69 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
69 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
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REVIEWS FOR H&N 11
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"The Politics of Whim: A Critique of the 'Situationist' Version of Marxism"
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by Chris R. Tame. (Published by the Libertarian Alliance, 1 Russell Chambers,
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London WC2E 8AA).
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It comes as a surprise that a four-page leaflet could give a substantial
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critique of the Situationist project. It is all the more surprising that it
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could be based on a reading of "Leaving the Twentieth Century" (always a
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strange and breathless selection) and written by an anarcho-capitalist.
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Inevitably, the situationist distaste for the forms in which needs are
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created and satisfied in modern societies is alien to an anarcho-capitalist:
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any diagnosis of alienation in labour or in leisure is found suspect. But by
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raising those very issues Tame presses on weak points in situationism. Did
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situationism deal in "real analysis, real questions and rational enquiry"? Or
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did it instead operate an ideology of rhetorical delusion and hide sectional
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interests under an abstract universalism?
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Situationism's proclaimed contempt for consumer goods provides much of its
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initial resonance for transitional social groups. Those forming their
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identity through differentiated taste are attracted by patrician distaste:
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poverty is in everyone else's lives. Washing machine and garbage disposal
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unit? No problem about rejecting those (although the cassette machine might
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be more awkward) But if (as Tame suggests) this merely projects feeling of
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"meaningless and banalisation" onto objects, then that blend of present
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misery and potential future "satisfaction of the demands of the passions" is
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ripe for picking by Tame's ally, the advertising industry. The pseudo-useful
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novelties in the Innovations catalogue exist to soak up that excess demand.
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Like other renovators, the Situationists found in the young Marx a vision of
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a life beyond specialised existence. Tame ridicules the "metaphysical whining
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against a universe in which individual effort, choice, labour and the
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division of labour are necessary". In recent years, radical prose has
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evaporated further. Never, it seems, is one more radical than when spouting
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on about a "humanity" counterposed to every feature of the current world.
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Situationist modernism displayed an untenable fifties' faith in automation
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and planning. Specialists in revolt The workers council based apparatus of
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late Situationism came wholesale from their dalliance with Socialisme ou
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Barbarie. Like a maitre d'hotel, it stood at the grant entrance luring
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passers-by, but disguising conditions in the kitchen. The proletariat would
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merely be guarantor of a highly-polished critique whose radicality remained
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organisationally-based (even in its abolition). But the audience was
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perceived as coming from the managerial stratum (explicitly so in the opening
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of Debord's In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni and Comments on the
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Society of the Spectacle). The aristocratic critique denigrates only the
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rewards which that stratum draws from the system.
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The lifestylist can reject everything for re-integration in the beyond; the
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managerial strata have another tactic for transcending the particular.
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Aspiring managers preen themselves before a mirror where they see themselves
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attractively decked out as the goal of evolution. Free from particular duties
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and responsibilities, free for endless meetings to plan others' actions, free
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from the burden of expertise required to implement its decisions, their
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colourless ideas dream furiously. (Here are echoes of the situationists'
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early sympathy for cultural bureaucracies.) Lacking all practical skill, the
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aspiring bureaucrat is outraged by any need for dexterity.
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Production as a system of "forgetting" the labour in the commodity; leisure
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as an integral part of that system: criticism in these terms is foreign to
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Tame. Situationism contributed much to that critique, but contained other
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elements which neutralised much of its worth (not least the former leaders'
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subsequent self-historification and projection). Tame's pamphlet will be
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worthwhile if, despite its own purpose, it assists in a critique which
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returns to the actual living conditions.
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Alex Richards
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From Here & Now 11 1991 - No copyright
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