The Boy Scout's Guide to the Situationist
International: The Effect The S.I. Had On Paris '68 And All That, Through The Angry Brigade
And King Mob To The Sex Pistols
by Tom Vague (Taken from
|
DEFINITIONS:
Constructed
Situation: a moment of life concretely
and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary
ambiance and game of events.
Situationist: having to do with the theory or practical activity of
constructing situations. One who engages in the construction of situations. A
member of the Situationist International.
Situationism: a meaningless term improperly derived from the above.
There is no such thing as situationism, which would mean a doctrine of
interpretation of existing facts. The notion of situationism is obviously
devised by anti-situationists.
Psychogeography: the study of the specific effects of the geographical
environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour on
individuals.
Psychogeographical: relating to psychogeography. That which manifests the
geographical environment's direct emotional effects.
Psychogeographer: schoolteacher who hacks up his pupils...Sorry! One who
explores and reports on psychogeographical phenomena.
Derive: a mode of experimental behavior linked to the
conditions of urban society: a technique of transient passage through various
ambiances. Also used to designate a specific period of continuous deriving.
Unitary
Urbanism: the theory of the combined use
of arts and techniques for the integral construction of a milieu in dynamic
relation with experiments in behaviour.
Detournement: short for: detournement of pre-existing aesthetic
elements. The integration of present or past artistic production into a
superior construction of a milieu. In this sense there can be no situationist
painting or music, but only a situationist use of these means. In a more
primitive sense, detournement within the old cultural spheres is a method of
propaganda, a method which testifies to the wearing out and loss of
importance of those spheres.
Culture : the reflection and prefiguration of the possibilities
of organization of everyday life in a given historical moment; a complex of
aesthetics, feelings and mores through which a collectively reacts on the
life that is objectively determined by it's economy. (We are defining this
term only in the perspective of the creation of values, not in that of the
teaching of them.
Decomposition: the process in which the traditional cultural forms
have destroyed themselves as a result of the emergence of superior means of
dominating nature which enable and require superior cultural constructions.
We can distinguish between an active phase of the decomposition and effective
demolition of the old superstructure - which came to an end around 1930 - and
a phase of repetition which has prevailed since then. The delay in the
transition from decomposition to new constructions is linked to the delay in
the revolutionary liquidation of capitalism.
You'll
find the term 'Situationist' liberally sprinkled throughout
contemporary agit-prop/pop culture. A lot of people name drop it but what it
actually means and where it comes from is never properly explained and mapped
out for people. This particular effort is going to be no exception to that.
However "Situationist"is
most definitely not some arty term that Malcolm Mclaren dreamed up to con
people. It goes back many years before Talky
Malky's reign of terror and
had already been used to far greater effect.
The
term came to the attention of certain sectors of the British populus, 5 years
before Malcolm Mclaren borrowed some situationist ideas for the Sex Pistols,when on the night
or January 12th, 1971 the country, and more specifically the house of Robert
Carr, Ted Heath's Secretary of State for Employment, was rocked by two bomb
explosions. Old
Blighty had, of course,
already felt the anti-imperialist anger of the IRA in a similar way. But
this was different. The IRA used bomb attacks for very specific purposes;
troops out and home rule. The Carr Bombing was undoubtedly connected with
Carr's controversial industrial relations bill, but the people responsible
were not part of any traditional revolutionary group. All Special Branch had to go on was a communiqué
from an organization calling itself "drumroll." "The Angry Brigade- Robert Carr got it
tonight. We're getting closer."
Special
Branch had heard of them before, but always dismissed them as
(relatively) harmless anarchistic cranks. After the Carr Bombing they took
them rather more seriously, asking themselves if this was the beginning of
something big - the Revolution that people had been predicting throughout the
60's? Special Branch informants and files on
political groups were useless. In fact the only real clue they had was a list
of targets included in an earlier communiqué:"Embassies, High Pigs, Spectacles, Judges,
Property." The third
from last term "Spectacles" intrigued
one enterprising Special Branch sergeant,
who started visiting Liberatarian bookshops and sifting through underground
magazines and literature.
The enterprising Special Branch sergeant found that
the word Spectacle was a popular slogan, used by a
Paris based group known as Situationists, to describe capitalism, the
state, the whole shooting match. Owing as much to the Surrealists and Dada as
Marx and Bakunin, the Situationists starting
point was that the original working class movement had been crushed, by the
Bourgeoisie in the West and by the Bolsheviks in the East; Working class
organizations, such as Trade Unions and Leftist political parties had sold
out to World Capitalism; And furthermore, capitalism could now appropriate even the most radical ideas and
return them safely, in the form of harmless ideologies to be used against the
working class which they were supposed to represent.
Unlike
the Special Branch sergeant, Malcolm Mclaren
obviously didn't do his homework properly (Or maybe, schoolboy prankster that
he is, he didn't care about the exam results as long as he became a
personality cult). However in 1957 the soon to be Situationists did not accept this as the way
things would remain, not if they had anything to do with it. In opposition to
this process they formed 'the Situationist International': a group consisting
mostly of artists, intellectuals and the like (it has to be said), which set
out to develop a new way of interpreting society as a whole. (Prior to the
S.I. the Lettrists, who predated Punk by almost 30
years sporting trousers painted with slogans).
On
the surface the Situationists appear as extremely cynical fatalists. They
began by condemning as redundant and articulately destroying anything that
came before them. Everything from the Surrealists and the Beat Generation
fell in their wake. Yet they had a fundamental, utopian belief that the bad days will end.Their
criteria was basically, "if we explain how the nightmare works, everyone
will wake up!" An inevitable optimism absent, by the very fact of their
existence, from traditional political groups: who always operate on the
premise that people are too thick to decide for themselves.
This
was how (and why) leading Situationist, Guy Debord formulated his theory
of The Spectacle. He argued, in their journal ('Internationale Situationniste') that through computers,
television, rapid transport systems and other forms of advanced technology
capitalism controlled the very conditions of existence. Hence the World we
see is not the Real World but the World we are conditioned to see: THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE (the name of Debord's book). The
Spectacle's audience is the lumpen proletariat, the bourgeoisie, even the
bosses now merely look at the Show: Real
Life: thinking about it as
spectators, not actually participating or experiencing it.
Debord
saw the end result as Alienation. Separation of person from
person; crowds or strangers, laughing and crying together but ultimately
isolated from everybody and everything. The Spectacle makes spectators of us
all, because we've been conned into substituting material things for Real
experiences. However, Debord felt this feeling of alienation could eventually
break the stranglehold of the Spectacular society. People were already
rebelling against being kept apart by mass culture/ commodity/ consumer
society. In the early 60s thousands of young americans questioned their role
in middle morality America and dropped out in the
anonymous tenements of Haights-Ashbury, San Francisco. In 1965, in the Watts
suburb of Los Angeles, thousands of black kids burnt down their schools and
factories.
To
Debord these unconscious revolts against the Spectacle were evidence of it's
vulnerability. It wasn't as invincible as it seemed. But before the Spectacle
could be overcome it's safety net, Recuperation,
had to be dealt with: to survive Spectacular Society has to have strict social
control. This is retained, without much fuss, by it's ability to recuperate
a potentially revolutionary situation. By changing chameleonlike it can
resist an attack, creating new roles, cultural forms and encouraging
participation in the construction of the world of your own alienation into
the bargain.
For
example alternative
lifestyles can be turned
into commodities. The Haight-Ashbury hippies were eventually packaged off
into commodity culture, as, of course, the London punk rockers were a decade
later. And, with a lifestyle safely
recuperated, after a
certain amount of time it can be dusted off and sold back to people, inducing
a yearning for the past. The Spectacle had gone that whole step
further. For those bored with the possession of mere things, it was now
capable of packaging even the possession of experiences: package holidays,
community schemes, pop culture.
Spectacular
Society is made complete by the recuperation of the environment in which all
this must be experienced: The Recuperators realized that people would no
longer accept the damage the growth of the
Spectacle: heavy industry:
was doing to their physical surroundings: the world. Hence environmental recuperation or "Urbanism." This consists of replacing
disordered urban-sprawl with more manageable structures; factory-towns, new-towns, shopping-malls, super-markets. Huge areas designed solely for
the purpose of work and the creation of profit, with total disregard for the
needs or the people forced to service it. The workers kept apart in 'new
architecture, traditionally reserved to satisfy the ruling class...for the
first time, directly aimed at the poor: 'Dwelling
Unit, Sweet Dwelling
Unit.' Rabbit hutches
designed soullessly to isolate and instill formal misery.
The Situationists' answer to "Urbanism" 'was the
reconstruction or the entire environment, according to the needs of the
people that inhabit it. Their answer to modern society was to be nothing
short of the "REVOLUTION
OF EVERYDAY LIFE" (the
title of the companion book to 'The Society
Of The Spectacle' by Raoul
Vaneigem). Unlike traditional revolutionary groups, the Situationists were not concerned with the
improvement of existing society, or reforming it. They were interested in
destroying it completely and pulling something new and better in it's place.
No half measures. No gestures. No immediate solution.
The Situationist programme began where art ended.
They argued that mechanization and automation had potentially eliminated the
need for all forms of traditional labour: leaving a gaping hole, now known as leisure time. Rather than fill this hole with 'Specialist Art', the
Situationists wanted a new
type of creativity to come out of it, which would be inseparable from
everyday life. This new environment has to be brought about by the 'construction of situations'.Never
an easy one to grasp that. Basically it's confronting the Spectacle with it's own irrelevance;
"To
make the World a sensuous extension of man rather than have man remain an
instrument of an alien world, is the goal of the Situationist Revolution. For
us the reconstruction of Life and the rebuilding of the World are one and the
same desire. To achieve this the tactics of subversion have to be extended
from schools, factories, universities, to confront the Spectacle directly.
Rapid transport systems, shopping centers, museums, as well as the various
new forms of culture and the Media, must be considered as targets for
scandalous activity."
Areas
For Scandalous Activity; Strasbourg University, 1966.
So
by appropriating a bit of Marx, a bit of anarchist practice, plenty of Dadaism (Situationist practice owes more to Groucho
Marx than Karl), even some Rimbaud, and by refusing absolutely to have
anything to do with traditional hierarchies and the transfer of power from
one ruling elite to another, the
Situationists were ready to
become a social force. By the mid-60's they were looking around for
opportunities to intervene in existing radical situations;
in order to speed up the inevitable collapse of the Spectacular Society.
Their
first major opportunity arose in 1966 at Strasbourg University; a notoriously
inactive careerist student body but with a leftist student union. 5 Pro-situ students infiltrated the union
and set about scandalizing the authorities. They formed an anarchist
appreciation society, appropriated union funds for situationist inspired flyposters and invited the SI to write a critique of the university
and society in general. The resulting pamphlet, "On The Poverty Of
Student Life (Ten Days That
Shook The University)" was designed to wind up the apathetic
students by confronting them with their subservience to the Family and the
State. And it was none too subtle about it;
"The
whole of (the Student's) life is beyond his control, and for all he sees of
the World he might as well be on another planet...Every student likes to feel
he is a bohemian at heart; but the student bohemian clings to his false and
degraded version of individual revolt. His rent-a-crowd militancy for the
latest good cause is an aspect of his real impotence...he does have marginal
freedoms; a small area of liberty which as yet escapes the totalitarian
control of the Spectacle; his flexible working hours permit adventure and
experiment. But he is a sucker for punishment and freedom scares him to
death: he feels safer in the straight-jacketed space-time of the Lecture Hall
and the weekly essay. He is quite happy withh this open prison organized for
his benefit...The Real poverty of his Everyday Life finds it's immediate
phantastic compensation in the opium of cultural commodities...he is obliged
to discover modern culture as an admiring spectator...he thinks he is
avant-garde if he's seen the latest Godard or 'participated' in the latest
'happening'. He discovers modernity as fast as the market can provide it: for
him every rehash of ideas is a cultural revolution. His principal concern is
status, and he eagerly snaps up all the paperback editions of important and
'difficult' texts with which mass culture has filled the bookstore.
Unfortunately, he cannot read, so he devours them with his gaze.'"
The
pamphlet went on to dismiss the university as "The Society for the
propagation of ignorance...high culture with the rhythm of the production
line...With out exception the lecturers are cretins...bourgeois culture is
dead...allthe university does is make production-line specialists. But on the positive side, it
pointed out that away from student life, in the Real World, working class
kids were already rebelling against the boredom of everyday life;
"...the
'delinquents' of the world use violence to express their rejection of society
and its sterile options. But their refusal is an abstract one: it gives them
no chance of actually escaping the contradictions of the system. They are
it's products - negative, spontaneous, but none the less exploitable. All the
experiments of the new social order produce them: they are the first
side-effects of the new urbanism; or the disintegration of all values; or the
extension of an increasingly boring consumer leisure; of the growing control
of every aspect of everyday life by the psycho-humanist police force; and of
the economic survival of a family unit which has lost all significance.
"The
'young thug' despises work but accepts the goods. He wants what the spectacle
offers him - but NOW, with no down payment. This is the essential
contradiction of the delinquent's existence. He may try for a real freedom in
the use of his time, in an individual assertiveness, even in the construction
of a kind of community. But the contradiction remains, and kills (on the
fringe old society, where poverty reigns, the gang develops it's own
hierarchy, which can only fulfill itself in a war with other gangs, isolating
each group and each individual within the group). In the end the
contradiction proves unbearable. Either the lure of the product world proves
too strong, and the hooligan decides to do his honest day's work: to this end
a whole sector of production is devoted specifically to his recuperation.
Clothes, records, guitars, scooters, transistors, purple hearts beckon him to
the land of the consumer. Or else he is forced to attack the laws of the
market itself either in the primary sense, by stealing, or by a move towards
a conscious revolutionary critique of commodity society. For the delinquent
only two futures are possible: revolutionary Consciousness, or blind
obedience on the shop floor."
However
existing student rebels, such as The Dutch Provos, the British'Committee of 100' and the Berkeley students got
the thumbs down: Basically for fighting the symptoms (Nuclear Arms/ the
Vietnam war/ Racism/ Censorship) not the disease: And specifically for their
tendency to sympathize with western society's apparent enemies; China
especially whose cultural
revolution pamphlet
considered "a pseudo-revolt
directed by the most elephantine bureaucracy of modern times." (it did begrudgingly have a good
word for the Committee of
100's "Spies for Peace" scandal:
where, in 1963 the anti-nuke movement invaded secret fallout shelters
reserved for the British government.)
Summing
up, "On the Poverty..." outlined the solution as confronting the
present social system with the negative forces it produces;
"We
must destroy the Spectacle itself, the whole apparatus of the commodity
society...We must abolish the pseudo-needs and false desires which the system
manufactures daily in order to preserve it's power."
Using
appropriated union funds, 10,000 copies of the pamphlet were printed and
handed out at the official ceremony, to mark the beginning of the Strasbourg
academic year. There was an immediate outcry. The local, national, and
international press condemned it as incitement to violence, which of course
it unashamedly was. The Rector of the University said they should be in a
lunatic asylum. The students responsible were expelled and the student union
closed by court order.
The
presiding Judge pronounced; "The
accused have never denied the charge of misusing the funds of the student
union. Indeed, they openly admit to having made the union pay some 650 pounds
for the printing of 10,000 pamphlets, not to mention the cost of other
literature inspired by the 'International Situationniste'. These publications
express ideas and aspirations which, to put it mildly, have nothing to do
with the aims of a student union. One only has to read what the accused have
written, for it is obvious that these five students, scarcely more than
adolescents, lacking all experience of real life, their minds confused by
ill-digested philosophical, social, political and economic theories, and
perplexed by the drab monotony of their everyday life, make the empty,
arrogant and pathetic claim to pass definitive judgements, sinking to
outright abuse, on their fellow students, their teachers, God, religion, the
clergy, the governments and political systems of the whole world, rejecting
all morality and restraint, these cynics do not hesitate to commend theft,
the destruction of scholarship, the abolition of work, total subversion and a
worldwide proletarian revolution with 'Unlicensed pleasure' as it's only goal.
"In
view of their basically anarchist character, these theories and propaganda
are eminently noxious. Their wide diffusion in both student circles and among
the general public, by the local, national and foreign press, are a threat to
the morality, the studies, the reputation and thus the very future of the
students of the University of Strasbourg."
Areas
For Scandalous Activity; Paris '68 And All That.
"This
work is part of a subversive current of which the last has not yet been
heard. It's significance should escape no one! In any case, as time will
show, no one is going to escape its implications!"
-Raoul
Vaneigem, "The Revolution Of Everyday Life"
At
first the events in Strasbourg didn't seem to have much effect. But in the
following months the ideas and tactics of the Situationist International (or
at least a fair old bit of discontent, fueled by the Strasbourg pamphlet
spread like wildfire through the universities of France.
In the
mid-60's the French University system was heading for trouble anyway - largely
due to overcrowding. The government tried to deal with the crisis by setting
up overspill colleges in the provinces and slum-outskirts of Paris. This made
matters worse. One of the Paris overspill colleges in particular, Nanterre,
situated amidst waste disposal tips and the spanish immigrant ghetto, was
almost perfect for intervention. There was already a strong
feeling of alienation amongst the students; uprooted from their former teeming
cafe lifestyle in the Latin Quarter and dumped in council flat style
blocks; separate residential blocks for males and females, no recreational
facilities, everything controlled by a faceless centralized bureaucracy in
Paris. It was all straight out of Debord's Society of the Spectacle.
However
Nanterre did have one of the few Sociology departments in France and, at the
beginning of 1968, a lot of radical students were concentrated there. In due
course a list of reforms was drawn up. Quite reasonably they wanted to
specialize in subjects of their own choice, but that wasn't all by any means.
They deliberately pressed on with claims they knew would be rejected, and all
talk of reform was soon forgotten: As they used to say, be realistic
demand the impossible.
The
students involved became known as 'LES ENRAGES' because of
their theatrical nature and the violence of their demonstrations (the name
originally comes from an 18th Century revolutionary group led by Jacques
Roux, who ended up being guillotined by the Revolutionary Tribunal). To
support theirreforms they began disrupting lectures, breaking
down all communication between lecturers and students: then escalating the
ensuing disorder by spreading rumours that plain-clothes police had
infiltrated the campus to compile a black-list of trouble-makers. The SU
protested. The situation was developing.
The
first major incident occurred when the Minister of Sport came to open a new
olympic-swimming pool. A vandal orgy had been planned for
the opening ceremony and the minister's route was sprayed with graffiti. But
nothing happened until the minister was about to leave. Then, so the story
goes, a red-haired youth stepped out from the crowd and shouted;
"Minister,
you've drawn up a report on french youth 600 pages long but there isn't a
word in it about our sexual problems. Why not?" The
minister replied, "I'm quite willing to discuss this matter with
responsible people, but you are certainly not one of them. I myself prefer
sport to sexual education. If you have sexual problems, I suggest you jump in
the pool." To
which Danny Cohn-Bendit countered, "that's what the Hitler Youth used to
say!" and immediately shot into the headlines and secret police files
(if he wasn't in the latter already.)
Les
Enrages capitalized
on this development by parading up and down the hall of the Sociology building,
with placards displaying blown-up pictures of alleged plain-clothes police.
One of the staff complained and tried to enforce the college ban on political
demonstrations. There was a scuffle and the Dean called the police.
This
was just what Les Enrages were waiting for. Within an hour 4
truck loads of armed police were let into the University by the Dean. Les
Enrages threw everything they could lay their hands on at them,
luring them into the University so everybody could see exactly what was going
on. The Police were no longer a rumour, they were very much fact. Moderate
students duly joined in to drive the police out of the University.
Provocation had drawn repression, which in turn had rallied mass support. It
was a classic Situationist victory.
Les
Enrages continued
to build on this emotional reaction to the authorities repression, until 3
anti-Vietnam War bombings took place in Paris. 5 members of'The National Committee
For Vietnam' were arrested. On March 22nd, as a protest against the
arrests, a group of Les Enrages and some anti-Vietnam war
demonstrators occupied the administration offices at Nanterre and decided to
get a real Movement going. "THE MOVEMENT OF MARCH 22nd" was
to have no organization as such, no hierarchy and no hard and fast programme.
Obviously it was political, but it did'nt follow one political doctrine.
There were anarchists, Marxists, Leninists, Trotskyists, all manner of -ists,
and of course, a bit ofSituationist in there somewhere.
Dany
Cohn-Bendit soon established himself as the principal spokesman; describing
himself as 'a megaphone' for the Movement and 'an
anarchist by negation'. He said he despised authoritarian
Marxist-Leninist hierarchies almost as much as capitalism itself but, "I
don't live in Russia, I live here, so I carry on the fight against the French
Bourgeoisie." Cohn-Bendit and the situationistswanted a
horizontal, federal organization of Workers' Councils, who
act together but preserve their autonomy, Direct Democracy. The
hard-line Leftist factions did'nt always share this view but the Movement was
held together simply by a desire to change society.
They
had no illusions of overthrowing Bourgeois Society in one
foul swoop. NoRevolution. The plan was to stage a series of revolutionary
shocks. Each one setting off a irreversible process of change. The
March 22nd Movement acting as detonator but not attempting to
control the forces it unleashed. They realized such a revolt could not last,
but at least it would provide a glimpse of what was possible. If they failed
it was just a matter of time before another situation developed in another
place in another way.
Anyway,
at Nanterre the threat of The March 22nd Movement and what
the Dean described as "a real war psychosis", led to
the University being closed down andRed Danny and some others
being summoned before a disciplinary tribunal. On May 3rd hundreds of left
wing students gathered at the Sorbonne, the originally overcrowded University
in Paris, to protest. The Rector of the University became worried, especially
when he heard that a group of right-wing students were gathering nearby. He
rang the Minister of Education and together they decided to bring in the
police, despite what happened at Nanterre.
Silently
groups of students were bundled into police trucks. Then, as the first load
was being driven away, shouting and jeering broke out from the assembled
crowd. Someone threw a stone through the windscreen of the truck and hit one
of the police. The students surged forward and tried to liberate their
comrades (woops!...friends). Tear gas was fired and the violence escalated:
The police beating innocent by-standers and street fighters alike. The
students setting light to cars and tearing up paving stones, iron gratings,
traffic signs, anything that could be hurled at the police.
The
rioting spread throughout the Latin Quarter and at the end of the day 597
people had been arrested and hundreds more injured. The
Authorities heavy handling of the situation had provided tens of thousands of
young parisians with something concrete to release their pent-up anger/
frustration/ alienation/ resentment on. The cry of 'Liberez nos
Camarades!' went up and the students held their ground for a week;
during which more and more young people joined their increasingly militant
demonstrations. Finally, on May 11th, M. Pompidou withdrew the police from
the Latin Quarter and said the case of the arrested students would be
reconsidered and the University reopened.
As news
of the Events spread, via TV-footage of the burning barricades and street
battles, thousands of young people from, not just France but, all over Europe
made for Paris. Many of them from affiliated student groups but also
individuals drawn by something relevant to their own situation. Amongst the
English contingent were John Barker, Anna Mendelson and Christopher Bott, who
would put the ideas they experienced into practice back home and go down in
history (as well as literally) as part of "The Stoke Newington
Eight" Also, if you believe the story, Malcolm McLaren was
given a guided tour of the barricades by his art school buddy Fred Vermorel
and returned to put the ideas in practice in a different way.
"A
good time to be free," was how Christopher Bott described it, "Imagination
was seizing power" ' The Sorbonne was transformed from an institutionalized
bureaucratic conditioning centre to "a Volcano of revolutionary
ideas".Everything was up for debate, everything was being
challenged. Day and night every lecture hall was packed. Passionate debates
on every subject went on continuously. The spirit of Arthur Rimbaud had
returned. The Paris Communehad become a reality. Nothing like it
had been seen before anywhere.
This is
how another English student described it in 'Solidarity': "First
impression was of a gigantic lid being lifted, pent-up thoughts and
aspirations suddenly exploding, on being released from the realm of dreams
into the realm of the Real and Possible. In changing their environment people
themselves were changed. Those who had never dared to say anything before
suddenly felt their thoughts to be the most important thing in the world and
said so. The helpless and isolated suddenly discovered that collective power
lay in their hands...People just went up and talked to one another without a
trace of self-consciousness. This state of euphoria lasted throughout the
whole fortnight I was there."
It was
then that the inspiration for the Sex Pistols best lyrics and t-shirt slogans
was written, on the walls:
"GO AND DIE IN NAPLES WITH THE CLUB
MEDITERRANEE,"
"BE REALISTIC DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE," "LONG LIVE COMMUNICATION! DOWN WITH TELECOMMUNICATION!," "IT IS FORBIDDEN TO FORBID," "TAKE YOUR DESIRES FOR REALITY," "REFUSE YOUR ASSIGNED ROLES," "NEVER WORK," "CULTURE IS THE INVERSION OF LIFE," "THE COMMODITY IS THE OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE," "SCREAM, STEAL, EJACULATE YOUR DESIRES," "THE MORE YOU CONSUME THE LESS YOU LIVE," "THEY ARE BUYING YOUR HAPPINESS, STEAL IT," "KNOWLEDGE IS INSEPARABLE FROM THE USE TO WHICH YOU PUT IT BE CRUEL," "DOWN WITH THE NAZARENE TOAD," "EVEN IF GOD EXISTED WE WOULD HAVE TO SUPPRESS HIM," "ART IS DEAD: DO NOT CONSUME ITS CORPSE," "LIVE WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS OR DEADTIME."
But
while the Sorbonne became the hip place to be in '68, all the Centre
Censiermembers of the Situationist International, Les Enrages and
some others were forming 'The Council For The Maintenance Of The
Occupations. Their aim was to set up Worker/Student Action
Committees to maintain the many sit-ins and strikes that had spread
from Paris to the rest of France.
By May
21st, 10 million french workers were on strike, most factories were occupied,
the french transport system had come to a standstill, everybody from
pro-footballers to film directors (though not Polanski) were supporting the
students. But nobody seemed to know what to do next: they had taken over the
factories; the means of production and thrown open the doors to the
institutions. But where to from there?
The SI and Les Enrages at
the Centre Censier tried to show how it could befollowed up
by producing leaflets on self-management and workers' councils.
Whilst, at the same time, denouncing the leftist recouperators who were
trying to take the credit and manipulate things for their own party political
ends. The Communist Party, who refused to acknowledge any
individual revolutionary activity actually by the people,
were having decidedly unproductive dialogue with Cohn-Bendit. Dany
the Red ended up calling them "Stalinist Filth" and
the big Communist Trade Union, the CGT, refused
to back the Revolution because it wasn't under
the control of their central committee. The same story as the Spanish Civil
War where the communists blew it because it wasn't on theirterms.
But at least they did'nt back the elections called for by the opposition.
De
Gaulle formally (and characteristically) called on the Army. On May 28th
he made a secret flight to Baden-Baden in West Germany, where General
Massu, the Commander of the French troops, was stationed on NATO
exercises. The following day he returned to Paris with Massu's
assurance that the army was still loyal enough to support him in
any confrontation. First he called M. Pompidouand his Cabinet to tell them he
was going to dissolve the National Assembly and call an election.
Then, at 4:30 that afternoon, he addressed the Nation and
basically lied that the Country was threatened by a "communist
dictatorship" to rally support for the Republic.
Promised to give greater powers to the Prefects of the Provinces
and, that if necessary, he would have no hesitation in calling in
General Massu and his troops (as if anyone thought he would
have anyway).Vive La France!
And
that was it. Of course it worked, the old communist bogeyman was
all that was needed to whip up enough patriotic
fervour to get the Centre to join with The Right and recouperate
the situation. Extra petrol rations and free coaches
were laid on and they came from all over France to La
Place De La Concorde(De Gaulle's face?), for a carefully
orchestrated march to The Eternal Flame atL'Arc De
Triomphe; the symbol of Nationalism. In the elections that followed
De Gaulle was returned to power by the biggest majority in recent french
history... well and truly recuperated.
Despite
the millions on strike and the hundreds of thousands on the
streets, it was always true that the Movement was
basically the work of an intellectual elite and at the end of the day the
silent majority couldn't be lured away from the capitalist
carrot. They did'nt understand the intellectual repression felt by the
students and their theories were all so much idle rubbish
compared with the day to day reality of earning a crust. But
having said that, De Gaulle had been lucky. Maybe not so
lucky next time. The students had succeeded in bringing out the
discontent in French Society at the ever increasing distance between the
bureaucrats and those whose lives they control.
The
physical recuperation took several months: State property
had to be reclaimed, slogans painted over and foreign students
deported; including Dany Cohn-Bendit and John Barker. But
with France back in the grip of a right-wing, nationalistic
fervour (which it has never really shook off to this
day), the show was over. (The Situationist International itself,
which had already split in 2, was further decimated by various
expulsions, resignations and scissions until it's eventual demise
in 1972 - It seems that half the fun of having an International in
the first place is so you can expel people). From
this point on the action movedwith John Barker and chums, to England. A
certain group of germans alsoincorporated some situationist ideas and,
in America, groups such as the Yippies, Motherfuckers, SLA and The
Weathermen (but by 1969 the hippies had beenrecuperated to
such an extent that there wasn't anywhere much to intervene in
America).
The
legacy of May '68 was to be felt for some time
yet. The nights on thebarricades and the exhilaration of new ideas
had proved to the people there that revolution/ change was
possible, not only possible but inevitable, and that
capitalist society was in it's death throes. The situationist idea
of intervening in a situation, with deliberate and
systematic provocation, as put into practice by the 22nd
March Movement, had been proven to work very effectively and very
dramatically.
Where
Paris had succeeded and the most important lesson of May '68 was
final proof that the traditional revolutionary groups were now as outmoded,
institutionalized and oppressive as the capitalists in power and were
just as much slaves of the Spectacular Society. Final proof,
that since the halcyon days of Marx, Bakunin and
Lenin, they too had been recouperated and indeed becomerecouperators in
their own right. They lost face to thousands of young people when they
came out in their true colours, against the anti-hierarchy,
self-management notions of the 22nd March Movement. And
especially when it wasproved, contrary to communist dogma, that
self-management does in fact work.Why not let the people decide?
"People
who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring
explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about
love and what is positive in the refusal or constraints, such
people have a corpse in their mouth."
-Raoul
Vaneigem, The Revolution Of Everyday Life.
|
Friday, July 31, 2015
The Boy Scout's Guide to The Situationist International - an essay by Tom Vague
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Virgin Sex Pistols credit card
Jamie Reid's response to a Guardian article on the new Virgin Sex Pistols credit card, outlining his position with regard to Virgin's use of his original artwork.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)