). Instead, in an age of capitalism, Marx describesan economic class.

Membership in a class is defined by one's relationship to the means of production, i.e., one's position in the socialstructure that characterizes capitalism. Marx talks mainly about two classes that include the vast majority of thepopulation, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Other classes such as the petty bourgeoisie share characteristics ofboth of these main classes (see below).

Main class struggleMarxist analysis of society identifies two main social groups:

• Labour (the proletariat or workers) includes anyone who earns their livelihood by selling their labor power andbeing paid a wage or salary for their labor time. They have little choice but to work for capital, since theytypically have no independent way to survive.

• Capital (the bourgeoisie or capitalists) includes anyone who gets their income not from labor as much as from thesurplus value they appropriate from the workers who create wealth. The income of the capitalists, therefore, isbased on their exploitation of the workers (proletariat).

What Marx points out is that members of each of the two main classes have interests in common. These class orcollective interests are in conflict with those of the other class as a whole. This in turn leads to conflict betweenindividual members of different classes.

An example of this would be a factory producing a commodity, such as the manufacture of widgets (a standardimaginary commodity in economics books). Some of the money received from selling widgets will be spent onthings like raw materials and machinery (constant capital) in order to build more widgets. Similarly, some money –variable capital – is spent on labor power. The capitalist would not be in business if not for the surplus value, i.e.,the money received from selling the widgets beyond that spent on constant and variable capital. The amount of thissurplus value – profits, interest, and rent – depends on how much labor workers do for the wages or salaries they arepaid, as well as the amount of income generated from the sale of the product.

Not all class struggle is violent or necessarily radical (as with strikes and lockouts). Class antagonism may instead beexpressed as low worker morale, minor sabotage and pilferage, and individual workers' abuse of petty authority andhoarding of information. It may also be expressed on a larger scale by support for socialist or populist parties. On theemployers' side, the use of union-busting legal firms and the lobbying for anti-union laws are forms of class struggle.

Not all class struggle is a threat to capitalism, or even to the authority of an individual capitalist. A narrow strugglefor higher wages by a small sector of the working-class (what is often called "economism") hardly threatens thestatus quo. In fact, by applying "craft union" tactics of excluding other workers from skilled trades, an economisticstruggle may even weaken the working class as a whole by dividing it. Class struggle becomes more important in thehistorical process as it becomes more general, as industries are organized rather than crafts, as workers' classconsciousness rises, and as they self-organize away from political parties. Marx referred to this as the progress of theproletariat from being a class "in itself" (a position in the social structure) to being one "for itself" (an active andconscious force that could change the world).

Marx thought that this conflict was central to the social structure of capitalism and could not be abolished without replacing the system itself. Further, he argued that the objective conditions under capitalism would likely develop in a way that encouraged a proletariat organized collectively for its own goals to develop: the accumulation of surplus

Class struggle 34

value as more means of production by the capitalists would allow them to become more and more powerful,encouraging overt class conflict. If this is not counteracted by increasing political and economic organization byworkers, it would inevitably cause an extreme polarization of the classes, encouraging the revolution that woulddestroy capitalism itself.

The revolution would lead to a socialist society in which the proletariat controlled the state, that is, "the dictatorshipof the proletariat". The original meaning of this term was a workers' democracy, not a dictatorship in the modernsense of the word. For Marx, democracy under capitalism is a bourgeois dictatorship.

Even after a revolution, the two classes would struggle, but eventually the struggle would recede and the classesdissolve. As class boundaries broke down, the state apparatus would wither away. According to Marx, the main taskof any state apparatus is to uphold the power of the ruling class; but without any classes there would be no need for astate. That would lead to the classless, stateless communist society.

"Minor" classesMarx noted that other classes existed, but said that as time (and capitalism) moved forward, these other classeswould disappear, and things would become stratified until only two classes remained, which would become moreand more polarized as time went on. Other classes are:

• the self-employed (petit bourgeoisie)—these are people who own their own means of production, thus work forthemselves. Marx saw these people swept away by the march of capitalism, such as family farms being replacedby agribusiness, or many small stores run by their owners being replaced by a supermarket, and so forth.

• managers, supervisors, white-collar staff, and security officers—these are intermediaries between capitalists andthe proletariat. Since they are paid a wage, technically they are workers, but they represent a privileged stratum ofthe proletariat, typically serving the capitalists' interest. These are often classified as class traitors by socialistorganizations and government because even though they share the working man's plight, they actively support thestatus quo.

• soldiers and servicemen—Also widely considered to be class traitors, Marx theorized that the army was a part ofthe proletariat, similarly to the managers and supervisors, but with significantly lower wages and standard ofliving. Trotsky postulated in the theory of Permanent Revolution that the support of the army would be necessaryfor the Russian Revolution to succeed.

• the lumpenproletariat—the chronically unemployed. These people have at most a tenuous connection toproduction. Since Marx, many states have tried to compensate for the difficulties experienced by workers due tocyclical unemployment. Unfortunately there is also a growing structural unemployment in which people arepermanently dependent on welfare programs or employed relatives. These people form the lumpenproletariat,along with thieves and con artists of various kinds who depend on crime for their income. Marx saw the problemof unemployment growing more acute as capitalism went on, so this class would exist prior to the foreseenrevolution. Marx deemed the lumpenproletariat as unimportant, and not playing a major role in the labor/capitalclass struggle. Since they would benefit in his view from a revolution, they would be on the side of the proletariat.But he saw them as unreliable, since they were likely to be mercenary in their attitudes. This view was revised bysome followers of Marx such as Mao Zedong, who saw a greater role for the lumpenproletariat in class struggle.

•• domestic servants, who often had a better standard of living than the proletariat, but who were considered bysociety as by nature dependent upon their literal masters, and so male servants were not considered worthy ofreceiving the vote.

• peasants, who still represented a large part of the population well into the 20th century. Capital for such workers—for example, a tractor or reaping machine—was in most countries for a long time unthinkable, so they were not considered some sort of rural proletarians. Trotsky's analysis of the peasant demonstrated this class to be divided in loyalty between the capitalist class and the proletariat, in that the wealthier land-owning peasants (Soviets found this in the Kulak) had an interest in maintaining a capitalist system, while the poor landless

Class struggle 35

peasants had interests more aligned with those of the proletariat; thus is why the peasant class could not lead arevolution.

Class and race struggle

Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934

According to Michel Foucault, in the 19th century the essentialistnotion of the "race" was incorporated by racists, biologists, andeugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "biological race"which was then integrated to "state racism". On the other hand,Marxists transformed the notions of the "race" and the "racestruggle" into the concept of "class struggle". In a letter toFriedrich Engels in 1882 Karl Marx wrote: You know very wellwhere we found our idea of class struggle; we found it in the workof the French historians who talked about the race struggle.[3] ForFoucault, the theme of social war provides overriding principlethat connects class and race struggle.[4]

Moses Hess, an important theoretician of the early socialistmovement, in his "Epilogue" to "Rome and Jerusalem" argued that "the race struggle is primary, the class strugglesecondary... With the cessation of race antagonism, the class struggle will also come to a standstill. The equalizationof all classes of society will necessarily follow the emancipation of all the races, for it will ultimately become ascientific question of social economics."[5]

In modern times, emerging schools of thought in the U.S. and other countries hold the opposite to be true. That therace struggle is less important, since the primary struggle is that of class since labor of all races face the sameproblems and injustices. The main example given is the United States, which has the most politically weak workingclass of any developed nation, where race is held as a distraction that has kept labor divided and unorganized.[6]

Non-Marxist perspectivesSocial commentators, historians and socialist theorists had commented on class struggle for some time before Marx,as well as the connection between class struggle, property, and law: Augustin Thierry,[7] François Guizot,François-Auguste Mignet and Adolphe Thiers. The Physiocrats, David Ricardo, and after Marx, Henry George notedthe inelastic supply of land and argued that this created certain privileges (economic rent) for landowners.

Proudhon, in What is Property? (1840) states that "certain classes do not relish investigation into the pretended titlesto property, and its fabulous and perhaps scandalous history."[8]

Fascists have often opposed class struggle and instead have attempted to appeal to the working class while promisingto preserve the existing social classes and have proposed an alternative concept known as class collaboration.

Class struggle 36

ChronologyRiots with a basically nationalist background are not included.

Classical antiquity•• Roman Servile Wars

Middle Ages• Ciompi in Florence 1378• Jacquerie - France 14th century

Modern era• German Peasants' War since 1524• English Civil War (1642–1651) (Diggers)• French Revolution since 1789[9]

• Canut revolts in Lyon since 1831 - often considered as the beginning of the modern labor movement• 1848[10]

• Paris Commune 1871• Donghak Peasant Revolution in Korea 1893/94•• 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt• Mexican Revolution since 1910• October Revolution in 1917• Spartacist uprising in Germany 1919• Seattle General Strike of 1919 in Seattle• General Strike of 1919 in Spain• Winnipeg General Strike 1919• Ruhr Uprising in Germany 1920• Kronstadt rebellion 1921• March riots in Central Germany 1921•• 1926 United Kingdom general strike•• 1934 West Coast waterfront strike• Spanish Civil War 1936-1939•• Uprising of 1953 in East Germany• Cuban Revolution 1953-1959• Hungarian Revolution of 1956 - foundation of worker's councils•• Poznań 1956 protests• Mai 68 in France• 1968/69: intensive class struggles in Italy• Wild cats in Western Germany in 1969• Winter of Discontent 1978/79• UK miners' strike (1984–1985)•• 1993 Russian constitutional crisis• 2006 Oaxaca protests in Mexico•• 2008 Greek riots•• 2010 Kyrgyzstani uprising•• Egyptian Revolution of 2011•• 2011 England riots

Class struggle 37

Literature• The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present, ed. by Immanuel Ness, Malden,

MA [etc.]: Wiley & Sons, 2009.• Louis Adamic, Dynamite: The story of class violence in America, Revised Edition (1934)• Leo Zeilig (Editor), Class Struggle and Resistance in Africa, New Clarion Press, 2002.• Li Yi, The Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratification, University Press of America, 2005.•• Gerson Antell/Walter Harris, "Economics For Everybody", Amsco School Publications, 2007

Footnotes[1][1] The bracketed word reflects the footnote that Engels added later, noting that pre-class societies existed.[2] Communist Manifesto, 1848[3] Quoted in Society Must be Defended by Michel Foucault (trans. David Macey), London: Allen Lane, Penguin Press (1976, 2003), p. 79[4] Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's "History of Sexuality" and the Colonial Order of Things , Duke University

Press (1995), p.71-72[5] quoted in Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews by Jonathan Frankel, Cambridge University Press (1981), p.

22.[6][6] The Tavis Smiley Show/NPR, various interviews.[7] Augustin Thierry: Recueil des monuments inédits de l'histoire du Tiers état (http:/ / books. google. lu/ books?id=c5A1lIZb5H8C&

dq=Histoire+ du+ Tiers+ Ã�tat& source=gbs_navlinks_s)[8] Pierre Proudhon, What is Property?, chapter 2, remark 2.[9][9] see Daniel Guérin, Class Struggle in the First French Republic, Pluto Press 1977[10] Karl Marx, Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich 1848 bis 1850 MEW Bd. 7

External links

Women and class struggle• Committee for Asian women (http:/ / www. cawinfo. org/ )

Pro-Marxist• Collective Action Notes (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20091027131300/ http:/ / geocities. com/ CapitolHill/

Lobby/ 2379/ )•• Karl Marx and Frederick Engels• Bertell Ollman and Class Struggle Articles on Dialectics (http:/ / bertellollman. com)• Communist Manifesto (http:/ / www. anu. edu. au/ polsci/ marx/ classics/ manifesto. htm) (1848)• Karl Kautsky The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) (1888) (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ kautsky/ 1892/

erfurt/ )- contemporary book.• The Marxists Internet Archive (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ )• Class Struggle and Articles on Dialectics (http:/ / dialectics. net)• Karl Marx Wage Labour and Capital (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ marx/ works/ 1847/ wage-labour/

index. htm)• libcom.org (http:/ / www. libcom. org/ ) UK based class struggle resource• Karl Marx Capital, Volume One (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ marx/ works/ 1867-c1/ ch01. htm)• ClassStruggle.Com Critical Articles on Class Struggle (http:/ / classstruggle. com)• Secular Stagnation, Keynes and Marx (http:/ / secularstagnation. com)• Beyond PostCapitalism.Net (http:/ / postcapitalism. net)

Class struggle 38

Anti-Marxist• "The Marxian Class Conflict Doctrine" (http:/ / www. mises. org/ efandi/ ch25. asp) Excerpt from Economic

Freedom and Interventionism by Ludwig von Mises• "Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis" (http:/ / www. mises. org/ journals/ jls/ 9_2/ 9_2_5. pdf), by

Hans-Hermann Hoppe• Post Capitalism and Kondratieff as Alternative to Class Struggle (http:/ / postcapitalism. net)

CommunismCommunism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless,stateless and revolutionary socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production. Thismovement, in its Marxist-Leninist interpretations, significantly influenced the history of the 20th century, which sawintense rivalry between the "socialist world" (socialist states ruled by Communist parties) and the "western world"(countries with market economies and Liberal democratic government), culminating in the Cold War between theEastern bloc and the "Free World".

In Marxist theory, communism is a specific stage of historical development that inevitably emerges from thedevelopment of the productive forces that leads to a superabundance of material wealth, allowing for distributionbased on need and social relations based on freely associated individuals.[1][2] The exact definition of communismvaries, and it is often mistakenly, in general political discourse, used interchangeably with socialism; however,Marxist theory contends that socialism is just a transitional stage on the road to communism. Leninists revised thistheory by introducing the notion of a vanguard party to lead the proletarian revolution and to hold all political powerafter the revolution, "in the name of the workers" and with worker participation, in a transitional stage betweencapitalism and socialism.

Communists such as council communists and non-Marxist libertarian communists and anarcho-communist opposethe idea of a vanguard party and a transition stage, and advocate for the construction of full communism to beginimmediately upon the abolition of capitalism. There is a very wide range of theories amongst those particularcommunists in regards to how to build the types of institutions that would replace the various economic engines(such as food distribution, education, and hospitals) as they exist under capitalist systems—or even whether to do soat all. Some of these communists have specific plans for the types of administrative bodies that would replace thecurrent ones, while always qualifying that these bodies would be decentralised and worker-owned, just as theycurrently are within the activist movements themselves. Others have no concrete set of post-revolutionary blueprintsat all, claiming instead that they simply trust that the world's workers and poor will figure out proper modes ofdistribution and wide-scale production, and also coordination, entirely on their own, without the need for anystructured "replacements" for capitalist state-based control.

In the modern lexicon of what many sociologists and political commentators refer to as the "political mainstream",communism is often used to refer to the policies of states run by communist parties, regardless of the practicalcontent of the actual economic system they may preside over. Examples of this include the policies of the SocialistRepublic of Vietnam where the economic system incorporates "doi moi", the People's Republic of China (PRC, orsimply "China") where the economic system incorporates "socialist market economy", and the economic system ofthe Soviet Union which was described as "state capitalist" by non-Leninist socialists and later by communists whoincreasingly opposed the post-Stalin era Soviet model as it progressed over the course of the 20th century (e.g.Maoists, Trotskyists and libertarian communists)—and even at one point by Vladimir Lenin himself.[3]

Communism 39

Etymology and terminologyCommunism comes from the Latin word communis, which means "shared" or "belong to all".[4][5]

In the schema of historical materialism, communism is the idea of a free society with no division or alienation, wheremankind is free from oppression and scarcity. A communist society would have no governments, countries, or classdivisions. In Marxist theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate system between capitalism andcommunism, when the government is in the process of changing the means of ownership from privatism to collectiveownership.[6] In political science, the term "communism" is sometimes used to refer to communist states, a form ofgovernment in which the state operates under a one-party system and declares allegiance to Marxism-Leninism or aderivative thereof.

In modern usage, the word "communism" is still often used to refer to the policies of self-declared socialistgovernments comprising one-party states which were single legal political party systems operating under centrallyplanned economies and a state ownership of the means of production, with the state, in turn, claiming that itrepresented the interests of the working classes. A significant sector of the modern communist movement alleges thatthese states never made an attempt to transition to a communist society, while others even argue that they neverachieved a legitimate socialism. Most of these governments based their ideology on Marxism-Leninism, but they didnot call the system they had set up "communism", nor did they even necessarily claim at all times that the ideologywas the sole driving force behind their policies: Mao Zedong, for example, pursued New Democracy, and Lenin inthe early 1920s enacted war communism; later, the Vietnamese enacted doi moi, and the Chinese switched tosocialism with Chinese characteristics. The governments labeled by other governments as "communist" generallyclaimed that they had set up a transitional socialist system. This system is sometimes referred to as state socialism orby other similar names.

"Pure communism" is a term sometimes used to refer to the stage in history after socialism, although just as manycommunists use simply the term "communism" to refer to that stage. The classless, stateless society that is meant tocharacterise this communism is one where decisions on what to produce and what policies to pursue are made in thebest interests of the whole of society—a sort of 'of, by, and for the working class', rather than a rich class controllingthe wealth and everyone else working for them on a wage basis. In this communism the interests of every member ofsociety is given equal weight to the next, in the practical decision-making process in both the political and economicspheres of life. Karl Marx, as well as some other communist philosophers, deliberately never provided a detaileddescription as to how communism would function as a social system, nor the precise ways in which the workingclass could or should rise up, nor any other material specifics of exactly how to get to communism from capitalism.In the Communist Manifesto, Marx does lay out a 10-point plan advising the redistribution of land and production tobegin the transition to communism, but he ensured that even this was very general and all-encompassing. It hasalways been presumed that Marx intended these theories to read this way specifically so that later theorists inspecific situations could adapt communism to their own localities and conditions.

TheoryAccording to communist theory, the only way to abolish capitalist inequalities is to have the proletariat (working class), who collectively constitute the main producer of wealth in society, and who are perpetually exploited and marginalised by the bourgeoisie (wealthy class), to overthrow the capitalist system in a wide-ranging social revolution.[7] The revolution, in the theory of most individuals and groups espousing communist revolution, usually involves an armed rebellion. The revolution espoused can be explained by theorists in many different ways, and usually depends on the environment in which the particular communism theory originates. For example, the Chinese Revolution involved military combat between the Chinese Red and the Chinese Nationalist Armies, while the Vietnamese Revolution was characterised by guerilla warfare between the heavily-backed Vietnam People's Army and various Western armies, culminating in the Vietnam War which ended in 1975. Meanwhile, the Cuban Revolution was essentially a coup that did not involve intensive wide-scale military conflict between Fulgencio

Communism 40

Batista's soldiers and those of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. In fact, Castro initially did not believe that a vanguardparty was necessary in Cuba's case, a view boosted by Batista's unpopularity at the time of the actual armed conflictbetween the two sides. Regardless of the specific form a communist revolution takes, its aim is for the working classto replace the exploiter class as the ruling class to establish a society without class divisions, called socialism, as aprelude to attempting to achieve the final stage of communism.[8]

History

Communist (red) and formerly Communist (orange) countries of the world.

"Communism differs from allprevious movements in that itoverturns the basis of all earlierrelations of production andintercourse, and for the first timeconsciously treats all naturalpremises as the creatures ofhitherto existing men, stripsthem of their natural characterand subjugates them to thepower of the united individuals."

— Karl Marx, The German Ideology, 1845[9]

Early communismFurther information: Primitive communism, Religious communism, and Utopian socialism

The origins of communism are debatable, and there are various historical groups, as well as theorists, whose beliefshave been subsequently described as communist. German philosopher Karl Marx saw primitive communism as theoriginal, hunter-gatherer state of humankind from which it arose. For Marx, only after humanity was capable ofproducing surplus, did private property develop. The idea of a classless society first emerged in Ancient Greece.[10]

Plato in his The Republic described it as a state where people shared all their property, wives, and children: "Theprivate and individual is altogether banished from life and things which are by nature private, such as eyes and earsand hands, have become common, and in some way see and hear and act in common, and all men express praise andfell joy and sorrow on the same occasions."[10]

In the history of Western thought, certain elements of the idea of a society based on common ownership of propertycan be traced back to ancient times. Examples include the Spartacus slave revolt in Rome.[11] The 5th centuryMazdak movement in what is now Iran has been described as "communistic" for challenging the enormous privilegesof the noble classes and the clergy, criticizing the institution of private property and for striving for an egalitariansociety.[12]

At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the inspiration ofScripture.[13] In the medieval Christian church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders sharedtheir land and other property (see Religious and Christian communism). These groups often believed that concernwith private property was a distraction from religious service to God and neighbour.

Communist thought has also been traced back to the work of 16th century English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia (1516), More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England. In England, a Puritan religious group known as the "Diggers" advocated the abolition of private ownership of land.[14] Eduard Bernstein, in his 1895 Cromwell and Communism[15] argued that several groupings in the English Civil War, especially the Diggers espoused clear communistic, agrarian ideals, and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude to

Communism 41

these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.[16] Criticism of the idea of private property continued into theAge of Enlightenment of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France. Later,following the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine.[17] François NoëlBabeuf, in particular, espoused the goals of common ownership of land and total economic and political equalityamong citizens.

Various social reformers in the early 19th century founded communities based on common ownership. But unlikemany previous communist communities, they replaced the religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropicbasis.[18] Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony in Indiana (1825), and CharlesFourier, whose followers organized other settlements in the United States such as Brook Farm (1841–47).[18] Laterin the 19th century, Karl Marx described these social reformers as "utopian socialists" to contrast them with hisprogram of "scientific socialism" (a term coined by Friedrich Engels). Other writers described by Marx as "utopiansocialists" included Saint-Simon.

In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement of 19th century Europe. As the IndustrialRevolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat—a new class of urbanfactory workers who laboured under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Marx and hisassociate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized theterm in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto.[18] Engels, who lived in Manchester, observed theorganization of the Chartist movement (see History of British socialism), while Marx departed from his universitycomrades to meet the proletariat in France and Germany.

Growth of modern communism

Vladimir Lenin after his return toPetrograd.

In the late 19th century, Russian Marxism developed a distinct character. Thefirst major figure of Russian Marxism was Georgi Plekhanov. Underlying thework of Plekhanov was the assumption that Russia, less urbanized andindustrialized than Western Europe, had many years to go before society wouldbe ready for proletarian revolution to occur, and a transitional period of abourgeois democratic regime would be required to replace Tsarism with asocialist and later communist society. (EB)

In Russia, the 1917 October Revolution was the first time any party with anavowedly Marxist orientation, in this case the Bolshevik Party, seized statepower. The assumption of state power by the Bolsheviks generated a great dealof practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predictedthat socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the mostadvanced capitalist development. Russia, however, was one of the poorestcountries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minorityof industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeoisiecapitalism.[19] Other socialists also believed that a Russian revolution could be the precursor of workers' revolutionsin the West.

The moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenin's Bolshevik plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fullydeveloped. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace, bread, and land"which tapped the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, the peasants'demand for land reform, and popular support for the Soviets.[20]

The usage of the terms "communism" and "socialism" shifted after 1917, when the Bolsheviks changed their name to Communist Party and installed a single party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies under Leninism. The Second International had dissolved in 1916 over national divisions, as the separate national parties

Communism 42

that composed it did not maintain a unified front against the war, instead generally supporting their respectivenation's role. Lenin thus created the Third International (Comintern) in 1919 and sent the Twenty-one Conditions,which included democratic centralism, to all European socialist parties willing to adhere. In France, for example, themajority of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party split in 1921 to form the French Section ofthe Communist International (SFIC). Henceforth, the term "Communism" was applied to the objective of the partiesfounded under the umbrella of the Comintern. Their program called for the uniting of workers of the world forrevolution, which would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as well as thedevelopment of a socialist economy. Ultimately, if their program held, there would develop a harmonious classlesssociety, with the withering away of the state.

Socialist countries within the Marxist-Leninist or Maoist definition in 1980.Color-coding indicates communist alignment with the Soviet Union (red), China

(yellow), or independent status (black).

During the Russian Civil War (1918–1922),the Bolsheviks nationalized all productiveproperty and imposed a policy of warcommunism, which put factories andrailroads under strict government control,collected and rationed food, and introducedsome bourgeois management of industry.After three years of war and the 1921Kronstadt rebellion, Lenin declared the NewEconomic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which wasto give a "limited place for a limited time tocapitalism." The NEP lasted until 1928,when Joseph Stalin achieved party

leadership, and the introduction of the first Five Year Plan spelled the end of it. Following the Russian Civil War, theBolsheviks, in 1922, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or Soviet Union, from the formerRussian Empire.

Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the communist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with activecells of members as the broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the partyas being reliable and completely subject to party discipline.[21]

Following World War II, Communists consolidated power in Central and Eastern Europe, and in 1949, theCommunist Party of China (CPC), led by Mao Zedong, established the People's Republic of China, which wouldfollow its own ideological path of Communist development following the Sino-Soviet split. Cuba, North Korea,Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, and Mozambique were among the other countries in the Third World thatadopted or imposed a Communist government at some point. By the early 1980s almost one-third of the world'spopulation lived in Communist states, including the former Soviet Union and PRC.

Communist states such as the Soviet Union and PRC succeeded in becoming industrial and technological powers,challenging the capitalists' powers in the arms race and space race.

Communism 43

Cold War years

USSR postage stamp depicting thecommunist state launching the first

artificial satellite Sputnik 1.

By virtue of the Soviet Union's victory in the Second World War in 1945, theRed Army occupied nations not only in Central and Eastern Europe, but alsoin East Asia; consequently, communism as a movement spread to many newcountries. This expansion of communism both in Europe and Asia gave riseto a few different branches of its own, such as Maoism.[22]

Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many newnations into the sphere of Soviet influence and strength in Central and EasternEurope. Governments modelled on Soviet Communism took power withSoviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland,Hungary and Romania. A Communist government was also created underMarshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to theexpulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform, which had replaced theComintern. Titoism, a new branch in the world Communist movement, waslabelled "deviationist". Albania also became an independent Communistnation after World War II.[23]

By 1950, the Chinese Communists held all of Mainland China, thuscontrolling the most populous nation in the world. Other areas where risingCommunist strength provoked dissension and in some cases led to actual fighting through conventional and guerrillawarfare include the Korean War, Laos, many nations of the Middle East and Africa, and notably succeeded in thecase of the Vietnam War against the military power of the United States and its allies. With varying degrees ofsuccess, Communists attempted to unite with nationalist and socialist forces against what they saw as Westernimperialism in these poor countries.

Fear of communism

A 1947 propaganda book published bythe Catechetical Guild EducationalSociety warning of the dangers of a

communist revolution.

With the exception of the contribution in World War II by the Soviet Union,China, and the Italian resistance movement, communism was seen as a rival,and a threat to western democracies and capitalism for most of the 20thcentury.[24] This rivalry peaked during the Cold War, as the world's tworemaining superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, polarizedmost of the world into two camps of nations. This was characterized in theWest as The Free World vs. Behind the Iron Curtain. It supported the spreadof their respective economic and political systems (capitalism andcommunism) and strengthened their military powers. As a result, the campsdeveloped new weapon systems, stockpiled nuclear weapons, and competedin space exploration.

Near the beginning of the Cold War, on February 9, 1950, Senator JosephMcCarthy from Wisconsin accused 205 Americans working in the StateDepartment of being "card-carrying communists".[25] The fear of communismin the U.S. spurred McCarthyism, aggressive investigations and thered-baiting, blacklisting, jailing and deportation of persons suspected offollowing communist or other left-wing ideologies. Many famous actors andwriters were placed on a blacklist from 1950 to 1954, which meant theywould not be hired and would be subject to public disdain.[24]

Communism 44

After the dissolution of the Soviet UnionFurther information: List of far-left parties with parliamentary representation

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union and relaxed central control, in accordance withreform policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The Soviet Union did not intervene as Poland,East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary all abandoned Communist rule by 1990. In 1991,the Soviet Union dissolved.

By the beginning of the 21st century, states controlled by communist parties under a single-party system include thePeople's Republic of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and informally North Korea. Communist parties, or theirdescendant parties, remain politically important in many countries. President Dimitris Christofias of Cyprus is amember of the Progressive Party of Working People, but the country is not run under single-party rule. In SouthAfrica, the Communist Party is a partner in the ANC-led government. In India, communists lead the governments ofthree states, with a combined population of more than 115 million. In Nepal, communists hold a majority in theparliament.[26] In Brazil, the PCdoB is a part of the parliamentary coalition led by the ruling democratic socialistWorkers' Party and is represented in the executive cabinet of Dilma Rousseff.

The People's Republic of China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy; it, along with Laos, Vietnam, and,to a lesser degree Cuba, has reduced state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. Chinese economicreforms started in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping; since then, China has managed to bring down thepoverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just 6% in 2001.[27] The People's Republic of China runs Special EconomicZones dedicated to market-oriented enterprise, free from central government control. Several other communist stateshave also attempted to implement market-based reforms, including Vietnam.

A tableau in a communist rally in Kerala,India, of a young farmer and worker.

Theories within Marxism as to why communism in Central and EasternEurope was not achieved after socialist revolutions pointed to such elementsas the pressure of external capitalist states, the relative backwardness of thesocieties in which the revolutions occurred, and the emergence of abureaucratic stratum or class that arrested or diverted the transition press in itsown interests. (Scott and Marshall, 2005) Marxist critics of the Soviet Union,most notably Trotsky, referred to the Soviet system, along with otherCommunist states, as "degenerated" or "deformed workers' states", arguingthat the Soviet system fell far short of Marx's communist ideal and he claimedthe working class was politically dispossessed. The ruling stratum of theSoviet Union was held to be a bureaucratic caste, but not a new ruling class,despite their political control. Anarchists who adhere to Participatoryeconomics claim that the Soviet Union became dominated by powerfulintellectual elites who in a capitalist system crown the proletariat's labour onbehalf of the bourgeoisie.

Non-Marxists, in contrast, have often applied the term to any society ruled bya communist party and to any party aspiring to create a society similar to such existing nation-states. In the socialsciences, societies ruled by communist parties are distinct for their single party control and their socialist economicbases. While some social and political scientists applied the concept of "totalitarianism" to these societies, othersidentified possibilities for independent political activity within them,[28][29] and stressed their continued evolution upto the point of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its allies in Central Europe during the late 1980s and early1990s.

Communism 45

A Communist demonstration in Red Square,Moscow, July 2009.

Marxist schools of communism

“Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.”—Karl Marx, 1844[30]

Variations to the communist movement have developed, each based upon the ideas of different political theorists,usually as additions or interpretations of various forms of Marxism, the collective philosophies of the Germanphilosophers Karl Marx.[31] Marxism-Leninism is the synthesis of Vladimir Lenin's contributions to Marxism, suchas how a revolutionary party should be organised;[32] Trotskyism is Leon Trotsky's conception of Marxism,influenced by Lenin, and meanwhile, Maoism is Mao Zedong's interpretation of Marxism to suit the conditions ofChina at that time, and is fairly heavy on the need for agrarian worker support as the engine for the revolution, ratherthan workers in the urban areas, which were still very small at that point.

Self-identified communists hold a variety of views, including Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism, council communism,Luxemburgism, anarchist communism, Christian communism, and various currents of left communism. However,the offshoots of the Marxist-Leninist interpretations of Marxism are the best-known of these and had been a drivingforce in international relations during the last quarter of the 19th century and most of the 20th century up to around1989 and what historians refer to as "the collapse of communism."[33] However, other forms of communismworldwide continue to exist in the ideologies of various individual labor movement trade unions worldwide,particularly in Europe and the Third World, and also in communist parties that continue to espouse the ultimate needfor communist revolution.

Most communists today tend to agree that the remaining communist states, such as China, Vietnam and especiallyNorth Korea (which has replaced Marxism-Leninism with Juche as its official ideology), have nothing to do withcommunism, whether as practised currently within leftist resistance movements and parties, or in terms of theideologies and programmes held by those movements.[34][35][36][37]

A diverse range of theories persist amongst prominent globally known people such as Slavoj Zizek, Michael Parenti,Alain Badiou and other radical left thinkers who proclaim themselves communists; they and others like them areexamples of present-day well-known figures in the modern communist movement.

Communism 46

Marxism

The Communist Manifesto

Like other socialists, Marx and Engels sought an end to capitalism and thesystems which they perceived to be responsible for the exploitation of workers.Whereas earlier socialists often favored longer-term social reform, Marx andEngels believed that popular revolution was all but inevitable, and the only pathto socialism and communism.

According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main characteristic ofhuman life in class society is alienation; and communism is desirable because itentails the full realization of human freedom.[38] Marx here follows GeorgWilhelm Friedrich Hegel in conceiving freedom not merely as an absence ofrestraints but as action with content.[39] According to Marx, communism'soutlook on freedom was based on an agent, obstacle, and goal. The agent is thecommon/working people; the obstacles are class divisions, economicinequalities, unequal life-chances, and false consciousness; and the goal is thefulfilment of human needs including satisfying work, and fair share of theproduct.[40][41]

They believed that communism allowed people to do what they want, but also put humans in such conditions andsuch relations with one another that they would not wish to exploit, or have any need to. Whereas for Hegel theunfolding of this ethical life in history is mainly driven by the realm of ideas, for Marx, communism emerged frommaterial forces, particularly the development of the means of production.[39]

Marxism holds that a process of class conflict and revolutionary struggle will result in victory for the proletariat andthe establishment of a communist society in which private property and ownership is abolished over time and themeans of production and subsistence belong to the community. (Private property and ownership, in this context,means ownerships of the means of production, not private possessions).[42] Marx himself wrote little about life undercommunism, giving only the most general indication as to what constituted a communist society. It is clear that itentails abundance in which there is little limit to the projects that humans may undertake. In the popular slogan thatwas adopted by the communist movement, communism was a world in which each gave according to their abilities,and received according to their needs. The German Ideology (1845) was one of Marx's few writings to elaborate onthe communist future:

“"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, societyregulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish inthe afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman orcritic."[43] ”

Marx's lasting vision was to add this vision to a theory of how society was moving in a law-governed way towardscommunism, and, with some tension, a political theory that explained why revolutionary activity was required tobring it about.[39]

In the late 19th century, the terms "socialism" and "communism" were often used interchangeably. However, Marxand Engels argued that communism would not emerge from capitalism in a fully developed state, but would passthrough a "first phase" in which most productive property was owned in common, but with some class differencesremaining. The "first phase" would eventually evolve into a "higher phase" in which class differences wereeliminated, and a state was no longer needed. Lenin frequently used the term "socialism" to refer to Marx andEngels' supposed "first phase" of communism and used the term "communism" interchangeably with Marx andEngels' "higher phase" of communism.[44]

Communism 47

These later aspects, particularly as developed by Vladimir Lenin, provided the underpinning for the mobilizingfeatures of 20th century communist parties.

Marxism-LeninismLeninism is the political movement developed by Vladimir Lenin, which has become the foundation for theorganizational structure of most major communist parties. Leninists advocate the creation of a vanguard party led byprofessional revolutionaries in order to lead the working class revolution. Leninists believe that socialism will notarise spontaneously through the natural decay of capitalism and that workers are unable to organize and developsocialist consciousness without the guidance of the Vanguard party. After taking power, Vanguard parties seek tocreate a socialist state dominated by the Vanguard party in order to direct social development and defend againstcounterrevolutionary insurrection. The mode of industrial organization championed by Leninism andMarxism-Leninism is the capitalist model of scientific management pioneered by Fredrick Taylor.

Marxism-Leninism is a version of Leninism merged with classical Marxism adopted by the Soviet Union and mostcommunist parties across the world today. It shaped the Soviet Union and influenced communist parties worldwide.It was heralded as a possibility of building communism via a massive program of industrialization andcollectivisation. Despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the 'Eastern Bloc' (meaning communist countries of Easternand Central Europe), many communist parties of the world today still lay claim to uphold the Marxist-Leninistbanner. Marxism-Leninism expands on Marxists thoughts by bringing the theories to what Lenin and otherCommunists considered, the age of capitalist imperialism, and a renewed focus on party building, the developmentof a socialist state, and democratic centralism as an organizational principle.

Lenin adapted Marx's urban revolution to Russia's agricultural conditions, sparking the "revolutionary nationalism ofthe poor".[45] The pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902), proposed that the (urban) proletariat can successfullyachieve revolutionary consciousness only under the leadership of a vanguard party of professionalrevolutionaries—who can achieve aims only with internal democratic centralism in the party; tactical and ideologicalpolicy decisions are agreed via democracy, and every member must support and promote the agreed party policy.

To wit, capitalism can be overthrown only with revolution—because attempts to reform capitalism from within(Fabianism) and from without (democratic socialism) will fail because of its inherent contradictions. The purpose ofa Leninist revolutionary vanguard party is the forceful deposition of the incumbent government; assume power (asagent of the proletariat) and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat government. Moreover, as the government, thevanguard party must educate the proletariat—to dispel the societal false consciousness of religion and nationalismthat are culturally instilled by the bourgeoisie in facilitating exploitation. The dictatorship of the proletariat isgoverned with a de-centralized direct democracy practised via soviets (councils) where the workers exercise politicalpower (cf. soviet democracy); the fifth chapter of State & Revolution, describes it:

". . . the dictatorship of the proletariat—i.e. the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as theruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors. . . . An immense expansion of democracy, whichfor the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for therich: . . . and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors ofthe people—this is the change which democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism tocommunism."[46]

The Bolshevik government was hostile to nationalism, especially to Russian nationalism, the "Great Russianchauvinism", as an obstacle to establishing the proletarian dictatorship.[47] The revolutionary elements ofLeninism—the disciplined vanguard party, a dictatorship of the proletariat, and class war.

Communism 48

Stalinism

Stalinism was the political system of the Soviet Union and the countries within the Soviet sphere of influence duringthe leadership of Joseph Stalin. The term usually defines the style of a government rather than an ideology. Theideology was officially Marxism-Leninism theory, reflecting that Stalin himself was not a theoretician, in contrast toMarx and Lenin, and prided himself on maintaining the legacy of Lenin as a founding father for the Soviet Unionand the future Socialist world. Stalinism is an interpretation of their ideas, and a certain political regime claiming toapply those ideas in ways fitting the changing needs of Soviet society, as with the transition from "socialism at asnail's pace" in the mid-twenties to the rapid industrialization of the Five-Year Plans.

The main contributions of Stalin to communist theory were:

• The groundwork for the Soviet policy concerning nationalities, laid in Stalin's 1913 work Marxism and theNational Question,[48] praised by Lenin.

• Socialism in One Country, stating that communists should attain socialism in their own country as a prelude tointernationalising.

• The theory of aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism, a theoretical basesupporting the repression of political opponents as necessary.

Trotskyism

Leon Trotsky reading The Militant.

Trotskyism is the branch of Marxism that wasdeveloped by Leon Trotsky. It supports the theory ofpermanent revolution and world revolution instead ofthe two stage theory and socialism in one country. Itsupported proletarian internationalism and anotherCommunist revolution in the Soviet Union, which,under the leadership of Stalin, Trotsky claimed hadbecome a degenerated worker's state, rather than thedictatorship of the proletariat.

Trotsky and his supporters organized into the LeftOpposition and their platform became known asTrotskyism. Stalin eventually succeeded in gainingcontrol of the Soviet regime and Trotskyist attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from theSoviet Union in 1929. During Trotsky's exile, world communism fractured into two distinct branches:Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism.[8] Trotsky later founded the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to theComintern, in 1938.

Trotskyist ideas have continually found a modest echo among political movements in some countries in LatinAmerica and Asia, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Sri Lanka. Many Trotskyist organizations are alsoactive in more stable, developed countries in North America and Western Europe. Trotsky's politics differed sharplyfrom those of Stalin and Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international proletarian revolution(rather than socialism in one country) and unwavering support for a true dictatorship of the proletariat based ondemocratic principles.

However, as a whole, Trotsky's theories and attitudes were never accepted in worldwide mainstream Communistcircles after Trotsky's expulsion, either within or outside of the Soviet bloc. This remained the case even after theSecret Speech and subsequent events critics claim exposed the fallibility of Stalin.

Communism 49

Maoism

Maoism is the Marxist-Leninist trend of Communism associated with Mao Zedong and was mostly practiced withinChina. Khrushchev's reforms heightened ideological differences between China and the Soviet Union, which becameincreasingly apparent in the 1960s. Parties and groups that supported the Communist Party of China (CPC) in theircriticism against the new Soviet leadership proclaimed themselves as 'anti-revisionist' and denounced the CPSU andthe parties aligned with it as revisionist "capitalist-roaders." The Sino-Soviet Split resulted in divisions amongstcommunist parties around the world. Notably, the Party of Labour of Albania sided with the People's Republic ofChina. Effectively, the CPC under Mao's leadership became the rallying forces of a parallel international Communisttendency.

Definitions of Maoism vary. Within the Chinese context, Maoism can refer to Mao's belief in the mobilization of themasses, particularly in large-scale political movements; it can also refer to the egalitarianism that was seen duringMao's era as opposed to the free-market ideology of Deng Xiaoping; some scholars additionally define personalitycults and political sloganeering as "Maoist" practices. Contemporary Maoists in China criticize the social inequalitiescreated by a capitalist and 'revisionist' Communist party.

Others

Prachanda, giving a speech at Pokhara, Nepal

Prachanda Path

Prachanda Path refers to the ideological line of the Unified CommunistParty of Nepal. This thought is an extension of Marxism, Leninism andMaoism, totally based on home-ground politics of Nepal. The doctrinecame into existence after it was realized that the ideology of Marxism,Leninism and Maoism could not be practiced completely as it wasdone in the past. And an ideology suitable, based on the ground realityof Nepalese politics was adopted by the party.

Hoxhaism

Another variant of anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism appeared afterthe ideological row between the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania in 1978. TheAlbanians rallied a new separate international tendency, which would demarcate itself by a strict defence of thelegacy of Joseph Stalin and fierce criticism of virtually all other Communist groupings as revisionism. Critical of theUnited States, the Soviet Union, and China, Enver Hoxha declared the latter two to be social-imperialist andcondemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia by withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact in response. Hoxhadeclared Albania to be the world's only Marxist-Leninist state after 1978. The Albanians were able to win over alarge share of the Maoists, mainly in Latin America such as the Popular Liberation Army, but also had a significantinternational following in general. This tendency has occasionally been labelled as 'Hoxhaism' after him.

After the fall of the Communist government in Albania, the pro-Albanian parties are grouped around an internationalconference and the publication 'Unity and Struggle'.

Titoism

Elements of Titoism are characterized by policies and practices based on the principle that in each country, themeans of attaining ultimate communist goals must be dictated by the conditions of that particular country, rather thanby a pattern set in another country. During Tito's era, this specifically meant that the communist goal should bepursued independently of (and often in opposition to) the policies of the Soviet Union. The term was originallymeant as a pejorative, and was labelled by Moscow as a heresy during the period of tensions between the SovietUnion and Yugoslavia known as the Informbiro period from 1948 to 1955.

Unlike the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, which fell under Stalin's influence post–World War II, Yugoslavia, due to the strong leadership of Marshal Tito and the fact that the Yugoslav Partisans liberated Yugoslavia with only

Communism 50

limited help from the Red Army, remained independent from Moscow. It became the only country in the Balkans toresist pressure from Moscow to join the Warsaw Pact and remained "socialist, but independent" until the collapse ofSoviet socialism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Throughout his time in office, Tito prided himself onYugoslavia's independence from Russia, with Yugoslavia never accepting full membership of the Comecon andTito's open rejection of many aspects of Stalinism as the most obvious manifestations of this.

EurocommunismEurocommunism was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties to developa theory and practice of social transformation that was more relevant in a Western European democracy and lessaligned to the influence or control of the Soviet Union. Parties such as the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the FrenchCommunist Party (PCF), and the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), were politically active and electorally significantin their respective countries).

The main theoretical foundation of Eurocommunism was Antonio Gramsci's writing about Marxist theory whichquestioned the sectarianism of the Left and encouraged communist parties to develop social alliances to winhegemonic support for social reforms. Eurocommunist parties expressed their fidelity to democratic institutions moreclearly than before and attempted to widen their appeal by embracing public sector middle-class workers, new socialmovements such as feminism and gay liberation and more publicly questioning the Soviet Union. Early inspirationscan also be found in the Austromarxism and its seeking of a "third" democratic "way" to socialism.

Libertarian and non-Leninist forms of MarxismLibertarian Marxism refers to a broad scope of economic and political philosophies that emphasize theanti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism,[49] emergedin opposition to Marxism–Leninism[50] and its derivatives, such as Stalinism, Maoism, and Trotskyism.[51]

Libertarian Marxism is also critical of reformist positions, such as those held by social democrats.[52] LibertarianMarxist currents often draw from Marx and Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War inFrance;[53] emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its own destiny without theneed for a revolutionary party or state to mediate or aid its liberation.[54] Along with anarchism, Libertarian Marxismis one of the main currents of libertarian socialism.[55]

Libertarian Marxism includes such currents as Luxemburgism, council communism, left communism, Socialisme ouBarbarie, the Johnson-Forest tendency, world socialism, Lettrism/Situationism and operaismo/autonomism, andNew Left.[56] Libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists. Notabletheorists of libertarian Marxism have included Anton Pannekoek, Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Antonio Negri,Cornelius Castoriadis, Maurice Brinton, Guy Debord, Daniel Guérin, Ernesto Screpanti and Raoul Vaneigem.

Council communism

Council communism is a far-left movement originating in Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s. Its primaryorganization was the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). Council communism continues today as atheoretical and activist position within both left-wing Marxism and libertarian socialism.

The central argument of council communism, in contrast to those of social democracy and Leninist Communism, isthat democratic workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural form of working classorganisation and governmental power. This view is opposed to both the reformist and the Leninist ideologies, withtheir stress on, respectively, parliaments and institutional government (i.e., by applying social reforms), on the onehand, and vanguard parties and participative democratic centralism on the other).

The core principle of council communism is that the government and the economy should be managed by workers' councils composed of delegates elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run authoritarian "State socialism"/"State capitalism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary

Communism 51

party", since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a partydictatorship. Council communists support a worker's democracy, which they want to produce through a federation ofworkers' councils.

Rosa Luxemburg, prominent left communist critic ofLeninism

Left communism

Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by thecommunist left, which criticizes the political ideas of theBolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to bemore authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views ofLeninism held by the Communist International after its first andduring its second congress.

Left Communists see themselves to the left of Leninists (whomthey tend to see as 'left of capital', not socialists), anarchistcommunists (some of whom they consider internationalistsocialists) as well as some other revolutionary socialist tendencies(for example De Leonists, who they tend to see as beinginternationalist socialists only in limited instances).

Although she died before left communism became a distincttendency, Rosa Luxemburg has heavily influenced most leftcommunists, both politically and theoretically. Proponents of leftcommunism have included Amadeo Bordiga, Herman Gorter,Anton Pannekoek, Otto Rühle, Karl Korsch, Sylvia Pankhurst and Paul Mattick.

Prominent left communist groups existing today include the International Communist Party, the InternationalCommunist Current and the Internationalist Communist Tendency.

Situationist International

The Situationist International was a restricted group of international revolutionaries founded in 1957, and which hadits peak in its influence on the unprecedented general wildcat strikes of May 1968 in France.

With their ideas rooted in Marxism and the 20th century European artistic avant-gardes, they advocated experiencesof life being alternative to those admitted by the capitalist order, for the fulfillment of human primitive desires andthe pursuing of a superior passional quality. For this purpose they suggested and experimented with the constructionof situations, namely the setting up of environments favorable for the fulfillment of such desires. Using methodsdrawn from the arts, they developed a series of experimental fields of study for the construction of such situations,like unitary urbanism and psychogeography.

They fought against the main obstacle on the fulfillment of such superior passional living, identified by them inadvanced capitalism. Their theoretical work peaked on the highly influential book The Society of the Spectacle byGuy Debord. Debord argued in 1967 that spectacular features like mass media and advertising have a central role inan advanced capitalist society, which is to show a fake reality in order to mask the real capitalist degradation ofhuman life. To overthrow such a system, the Situationist International supported the May '68 revolts, and asked theworkers to occupy the factories and to run them with direct democracy, through workers' councils composed byinstantly revocable delegates.

After publishing in the last issue of the magazine an analysis of the May 1968 revolts, and the strategies that willneed to be adopted in future revolutions,[57] the SI was dissolved in 1972.[58]

Communism 52

Autonomism

Antonio Negri, main theorist ofItalian autonomism

Autonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements andtheories close to the socialist movement. As an identifiable theoretical system itfirst emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerist (operaismo) communism.Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tendencies became significant after influencefrom the Situationists, the failure of Italian far-left movements in the 1970s, andthe emergence of a number of important theorists including Antonio Negri, whohad contributed to the 1969 founding of Potere Operaio, Mario Tronti, PaoloVirno, etc.

Through translations made available by Danilo Montaldi and others, the Italianautonomists drew upon previous activist research in the United States by theJohnson-Forest Tendency and in France by the group Socialisme ou Barbarie.

It influenced the German and Dutch Autonomen, the worldwide Social Centre movement, and today is influential inItaly, France, and to a lesser extent the English-speaking countries. Those who describe themselves as autonomistsnow vary from Marxists to post-structuralists and anarchists. The Autonomist Marxist and Autonomen movementsprovided inspiration to some on the revolutionary left in English speaking countries, particularly among anarchists,many of whom have adopted autonomist tactics. Some English-speaking anarchists even describe themselves asAutonomists. The Italian operaismo movement also influenced Marxist academics such as Harry Cleaver, JohnHolloway, Steve Wright, and Nick Dyer-Witheford.

Non-Marxist schools of communismThe dominant forms of communism are based on Marxism, but non-Marxist versions of communism (such asChristian communism and anarchist communism) also exist.

Anarcho-communism

Peter Kropotkin, main theorist ofanarcho-communism

Anarchist communism (also known as libertarian communism) is atheory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, privateproperty, and capitalism in favour of common ownership of the meansof production,[59][60] direct democracy and a horizontal network ofvoluntary associations and workers' councils with production andconsumption based on the guiding principle: "from each according tohis ability, to each according to his need".[61][62]

Anarcho-communism differs from marxism rejecting its view about theneed for a State Socialism phase before building communism. Themain anarcho-communist theorist Peter Kropotkin argued "that arevolutionary society should “transform itself immediately into acommunist society,”, that is, should go immediately into what Marxhad regarded as the “more advanced,” completed, phase ofcommunism."[63] In this way it tries to avoid the reappearence of "classdivisions and the need for a state to oversee everything".[63]

Some forms of anarchist communism such as insurrectionaryanarchism are egoist and strongly influenced by radical

individualism,[64][65][66] believing that anarchist communism does not require a communitarian nature at all. Most anarcho-communists view anarcho-communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and

Communism 53

society[67][68][69]

To date in human history, the best known examples of an anarchist communist society, established around the ideasas they exist today, that received worldwide attention and knowledge in the historical canon, are the anarchistterritories during the Spanish Revolution and the Free Territory during the Russian Revolution. Through the effortsand influence of the Spanish Anarchists during the Spanish Revolution within the Spanish Civil War, starting in1936 anarchist communism existed in most of Aragon, parts of the Levante and Andalusia, as well as in thestronghold of Anarchist Catalonia before being brutally crushed by the combined forces of the authoritarian regimethat won the war, Hitler, Mussolini, Spanish Communist Party repression (backed by the USSR) as well as economicand armaments blockades from the capitalist countries and the Spanish Republic itself. During the RussianRevolution, anarchists such as Nestor Makhno worked to create and defend—through the RevolutionaryInsurrectionary Army of Ukraine—anarchist communism in the Free Territory of the Ukraine from 1919 beforebeing conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1921.

Christian communismChristian communism is a form of religious communism centred on Christianity. It is a theological and politicaltheory based upon the view that the teachings of Jesus Christ urge Christians to support communism as the idealsocial system. Christian communists trace the origins of their practice to teachings in the New Testament, such asthis one from Acts of the Apostles at chapter 2 and verses 42, 44, and 45:

42 And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and in fellowship ... 44 And all that believedwere together, and had all things in common; 45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted themto all men, as every man had need. (King James Version)

Christian communism can be seen as a radical form of Christian socialism. Also, because many Christiancommunists have formed independent stateless communes in the past, there is also a link between Christiancommunism and Christian anarchism. Christian communists may not agree with various parts of Marxism, but theyshare some of the political goals of Marxists, for example replacing capitalism with socialism, which should in turnbe followed by communism at a later point in the future. However, Christian communists sometimes disagree withMarxists (and particularly with Leninists) on the way a socialist or communist society should be organized.

Criticisms

Victims of Soviet NKVD in Lviv, June 1941.

Some people have criticised socialism and by extension communism,stating that the two systems have distorted or absent pricesignals,[70][71] slow or stagnant technological advance,[72] reducedincentives,[73][74][75] reduced prosperity,[76][77] feasibility,[70][71][72]

and its social and political effects.[78][79][80][81][82][83]

Part of this criticism extends to the policies adopted by one-party statesruled by communist parties (known as "communist states"). Somescholars are specially focused on their human rights records which areclaimed to be responsible for famines, purges and warfare resulting indeaths far in excess of previous empires, capitalist or other regimes.[84][85][86] The Council of Europe in Resolution1481 and international declarations such as the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism andthe Declaration on Crimes of Communism have condemned some of the actions that resulted in these deaths ascrimes.

Stéphane Courtois argues that Communism and National Socialism are slightly different totalitarian systems, and that communism is responsible for the murder of almost 100 million people in the 20th century,[87] but two of the main Black Book's contributors, Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, disagreed and publicly disassociated

Communism 54

themselves from Courtois's statements.[88]

Notes[1] Critique of the Gotha Programme, Karl Marx.[2] Full Communism: The Ultimate Goal: http:/ / www. economictheories. org/ 2009/ 05/ full-communism-ultimate-goal. html Archived (http:/ /

www. webcitation. org/ 60XSuRhmT) 29 July 2011 at WebCite[3] Lenin's Collected Works Vol. 27 (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ lenin/ works/ cw/ volume27. htm), p. 293, quoted by Aufheben (http:/

/ www. geocities. com/ aufheben2/ auf_6_ussr1. html) Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 5knCuc4J3) 25 October 2009 at WebCite[4] "Communism" (http:/ / www. britannica. com/ EBchecked/ topic/ 129104/ communism). Britannica Encyclopedia. .[5] World Book 2008, p. 890.[6] "Critique of the Gotha Programme—IV" (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ marx/ works/ 1875/ gotha/ ch04. htm). Critique of the Gotha

Programme. . Retrieved 2009-10-18.[7][7] Lansford 2007, p. 9[8] "Communism" (http:/ / www. encyclopedia. com/ topic/ communism. aspx). Columbia Encyclopedia. 2008. Archived (http:/ / www.

webcitation. org/ 60XStZz4L) from the original on 2011-07-29. . Retrieved 29 November 2009.[9] The German Ideology, Volume 1 of German Ideology & Selections from Pts 2 & 3, by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Christopher John

Arthur, International Publishers Co, 1970, ISBN 978-0-7178-0302-6, pg 86[10] Richard Pipes Communism: A History (2001) ISBN 978-0-8129-6864-4, pages 3–5.[11] "Historical Background for Spartacus" (http:/ / www. vroma. org/ ~bmcmanus/ spartacus. html). Vroma.org. Archived (http:/ / www.

webcitation. org/ 60XT6Fh2W) from the original on 2011-07-29. . Retrieved 2009-10-18.[12] The Cambridge History of Iran Volume 3, The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Period (http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20080611075040/

http:/ / www. derafsh-kaviyani. com/ english/ mazdak. html), edited by Ehsan Yarshater, Parts 1 and 2, p1019, Cambridge University Press(1983)

[13] Lansford 2007, pp. 24–25[14] "Diggers' Manifesto" (http:/ / www. rogerlovejoy. co. uk/ philosophy/ diggers/ diggers3. htm). Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/

60XT6NLIO) from the original on 2011-07-29. . Retrieved 2011-07-19.[15] "Eduard Bernstein: Cromwell and Communism (1895)" (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ reference/ archive/ bernstein/ works/ 1895/ cromwell/

). .[16] Eduard Bernstein, (1895). Kommunistische und demokratisch-sozialistische Strömungen während der englischen Revolution, J.H.W. Dietz,

Stuttgart. OCLC 36367345 Sources available at Eduard Bernstein: Cromwell and Communism (1895) (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ reference/archive/ bernstein/ works/ 1895/ cromwell/ ) at www.marxists.org.

[17] "Communism" A Dictionary of Sociology. John Scott and Gordon Marshall. Oxford University Press 2005. Oxford Reference Online.Oxford University Press.

[18] "Communism." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.[19] Marc Edelman, "Late Marx and the Russian road: Marx and the 'Peripheries of Capitalism'"—book reviews. Monthly Review, Dec., 1984.

Late Marx and the Russian road: Marx and the "Peripheries of Capitalism."—book reviews Monthly Review[20][20] Holmes 2009, p. 18.[21] Norman Davies. "Communism" The Oxford Companion to World War II. Ed. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot. Oxford University Press,

2001.[22] "Glossary of Terms: Ma" (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ glossary/ terms/ m/ a. htm#maoism). Marxists Internet Archive. . Retrieved 3 June

2011.[23] "Kushtetuta e Republikës Popullore Socialiste të Shqipërisë : [miratuar nga Kuvendi Popullor më 28. 12. 1976 (http:/ / searchworks.

stanford. edu/ view/ 1880822). – SearchWorks (SULAIR)"] (in Albanian). Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT817wU) from theoriginal on 2011-07-29. . Retrieved 3 June 2011.

[24] Georgakas, Dan (1992). "The Hollywood Blacklist". Encyclopedia of the American Left. University of Illinois Press.[25] Adams, John G. (1983). Without Precedent. New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 285. ISBN 978-0-393-01616-1.[26] "Nepal's election The Maoists triumph Economist.com" (http:/ / www. economist. com/ displaystory. cfm?story_id=11057207& fsrc=nwl).

Economist.com. 2008-04-17. Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT8Sk3J) from the original on 2011-07-29. . Retrieved 2009-10-18.[27] Fighting Poverty: Findings and Lessons from China’s Success (http:/ / econ. worldbank. org/ WBSITE/ EXTERNAL/ EXTDEC/

EXTRESEARCH/ 0,,contentMDK:20634060~pagePK:64165401~piPK:64165026~theSitePK:469382,00. html) (World Bank). RetrievedAugust 10, 2006. Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT8XpKl) 29 July 2011 at WebCite

[28] H. Gordon Skilling (April 1966). "Interest Groups and Communist Politics". World Politics (World Politics, Vol. 18, No. 3) 18 (3):435–451. doi:10.2307/2009764. JSTOR 2009764.?UNIQ3ab34e171166e61b-HTMLCommentStrip7c7dfbc41ccbeb7000000002

[29] J. Arch Getty (1985). Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered: 1933–1938. Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-0-521-33570-6.

[30] Private Property and Communism (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ marx/ works/ 1844/ manuscripts/ comm. htm) by Karl Marx,Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

[31][31] Holmes 2009, p. 1.

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[32][32] Lansford 2007, p. 17[33] "Communism" (http:/ / www. bartleby. com/ 65/ co/ communism. html). The Columbia Encyclopedia (6th ed.). 2007. .[34] "China's Transition to a Market Economy: How Far Across the River?" (http:/ / elsa. berkeley. edu/ ~yqian/ how far across the river. pdf).

Berkely.edu. . Retrieved 20 May 2011.[35] "The Winners And Losers In Chinese Capitalism – Gady Epstein – Beijing Dispatch – Forbes" (http:/ / blogs. forbes. com/ gadyepstein/

2010/ 08/ 31/ the-winners-and-losers-in-chinese-capitalism/ ). Forbes. Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XSxxeOn) from theoriginal on 2011-07-29. . Retrieved 20 May 2011.

[36] Janjigian, Vahan. "Communism Is Dead, But State Capitalism Thrives – Great Speculations – Buys, holds, and hopes – Forbes" (http:/ /blogs. forbes. com/ greatspeculations/ 2010/ 03/ 22/ communism-is-dead-but-state-capitalism-thrives/ ). Forbes. Archived (http:/ / www.webcitation. org/ 60XSyh7Tc) from the original on 2011-07-29. . Retrieved 20 May 2011.

[37] "Eastday – China is already a market economy – Long Yongtu, Secretary General of Boao Forum for Asia" (http:/ / english. eastday. com/e/ ICS/ u1a4035916. html). Eastday. Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XSzp8ZX) from the original on 2011-07-29. . Retrieved 20May 2011.

[38] Stephen Whitefield. "Communism." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford UniversityPress, 2003.

[39][39] McLean and McMillan, 2003.[40][40] Ball and Dagger 118[41] Terence Ball and Richard Dagger. "Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal." Pearson Education, Inc.:2006.[42] Karl Marx; Friedrich Engels; Philip Gasper (1 October 2005). The Communist manifesto: a road map to history's most important political

document (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=KP639MoNBMMC& pg=PA60). Haymarket Books. pp. 60–63. ISBN 978-1-931859-25-7. .Retrieved 12 April 2011.

[43] Karl Marx, (1845). The German Ideology, Marx-Engels Institute, Moscow. ISBN 978-1-57392-258-6. Sources available at The GermanIdeology (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ marx/ works/ 1845/ german-ideology/ ch01a. htm) at www.marxists.org.

[44] See Chapter 5 (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ lenin/ works/ 1917/ staterev/ ch05. htm#s3) of Vladimir Lenin's The State andRevolution" (1917).

[45] Faces of Janus p. 133.[46] Hill, Christopher Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1971) Penguin Books:Londonp. 86.[47] Harding, Neil (ed.) The State in Socialist Society, second edition (1984) St. Antony's College: Oxford, p. 189.[48] "Marxism and the National Question" (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ reference/ archive/ stalin/ works/ 1913/ 03. htm). .[49] Pierce, Wayne. "Libertarian Marxism's Relation to Anarchism" (http:/ / www. utopianmag. com/ files/ in/ 1000000034/

12___WayneLibMarx. pdf) "The Utopian" 73-80.[50] Herman Gorter, Anton Pannekoek, Sylvia Pankhurst, Otto Ruhl Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers Councils. Red and Black,

2007.[51] Marot, Eric. "Trotsky, the Left Opposition and the Rise of Stalinism: Theory and Practice" (http:/ / libcom. org/ library/

trotsky-left-opposition-rise-stalinism-theory-practice-john-eric-marot)[52] "The Retreat of Social Democracy ... Re-imposition of Work in Britain and the 'Social Europe'" (http:/ / libcom. org/ library/

social-democracy-1-aufheben-8) "Aufheben" Issue #8 1999.[53][53] Ernesto Screpanti, Libertarian communism: Marx Engels and the Political Economy of Freedom, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2007.[54] Draper, Hal. "The Principle of Self-Emancipation in Marx and Engels" (https:/ / jps. library. utoronto. ca/ index. php/ srv/ article/ view/

5333) "The Socialist Register." Vol 4.[55] Chomsky, Noam. "Government In The Future" (http:/ / chomsky. info/ audionvideo/ 19700216. mp3) Poetry Center of the New York

YM-YWHA. Lecture.[56] "A libertarian Marxist tendency map" (http:/ / libcom. org/ library/ libertarian-marxist-tendency-map). libcom.org. . Retrieved 2011-10-01.[57] The Beginning of an Era ( part1 (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ 12. era1. htm), part 2 (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ 12. era2. htm))

Situationist International #12, 1969[58] Karen Elliot (2001-06-01). "Situationism in a nutshell" (http:/ / www. barbelith. com/ cgi-bin/ articles/ 00000011. shtml). Barbelith

Webzine. . Retrieved 2008-06-23.[59] From Politics Past to Politics Future: An Integrated Analysis of Current and Emergent Paradigms Alan James Mayne Published 1999

Greenwood Publishing Group 316 pages ISBN 0-275-96151-6 (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=6MkTz6Rq7wUC& pg=PA131&dq=Communist+ anarchism+ belives+ in+ collective+ ownership). Books.google.com. 1999. ISBN 978-0-275-96151-0. . Retrieved2010-09-20.

[60] Anarchism for Know-It-Alls By Know-It-Alls For Know-It-Alls, For Know-It-Alls Published by Filiquarian Publishing, LLC., 2008 ISBN1-59986-218-2, 978-1-59986-218-7 72 pages (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=jeiudz5sBV4C& pg=PA14& dq=Communist+ anarchism+believes+ in+ common+ ownership#PPA13,M1). Books.google.com. 2008-01. ISBN 978-1-59986-218-7. . Retrieved 2010-09-20.

[61] Fabbri, Luigi. "Anarchism and Communism." Northeastern Anarchist #4. 1922. 13 October 2002. http:/ / dwardmac. pitzer. edu/anarchist_archives/ worldwidemovements/ fabbrianarandcom. html Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT4dCPz) 29 July 2011 atWebCite

[62] Makhno, Mett, Arshinov, Valevski, Linski (Dielo Trouda). "The Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists". 1926. Constructive Section: available here http:/ / www. nestormakhno. info/ english/ platform/ constructive. htm Archived (http:/ / www.

Communism 56

webcitation. org/ 60XT4n8gw) 29 July 2011 at WebCite[63] ""What is Anarchist Communism?" by Wayne Price" (http:/ / www. theanarchistlibrary. org/ HTML/

Wayne_Price__What_is_Anarchist_Communism_. html). Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT4wIPV) from the original on2011-07-29. .

[64] Christopher Gray, Leaving the Twentieth Century, p. 88.[65] "Towards the creative Nothing" by [[Renzo Novatore (http:/ / www. theanarchistlibrary. org/ HTML/

Renzo_Novatore__Toward_the_Creative_Nothing. html)] Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT5H7mi) 29 July 2011 at WebCite[66] "Bob Black. Nightmares of Reason" (http:/ / www. theanarchistlibrary. org/ HTML/ Bob_Black__Nightmares_of_Reason. html#toc22).

Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT5e8sI) from the original on 2011-07-29. .[67] "Communism is the one which guarantees the greatest amount of individual liberty—provided that the idea that begets the community be

Liberty, Anarchy...Communism guarantees economic freedom better than any other form of association, because it can guarantee wellbeing,even luxury, in return for a few hours of work instead of a day's work." "Communism and Anarchy" by [[Peter Kropotkin (http:/ / www.theanarchistlibrary. org/ HTML/ Petr_Kropotkin__Communism_and_Anarchy. html)] Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT5iyby)29 July 2011 at WebCite

[68] This other society will be libertarian communism, in which social solidarity and free individuality find their full expression, and in whichthese two ideas develop in perfect harmony. Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists by Dielo Truda (Workers' Cause) (http:/ /www. theanarchistlibrary. org/ HTML/ Dielo_Truda__Workers__Cause___Organisational_Platform_of_the_Libertarian_Communists. html)Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT5tf40) 29 July 2011 at WebCite

[69] "I see the dichotomies made between individualism and communism, individual revolt and class struggle, the struggle against humanexploitation and the exploitation of nature as false dichotomies and feel that those who accept them are impoverishing their own critique andstruggle." "MY PERSPECTIVES" by Willful Disobedience Vol. 2, No. 12 (http:/ / www. reocities. com/ kk_abacus/ vb/ wd12persp. html)Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT65UUG) 29 July 2011 at WebCite

[70] Von Mises, Ludwig (1990) (PDF). Economic calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (http:/ / mises. org/ pdf/ econcalc. pdf). Ludwigvon Mises Institute. . Retrieved 2008-09-08.

[71] F. A. Hayek, (1935), "The Nature and History of the Problem" and "The Present State of the Debate," om in F. A. Hayek, ed. CollectivistEconomic Planning, pp. 1–40, 201–43.

[72] Milton Friedman. We have Socialism Q.E.D., Op-Ed in New York Times December 31, 1989 On Milton Friedman, MGR & Annaism (http:// www. sangam. org/ taraki/ articles/ 2006/ 11-25_Friedman_MGR. php?uid=2075) Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT8qjcV) 29July 2011 at WebCite

[73] Zoltan J. Acs & Bernard Young. Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Global Economy. University of Michigan Press, page 47, 1999.[74] Mill, John Stuart. The Principles of Political Economy, Book IV, Chapter 7.[75] John Kenneth Galbraith, The Good Society: The Humane Agenda, (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1996), 59–60."[76] Hans-Hermann Hoppe. A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism http:/ / www. mises. org/ etexts/ Soc& Cap. pdf .[77] Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Inc.. 1981, trans. J. Kahane,

IV.30.21[78] F.A. Hayek. The Intellectuals and Socialism (http:/ / www. mises. org/ etexts/ hayekintellectuals. pdf). (1949).[79] Alan O. Ebenstein. Friedrich Hayek: A Biography. (2003). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-18150-9 p.137[80] Friedrich Hayek (1944). The Road to Serfdom. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-32061-8.[81] Bellamy, Richard (2003). The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought. Cambridge University Press. p. 60.

ISBN 978-0-521-56354-3.[82] Self, Peter. Socialism. A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, editors Goodin, Robert E. and Pettit, Philip. Blackwell

Publishing, 1995, p.339 "Extreme equality overlooks the diversity of individual talents, tastes and needs, and save in a utopian society ofunselfish individuals would entail strong coercion; but even short of this goal, there is the problem of giving reasonable recognition todifferent individual needs, tastes (for work or leisure) and talents. It is true therefore that beyond some point the pursuit of equality runs intocontroversial or contradictory criteria of need or merit."

[83] Socialism (http:/ / www. importanceofphilosophy. com/ Bloody_Socialism. html) Archived (http:/ / www. webcitation. org/ 60XT99hnl) 29July 2011 at WebCite

[84] Rosefielde, Steven (2009). Red Holocaust. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-77757-5.[85] Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity. PublicAffairs, 2009. ISBN

978-1-58648-769-0 p. 54: "...in the past century communist regimes, led and inspired by the Soviet Union and China, have killed more peoplethan any other regime type."

[86] Benjamin A. Valentino. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Cornell University Press, 2004. p.73 (http:/ /books. google. com. au/ books?id=LQfeXVU_EvgC& lpg=PP1& pg=PA73#v=onepage& q& f=false) ISBN 978-0-8014-3965-0

[87] Courtois, Stéphane, ed. (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. p. 9.ISBN 978-0-674-07608-2.

[88] Le Monde, 14 November 1997

Communism 57

References• Holmes, Leslie (2009). Communism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

ISBN 978-0-19-955154-5.• Lansford, Tom (2007). Communism. Marshall Cavendish. ISBN 9780761426288.• Link, Theodore (2004). Communism: A Primary Source Analysis. The Rosen Publishing Group.

ISBN 9780823945177.• Rabinowitch, Alexander (2004). The Bolsheviks come to power: the Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd. Pluto Press.• "Ci–Cz Volume 4". World Book. Chicago, Illinois: World Book, Inc.. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7166-0108-1.

Further reading• Adami, Stefano. "Communism", in Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies, ed. Gaetana Marrone – P.Puppa,

Routledge, New York- London, 2006• Beer, Max. The General History of Socialism and Social Struggles Volumes 1 & 2. New York, Russel and Russel,

Inc. 1957• Daniels, Robert Vincent. A Documentary History of Communism and the World: From Revolution to Collapse.

University Press of New England, 1994. ISBN 978-0-87451-678-4.• Dirlik, Arif. Origins of Chinese Communism. Oxford University Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-19-505454-5• Forman, James D. Communism From Marx's Manifesto To 20th century Reality. New York, Watts. 1972. ISBN

978-0-531-02571-0• Furet, Francois and Deborah Kan (translator). The Passing of An Illusion: The Idea of Communism In the

Twentieth Century. University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-226-27341-9• Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. Communist Manifesto. (Mass Market Paperback – REPRINT), Signet Classics,

1998. ISBN 978-0-451-52710-3• Pons, Silvio and Robert Service. A Dictionary of 20th century Communism. 2010.• Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois,

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (http:/ / books. google. com/books?id=H1jsgYCoRioC& source=gbs_navlinks_s), Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages,ISBN 978-0-674-07608-2

• Hollander, Paul (ed). From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence AndRepression in Communist Studies. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006). ISBN 978-1-932236-78-1

• Zinoviev, Alexandre. The Reality of Communism (1980), Publisher Schocken, 1984.

External links• Marxists.org (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ ) (Marxists Internet Archive)• Libertarian Communist Library (http:/ / www. libcom. org/ library)• Gilman, Daniel Coit; Peck, Harry Thurston; Colby, Frank Moore (1905). "  Communism". New International

Encyclopedia. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. Wikisource• Marxist Theory (http:/ / www2. socialistorganizer. org/ index. php?option=com_content& task=blogsection&

id=10& Itemid=75)

Dérive 58

Dérive

Poster announcing a large-scale dérive by apsychogeographical society.

In psychogeography, a dérive is an unplanned journey through alandscape, usually urban, where an individual travels where the subtleaesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geographysubconsciously direct them with the ultimate goal of encountering anentirely new and authentic experience. Situationist theorist GuyDebord defines the dérive as "a mode of experimental behavior linkedto the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage throughvaried ambiances." He also notes that "the term also designates aspecific uninterrupted period of dériving."[1] The term is literallytranslated into English as drift.

History

The concept of the dérive has its origins in the Letterist International ofthe 1940s, an artistic and political collective based in Paris, where itwas a critical tool for understanding and developing the theory ofpsychogeography, defined as the "specific effects of the geographicalenvironment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotionsand behavior of individuals."[1] The dérive, an unplanned tour throughan urban landscape directed entirely by the feelings evoked in theindividual by their surroundings, served as the primary means for mapping and investigating the psychogeography ofthese different areas.

The dérive continued to be a critical concept in the theory of the Situationist International, the radical group ofavante-garde artists and political theorists that succeeded the Letterist International, emerging in the 1950s. For thesituationists, the dérive is the primary technique for exploring an urban landscape's psychogeography and engagingin new experiences. According to situationist theorist Guy Debord, in performing a dérive, the individual in questionmust first set aside all work and leisure activities and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and letthemselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.

The need for the dérive is necessitated, according to situationist theory, by the increasingly predictable andmonotonous experience of everyday life trudged through every day by workers in advanced capitalism.[2] The dérivegrants a rare instance of pure chance, an opportunity for an utterly new and authentic experience of the differentatmospheres and feelings generated by the urban landscape.[2] Debord observes in his Introduction to a Critique ofUrban Geography:

The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space of a few meters; the evident division of a city intozones of distinct psychic atmospheres; the path of least resistance that is automatically followed in aimlessstrolls (and which has no relation to the physical contour of the terrain); the appealing or repelling character ofcertain places — these phenomena all seem to be neglected. In any case they are never envisaged as dependingon causes that can be uncovered by careful analysis and turned to account.

—Guy Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography[3]

Several groups have adopted the concept of the dérive and applied it in their own form, including many modern organizations, most notably the London Psychogeographical Association and the Providence Initiative for Psychogeographic Studies. Since 2003 in the United States, separate events known as Provflux and Psy-Geo-conflux have been dedicated to action-based participatory experiments similar to the dérive, within the context of

Dérive 59

psychogeography.

References[1] Guy Debord (1958) Definitions (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ definitions. html). Internationale Situationniste #1 (Paris, June

1958). Translated by Ken Knabb.[2] Guy Debord (1956) Theory of the Dérive (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ theory. html). Les Lèvres Nues #9 (Paris, November 1956).

Reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #2 (Paris, December 1958). Translated by Ken Knabb.[3] Guy Debord (1955) Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ presitu/ geography. html). Les

Lèvres Nues #6 (Paris, September 1955). Translated by Ken Knabb.

External links• Theory of the Dérive (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ theory. html) Guy Debord (1956)• Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ presitu/ geography. html)

Guy Debord (1955)

DétournementA détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International,[1][2] and consist in "turningexpressions of the capitalist system against itself." [3] Détournement was prominently used to set up subversivepolitical pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was reprised by the punk movement in the late1970s[4] and inspired the culture jamming movement in the late 1980s.[3]

In general it can be defined as a variation on a previous media work, in which the newly created one has a meaningthat is antagonistic or antithetical to the original. The original media work that is détourned must be somewhatfamiliar to the target audience, so that it can appreciate the opposition of the new message. The artist or commentatormaking the variation can reuse only some of the characteristic elements of the originating work. The term"détournement" is borrowed from the French, the original language of the Situationist International publications. Asimilar term more familiar to English speakers would be "turnabout" or "derailment".

Détournement is similar to satirical parody, but employs more direct reuse or faithful mimicry of the original worksrather than constructing a new work which merely alludes strongly to the original. It may be contrasted withrecuperation, in which originally subversive works and ideas are themselves appropriated by mainstream media.

One could view detournement as forming the opposite side of the coin to 'recuperation' (where radical ideas andimages become safe and commodified), in that images produced by the spectacle get altered and subverted so thatrather than supporting the status quo, their meaning becomes changed in order to put across a more radical oroppositional message.

Guy Debord and Gil J Wolman categorized détourned elements into two types: minor détournements and deceptivedétournements. Minor détournements are détournements of elements that in themselves are of no real importancesuch as a snapshot, a press clipping, an everyday object which draw all their meaning from being placed in a newcontext. Deceptive détournements are when already significant elements such as a major political or philosophicaltext, great artwork or work of literature take on new meanings or scope by being placed in a new context.[5]

Détournement 60

Examples after the Situationist InternationalThe most significant post (or anti) situationist development of detournement was undertaken by the "Workshop forNon Linear Architecture" during their "Psychogeographical Survey of Glasgow" (1992-94). During this two yearperiod of active 'protagonisation', the Workshop shifted the realm of the psychogeographic from that of the praxis ofthe theorists of the LI/SI to that of a lived exigency. Their theoretical assertions were transformed from cognativespeculations into concrete examples of lived adventure. The results of this experimental programme are described indetail in the WNLA journal "Viscosity", the four issues of which are due for publication in January 2018. In theUnited States, Frank Discussion is widely known for his use of detournement in his works dating from the late 70sthrough the present, particularly with the Feederz. The use of détournement by Barbara Kruger familiarised manywith the technique, and it was extensively and effectively used as part of the early HIV/AIDS activism of the late1980s and early 1990s.[6] Examples of contemporary detournement include Adbusters' "subvertisements" and otherinstances of culture jamming, as well as poems composed collaboratively by Marlene Mountain, Paul Conneally, andothers, in which quotations from such famous sources as the Ten Commandments and quotations by United StatesPresident George W. Bush are combined with haiku-like phrases to produce a larger work intended to subvert theoriginal source. The comic artist Brad Neely's reinterpretation of Harry Potter, Wizard People, took Warner Brother'sfirst Harry Potter film, The Sorcerer's Stone, and substituted the original soundtrack with a narration that casts thehero as a Nietzschean superman.

The concept of détournement has had a popular influence amongst contemporary radicals, and the technique can beseen in action in the present day when looking at the work of Culture Jammers including the Cacophony Society,Billboard Liberation Front, Occupy Movements[7] and Adbusters, whose 'subvertisements' 'detourn' Nike adverts, forexample. In this case, the original advertisement's imagery is altered in order to draw attention to said company'spolicy of shifting their production base to cheap-labour third-world 'free trade zones'. However, the line between'recuperation' and 'détournement' can become thin (or at least very fuzzy) at times, as Naomi Klein points out in herbook No Logo. Here she details how corporations such as Nike, Pepsi or Diesel have approached Culture Jammersand Adbusters and offered them lucrative contracts in return for partaking in 'ironic' promotional campaigns. Shepoints out further irony by drawing attention to merchandising produced in order to promote Adbusters' Buy NothingDay, an example of the recuperation of détournement if ever there was one.

Klein's arguments about irony reifying rather than breaking down power structures are echoed by Slavoj Žižek.Žižek argues that the kind of distance opened up by detournement is the condition of possibility for ideology tooperate: by attacking and distancing oneself from the sign-systems of capital, the subject creates a fantasy oftransgression that "covers up" his/her actual complicity with capitalism as an overarching system. In contrast,evoLhypergrapHyCx are very fond of pointing out the differences between hypergraphics, 'detournement', thepostmodern idea of appropriation and the Neoist use of plagiarism as the use of different and similar techniques usedfor different and similar means, effects and causes.

The Neue Slowenische Kunst has a long history of aggressive détournement of extreme political ideologies, as doseveral industrial music groups, such as Die Krupps, Nitzer Ebb, KMFDM, and Front 242.

Chris Morris uses détournement and culture jamming extensively in his work, particularly in the British televisionseries The Day Today and Brass Eye.

Détournement 61

References[1] Report on the Construction of Situations (1957)[2] Internationale Situationniste #1 (June 1958) (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ / / si/ is1. html)[3][3] Holt (2010) p.252[4] Marrone, Gianfranco (2005) Sensi alterati: droghe, musica, immagini (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=0jluoyGktKsC), p.45, quote:

[...] gioco al coplotto, alla manipolazione dei media, alla beffa, alla "grande truffa," o al detournement --inventato dai situazionisti e ripreso dai punk -- che appunto del situazionismo sono talvolta concreticontinuatori. Pensiamo in questo senso al fin troppo noto caso, esagerato dai media, ma paradigmatico, delmanager dei Sex Pistols, Malcom McClaren, a partire dal quale, nell'estate del 1977, si scateno', con grandescandalo, il lancio del gruppo dei Pistols in pieno Giubileo della regina, e l'interesse della stampa per lanascente scena punk. Tuttavia, anche in questo caso non si tratta, come invece e' stato spesso sostenuto, difreddo "gioco a tavolino", di cinismo, di furbo lancio di un prodotto da parte di chi aveva studiato i media elavorava sulla guerriglia semiologica (cfr. Fabbri P. 2002, p.40), di una tattica che sarebbe poi stata facilmentesfruttata e fatta propria da quel momento in avanti dall'industria culturale mainstream.

[5] A User's Guide To Détournement May 1956 (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ detourn. htm)[6] Crimp, Douglas. AIDS Demographics. Bay Press, 1990.[7] Détournement of Bronzed Historical Icons adorns imaginary John Harvard with a Guy Fawkes mask (http:/ / www. youtube. com/

watch?v=4JD8jNCQ2gw)

Books• McDonough, Tom (2007). the beautiful language of my century. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-13477-4.

External links• Guy Debord, Gil J. Wolman, 1956: A User’s Guide to Détournement (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ detourn.

htm)• (http:/ / www. feederz. com/ subvert. html)• sniggle.net: The Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia (http:/ / www. sniggle. net/ )• The Ring of Free Trade - a 5 minute detournement of the Fellowship of the Ring (http:/ / indybay. org/ news/

2002/ 12/ 1553281. php)• The God Connection - a détournement of the Ten Commandments (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ host/ haikumania/

thegodconnection. html)• Essay: Détournement as Negation and Prelude (http:/ / library. nothingness. org/ articles/ SI/ en/ display/ 315)

General strike 62

General strike

Vorwärts announcing a general strike in Germanyon 9 November 1918, at the beginning of the

November Revolution.

A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour forcein a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for politicalgoals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from theideological or class sympathies of the participants. It is alsocharacterized by participation of workers in a multitude of workplaces,and tends to involve entire communities. The general strike has waxedand waned in popularity since the mid-19th century, and hascharacterized many historically important strikes.

Purpose

General strikes have been done in order to seek "democracy, politicalrepresentation and the provision of basic education and healthcare".[1]

In Europe, General Strikes were very common in the 19th and early20th century. It could be argued that many of them have contributed torights, such as universal healthcare, low cost college education, andhigher taxes on the rich.

In Portugal, a general strike has been called by the federation of publiclabor unions to avert austerity measures.[2]

In Honduras, a general strike has been called by Union workers,farmers and other organizations demanding better education, an increase in the minimum wage and against fuel pricehikes.[3]

In Yemen, a general strike has been called by protesters to protest the presidency of that country.[4]

In Algeria, public sector workers have mounted a general strike for higher wages and improved workingconditions.[5]

At any given moment, there may be general strikes in numerous nations around the world. Government leaders mayseek to ban general strikes, and in some cases they are successful. In February, 1947, General Douglas MacArthur,as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in Japan, banned a planned general strike of 2,400,000 governmentworkers, stating that "so deadly a social weapon" as the general strike should not be used in the impoverished andemaciated condition of Japan so soon after World War II. Japan's labour leaders complied with his ban.[6]

ConceptRalph Chaplin, editor of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) newspaper Solidarity and later, of the IndustrialWorker, identified four levels of general strike,

•• A General Strike in a community.•• A General Strike in an Industry.•• A national General Strike.• A revolutionary or class strike-- THE General Strike.[7]

In the 1905 pamphlet The Social General Strike, published in Chicago in 1905, Stephen Naft had previouslyacknowledged the same four levels of the general strike:

[The name "General Strike"] is often used to designate the strike of all branches in one trade; for instance the general strike of the miners; when helpers and hoisting engineers, etc. are all out. Then it is

General strike 63

used as: General Strike of a city, i.e., "General Strike in Florence", or a General Strike in a wholecountry or province, for the purpose of gaining political rights, i.e., the right to vote; as in Belgium, orSweden.[8]

The profoundest conception of the General Strike, however, [is] the one pointing to a thorough changeof the present system: a social revolution of the world; an entire new reorganization; a demolition of theentire old system of all governments...[8]

Naft's 1905 pamphlet (translated from the German language) traced existing sentiment for this goal of the generalstrike to proletarians of Spain and Italy.[9]

The premise of The Social General Strike is that no matter how powerfully the working class organizes itself, it stillhas no significant power over a congress, or the executive (which has military force at its beck and call). Therefore ageneral strike called by an "energetic and enthusiastic" minority of workers, may be embraced by the mass ofworkers who remain unorganized.[9] Thus it may be possible,

...to completely interrupt production in the whole country, and stop communication and consumption forthe ruling classes, and that for a time long enough to totally disorganize the capitalistic society; so thatafter the complete annihilation of the old system, the working people can take possession through itslabor unions of all the means of production...[10]

The Social General Strike noted the complexity of modern industry, identifying the many stages in themanufacturing process and geographic dispersal of related manufacturing locations as weaknesses of the industrialprocess during any labor dispute.[10] The pamphlet notes the problem of hunger during a general strike, andrecommends where warehouses are available for the purpose, that proletarians,

...do the same thing as the ruling classes have done uninterruptedly for thousands of years: that is,"consume without producing." This deportment of the ruling classes the working class calls exploitation,and if the proletarians do it, the possessing classes call it plundering—and socialism calls itexpropriation.[11]

However, the pamphlet asserts that,

The immense advantage of the general strike is that it begins entirely lawfully and without any dangerfor the workers, and for this reason thousands will take part...[12]

Socialists, anarchists differ on tacticsIn 1966, in a study of revolutionary socialism, Milorad M. Drachkovitch of the Hoover Institution on War,Revolution, and Peace (a conservative/libertarian think tank), noted two tactical options which divided late 19thcentury and early 20th century anarchists from socialists: electoral politics, which the socialists embraced, butanarchists generally opposed; and, the general strike as a mechanism to prevent war, which anarchists supported, butsocialists refused to endorse.[13]

As a group, the Socialists of the period repeatedly rejected the general strike as a tactic;[14] however, a number ofSocialist leaders advocated its use for one reason or another.[15] Socialist leaders who embraced the general striketended to see it as an instrument for obtaining political concessions.[14]

Drachkovitch identified five types of general strikes:

•• the political mass strike, a general strike for political rights (such as the right to vote)•• the general strike as a revolutionary act that would transform society•• the general strike as a "revolutionary exercise" which would eventually lead to a transformation of society• a one day demonstration general strike on May Day (International Workers' Day), aimed at identifying a

"worldwide proletariat"• commencing in 1891, a theoretical mechanism by which to stop wars between nation states[16]

General strike 64

Drachkovitch perceived the first two concepts, the socialist-friendly general strike for political rights within thesystem, and the general strike as a revolutionary mechanism to overthrow the existing order — which he associatedwith a "rising anarcho-syndicalist movement" — as in conflict.[17] Drachkovitch believed that the difficulty arosefrom the fact that the general strike was "one instrument", but was frequently considered "without distinction ofunderlying motives."[18]

Milorad M. Drachkovitch also observed the variable success of the general strike in actual use:

In Belgium a general strike movement, broken off in one instance without damage to the organizingforces, eventually led to universal suffrage; in Holland a general strike collapsed with disastrousconsequences; in Sweden, a general strike was conducted and terminated with disciplined order but didnot attain the desired results. In Italy, general strikes had been both socially effective and politicallyunproductive. On the other hand, the events of January 1905 in Russia once more seemed to underscorethe suitability of the general strike as a decisively revolutionary action.[18]

Syndicalism and the general strikeOrthodox labor unions typically act as a representative from the workers to employers. They bargain over wages,hours, and working conditions.

Other labor organizations typically bargain for the same wage, hour, and conditions improvements, but embrace acritique of capital as establishing and maintaining a permanent working class and an elite ruling class. These unionstherefore advocate a permanent solution to the circumstances of strikes, injunctions, and crossing other workers'picket lines.[19][20][21] Given the hierarchical relationships of the existing economic system, these other unionsperceive the necessity of a radical change in the social order. In brief, these unions are radical in their orientation,and may accurately be described as revolutionary.

One labour movement philosophy of "peaceful revolution" is known as syndicalism. Its tactical method is the strike— the regular strike for protecting the material welfare of the workers, and the general strike as a means toaccomplish the desired permanent solution to industrial strife.[22] Syndicalism has been a common union organizingprinciple in a number of European countries, including France, Spain, and Italy.

One variation of syndicalism is anarcho-syndicalism, which (in comparison to syndicalism) develops rank and filepower with democratic traditions to maintain worker control over union leadership.

Industrial Workers of the World

In the United States, Britain, and (to a lesser extent) Australia, the trend toward revolutionary unionism culminatedin the growth of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Technically, the IWW is described as a union thatpractices revolutionary industrial unionism. Some consider the revolutionary industrial unionism of the IWW to be aform of anarcho-syndicalism.[23] Others point out differences; for example, Ralph Chaplin has written,

...the I.W.W. concept of the General Strike differs almost as much from that of the anarcho-syndicalistas from that of the political or craft unionist. In form, structure and objective, the I.W.W. is moreall-sufficient, more mature and more modern than any of its anarcho-syndicalist predecessors.[7]

The IWW began to fully embrace the general strike in 1910-1911.[24] The ultimate goal of the general strike,according to Industrial Workers of the World theory, is to displace capitalists and give control over the means ofproduction to workers.[24][25] In a 1911 speech in New York City, IWW organizer Haywood explained his view ofthe economic situation, and why he believed a general strike was justified,

The capitalists have wealth; they have money. They invest the money in machinery, in the resources of the earth. They operate a factory, a mine, a railroad, a mill. They will keep that factory running just as long as there are profits coming in. When anything happens to disturb the profits, what do the capitalists do? They go on strike, don't they? They withdraw their finances from that particular mill. They close it

General strike 65

down because there are no profits to be made there. They don't care what becomes of the working class.But the working class, on the other hand, has always been taught to take care of the capitalist's interest inthe property.[26]

Bill Haywood believed that industrial unionism made possible the general strike, and the general strike madepossible industrial democracy.[26] According to Wobbly theory, the conventional strike is an important (but not theonly) weapon for improving wages, hours, and working conditions for working people. These strikes are also goodtraining to help workers educate themselves about the class struggle, and about what it will take to execute aneventual general strike for the purpose of achieving industrial democracy.[27] During the final general strike, workerswould not walk out of their shops, factories, mines, and mills, but would rather occupy their workplaces and takethem over.[27] Prior to taking action to initiate industrial democracy, workers would need to educate themselves withtechnical and managerial knowledge in order to operate industry.[27]

According to labor historian Philip S. Foner, the Wobbly conception of industrial democracy is intentionally notpresented in detail by IWW theorists; in that sense, the details are left to the "future development of society".[28]

However, certain concepts are implicit. Industrial democracy will be "a new society [built] within the shell of theold."[29] Members of the industrial union educate themselves to operate industry according to democratic principles,and without the current hierarchical ownership/management structure. Issues such as production and distributionwould be managed by the workers themselves.[29]

In 1927 the IWW called for a three day nationwide walkout — in essence, a demonstration general strike — toprotest the execution of anarchists Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.[30] The most notable responseto the call was in the Walsenburg coal district of Colorado, where 1,132 miners stayed off the job, and only 35 wentto work,[31] a participation rate which led directly to the Colorado coal strike of 1927.

On March 18, 2011, the Industrial Workers of the World website (www.iww.org) supported an endorsement of ageneral strike as a followup to protests against Governor Scott Walker's proposed labor legislation in Wisconsin,following a motion passed by the South Central Federation of Labor (SCFL) of Wisconsin endorsing a statewidegeneral strike as a response to those legislative proposals.[32][33] The SCFL website states,

At SCFL’s monthly meeting Monday, Feb. 21, delegates endorsed the following: "The SCFL endorses ageneral strike, possibly for the day Walker signs his 'budget repair bill.'" An ad hoc committee wasformed to explore the details. SCFL did not CALL for a general strike because it does not have thatauthority.[33]

Reaction of orthodox laborThe year 1919 saw a number of general strikes throughout North America, including two that were consideredsignificant — the Seattle General Strike, and the Winnipeg General Strike. While the IWW participated in theSeattle General Strike, that action was called by the Seattle Central Labor Union, affiliated with the AmericanFederation of Labor (AFL, predecessor of the AFL-CIO).[34]

In June, 1919, the AFL national organization, in session in Atlantic City, New Jersey, passed resolutions inopposition to the general strike. The official report of these proceedings described the convention as the "largest andin all probability the most important Convention ever held" by the organization, in part for having engineered the"overwhelming defeat of the so-called Radical element" via crushing a "One Big Union proposition", and also fordefeating a proposal for a nationwide general strike, both "by a vote of more than 20 to 1."[35] The AFL amended itsconstitution to disallow any central labor union (i.e., regional labor councils) from "taking a strike vote without priorauthorization of the national officers of the union concerned."[35] The change was intended to "check the spread ofgeneral strike sentiment and prevent recurrences of what happened at Seattle and is now going on at Winnepeg."[35]

The penalty for any unauthorized strike vote was revocation of that body's charter.[35]

General strike 66

History

RomeThe first general strike may have been the secessio plebis in ancient Rome. In the Outline Of History, H.G. Wellsrecorded "the general strike of the plebeians; the plebeians seem to have invented the strike, which now makes itsfirst appearance in history."[36] Their first strike occurred because they "saw with indignation their friends, who hadoften served the state bravely in the legions, thrown into chains and reduced to slavery at the demand of patriciancreditors."[36]

Wells noted that "[t]he patricians made a mean use of their political advantages to grow rich through the nationalconquests at the expense not only of the defeated enemy, but of the poorer plebeian..."[36] The plebeians, who wereexpected to obey the laws, but were not allowed to know the laws (which patricians were able to recite frommemory),[37] were successful, winning the right to appeal any injustice to the general assembly.[36] In 450 BC., in aconcession resulting from the rebellion of the plebeians, the laws of Rome were written for all to peruse.[37]

North AmericaNorth American general strikes include the 1877 Saint Louis general strike, which grew out of the events of theGreat Railroad Strike of 1877 across the United States, the 1892 New Orleans general strike, and the WinnipegGeneral Strike of 1919.

Winnipeg General Strike

The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was one of the most influential strikes in Canadian history, and became theplatform for future labour reforms.

Although many Canadian companies had enjoyed enormous profits on World War I contracts, wages and workingconditions were dismal and labour regulations were mostly non-existent.

In Winnipeg, workers within the building and metal industries attempted to strengthen their bargaining ability bycreating umbrella unions, the Building Trade Council and Metal Trade Council respectively, to encompass all metaland building unions. Although employers were willing to negotiate with each union separately, they refused tobargain with the Building and Metal Trade Councils, disapproving of the constituent unions that had joined theumbrella organization, and citing employers' inability to meet proposed wage demands. Restrictive labour policy inthe 1900s meant that a union could be recognized voluntarily by employers, or through strike action, but in no otherway. Workers from both industrial groupings therefore struck to gain union recognition and to compel recognition oftheir collective bargaining rights.

At 11:00 a.m. on Thursday May 15, 1919, virtually the entire working population of Winnipeg had gone on strike.Somewhere around 30,000 workers in the public and private sectors walked off their jobs.[] Even essential publicemployees such as firefighters went on strike, but returned midway through the strike with the approval of the StrikeCommittee. Although relations with the police and City Council were tense, the strike was non-violent in itsbeginning stages until the confrontation on Bloody Saturday.

On June 10 the federal government ordered the arrest of eight strike leaders (including J.S. Woodsworth andAbraham Albert Heaps). A week later, about 25,000 strikers assembled for a demonstration at Market Square, whereWinnipeg Mayor Charles Frederick Gray read the Riot Act. Troubled by the growing number of protestors andfearing violence, Mayor Gray called in the Royal Northwest Mounted Police who rode in on horseback charging intothe crowd of strikers, beating them with clubs and firing weapons.[] This violent action resulted in many peopleinjured, numerous arrests and the death of two strikers. Four eastern European immigrants were also rounded up atthis time and eventually two were deported, one voluntarily to the United States and the other to Eastern Europe.This day, which came to be known as “Bloody Saturday”,[38] ended with Winnipeg virtually under militaryoccupation.

General strike 67

1919 Seattle general strike

In Seattle, 35,000 shipyard workers went on strike for a pay increase. The Seattle Central Labor Council called for acity-wide strike in support. More than one hundred union locals voted to strike. Total number of strikers weresixty-thousand union workers, joined by 40,000 other workers who walked out in sympathy.[39]

The city was successfully shut down, except for essential needs such as fire protection and hospital laundry.Thirty-five neighborhood milk stations were set up throughout the city, and large kitchens prepared thirty thousandmeals per day.[39]

National leadership of the American Federation of Labor and other top union officials opposed the strike, andsuccessfully brought pressure to end it.[40]

According to Howard Zinn, participants in the strike were mostly affiliated with the American Federation of Labor,and there were only a few IWW locals.[41] Zinn observed,

The strike had been peaceful. But when it was over, there were raids and arrests: on the Socialist partyheadquarters, on a printing plant. Thirty-nine members of the IWW were jailed as "ring-leaders ofanarchy."[41]

1934 textile workers

The term "general strike" is sometimes applied to large-scale strikes of all of the workers in a particular industry,such as the Textile workers strike (1934). Such "general" strikes, however massive they might be, involve workersonly in a particular workplace.

1934 dock workers strike

The classic general strike involves workers (and members of the working-class) who may have no direct stake in theoutcome of the strike. For example, in the San Francisco General Strike of 1934, both union and non-union workersstruck for four days to protest the police and employers' tactics that had killed two picketers and in support of thelongshoremen's and seamen's demands.

1934 Teamsters strike

The distinction between a strike of different organizations, and a general strike is not always clear. In theMinneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934, as an example, many building trades unions and organizations of unemployedworkers in federal work projects struck in sympathy with striking truck drivers and to protest the police violenceagainst picketers. Thousands of others participated in demonstrations to support the strikers. Those sympathy strikes,while sizable, never acquired the scope necessary to amount to a "general strike", however, and the organizers of theTeamsters' strike did not describe it as such.

1946 Oakland strike

In October 1946, women at two department stores went on strike. On December 1, 400 members of the city's policeforce were employed to break the strike. Police succeeded in breaking the picket line, but their actions created aspontaneous general strike throughout the city. An estimated 130,000 people stopped work, essentially shuttingdown the city.[42]

Europe

The Belgian experience and Rosa Luxemburg

Milorad M. Drachkovitch noted four mass strikes in Belgium — 1886, 1887, 1891, and 1893 — which eventuallyled to universal suffrage.[16]

General strike 68

Belgium was likely one of the first important industrial countries where a general strike happened, at least inEurope.[43] In 1886, there was the Walloon Jacquerie of 1886, but without an actual leading political organisation.The final strike was the Belgian general strike of 1893.[44]

In his book about Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Frölich quotes several experiences of general strikes, including the Belgiangeneral strike for the universal suffrage in 1893. Although the strike succeeded, absolute equality of suffrage had yetto be obtained.

In 1902 the Belgian Labour Party launched an other strike, which failed. Many German social democrats thoughtsuch an experiment was absurd. Drachkovitch observed that German socialists were against the general strikebecause "under the Kaiser, supporting it was not very safe."[45]

Rosa Luxemburg had a different view, criticizing the Belgian Labour Party for perceived tactical incompetence: Ageneral strike forged in advance within the fetters of legality is like a war demonstration with cannons dumped into ariver within the very sight of the enemy.[46]

Carl E. Schorske wrote about the same Belgian phenomenon studied by Luxemburg as well as the Germanopposition to it:

In German Social Democratic circles, the general strike suffered from the hereditary taint of its anarchistorigins (...) Rosa Luxemburg, who studied the Belgian strike, was particularly impressed with its successin activating the political consciousness of the backward portions of the population. She was not yethowever, prepared to give it European-wide significance. Luxemburg felt it to be appropriate only incountries in which industry was geographically concentrated.[47]

The Walloon author Claude Renard explained the relative successes of the general strike by the relative smallterritory of Belgium (and especially Wallonia where the industry was concentrated). He also quoted Luxemburg whocriticized Le Peuple, the official newspaper of the Belgian Labour Party who was again in favour of the Germanmethod after the General strike of 1902 failed. In Die Neue Zeit, she pointed out the small territory of Belgium, thefact that only 3 or 400 thousand workers were able to make a country strike-bound. But she insisted also about aclimate of liberty and democracy where the working class is really stronger, in France as well as in Belgium.[48]

For several historians, it seemed that Wallonia sprang from these strikes[49] and likely from the last Belgian generalstrike the 1960-1961 Winter General Strike.

Spain

General strikes were frequent in Spain during the early 20th century, where revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism wasmost popular.

Notable general strikesThe largest general strike that ever stopped the economy of an advanced industrial country – and the first generalwildcat strike in history – was May 1968 in France.[50] The prolonged strike involved eleven million workers for twoweeks in a row,[50] and its impact was such that it almost caused the collapse of the de Gaulle government. Othernotable general strikes include:

• 494 BC – The Aventine Secession, Ancient Rome, creating the Tribune of the Plebs• 449 BC – A secessio plebis leading to the adoption of the Twelve Tables• 287 BC – A secessio plebis leading to the adoption of the Lex Hortensia• 1842 – 1842 General Strike, Great Britain• 1886 - Walloon jacquerie of 1886 Wallonia• 1893 - Belgian general strike of 1893 Belgium Wallonia• 1902 – Geneva General Strike of 1902, Switzerland• 1905 – The Great October Strike, Russia

General strike 69

• 1907 – Geneva General Strike of 1907, Switzerland• 1907 - New Orleans Levee General Strike, United States• 1909 – Swedish General Strike• 1909 - Uprising of the 20,000• 1912 – Brisbane General Strike, Australia• 1912 – Zurich General Strike of 1912, Switzerland• 1917 – Australian General Strike• 1917 – Brazilian General Strike• 1917 – Spanish General Strike• 1918 – Swiss General Strike• 1919 – Barcelona General Strike, Spain• 1919 – Winnipeg General Strike, Canada• 1919 – Seattle General Strike, US• 1919 – General Strike in Basel and Zurich 1919, Switzerland• 1920 – German Kapp Putsch Strike• 1922 – Italian General Strike• 1920 - German passive resistance strikes at the Ruhr• 1926 – UK General Strike of 1926• 1933 - French general strike of 1933• 1932 – Geneva General Strike of 1932, Switzerland• 1934 – West Coast Longshoremen's Strike, US• 1934 – Minneapolis Teamsters Strike, US• 1934 – Toledo Auto-Lite Strike, US• 1936 – Palestinian general strike• 1936 - French general strike of 1936• 1936 – Syrian General Strike• 1941 – February Strike, Netherlands• 1942 – Luxembourgian General Strike• 1946 – Indian General Strike• 1946 - Oakland, California General Strike• 1950 – Austrian General Strikes• 1950 - General strike against Leopold III of Belgium• 1953 - Hartal 1953, Ceylon• 1954 - General strike of 1954, Honduras• 1956 – Finnish General Strike• 1958 - Bahamas General Strike• 1960 - 1960-1961 Winter General Strike in Wallonia• 1968 – French General Strike• 1973 – Uruguayan General Strike• 1974 – Ulster Workers Council Strike, Northern Ireland.• 1984 – Uruguayan General Strike• 1988 – Spanish General Strike• 1989 – 2-hour general strike of all citizens of Czechoslovakia during the Velvet Revolution• 1992 – Nepalese General Strike• 1995 – French Public Sector Strikes• 1995 – Days of Action, Canada• 2000 – Cochabamba General Strike, Bolivia

General strike 70

• 2002 – Italian General Strike• 2005 – Bolivian Gas Conflict• 2006 - April 2006 Nepalese general strike• 2007 – Guinea General Strike• 2009 – French Caribbean General Strikes• 2010 - Spanish General Strike• 2011 - Oakland, California general strike

References[1] http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=TmlYAAAAYAAJ& q=Labour+ research+ ,+ Volume+ 94& dq=Labour+ research+ ,+ Volume+ 94&

hl=en& ei=FXGpTs2HMs734QTbhsT8Dw& sa=X& oi=book_result& ct=result& resnum=1& ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA[2] The Wall Street Journal http:/ / online. wsj. com/ article/ BT-CO-20110408-702627. html retrieved April 9, 2011[3] Seattle PI, http:/ / www. seattlepi. com/ news/ article/ Teachers-strike-fuels-unrest-in-polarized-Honduras-1317798. php retrieved April 9,

2011[4] ABC News, http:/ / www. abc. net. au/ pm/ content/ 2011/ s3185314. htm retrieved April 9, 2011[5] Magharebia, http:/ / www. magharebia. com/ cocoon/ awi/ xhtml1/ en_GB/ features/ awi/ newsbriefs/ general/ 2011/ 04/ 07/ newsbrief-03

retrieved April 9, 2011[6][6] The Sydney Morning Herald, February 1, 1947, page 1[7] Ralph Chaplin, The General Strike, Pamphlet, Industrial Workers of the World, 1933 (from the 1985 republication of this pamphlet), http:/ /

www. iww. org/ en/ culture/ official/ strike/ strike4. shtml retrieved April 8, 2011[8][8] Stephen Naft, The Social General Strike, Debating Club No. 1, Chicago, June 1905, pages 5-6, translated from the German language

pamphlet of the same name by Arnold Roller[9][9] Stephen Naft, The Social General Strike, Debating Club No. 1, Chicago, June 1905, page 6, translated from the German language pamphlet of

the same name by Arnold Roller[10][10] Stephen Naft, The Social General Strike, Debating Club No. 1, Chicago, June 1905, page 7, translated from the German language pamphlet

of the same name by Arnold Roller[11][11] Stephen Naft, The Social General Strike, Debating Club No. 1, Chicago, June 1905, page 8, translated from the German language pamphlet

of the same name by Arnold Roller[12][12] Stephen Naft, The Social General Strike, Debating Club No. 1, Chicago, June 1905, page 9, translated from the German language pamphlet

of the same name by Arnold Roller[13][13] Milorad M. Drachkovitch, The revolutionary internationals, 1864-1943, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford

University Press, 1966, page 81[14][14] Milorad M. Drachkovitch, The revolutionary internationals, 1864-1943, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford

University Press, 1966, page 83[15][15] Milorad M. Drachkovitch, The revolutionary internationals, 1864-1943, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford

University Press, 1966, pages 82-83[16][16] Milorad M. Drachkovitch, The revolutionary internationals, 1864-1943, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford

University Press, 1966, pages 99-100[17][17] Milorad M. Drachkovitch, The revolutionary internationals, 1864-1943, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford

University Press, 1966, page 99. His actual term was "mutually exclusive."[18][18] Milorad M. Drachkovitch, The revolutionary internationals, 1864-1943, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford

University Press, 1966, page 100[19][19] Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, A History of the Industrial Workers of the World, University of Illinois Press Abridged, 2000, page 88[20][20] Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 4, The Industrial Workers of the World 1905-1917, International

Publishers, 1997, page 18[21] Thomas J. Hagerty and W. E. Trautmann, One Big Union, An Outline of a Possible Industrial Organization of the Working Class, with

Chart, 1st edition, Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1911.[22][22] Milorad M. Drachkovitch, The revolutionary internationals, 1864-1943, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford

University Press, 1966, page 84[23] Paul Frederick Brissenden, The I.W.W. A Study of American Syndicalism, Columbia University, 1919, page 45[24][24] Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 4, The Industrial Workers of the World 1905-1917, International

Publishers, 1997, page 140[25][25] Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, A History of the Industrial Workers of the World, University of Illinois Press Abridged, 2000, page 90[26][26] Bill Haywood, The General Strike (Chicago, n.d.), pamphlet, published by Industrial Workers of the World, from a New York City speech

delivered March 16, 1911.

General strike 71

[27][27] Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 4, The Industrial Workers of the World 1905-1917, InternationalPublishers, 1997, page 141

[28][28] Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 4, The Industrial Workers of the World 1905-1917, InternationalPublishers, 1997, pages 141-142

[29][29] Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 4, The Industrial Workers of the World 1905-1917, InternationalPublishers, 1997, page 142

[30][30] Donald J. McClurg, The Colorado Coal Strike of 1927 -- Tactical Leadership of the IWW, Labor History, Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter, 1963, page71

[31][31] Donald J. McClurg, The Colorado Coal Strike of 1927 -- Tactical Leadership of the IWW, Labor History, Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter, 1963, page72

[32] http:/ / www. iww. org/ en/ genstrike retrieved April 9, 2011[33] http:/ / www. scfl. org/ retrieved April 9, 2011[34] http:/ / depts. washington. edu/ labhist/ strike/ retrieved April 9, 2011[35][35] Sheet Metal Workers' Journal, Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers' International Alliance, Volumes 24-25, Chicago, Illinois, 1919, pages

265-267[36][36] H.G. Wells, Outline Of History, Waverly Book Company, 1920, page 225[37][37] H.G. Wells, Outline Of History, Waverly Book Company, 1920, pages 225-226[38] Bloody Saturday (http:/ / www. cbc. ca/ documentaries/ bloodysaturday/ ) CBC Television documentary[39][39] Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, Harper Collins, 2010, page 377[40][40] Foner, Philip S., History of the Labor Movement in the United States, v.8 Postwar Struggles, 1918-1920 (NY: International Publishers,

1988), page 75[41] Howard Zinn, "Self Help in Hard Times", Chapter 15 of A People's History of the United States, http:/ / www. iww. org/ en/ culture/

articles/ zinn15. shtml retrieved April 9, 2011[42] http:/ / blog. sfgate. com/ kalw/ 2011/ 11/ 02/ remembering-the-1946-oakland-general-strike/[43] Carl Strikwerda (1997). A house divided: Catholics, Socialists, and Flemish nationalists in nineteenth-century Belgium (http:/ / books.

google. com/ books?id=RlR0B7Nkq-EC). Rowman & Littlefield. p. 109. ISBN 9780847685271. . Retrieved 23 September 2010.[44] Many Riots in Belgium, New York Times, 13 April 1893 (http:/ / query. nytimes. com/ mem/ archive-free/

pdf?res=9C07E3D61731E033A25750C1A9629C94629ED7CF)[45][45] Milorad M. Drachkovitch, The revolutionary internationals, 1864-1943, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford

University Press, 1966, page 82[46] Paul Frölich (August 1994). Rosa Luxemburg, ideas in action (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=pIA7AYyZPfkC& pg=PA338). Pluto

Press. p. 141. ISBN 9780902818194. . Retrieved 23 September 2010.[47] Carl E. Schorske (1983). German social democracy, 1905-1917: the development of the great schism (http:/ / books. google. com/

books?id=VH5zW6GOAIoC). Harvard University Press. p. 34. ISBN 9780674351257. . Retrieved 23 September 2010.[48] Rosa Luxemburg, The Belgian Experience, Die Neue Zeit, 14 may 1902, pp. 47 and the following pages. Quoted by Claude Renard, La

conquête du suffrage universel en Belgique, Editions de la Fondation Jacquemotte, Bruxelles, 1966, pp. 224-226.[49] Marinette Bruwier 1886, La Wallonie née de la grève,Colloque Université de Liège, Editions Labor, Bruxelles, 1990 ISBN 2-8040-0522-4[50] The Beginning of an Era (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ beginning. html), from Situationist International No 12 (September 1969).

Translated by Ken Knabb.

External links• Chronology of general strikes (http:/ / www. sonic. net/ ~figgins/ generalstrike/ )• The Mass Strike (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ luxemburg/ 1906/ mass-strike/ index. htm) by Rosa

Luxemburg (1906)• General Strike 1842 (http:/ / www. chartists. net/ General-Strike-1842) From chartists.net, downloaded 5 June

2006• From Reflections on Violence (http:/ / www. cooper. edu/ humanities/ classes/ coreclasses/ hss3/ g_sorel. html)• Strike! Famous Worker Uprisings (http:/ / www. life. com/ image/ first/ in-gallery/ 55951/

strike-famous-worker-uprisings#index/ 0) - slideshow by Life magazine• Strikes and You from the National Alliance for Worker and Employer Rights (http:/ / www. freeworkplace. org/

helpcenter/ strike. php)• Seattle General Strike Project (http:/ / depts. washington. edu/ labhist/ strike/ )• Oakland 1946! Project (http:/ / www. deepoakland. org/ project?id=136& project=136)

Recuperation (politics) 72

Recuperation (politics)Recuperation, in the sociological sense, is the process by which politically radical ideas and images arecommodified and incorporated within a mainstream society and, thus, become interpreted through a more sociallyacceptable or conventional perspective. More broadly, it may refer to the appropriation of any subversive works orideas by mainstream media or culture. It is the opposite of détournement, in which images and other cultural artifactsare appropriated from mainstream sources and repurposed with radical intentions.

The concept in political philosophy of recuperation was first proposed by members of the Situationist International.The term is intended to convey a negative connotation because recuperation generally bears the intentionalconsequence (whether perceived or not) of fundamentally altering the meanings behind ideas due to theirappropriation or being co-opted into the ruling discourse.

External linksEssay on the topic [1]

Further reading• Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989).

References[1] http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20091028143650/ http:/ / geocities. com/ ~johngray/ barsit10. htm

Spectacle (critical theory)The spectacle is a central notion in the Situationist theory developed by Guy Debord. Guy Debord's 1967 book, TheSociety of the Spectacle, attempted to provide the Situationist International (SI) with a Marxian critical theory. Theconcept of "the spectacle" expanded to all society the Marxist concept of reification drawn from the first section ofKarl Marx's Capital, entitled The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof and developed by György Lukácsin his work, History and Class Consciousness. This was an analysis of the logic of commodities whereby theyachieve an ideological autonomy from the process of their production, so that “social action takes the form of theaction of objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them.” (Marx, Capital) Developing this analysisof the logic of the commodity, The Society of the Spectacle generally understood society as divided between thepassive subject who consumes the spectacle and the reified spectacle itself.

The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living.

—Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

History and influenceA long tradition of work exists in political science on the "political spectacle"[1] started with Debord;[2] many literary critics and philosophers in the 20th century contributed to this analysis. According to anthropologist Meg McLagan, "Debord analyzes the penetration of the commodity form into mass communication, which he argues results in the spectacle".[1] Andrew Hussey claims in his biography of Debord that the term spectacle began life not in a Marxist context, but was first borrowed from Nietzsche and his concept of the mass secret. The critic Sadie Plant argues that later theories of postmodernism, particularly those of Baudrillard and Lyotard, owe much to Debord's theory, and represent an apolitical appropriation of its criticism of the unreality of life under late capitalism. Debord was a rebel

Spectacle (critical theory) 73

to his core and despised academic commodification of his ideas and their integration into the diffuse spectacle.Throughout his life he fought to make his ideas truly revolutionary. His ideas appear to be gaining more and morerelevance and interest. Web sites such as the Bureau of Public Secrets[3] which is maintained by Ken Knabb and NotBored[4] are increasingly visited. Debord's ideas have also been used to interpret right wing and populist attitudes tomental illness[5].

Different formsDebord later modified his argument, and claimed that the spectacle manifests itself in three different forms:

The concentrated spectacleThe spectacle associated with concentrated bureaucracy. Debord associated this spectacular form mostly with theEastern Bloc and Fascism, although today mixed backward economies import it, and even advanced capitalistcountries in times of crisis. Every aspect of life, like property, music, and communication is concentrated and isidentified with the bureaucratic class. The concentrated spectacle generally identifies itself with a powerful politicalleader. The concentrated spectacle is made effective through a state of permanent violence and police terror.

The diffuse spectacleThe spectacle associated with advanced capitalism and commodity abundance. In the diffuse spectacle, differentcommodities conflict with each other, preventing the consumer from consuming the whole. Each commodity claimsitself as the only existent one, and tries to impose itself over the other commodities:

Irreconcilable claims jockey for position on the stage of the affluent economy's unified spectacle, and differentstar commodities simultaneously promote conflicting social policies. The automobile spectacle, for example,strives for a perfect traffic flow entailing the destruction of old urban districts, while the city spectacle needs topreserve those districts as tourist attractions.

— Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

The diffuse spectacle is more effective than the concentrated spectacle. The diffuse spectacle operates mostlythrough seduction, while the concentrated spectacle operates mostly through violence. Because of this, Debordargues that the diffuse spectacle is more effective at suppressing non-spectacular opinions than the concentratedspectacle.

The integrated spectacleThe spectacle associated with modern capitalist countries. The integrated spectacle borrows traits from the diffuseand concentrated spectacle to form a new synthesis. Debord argues that this is a very recent form of spectacularmanifestation, and that it was pioneered in France and Italy. According to Debord, the integrated spectacle goes bythe label of liberal democracy. This spectacle introduces a state of permanent general secrecy, where experts andspecialists dictate the morality, statistics, and opinions of the spectacle. Terrorism is the invented enemy of thespectacle, which specialists compare with their "liberal democracy", pointing out the superiority of the latter one.Debord argues that without terrorism, the integrated spectacle wouldn't survive, for it needs to be compared tosomething in order to show its "obvious" perfection and superiority.

We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation ofspectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken outof the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detrimentof the real. It becomes a substitute for experience. (Larry Law, Images And Everyday Life)

Spectacle (critical theory) 74

References[1] McLagan, Meg. "Spectacles of difference: cultural activism and the mass mediation of Tibet", Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain,

2002, p.107[2] Edelman, Murray (1998) Constructing the political spectacle.

Wedeen, Lisa (1999) Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria.[3] http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/[4] http:/ / www. notbored. org/ index1. html[5] http:/ / www. psychopolitics. net/ index. html

Unitary urbanismUnitary urbanism (UU) was the critique of status quo urbanism employed by the Lettrist International and thenfurther developed by the Situationist International between approximately 1953 and 1960.

The praxis originates from the Lettrist technique of hypergraphics which was applied to architecture by the LettristInternational (LI). The UU critique of urbanism was further developed in the 1950s by the LI, consisting of a rangeof practices including but not limited to:

•• the situation• the dérive or drift•• psychogeography•• detournement•• industrial painting•• recuperation•• revolution

The critical practice continued to be developed by the Situationists and others. It was largely abandoned for theDebordian theory of the spectacle after the Second Situationist International and Situationist Antinational wereformed. London based evoL Psychogeographix is one of the few groups openly practicing unitary urbanism today.

Unitary Urbanism was announced as a very specific praxis at the Alba platform between the Lettrist Internationaland the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus. In his Address to the Alba Conference of September1956, the Lettrist International Delegate Gil J Wolman announced: "A unitary urbanism — the synthesis of art andtechnology that we call for — must be constructed according to certain new values of life, values which now need tobe distinguished and disseminated." [1]. This mode of urban practice was also called for in a tract distributed duringa demonstration by Lettrists in Turin, Italy in December 1956. [2]

Constant Nieuwenhuys and Guy Debord disagreed about the praxis, issuing the designation "the complex, ongoingactivity which consciously recreates man's environment according to the most advanced conceptions in everydomain," however the widening gulf between Nieuwenhuys' "structural" approach and Debord's focus on "content"eventually lead to Nieuwenhuy's split from the SI in 1960 [3].

Unitary urbanism, one of the major early Situationist concerns [4], stands on two tenets:

• the rejection of the standard Euclidean, almost wholly functional approach to urban architectural design, and•• the rejection of the compartmentalized way in which "art" is typically detached from its surroundings.

In the relative utopia of the UU ideal, the structural and artistic elements of human's metropolitan surroundings areblended into such grey area that one cannot identify where function ends and play begins. The resulting society,while it caters to fundamental needs, does so in an atmosphere of continual exploration, leisure, and stimulatingambience.

Unitary urbanism 75

Unitary Urbanists•• Lettrist International•• Guy Debord•• Constant Nieuwenhuys•• Piero Simondo•• Providence Initiative for Psychogeographic Studies•• Psy-Geo-Conflux•• The Workshop for Non-Linear Architecture

Quotes"Whatever prestige the bourgeoisie may today be willing to grant to fragmentary or deliberately retrograde artistictentatives, creation can now be nothing less than a synthesis aiming at the construction of entire atmospheres andstyles of life. . . . A unitary urbanism — the synthesis we call for, incorporating arts and technologies — must becreated in accordance with new values of life, values which we now need to distinguish and disseminate. . . . " Gil JWolman “La plate-forme d’Alba” originally appeared in Potlatch: Information Bulletin of the Lettrist International#27 (Paris, 2 November 1956).

External links• History of Unitary Urbanism and Psychogeography at the Turn of the Sixties [4]

References[1] http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ presitu/ wolman. html[2] http:/ / www. notbored. org/ UU. html[3] http:/ / www. notbored. org/ ten-years-on. html[4] http:/ / www. socialfiction. org/ psychogeography/ unitary_urbanism. html

Workers' council 76

Workers' councilA workers' council, or revolutionary councils, is the phenomenon where a single place of work or enterprise, suchas a factory, school, or farm, is controlled collectively by the workers of that workplace, through the core principle oftemporary and instantly revocable delegates.

In a system with temporary and instantly revocable delegates, workers deliberate on what is their agenda and whatare their needs, and mandate a temporary delegate to divulge and pursue them. The temporary delegates are electedamong the workers themselves, can be instantly revoked if they betray their mandate, and are supposed to changefrequently. There are no managers and all the decision power and the organization is based on the delegates system.

On a larger scale, a group of delegates may in turn elect a higher delegate to pursue their mandate, and so on, untilthe top delegates are running the industrial system of a state. In such a system decision power raises bottom-up fromthe agendas of the workers themselves, and there is not a decision imposition from the top, as would happen in thecase of a power seizure by a supposedly revolutionary party.

Historical examplesSeveral times in modern history the idea of Workers' councils has been attributed to similar forms of organization,although in most cases the workers didn't actually have full power control, and were subdued to some externalauthority. Examples include Russia in 1905 and 1917, where the councils were called "soviets";[1] Germany during1918 (Räte); Turin, Italy during 1919-1920; rural Ireland during 1920-1921; China during 1926-1927; Spain during1936; Hungary during 1919 and 1956; France during 1871 and 1968; Chile in 1973 (cordones); Iran during1978-1979 (shoras[2]); and from at the latest 2002 to the present in Venezuela.[3]

Despite Lenin's declarations that "the workers must demand the immediate establishment of genuine control, to beexercized by the workers themselves", on May 30, the Menshevik minister of labor, Skobolev, pledged to not givethe control of industry to the workers but instead to the state: "The transfer of enterprises into the hands of the peoplewill not at the present time assist the revolution [...] The regulation and control of industry is not a matter for aparticular class. It is a task for the state. Upon the individual class, especially the working class, lies theresponsibility for helping the state in its organizational work."[][4]

Organization detailsIn the workers' councils organised as part of the German revolution, factory organisations, such as the GeneralWorkers' Union of Germany (AAUD), formed the basis for organising region-wide councils. The councilcommunists in the Communist Workers' Party of Germany advocated organising "on the basis of places of work, nottrades, and to establish a National Federation of Works Committees."[5]

Councils operate on the principle of recallable delegates. This means that elected delegates may be recalled at anytime through a vote in a form of impeachment. Recall of management committee members, specialist professionalssuch as engineers, and delegates to higher councils was observed in the Central Workers Council of GreaterBudapest during 1956, where delegates were removed for industrial, organisational and political reasons.

Workers' councils combine to elect higher bodies for coordinating between one another. This means that the uppercouncils are not superior to the lower councils, but are instead built from and operated by them. The national councilwould therefore have delegates from every city in the country. Their nature means that workers' councils do awaywith traditional centralized governments and instead give the power indirectly to the people. This type of democraticorder is called council democracy. The Central Workers Council of Greater Budapest occupied this role in theHungarian Revolution of 1956, between late October and early January 1957, where it was formed from local factorycommittees.

Workers' council 77

Councils against unions and StalinistsA workers' council is a deliberative assembly, composed of working class members, intended to institute workers'self-management or workers' control. Unlike a trade union, in a workers' council the workers are assumed to be inactual control of the workplace, rather than merely negotiating with employers through collective bargaining. Theyare a form of workplace democracy.

Many Marxists and most anarchists believe that workers' councils embody the fundamental principles of socialism,such as workers' control over production and distribution. Indeed, some have described this as "socialism frombelow," which they counterpose against what they see as "socialism from above" endorsed by Stalinism andMaoism. According to this view, socialism from above is carried out by a centralized state run by an elitebureaucratic apparatus, whereas socialism from below represents the self-administration and self-rule of the workingclass.

Some left communists (particularly council communists) and anarchists support a council-based society; believingthat only the workers themselves can spark the revolution and so workers' councils will be the foundation of therevolution. There are also Leninists (for example the International Socialist Tendency and its offshoots) whoadvocate a council-based society,[6] but maintain that workers' councils cannot carry out a revolution without theleadership of a vanguard party.[7]

During May 1968 ( "The largest general strike that ever stopped the economy of an advanced industrial country, andthe first wildcat general strike in history" ), the Situationists, against the unions and the Communist Party that werestarting to side with the de Gaulle government to contain the revolt, called for the formation of workers' councils totake control of the factories, expelling union leaders and left-wing bureaucrats, in order to keep the power in thehands of the workers with direct democracy.[8]

References[1] Maurice Brinton, pseud. (Christopher Agamemnon Pallis). The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control. (Orig: Solidarity UK, London, 1970), The

Bolsheviks and Workers' Control introduction (http:/ / www. spunk. org/ texts/ places/ russia/ sp001861/ bolintro. html)[2] Poya, Maryam (2002) [1987]. "IRAN 1979: Long live the Revolution! ... Long Live Islam?". In Colin Barker. Revolutionary Rehearsals.

Chicago: Haymarket Books. pp. 143–9. ISBN 1-931859-02-7.[3] Venezuela’s Co-Managed Inveval: Surviving in a Sea of Capitalism (http:/ / www. venezuelanalysis. com/ analysis/ 2520)[4] Amosov et al. (1927) Oktiabrskaia Revoliutsiia i Fazavkomy, vol.1, p.83. (published in Moscow)[5] Bernhard Reichenbach, The KAPD in Retrospect: An Interview with a Member of the Communist Workers Party of Germany (http:/ / www.

marxists. org/ archive/ reichenbach/ 1969/ retrospect. htm)[6] Molyneux, John (2003) [1987]. The Future Socialist Society. Chicago: Haymarket Books. pp. 5–6. "... the core institutions of the new state

will be ... the network of workers' councils."[7] Molyneux, John (2003) [1978]. Marxism and the Party. Chicago: Haymarket Books. pp. 79. "Only with the growth of the Bolsheviks into a

mass party and with the emergence of a Bolshevik majority in the soviets were these embryos of workers' state power able to fulfil theirpotentiality."

[8] The Beginning of an Era (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ beginning. html), from Situationist International No 12 (September 1969).Translated by Ken Knabb.

External links• Workers' Councils: The historically discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat (http:/ / en.

internationalism. org/ node/ 621)

World revolution 78

World revolutionThis is about the concept of world revolution in Marxist theory. For other uses of the term, see worldrevolution (disambiguation).

World revolution is the Marxist concept of overthrowing capitalism in all countries through the consciousrevolutionary action of the organized working class. These revolutions would not necessarily occur simultaneously,but where local conditions allowed a revolutionary party to successfully replace bourgeois ownership and rule, andinstall a workers' state based on social ownership of the means of production. In most Marxist schools, such asTrotskyism, the essentially international character of the class struggle and the necessity of global scope are criticalelements and a chief explanation of the failure of socialism in one country.

The end goal is to achieve world socialism, and later, stateless communism.[1][2]

A picture saying, "Comrade LeninCleanses the Earth of Filth"

Communist movements

The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia sparked a revolutionary wave ofsocialist and communist uprisings across Europe, most notably the GermanRevolution, the Hungarian Revolution, Biennio Rosso and the revolutionarywar in Finland with the short lived Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic,which made large gains and met with considerable success in the early stages;see also Revolutions of 1917-23.

Particularly in the years 1918-1919, it seemed plausible that capitalism wouldsoon be swept from the European continent forever. Given the fact thatEuropean powers controlled the majority of Earth's land surface at the time,such an event could have meant the end of capitalism not just in Europe, buteverywhere. Additionally, the Comintern, founded in March 1919, began asan independent international organization of communists from variouscountries around the world that evolved after the Russian Civil War into anessentially Soviet-sponsored agency responsible for coordinating therevolutionary overthrow of capitalism worldwide.

“Revolutions are the locomotives of history.”— Karl Marx [3]

With the prospect of world revolution so close at hand, Marxists were dominated by a feeling of overwhelmingoptimism, which in the end proved to be quite premature. The European revolutions were crushed one by one, untileventually the Russian revolutionaries found themselves to be the only survivors. Since they had been relying on theidea that an underdeveloped and agrarian country like Russia would be able to build socialism with help fromsuccessful revolutionary governments in the more industrialized parts of Europe, they found themselves in a crisisonce it became clear that no such help would arrive; see Socialism in one country.

After those events and up until the present day, the international situation never came quite so close to a worldrevolution again. As fascism grew in Europe in the 1930s, instead of immediate revolution, the Comintern opted fora Popular Front with liberal capitalists against fascism; then, at the height of World War II in 1943, the Cominternwas disbanded on the request of the Soviet Union's Western allies.

World revolution 79

Post World War TwoA new upsurge of revolutionary feeling swept across Europe in the aftermath of World War II, though it was not asstrong as the one triggered by World War I which resulted in failed (in the socialist sense) revolution in Germanyand a successful one (for seventy years) in Russia. Communist parties in countries such as Greece, France, and Italyhad acquired significant prestige and public support due to their activity as leaders of anti-fascist resistancemovements during the war; as such, they also enjoyed considerable success at the polls and regularly finished secondin elections in the late 1940s. However, none managed to finish in first and form a government. Communist partiesin Eastern Europe, meanwhile, though they did win elections at around the same time, did so under circumstancesregarded by some as mere show elections.

Revolts across the world in the 1960s and early 1970s, coupled with the Chinese Cultural Revolution, theestablishment of the New Left together with the Civil Rights Movement, the militancy of the Black Panther Partyand similar armed/insurrectionary "Liberation Front" groups around the globe, and even a bit of a resurgence in thelabor movement for a time once again made it seem to some as though world revolution was not only possible, butactually imminent; thus, there was a common expression, "The East is Red, and the West is Ready". However, thisradical left spirit ebbed by the mid-1970s, and in 1980s and 1990s there was a return to certain right-wing,economically conservative ideologies (spearheaded, among other examples, by Thatcherism in the United Kingdomand Reaganomics in the United States) and also free-market reforms in China and in Vietnam.

Within Marxist theory, Lenin's concept of the labor aristocracy and his description of imperialism, and – separately,but not necessarily unrelatedly – Trotsky's theories regarding the deformed workers' state, offer several explanationsas to why the world revolution has not occurred to the present day. Many groups, however, such as the ProgressiveLabor Party (United States), still explicitly pursue the goal of worldwide communist revolution, calling it the truestexpression of proletarian internationalism.

References[1] The Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship and Scientific Communism (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ bukharin/ works/ 1933/ teaching/ 4.

htm) by Bukharin[2] The State and Revolution — Chapter 5 (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ archive/ lenin/ works/ 1917/ staterev/ ch05. htm)[3] Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above 1928-1941 by Robert C. Tucker, W. W. Norton & Company, 1992, ISBN 0-393-30869-3, pg

608

External links• World Revolution (http:/ / en. internationalism. org) section in Britain of the International Communist Current• Progressive Labor Party (United States) (http:/ / progressivelabor. 890m. com/ )

80

Groups

Council for Maintaining the OccupationsThe Council for Maintaining the Occupations (French: Conseil pour le Maintien des Occupations), or CMDO,was a revolutionary committee formed during the May 1968 events in France originating in the Sorbonne.[1] Thecouncil favored the continuation of wildcat general strikes and factory occupations across France, maintaining themthrough directly democratic workers' councils.[1] Within the revolutionary movement, it opposed the influence ofmajor trade unions and the French Communist Party who intended to contain the revolt and compromise withGeneral Charles de Gaulle.[2]

The council implemented a policy of equal representation for its participants. It was described by Situationist RenéViénet as "essentially an uninterrupted general assembly, deliberating day and night. No faction or private meetingsever existed outside the common debate." It was formed on the evening of May 17, by supporters of the SorbonneOccupation Committee.[1]

References[1] René Viénet (1968) The "Council for Maintaining the Occupations" and Councilist Tendencies (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/

enrages08. html). Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement (Paris, May 1968). Translated by Loren Goldner and PaulSieveking.

[2] Guy Debord, Mustapha Khayati, René Riesel, Christian Sébastiani, Raoul Vaneigem, René Viénet (1969) The Beginning of an Era (http:/ /www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ enrages08. html). Internationale Situationniste #12 (Paris, September 1969).Translated by Ken Knabb.

Second Situationist International 81

Second Situationist InternationalJørgen Nash identifies the first manifestation of the Second Situationist International after it broke away from theSituationist International as a leaflet signed by himself along with Jacqueline de Jong and Ansgar Elde, shortly afterthe group Seven Rebels was formed at Situationist Bauhaus at Asger Jorn's farm Drakabygget in southern Sweden.This assertion was made in the Times Literary Supplement, Special Issue, 1964.

Before Nash rupture with the SI, Jorn, who sided with the SI against Nash, emphasised situlogy, "the transformativemorphology of the unique."[1]

Howard Slater describes the break between the "Parisian" and the "Scandinavian" tendencies as amounting to "aconflict between a conceptual and an expressionist approach, or, to echo Jorn's two tendencies of situlogy, a conflictbetween the ludic and the analytical," and quotes the Drakabygget Declaration:

"The Franco-Belgian Situationists base themselves on the same principles as Pascal, Descartes... actionprecedes emotion. Emotion is a primary non-reflective intelligence: passionate thought/thinking passion.... We do not always distinguish between theory and practice. We intend to produce our theories afterthe event.... The French work exactly the other way round. They want everything straight before theystart and everybody has to line up correctly."[2]

The Drakabygget Declaration was the founding document of the Second Situationist International, which appearedin the Situationist Times No. 2, 1962.

The declaration was signed by Jørgen Nash, Jens Jørgen Thorsen, Gordon Fazakerley, Hardy Strid, Stefan Larsson,Ansgar Elde, Jacqueline de Jong, and Patrick O'Brien,[3] following their expulsion from the SituationistInternational.

References[1] Asger Jorn "Open Creation and its Enemies," Internationale Situationniste No. 5, 1960[2] Slater, Howard (2001). "Divided We Stand - An Outline of Scandinavian Situationism" (http:/ / www. infopool. org. uk/ 2001. html). http:/ /

www. infopool. org. uk Infopool.org. . Retrieved 2008-02-10.[3] According to Slater, Patrick O'Brien was a pseudonym for Guy Atkins, author of Asger Jorn (Methuen London, 1977).

External links• The Situationists from Drakabygget, The Spiral Labyrinth and The Situationist International (http:/ / www.

infopool. org. uk/ 6306. html)

Report on the Construction of Situations 82

Report on the Construction of SituationsThe pamphlet Report on the Construction of Situations is the founding Manifesto of the Situationist Internationalrevolutionary organization.[1][2] It was published by Guy Debord in June 1957,[3] and the following month theorganization was founded, at Cosio d'Arroscia, Italy.

The organization was founded by the fusion of three organizations: the Lettrist International, the InternationalMovement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association.

The complete title is Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency’sConditions of Organization and Action.

Content

Revolutionary movementExpressing the view of the national leaders of the previous organizations, particularly Jorn, Debord, Gallizio andKorun,[1] this report defines the main political aim of the movement as revolutionary:

First, we believe that the world must be changed. We desire the most liberatory possible change of thesociety and the life in which we find ourselves confined. We know that such change is possible bymeans of pertinent actions.

During the May 1968 general strike, the Situationists, against the unions and the Communist Party that were startingto side with the de Gaulle government to contain the revolt, called for the formation of workers' councils to takecontrol of the factories, expelling union leaders and left-wing bureaucrats, in order to keep the power in the hands ofthe workers with direct democracy.[4]

The imbecilization of young people in families and schoolsThe imbecilization that young people undergo within their families and schools, has then a natural continuation inthe "deliberately anticultural production" of novels, films, et cetera, conducted with the means of large-scaleindustry.[5]

In his 1961 film Critique of Separation, Debord returned on this topic adding:

“The spectacle as a whole is nothing other than [...] the gap between the visions, tastes, refusals and projects that previously characterized thisyouth and the way it has advanced into ordinary life.[6] ”

In contrast, the sense of the Report on the Construction of Situations is to fulfill human primitive desires and pursuea superior passional quality. The main goal of the Situationist International is precisely the setting up ofenvironments that favor such fulfillments.[7]

Official culture and the trivialization and sterilization of the subversiveFor Debord, official culture is a "rigged game", where conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have directaccess to the public discourse, and where such ideas are integrated only after been trivialized and sterilized.[8]

Debord discusses the close link between revolution and culture and everyday life, and the reason why conservativepowers are interested in forbidding them "any direct access to the rigged game of official culture." Debord recallsthat worldwide revolutionary movements that emerged during the 1920s were followed by "an ebbing of themovements that had tried to advance a liberatory new attitude in culture and everyday life," and that such movementswere brought to a "complete social isolation."[9]

Report on the Construction of Situations 83

Emptiness of an art separated from politicsHistorically, revolutionary ideas have emerged first among artists and intellectuals. For this reason, artists andintellectuals are relegated into specialized, compartmentalized disciplines, defusing their revolutionary potential andimposing unnatural dichotomies such as the "separation of art from politics". Once artistic-intellectual works areseparated from current events and from a comprehensive critique of society, they are sterilized and can be safelyintegrated into the official culture and the public discourse, where they can add new flavors to old dominant ideasand play the role of a gear wheel in the mechanism of the society of the spectacle.

One of the contradictions of the bourgeoisie [...] is that while it respects the abstract principle ofintellectual and artistic creation, it resists actual creations when they first appear, then eventuallyexploits them. This is because it needs to maintain a certain sense of criticality and experimentalresearch among a minority, but must take care to channel this activity into narrowly compartmentalizedutilitarian disciplines, dismissing all comprehensive critique and research. In the domain of culture, thebourgeoisie strives to divert the taste for the new, which has become dangerous for it, toward certaindegraded forms of novelty that are harmless and confused. [...] The people within avant-gardetendencies who distinguished themselves are generally accepted on an individual basis, at the price ofvital renunciations: the fundamental point of debate is always the renunciation of comprehensivedemands, and the acceptance of a fragmentary work, susceptible to multiple interpretations. This is whatmakes the very term avant-garde, which in the end is always defined and manipulated by thebourgeoisie, somewhat suspicious and ridiculous. ( pp.2-3 )

In his 1959 film On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time, Debord returned on thistopic adding:

Knowledge of empirical facts remains abstract and superficial as long as it is not concretized by beingrelated to the whole situation. This is the only method that enables us to supersede partial and abstractproblems and get to their concrete essence, and thus implicitly to their meaning. [...] We can neverreally challenge any form of social organization without challenging all of that organization’s forms oflanguage. [...] When freedom is practiced in a closed circle, it fades into a dream, becomes a mere imageof itself.[10]

Notes[1] Guy Debord, letter to Pinot Gallizio, April 4th 1958, Paris. (Letter preserved by association Archivio Gallizio (http:/ / www. pinotgallizio.

org/ ) in Turin)

Il Rapport puo' essere presentato come l'espressione teorica adottata nella Conferenza di fondazionedell'I.S. a Cosio d'Arroscia; e si puo' dire che esprima il pensiero dei dirigenti dell'Internazionale, fra cuisi possono sopratutto citare Korun (Belgio), Debord (Francia), Gallizio (Italia) e Jorn (Scandinavia).Cosi' si avrebbe piu' l'immagine di un comitato responsabile, democratico, rispetto alla tendenzainternazionale che abbiamo cominciato a formare.

[2][2] Bandini (1977) pp.110-1[3] Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio (May 1958) introduction to the Italian edition of the Report on the Construction of Situations. Published in Turin by

Notizie (1958).[4] The Beginning of an Era (http:/ / www. cddc. vt. edu/ sionline/ si/ beginning. html), from Situationist International No 12 (September 1969).

Translated by Ken Knabb.[5][5] Debord (1957) p.2[6] Debord, Critique of Separation, subtitles translation (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ debord. films/ separation. htm) by Ken Knabb[7] Debord (1957) Report on the Construction of Situations, section Toward a Situationist International[8][8] Debord (1957) pp.2, 10[9] Section 3 The Function of Minority Trends in the Period of Reflux[10] Debord, On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time, subtitles translation (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/

debord. films/ passage. htm) by Ken Knabb

Report on the Construction of Situations 84

References• Bandini, Mirella (1988) [1977] (in Italian). L'estetico, il politico. Da Cobra all'Internazionale situazionista

1948-1957. Ancone: Costa & Nolan. ISBN 8876483446. OCLC 42461565.• Debord, Guy (2006) [1957]. "Report on the Construction of Situations" (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ report.

htm). Situationist International Anthology. Berkeley, California: Bureau of Public Secrets (translated by KenKnabb). ISBN 0939682044. OCLC 124093356.

Further reading• On anticulture:

• Russel Hardin (2007) The Systemic Anticulture of Capitalism in Víctor Nee, Richard Swedberg (2007) Oncapitalism (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=rRWrAAAAIAAJ) Stanford University Press, pp. 21–41

• James C. Scott 1976 The moral economy of the peasant Yale University Press• James C. Scott 1985 Weapons of the weak Yale University Press

Editions and translations• Original French text Rapport sur la construction des situations (http:/ / www. rocbo. net/ poleis/ is/ rap_construc/

)•• English translations:

• by Ken Knabb (http:/ / www. bopsecrets. org/ SI/ report. htm)• by Tom McDonough, published at pp. 29-seq of Guy Debord and the Situationist International (http:/ / books.

google. com/ books?id=8jPwJsJKXn8C)• Italian translation: published by Nautilus (counterculture publisher).

Article Sources and Contributors 85

Article Sources and ContributorsSituationist International  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=475446811  Contributors: 119, 158-152-12-77, AV3000, Academic Challenger, Acebulf, Ae7flux, Akerans, AlanLiefting, AlanGalan, Altenmann, Amoss, Anarcho hipster, Andre Engels, Anitagran, Anthere, Apeloverage, Appraiser, Ark, Armando Navarro, ArtLibAssist, Aryder779, Avsa, Awiseman, Badcarpet, BaronLarf, Beetstra, Bernd.Brincken, Betacommand, Black Butterfly, BlackAndy, BlindMic, Bradv, Brant Jones, Brock, Brockert, Bruce Tucker, Buridan, Bus stop, COMPFUNK2,Cacuija, Carboneyes, Catch, Catdav, Cdc, Cerealkiller13, Certes, Cesarharada, Chester Markel, Chzz, Climenole, Clubmarx, CommonsDelinker, Crackshoe, Crosbiesmith, Ctp-matt, Curb Chain,Cutler, Cybercobra, D6, DNewhall, DPacman, DVD R W, Daniel C. Boyer, Daniel Quinlan, Daykart, Dekimasu, Demeter, Derek Ross, Desnacked, DionysosProteus, Drisdred, Drug warrior,Duck Face, EdJohnston, Eduen, Elbelz, Elementofcrime, Eleven3, Elevenfortyfive, EoGuy, Evoluther, Extransit, Fairygurl132, Fieldday-sunday, Freshacconci, Fuzzysocksucker, Gadfium, GaiusCornelius, Gangasrotogati, Gobonobo, Grant65, Grenavitar, Ground Zero, Gyrofrog, HaeB, Harry Potter, Harvester, Hattrick, Herbythyme, Hmains, Horses In The Sky, Hurricane111, IanPitchford, Iandowneyisfamous, Icairns, Inarcadiaego, Inky, Inoculatedcities, J Milburn, Jesse McClelland, JesseHogan, Jhester25, Jni, JoDonHo, John Nevard, John Vandenberg, Jonkerz,Joshuacharles, Jpotherington, Jsf27, JustAGal, Justin Foote, Jvd, Jvol, KD Tries Again, Kai-Hendrik, Karl, Katie Marshall, Kingturtle, Kithira, KnowledgeOfSelf, Kungfuadam, Kylesutherland,Lapsed Pacifist, Lapskingwiki, Leutha, Lightlowemon, Lightmouse, LilHelpa, Livajo, Lousyd, Loz grain, Lozen8, Lquilter, Lriley47, Lucidish, Lyellin, MajusB, Mandarax, Martpol, Maxim,MaxwellBourgeoise, Maziotis, McGeddon, Mcginnly, Mcoupal, Measles, Meco, Michael Hardy, Mike Rosoft, Mild Bill Hiccup, Mladifilozof, Modulatum, Monty Cantsin, Morganfitzp, Morven,Motorboy, Mr Frosty, MsHyde, Msikma, N0cturn4lsh4d0w, Naddy, Nessman, Netsnipe, Nicke L, Nickj, Omphaloscope, Paki.tv, Panoramix, Patstuart, Pedant17, Pete singer 70, Peter G Werner,PhilCurtis, Philip Baird Shearer, Philodespotos, Polisher of Cobwebs, Qgil, Quadell, Quercusrobur, Qwertyus, R Lowry, Rabble Rouser, Radical Mallard, Rahgsu, Randomblue, Rbarreira,RedHughs, Redhughs, Redthoreau, Reedy, RepublicanJacobite, Rexrothian, Rich Farmbrough, Rlquall, Roberta F., Ron madsky, Rorysolomon, Ryan Postlethwaite, Saintartaud, Sam Francis,Sam Hocevar, Sannse, Santa Sangre, Saxifrage, Schwalker, Scott5834, Selfinformation, Semitransgenic, Sethmahoney, Sferrier, Shiki2, Si, Sigma-Algebra, Simon Sadler, Simontreal, Sjc,Skomorokh, Slowmotionrevolution, Smautf, Soja, Soviet-attack, Sparkit, Speedreeder, Spencerk, Stevertigo, Sulair.speccoll, SummerWithMorons, Syd nkroma, TFOWR, Tartarugafechada,Tazmaniacs, The Anome, The Epopt, The Tom, TheRingess, Theoldanarchist, Theturk1, TimMony, Timeshifter, Tkynerd, Tlogmer, TonyClarke, Topbanana, Trackstand, Tshase, Tyrenius,Tzartzam, U2r2h, Ufinne, UlrikOldenburg, Ute, Vanished User 03, Voyevoda, WaitingForConnection, Wayland, Weierstrass, William Avery, Wmahan, Woohookitty, Y.Pestis, Yamamoto Ichiro,Yconnan, Zazaban, Zeno Gantner, Αναρχία, 397 ,أحمد anonymous edits

Guy Debord  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=476033860  Contributors: AV3000, Ababababab, Actio, Ael 2, Alangarr, Alf Meier, Anders.bjornberg, Andy Dingley, ArmandoNavarro, Arronax50, AxelBoldt, Bartleby, Bender235, Billfred, Buridan, CBM, Carabinieri, Carlon, Chaica, D6, Docu, Duck Face, Ebbarc, Eduen, Ehheh, EqualRights, EznorbYar,Fionabuckley, FlavrSavr, Franciselliott, Fredrik, Freshacconci, Gavia immer, Geronimo355, Gingerup, Giovanni33, Giraffedata, Good Olfactory, Gwaka Lumpa, Harry Potter, Harvester, Hmains,Horselover Fat, Icey, Inbloom2, Inwind, Jahsonic, Jawsh, Jcassano, Jellyman, Jeremy Butler, Jihg, Jmc29, JoseJones, Josh Parris, Judithfitzgerald, KD Tries Again, Karl, Kasyapa, KeenanPepper, Kingturtle, Knucmo2, Krang, LGagnon, Leutha, Livajo, Lord Jim, Lotje, Lugnuts, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters, Lutherarkwright, MK, Madandnaked, Micahel Jackson, Michael David, MikeSelinker, Mladifilozof, Monegasque, Mwmillar, Neomedes, Nesbitt, Nicke L, Nihila, Owenhatherley, Paki.tv, Patstuart, Pauper Aristoteles, Phil Sandifer, Philipbn, Pointsmoon, Polisher ofCobwebs, Poor Yorick, Rcsprinter123, Rec syn, RepublicanJacobite, Rexrothian, Rich Farmbrough, Roux, RoyBoy, RyanGerbil10, Sam Hocevar, Sardanaphalus, Scrawlspacer, Senses08, SerAmantio di Nicolao, Serein (renamed because of SUL), Sethmahoney, Simonides, Slicing, Stefanomione, SummerWithMorons, Tarma 2002, Tassedethe, Teneriff, Theoldanarchist, TimMony,Timwi, Tomisti, Trachys, Tubedogg, UDScott, Unai Fdz. de Betoño, Versageek, VieQuotidienne, Voyevoda, Warkk, Weierstrass, Window, Xav71176, Zigguratesque, Zoe, 199 anonymous edits

Proletarian internationalism  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=462540877  Contributors: ABF, Acather96, Altenmann, Apjohns54, Aplex84, Arrest pol pot stoogerance,Beheader6, Bite Me Rance22, Bitemerance71, Bonadea, Bongwarrior, Bowei Huang 2, Britannicus, C mon, Caiaffa, ChaChaFut, Cogiati, Dasha14, Dina, Dionysius525, DuncanBCS,EdWalker58, Edgar181, End the trot, Erc, Ever present past, Fast eddie 7, Fl, G1076, Geeseberry, Grantbonn, Grifftob, Gutm, Gwernol, Haaninjo, Hangakommy, Hangdabastard, Hangtrots,Humus sapiens, Indon, Infinity0, Irishguy, J.delanoy, KI, Kikodawgzz, Leandros, Leons Kickster, Lick Spittle RRance, Livajo, MarionFSU, Marxwasright, Mattisse, Matturn, Matzpun,MeteorMaker, MisfitToys, Moulticite, Mysdaao, NHSavage, NewEnglandYankee, Nikosgreencookie, Nukeroland, Number 57, One, OrionK, PJB, Paki.tv, Pearle, Pol pot stoogerance, Quarl,Ranceinnoose, Rancie shthead, Rbellin, Redflagflying, Rich Farmbrough, Robert Weemeyer, Roland rancidity, Rolandinmuck, Rolandturd, SatuSuro, Sherlockindo, Shythead rrance,Skewerrance, Sluzzelin, Smackrance, Smite rrants, Snuff outrance, Soman, Spartacus Marat, Specs112, StaticElectric, Stephenb, Stomponrance, Template namespace initialisation script,Terrasque, The dark lord trombonator, Thingg, Timberframe, Toiletfacerance, Tombomp, Tonys prison butch, TreasuryTag, Trot icepickers2, Trotskolach revenge, Untrotsky, VAcharon, Valip,Wadayow, Waterboard Rance17, Waterboarder17, Xx236, Yoghurt goy, Zzuuzz, 82 anonymous edits

Class consciousness  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=473289297  Contributors: 5 albert square, Adhib, Alan Liefting, Artegis, Bartleby, Bjankuloski06en, Bluszczokrzew,Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Chris the speller, Classicalecon, ClovisPt, Conscious7, Cswift2, Cybercobra, DO'Neil, Dina, Dysprosia, Edward, Endy Leo, Eraserance, Erianna, Ernalve,Expelrance, Flowerpotman, Gogo Dodo, Gregbard, Hangtrots, Hans Adler, HarryHenryGebel, Hillawiya, Icepicktrot2, Imprisonrance, Infinity0, J.delanoy, J04n, JForget, JMCJMC, Jennesy,Koavf, Kusma, Lapaz, Lauristan, Livajo, Lycurgus, M3taphysical, Mangoe, Mellow2167, Mesoderm, Mmortal03, Moraca34, Moulticite, Mysdaao, NatDemUK, Nick Number, Nikodemos, Ongsaluri, PhnomPencil, Pretzelpaws, Raggz, Rdsmith4, Remuel, RepublicanJacobite, Riana, RobertG, RolandR, Rolandinmuck, Santa Sangre, SchreiberBike, Secretlondon, Semmler, Skewerrance,Sluzzelin, Soman, SpigotMap, Synergy, Tamarts, TheLamprey, TreasuryTag, Vssun, Wacktrotsky, Whipawill, WordyGirl90, Zdravko mk, Zzuuzz, Zzyzx11, 46 anonymous edits

Class struggle  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=473423262  Contributors: 2, Abdullais4u, Alansohn, Albmont, Ale jrb, Andres, Anna Lincoln, Aplex84, Athkalani,Awostrack, BL, Badabing7, Banaticus, Bitchen, Bite Me Rance22, Bitemerance51, Bitemerance71, Bongwarrior, Brianreading, Broom legend, Bucktoothie, CIreland, Cadr, Cailil, Carrite, Cdc,Charles Matthews, Closedmouth, Conscious7, Ctande, Dahn, Defilerance, Delldot, Dina, Distal24, Doctormatt, Drinkpis rancie, Duncharris, Edgarde, Eduen, End the trot, Esperant, Everyking,Exactly exacter, FaerieInGrey, Fang 23, Flaturance6, Flog Rance, Fredbauder, Fredrik, Frykommies, Fun n games, Gail, Geeseberry, Gobonobo, Goldfritha, Grantbonn, Gutm, Hanshans23,Hede2000, Hmains, Icseaturtles, Indon, Infinity0, Jacob Haller, Jdevine, Jeffrey O. Gustafson, John J Rice, Joseph Solis in Australia, JoshuaD1991, Jouvenel, Jpgordon, Jrtayloriv, Jurriaan,Jusdafax, KF, Kate, Kubigula, Lairor, Lancemurdoch, Lapa38, Lapaz, Leong0083, Liftarn, Likebox, LilHelpa, Loremaster, Lycurgus, Madhero88, Materialscientist, MattW93, Matzpun, MauriceCarbonaro, Max rspct, Mayis, Mentifisto, Merlinschnee, Michael Rogers, Minority2005, Mjk2357, Modulatum, MuZemike, Mysdaao, NawlinWiki, Neo-Jay, Nikodemos, Nmpenguin, Number57, Ohnoitsjamie, Otolemur crassicaudatus, PamD, Paradiver, PeterSymonds, Phanerozoic, Philip Trueman, Pigman, Pinethicket, Pkoden, Plrk, Plugrance, Political Guru, Potty rance, Powerpugnace, Ranveig, Reckoner22, Redthoreau, Rettetast, RolandR, Rolandinmuck, Rolandinmud, Rolandsukks, Rolandturd, Rrburke, SG, Sabri76, Salvor Hardin, Sausagehiders, Sentimmm33,Serpent-A, Sherlockindo, Shuipzv3, Silvonen, Simonister, Slakr, SlimVirgin, Slrubenstein, Smackrance, Smash therance2, Smekking about, Snipitoff, SocialistJack, Sottolacqua, Spylab,StaticGull, Stefanomione, Stomponrance, Tarc, Teamshoottraitors, Tiamut, Tiddly Tom, Timo Baumann, Tiptoety, Tom Paine, Tonys prison butch, Trothunter, Trotskyrein2, TutterMouse,Untrotsky, Updatehelper, Vassyana, Vision Thing, Vitruvian0, VoluntarySlave, Well behavior, Whispering, Willdw79, Woohookitty, WookieInHeat, Wuhwuzdat, Xdenizen, Xiaoyu of Yuxi,Yamamoto Ichiro, Yvwv, Zdravko mk, Zzuuzz, 157 anonymous edits

Communism  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=476332870  Contributors: *Kat*, 05theben, 08toi, 0o64eva, 10qwerty, 172, 200.255.83.xxx, 213.67.126.xxx, 24.93.53.xxx, 4twenty42o, 4u1e, 5M4R7Y, 6birc, 98smithg2, A bit iffy, A-giau, A.Beaz, A.K.A.47, A.M., ALL YOUR STUPID IDEAS ARE BELONG TO US, ANTI COMMUNIST 16, AaronF2, Aaronw, Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri, Accurizer, Acetic Acid, Ackoz, Acros037, Acroterion, Adam Carr, Addihockey10, Adhib, Adis44, Adrian, AeonicOmega, Aeusoes1, Afitillidie13, Aflafla1, Afterword, Aggie Jedi, Ahoerstemeier, Ahs gurl2012, Ahuitzotl, Ainlina, Aitias, Aiwendil42, Aksi great, Al3xil, Alakhriveion, Alansohn, Alessandro57, Alex Peppe, Alex S, Alexper, Alfa.golf.alfa, Alfons2, Alhutch, Allenc28, Allmightyduck, Allstarecho, AlphaEta, Alphachimp, Alrasheedan, Altenmann, Amberrock, Anarchist-communist, Anarchopedia, Andonic, Andre Engels, Andres, Andrewlp1991, Andrewpmk, Android79, Andy Marchbanks, Andypandy.UK, Andysoh, Angela, Anger22, Anime Editor, Anna Lincoln, Anna969, Anonymous editor, Anonymous from the 21th century, Anoopkn, Another disinterested reader, Antandrus, Anthony Appleyard, Apeloverage, Aphaia, Apjohns54, Apollonius 1236, Aprogressivist, Aqualung, ArcAngel, Arctic-Editor, Arhiv, Aris Katsaris, Arjun01, Arkhiver, Arrest pol pot stoogerance, Arrest traitor rance12, Arronax50, Arwel Parry, Asams10, AsgdafdgadgasfdfQ!!!!!!!!!, Ashlux, Ashockey77, Ask123, Asn, Assbackward, Asthetic, Astroceltica, Astronautics, Athaenara, Atlan, Atlant, Atrix20, AtrusTheGuildmaster, Attilios, Auno3, AustralianMelodrama, Auswiger, Average Earthman, Avernet, Avia, Avoided, Awesomo Jefray, Az1568, AzaToth, AzureFury, B. Fairbairn, BAR1543, BD2412, BTraven, Babajobu, Babij, Bachcell, Bad mechanic, Badgerpatrol, Badinfinity, Balu.muthu, Bamboodragon, BananaFiend, Banes, Banjotime, Bantosh, Barnaby dawson, Bash rrance, Basidd1, Battlecry, Bawolff, Bbatsell, Bdb484, Bdevoe, Beamathan, Beanluc, Bearcat, Beeblebrox, Before My Ken, Begoon, Beland, Belligero, Benipinga, Beno1000, Bens a ninja, Berek, Bevo74, Bhadani, Big Bird, Bigeholt990, Bigjimr, Bility, BillCosby, Billysucksyay, Biruitorul, Biscuit and crunch, Bjorn Martiz, Bkwillwm, Bl0wme, Blake-, Blitzer Van Susterwolf, Blockader, Blog Mav Rick, Bluemoose, Bluenwhite341, Bmicomp, Bob Burkhardt, BobFromBrockley, Bobanni, Bobblewik, Bobbybrown, Bobet, Bobfrombrockley, Bobianite, Bobisbob, Bobisbob2, Bobo192, Bodnotbod, Bomac, Bombastus, Bonadea, Bongwarrior, Bonzano, Boothman, Boothy443, Boraczek, Boris 1991, Bornhj, BostonMA, Branddobbe, Branislavk, BrendelSignature, Brian Crawford, Brianga, Bristow1, Broken Segue, BrokenSegue, Bronks, Bubbabobdingdong, Buchanan-Hermit, Bucketsofg, Bulltastrophy, BurritoLuca, Burschik, Byelf2007, C mon, C.Fred, C.J. Griffin, CART fan, CHS BULLDOGS 75, CJCurrie, CJK, CJLL Wright, CJWilly, CWenger, Cactus.man, Caiaffa, Caltas, CambridgeBayWeather, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Canderson7, Capone, Captain panda, CardinalDan, Carmichael, Causa sui, Cdc, Celebration1981, Centrx, Cesar Tort, Cflm001, Chairman S., Chancemill, Changing of the guard, ChantCaitanyaMangala, Chanting Fox, Charles Matthews, CharlieEchoTango, CharlotteWebb, Chato, Che y Marijuana, Chenzw, ChildofMidnight, Chinaleftcom, Chinesearabs, Chino, Chitrapa, Chowbok, Chowells, Chris Roy, Chris the speller, ChrisMorgan, Chrislk02, Chrisrmason, Christian List, Christofurio, Christopher Kraus, Christopherjamesgraham, Christysaurr, Chunkofwhores, Claire andrade, Clamwave, Clanposse, Clarencedarrow, Clilly, Clockwork Soul, ClockworkSoul, Cloggedone, CloudNine, Cloudcoverboy, Clq, CmrdMariategui, Coasterlover1994, Codeman2233, Codij51, Colchicum, Colincbn, ComIntern, Comandante, Cometstyles, Commander Keane, Commiessuck, Commodore Kevles, CommonsDelinker, Communist Monkey, CommunistLeague, Communistchurch, Complainer, Complex (de), Computerjoe, ConCompS, Concon26, Confession0791, Conscious, Constanz, Conversion script, Cool3, Coolcaesar, Corporal Tunnel, Cosmic Latte, Cowie1337, Cranium225, Crazycomputers, Crazytales, Crc32, Credema, Cremepuff222, Critik, Crito2161, Crocodealer, CryptoDerk, Csmcsm, Ctjf83, Curps, Curtis122, Curufinwe, Cybercobra, CyrilB, Cyrius, DARTH SIDIOUS 2, DHN, DJ Clayworth, DNewhall, DVD R W, Da phantom, Dak, Damicatz, Daniel Case, Daniel Olsen, Daniel Quinlan, DanielCD, Danis1911, Danny, Darcrist, Darsh13, Darwinek,

Article Sources and Contributors 86

Dash Hause, Dasha14, Dave6, Davenbelle, David.Mestel, David.Monniaux, DavidMIA, Davidstrauss, Dawn Bard, Dazcue, Dbtfz, DeadEyeArrow, Decora, Deed89, Deedubzed, Deeptrivia, Delgado25jays, Delighted eyes, Delldot, Delphii, Deltabeignet, Demize, Den fjättrade ankan, DennyColt, Der Ausländer, Derek Ross, Derfuehrer, Descendall, Destroy101, Dfrg.msc, Diagonalfish, Diannaa, Dickiedudeles, Diego Grez, Diligens, DirkvdM, Discospinster, Dissident, Diza, Dizzytheegg, Dlohcierekim's sock, Dmerrill, DocWatson42, Doctors without suspenders, Dolda2000, Dominic, Domthedude001, Donnachadelong, Donthaveacowman, DoomsDay349, Dormantfascist, Dougher, Downpayment, Dp462090, Dr. Yingst, DragonflySixtyseven, Dragracer89, DreamGuy, Drlcartman, Drmies, Droll, DrowningInRoyalty, Drpickem, Dskluz, Dudtz, Duff, Dullfig, DumitruRaduPopa, DuncanBCS, Duncharris, Dycedarg, Dylansmrjones, Dynesclan, Dysepsion, Dysprosia, Dzhugashvili, E-Carl, E. 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Article Sources and Contributors 87

YusufDepe, Yuyudevil, ZScout370, Zachorious, Zap Rowsdower, Zazaban, Zbdued08, Zblewski, Zd12, Zealander, Zedla, Zepher25, Zephyrad, Zettai mu, Ziusudra, ZoFreX, Zoe,Zombielegoman, Zomic13, Zsinj, Zubin Metal, Zundark, Zztzed, Zzuuzz, Zzyzx11, Δ, Σ, Александър, לערי ריינהארט, と あ る 白 い 猫 , 3090 anonymous edits

Dérive  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=472409516  Contributors: 123sanoj0, Auntof6, BlindMic, Bruud51, Buridan, Dan Carkner, Drug warrior, Eduen, Edward, Esperant,Fuzzform, Garion96, Gene Nygaard, Grutness, Icairns, Kcordina, LilHelpa, Lockley, Lutherarkwright, Mato, McGeddon, Nlsnls, Rahgsu, Rich Farmbrough, Rnb, Robofish, Saudade7,Skomorokh, Theoldanarchist, William Avery, Yorkmapper, 23 anonymous edits

Détournement  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=476504591  Contributors: 16@r, Aaron D. Ball, AndySimpson, Atropos, BMF81, Bagworm, Beta m, Bkkbrad, Bookuser,Ceoil, Chocolateboy, Commodore Sloat, Courcelles, Danspalding, Erichludendorff12, Filmmaker2011, Freshacconci, Giovanni33, Histrion, Karenbenedicte, Kate, LGagnon, Lutherarkwright,Markeilz, Mattisse, Max rspct, Mayur, Mellery, Michael Hardy, Mlaoxve, Modernist, Mollyegan12, Mycatunderstandsme, Nex O-Slash, Not with all those rocks about, OckRaz, Offenbach,Philip Trueman, R Lowry, Raul654, Reaverdrop, Red star, RepublicanJacobite, SchreiberBike, Spencerk, Stefanomione, SummerWithMorons, Syd nkroma, Szyslak, The Anome, The Thing ThatShould Not Be, Theowilkins, Tiptoety, Tognopop, Twelsht, Unknownwarrior33, Varlaam, Whatsnewsisyphus, Whitepaw, William Avery, Xp54321, Zazaban, 62 anonymous edits

General strike  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=476258937  Contributors: 21655, AaronF2, Ajaynich, Allthenamesarealreadytaken, AnarchistAssassin, Anarkitekt, AntonioLopez, Apokrif, Art LaPella, Beepsie, Bill j, Biruitorul, Bitemerance51, Bkalafut, Bob mullins, Bobanny, Bona Togs, Bookandcoffee, Breadandroses, Canley, Casito, Ccacsmss, Crigaux,Cullen328, Davecampbell, David.Gaya, Demiurge, Disillusioned-, Dmwilliams, East of Borschov, Erik9, Fearlesschicken, Formeruser-81, Gobonobo, Gogo Dodo, Gurch, Hairy Dude, Halo,Hmains, Hu12, Hut 8.5, Ikip, Inbloom2, Italo Svevo, J.delanoy, Jack Phoenix, Jeremy Butler, Jmkim dot com, Jon Wynges, José Fontaine, K4zem, Kaihsu, Kate, Kimchi.sg, Korky Day, Kross,LanguageMan, Lapaz, Lenerd, Leutha, Levent, Life in General, Lightmouse, LilHelpa, LittleSmall, Lockley, Lord of the Isles, LucasW, LuckE2000, Lumos3, Lycurgus, Madhava 1947,Mandarax, MarB4, Mayis, Methcub, Mhking, Mintleaf, Mrgraciehunter, Mxn, Mysdaao, NsMn, Ottershrew, Paki.tv, Petri Krohn, Phonemonkey, Picapica, Redthoreau, RepublicanJacobite, RichFarmbrough, Richard Myers, RingtailedFox, Robbypark, Sabbut, Scarykitty, SchreiberBike, Scotchorama, Seajay, Semmler, Serpent-A, Smyth, Sodaplayer, Soman, SummerStream,SummerWithMorons, Tabletop, Tangledorange, Tazmaniacs, Tercera Información, TheEditrix2, Thryduulf, Tirin, Tomorrowsashes, Tothebarricades.tk, Tsg946, Tzartzam, Ultramandk, Uwmad,Vegaswikian, Warofdreams, Wnt, Ybk33, 91 anonymous edits

Recuperation (politics)  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=460958719  Contributors: Anonymouswikieditor, Borgmcklorg, Dakinijones, Eastlaw, Fæ, Jdcooper, Kai-Hendrik,Peter G Werner, Pigman, Planetneutral, RepublicanJacobite, Squids and Chips, The Anome, Theoldanarchist, Twsx, Violask81976, Wolfdog, Αναρχία, 9 anonymous edits

Spectacle (critical theory)  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=445913391  Contributors: Altenmann, Anthony Appleyard, BlindMic, Gwguffey, Hgurling, J Milburn, KD TriesAgain, Kaihsu, Lebha, Levineps, Mr Stephen, RepublicanJacobite, Rpassero, Skomorokh, SummerWithMorons, 11 anonymous edits

Unitary urbanism  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=463689093  Contributors: Altenmann, Argotechnica, Autarch, Biblbroks, EricR, Fewerthanzero, Grumpyyoungman01,Leutha, Lockley, Lutherarkwright, Michael Hardy, Paki.tv, RepublicanJacobite, Saint 45, Shanghainese.ua, SilkTork, Stephen Morley, Surv1v4l1st, Syd nkroma, The Anome, Theoldanarchist,Woodshed, 11 anonymous edits

Workers' council  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=475499328  Contributors: Ahuitzotl, Alpha-ZX, Altenmann, Appledoze, Bayano, Beltov1895, Bobfrombrockley, Carrite,Che y Marijuana, Cmdrjameson, Cybercobra, Daanschr, Danny, Darkstar1st, Deiz, Demigod Ron, Ed Poor, Fenice, Fifelfoo, Fifelfoo m, Gregbard, Gunnernett, HOR022880, Haigee2007,Hanshans23, Humanoid12, Jerbol, Jim62sch, Joy, La goutte de pluie, Lapsed Pacifist, Leutha, Lima, Lquilter, Martin Wisse, Maurreen, Max rspct, Mr.Rocks, Nicke L, Nikodemos, Owen,PaulVIF, Rafaelgr, RookZERO, Sam Spade, Semmler, Squiddy, Squideshi, SummerWithMorons, SvartMan, Tb, The Thing That Should Not Be, Timrollpickering, TreasuryTag, UnifiedLeft,Woohookitty, Zazaban, Zdravko mk, 71 anonymous edits

World revolution  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=475257222  Contributors: 172, A.K.A.47, Altenmann, Aplex84, Arrest pol pot stoogerance, Bedwetting rrance, Beheader6,Beltov1895, Bitemerance71, Bonadea, Bongwarrior, Bronks, Bydand, Camw, Chill doubt, Closedmouth, CommonsDelinker, Dasha14, Decapitate rancele, Dekisugi, Deor, Dukemeiser,Duncharris, Epbr123, Eskandarany, FERHAT ATAMAN, Fast eddie 6, Flushawayrance, Ghirlandajo, Gitmo 4rancie, Glane23, Gnevin, Grenavitar, Guoguo12, Gwernol, Gzornenplatz,Hangakommy, Hell Hawk, Icseaturtles, Intolerrance2, JCDenton2052, Jac16888, JamesBWatson, Jim Sukwutput, Jmabel, Joseph Solis in Australia, Kandarin, Kikodawgzz, Kikodawgzzz, Kulakrevenge, Kuragin, L Kensington, Lapsed Pacifist, Laurusnobilis, Lycurgus, Martin Wisse, Massacretraitors, MeteorMaker, Monedula, NSH001, Nat, Nikodemos, Nosedung, Orphan Wiki,PhilKnight, Pol pot stoogerance, QueenCake, R'n'B, Rance intrance, Rancebehindbars, Ranceindumpster, Ranceinnoose, Redthoreau, Riversider2008, S.K., Sardanaphalus, Sentimmm33, Shakko,Sharkface217, Skater, Slimerance, Sluzzelin, Smite rrants, Snuff outrance, Soman, Sparticussy, Specs112, Stefanomione, Tempodivalse, The dark lord trombonator, Toiletfacerance, Traitors2jail,Traitorsinjail, Trothunter, Tulandro, VAcharon, Vision Thing, Wadayow, Warofdreams, Was a bee, Willdw79, Woohookitty, WookieInHeat, Zzuuzz, 56 anonymous edits

Council for Maintaining the Occupations  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=437039444  Contributors: BlindMic, Ground Zero, Kwiki, Loyalprecision, Otisjimmy1, RichFarmbrough, SummerWithMorons, Δ

Second Situationist International  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=348065548  Contributors: Armando Navarro, Icairns, Leki, Leutha, Omnipaedista, Paki.tv,RepublicanJacobite, Skomorokh, SummerWithMorons, That Guy, From That Show!, Theoldanarchist, 2 anonymous edits

Report on the Construction of Situations  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=392628951  Contributors: CommonsDelinker, Eduen, Optimist on the run, SummerWithMorons,Tim!, 4 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 88

Image Sources, Licenses and ContributorsFile:IS, De la Misère en milieu etudiant maitrier.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:IS,_De_la_Misère_en_milieu_etudiant_maitrier.jpg  License: unknown Contributors: L MaitrierFile:CheHigh.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:CheHigh.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Alberto KordaFile:Kapital titel bd1.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Kapital_titel_bd1.png  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Karl MarxFile:Liberatelondon.GIF  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Liberatelondon.GIF  License: GNU Free Documentation License  Contributors: KarenkarnakFile:Heroes Square in 1919.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Heroes_Square_in_1919.jpg  License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0  Contributors: PhotoriporterFile:Battle strike 1934.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Battle_strike_1934.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Photographer not creditedFile:Communism.PNG  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Communism.PNG  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0  Contributors: SjorskingmaFile:Soviet Union, Lenin (55).jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Soviet_Union,_Lenin_(55).jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Alex Bakharev, Celeron,CommonsDelinker, Esemono, EugeneZelenko, Frederico, Infrogmation, Kl833x9, Kneiphof, Maksim, Memmingen, Nicke L, Philip Baird Shearer, Red devil 666, The Deceiver, 1 anonymouseditsFile:Sino-Soviet split 1980.svg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Sino-Soviet_split_1980.svg  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0  Contributors:NuclearVacuumFile:Sputnik-stamp-ussr.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Sputnik-stamp-ussr.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Butko, Man vyi, Michael Romanov,Saperaud, Shakko, ¡0-8-15!File:Is this tomorrow.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Is_this_tomorrow.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Catechetical GuildFile:Kerala communist tableaux.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Kerala_communist_tableaux.jpg  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.0 Contributors: David Wilmot from Wimbledon, United KingdomFile:Communist demonstration in Red Square July 2009.JPG  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Communist_demonstration_in_Red_Square_July_2009.JPG  License:Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0  Contributors: dino (talk). Original uploader was Dino at en.wikipediaFile:communist-manifesto.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Communist-manifesto.png  License: GNU Free Documentation License  Contributors: Friedrich Engels,Karl MarxFile:Trotsky militant.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Trotsky_militant.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Andrew Levine, Bronks, Everyking, IZAK,Monkeybait, Shyam, Sir Richardson, 3 anonymous editsFile:Prachanda.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Prachanda.jpg  License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported  Contributors: en:User:NhorningFile:Rosa Luxemburg.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Rosa_Luxemburg.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: -jha-, Black31, Cantons-de-l'Est, Krinkle,Mogelzahn, 2 anonymous editsFile:AntonioNegri SeminarioInternacionalMundo.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:AntonioNegri_SeminarioInternacionalMundo.jpg  License: Creative CommonsAttribution 2.0  Contributors: fabiogoveiaFile:Kropotkin2.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Kropotkin2.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: KoroesuFile:Victims of Soviet NKVD in Lvov ,June 1941.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Victims_of_Soviet_NKVD_in_Lvov_,June_1941.jpg  License: Public Domain Contributors: Andros64, Antonu, Oleh Kernytskyi, Quibik, SilarFile:Wikisource-logo.svg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikisource-logo.svg  License: logo  Contributors: Nicholas MoreauFile:Sex-majik-2004.GIF  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Sex-majik-2004.GIF  License: Creative Commons Zero  Contributors: KarenkarnakImage:Vorwärts.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Vorwärts.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: VorwärtsFile:Tov lenin ochishchaet.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Tov_lenin_ochishchaet.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Viktor Deni (1893-1946)

License 89

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