Report on the class leaderships. In this way it has Construction of Situations succeeded in maintaining the old social and on the relations in the great majority of the highly International Situationist Tendency’s industrialized countries, thereby depriving Conditions of Organization and Action a socialist society of its indispensable by Guy Debord material base. In contrast, the underdeveloped or colonized countries, Revolution and Counterrevolution in which over the last decade have engaged in Modern Culture the most direct and massive battles against imperialism, have begun to win some very First of all, we think the world must be significant victories. These victories are changed. We want the most liberating aggravating the contradictions of the change of the society and life in which we capitalist economy and (particularly in the find ourselves confined. We know that such case of the Chinese revolution) could be a a change is possible through appropriate contributing factor toward a renewal of the actions. whole revolutionary movement. Such a renewal cannot limit itself to reforms Our specific concern is the use of certain within the capitalist or anticapitalist means of action and the discovery of new countries, but must develop conflicts ones, means which are more easily posing the question of power everywhere. recognizable in the domain of culture and customs, but which must be applied in The shattering of modern culture is the interrelation with all revolutionary result, on the plane of ideological struggle, changes. of the chaotic crisis of these antagonisms. The new desires that are taking shape are A society’s “culture” both reflects and presented in distorted form: present-day prefigures its possible ways of organizing resources could enable them to be fulfilled, life. Our era is characterized by the lagging but the anachronistic economic structure is of revolutionary political action behind the incapable of developing these resources to development of modern possibilities of such ends. Ruling-class ideology has production which call for a more advanced meanwhile lost all coherence because of the organization of the world. depreciation of its successive conceptions of the world (a depreciation which leads the We are going through a crucial historical ruling class to historical indecision and crisis in which each year poses more uncertainty); because of the coexistence of a acutely the global problem of rationally range of mutually contradictory reactionary mastering the new productive forces and ideologies (such as Christianity and social- creating a new civilization. Yet the democracy); and because of the mixing into international working-class movement, on contemporary Western culture of a number which depends the prerequisite overthrow of only recently appreciated features of of the economic infrastructure of several foreign civilizations. The main goal exploitation, has registered only a few of ruling-class ideology is therefore to partial local successes. Capitalism has maintain this confusion. invented new forms of struggle (state intervention in the economy, expansion of Within culture (it should be understood the consumer sector, fascist governments) that throughout this text we are ignoring while camouflaging class oppositions the scientific or educational aspects of through various reformist tactics and culture, even if the confusion we have exploiting the degenerations of working- noted is also visibly reflected at the level of general scientific theories and notions of individuals, on the condition that they education; we are using the term to refer to accept various renunciations: the essential a complex of aesthetics, sentiments and point is always the renunciation of a customs: the reaction of an era on everyday comprehensive opposition and the life) there are two parallel acceptance of fragmentary works counterrevolutionary confusionist tactics: susceptible to diverse interpretations. This the partial cooption of new values, and a is what gives the very term “avant-garde,” deliberately anticultural, industrially which in the final analysis is always facilitated production (novels, films), the defined and manipulated by the latter being a natural continuation of the bourgeoisie, a dubious and ridiculous imbecilization of young people begun in aspect. their schools and families. The ruling ideology sees to it that subversive The very notion of a collective avant-garde, discoveries are trivialized and sterilized, with the militant aspect it implies, is a after which they can be safely recent product of the historical conditions spectacularized. It even manages to make that are simultaneously giving rise to the use of subversive individuals — by necessity for a coherent revolutionary falsifying their works after their death, or, program in culture and to the necessity to while they are still alive, by taking struggle against the forces that impede the advantage of the general ideological development of such a program. Such confusion and drugging them with one or groups are led to transpose into their another of the many mystiques at their sphere of activity certain organizational disposal. methods originally created by revolutionary politics, and their action is One of the contradictions of the bourgeoisie henceforth inconceivable without some in its period of decline is that while it connection with a political critique. In this respects the abstract principle of intellectual regard there is a notable progression from and artistic creation, it resists actual Futurism through Dadaism and Surrealism creations when they first appear, then to the movements formed after 1945. At eventually exploits them. This is because it each of these stages, however, one needs to maintain a certain degree of discovers the same desire for total change; criticality and experimental research among and the same rapid disintegration when the a minority, but must take care to channel inability to change the real world this activity into narrowly profoundly enough leads to a defensive compartmentalized utilitarian disciplines withdrawal to the very doctrinal positions and avert any holistic critique and whose inadequacy had just been revealed. experimentation. In the domain of culture the bourgeoisie strives to divert the taste for Futurism, whose influence spread from innovation, which is dangerous for it in our Italy in the period preceding World War I, era, toward certain confused, degraded and adopted an attitude of revolutionizing innocuous forms of novelty. Through the literature and the arts which introduced a commercial mechanisms that control great number of formal innovations, but cultural activity, avant-garde tendencies are which was only based on an extremely cut off from the segments of society that simplistic application of the notion of could support them, segments already mechanical progress. Futurism’s puerile limited because of the general social technological optimism vanished with the conditions. The people within these period of bourgeois euphoria that had tendencies who become well known are sustained it. Italian Futurism collapsed, generally accepted as exceptional going from nationalism to fascism without ever attaining a more complete theoretical a halt soon after 1930, but its decay only vision of its time. became evident after World War II. Surrealism had by then spread to numerous Dadaism, initiated in Zurich and New York countries. It had also initiated a discipline by refugees and deserters from World whose rigor must not be overestimated and War I, expressed the rejection of all the which was often tempered by commercial values of a bourgeois society whose considerations, but which was nevertheless bankruptcy had just become so grossly an effective means of struggle against the evident. Its violent manifestations in confusionist mechanisms of the postwar Germany and France aimed bourgeoisie. mainly at the destruction of art and literature and to a lesser degree at certain The surrealist program, asserting the forms of behavior (deliberately imbecilic sovereignty of desire and surprise and spectacles, speeches and excursions). Its proposing a new way of life, is much richer historic role is to have delivered a mortal in constructive possibilities than is blow to the traditional conception of generally realized. The limited scope of culture. The almost immediate dissolution surrealism was in large part due to the lack of dadaism was an inevitable result of its of material means for fulfilling its aims. But purely negative definition. The dadaist the devolution of its original proponents spirit has nevertheless influenced all into spiritualism, and above all the subsequent movements; and any future mediocrity of its later members, obliges us constructive position must include a to search for the failed development of dadaist-type negative aspect as long as the surrealist theory in the very origin of that social conditions that impose the repetition theory. of rotten superstructures — conditions that have intellectually already been definitively The error that is at the root of surrealism is condemned — have not been wiped out by the idea of the infinite richness of the force. unconscious imagination. The cause of surrealism’s ideological failure was its The creators of surrealism, who had belief that the unconscious was the finally participated in the dadaist movement in discovered ultimate force of life; and the France, endeavored to define the terrain of fact that the surrealists revised