Guy Debord

The Society of theSpectacle

Retrieved on February 13th, 2009 fromwww.bopsecrets.org

Translator’s Note

There have been several previousEnglish translations of The Society ofthe Spectacle. I have gone through themall and have retained whatever seemedalready to be adequate. In particular, Ihave adopted quite a few of DonaldNicholson-Smith’s renderings, though Ihave diverged from him in many othercases. His translation (Zone Books,1994) and the earlier one by FredyPerlman and John Supak (Black andRed, 1977) are both in print, and bothcan also be found at the SituationistInternational Online website.

I believe that my translation conveys

Debord’s actual meaning moreaccurately, as well as more clearly andidiomatically, than any of the otherversions. I am nevertheless aware that itis far from perfect, and welcome anycriticisms or suggestions.

If you find the opening chapters toodifficult, you might try starting withChapter 4 or Chapter 5. As you see howDebord deals with concrete historicalevents, you may get a better idea of thepractical implications of ideas that arepresented more abstractly in the otherchapters.

The book is not, however, as difficult orabstract as it is reputed to be. It is not anivory-tower academic or philosophical

discourse. It is an effort to clarify thenature of the society in which we findourselves and the advantages anddrawbacks of various methods forchanging it. Every single thesis has adirect or indirect bearing on issues thatare matters of life and death. Chapter 4,which with remarkable concisenesssums up the lessons of two centuries ofrevolutionary experience, is simply themost obvious example.

Ken Knabb, February 2002

March 2002

In answer to a number of queries I havereceived: At the moment I have no plansto publish this translation in book form.

For one thing, I’m not yet completelysatisfied with it, and will be fine-tuningit over the next few months. Then I maystart considering different publicationpossibilities, depending on what sort ofinterest has been expressed.

Another reason is that Alice Debord hasasked me to prepare new translations ofall of Debord’s films, to be used insubtitling them for English-speakingaudiences. One of those films, of course,is based on this book, so I will want toget that taken care of (which mayinvolve minor last-minute changes in theportions of the book that are used in thefilm) before thinking about bookpublication.

July 2002:

During the last few weeks I have made aconsiderable number of stylisticrevisions in the Society of the Spectacletranslation. Although I will continue tomake any improvements that occur tome, the translation as it now stands isprobably pretty close to final.

January 2005:

A book edition of this translation hasbeen published in England by RebelPress. (Note: In the first printing of thisedition the publisher erroneouslyreferred to this as “a new authorizedtranslation.” The translation was in factdone independently and was not

authorized. The first printing also beginsChapter 2 with thesis #38. It shouldbegin with #35. Both of these errorshave been corrected in the secondprinting.)

Chapter 1: TheCulmination of Separation

“But for the present age, whichprefers the sign to the thingsignified, the copy to the original,representation to reality,appearance to essence ... truth isconsidered profane, and onlyillusion is sacred. Sacredness is infact held to be enhanced inproportion as truth decreases andillusion increases, so that thehighest degree of illusion comes tobe the highest degree ofsacredness.”

Feuerbach, Preface to the second

edition of The Essence ofChristianity

1

In societies dominated by modernconditions of production, life ispresented as an immense accumulationo f spectacles. Everything that wasdirectly lived has receded into arepresentation.

2

The images detached from every aspectof life merge into a common stream inwhich the unity of that life can no longerbe recovered. Fragmented views ofreality regroup themselves into a newunity as a separate pseudoworld that canonly be looked at. The specialization ofimages of the world evolves into aworld of autonomized images whereeven the deceivers are deceived. Thespectacle is a concrete inversion of life,an autonomous movement of thenonliving.

3

The spectacle presents itselfsimultaneously as society itself, as a partof society, and as a means ofunification. As a part of society, it is thefocal point of all vision and allconsciousness. But due to the very factthat this sector is separate, it is inreality the domain of delusion and falseconsciousness: the unification itachieves is nothing but an officiallanguage of universal separation.

4

The spectacle is not a collection ofimages; it is a social relation betweenpeople that is mediated by images.

5

The spectacle cannot be understood as amere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldviewthat has actually been materialized, aview of a world that has becomeobjective.

6

Understood in its totality, the spectacleis both the result and the project of thedominant mode of production. It is not amere decoration added to the real world.It is the very heart of this real society’sunreality. In all of its particularmanifestations — news, propaganda,advertising, entertainment — thespectacle represents the dominant modelof life. It is the omnipresent affirmationof the choices that have already beenmade in the sphere of production and inthe consumption implied by thatproduction. In both form and content thespectacle serves as a total justificationof the conditions and goals of the

existing system. The spectacle alsorepresents the constant presence of thisjustification since it monopolizes themajority of the time spent outside theproduction process.

7

Separation is itself an integral part of theunity of this world, of a global socialpractice split into reality and image. Thesocial practice confronted by anautonomous spectacle is at the same timethe real totality which contains thatspectacle. But the split within thistotality mutilates it to the point that thespectacle seems to be its goal. Thelanguage of the spectacle consists ofsigns of the dominant system ofproduction — signs which are at thesame time the ultimate end-products ofthat system.

8

The spectacle cannot be abstractlycontrasted to concrete social activity.Each side of such a duality is itselfdivided. The spectacle that falsifiesreality is nevertheless a real product ofthat reality. Conversely, real life ismaterially invaded by the contemplationof the spectacle, and ends up absorbingit and aligning itself with it. Objectivereality is present on both sides. Each ofthese seemingly fixed concepts has noother basis than its transformation intoits opposite: reality emerges within thespectacle, and the spectacle is real. Thisreciprocal alienation is the essence andsupport of the existing society.

9

In a world that is really upside down,the true is a moment of the false.

10

The concept of “the spectacle”interrelates and explains a wide range ofseemingly unconnected phenomena. Theapparent diversities and contrasts ofthese phenomena stem from the socialorganization of appearances, whoseessential nature must itself berecognized. Considered in its own terms,the spectacle is an affirmation ofappearances and an identification of allhuman social life with appearances. Buta critique that grasps the spectacle’sessential character reveals it to be avisible negation of life — a negationthat has taken on a visible form.

11

In order to describe the spectacle, itsformation, its functions, and the forcesthat work against it, it is necessary tomake some artificial distinctions. Inanalyzing the spectacle we are obligedto a certain extent to use the spectacle’sown language, in the sense that we haveto operate on the methodological terrainof the society that expresses itself in thespectacle. For the spectacle is both themeaning and the agenda of ourparticular socio-economic formation. Itis the historical moment in which we arecaught.

12

The spectacle presents itself as a vastinaccessible reality that can never bequestioned. Its sole message is: “Whatappears is good; what is good appears.”The passive acceptance it demands isalready effectively imposed by itsmonopoly of appearances, its manner ofappearing without allowing any reply.

13

The tautological character of thespectacle stems from the fact that itsmeans and ends are identical. It is thesun that never sets over the empire ofmodern passivity. It covers the entiresurface of the globe, endlessly baskingin its own glory.

14

The society based on modern industry isnot accidentally or superficiallyspectacular, it is fundamentallyspectaclist. In the spectacle — thevisual reflection of the ruling economicorder — goals are nothing, developmentis everything. The spectacle aims atnothing other than itself.

15

As indispensable embellishment ofcurrently produced objects, as generalarticulation of the system’s rationales,and as advanced economic sector thatdirectly creates an ever-increasing massof image-objects, the spectacle is theleading production of present-daysociety.

16

The spectacle is able to subject humanbeings to itself because the economy hasalready totally subjugated them. It isnothing other than the economydeveloping for itself. It is at once afaithful reflection of the production ofthings and a distorting objectification ofthe producers.

17

The first stage of the economy’sdomination of social life brought aboutan evident degradation of being intohaving — human fulfillment was nolonger equated with what one was, butwith what one possessed. The presentstage, in which social life has becomecompletely dominated by theaccumulated productions of theeconomy, is bringing about a generalshift from having to appearing — all“having” must now derive its immediateprestige and its ultimate purpose fromappearances. At the same time allindividual reality has become social, inthe sense that it is shaped by social

forces and is directly dependent on them.Individual reality is allowed to appearonly if it is not actually real.

18

When the real world is transformed intomere images, mere images become realbeings — dynamic figments that providethe direct motivations for a hypnoticbehavior. Since the spectacle’s job is touse various specialized mediations inorder to show us a world that can nolonger be directly grasped, it naturallyelevates the sense of sight to the specialpreeminence once occupied by touch:the most abstract and easily deceivedsense is the most readily adaptable to thegeneralized abstraction of present-daysociety. But the spectacle is not merely amatter of images, nor even of imagesplus sounds. It is whatever escapes

people’s activity, whatever eludes theirpractical reconsideration and correction.It is the opposite of dialogue. Whereverrepresentation becomes independent,the spectacle regenerates itself.

19

The spectacle inherits the weakness ofthe Western philosophical project,which attempted to understand activityby means of the categories of vision, andit is based on the relentless developmentof the particular technical rationality thatgrew out of that form of thought. Thespectacle does not realize philosophy, itphilosophizes reality, reducingeveryone’s concrete life to a universe ofspeculation.

20

Philosophy — the power of separatethought and the thought of separatepower — was never by itself able tosupersede theology. The spectacle is thematerial reconstruction of the religiousillusion. Spectacular technology has notdispersed the religious mists into whichhuman beings had projected their ownalienated powers, it has merely broughtthose mists down to earth, to the pointthat even the most mundane aspects oflife have become impenetrable andunbreathable. The illusory paradise thatrepresented a total denial of earthly lifeis no longer projected into the heavens,it is embedded in earthly life itself. The

spectacle is the technological version ofthe exiling of human powers into a“world beyond”; the culmination ofhumanity’s internal separation.

21

As long as necessity is sociallydreamed, dreaming will remain a socialnecessity. The spectacle is the baddream of a modern society in chains andultimately expresses nothing more thanits wish for sleep. The spectacle is theguardian of that sleep.

22

The fact that the practical power ofmodern society has detached itself fromthat society and established anindependent realm in the spectacle canbe explained only by the additional factthat that powerful practice continued tolack cohesion and had remained incontradiction with itself.

23

The root of the spectacle is that oldest ofall social specializations, thespecialization of power. The spectacleplays the specialized role of speaking inthe name of all the other activities. It ishierarchical society’s ambassador toitself, delivering its official messages ata court where no one else is allowed tospeak. The most modern aspect of thespectacle is thus also the most archaic.

24

The spectacle is the ruling order’snonstop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue of self-praise, itsself-portrait at the stage of totalitariandomination of all aspects of life. Thefetishistic appearance of pure objectivityin spectacular relations conceals theirtrue character as relations betweenpeople and between classes: a secondNature, with its own inescapable laws,seems to dominate our environment. Butthe spectacle is not the inevitableconsequence of some supposedly naturaltechnological development. On thecontrary, the society of the spectacle is aform that chooses its own technological

content. If the spectacle, considered inthe limited sense of the “mass media”that are its most glaring superficialmanifestation, seems to be invadingsociety in the form of a mere technicalapparatus, it should be understood thatthis apparatus is in no way neutral andthat it has been developed in accordancewith the spectacle’s internal dynamics. Ifthe social needs of the age in which suchtechnologies are developed can be metonly through their mediation, if theadministration of this society and allcontact between people has becometotally dependent on these means ofinstantaneous communication, it isbecause this “communication” isessentially unilateral. The concentration

of these media thus amounts toconcentrating in the hands of theadministrators of the existing system themeans that enable them to carry on thisparticular form of administration. Thesocial separation reflected in thespectacle is inseparable from themodern state — the product of the socialdivision of labor that is both the chiefinstrument of class rule and theconcentrated expression of all socialdivisions.

25

Separation is the alpha and omega of thespectacle. The institutionalization of thesocial division of labor in the form ofclass divisions had given rise to anearlier, religious form of contemplation:the mythical order with which everypower has always camouflaged itself.Religion justified the cosmic andontological order that corresponded tothe interests of the masters, expoundingand embellishing everything theirsocieties could not deliver. In thissense, all separate power has beenspectacular. But this earlier universaldevotion to a fixed religious imagerywas only a shared acknowledgment of

loss, an imaginary compensation for thepoverty of a concrete social activity thatwas still generally experienced as aunitary condition. In contrast, the modernspectacle depicts what society coulddeliver, but in so doing it rigidlyseparates what is possible from what ispermitted. The spectacle keeps peoplein a state of unconsciousness as theypass through practical changes in theirconditions of existence. Like a factitiousgod, it engenders itself and makes itsown rules. It reveals itself for what it is:an autonomously developing separatepower, based on the increasingproductivity resulting from anincreasingly refined division of laborinto parcelized gestures dictated by the

independent movement of machines, andworking for an ever-expanding market.In the course of this development, allcommunity and all critical awarenesshave disintegrated; and the forces thatwere able to grow by separating fromeach other have not yet been reunited.

26

The general separation of worker andproduct tends to eliminate any directpersonal communication between theproducers and any comprehensive senseof what they are producing. With theincreasing accumulation of separateproducts and the increasingconcentration of the productive process,communication and comprehension aremonopolized by the managers of thesystem. The triumph of this separation-based economic system proletarianizesthe whole world.

27

Due to the very success of this separateproduction of separation, thefundamental experience that in earliersocieties was associated with people’sprimary work is in the process of beingreplaced (in sectors near the cutting edgeof the system’s evolution) by anidentification of life with nonworkingtime, with inactivity. But such inactivityis in no way liberated from productiveactivity. It remains dependent on it, in anuneasy and admiring submission to therequirements and consequences of theproduction system. It is itself one of theconsequences of that system. There canbe no freedom apart from activity, and

within the spectacle activity is nullified— all real activity having been forciblychanneled into the global construction ofthe spectacle. Thus, what is referred toas a “liberation from work,” namely themodern increase in leisure time, isneither a liberation of work itself nor aliberation from the world shaped by thiskind of work. None of the activity stolenby work can be regained by submittingto what that work has produced.

28

The reigning economic system is avicious circle of isolation. Itstechnologies are based on isolation, andthey contribute to that same isolation.From automobiles to television, thegoods that the spectacular systemchooses to produce also serve it asweapons for constantly reinforcing theconditions that engender “lonelycrowds.” With ever-increasingconcreteness the spectacle recreates itsown presuppositions.

29

The spectacle was born from theworld’s loss of unity, and the immenseexpansion of the modern spectaclereveals the enormity of this loss. Theabstractifying of all individual labor andthe general abstractness of what isproduced are perfectly reflected in thespectacle, whose manner of beingconcrete is precisely abstraction. In thespectacle, a part of the world presentsitself to the world and is superior to it.The spectacle is simply the commonlanguage of this separation. Spectatorsare linked solely by their one-wayrelationship to the very center that keepsthem isolated from each other. The

spectacle thus reunites the separated, butit reunites them only in theirseparateness.

30

The alienation of the spectator, whichreinforces the contemplated objects thatresult from his own unconscious activity,works like this: The more hecontemplates, the less he lives; the morehe identifies with the dominant images ofneed, the less he understands his ownlife and his own desires. The spectacle’sestrangement from the acting subject isexpressed by the fact that theindividual’s gestures are no longer hisown; they are the gestures of someoneelse who represents them to him. Thespectator does not feel at homeanywhere, because the spectacle iseverywhere.

31

Workers do not produce themselves,they produce a power independent ofthemselves. The success of thisproduction, the abundance it generates,is experienced by the producers as anabundance of dispossession. As theiralienated products accumulate, all timeand space become foreign to them. Thespectacle is the map of this new world, amap that is identical to the territory itrepresents. The forces that have escapedus display themselves to us in all theirpower.

32

The spectacle’s social function is theconcrete manufacture of alienation.Economic expansion consists primarilyof the expansion of this particular sectorof industrial production. The “growth”generated by an economy developing forits own sake can be nothing other than agrowth of the very alienation that was atits origin.

33

Though separated from what theyproduce, people nevertheless produceevery detail of their world with ever-increasing power. They thus also findthemselves increasingly separated fromthat world. The closer their life comes tobeing their own creation, the more theyare excluded from that life.

34

The spectacle is capital accumulated tothe point that it becomes images.

Chapter 2: The Commodityas Spectacle

“The commodity can be understoodin its undistorted essence onlywhen it becomes the universalcategory of society as a whole.Only in this context does thereification produced by commodityrelations assume decisiveimportance both for the objectiveevolution of society and for theattitudes that people adopt towardit, as it subjugates theirconsciousness to the forms in whichthis reification finds expression...As labor is increasinglyrationalized and mechanized, this

subjugation is reinforced by the factthat people’s activity becomes lessand less active and more and morecontemplative.”

L u k á c s , History and ClassConsciousness

35

In the spectacle’s basic practice ofincorporating into itself all the fluidaspects of human activity so as topossess them in a congealed form, and ofinverting living values into purelyabstract values, we recognize our oldenemy the commodity, which seems atfirst glance so trivial and obvious, yetwhich is actually so complex and full ofmetaphysical subtleties.

36

The fetishism of the commodity — thedomination of society by “intangible aswell as tangible things” — attains itsultimate fulfillment in the spectacle,where the real world is replaced by aselection of images which are projectedabove it, yet which at the same timesucceed in making themselves regardedas the epitome of reality.

37

The world at once present and absentthat the spectacle holds up to view is theworld of the commodity dominating allliving experience. The world of thecommodity is thus shown for what it is,because its development is identical topeople’s estrangement from each otherand from everything they produce.

38

The loss of quality that is so evident atevery level of spectacular language,from the objects it glorifies to thebehavior it regulates, stems from thebasic nature of a production system thatshuns reality. The commodity formreduces everything to quantitativeequivalence. The quantitative is what itdevelops, and it can develop only withinthe quantitative.

39

Despite the fact that this developmentexcludes the qualitative, it is itselfsubject to qualitative change. Thespectacle reflects the fact that thisdevelopment has crossed the thresholdo f its own abundance. Although thisqualitative change has as yet taken placeonly partially in a few local areas, it isalready implicit at the universal levelthat was the commodity’s originalstandard — a standard that thecommodity has lived up to by turning thewhole planet into a single world market.

40

The development of productive forces isthe unconscious history that has actuallycreated and altered the living conditionsof human groups — the conditionsenabling them to survive and theexpansion of those conditions. It hasbeen the economic basis of all humanundertakings. Within natural economies,the emergence of a commodity sectorrepresented a surplus survival.Commodity production, which impliesthe exchange of varied products betweenindependent producers, tended for a longtime to retain its small-scale craftaspects, relegated as it was to amarginal economic role where its

quantitative reality was still hidden. Butwhenever it encountered the socialconditions of large-scale commerce andcapital accumulation, it took totalcontrol of the economy. The entireeconomy then became what thecommodity had already shown itself tobe in the course of this conquest: aprocess of quantitative development.This constant expansion of economicpower in the form of commoditiestransformed human labor itself into acommodity, into wage labor, andultimately produced a level ofabundance sufficient to solve the initialproblem of survival — but only in sucha way that the same problem iscontinually being regenerated at a higher

level. Economic growth has liberatedsocieties from the natural pressures thatforced them into an immediate strugglefor survival; but they have not yet beenliberated from their liberator. Thecommodity’s independence has spreadto the entire economy it now dominates.This economy has transformed theworld, but it has merely transformed itinto a world dominated by the economy.The pseudonature within which humanlabor has become alienated demands thatsuch labor remain forever in its service;and since this demand is formulated byand answerable only to itself, it in factends up channeling all socially permittedprojects and endeavors into its ownreinforcement. The abundance of

commodities — that is, the abundance ofcommodity relations — amounts tonothing more than an augmentedsurvival.

41

As long as the economy’s role asmaterial basis of social life was neithernoticed nor understood (remainingunknown precisely because it was sofamiliar), the commodity’s dominionover the economy was exerted in acovert manner. In societies where actualcommodities were few and far between,money was the apparent master, servingas plenipotentiary representative of thegreater power that remained unknown.With the Industrial Revolution’smanufactural division of labor and massproduction for a global market, thecommodity finally became fully visibleas a power that was colonizing all

social life. It was at that point thatpolitical economy established itself asthe dominant science, and as the scienceof domination.

42

The spectacle is the stage at which thecommodity has succeeded in totallycolonizing social life. Commodificationis not only visible, we no longer seeanything else; the world we see is theworld of the commodity. Moderneconomic production extends itsdictatorship both extensively andintensively. In the less industrializedregions, its reign is already manifestedby the presence of a few starcommodities and by the imperialistdomination imposed by the moreindustrially advanced regions. In thelatter, social space is blanketed withever-new layers of commodities. With

the “second industrial revolution,”alienated consumption has become justas much a duty for the masses asalienated production. The society’sentire sold labor has become a totalcommodity whose constant turnovermust be maintained at all cost. Toaccomplish this, this total commodityhas to be returned in fragmented form tofragmented individuals who arecompletely cut off from the overalloperation of the productive forces. Tothis end the specialized science ofdomination is broken down into furtherspecialties such as sociology, appliedpsychology, cybernetics, and semiology,which oversee the self-regulation ofevery phase of the process.

43

Whereas during the primitive stage ofcapitalist accumulation “politicaleconomy considers the proletarian onlyas a worker,” who only needs to beallotted the indispensable minimum formaintaining his labor power, and neverconsiders him “in his leisure andhumanity,” this ruling-class perspectiveis revised as soon as commodityabundance reaches a level that requiresan additional collaboration from him.Once his workday is over, the worker issuddenly redeemed from the totalcontempt toward him that is so clearlyimplied by every aspect of theorganization and surveillance of

production, and finds himself seeminglytreated like a grownup, with a greatshow of politeness, in his new role as aconsumer. At this point the humanism ofthe commodity takes charge of theworker’s “leisure and humanity” simplybecause political economy now can andmust dominate those spheres as politicaleconomy. The “perfected denial of man”has thus taken charge of all humanexistence.

44

The spectacle is a permanent opium wardesigned to force people to equate goodswith commodities and to equatesatisfaction with a survival that expandsaccording to its own laws. Consumablesurvival must constantly expand becauseit never ceases to include privation. Ifaugmented survival never comes to aresolution, if there is no point where itmight stop expanding, this is because itis itself stuck in the realm of privation. Itmay gild poverty, but it cannot transcendit.

45

Automation, which is both the mostadvanced sector of modern industry andthe epitome of its practice, obliges thecommodity system to resolve thefollowing contradiction: Thetechnological developments thatobjectively tend to eliminate work mustat the same time preserve labor as acommodity, because labor is the onlycreator of commodities. The only way toprevent automation (or any other lessextreme method of increasing laborproductivity) from reducing society’stotal necessary labor time is to createnew jobs. To this end the reserve armyof the unemployed is enlisted into the

tertiary or “service” sector, reinforcingthe troops responsible for distributingand glorifying the latest commodities;and in this it is serving a real need, inthe sense that increasingly extensivecampaigns are necessary to convincepeople to buy increasingly unnecessarycommodities.

46

Exchange value could arise only as arepresentative of use value, but thevictory it eventually won with its ownweapons created the conditions for itsown autonomous power. By mobilizingall human use value and monopolizingits fulfillment, exchange value ultimatelysucceeded in controlling use.Usefulness has come to be seen purely interms of exchange value, and is nowcompletely at its mercy. Starting out likea condottiere in the service of use value,exchange value has ended up waging thewar for its own sake.

47

The constant decline of use value thathas always characterized the capitalisteconomy has given rise to a new form ofpoverty within the realm of augmentedsurvival — alongside the old povertywhich still persists, since the vastmajority of people are still forced totake part as wage workers in theunending pursuit of the system’s endsand each of them knows that he mustsubmit or die. The reality of thisblackmail — the fact that even in itsmost impoverished forms (food, shelter)use value now has no existence outsidethe illusory riches of augmented survival— accounts for the general acceptance

of the illusions of modern commodityconsumption. The real consumer hasbecome a consumer of illusions. Thecommodity is this materialized illusion,and the spectacle is its generalexpression.

48

Use value was formerly understood asan implicit aspect of exchange value.Now, however, within the upside-downworld of the spectacle, it must beexplicitly proclaimed, both because itsactual reality has been eroded by theoverdeveloped commodity economy andbecause it serves as a necessary pseudo-justification for a counterfeit life.

49

The spectacle is the flip side of money.It, too, is an abstract general equivalentof all commodities. But whereas moneyhas dominated society as therepresentation of universal equivalence— the exchangeability of different goodswhose uses remain uncomparable — thespectacle is the modern complement ofmoney: a representation of thecommodity world as a whole whichserves as a general equivalent for whatthe entire society can be and can do. Thespectacle is money one can only look at,because in it all use has already beenexchanged for the totality of abstractrepresentation. The spectacle is not just

a servant of pseudo-use, it is already initself a pseudo-use of life.

50

With the achievement of economicabundance, the concentrated result ofsocial labor becomes visible, subjectingall reality to the appearances that arenow that labor’s primary product.Capital is no longer the invisible centergoverning the production process; as itaccumulates, it spreads to the ends of theearth in the form of tangible objects. Theentire expanse of society is its portrait.

51

The economy’s triumph as anindependent power at the same timespells its own doom, because the forcesit has unleashed have eliminated theeconomic necessity that was theunchanging basis of earlier societies.Replacing that necessity with a necessityfor boundless economic developmentcan only mean replacing the satisfactionof primary human needs (now scarcelymet) with an incessant fabrication ofpseudoneeds, all of which ultimatelycome down to the single pseudoneed ofmaintaining the reign of the autonomouseconomy. But that economy loses allconnection with authentic needs insofar

as it emerges from the socialunconscious that unknowingly dependedon it. “Whatever is conscious wears out.What is unconscious remainsunalterable. But once it is freed, it toofalls to ruin” (Freud).

52

Once society discovers that it dependson the economy, the economy in factdepends on the society. When thesubterranean power of the economygrew to the point of visible domination,it lost its power. The economic Id mustbe replaced by the I. This subject canonly arise out of society, that is, out ofthe struggle within society. Its existencedepends on the outcome of the classstruggle that is both product andproducer of the economic foundation ofhistory.

53

Consciousness of desire and desire forconsciousness are the same project, theproject that in its negative form seeks theabolition of classes and thus theworkers’ direct possession of everyaspect of their activity. The opposite ofthis project is the society of thespectacle, where the commoditycontemplates itself in a world of its ownmaking.

Chapter 3: Unity andDivision WithinAppearances

“A lively new polemic about theconcepts ‘one divides into two’ and‘two fuse into one’ is unfolding onthe philosophical front in thiscountry. This debate is a strugglebetween those who are for andthose who are against thematerialist dialectic, a strugglebetween two conceptions of theworld: the proletarian conceptionand the bourgeois conception.Those who maintain that ‘onedivides into two’ is the fundamental

law of things are on the side of thematerialist dialectic; those whomaintain that the fundamental lawof things is that ‘two fuse into one’are against the materialist dialectic.The two sides have drawn a clearline of demarcation between them,and their arguments arediametrically opposed. Thispolemic is a reflection, on theideological level, of the acute andcomplex class struggle taking placein China and in the world.”

Red Flag (Beijing), 21 September1964

54

The spectacle, like modern societyitself, is at once united and divided. Theunity of each is based on violentdivisions. But when this contradictionemerges in the spectacle, it is itselfcontradicted by a reversal of itsmeaning: the division it presents isunitary, while the unity it presents isdivided.

55

Although the struggles between differentpowers for control of the same socio-economic system are officially presentedas irreconcilable antagonisms, theyactually reflect that system’sfundamental unity, both internationallyand within each nation.

56

The sham spectacular struggles betweenrival forms of separate power are at thesame time real, in that they express thesystem’s uneven and conflictualdevelopment and the more or lesscontradictory interests of the classes orsections of classes that accept thatsystem and strive to carve out a role forthemselves within it. Just as thedevelopment of the most advancedeconomies involves clashes betweendifferent priorities, totalitarian state-bureaucratic forms of economicmanagement and countries undercolonialism or semicolonialism alsoexhibit highly divergent types of

production and power. By invoking anynumber of different criteria, thespectacle can present these oppositionsas totally distinct social systems. But inreality they are nothing but particularsectors whose fundamental essence liesin the global system that contains them,the single movement that has turned thewhole planet into its field of operation:capitalism.

57

The society that bears the spectacle doesnot dominate underdeveloped regionssolely by its economic hegemony. It alsodominates them as the society of thespectacle. Even where the material baseis still absent, modern society hasalready used the spectacle to invade thesocial surface of every continent. It setsthe stage for the formation of indigenousruling classes and frames their agendas.Just as it presents pseudogoods to becoveted, it offers false models ofrevolution to local revolutionaries. Thebureaucratic regimes in power in certainindustrialized countries have their ownparticular type of spectacle, but it is an

integral part of the total spectacle,serving as its pseudo-opposition andactual support. Even if localmanifestations of the spectacle includecertain totalitarian specializations ofsocial communication and control, fromthe standpoint of the overall functioningof the system those specializations aresimply playing their allotted role withina global division of spectacular tasks.

58

Although this division of spectaculartasks preserves the existing order as awhole, it is primarily oriented towardprotecting its dominant pole ofdevelopment. The spectacle is rooted inthe economy of abundance, and theproducts of that economy ultimately tendto dominate the spectacular market andoverride the ideological or police-stateprotectionist barriers set up by localspectacles with pretensions ofindependence.

59

Behind the glitter of spectaculardistractions, a tendency towardbanalization dominates modern societythe world over, even where the moreadvanced forms of commodityconsumption have seemingly multipliedthe variety of roles and objects tochoose from. The vestiges of religionand of the family (the latter is still theprimary mechanism for transferring classpower from one generation to the next),along with the vestiges of moralrepression imposed by those twoinstitutions, can be blended withostentatious pretensions of worldlygratification precisely because life in

this particular world remains repressiveand offers nothing but pseudo-gratifications. Complacent acceptance ofthe status quo may also coexist withpurely spectacular rebelliousness —dissatisfaction itself becomes acommodity as soon as the economy ofabundance develops the capacity toprocess that particular raw material.

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Stars — spectacular representations ofliving human beings — project thisgeneral banality into images of permittedroles. As specialists of apparent life,stars serve as superficial objects thatpeople can identify with in order tocompensate for the fragmentedproductive specializations that theyactually live. The function of thesecelebrities is to act out various lifestylesor sociopolitical viewpoints in a full,totally free manner. They embody theinaccessible results of social labor bydramatizing the by-products of that laborwhich are magically projected above itas its ultimate goals: power and

vacations — the decisionmaking andconsumption that are at the beginning andthe end of a process that is neverquestioned. On one hand, a governmentalpower may personalize itself as apseudostar; on the other, a star ofconsumption may campaign forrecognition as a pseudopower over life.But the activities of these stars are notreally free, and they offer no realchoices.

61

The agent of the spectacle who is put onstage as a star is the opposite of anindividual; he is as clearly the enemy ofhis own individuality as of theindividuality of others. Entering thespectacle as a model to be identifiedwith, he renounces all autonomousqualities in order to identify himselfwith the general law of obedience to thesuccession of things. The stars ofconsumption, though outwardlyrepresenting different personality types,actually show each of these typesenjoying equal access to, and derivingequal happiness from, the entire realm ofconsumption. The stars of

decisionmaking must possess the fullrange of admired human qualities:official differences between them arethus canceled out by the officialsimilarity implied by their supposedexcellence in every field of endeavor.As head of state, Khrushchevretrospectively became a general so asto take credit for the victory of the battleof Kursk twenty years after it happened.And Kennedy survived as an orator tothe point of delivering his own funeraloration, since Theodore Sorensoncontinued to write speeches for hissuccessor in the same style that hadcontributed so much toward the deadman’s public persona. The admirablepeople who personify the system are

well known for not being what theyseem; they attain greatness by stoopingbelow the reality of the mostinsignificant individual life, andeveryone knows it.

62

The false choices offered by spectacularabundance — choices based on thejuxtaposition of competing yet mutuallyreinforcing spectacles and of distinct yetinterconnected roles (signified andembodied primarily by objects) —develop into struggles between illusoryqualities designed to generate ferventallegiance to quantitative trivialities.Fallacious archaic oppositions arerevived — regionalisms and racismswhich serve to endow mundane rankingsin the hierarchies of consumption with amagical ontological superiority — andpseudoplayful enthusiasms are arousedby an endless succession of ludicrous

competitions, from sports to elections.Wherever abundant consumption isestablished, one particular spectacularopposition is always in the forefront ofillusory roles: the antagonism betweenyouth and adults. But real adults —people who are masters of their ownlives — are in fact nowhere to be found.And a youthful transformation of whatexists is in no way characteristic ofthose who are now young; it is presentsolely in the economic system, in thedynamism of capitalism. It is things thatrule and that are young, vying with eachother and constantly replacing eachother.

63

Spectacular oppositions conceal theunity of poverty. If different forms of thesame alienation struggle against eachother in the guise of irreconcilableantagonisms, this is because they are allbased on real contradictions that arerepressed. The spectacle exists in aconcentrated form and a diffuse form,depending on the requirements of theparticular stage of poverty it denies andsupports. In both cases it is nothing morethan an image of happy harmonysurrounded by desolation and horror, atthe calm center of misery.

64

The concentrated spectacle is primarilyassociated with bureaucratic capitalism,though it may also be imported as atechnique for reinforcing state power inmore backward mixed economies oreven adopted by advanced capitalismduring certain moments of crisis.Bureaucratic property is itselfconcentrated, in that the individualbureaucrat takes part in the ownership ofthe entire economy only through hismembership in the community ofbureaucrats. And since commodityproduction is less developed underbureaucratic capitalism, it too takes on aconcentrated form: the commodity the

bureaucracy appropriates is the totalsocial labor, and what it sells back tothe society is that society’s wholesalesurvival. The dictatorship of thebureaucratic economy cannot leave theexploited masses any significant marginof choice because it has had to make allthe choices itself, and any choice madeindependently of it, whether regardingfood or music or anything else, thusamounts to a declaration of war againstit. This dictatorship must be enforced bypermanent violence. Its spectacleimposes an image of the good whichsubsumes everything that officiallyexists, an image which is usuallyconcentrated in a single individual, theguarantor of the system’s totalitarian

cohesion. Everyone must magicallyidentify with this absolute star ordisappear. This master of everyoneelse’s nonconsumption is the heroicimage that disguises the absoluteexploitation entailed by the system ofprimitive accumulation accelerated byterror. If the entire Chinese populationhas to study Mao to the point ofidentifying with Mao, this is becausethere is nothing else they can be. Thedominion of the concentrated spectacleis a police state.

65

The diffuse spectacle is associated withcommodity abundance, with theundisturbed development of moderncapitalism. Here each individualcommodity is justified in the name of thegrandeur of the total commodityproduction, of which the spectacle is alaudatory catalog. Irreconcilable claimsjockey for position on the stage of theaffluent economy’s unified spectacle,and different star commoditiessimultaneously promote conflictingsocial policies. The automobilespectacle, for example, strives for aperfect traffic flow entailing thedestruction of old urban districts, while

the city spectacle needs to preservethose districts as tourist attractions. Thealready dubious satisfaction alleged tobe obtained from the consumption of thewhole is thus constantly beingdisappointed because the actualconsumer can directly access only asuccession of fragments of thiscommodity heaven, fragments whichinvariably lack the quality attributed tothe whole.

66

Each individual commodity fights foritself. It avoids acknowledging theothers and strives to impose itselfeverywhere as if it were the only one inexistence. The spectacle is the epicpoem of this struggle, a struggle that nofall of Troy can bring to an end. Thespectacle does not sing of men and theirarms, but of commodities and theirpassions. In this blind struggle eachcommodity, by pursuing its own passion,unconsciously generates somethingbeyond itself: the globalization of thecommodity (which also amounts to thecommodification of the globe). Thus, asa result of the cunning of the

commodity, while each particularmanifestation of the commodityeventually falls in battle, the generalcommodity-form continues onwardtoward its absolute realization.

67

The satisfaction that no longer comesfrom using the commodities produced inabundance is now sought throughrecognition of their value ascommodities. Consumers are filled withreligious fervor for the sovereignfreedom of commodities whose use hasbecome an end in itself. Waves ofenthusiasm for particular products arepropagated by all the communicationsmedia. A film sparks a fashion craze; amagazine publicizes night spots which inturn spin off different lines of products.The proliferation of faddish gadgetsreflects the fact that as the mass ofcommodities becomes increasingly

absurd, absurdity itself becomes acommodity. Trinkets such as key chainswhich come as free bonuses with thepurchase of some luxury product, butwhich end up being traded back andforth as valued collectibles in their ownright, reflect a mystical self-abandonment to commoditytranscendence. Those who collect thetrinkets that have been manufactured forthe sole purpose of being collected areaccumulating commodity indulgences —glorious tokens of the commodity’s realpresence among the faithful. Reifiedpeople proudly display the proofs oftheir intimacy with the commodity. Likethe old religious fetishism, with itsconvulsionary raptures and miraculous

cures, the fetishism of commoditiesgenerates its own moments of ferventexaltation. All this is useful for only onepurpose: producing habitual submission.

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The pseudoneeds imposed by modernconsumerism cannot be opposed by anygenuine needs or desires that are notthemselves also shaped by society andits history. But commodity abundancerepresents a total break in the organicdevelopment of social needs. Itsmechanical accumulation unleashes anunlimited artificiality whichoverpowers any living desire. Thecumulative power of this autonomousartificiality ends up by falsifying allsocial life.

69

The image of blissful social unificationthrough consumption merely postponesthe consumer’s awareness of the actualdivisions until his next disillusionmentwith some particular commodity. Eachnew product is ceremoniously acclaimedas a unique creation offering a dramaticshortcut to the promised land of totalconsummation. But as with thefashionable adoption of seeminglyaristocratic first names which end upbeing given to virtually all individualsof the same age, the objects that promiseuniqueness can be offered up for massconsumption only if they have beenmass-produced. The prestigiousness of

mediocre objects of this kind is solelydue to the fact that they have beenplaced, however briefly, at the center ofsocial life and hailed as a revelation ofthe unfathomable purposes ofproduction. But the object that wasprestigious in the spectacle becomesmundane as soon as it is taken home byits consumer — and by all its otherconsumers. Too late, it reveals itsessential poverty, a poverty thatinevitably reflects the poverty of itsproduction. Meanwhile, some otherobject is already replacing it asrepresentative of the system anddemanding its own moment of acclaim.

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The fraudulence of the satisfactionsoffered by the system is exposed by thiscontinual replacement of products and ofgeneral conditions of production. In boththe diffuse and the concentratedspectacle, entities that have brazenlyasserted their definitive perfectionnevertheless end up changing, and onlythe system endures. Stalin, like any otheroutmoded commodity, is denounced bythe very forces that originally promotedhim. Each new lie of the advertisingindustry is an admission of its previouslie. And with each downfall of apersonification of totalitarian power, theillusory community that had

unanimously approved him is exposed asa mere conglomeration of loners withoutillusions.

71

The things the spectacle presents aseternal are based on change, and mustchange as their foundations change. Thespectacle is totally dogmatic, yet it isincapable of arriving at any really soliddogma. Nothing stands still for it. Thisinstability is the spectacle’s naturalcondition, but it is completely contraryto its natural inclination.

72

The unreal unity proclaimed by thespectacle masks the class divisionunderlying the real unity of the capitalistmode of production. What obliges theproducers to participate in theconstruction of the world is also whatexcludes them from it. What bringspeople into relation with each other byliberating them from their local andnational limitations is also what keepsthem apart. What requires increasedrationality is also what nourishes theirrationality of hierarchical exploitationand repression. What produces society’sabstract power also produces itsconcrete lack of freedom.

Chapter 4: The Proletariatas Subject andRepresentation

“Equal right to all the goods andpleasures of this world, thedestruction of all authority, thenegation of all moral restraints —in the final analysis, these are theaims behind the March 18th

insurrection and the charter of thefearsome organization thatfurnished it with an army.”

Parliamentary Inquest on theParis Commune

73

The real movement that transformsexisting conditions has been thedominant social force since thebourgeoisie’s victory within theeconomic sphere, and this dominancebecame visible once that victory wastranslated onto the political plane. Thedevelopment of productive forcesshattered the old production relations,and all static order crumbled. Everythingthat was absolute became historical.

74

When people are thrust into history andforced to participate in the work andstruggles that constitute history, they findthemselves obliged to view theirrelationships in a clear and disabusedmanner. This history has no objectdistinct from what it creates from out ofitself, although the final unconsciousmetaphysical vision of the historical eraconsidered the productive progressionthrough which history had unfolded asitself the object of history. As for thesubject of history, it can be nothing otherthan the self-production of the living —living people becoming masters andpossessors of their own historical world

and of their own fully consciousadventures.

75

The class struggles of the long era ofrevolutions initiated by the rise of thebourgeoisie have developed in tandemwith the dialectical “thought ofhistory” — the thought which is nolonger content to seek the meaning ofwhat exists, but which strives tocomprehend the dissolution of whatexists, and in the process breaks downevery separation.

76

For Hegel the point was no longer tointerpret the world, but to interpret thetransformation of the world. Butbecause he limited himself to merelyinterpreting that transformation, Hegelonly represents the philosophicalculmination of philosophy. He seeks tounderstand a world that develops byitself. This historical thought is still aconsciousness that always arrives toolate, a consciousness that can onlyformulate retrospective justifications ofwhat has already happened. It has thusgone beyond separation only in thought.Hegel’s paradoxical stance — hissubordination of the meaning of all

reality to its historical culmination whileat the same time proclaiming that hisown system represents that culmination— flows from the simple fact that thisthinker of the bourgeois revolutions ofthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuriessought in his philosophy only areconciliation with the results of thoserevolutions. “Even as a philosophy ofthe bourgeois revolution, it does notexpress the entire process of thisrevolution, but only its concludingphase. In this sense it is a philosophy notof the revolution, but of the restoration”(Karl Korsch, “Theses on Hegel andRevolution”). Hegel performed the taskof the philosopher — “the glorificationof what exists” — for the last time; but

already what existed for him could benothing less than the entire movement ofhistory. Since he neverthelessmaintained the external position ofthought, this externality could be maskedonly by identifying that thought with apreexisting project of the Spirit — ofthat absolute heroic force which hasdone what it willed and willed what ithas done, and whose ultimate goalcoincides with the present. Philosophy,in the process of being superseded byhistorical thought, has thus arrived at thepoint where it can glorify its world onlyby denying it, since in order to speak itmust presuppose that the total history towhich it has relegated everything hasalready come to an end, and that the only

tribunal where truth could be judged isclosed.

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When the proletariat demonstratesthrough its own actions that thishistorical thought has not been forgotten,its refutation of that thought’s conclusionis at the same time a confirmation of itsmethod.

78

Historical thought can be salvaged onlyby becoming practical thought; and thepractice of the proletariat as arevolutionary class can be nothing lessthan historical consciousness operatingon the totality of its world. All thetheoretical currents of the revolutionaryworking-class movement — Stirner andBakunin as well as Marx — grew out ofa critical confrontation with Hegelianthought.

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The inseparability of Marx’s theory fromthe Hegelian method is itself inseparablefrom that theory’s revolutionarycharacter, that is, from its truth. It is inthis regard that the relationship betweenMarx and Hegel has generally beenignored or misunderstood, or evendenounced as the weak point of whatbecame fallaciously transformed into adoctrine: “Marxism.” Bernsteinimplicitly revealed this connectionbetween the dialectical method andhistorical partisanship when in his bookEvolutionary Socialism he deplored the1 8 4 7 Manifesto’s unscientificpredictions of imminent proletarian

revolution in Germany: “This historicalself-deception, so erroneous that themost naïve political visionary couldhardly have done any worse, would beincomprehensible in a Marx who at thattime had already seriously studiedeconomics if we did not recognize that itreflected the lingering influence of theantithetical Hegelian dialectic, fromwhich Marx, like Engels, could nevercompletely free himself. In those timesof general effervescence this influencewas all the more fatal to him.”

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The inversion carried out by Marx inorder to “salvage” the thought of thebourgeois revolutions by transferring itto a different context does not triviallyconsist of putting the materialistdevelopment of productive forces inplace of the journey of the HegelianSpirit toward its eventual encounter withitself — the Spirit whose objectificationis identical to its alienation and whosehistorical wounds leave no scars. Foronce history becomes real, it no longerhas an end. Marx demolished Hegel’sposition of detachment from events, aswell as passive contemplation by anysupreme external agent whatsoever.

Henceforth, theory’s concern is simplyto know what it itself is doing. Incontrast, present-day society’s passivecontemplation of the movement of theeconomy is an untranscended holdoverfrom the undialectical aspect of Hegel’sattempt to create a circular system; it isan approval that is no longer on theconceptual level and that no longerneeds a Hegelianism to justify itself,because the movement it now praises isa sector of a world where thought nolonger has any place, a sector whosemechanical development effectivelydominates everything. Marx’s project isa project of conscious history, in whichthe quantitativeness that arises out of theblind development of merely economic

productive forces must be transformedinto a qualitative appropriation ofhistory. The critique of politicaleconomy is the first act of this end ofprehistory: “Of all the instruments ofproduction, the greatest productivepower is the revolutionary class itself.”

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Marx’s theory is closely linked withscientific thought insofar as it seeks arational understanding of the forces thatreally operate in society. But itultimately goes beyond scientificthought, preserving it only bysuperseding it. It seeks to understandsocial struggles, not sociological laws.“We recognize only one science: thescience of history” (The GermanIdeology).

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The bourgeois era, which wants to givehistory a scientific foundation, overlooksthe fact that the science available to itcould itself arise only on the foundationof the historical development of theeconomy. But history is fundamentallydependent on this economic knowledgeonly so long as it remains merelyeconomic history. The extent to whichthe viewpoint of scientific observationcould overlook history’s effect on theeconomy (an overall process modifyingits own scientific premises) is shown bythe vanity of those socialists who thoughtthey had calculated the exact periodicityof economic crises. Now that constant

government intervention has succeededin counteracting the tendencies towardcrisis, the same type of mentality seesthis delicate balance as a definitiveeconomic harmony. The project oftranscending the economy and masteringhistory must grasp and incorporate thescience of society, but it cannot itself bea scientific project. The revolutionarymovement remains bourgeois insofar asit thinks it can master current history bymeans of scientific knowledge.

83

The utopian currents of socialism,though they are historically grounded incriticism of the existing social system,can rightly be called utopian insofar asthey ignore history (that is, insofar asthey ignore actual struggles taking placeand any passage of time outside theimmutable perfection of their image of ahappy society), but not because theyreject science. On the contrary, theutopian thinkers were completelydominated by the scientific thought ofearlier centuries. They sought thecompletion and fulfillment of thatgeneral rational system. They did notconsider themselves unarmed prophets,

for they firmly believed in the socialpower of scientific proof and even, inthe case of Saint-Simonism, in theseizure of power by science. “Why,”Sombart asked, “would they want toseize through struggle what merelyneeded to be proved?” But the utopians’scientific understanding did not includethe awareness that some social groupshave vested interests in maintaining thestatus quo, forces to maintain it, andforms of false consciousness to reinforceit. Their grasp of reality thus lagged farbehind the historical reality of thedevelopment of science itself, which hadbeen largely oriented by the socialrequirements arising from such factors,which determined not only what findings

were considered acceptable, but evenwhat might or might not become anobject of scientific research. The utopiansocialists remained prisoners of thescientific manner of expounding thetruth, viewing this truth as a pureabstract image — the form in which ithad established itself at a much earlierstage of social development. As Sorelnoted, the utopians took astronomy astheir model for discovering anddemonstrating the laws of society; theirunhistorical conception of harmony wasthe natural result of their attempt toapply to society the science leastdependent on history. They describedthis harmony as if they were Newtonsdiscovering universal scientific laws,

and the happy ending they constantlyevoked “plays a role in their socialscience analogous to the role of inertiain classical physics” (Materials for aTheory of the Proletariat).

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The scientific-determinist aspect ofMarx’s thought was precisely what madeit vulnerable to “ideologization,” bothduring his own lifetime and even moreso in the theoretical heritage he left tothe workers movement. The advent ofthe historical subject continues to bepostponed, and it is economics, thehistorical science par excellence, whichis increasingly seen as guaranteeing theinevitability of its own future negation.In this way revolutionary practice, theonly true agent of this negation, tends tobe pushed out of theory’s field of vision.Instead, it is seen as essential topatiently study economic development,

and to go back to accepting the sufferingwhich that development imposes with aHegelian tranquility. The result remains“a graveyard of good intentions.” The“science of revolutions” then concludestha t consciousness always comes toosoon, and has to be taught. “History hasshown that we, and all who thought aswe did, were wrong,” Engels wrote in1895. “It has made clear that the state ofeconomic development on the Continentat that time was far from being ripe.”Throughout his life Marx had maintaineda unitary point of view in his theory, butthe exposition of his theory was carriedout on the terrain of the dominantthought insofar as it took the form ofcritiques of particular disciplines, most

notably the critique of that fundamentalscience of bourgeois society, politicaleconomy. It was in this mutilated form,which eventually came to be seen asorthodox, that Marx’s theory wastransformed into “Marxism.”

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The weakness of Marx’s theory isnaturally linked to the weakness of therevolutionary struggle of the proletariatof his time. The German working classfailed to inaugurate a permanentrevolution in 1848; the Paris Communewas defeated in isolation. As a result,revolutionary theory could not yet befully realized. The fact that Marx wasreduced to defending and refining it bycloistered scholarly work in the BritishMuseum had a debilitating effect on thetheory itself. His scientific conclusionsabout the future development of theworking class, and the organizationalpractice apparently implied by those

conclusions, became obstacles toproletarian consciousness at a laterstage.

86

The theoretical shortcomings of thescientific defense of proletarianrevolution (both in its content and in itsform of exposition) all ultimately resultfrom identifying the proletariat with thebourgeois ie with respect to therevolutionary seizure of power.

87

As early as the Communist Manifesto,Marx’s effort to demonstrate thelegitimacy of proletarian power byciting a repetitive sequence ofprecedents led him to oversimplify hishistorical analysis into a linear model ofthe development of modes of production,in which class struggles invariablyresulted “either in a revolutionarytransformation of the entire society or inthe mutual ruin of the contendingclasses.” The plain facts of history,however, are that the “Asiatic mode ofproduction” (as Marx himselfacknowledged elsewhere) maintained itsimmobility despite all its class conflicts;

that no serf uprising ever overthrew thefeudal lords; and that none of the slaverevolts in the ancient world ended therule of the freemen. The linear schemaloses sight of the fact that thebourgeoisie is the only revolutionaryclass that has ever won; and that it isalso the only class for which thedevelopment of the economy was boththe cause and the consequence of itstaking control of society. The sameoversimplification led Marx to neglectthe economic role of the state in themanagement of class society. If the risingbourgeoisie seemed to liberate theeconomy from the state, this was trueonly to the extent that the previous statewas an instrument of class oppression

within a static economy. Thebourgeoisie originally developed itsindependent economic power during themedieval period when the state had beenweakened and feudalism was breakingup the stable equilibrium betweendifferent powers. In contrast, the modernstate — which began to support thebourgeoisie’s development through itsmercantile policies and whichdeveloped into the bourgeoisie’s ownstate during the laissez-faire era — waseventually to emerge as a central powerin the planned management of theeconomic process. Marx wasnevertheless able to describe the“Bonapartist” prototype of modernstatist bureaucracy, the fusion of capital

and state to create a “national power ofcapital over labor, a public forcedesigned to maintain social servitude”— a form of social order in which thebourgeoisie renounces all historical lifeapart from what has been reduced to theeconomic history of things, and wouldlike to be “condemned to the samepolitical nothingness as all the otherclasses.” The sociopolitical foundationsof the modern spectacle are alreadydiscernable here, and these foundationsnegatively imply that the proletariat isthe only pretender to historical life.

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The only two classes that reallycorrespond to Marx’s theory, the twopure classes that the entire analysis ofCapital brings to the fore, are thebourgeoisie and the proletariat. Theseare also the only two revolutionaryclasses in history, but operating undervery different conditions. The bourgeoisrevolution is done. The proletarianrevolution is a yet-unrealized project,born on the foundation of the earlierrevolution but differing from itqualitatively. If one overlooks theoriginality of the historical role of thebourgeoisie, one also tends to overlookthe specific originality of the proletarian

project, which can achieve nothingunless it carries its own banners andrecognizes the “immensity of its owntasks.” The bourgeoisie came to powerbecause it was the class of thedeveloping economy. The proletariatcannot create its own new form ofpower except by becoming the class ofconsciousness. The growth ofproductive forces will not in itselfguarantee the emergence of such a power— not even indirectly by way of theincreasing dispossession which thatgrowth entails. Nor can a Jacobin-styleseizure of the state be a means to thisend. The proletariat cannot make use ofa ny ideology designed to disguise itspartial goals as general goals, because

the proletariat cannot preserve anypartial reality that is truly its own.

89

If Marx, during a certain period of hisparticipation in the proletarian struggle,placed too great a reliance on scientificprediction, to the point of creating theintellectual basis for the illusions ofeconomism, it is clear that he himselfdid not succumb to those illusions. In awell-known letter of 7 December 1867,accompanying an article criticizingCapital which he himself had written butwhich he wanted Engels to present to thepress as the work of an adversary, Marxclearly indicated the limits of his ownscience: “The author’s subjectivetendency (imposed on him, perhaps, byhis political position and his past),

namely the manner in which he viewsand presents the final outcome of thepresent movement and social process,has no connection with his actualanalysis.” By thus disparaging the“tendentious conclusions” of his ownobjective analysis, and by the irony ofthe “perhaps” with reference to theextrascientific choices supposedly“imposed” on him, Marx implicitlyrevealed the methodological key tofusing the two aspects.

90

The fusion of knowledge and action mustbe effected within the historical struggleitself, in such a way that each dependson the other for its validation. Theproletarian class is formed into a subjectin its process of organizingrevolutionary struggles and in itsreorganization of society at the momentof revolution — this is where thepractical conditions of consciousnessmust exist, conditions in which thetheory of praxis is confirmed bybecoming practical theory. But thiscrucial question of organization wasvirtually ignored by revolutionary theoryduring the period when the workers

movement was first taking shape — thevery period when that theory stillpossessed the unitary character it hadinherited from historical thought (andwhich it had rightly vowed to developinto a unitary historical practice).Instead, the organizational questionbecame the weakest aspect of radicaltheory, a confused terrain lending itselfto the revival of hierarchical and statisttactics borrowed from the bourgeoisrevolution. The forms of organization ofthe workers movement that weredeveloped on the basis of thistheoretical negligence tended in turn toinhibit the maintenance of a unitarytheory by breaking it up into variousspecialized and fragmented disciplines.

This ideologically alienated theory wasthen no longer able to recognize thepractical verifications of the unitaryhistorical thought it had betrayed whensuch verifications emerged inspontaneous working-class struggles;instead, it contributed toward repressingevery manifestation and memory of them.Yet those historical forms that tookshape in struggle were precisely thepractical terrain that was needed inorder to validate the theory. They werewhat the theory needed, yet that need hadnot been formulated theoretically. Thesoviet, for example, was not atheoretical discovery. And the mostadvanced theoretical truth of theInternational Workingmen’s Association

was its own existence in practice.

91

The First International’s initialsuccesses enabled it to free itself fromthe confused influences of the dominantideology that had survived within it. Butthe defeat and repression that it soonencountered brought to the surface aconflict between two differentconceptions of proletarian revolution,each of which contained anauthoritarian aspect that amounted toabandoning the conscious self-emancipation of the working class. Thefeud between the Marxists and theBakuninists, which eventually becameirreconcilable, actually centered on twodifferent issues — the question of power

in a future revolutionary society and thequestion of the organization of thecurrent movement — and each of theadversaries reversed their position whenthey went from one aspect to the other.Bakunin denounced the illusion thatclasses could be abolished by means ofan authoritarian implementation of statepower, warning that this would lead tothe formation of a new bureaucraticruling class and to the dictatorship of themost knowledgeable (or of those reputedto be such). Marx, who believed that theconcomitant maturation of economiccontradictions and of the workers’education in democracy would reducethe role of a proletarian state to a briefphase needed to legitimize the new

social relations brought into being byobjective factors, denounced Bakuninand his supporters as an authoritarianconspiratorial elite who weredeliberately placing themselves abovethe International with the harebrainedscheme of imposing on society anirresponsible dictatorship of the mostrevolutionary (or of those who woulddesignate themselves as such). Bakunindid in fact recruit followers on such abasis: “In the midst of the populartempest we must be the invisible pilotsguiding the revolution, not through anykind of overt power but through thecollective dictatorship of our Alliance— a dictatorship without any badges ortitles or official status, yet all the more

powerful because it will have none ofthe appearances of power.” Thus twoideologies of working-class revolutionopposed each other, each containing apartially true critique, but each losingthe unity of historical thought and settingitself up as an ideological authority.Powerful organizations such as GermanSocial Democracy and the IberianAnarchist Federation faithfully servedone or the other of these ideologies; andeverywhere the result was very differentfrom what had been sought.

92

The fact that anarchists have seen thegoal of proletarian revolution asimmediately present represents both thestrength and the weakness of collectivistanarchist struggles (the only forms ofanarchism that can be taken seriously —the pretensions of the individualist formsof anarchism have always beenludicrous). From the historical thought ofmodern class struggles collectivistanarchism retains only the conclusion,and its constant harping on thisconclusion is accompanied by adeliberate indifference to anyconsideration of methods. Its critique ofpolitical struggle has thus remained

abstract, while its commitment toeconomic struggle has been channeledtoward the mirage of a definitivesolution that will supposedly beachieved by a single blow on thisterrain, on the day of the general strikeor the insurrection. The anarchists havesaddled themselves with fulfilling anideal. Anarchism remains a merelyideological negation of the state and ofclass society — the very socialconditions which in their turn fosterseparate ideologies. It is the ideology ofpure freedom , an ideology that putseverything on the same level and losesany conception of the “historical evil”(the negation at work within history).This fusion of all partial demands into a

single all-encompassing demand hasgiven anarchism the merit ofrepresenting the rejection of existingconditions in the name of the whole oflife rather than from the standpoint ofsome particular critical specialization;but the fact that this fusion has beenenvisaged only in the absolute, inaccordance with individual whim and inadvance of any practical actualization,has doomed anarchism to an all tooobvious incoherence. Anarchismresponds to each particular struggle byrepeating and reapplying the samesimple and all-embracing lesson,because this lesson has from thebeginning been considered the be-all andend-all of the movement. This is

reflected in Bakunin’s 1873 letter ofresignation from the Jura Federation:“During the past nine years theInternational has developed more thanenough ideas to save the world, if ideasalone could save it, and I challengeanyone to come up with a new one. It’sno longer the time for ideas, it’s time foractions.” This perspective undoubtedlyretains proletarian historical thought’srecognition that ideas must be put intopractice, but it abandons the historicalterrain by assuming that the appropriateforms for this transition to practice havealready been discovered and will neverchange.

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The anarchists, who explicitlydistinguish themselves from the rest ofthe workers movement by theirideological conviction, reproduce thisseparation of competencies within theirown ranks by providing a terrain thatfacilitates the informal domination ofeach particular anarchist organization bypropagandists and defenders of theirideology, specialists whose mediocreintellectual activity is largely limited tothe constant regurgitation of a feweternal truths. The anarchists’ideological reverence for unanimousdecisionmaking has ended up paving theway for uncontrolled manipulation of

their own organizations by specialists infreedom; and revolutionary anarchismexpects the same type of unanimity,obtained by the same means, from themasses once they have been liberated.Furthermore, the anarchists’ refusal totake into account the great differencesbetween the conditions of a minoritybanded together in present-day strugglesand of a postrevolutionary society offree individuals has repeatedly led to theisolation of anarchists when the momentfor collective decisionmaking actuallyarrives, as is shown by the countlessanarchist insurrections in Spain thatwere contained and crushed at a locallevel.

94

The illusion more or less explicitlymaintained by genuine anarchism is itsconstant belief that a revolution is justaround the corner, and that theinstantaneous accomplishment of thisrevolution will demonstrate the truth ofanarchist ideology and of the form ofpractical organization that hasdeveloped in accordance with thatideology. In 1936 anarchism did indeedinitiate a social revolution, a revolutionthat was the most advanced expressionof proletarian power ever realized. Buteven in that case it should be noted thatthe general uprising began as a merelydefensive reaction to the army’s

attempted coup. Furthermore, inasmuchas the revolution was not carried tocompletion during its opening days(because Franco controlled half thecountry and was being stronglysupported from abroad, because the restof the international proletarianmovement had already been defeated,and because the anti-Franco campincluded various bourgeois forces andstatist working-class parties), theorganized anarchist movement provedincapable of extending the revolution’spartial victories, or even of defendingthem. Its recognized leaders becamegovernment ministers, hostages to abourgeois state that was destroying therevolution even as it proceeded to lose

the civil war.

95

The “orthodox Marxism” of the SecondInternational is the scientific ideology ofsocialist revolution, an ideology whichidentifies its whole truth with objectiveeconomic processes and with theprogressive recognition of theinevitability of those processes by aworking class educated by theorganization. This ideology revives thefaith in pedagogical demonstration thatwas found among the utopian socialists,combining that faith with acontemplative invocation of the courseof history; but it has lost both theHegelian dimension of total history andthe static image of totality presented by

the utopians (most richly by Fourier).This type of scientific attitude, whichcan do nothing more than resurrect thetraditional dilemmas betweensymmetrical ethical choices, is at theroot of Hilferding’s absurd conclusionthat recognizing the inevitability ofsocialism “gives no indication as towhat practical attitude should beadopted. For it is one thing to recognizethat something is inevitable, and quiteanother to put oneself in the service ofthat inevitability” (Finanzkapital).Those who failed to realize that forMarx and for the revolutionaryproletariat unitary historical thought wasin no way distinct from a practicalattitude to be adopted generally ended

up becoming victims of the practice theydid adopt.

96

The ideology of the social-democraticorganizations put those organizationsunder the control of the professors whowere educating the working class, andtheir organizational forms correspondedto this type of passive apprenticeship.The participation of the socialists of theSecond International in political andeconomic struggles was admittedlyconcrete, but it was profoundlyuncritical. It was a manifestly reformistpractice carried on in the name of anillusory revolutionism. This ideology ofrevolution inevitably foundered on thevery successes of those who proclaimedit. The elevation of socialist journalists

and parliamentary representatives abovethe rest of the movement encouragedthem to become habituated to abourgeois lifestyle (most of them had inany case been recruited from thebourgeois intelligentsia). And evenindustrial workers who had beenrecruited out of struggles in the factorieswere transformed by the trade-unionbureaucracy into brokers of labor-power, whose task was to make sure thatthat commodity was sold at a “fair”price. For the activity of all these peopleto have retained any appearance of beingrevolutionary, capitalism would havehad to have turned out to be convenientlyincapable of tolerating this economicreformism, despite the fact that it had no

trouble tolerating the legalistic politicalexpressions of the same reformism. Thesocial democrats’ scientific ideologyconfidently affirmed that capitalismc o u l d not tolerate these economicantagonisms; but history repeatedlyproved them wrong.

97

Bernstein, the social democrat leastattached to political ideology and mostopenly attached to the methodology ofbourgeois science, was honest enough topoint out this contradiction (acontradiction which had also beenimplied by the reformist movement ofthe English workers, who neverbothered to invoke any revolutionaryideology). But it was historicaldevelopment itself which ultimatelyprovided the definitive demonstration.Although full of illusions in otherregards, Bernstein had denied that acrisis of capitalist production wouldmiraculously force the hand of the

socialists, who wanted to inherit therevolution only by way of this orthodoxsequence of events. The profound socialupheaval touched off by World War I,though it led to a widespread awakeningof radical consciousness, twicedemonstrated that the social-democratichierarchy had failed to provide theGerman workers with a revolutionaryeducation capable of turning them intotheorists: first, when the overwhelmingmajority of the party rallied to theimperialist war; then, following theGerman defeat, when the party crushedthe Spartakist revolutionaries. The ex-worker Ebert, who had become one ofthe social-democratic leaders,apparently still believed in sin since he

admitted that he hated revolution “likesin.” And he proved himself a fittingprecursor of the socialist representationthat was soon to emerge as the mortalenemy of the proletariat in Russia andelsewhere, when he accurately summedup the essence of this new form ofalienation: “Socialism means working alot.”

98

As a Marxist thinker, Lenin was simplya faithful and consistent Kautskyist whoapplied the revolutionary ideology of“orthodox Marxism” within theconditions existing in Russia, conditionswhich did not lend themselves to thereformist practice carried on elsewhereby the Second International. In theRussian context, the Bolshevik practiceof directing the proletariat from outside,by means of a disciplined undergroundparty under the control of intellectualswho had become “professionalrevolutionaries,” became a newprofession — a profession whichrefused to come to terms with any of the

professional ruling strata of capitalistsociety (the Czarist political regime wasin any case incapable of offering anyopportunities for such compromise,which depends on an advanced stage ofbourgeois power). As a result of thisintransigence, the Bolsheviks ended upbecoming the sole practitioners of theprofession of totalitarian socialdomination.

99

With the war and the collapse ofinternational social democracy in theface of that war, the authoritarianideological radicalism of the Bolshevikswas able to spread its influence all overthe world. The bloody end of thedemocratic illusions of the workersmovement transformed the entire worldinto a Russia, and Bolshevism, reigningover the first revolutionary breakthroughengendered by this period of crisis,offered its hierarchical and ideologicalmodel to the proletariat of all countries,urging them to adopt it in order to “speakRussian” to their own ruling classes.Lenin did not reproach the Marxism of

the Second International for being arevolutionary ideology, but for ceasingto be a revolutionary ideology.

100

The historical moment when Bolshevismtriumphed for itself in Russia and socialdemocracy fought victoriously for theold world marks the inauguration of thestate of affairs that is at the heart of themodern spectacle’s domination: therepresentation of the working class hasbecome an enemy of the working class.

101

“In all previous revolutions,” wroteRosa Luxemburg in Die Rote Fahne of21 December 1918, “the combatantsfaced each other openly and directly —class against class, program againstprogram. In the present revolution, thetroops protecting the old order are notfighting under the insignia of the rulingclass, but under the banner of a ‘social-democratic party.’ If the central questionof revolution was posed openly andhonestly — Capitalism or socialism? —the great mass of the proletariat wouldtoday have no doubts or hesitations.”Thus, a few days before its destruction,the radical current of the German

proletariat discovered the secret of thenew conditions engendered by the wholeprocess that had gone before (adevelopment to which the representationof the working class had greatlycontributed): the spectacularorganization of the ruling order’sdefense, the social reign of appearanceswhere no “central question” can anylonger be posed “openly and honestly.”The revolutionary representation of theproletariat had at this stage become boththe primary cause and the central resultof the general falsification of society.

102

The organization of the proletariat inaccordance with the Bolshevik modelresulted from the backwardness ofRussia and from the abandonment ofrevolutionary struggle by the workersmovements of the advanced countries.These same backward conditions alsotended to foster the counterrevolutionaryaspects which that form of organizationhad unconsciously contained from itsinception. The repeated failure of themass of the European workers movementto take advantage of the goldenopportunities of the 1918–1920 period(a failure which included the violentdestruction of its own radical minority)

favored the consolidation of theBolshevik development and enabled thatfraudulent outcome to present itself tothe world as the only possibleproletarian solution. By seizing a statemonopoly as sole representative anddefender of working-class power, theBolshevik Party justified itself andbecame what it already was: the partyof the owners of the proletariat, ownerswho essentially eliminated earlier formsof property.

103

For twenty years the various tendenciesof Russian social democracy hadengaged in an unresolved debate over allthe conditions that might bear on theoverthrow of Czarism — the weaknessof the bourgeoisie; the preponderance ofthe peasant majority; and the potentiallydecisive role of a proletariat which wasconcentrated and combative but whichconstituted only a small minority of thepopulation. This debate was eventuallyresolved in practice by a factor that hadnot figured in any of the hypotheses: arevolutionary bureaucracy that placeditself at the head of the proletariat,seized state power and proceeded to

impose a new form of class domination.A strictly bourgeois revolution had beenimpossible; talk of a “democraticdictatorship of workers and peasants”was meaningless verbiage; and theproletarian power of the soviets couldnot simultaneously maintain itself againstthe class of small landowners, againstthe national and international Whitereaction, and against its ownrepresentation which had becomeexternalized and alienated in the form ofa working-class party that maintainedtotal control over the state, the economy,the means of expression, and soon evenover people’s thoughts. Trotsky’s andParvus’s theory of permanent revolution,which Lenin adopted in April 1917, was

the only theory that proved true forcountries with underdevelopedbourgeoisies; but it became true onlyafter the unknown factor of bureaucraticclass power came into the picture. In thenumerous arguments within theBolshevik leadership, Lenin was themost consistent advocate ofconcentrating dictatorial power in thehands of this supreme ideologicalrepresentation. Lenin was right everytime in the sense that he invariablysupported the solution implied by earlierchoices of the minority that nowexercised absolute power: thedemocracy that was kept from peasantsby means of the state would have to bekept from workers as well, which led to

denying it to Communist union leadersand to party members in general, andfinally to the highest ranks of the partyhierarchy. At the Tenth Congress, as theKronstadt soviet was being crushed byarms and buried under a barrage ofslander, Lenin attacked the radical-leftbureaucrats who had formed a“Workers’ Opposition” faction with thefollowing ultimatum, the logic of whichStalin would later extend to an absolutedivision of the world: “You can standhere with us, or against us out there witha gun in your hand, but not within someopposition... We’ve had enoughopposition.”

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After Kronstadt, the bureaucracyconsolidated its power as sole owner ofa system of state capitalism —internally by means of a temporaryalliance with the peasantry (the “NewEconomic Policy”) and externally byusing the workers regimented into thebureaucratic parties of the ThirdInternational as a backup force forRussian diplomacy, sabotaging the entirerevolutionary movement and supportingbourgeois governments whose support itin turn hoped to secure in the sphere ofinternational politics (the Kuomintangregime in the China of 1925–27, thePopular Fronts in Spain and France,

etc.). The Russian bureaucracy thencarried this consolidation of power tothe next stage by subjecting the peasantryto a reign of terror, implementing themost brutal primitive accumulation ofcapital in history. The industrializationof the Stalin era revealed thebureaucracy’s ultimate function:continuing the reign of the economy bypreserving the essence of marketsociety: commodified labor. It alsodemonstrated the independence of theeconomy: the economy has come todominate society so completely that ithas proved capable of recreating theclass domination it needs for its owncontinued operation; that is, thebourgeoisie has created an independent

power that is capable of maintainingitself even without a bourgeoisie. Thetotalitarian bureaucracy was not “the lastowning class in history” in BrunoRizzi’s sense; it was merely a substituteruling class for the commodityeconomy. An impotent capitalistproperty system was replaced by acruder version of itself — simplified,less diversified, and concentrated as thecollective property of the bureaucraticclass. This underdeveloped type ofruling class is also a reflection ofeconomic underdevelopment, and it hasno agenda beyond overcoming thisunderdevelopment in certain regions ofthe world. The hierarchical and statistframework for this crude remake of the

capitalist ruling class was provided bythe working-class party, which wasitself modeled on the hierarchicalseparations of bourgeois organizations.As Ante Ciliga noted while in one ofStalin’s prisons, “Technical questions oforganization turned out to be socialquestions” (Lenin and the Revolution).

105

Leninism was the highest voluntaristicexpression of revolutionary ideology —a coherence of the separate governing areality that resisted it. With the advent ofStalinism, revolutionary ideologyreturned to its fundamentalincoherence. At that point, ideology wasno longer a weapon, it had become anend in itself. But a lie that can no longerbe challenged becomes insane. Thetotalitarian ideological pronouncementobliterates reality as well as purpose;nothing exists but what it says exists.Although this crude form of the spectaclehas been confined to certainunderdeveloped regions, it has

nevertheless played an essential role inthe spectacle’s global development. Thisparticular materialization of ideologydid not transform the worldeconomically, as did advancedcapitalism; it simply used police-statemethods to transform people’sperception of the world.

106

The ruling totalitarian-ideological classis the ruler of a world turned upsidedown. The more powerful the class, themore it claims not to exist, and its poweris employed above all to enforce thisclaim. It is modest only on this onepoint, however, because this officiallynonexistent bureaucracy simultaneouslyattributes the crowning achievements ofhistory to its own infallible leadership.Though its existence is everywhere inevidence, the bureaucracy must beinvisible as a class. As a result, allsocial life becomes insane. The socialorganization of total falsehood stemsfrom this fundamental contradiction.

107

Stalinism was also a reign of terrorwithin the bureaucratic class. Theterrorism on which this class’s powerwas based inevitably came to strike theclass itself, because this class has nojuridical legitimacy, no legallyrecognized status as an owning classwhich could be extended to each of itsmembers. Its ownership has to bemasked because it is based on falseconsciousness. This false consciousnesscan maintain its total power only bymeans of a total reign of terror in whichall real motives are ultimately obscured.The members of the ruling bureaucraticclass have the right of ownership over

society only collectively, as participantsin a fundamental lie: they have to playthe role of the proletariat governing asocialist society; they have to be actorsfaithful to a script of ideologicalbetrayal. Yet they cannot actuallyparticipate in this counterfeit entityunless their legitimacy is validated. Nobureaucrat can individually assert hisright to power, because to prove himselfa socialist proletarian he would have todemonstrate that he was the opposite ofa bureaucrat, while to prove himself abureaucrat is impossible because thebureaucracy’s official line is that thereis no bureaucracy. Each bureaucrat isthus totally dependent on the centralseal of legitimacy provided by the

ruling ideology, which validates thecollective participation in its “socialistregime” of all the bureaucrats it doesnot liquidate. Although the bureaucratsare collectively empowered to make allsocial decisions, the cohesion of theirown class can be ensured only by theconcentration of their terrorist power ina single person. In this person residesthe only practical truth of the ruling lie:the power to determine anunchallengeable boundary line which isnevertheless constantly being adjusted.Stalin decides without appeal who isand who is not a member of the rulingbureaucracy — who should beconsidered a “proletarian in power” andwho branded “a traitor in the pay of

Wall Street and the Mikado.” Theatomized bureaucrats can find theircollective legitimacy only in the personof Stalin — the lord of the world whothus comes to see himself as the absoluteperson, for whom no superior spiritexists. “The lord of the world recognizeshis own nature — omnipresent power —through the destructive violence heexerts against the contrastinglypowerless selfhood of his subjects.” Heis the power that defines the terrain ofdomination, and he is also “the powerthat ravages that terrain.”

108

When ideology has become total throughits possession of total power, and haschanged from partial truth to totalitarianfalsehood, historical thought has been sototally annihilated that history itself,even at the level of the most empiricalknowledge, can no longer exist.Totalitarian bureaucratic society lives ina perpetual present in which whateverhas previously happened is determinedsolely by its police. The project alreadyenvisioned by Napoleon of“monarchically controlling memory” hasbeen realized in Stalinism’s constantrewriting of the past, which alters notonly the interpretations of past events but

even the events themselves. But the pricepaid for this liberation from allhistorical reality is the loss of therational frame of reference that isindispensable to capitalism as ahistorical social system. The Lysenkofiasco is just one well-known exampleof how much the scientific application ofideology gone mad has cost the Russianeconomy. This contradiction — the factthat a totalitarian bureaucracy trying toadminister an industrialized society iscaught between its need for rationalityand its repression of rationality — isalso one of its main weaknesses incomparison with normal capitalistdevelopment. Just as the bureaucracycannot resolve the question of

agriculture as ordinary capitalism hasdone, it also proves inferior to the latterin the field of industrial production,because its unrealistic authoritarianplanning is based on omnipresentfalsifications.

109

Between the two world wars therevolutionary working-class movementwas destroyed by the joint action of theStalinist bureaucracy and of fascisttotalitarianism (the latter’sorganizational form having been inspiredby the totalitarian party that had firstbeen tested and developed in Russia).Fascism was a desperate attempt todefend the bourgeois economy from thedual threat of crisis and proletariansubversion, a state of siege in whichcapitalist society saved itself by givingitself an emergency dose ofrationalization in the form of massivestate intervention. But this

rationalization is hampered by theextreme irrationality of its methods.Although fascism rallies to the defenseof the main icons of a bourgeoisideology that has become conservative(family, private property, moral order,patriotism), while mobilizing the pettybourgeoisie and the unemployedworkers who are panic-stricken byeconomic crisis or disillusioned by thesocialist movement’s failure to bringabout a revolution, it is not itselffundamentally ideological. It presentsitself as what it is — a violentresurrection of myth calling forparticipation in a community defined byarchaic pseudovalues: race, blood,leader. Fascism is a technologically

equipped primitivism. Its factitiousmythological rehashes are presented inthe spectacular context of the mostmodern means of conditioning andillusion. It is thus a significant factor inthe formation of the modern spectacle,and its role in the destruction of the oldworking-class movement also makes itone of the founding forces of present-daysociety. But since it is also the mostcostly method of preserving thecapitalist order, it has generally endedup being replaced by the major capitaliststates, which represent stronger andmore rational forms of that order.

110

When the Russian bureaucracy hasfinally succeeded in doing away with thevestiges of bourgeois property thathampered its rule over the economy, andin developing this economy for its ownpurposes, and in being recognized as amember of the club of great powers, itwants to enjoy its world in peace and todisencumber itself from the arbitrarinessto which it is still subjected. It thusdenounces the Stalinism at its origin. Butthis denunciation remains Stalinist —arbitrary, unexplained, and subject tocontinual modification — because theideological lie at its origin can neverbe revealed. The bureaucracy cannot

liberalize itself either culturally orpolitically because its existence as aclass depends on its ideologicalmonopoly, which, for all itscumbersomeness, is its sole title topower. This ideology has lost thepassion of its original expression, but itspassionless routinization still has therepressive function of controlling allthought and prohibiting any competitionwhatsoever. The bureaucracy is thushelplessly tied to an ideology that is nolonger believed by anyone. The powerthat used to inspire terror now inspiresridicule, but this ridiculed power stilldefends itself with the threat of resortingto the terrorizing force it would like tobe rid of. Thus, at the very time when the

bureaucracy hopes to demonstrate itssuperiority on the terrain of capitalism itreveals itself to be a poor cousin ofcapitalism. Just as its actual historycontradicts its façade of legality and itscrudely maintained ignorancecontradicts its scientific pretensions, soits attempt to vie with the bourgeoisie inthe production of commodity abundanceis stymied by the fact that suchabundance contains its own implicitideology, and is generally accompaniedby the freedom to choose from anunlimited range of spectacularpseudoalternatives — a pseudofreedomthat remains incompatible with thebureaucracy’s ideology.

111

The bureaucracy’s ideological title topower is already collapsing at theinternational level. The power thatestablished itself nationally in the nameof an ostensibly internationalistperspective is now forced to recognizethat it can no longer impose its system oflies beyond its own national borders.The unequal economic development ofdiverse bureaucracies with competinginterests that have succeeded inestablishing their own “socialism” inmore than one country has led to an all-out public confrontation between theRussian lie and the Chinese lie. Fromthis point on, each bureaucracy in power

will have to find its own way; and thesame is true for each of the totalitarianparties aspiring to such power (notablythose that still survive from the Stalinistperiod among certain national workingclasses). This international collapse hasbeen further aggravated by theexpressions of internal negation whichfirst became visible to the outside worldwhen the workers of East Berlinrevolted against the bureaucrats anddemanded a “government of steelworkers” — a negation which has in onecase already gone to the point ofsovereign workers councils in Hungary.But in the final analysis, this crumblingof the global alliance of pseudosocialistbureaucracies is also a most unfavorable

development for the future of capitalistsociety. The bourgeoisie is in theprocess of losing the adversary thatobjectively supported it by providing anillusory unification of all opposition tothe existing order. This division of laborbetween two mutually reinforcing formsof the spectacle comes to an end whenthe pseudorevolutionary role in turndivides. The spectacular component ofthe destruction of the working-classmovement is itself headed fordestruction.

112

The only current partisans of the Leninistillusion are the various Trotskyisttendencies, which stubbornly persist inidentifying the proletarian project withan ideologically based hierarchicalorganization despite all the historicalexperiences that have refuted thatperspective. The distance that separatesTrotskyism from a revolutionary critiqueof present-day society is related to thedeferential distance the Trotskyistsmaintain regarding positions that werealready mistaken when they were actedon in real struggles. Trotsky remainedfundamentally loyal to the upperbureaucracy until 1927, while striving to

gain control of it so as to make it resumea genuinely Bolshevik foreign policy. (Itis well known, for example, that in orderto help conceal Lenin’s famous“Testament” he went so far as toslanderously disavow his own supporterMax Eastman, who had made it public.)Trotsky was doomed by his basicperspective, because once thebureaucracy became aware that it hadevolved into a counterrevolutionaryclass on the domestic front, it was boundto opt for a similarlycounterrevolutionary role in othercountries (though still, of course, in thename of revolution). Trotsky’ssubsequent efforts to create a FourthInternational reflect the same

inconsistency. Once he had become anunconditional partisan of the Bolshevikform of organization (which he didduring the second Russian revolution),he refused for the rest of his life torecognize that the bureaucracy was anew ruling class. When Lukács, in 1923,presented this same organizational formas the long-sought link between theoryand practice, in which proletarianscease being mere “spectators” of theevents that occur in their organizationand begin consciously choosing andexperiencing those events, he wasdescribing as merits of the BolshevikParty everything that that party was not.Despite his profound theoretical work,Lukács remained an ideologue, speaking

in the name of the power that was mostgrossly alien to the proletarianmovement, yet believing and pretendingthat he found himself completely athome with it. As subsequent eventsdemonstrated how that power disavowsand suppresses its lackeys, Lukács’sendless self-repudiations revealed withcaricatural clarity that he had identifiedwith the total opposite of himself and ofeverything he had argued for in Historyand Class Consciousness. No one betterthan Lukács illustrates the validity of thefundamental rule for assessing all theintellectuals of this century: What theyrespect is a precise gauge of their owndegradation. Yet Lenin had hardlyencouraged these sorts of illusions about

his activities. On the contrary, heacknowledged that “a political partycannot examine its members to see ifthere are contradictions between theirphilosophy and the party program.” Theparty whose idealized portrait Lukácshad so inopportunely drawn was inreality suited for only one very specificand limited task: the seizure of statepower.

113

Since the neo-Leninist illusion carriedon by present-day Trotskyism isconstantly being contradicted by thereality of modern capitalist societies(both bourgeois and bureaucratic), it isnot surprising that it gets its mostfavorable reception in the nominallyindependent “underdeveloped”countries, where the local rulingclasses’ versions of bureaucratic statesocialism end up amounting to littlemore than a mere ideology of economicdevelopment. The hybrid composition ofthese ruling classes tends to correspondto their position within the bourgeois-bureaucratic spectrum. Their

international maneuvering between thosetwo poles of capitalist power, alongwith their numerous ideologicalcompromises (notably with Islam)stemming from their heterogeneoussocial bases, end up removing fromthese degraded versions of ideologicalsocialism everything serious except thepolice. One type of bureaucracyestablishes itself by forging anorganization capable of combiningnational struggle with agrarian peasantrevolt; it then, as in China, tends to applythe Stalinist model of industrialization insocieties that are even less developedthan Russia was in 1917. A bureaucracyable to industrialize the nation may alsodevelop out of the petty bourgeoisie,

with power being seized by armyofficers, as happened in Egypt. In othersituations, such as the aftermath of theAlgerian war of independence, abureaucracy that has established itself asa para-state authority in the course ofstruggle may seek a stabilizingcompromise by merging with a weaknational bourgeoisie. Finally, in theformer colonies of black Africa thatremain openly tied to the American andEuropean bourgeoisie, a localbourgeoisie constitutes itself (usuallybased on the power of traditional tribalchiefs) through its possession of thestate. Foreign imperialism remains thereal master of the economy of thesecountries, but at a certain stage its native

agents are rewarded for their sale oflocal products by being grantedpossession of a local state — a state thatis independent from the local masses butnot from imperialism. Incapable ofaccumulating capital, this artificialbourgeoisie does nothing but squanderthe surplus value it extracts from locallabor and the subsidies it receives fromprotector states and internationalmonopolies. Because of the obviousinability of these bourgeois classes tofulfill the normal economic functions ofa bourgeoisie, they soon find themselveschallenged by oppositional movementsbased on the bureaucratic model (moreor less adapted to particular localconditions). But if such bureaucracies

succeed in their fundamental project ofindustrialization, they produce thehistorical conditions for their owndefeat: by accumulating capital they alsoaccumulate a proletariat, thus creatingtheir own negation in countries wherethat negation had not previously existed.

114

In the course of this complex and terribleevolution which has brought the era ofclass struggles to a new set ofconditions, the proletariat of theindustrial countries has lost its ability toassert its own independent perspective.In a fundamental sense, it has also lostits illusions. But it has not lost its being.The proletariat has not been eliminated.It remains irreducibly present within theintensified alienation of moderncapitalism. It consists of that vastmajority of workers who have lost allpower over their lives and who, oncethey become aware of this, redefinethemselves as the proletariat, the force

working to negate this society fromwithin. This proletariat is beingobjectively reinforced by the virtualelimination of the peasantry and by theincreasing degree to which the “service”sectors and intellectual professions arebeing subjected to factorylike workingconditions. Subjectively, however, thisproletariat is still far removed from anypractical class consciousness, and thisgoes not only for white-collar workersbut also for blue-collar workers, whohave yet to become aware of anyperspective beyond the impotence andmystifications of the old politics. Butwhen the proletariat discovers that itsown externalized power contributes tothe constant reinforcement of capitalist

society, no longer only in the form of itsalienated labor but also in the form ofthe trade unions, political parties, andstate powers that it had created in theeffort to liberate itself, it also discoversthrough concrete historical experiencethat it is the class that must totallyoppose all rigidified externalizationsand all specializations of power. It bearsa revolution that cannot leave anythingoutside itself, a revolution embodyingthe permanent domination of the presentover the past and a total critique ofseparation; and it must discover theappropriate forms of action to carry outthis revolution. No quantitativeamelioration of its impoverishment, noillusory participation in a hierarchized

system, can provide a lasting cure for itsdissatisfaction, because the proletariatcannot truly recognize itself in anyparticular wrong it has suffered, nor inthe righting of any particular wrong. Itcannot recognize itself even in therighting of many such wrongs, but only inthe righting of the absolute wrong ofbeing excluded from any real life.

115

New signs of negation are proliferatingin the most economically advancedcountries. Although these signs aremisunderstood and falsified by thespectacle, they are sufficient proof that anew period has begun. We have alreadyseen the failure of the first proletarianassault against capitalism; now we arewitnessing the failure of capitalistabundance. On one hand, anti-unionstruggles of Western workers are beingrepressed first of all by the unions; onthe other, rebellious youth are raisingnew protests, protests which are stillvague and confused but which clearlyimply a rejection of art, of everyday life,

and of the old specialized politics.These are two sides of a newspontaneous struggle that is at first takingon a criminal appearance. Theyforeshadow a second proletarian assaultagainst class society. As the lostchildren of this as yet immobile armyreappear on this battleground — abattleground which has changed and yetremains the same — they are following anew “General Ludd” who, this time,urges them to attack the machinery ofpermitted consumption.

116

“The long-sought political form throughwhich the working class could carry outits own economic liberation” has takenon a clear shape in this century, in theform of revolutionary workers councilswhich assume all decisionmaking andexecutive powers and which federatewith each other by means of delegateswho are answerable to their base andrevocable at any moment. The councilsthat have actually emerged have as yetprovided no more than a rough hint oftheir possibilities because they haveimmediately been opposed and defeatedby class society’s various defensiveforces, among which their own false

consciousness must often be included.As Pannekoek rightly stressed, opting forthe power of workers councils “posesproblems” rather than providing asolution. But it is precisely within thisform of social organization that theproblems of proletarian revolution canfind their real solution. This is theterrain where the objectivepreconditions of historicalconsciousness are brought together —the terrain where active directcommunication is realized, marking theend of specialization, hierarchy andseparation, and the transformation ofexisting conditions into “conditions ofunity.” In this process proletariansubjects can emerge from their struggle

against their contemplative position;their consciousness is equal to thepractical organization they have chosenfor themselves because thisconsciousness has become inseparablefrom coherent intervention in history.

117

With the power of the councils — apower that must internationally supplantall other forms of power — theproletarian movement becomes its ownproduct. This product is nothing otherthan the producers themselves, whosegoal has become nothing other than theirown fulfillment. Only in this way can thespectacle’s negation of life be negated inits turn.

118

The appearance of workers councilsduring the first quarter of this centurywas the most advanced expression of theold proletarian movement, but it wasunnoticed or forgotten, except intravestied forms, because it wasrepressed and destroyed along with allthe rest of the movement. Now, from thevantage point of the new stage ofproletarian critique, the councils can beseen in their true light as the onlyundefeated aspect of a defeatedmovement. The historical consciousnessthat recognizes that the councils are theonly terrain in which it can thrive cannow see that they are no longer at the

periphery of a movement that issubsiding, but at the center of amovement that is rising.

119

A revolutionary organization that existsbefore the establishment of the power ofworkers councils will discover its ownappropriate form through struggle; butall these historical experiences havealready made it clear that it cannot claimto represent the working class. Its task,rather, is to embody a radical separationfrom the world of separation.

120

Revolutionary organization is thecoherent expression of the theory ofpraxis entering into two-waycommunication with practical struggles,in the process of becoming practicaltheory. Its own practice is to foster thecommunication and coherence of thesestruggles. At the revolutionary momentwhen social separations are dissolved,the organization must dissolve itself as aseparate organization.

121

A revolutionary organization mustconstitute an integral critique of society,that is, it must make a comprehensivecritique of all aspects of alienated sociallife while refusing to compromise withany form of separate power anywhere inthe world. In the organization’s strugglewith class society, the combattantsthemselves are the fundamentalweapons: a revolutionary organizationmust thus see to it that the dominantsociety’s conditions of separation andhierarchy are not reproduced withinitself. It must constantly struggle againstits deformation by the ruling spectacle.The only limit to participation in its total

democracy is that each of its membersmust have recognized and appropriatedthe coherence of the organization’scritique — a coherence that must bedemonstrated both in the critical theoryas such and in the relation between thattheory and practical activity.

122

As capitalism’s ever-intensifyingimposition of alienation at all levelsmakes it increasingly hard for workersto recognize and name their ownimpoverishment, putting them in theposition of having to reject thatimpoverishment in its totality or not atall, revolutionary organization has hadto learn that it can no longer combatalienation by means of alienated formsof struggle.

123

Proletarian revolution depends entirelyon the condition that, for the first time,theory as understanding of humanpractice be recognized and lived by themasses. It requires that workers becomedialecticians and put their thought intopractice. It thus demands of its “peoplewithout qualities” more than thebourgeois revolution demanded of thequalified individuals it delegated tocarry out its tasks (because the partialideological consciousness developed bya segment of the bourgeois class wasbased on the economy, that central partof social life in which that class wasalready in power). The development of

class society to the stage of thespectacular organization of nonlife isthus leading the revolutionary project tobecome visibly what it has always beenin essence.

124

Revolutionary theory is now the enemyof all revolutionary ideology, and itknows it.

Chapter 5: Time andHistory

O, gentlemen, the time of life isshort! ...

An if we live, we live to tread onkings.

Shakespeare, Henry IV

125

Man, “the negative being who is solelyto the extent that he suppresses Being,”is one with time. Man’s appropriation ofhis own nature is at the same time hisgrasp of the development of theuniverse. “History is itself a real part ofnatural history, of the transformation ofnature into man” (Marx). Conversely,this “natural history” has no realexistence other than through the processof human history, the only vantage pointfrom which one can take in thathistorical totality (like the moderntelescope whose power enables one tolook back in time at the receding nebulasat the periphery of the universe). History

has always existed, but not always in itshistorical form. The temporalization ofhumanity, brought about through themediation of a society, amounts to ahumanization of time. The unconsciousmovement of time becomes manifest andtrue within historical consciousness.

126

True (though still hidden) historicalmovement begins with the slow andimperceptible development of the “realnature of man” — the “nature that is bornwith human history, out of the generativeaction of human society.” But even whensuch a society has developed atechnology and a language and is alreadya product of its own history, it isconscious only of a perpetual present.Knowledge is carried on only by theliving, never going beyond the memoryof the society’s oldest members. Neitherdeath nor procreation is understood as alaw of time. Time remains motionless,like an enclosed space. When a more

complex society finally becomesconscious of time, it tries to negate it —it views time not as something thatpasses, but as something that returns.This static type of society organizes timein a cyclical manner, in accordance withits own direct experience of nature.

127

Cyclical time is already dominant amongthe nomadic peoples because they findthe same conditions repeated at eachstage of their journey. As Hegel notes,“the wandering of nomads is onlynominal because it is limited to uniformspaces.” When a society settles in aparticular location and gives space acontent by developing distinctive areaswithin it, it finds itself confined withinthat locality. The periodic return tosimilar places now becomes the purereturn of time in the same place, therepetition of a sequence of activities.The transition from pastoral nomadismto sedentary agriculture marks the end of

an idle and contentless freedom and thebeginning of labor. The agrarian mode ofproduction, governed by the rhythm ofthe seasons, is the basis for fullydeveloped cyclical time. Eternity iswithin this time, it is the return of thesame here on earth. Myth is the unitarymental construct which guarantees thatthe cosmic order conforms with theorder that this society has in fact alreadyestablished within its frontiers.

128

The social appropriation of time and theproduction of man by human labordevelop within a society divided intoclasses. The power that establishes itselfabove the poverty of the society ofcyclical time, the class that organizesthis social labor and appropriates itslimited surplus value, simultaneouslyappropriates the temporal surplus valueresulting from its organization of socialtime: it alone possesses the irreversibletime of the living. The wealth that canonly be concentrated in the hands of therulers and spent in extravagant festivitiesamounts to a squandering of historicaltime at the surface of society. The

owners of this historical surplus valueare the only ones in a position to knowand enjoy real events. Separated fromthe collective organization of timeassociated with the repetitive productionat the base of social life, this historicaltime flows independently above its ownstatic community. This is the time ofadventure and war, the time in which themasters of cyclical society pursue theirpersonal histories; it is also the time thatemerges in the clashes with foreigncommunities that disrupt the unchangingsocial order. History thus arises assomething alien to people, as somethingthey never sought and from which theyhad thought themselves protected. But italso revives the negative human

restlessness that had been at the veryorigin of this whole (temporarilysuspended) development.

129

In itself, cyclical time is a time withoutconflict. But conflict is already presenteven in this infancy of time, as historyfirst struggles to become history in thepractical activity of the masters. Thishistory creates a surface irreversibility;its movement constitutes the very time ituses up within the inexhaustible time ofcyclical society.

130

“Static societies” are societies that havereduced their historical movement to aminimum and that have managed tomaintain their internal conflicts and theirconflicts with the natural and humanenvironment in a constant equilibrium.Although the extraordinary diversity ofthe institutions established for thispurpose bears eloquent testimony to theflexibility of human nature’s self-creation, this diversity is apparent onlyto the external observer, theanthropologist who looks back from thevantage point of historical time. In eachof these societies a definitiveorganizational structure has eliminated

any possibility of change. The totalconformism of their social practices,with which all human possibilities areidentified for all time, has no externallimit but the fear of falling back into aformless animal condition. The membersof these societies remain human at theprice of always remaining the same.

131

With the emergence of political power— which seems to be associated withthe last great technological revolutions(such as iron smelting) at the thresholdof a period that would experience nofurther major upheavals until the rise ofmodern industry — kinship ties begin todissolve. The succession of generationswithin a natural, purely cyclical timebegins to be replaced by a linearsuccession of powers and events. Thisirreversible time is the time of thosewho rule, and the dynasty is its first unitof measurement. Writing is the rulers’weapon. In writing, language attains itscomplete independence as a mediation

between consciousnesses. But thisindependence coincides with theindependence of separate power, themediation that shapes society. Withwriting there appears a consciousnessthat is no longer carried and transmitteddirectly among the living — animpersonal memory, the memory of theadministration of society. “Writings arethe thoughts of the state; archives are itsmemory” (Novalis).

132

The chronicle is the expression of theirreversible time of power. It alsoserves to inspire the continuedprogression of that time by recording thepast out of which it has developed, sincethis orientation of time tends to collapsewith the fall of each particular powerand would otherwise sink back into theindifferent oblivion of cyclical time (theonly time known to the peasant masseswho, during the rise and fall of all theempires and their chronologies, neverchange). The owners of history havegiven time a direction, a direction whichis also a meaning. But this historydevelops and perishes separately,

leaving the underlying societyunchanged, because it remains separatedfrom the common reality. This is why wetend to reduce the history of Orientalempires to a history of religions: thechronologies that have fallen to ruinshave left nothing but the seeminglyindependent history of the illusions thatveiled them. The masters who used theprotection of myth to make history theirprivate property did so first of all in therealm of illusion. In China and Egypt, forexample, they long held a monopoly onthe immortality of the soul; and theirearliest officially recognized dynastieswere nothing but imaginaryreconstructions of the past. But thisillusory ownership by the masters was

the only ownership then possible, bothof the common history and of their ownhistory. As their real historical powerexpanded, this illusory-mythicalownership became increasinglyvulgarized. All these consequencesflowed from the simple fact that as themasters played the role of mythicallyguaranteeing the permanence of cyclicaltime (as in the seasonal rites performedby the Chinese emperors), theythemselves achieved a relativeliberation from cyclical time.

133

The dry, unexplained chronology that adeified authority offered to its subjects,who were supposed to accept it as theearthly fulfillment of mythiccommandments, was destined to betranscended and transformed intoconscious history. But for this to happen,sizeable groups of people had to haveexperienced real participation in history.Out of this practical communicationbetween those who have recognizedeach other as possessors of a uniquepresent, who have experienced aqualitative richness of events in theirown activity and who are at home intheir own era, arises the general

language of historical communication.Those for whom irreversible time trulyexists discover in it both the memorableand the threat of oblivion: “Herodotusof Halicarnassus here presents theresults of his researches, so that timewill not abolish the deeds of men...”

134

Examining history amounts to examiningthe nature of power. Greece was themoment when power and changes inpower were first debated andunderstood. It was a democracy of themasters of society — a total contrast tothe despotic state, where power settlesaccounts only with itself, within theimpenetrable obscurity of its innersanctum, by means of palacerevolutions, which are beyond the paleof discussion whether they fail orsucceed. But the shared power in theGreek communities was limited to theconsumption of a social life whoseproduction remained the separate and

static domain of the servile class. Theonly people who lived were those whodid not work. The divisions among theGreek communities and their struggles toexploit foreign cities were theexternalized expression of the internalprinciple of separation on which each ofthem was based. Although Greece haddreamed of universal history, it did notsucceed in unifying itself in the face offoreign invasion, or even in unifying thecalendars of its independent city-states.Historical time became conscious inGreece, but it was not yet conscious ofitself.

135

The disappearance of the particularconditions that had favored the Greekcommunities brought about a regressionof Western historical thought, but it didnot lead to a restoration of the oldmythic structures. The clashes of theMediterranean peoples and the rise andfall of the Roman state gave rise insteadt o semihistorical religions, whichbecame a new armor for separate powerand basic components of a newconsciousness of time.

136

The monotheistic religions were acompromise between myth and history,between the cyclical time that stillgoverned the sphere of production andthe irreversible time that was the theaterof conflicts and regroupings amongdifferent peoples. The religions thatevolved out of Judaism were abstractuniversal acknowledgments of anirreversible time that had becomedemocratized and open to all, but only inthe realm of illusion. Time is totallyoriented toward a single final event:“The Kingdom of God is soon to come.”These religions were rooted in the soilof history, but they remained radically

opposed to history. The semihistoricalreligions establish a qualitative point ofdeparture in time (the birth of Christ, theflight of Mohammed), but theirirreversible time — introducing anaccumulation that would take the form ofconquest in Islam and of increasingcapital in Reformation Christianity — isinverted in religious thought andbecomes a sort of countdown: waitingfor time to run out before the LastJudgment and the advent of the other,true world. Eternity has emerged fromcyclical time, as something beyond it. Itis also the element that restrains theirreversibility of time, suppressinghistory within history itself bypositioning itself on the other side of

irreversible time as a pure point intowhich cyclical time returns anddisappears. Bossuet will still say: “Byway of time, which passes, we entereternity, which does not pass.”

137

The Middle Ages, an incompletemythical world whose consummation layoutside itself, is the period whencyclical time, though still governing themajor part of production, really beginsto be undermined by history. An elementof irreversible time is recognized in thesuccessive stages of each individual’slife. Life is seen as a one-way journeythrough a world whose meaning lieselsewhere: the pilgrim is the personwho leaves cyclical time behind andactually becomes the traveler thateveryone else is symbolically. Personalhistorical life still finds its fulfillmentwithin the sphere of power, whether in

struggles waged by power or instruggles over disputed power; butpower’s irreversible time is now sharedto an unlimited degree due to the generalunity brought about by the oriented timeof the Christian Era — a world of armedfaith, where the adventures of themasters revolve around fealty anddisputes over who owes fealty to whom.Feudal society was born from themerging of “the organizational structuresof the conquering armies that developedin the process of conquest” with “theproductive forces found in the conqueredregions” (The German Ideology), andthe factors contributing to theorganization of those productive forcesinclude the religious language in which

they were expressed. Social dominationwas divided between the Church and thestate, the latter power being in turnsubdivided in the complex relations ofsuzerainty and vassalage within andbetween rural domains and urbancommunities. This diversification ofpotential historical life reflected thegradual emergence (following the failureof that great official enterprise of themedieval world, the Crusades) of theera’s unnoticed innovation: theirreversible time that was silentlyundermining the society, the timeexperienced by the bourgeoisie in theproduction of commodities, thefoundation and expansion of cities, andthe commercial discovery of the planet

— a practical experimentation thatdestroyed every mythical organization ofthe cosmos once and for all.

138

With the waning of the Middle Ages, theirreversible time that had invadedsociety was experienced by aconsciousness still attached to the oldorder as an obsession with death. Thiswas the melancholy of a world passingaway, the last world where the securityof myth still counterbalanced history;and for this melancholy all earthly thingsmove inevitably toward decay. The greatEuropean peasant revolts were also anattempt to respond to history — ahistory that was violently wresting thepeasants from the patriarchal slumberthat had been imposed by their feudalguardians. The millenarians’ utopian

aspiration of creating heaven on earthrevived a dream that had been at theorigin of the semihistorical religions,when the early Christian communities,like the Judaic messianism from whichthey sprung, responded to the troublesand misfortunes of their time byenvisioning the imminent realization ofthe Kingdom of God, thereby adding anelement of unrest and subversion toancient society. When Christianityreached the point of sharing powerwithin the empire, it denouncedwhatever still remained of this hope asmere superstition. This is what St.Augustine was doing when, in a formulathat can be seen as the archetype of allthe modern ideological apologetics, he

declared that the Kingdom of God had infact already come long ago — that it wasnothing other than the establishedChurch. The social revolts of themillenarian peasantry naturally began bydefining their goal as the overthrow ofthat Church. But millenarianismdeveloped in a historical world, not onthe terrain of myth. Modernrevolutionary hopes are not irrationalcontinuations of the religious passion ofmillenarianism, as Norman Cohn thoughthe had demonstrated in The Pursuit ofthe Millennium. On the contrary,millenarianism, revolutionary classstruggle speaking the language ofreligion for the last time, was already amodern revolutionary tendency, a

tendency that lacked only theconsciousness that it was a purelyhistorical movement. The millenarianswere doomed to defeat because theywere unable to recognize theirrevolution as their own undertaking. Thefact that they hesitated to act until theyhad received some external sign ofGod’s will was an ideological corollaryto the insurgent peasants’ practice offollowing leaders from outside theirown ranks. The peasant class could notattain a clear understanding of theworkings of society or of how to conductits own struggle, and because it lackedthese conditions for unifying its actionand consciousness, it expressed itsproject and waged its wars with the

imagery of an earthly paradise.

139

The Renaissance was a joyous breakwith eternity. Though seeking its heritageand legitimacy in the ancient world, itrepresented a new form of historicallife. Its irreversible time was that of anever-ending accumulation ofknowledge, and the historicalconsciousness engendered by theexperience of democratic communitiesand of the forces that destroy them nowtook up once again, with Machiavelli,the analysis of secularized power,saying the previously unsayable aboutthe state. In the exuberant life of theItalian cities, in the creation of festivals,life is experienced as an enjoyment of

the passage of time. But this enjoymentof transience is itself transient. The songof Lorenzo de’ Medici, whichBurckhardt considered “the very spiritof the Renaissance,” is the eulogy thisfragile historical festival delivers onitself: “How beautiful the spring of life— and how quickly it vanishes.”

140

The constant tendency toward themonopolization of historical life by theabsolute-monarchist state — atransitional form on the way to completedomination by the bourgeois class —brings into clear view the nature of thebourgeoisie’s new type of irreversibletime. The bourgeoisie is associated witha labor time that has finally been freedfrom cyclical time. With the bourgeoisie,work becomes work that transformshistorical conditions. The bourgeoisieis the first ruling class for which work isa value. And the bourgeoisie, whichsuppresses all privilege and recognizesno value that does not stem from the

exploitation of labor, has appropriatelyidentified its own value as a ruling classwith labor, and has made the progress oflabor the measure of its own progress.The class that accumulates commoditiesand capital continually modifies natureby modifying labor itself, by unleashinglabor’s productivity. At the stage ofabsolute monarchy, all social life wasalready concentrated within theornamented poverty of the Court, thegaudy trappings of a bleak stateadministration whose apex was the“profession of king”; and all particularhistorical freedoms had to surrender tothis new power. The free play of thefeudal lords’ irreversible time came toan end in their last, lost battles — in the

Fronde and in the Scottish uprising insupport of Bonny Prince Charlie. Theworld now had a new foundation.

141

The victory of the bourgeoisie is thevictory of a profoundly historical time,because it is the time corresponding toan economic production thatcontinuously transforms society from topto bottom. So long as agrarianproduction remains the predominantform of labor, the cyclical time thatremains at the base of society reinforcesthe joint forces of tradition, which tendto hold back any historical movement.But the irreversible time of thebourgeois economy eradicates thosevestiges throughout the world. History,which until then had seemed to involveonly the actions of individual members

of the ruling class, and which had thusbeen recorded as a mere chronology ofevents, is now understood as a generalmovement — a relentless movement thatcrushes any individuals in its path. Bydiscovering its basis in politicaleconomy, history becomes aware ofwhat had previously been unconscious;but this basis remains unconsciousbecause it cannot be brought to light.This blind prehistory, this new fate thatno one controls, is the only thing that thecommodity economy has democratized.

142

The history that is present in all thedepths of society tends to becomeinvisible at the surface. The triumph ofirreversible time is also itsmetamorphosis into a time of things,because the weapon that brought aboutits victory was the mass production ofobjects in accordance with the laws ofthe commodity. The main product thateconomic development has transformedfrom a luxurious rarity to a commonlyconsumed item is thus history itself —but only in the form of the history of theabstract movement of things thatdominates all qualitative aspects of life.While the earlier cyclical time had

supported an increasing degree ofhistorical time lived by individuals andgroups, the irreversible time ofproduction tends to socially eliminatesuch lived time.

143

The bourgeoisie has thus madeirreversible historical time known andhas imposed it on society, but it hasprevented society from using it. “Oncethere was history, but not any more,”because the class of owners of theeconomy, which is inextricably tied toeconomic history, must repress everyother irreversible use of time because itis directly threatened by them all. Theruling class, made up of specialists inthe possession of things who arethemselves therefore possessed bythings, is forced to link its fate with thepreservation of this reified history, thatis, with the preservation of a new

immobility within history. Meanwhilethe worker at the base of society is forthe first time not materially estrangedfrom history, because the irreversiblemovement is now generated from thatbase. By demanding to live the historicaltime that it produces, the proletariatdiscovers the simple, unforgettable coreof its revolutionary project; and eachpreviously defeated attempt to carry outthis project represents a possible pointof departure for a new historical life.

144

The irreversible time of the bourgeoisiethat had just seized power was at firstcalled by its own name and assigned anabsolute origin: Year One of theRepublic. But the revolutionary ideologyof general freedom that had served tooverthrow the last remnants of a myth-based ordering of values, along with allthe traditional forms of socialorganization, was already unable tocompletely conceal the real goal that ithad draped in Roman costume:unr e s tr i c te d freedom of trade.Commodity society, discovering its needto restore the passivity that it had soprofoundly shaken in order to establish

its own unchallenged rule, now foundthat, for its purposes, “Christianity withits cult of man in the abstract ... is themost fitting form of religion” (Capital).The bourgeoisie thus entered into acompromise with that religion, acompromise also reflected in itspresentation of time: the Revolutionarycalendar was abandoned andirreversible time returned to thestraitjacket of a duly extended ChristianEra.

145

With the development of capitalism,irreversible time has become globallyunified. Universal history becomes areality because the entire world isbrought under the sway of this time’sdevelopment. But this history that iseverywhere simultaneously the same isas yet nothing but an intrahistoricalrejection of history. What appears theworld over as the same day is merelythe time of economic production, timecut up into equal abstract fragments. Thisunified irreversible time belongs to theglobal market, and thus also to theglobal spectacle.

146

The irreversible time of production isfirst of all the measure of commodities.The time officially recognizedthroughout the world as the general timeof society actually only reflects thespecialized interests that constitute it,and thus is merely one particular typeof time.

Chapter 6: SpectacularTime

“We have nothing of our ownexcept time, which even thehomeless can experience.”

Baltasar Gracián, The Art ofWorldly Wisdom

147

The time of production — commodifiedtime — is an infinite accumulation ofequivalent intervals. It is irreversibletime made abstract, in which eachsegment need only demonstrate by theclock its purely quantitative equalitywith all the others. It has no reality apartfrom its exchangeability. Under thesocial reign of commodified time, “timeis everything, man is nothing; he is atmost the carcass of time” (The Povertyof Philosophy). This devalued time isthe complete opposite of time as “terrainof human development.”

148

This general time of humannondevelopment also has acomplementary aspect — a consumableform of time based on the present modeof production and presenting itself ineveryday life as a pseudocyclical time.

149

This pseudocyclical time is in factmerely a consumable disguise of theproduction system’s commodified time.It exhibits the latter’s essential traits:homogenous exchangeable units andsuppression of any qualitativedimension. But as a by-product ofcommodified time whose function is topromote and maintain the backwardnessof everyday life, it is loaded withpseudovalorizations and manifests itselfas a succession of pseudoindividualizedmoments.

150

Pseudocyclical time is associated withthe consumption of modern economicsurvival — the augmented survival inwhich everyday experience is cut offfrom decisionmaking and subjected nolonger to the natural order, but to thepseudo-nature created by alienatedlabor. It is thus quite natural that itechoes the old cyclical rhythm thatgoverned survival in preindustrialsocieties, incorporating the naturalvestiges of cyclical time whilegenerating new variants: day and night,work and weekend, periodic vacations.

151

Pseudocyclical time is a time that hasbeen transformed by industry. The timebased on commodity production is itselfa consumable commodity, one thatrecombines everything that thedisintegration of the old unitary societieshad differentiated into private life,economic life, and political life. Theentire consumable time of modernsociety ends up being treated as a rawmaterial for various new products put onthe market as socially controlled uses oftime. “A product that already exists in aform suitable for consumption maynevertheless serve as raw material forsome other product” (Capital).

152

In its most advanced sectors,concentrated capitalism is increasinglytending to market “fully equipped”blocks of time, each functioning as aunified commodity combining a varietyof other commodities. In the expandingeconomy of “services” and leisureactivities, the payment for these blocksof time is equally unified: “everything’sincluded,” whether it is a matter ofspectacular living environments,touristic pseudotravel, subscriptions tocultural consumption, or even the sale ofsociability itself in the form of “excitingconversations” and “meetings withcelebrities.” Spectacular commodities of

this type, which would obviously neversell were it not for the increasingimpoverishment of the realities theyparody, just as obviously reflect themodernization of sales techniques bybeing payable on credit.

153

Consumable pseudocyclical time isspectacular time, both in the narrowsense as time spent consuming imagesand in the broader sense as image of theconsumption of time. The time spentconsuming images (images which in turnserve to publicize all the othercommodities) is both the particularterrain where the spectacle’smechanisms are most fully implementedand the general goal that thosemechanisms present, the focus andepitome of all particular consumptions.Thus, the time that modern society isconstantly seeking to “save” byincreasing transportation speeds or using

packaged soups ends up being spent bythe average American in watchingtelevision three to six hours a day. Asfor the social image of the consumptionof time, it is exclusively dominated byleisure time and vacations — momentsportrayed, like all spectacularcommodities, at a distance and asdesirable by definition. Thesecommodified moments are explicitlypresented as moments of real life whosecyclical return we are supposed to lookforward to. But all that is reallyhappening is that the spectacle isdisplaying and reproducing itself at ahigher level of intensity. What ispresented as true life turns out to bemerely a more truly spectacular life.

154

Although the present age presents itselfas a series of frequently recurringfestivities, it is an age that knowsnothing of real festivals. The momentswithin cyclical time when members of acommunity joined together in a luxuriousexpenditure of life are impossible for asociety that lacks both community andluxury. Its vulgarized pseudofestivalsare parodies of real dialogue and gift-giving; they may incite waves ofexcessive economic spending, but theylead to nothing but disillusionments,which can be compensated only by thepromise of some new disillusion tocome. The less use value is present in

the time of modern survival, the morehighly it is exalted in the spectacle. Thereality of time has been replaced by thepublicity of time.

155

While the consumption of cyclical timein ancient societies was consistent withthe real labor of those societies, thepseudocyclical consumption ofdeveloped economies contradicts theabstract irreversible time implicit intheir system of production. Cyclical timewas the really lived time of unchangingillusions. Spectacular time is theillusorily lived time of a constantlychanging reality.

156

The production process’s constantinnovations are not echoed inconsumption, which presents nothing butan expanded repetition of the past.Because dead labor continues todominate living labor, in spectaculartime the past continues to dominate thepresent.

157

The lack of general historical life alsomeans that individual life as yet has nohistory. The pseudo-events that vie forattention in spectacular dramatizationshave not been lived by those who areinformed about them; and in any casethey are soon forgotten due to theirincreasingly frenetic replacement atevery pulsation of the spectacularmachinery. Conversely, what is reallylived has no relation to the society’sofficial version of irreversible time, andconflicts with the pseudocyclical rhythmof that time’s consumable by-products.This individual experience of adisconnected everyday life remains

without language, without concepts, andwithout critical access to its own past,which has nowhere been recorded.Uncommunicated, misunderstood andforgotten, it is smothered by thespectacle’s false memory of theunmemorable.

158

The spectacle, considered as thereigning society’s method for paralyzinghistory and memory and for suppressingany history based on historical time,represents a false consciousness oftime.

159

In order to force the workers into thestatus of “free” producers andconsumers of commodified time, it wasfirst necessary to violently expropriatetheir time. The imposition of the newspectacular form of time becamepossible only after this initialdispossession of the producers.

160

The unavoidable biological limitationsof the work force — evident both in itsdependence on the natural cycle ofsleeping and waking and in thedebilitating effects of irreversible timeover each individual’s lifetime — aretreated by the modern production systemas strictly secondary considerations. Assuch, they are ignored in that system’sofficial proclamations and in theconsumable trophies that embody itsrelentless triumphant progress. Fixatedon the delusory center around which hisworld seems to move, the spectator nolonger experiences life as a journeytoward fulfillment and toward death.

Once he has given up on really living hecan no longer acknowledge his owndeath. Life insurance ads merelyinsinuate that he may be guilty of dyingwithout having provided for the smoothcontinuation of the system following theresultant economic loss, while thepromoters of the “American way ofdeath” stress his capacity to preservemost of the appearances of life in hispost-mortem state. On all the other frontsof advertising bombardment it is strictlyforbidden to grow old. Everybody isurged to economize on their “youth-capital,” though such capital, howevercarefully managed, has little prospect ofattaining the durable and cumulativeproperties of economic capital. This

social absence of death coincides withthe social absence of life.

161

As Hegel showed, time is the necessaryalienation, the terrain where the subjectrealizes himself by losing himself,becomes other in order to become trulyhimself. In total contrast, the currentform of alienation is imposed on theproducers of an estranged present. Inthis spatial alienation, the society thatradically separates the subject from theactivity it steals from him is in realityseparating him from his own time. Thispotentially surmountable socialalienation is what has prevented andparalyzed the possibilities and risks of aliving alienation within time.

162

Behind the fashions that come and go onthe frivolous surface of the spectacle ofpseudocyclical time, the grand style ofan era can always be found in what isgoverned by the secret yet obviousnecessity for revolution.

163

The natural basis of time, the concreteexperience of its passage, becomeshuman and social by existing forhumanity. The limitations of humanpractice imposed by the various stagesof labor have humanized time and alsodehumanized it, in the forms of cyclicaltime and of the separated irreversibletime of economic production. Therevolutionary project of a classlesssociety, of an all-embracing historicallife, implies the withering away of thesocial measurement of time in favor of afederation of independent times — afederation of playful individual andcollective forms of irreversible time that

are simultaneously present. This wouldbe the temporal realization of authenticcommunism, which “abolisheseverything that exists independently ofindividuals.”

164

The world already dreams of such atime. In order to actually live it, it onlyneeds to become fully conscious of it.

Chapter 7: TerritorialDomination

“Whoever becomes the ruler of acity that is accustomed to freedomand does not destroy it can expectto be destroyed by it, for it canalways find a pretext for rebellionin the name of its former freedomand age-old customs, which arenever forgotten despite the passageof time or any benefits it hasreceived. No matter what the rulerdoes or what precautions he takes,the inhabitants will never forgetthat freedom or those customs —unless they are separated ordispersed ...”

Machiavelli, The Prince

165

Capitalist production has unified space,breaking down the boundaries betweenone society and the next. This unificationis at the same time an extensive andintensive process of banalization. Justas the accumulation of commoditiesmass-produced for the abstract space ofthe market shattered all regional andlegal barriers and all the Medieval guildrestrictions that maintained the qualityof craft production, it also underminedthe autonomy and quality of places. Thishomogenizing power is the heavyartillery that has battered down all thewalls of China.

166

T h e free space of commodities isconstantly being altered and redesignedin order to become ever more identicalto itself, to get as close as possible tomotionless monotony.

167

While eliminating geographical distance,this society produces a new internaldistance in the form of spectacularseparation.

168

Tourism — human circulation packagedfor consumption, a by-product of thecirculation of commodities — is theopportunity to go and see what has beenbanalized. The economic organization oftravel to different places alreadyguarantees their equivalence. Themodernization that has eliminated thetime involved in travel hassimultaneously eliminated any real spacefrom it.

169

The society that reshapes its entiresurroundings has evolved its ownspecial technique for molding its ownterritory, which constitutes the materialunderpinning for all the facets of thisproject. Urbanism — “city planning” —is capitalism’s method for taking overthe natural and human environment.Following its logical developmenttoward total domination, capitalism nowcan and must refashion the totality ofspace into its own particular decor.

170

The capitalist need that is satisfied byurbanism’s conspicuous petrification oflife can be described in Hegelian termsas a total predominance of a “peacefulcoexistence within space” over “therestless becoming that takes place in theprogression of time.”

171

While all the technical forces ofcapitalism contribute toward variousforms of separation, urbanism providesthe material foundation for those forcesand prepares the ground for theirdeployment. It is the very technology ofseparation.

172

Urbanism is the modern method forsolving the ongoing problem ofsafeguarding class power by atomizingthe workers who have been dangerouslybrought together by the conditions ofurban production. The constant strugglethat has had to be waged against anythingthat might lead to such coming togetherhas found urbanism to be its mosteffective field of operation. The effortsof all the established powers since theFrench Revolution to increase the meansof maintaining law and order in thestreets have finally culminated in thesuppression of the street itself.Describing what he terms “a one-way

system,” Lewis Mumford points out that“with the present means of long-distancemass communication, sprawlingisolation has proved an even moreeffective method of keeping a populationunder control” (The City in History).But the general trend toward isolation,which is the underlying essence ofurbanism, must also include a controlledreintegration of the workers based on theplanned needs of production andconsumption. This reintegration into thesystem means bringing isolatedindividuals together as isolatedindividuals. Factories, cultural centers,tourist resorts and housing developmentsare specifically designed to foster thistype of pseudocommunity. The same

collective isolation prevails even withinthe family cell, where the omnipresentreceivers of spectacular messages fillthe isolation with the ruling images —images that derive their full powerprecisely from that isolation.

173

In all previous periods architecturalinnovations were designed exclusivelyfor the ruling classes. Now for the firsttime a new architecture has beenspecifically designed for the poor. Theaesthetic poverty and vast proliferationof this new experience in habitation stemfrom its mass character, which characterin turn stems both from its function andfrom the modern conditions ofconstruction. The obvious core of theseconditions is the authoritariandecisionmaking which abstractlyconverts the environment into anenvironment of abstraction. The samearchitecture appears everywhere as soon

as industrialization has begun, even inthe countries that are furthest behind inthis regard, as an essential foundationfor implanting the new type of socialexistence. The contradiction between thegrowth of society’s material powers andthe continued lack of progress towardany conscious control of those powers isrevealed as glaringly by thedevelopments of urbanism as by theissues of thermonuclear weapons or ofbirth control (where the possibility ofmanipulating heredity is already on thehorizon).

174

The self-destruction of the urbanenvironment is already well under way.The explosion of cities into thecountryside, covering it with whatMumford calls “a formless mass ofthinly spread semi-urban tissue,” isdirectly governed by the imperatives ofconsumption. The dictatorship of theautomobile — the pilot product of thefirst stage of commodity abundance —has left its mark on the landscape withthe dominance of freeways, which tearup the old urban centers and promote anever-wider dispersal. Within thisprocess various forms of partiallyreconstituted urban fabric fleetingly

crystallize around “distributionfactories” — giant shopping centersbuilt in the middle of nowhere andsurrounded by acres of parking lots.These temples of frenetic consumptionare subject to the same irresistiblecentrifugal momentum, which casts themaside as soon as they have engenderedenough surrounding development tobecome overburdened secondary centersin their turn. But the technicalorganization of consumption is only themost visible aspect of the generalprocess of decomposition that hasbrought the city to the point ofconsuming itself.

175

Economic history, whose entire previousdevelopment centered around theopposition between city and country, hasnow progressed to the point of nullifyingboth. As a result of the current paralysisof any historical development beyondthe independent movement of theeconomy, the incipient disappearance ofcity and country does not represent atranscendence of their separation, buttheir simultaneous collapse. The mutualerosion of city and country, resultingfrom the failure of the historicalmovement through which existing urbanreality could have been overcome, isreflected in the eclectic mixture of their

decomposed fragments that blanket themost industrialized regions of the world.

176

Universal history was born in cities, andit reached maturity with the city’sdecisive victory over the country. ForMarx, one of the greatest merits of thebourgeoisie as a revolutionary class wasthe fact that it “subjected the country tothe city,” whose “very air is liberating.”But if the history of the city is a historyof freedom, it is also a history of tyranny— a history of state administrationscontrolling not only the countryside butthe cities themselves. The city hasserved as the historical battleground forthe struggle for freedom without yethaving been able to win it. The city ist he focal point of history because it

embodies both a concentration of socialpower, which is what makes historicalenterprises possible, and aconsciousness of the past. The currentdestruction of the city is thus merely onemore reflection of humanity’s failure,thus far, to subordinate the economy tohistorical consciousness; of society’sfailure to unify itself by reappropriatingthe powers that have been alienated fromit.

177

“The country represents the completeopposite: isolation and separation” (TheGerman Ideology). As urbanismdestroys the cities, it recreates apseudocountryside devoid both of thenatural relations of the traditionalcountryside and of the direct (anddirectly challenged) social relations ofthe historical city. The conditions ofhabitation and spectacular control intoday’s “planned environment” havecreated an artificial neopeasantry. Thegeographical dispersal and the narrow-mindedness that have always preventedthe peasantry from undertakingindependent action and becoming a

creative historical force are equallycharacteristic of these modernproducers, for whom a world of theirown making is as inaccessible as werethe natural rhythms of work in agrariansocieties. The peasantry was thesteadfast foundation of “Orientaldespotism,” in that its inherentfragmentation gave rise to a naturaltendency toward bureaucraticcentralization. The neopeasantryproduced by the increasingbureaucratization of the modern statediffers from the old in that its apathymust now be historically manufacturedand maintained; natural ignorance hasbeen replaced by the organizedspectacle of falsification. The landscape

of the “new cities” inhabited by thistechnological pseudopeasantry is aglaring expression of the repression ofhistorical time on which they have beenbuilt. Their motto could be: “Nothinghas ever happened here, and nothingever will.” The forces of historicalabsence have been able to create theirown landscape because historicalliberation, which must take place in thecities, has not yet occurred.

178

The history that threatens this twilightworld could potentially subject space toa directly experienced time. Proletarianrevolution is this critique of humangeography through which individualsand communities could create places andevents commensurate with theappropriation no longer just of theirwork, but of their entire history. Theever-changing playing field of this newworld and the freely chosen variations inthe rules of the game will regenerate adiversity of local scenes that areindependent without being insular. Andthis diversity will revive the possibilityof authentic journeys — journeys within

an authentic life that is itself understoodas a journey containing its wholemeaning within itself.

179

The most revolutionary idea concerningurbanism is not itself urbanistic,technological or aesthetic. It is theproject of reconstructing the entireenvironment in accordance with theneeds of the power of workers councils,of the antistate dictatorship of theproletariat, of executory dialogue. Suchcouncils can be effective only if theytransform existing conditions in theirentirety; and they cannot set themselvesany lesser task if they wish to berecognized and to recognize themselvesin a world of their own making.

Chapter 8: Negation andConsumption WithinCulture

“Do you really believe that theseGermans will make a politicalrevolution in our lifetime? Myfriend, that is just wishful thinking...Let us judge Germany on the basisof its present history — and surelyyou are not going to object that allits history is falsified, or that all itspresent public life does not reflectthe actual state of the people? Readwhatever newspapers you please,and you cannot fail to be convincedthat we never stop (and you must

concede that the censorshipprevents no one from stopping)celebrating the freedom andnational happiness that we enjoy.”

Ruge to Marx, March 1843

180

Culture is the general sphere ofknowledge and of representations oflived experiences within historicalsocieties divided into classes. It is ageneralizing power which itself exists asa separate entity, as division ofintellectual labor and as intellectuallabor of division. Culture detached itselffrom the unity of myth-based society“when human life lost its unifying powerand when opposites lost their livingconnections and interactions and becameautonomous” (The Difference Betweenthe Systems of Fichte and Schelling). Inthus gaining its independence, cultureembarked on an imperialistic career of

self-enrichment that ultimately led to thedecline of that independence. Thehistory that gave rise to the relativeautonomy of culture, and to theideological illusions regarding thatautonomy, is also expressed as thehistory of culture. And this wholetriumphant history of culture can beunderstood as a progressive revelationof the inadequacy of culture, as a marchtoward culture’s self-abolition. Cultureis the terrain of the quest for lost unity.In the course of this quest, culture as aseparate sphere is obliged to negateitself.

181

In the struggle between tradition andinnovation, which is the basic theme ofinternal cultural development inhistorical societies, innovation alwayswins. But cultural innovation isgenerated by nothing other than the totalhistorical movement — a movementwhich, in becoming conscious of itselfas a whole, tends to go beyond its owncultural presuppositions and thus tomove toward the suppression of allseparations.

182

The rapid expansion of society’sknowledge, including the understandingthat history is the underlying basis ofculture, led to the irreversible self-knowledge reflected by the destructionof God. But this “first condition of anycritique” is also the first task of acritique without end. When there are nolonger any tenable rules of conduct, eachresult of culture pushes culture towardits own dissolution. Like philosophy themoment it achieved full independence,every discipline that becomesautonomous is bound to collapse — firstas a credible pretension to give acoherent account of the social totality,

and ultimately even as a fragmentedmethodology that might be workablewithin its own domain. Separateculture’s lack of rationality is whatdooms it to disappear, because thatculture already embodies a striving forthe victory of the rational.

183

Culture grew out of a history thatdissolved the previous way of life, butas a separate sphere within a partiallyhistorical society its understanding andsensory communication inevitablyremain partial. It is the meaning of aninsufficiently meaningful world.

184

The end of the history of culturemanifests itself in two opposing forms:the project of culture’s self-transcendence within total history, andits preservation as a dead object forspectacular contemplation. The firsttendency has linked its fate to socialcritique, the second to the defense ofclass power.

185

Each of these two forms of the end ofculture has a unitary existence, bothwithin all the aspects of knowledge andwithin all the aspects of sensoryrepresentation (that is, within what wasformerly understood as art in thebroadest sense of the word). In the caseof knowledge, the accumulation ofbranches of fragmentary knowledge,which become unusable becauseapproval of existing conditionsultimately requires renouncing one’sown knowledge, is opposed by thetheory of praxis which alone has accessto the truth of all these forms ofknowledge since it alone knows the

secret of their use. In the case of sensoryrepresentations, the critical self-destruction of society’s former commonlanguage is opposed by its artificialreconstruction within the commodityspectacle, the illusory representation ofnonlife.

186

Once society has lost its myth-basedcommunity, it loses all the referencepoints of truly common language untilsuch time as the divisions within theinactive community can be overcome bythe inauguration of a real historicalcommunity. When art, which was thecommon language of social inaction,develops into independent art in themodern sense, emerging from its originalreligious universe and becomingindividual production of separate works,it too becomes subject to the movementgoverning the history of all separateculture. Its declaration of independenceis the beginning of its end.

187

The positive significance of the moderndecomposition and destruction of all artis that the language of communicationhas been lost. The negative implicationof this development is that a commonlanguage can no longer take the form ofthe unilateral conclusions thatcharacterized the art of historicalsocieties — belated portrayals ofsomeone else’s dialogueless life whichaccepted this lack as inevitable — butmust now be found in a praxis thatunifies direct activity with its ownappropriate language. The point is toactually participate in the community ofdialogue and the game with time that up

till now have merely been representedby poetic and artistic works.

188

When art becomes independent andpaints its world in dazzling colors, amoment of life has grown old. Such amoment cannot be rejuvenated bydazzling colors, it can only be evoked inmemory. The greatness of art onlyemerges at the dusk of life.

189

The historical time that invaded art wasmanifested first of all in the sphere of artitself, beginning with the baroque.Baroque was the art of a world that hadlost its center with the collapse of thelast mythical order: the Medievalsynthesis of a unified Christianity withthe ghost of an Empire, which hadharmonized heavenly and earthlygovernment. The art of changeinevitably embodied the sameephemerality that it discovered in theworld. As Eugenio d’Ors put it, it chose“life instead of eternity.” Theoutstanding achievements of baroquewere in theater and festival, or in

theatrical festivals, where the solepurpose of each particular artisticexpression was to contribute to thecomposition of a scene, a scene whichhad to serve as its own center ofunification; and that center was thepassage, the expression of a threatenedequilibrium within the overall dynamicdisorder. The somewhat excessiveemphasis on the concept of baroque incontemporary aesthetic discussionsreflects the awareness that an artisticclassicism is no longer possible. Theattempts to establish a normativeclassicism or neoclassicism during thelast three centuries have been nothing butshort-lived artificial constructs speakingthe official language of the state

(whether of the absolute monarchy or ofthe revolutionary bourgeoisie draped inRoman togas). What eventually followedbaroque, once it had run its course, wasan ever more individualistic art ofnegation which, from romanticism tocubism, continually renewed its assaultsuntil it had fragmented and destroyed theentire artistic sphere. The disappearanceof historical art, which was linked to theinternal communication of an elite andwhich had its semi-independent socialbasis in the partially playful conditionsstill experienced by the lastaristocracies, also reflects the fact thatcapitalism is the first form of classpower that acknowledges its own totallack of ontological quality — a power

whose basis in the mere management ofthe economy is symptomatic of the lossof all human mastery. Thecomprehensive unity of the baroqueensemble, which has long been lackingin the world of artistic creation, has in asense been revived in today’s wholesaleconsumption of the totality of past art.As all the art of the past comes to berecognized and appreciated historically,and is retrospectively reclassified asphases of a single “world art,” it isincorporated into a global disorder thatcan itself be seen as a sort of baroquestructure at a higher level, a structurethat absorbs baroque art itself along withall its possible revivals. For the firsttime in history the arts of all ages and

civilizations can be known and acceptedtogether, and the fact that it has becomepossible to collect and recollect allthese art-historical memories marks theend of the world of art. In this age ofmuseums in which artisticcommunication is no longer possible, allthe previous expressions of art can beaccepted equally, because whateverparticular communication problems theymay have had are eclipsed by all thepresent-day obstacles to communicationin general.

190

Art in its period of dissolution — amovement of negation striving for itsown transcendence within a historicalsociety where history is not yet directlylived — is at once an art of change andthe purest expression of theimpossibility of change. The moregrandiose its pretensions, the furtherfrom its grasp is its true fulfillment. Thisart is necessarily avant-garde, and at thesame time it does not really exist. Itsvanguard is its own disappearance.

191

Dadaism and surrealism were the twocurrents that marked the end of modernart. Though they were only partiallyconscious of it, they werecontemporaries of the last greatoffensive of the revolutionaryproletarian movement, and the defeat ofthat movement, which left them trappedwithin the very artistic sphere whosedecrepitude they had denounced, was thefundamental reason for theirimmobilization. Dadaism and surrealismwere historically linked yet alsoopposed to each other. This oppositioninvolved the most important and radicalcontributions of the two movements, but

it also revealed the internal inadequacyof their one-sided critiques. Dadaismsought to abolish art without realizingit; surrealism sought to realize artwithout abolishing it. The criticalposition since developed by thesituationists has shown that theabolition and realization of art areinseparable aspects of a singletranscendence of art.

192

The spectacular consumption thatpreserves past culture in congealedform, including coopted rehashes of itsnegative manifestations, gives overtexpression in its cultural sector to whatit implicitly is in its totality: thecommunication of the incommunicable.The most extreme destruction oflanguage can be officially welcomed asa positive development because itamounts to yet one more way of flauntingone’s acceptance of a status quo whereall communication has been smuglydeclared absent. The critical truth of thisdestruction — the real life of modernpoetry and art — is obviously

concealed, since the spectacle, whosefunction is to use culture to bury allhistorical memory, applies its ownessential strategy in its promotion ofmodernistic pseudoinnovations. Thus aschool of neoliterature that baldly admitsthat it does nothing but contemplate thewritten word for its own sake can passitself off as something new. Meanwhile,alongside the simple claim that the deathof communication has a sufficient beautyof its own, the most modern tendency ofspectacular culture — which is also theone most closely linked to the repressivepractice of the general organization ofsociety — seeks by means of “collectiveprojects” to construct complexneoartistic environments out of

decomposed elements, as can be seen inurbanism’s attempts to incorporatescraps of art or hybrid aesthetico-technical forms. This is an expression, inthe domain of spectacular pseudoculture,of advanced capitalism’s general projectof remolding the fragmented worker intoa “socially integrated personality,” atendency that has been described byrecent American sociologists (Riesman,Whyte, etc.). In all these areas the goalremains the same: to restructure societywithout community.

193

As culture becomes completelycommodified it tends to become the starcommodity of spectacular society. ClarkKerr, one of the foremost ideologues ofthis tendency, has calculated that thecomplex process of production,distribution and consumption ofknowledge already accounts for 29% ofthe gross national product of the UnitedStates; and he predicts that in the secondhalf of this century the “knowledgeindustry” will become the driving forceof the American economy, as was theautomobile in the first half of thiscentury and the railroad in the last halfof the previous century.

194

The task of the various branches ofknowledge that are in the process ofdeveloping spectacular thought is tojustify an unjustifiable society and toestablish a general science of falseconsciousness. This thought is totallyconditioned by the fact that it cannotrecognize, and does not want torecognize, its own material dependenceon the spectacular system.

195

The official thought of the socialorganization of appearances is itselfobscured by the generalizedsubcommunication that it has to defend.It cannot understand that conflict is at theorigin of everything in its world. Thespecialists of spectacular power — apower that is absolute within its realmof one-way communication — areabsolutely corrupted by their experienceof contempt and by the success of thatcontempt, because they find theircontempt confirmed by their awarenessof how truly contemptible spectatorsreally are.

196

As the very triumphs of the spectacularsystem pose new problems, a newdivision of tasks appears within thespecialized thought of that system. Onone hand, a spectacular critique of thespectacle is undertaken by modernsociology, which studies separationexclusively by means of the conceptualand material instruments of separation.On the other, the various disciplineswhere structuralism has becomeentrenched are developing anapologetics of the spectacle — amindless thought that imposes an officialamnesia regarding all historicalpractice. But the fake despair of

nondialectical critique and the fakeoptimism of overt promotion of thesystem are equally submissive.

197

The sociologists who have begun toraise questions about the livingconditions created by modern socialdevelopments (first of all in the UnitedStates) have gathered a great deal ofempirical data, but they have failed tograsp the true nature of their object ofstudy because they fail to recognize thecritique that is inherent in that object. Asa result, those among them who sincerelywish to reform these conditions can onlyappeal to ethical standards, commonsense, moderation, and other measuresthat are equally inadequate for dealingwith the problems in question. Becausethis method of criticism is unaware of

the negativity at the heart of its world, itfocuses on describing and deploring anexcessive sort of negativity that seems toblight the surface of that world like someirrational parasitic infestation. Thisoutraged good will, which even withinits own moralizing framework ends upblaming only the external consequencesof the system, can see itself as criticalonly by ignoring the essentiallyapologetic character of its assumptionsand methods.

198

Those who denounce the affluentsociety’s incitement to wastefulness asabsurd or dangerous do not understandthe purpose of this wastefulness. In thename of economic rationality, theyungratefully condemn the faithfulirrational guardians that keep the powerof this economic rationality fromcollapsing. Daniel Boorstin, forexample, whose book The Imagedescribes spectacle-commodityconsumption in the United States, neverarrives at the concept of the spectaclebecause he thinks he can treat privatelife and “honest commodities” asseparate from the “excesses” he

deplores. He fails to understand that thecommodity itself made the laws whose“honest” application leads both to thedistinct reality of private life and to itssubsequent reconquest by the socialconsumption of images.

199

Boorstin describes the excesses of aworld that has become foreign to us as ifthey were excesses foreign to our world.When, like a moral or psychologicalprophet, he denounces the superficialreign of images as a product of “ourextravagant expectations,” he isimplicitly contrasting these excesses to a“normal” life that has no reality in eitherhis book or his era. Because the realhuman life that Boorstin evokes islocated for him in the past, including thepast that was dominated by religiousresignation, he has no way ofcomprehending the true extent of thepresent society’s domination by images.

We can truly understand this society onlyby negating it.

200

A sociology that believes that aseparately functioning industrialrationality can be isolated from sociallife as a whole may go on to view thetechniques of reproduction andcommunication as independent ofgeneral industrial development. ThusBoorstin concludes that the situation hedescribes is caused by an unfortunate butalmost fortuitous encounter of anexcessive technology of image-diffusionwith an excessive appetite forsensationalism on the part of today’spublic. This amounts to blaming thespectacle on modern man’s excessiveinclination to be a spectator. Boorstin

fails to see that the proliferation of theprefabricated “pseudo-events” hedenounces flows from the simple factthat the overwhelming realities ofpresent-day social existence preventpeople from actually living events forthemselves. Because history itself hauntsmodern society like a specter,pseudohistories have to be concocted atevery level in order to preserve thethreatened equilibrium of the presentfrozen time.

201

The current tendency towardstructuralist systematization is based onthe explicit or implicit assumption thatthis brief freezing of historical time willlast forever. The antihistorical thought ofstructuralism believes in the eternalpresence of a system that was nevercreated and that will never come to anend. Its illusion that all social practice isunconsciously determined by preexistingstructures is based on illegitimateanalogies with structural modelsdeveloped by linguistics andanthropology (or even on models usedfor analyzing the functioning ofcapitalism) — models that were already

inaccurate even in their originalcontexts. This fallacious reasoningstems from the limited intellectualcapacity of the academic functionarieshired to expound this thought, who are sothoroughly caught up in their awestruckcelebration of the existing system thatthey can do nothing but reduce all realityto the existence of that system.

202

In order to understand “structuralist”categories, one must bear in mind thatsuch categories, like those of any otherhistorical social science, reflect formsand conditions of existence. Just as onedoes not judge an individual by what hethinks about himself, one cannot judge oradmire this particular society byassuming that the language it speaks toitself is necessarily true. “We cannotjudge such a period of transformation byits own consciousness; on the contrary,that consciousness must be explained inthe light of the contradictions of materiallife...” Structures are the progeny ofestablished powers. Structuralism is

thought underwritten by the state, aform of thought that regards the presentconditions of spectacular“communication” as an absolute. Itsmethod of studying code in isolationfrom content is merely a reflection of ataken-for-granted society wherecommunication takes the form of acascade of hierarchical signals.Structuralism does not prove thetranshistorical validity of the society ofthe spectacle; on the contrary, it is thesociety of the spectacle, imposing itselfin its overwhelming reality, thatvalidates the frigid dream ofstructuralism.

203

The critical concept of “the spectacle”can also undoubtedly be turned into onemore hollow formula of sociologico-political rhetoric used to explain anddenounce everything in the abstract,thus serving to reinforce the spectacularsystem. It is obvious that ideas alonecannot lead beyond the existingspectacle; at most, they can only leadbeyond existing ideas about thespectacle. To actually destroy thesociety of the spectacle, people must seta practical force into motion. A criticaltheory of the spectacle cannot be trueunless it unites with the practical currentof negation in society; and that negation,

the resumption of revolutionary classstruggle, can for its part only becomeconscious of itself by developing thecritique of the spectacle, which is thetheory of its real conditions — theconcrete conditions of present-dayoppression — and which also reveals itshidden potential. This theory does notexpect miracles from the working class.It envisages the reformulation andfulfillment of proletarian demands as along-term task. To make an artificialdistinction between theoretical andpractical struggle (for the formulationand communication of the type of theoryenvisaged here is already inconceivablewithout a rigorous practice), it iscertain that the obscure and difficult path

of critical theory must also be the fate ofthe practical movement acting on thescale of society.

204

Critical theory must communicate itselfin its own language — the language ofcontradiction, which must be dialecticalin both form and content. It must be anall-inclusive critique, and it must begrounded in history. It is not a “zerodegree of writing,” but its reversal. It isnot a negation of style, but the style ofnegation.

205

The very style of dialectical theory is ascandal and abomination to theprevailing standards of language and tothe sensibilities molded by thosestandards, because while it makesconcrete use of existing concepts itsimultaneously recognizes their fluidityand their inevitable destruction.

206

This style, which includes a critique ofitself, must express the domination of thepresent critique over its entire past.Dialectical theory’s mode of expositionreveals the negative spirit within it.“Truth is not like some finished productin which one can no longer find anytrace of the tool that made it” (Hegel).This theoretical consciousness of amovement whose traces must remainvisible within it is manifested by thereversal of established relationshipsbetween concepts and by thedétournement of all the achievements ofearlier critical efforts. Hegel’s practiceof reversing the genitive was an

expression of historical revolutions,though that expression was confined tothe form of thought. The young Marx,inspired by Feuerbach’s systematicreversal of subject and predicate,achieved the most effective use of thisinsurrectional style, which answers“the philosophy of poverty” with “thepoverty of philosophy.” Détournementreradicalizes previous criticalconclusions that have been petrified intorespectable truths and thus transformedinto lies. Kierkegaard already used itdeliberately, though he also denouncedit: “But despite all your twists and turns,just as jam always returns to the pantry,you always end up introducing somelittle phrase which is not your own, and

which awakens disturbing recollections”(Philosophical Fragments). As heacknowledged elsewhere in the samebook, this use of détournement requiresmaintaining one’s distance fromwhatever has been turned into an officialtruth: “One further remark regardingyour many complaints that I introducedborrowed expressions into myexposition. I do not deny that I did so. Itwas in fact done deliberately. In the nextsection of this work, if I ever write sucha section, I intend to call this topic by itstrue name and to clothe the problem inits historical attire.”

207

Ideas improve. The meaning of wordsplays a role in that improvement.Plagiarism is necessary. Progressdepends on it. It sticks close to anauthor’s phrasing, exploits hisexpressions, deletes a false idea,replaces it with the right one.

208

Détournement is the opposite ofquotation, of appealing to a theoreticalauthority that is inevitably tainted by thevery fact that it has become a quotation— a fragment torn from its own contextand development, and ultimately fromthe general framework of its period andfrom the particular option (appropriateor erroneous) that it represented withinthat framework. Détournement is theflexible language of anti-ideology. Itappears in communication that knows itcannot claim to embody any definitivecertainty. It is language that cannot andneed not be confirmed by any previousor supracritical reference. On the

contrary, its own internal coherence andpractical effectiveness are what validatethe previous kernels of truth it hasbrought back into play. Détournementhas grounded its cause on nothing but itsown truth as present critique.

209

The element of overt détournement informulated theory refutes any notion thatsuch theory is durably autonomous. Byintroducing into the theoretical domainthe same type of violent subversion thatdisrupts and overthrows every existingorder, détournement serves as areminder that theory is nothing in itself,that it can realize itself only throughhistorical action and through thehistorical correction that is its trueallegiance.

210

The real values of culture can bemaintained only by negating culture. Butthis negation can no longer be a culturalnegation. It may in a sense take placewithin culture, but it points beyond it.

211

In the language of contradiction, thecritique of culture is a unified critique,in that it dominates the whole of culture— its knowledge as well as its poetry— and in that it no longer separatesitself from the critique of the socialtotality. This unified theoreticalcritique is on its way to meet unifiedsocial practice.

Chapter 9: IdeologyMaterialized

“Self-consciousness exists in itselfand for itself only insofar as itexists in and for another self-consciousness; that is, it exists onlyby being recognized andacknowledged.”

He ge l , The Phenomenology ofSpirit

212

Ideology is the intellectual basis of classsocieties within the conflictual course ofhistory. Ideological expressions havenever been pure fictions; they representa distorted consciousness of realities,and as such they have been real factorsthat have in turn produced real distortingeffects. This interconnection isintensified with the advent of thespectacle — the materialization ofideology brought about by the concretesuccess of an autonomized system ofeconomic production — which virtuallyidentifies social reality with an ideologythat has remolded all reality in its ownimage.

213

Once ideology — the abstract will touniversality and the illusion associatedwith that will — is legitimized by theuniversal abstraction and the effectivedictatorship of illusion that prevail inmodern society, it is no longer avoluntaristic struggle of the fragmentary,but its triumph. Ideological pretensionstake on a sort of flat, positivisticprecision: they no longer representhistorical choices, they are assertions ofundeniable facts. The particular namesof ideologies thus tend to disappear. Thespecifically ideological forms ofsystem-supporting labor are reduced toan “epistemological base” that is itself

presumed to be beyond ideology.Materialized ideology has no name, justas it has no formulatable historicalagenda. Which is another way of sayingthat the history of different ideologies isover.

214

Ideology, whose whole internal logicled toward what Mannheim calls “totalideology” — the despotism of afragment imposing itself aspseudoknowledge of a frozen totality, asa totalitarian worldview — hasreached its culmination in theimmobilized spectacle of nonhistory. Itsculmination is also its dissolution intosociety as a whole. When that societyitself is concretely dissolved, ideology— the final irrationality standing in theway of historical life — must alsodisappear.

215

The spectacle is the acme of ideologybecause it fully exposes and manifeststhe essence of all ideological systems:the impoverishment, enslavement andnegation of real life. The spectacle is thematerial “expression of the separationand estrangement between man andman.” The “new power of deception”concentrated in it is based on theproduction system in which “as the massof objects increases, so do the alienpowers to which man is subjected.” Thisis the supreme stage of an expansion thathas turned need against life. “The needfor money is thus the real need createdby the modern economic system, and the

only need it creates” (Economic andPhilosophical Manuscripts). Hegel’scharacterization of money as “the self-moving life of what is dead” (JenenserRealphilosophie) has now beenextended by the spectacle to all sociallife.

216

In contrast to the project outlined in the“Theses on Feuerbach” (the realizationof philosophy in a praxis transcendingthe opposition between idealism andmaterialism), the spectacle preserves theideological features of both materialismand idealism, imposing them in thepseudoconcreteness of its universe. Thecontemplative aspect of the oldmaterialism, which conceives the worldas representation and not as activity —and which ultimately idealizes matter —is fulfilled in the spectacle, whereconcrete things are automatic masters ofsocial life. Conversely, the dreamedactivity of idealism is also fulfilled in

the spectacle, through the technicalmediation of signs and signals — whichultimately materialize an abstract ideal.

217

The parallel between ideology andschizophrenia demonstrated in Gabel’sFalse Consciousness should beconsidered in the context of thiseconomic materialization of ideology.Society has become what ideologyalready was. The repression of practiceand the antidialectical falseconsciousness that results from thatrepression are imposed at every momentof everyday life subjected to thespectacle — a subjection thatsystematically destroys the “faculty ofencounter” and replaces it with a socialhallucination: a false consciousness ofencounter, an “illusion of encounter.” In

a society where no one can any longerbe recognized by others, each individualbecomes incapable of recognizing hisown reality. Ideology is at home;separation has built its own world.

218

“In clinical descriptions ofschizophrenia,” says Gabel, “thedisintegration of the dialectic of totality(with dissociation as its extreme form)and the disintegration of the dialectic ofbecoming (with catatonia as its extremeform) seem closely interrelated.”Imprisoned in a flattened universebounded by the screen of the spectaclethat has enthralled him, the spectatorknows no one but the fictitious speakerswho subject him to a one-waymonologue about their commodities andthe politics of their commodities. Thespectacle as a whole serves as hislooking glass. What he sees there are

dramatizations of illusory escapes froma universal autism.

219

The spectacle obliterates the boundariesbetween self and world by crushing theself besieged by the presence-absence ofthe world. It also obliterates theboundaries between true and false byrepressing all directly lived truthbeneath the real presence of thefalsehood maintained by the organizationof appearances. Individuals whopassively accept their subjection to analien everyday reality are thus driventoward a madness that reacts to this fateby resorting to illusory magicaltechniques. The essence of thispseudoresponse to an unanswerablecommunication is the acceptance and

consumption of commodities. Theconsumer’s compulsion to imitate is atruly infantile need, conditioned by allthe aspects of his fundamentaldispossession. As Gabel puts it indescribing a quite different level ofpathology, “the abnormal need forrepresentation compensates for anagonizing feeling of being at the marginof existence.”

220

In contrast to the logic of falseconsciousness, which cannot truly knowitself, the search for critical truth aboutthe spectacle must also be a truecritique. It must struggle in practiceamong the irreconcilable enemies of thespectacle, and admit that it is nothingwithout them. By rushing into sordidreformist compromises orpseudorevolutionary collective actions,those driven by an abstract desire forimmediate effectiveness are in realityobeying the ruling laws of thought,adopting a perspective that can seenothing but the latest news. In this waydelirium reappears in the camp that

claims to be opposing it. A critiqueseeking to go beyond the spectacle mustknow how to wait.

221

The self-emancipation of our time is anemancipation from the material bases ofinverted truth. This “historic mission ofestablishing truth in the world” can becarried out neither by the isolatedindividual nor by atomized andmanipulated masses, but only andalways by the class that is able todissolve all classes by reducing allpower to the de-alienating form ofrealized democracy — to councils inwhich practical theory verifies itself andsurveys its own actions. This is possibleonly when individuals are “directlylinked to universal history” and dialoguearms itself to impose its own conditions.

Table of ContentsTitle Page**** Translator’s Note*** Chapter 1: The Culmination of

Separation**** 1**** 2**** 3**** 4**** 5**** 6**** 7**** 8**** 9**** 10**** 11

**** 12**** 13**** 14**** 15**** 16**** 17**** 18**** 19**** 20**** 21**** 22**** 23**** 24**** 25**** 26**** 27**** 28**** 29

**** 30**** 31**** 32**** 33**** 34*** Chapter 2: The Commodity as

Spectacle**** 35**** 36**** 37**** 38**** 39**** 40**** 41**** 42**** 43**** 44**** 45

**** 46**** 47**** 48**** 49**** 50**** 51**** 52**** 53*** Chapter 3: Unity and Division

Within Appearances**** 54**** 55**** 56**** 57**** 58**** 59**** 60**** 61

**** 62**** 63**** 64**** 65**** 66**** 67**** 68**** 69**** 70**** 71**** 72*** Chapter 4: The Proletariat as

Subject and Representation**** 73**** 74**** 75**** 76**** 77

**** 78**** 79**** 80**** 81**** 82**** 83**** 84**** 85**** 86**** 87**** 88**** 89**** 90**** 91**** 92**** 93**** 94**** 95

**** 96**** 97**** 98**** 99**** 100**** 101**** 102**** 103**** 104**** 105**** 106**** 107**** 108**** 109**** 110**** 111**** 112**** 113

**** 114**** 115**** 116**** 117**** 118**** 119**** 120**** 121**** 122**** 123**** 124*** Chapter 5: Time and History**** 125**** 126**** 127**** 128**** 129**** 130

**** 131**** 132**** 133**** 134**** 135**** 136**** 137**** 138**** 139**** 140**** 141**** 142**** 143**** 144**** 145**** 146*** Chapter 6: Spectacular Time**** 147

**** 148**** 149**** 150**** 151**** 152**** 153**** 154**** 155**** 156**** 157**** 158**** 159**** 160**** 161**** 162**** 163**** 164*** Chapter 7: Territorial Domination

**** 165**** 166**** 167**** 168**** 169**** 170**** 171**** 172**** 173**** 174**** 175**** 176**** 177**** 178**** 179*** Chapter 8: Negation and

Consumption Within Culture**** 180

**** 181**** 182**** 183**** 184**** 185**** 186**** 187**** 188**** 189**** 190**** 191**** 192**** 193**** 194**** 195**** 196**** 197**** 198

**** 199**** 200**** 201**** 202**** 203**** 204**** 205**** 206**** 207**** 208**** 209**** 210**** 211*** Chapter 9: Ideology Materialized**** 212**** 213**** 214**** 215

**** 216**** 217**** 218**** 219**** 220**** 221