Discussing Situationists International before the Uprising in the 1960s
In a world that is really upside down, the true is a moment of the false. Guy Debord, La société du spectacle, 1967
This quote is one of most famous theses in Society of Spectacle, revealing SI members’ core concept and motivations. These were predicated upon a critique of modern society in the post-war period which was witnessing the gradual transformation into a consumer based society. Debord suggests that when people live with consumerism, authentic social life is replaced by representation due to the conditions of modernity and its implicit economic system.
SI’s motivation and criticism of art and society centred on the long-term development of modern society. It is useful for the discussion of ‘the true is a moment of false ‘to initially outline the progress of modern society and the rise of free- market and capitalism. During the 19th century, capitalism became the dominant economic system throughout most western countries, hence highlighting the issue of class. In doing so, the most serious price that people paid for this economic shift was alienation from SI’s perspective. People lost the chances to realise themselves. The following discussion further elaborates the causes of the rise of capitalist society and makes connections between Marxism and SIs’ main ideals and ideas.
‘Modern’ can be defined as when people claim that they leave their traditional lifestyle or values. The most significant shift from traditional society to a modern society is the change of economic systems. As societies become industrialized they are generally considered as “modern”. “Modern” is also associated with nationhood/statehood, urbanization and literacy. Each modern society has varying typical facets to its modernity namely lifestyle and secularism. People in modern societies do not grow produce or raise livestock to make their living but they produce and sell products and services through industrialized means. People consume for their everyday needs and lifestyle via the exchange of commodities. This economic system is known as capitalism.
Capitalism can be defined as an economic system which seeks to make profit through private ownership or corporations though the free market. Consequently, free markets are manipulated by private companies or groups of people rather than by the state or nation. Originating in the 18th Century, classic capitalist theory was delivered in Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nation (1776) who described his beliefs that the free market should give up the role of self-regulation, meaning that greater profit- making is necessary in a free market.
It seems a natural development for 17th to 18th society which people started to abandon feudalism to have a new economic system; this new economic ideology was Mercantilism which provide government to give up the trade- regulation from states, seeking higher profits.The ideology of classical capitalism gradually became valued in most western countries. Ideology can be regarded as the sum of imagination, expectation, value and hypothesis and is commonly used for politics and economic areas to support a system of ideals and idea. The spirit of classical capitalism was always to encourage greater profit-making and production because the ideology of classical capitalism was embedded in the notion that the free market did not only contribute to the economic growth but also could contribute to universal public well-being via free market trade. Deardorff notes that the ideology of classical capitalism encourages more private commerce in order to improve cities and suburban areas and raise the quality of each people’s lives.
However, the growth of the free market, controlled by private corporations could not avoid its negative impacts. That is, when capitalist accumulated their profits, the issues of class arose simultaneously in society. Following Adam Smith, Marx argued the private capitalists who controlled productivity could dominate ‘use value’ of specific products from their own ‘exchange value’. Under such circumstance, it was possible to produce the condition of alienation when capitalists focused on accumulating their own capital via the progression of increasing industrial production.
It can be assumed that when capitalists value higher productivity to gain capital via free market rules, this situation would increase the sense of alienation of labourers. In order to seek continual profits, capitalists would exploit the labour force, imposing a high volume of working hours with no allowance for self-regulation. In doing so, the labour force was always disadvantaged and lost the opportunity of receiving fair income from their capitalist employers. This exploitation led to an emergence of a stratified class system according to Marx. Under such circumstances, owners of land and production, the capitalist class were always the upper class and the labour force was trapped in the lower strata of society. These social relations became almost permanently set in the 19th century, which triggered the discussion of alienation by Marx.
Volume II and Volume III were published in 1885 and 1894, respectively
Marx suggested that labour had no choice but to reside in an unjust society in which the balance of power consistently resides with the capitalist class. Marx suggested that the labour force, unable to choose their preferred employment possibilities had only the choice of which capitalist to serve. Marx suggested that this social relation was the cause of ‘alienation’ and the result of the capitalist system. In Marxist thought, alienation can be defined as ‘the process whereby people become foreign to the world they are living in’ in terms of Encyclopedia of Marxism. It was alienation that Marx described, suggesting that a labourer’s life was no longer related to his/her own body/life but could only serve bourgeoisie society being enmeshed in a social relation in which opportunities for choice were absent. Marx’s theories hold that it was impossible for individuals to make agentic decisions, to follow their mind in deciding their future and lifepaths and therefore to enact self-realization.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past
The written is to be continue.
