Les scissions de la F.A.
Sur La FA
CONTRAIREMENT à tous les bruits répandus sciemment dans la Fédération Anarchiste, et clamés jusque dans son Congrès de Bordeaux, il n’y a jamais eu aucune sorte de « complot situationniste » tendant à faire éclater cette Fédération, qui a toujours présenté à nos yeux l’inintérêt le plus total. Nous n’y connaissions personne. La lecture épisodique du déplorable Monde Libertaire était loin de nous laisser supposer que l’I.S. pût y avoir la moindre audience. De la misère en milieu étudiant apporta à cet égard une certaine surprise : différents membres de la F.A. parurent l’approuver. La direction permanente de la F.A., qui avait absolument tout supporté, dans ses rangs ou en invité dans son journal, du pro-chinois, du surréaliste, du lettriste, avec la même bienveillance qu’elle accorde au syndicat Force Ouvrière, réagit très vivement pour soustraire on ne sait quels militants à la première influence qu’elle jugea pernicieuse.
Un article nous calomniait avec la dernière lourdeur. Nous envoyâmes une réponse assez dure, ce qui plaçait tout individu à prétention révolutionnaire dans l’obligation d’en exiger la parution et, puisqu’elle apparaissait impossible à ses chefs, d’en tirer les conséquences. C’est, par exemple, ce qui ne firent pas les « anarchistes » du Groupe de Nanterre, de vrais étudiants qui croyaient pouvoir s’offrir les luxes réunis de nous applaudir en esthètes, d’être garantis anarchistes par l’étiquette F.A., et de n’être en rien compromis par les actes de la F.A., puisqu’ils la condamnaient à tout instant à l’extérieur. Trois groupes se trouvèrent en cette circonstance — celui de Ménilmontant, le Groupe Anarchiste-Révolutionnaire et le Groupe Makhno de Rennes — pour défendre une position honorable. Ce problème fit surgir tous les autres. Les choses s’envenimèrent au point qu’au Congrès de Bordeaux, en avril, tandis que ces trois groupes rompaient avec la totalité de la F.A., une autre scission, numériquement beaucoup plus considérable, était amenée à fonder une F.A. bis, qui reproduit pour son propre compte la confusion et les carences de la véritable. Bien entendu, l’I.S. n’avait et n’aura aucune sorte de relation avec ces deux F.A. De leur côté, les trois groupes radicaux qui se sont définis dans ce processus ont fusionné, et ont annoncé la prochaine parution d’une revue Internationale Anarchiste (Adresse : 80, rue de Ménilmontant, Paris-20e). Il est bien clair que, sans que rien d’extérieur ne s’en occupe, la F.A. devait éclater d’elle-même à partir du moment où certains de ses membres découvriraient la moindre trace d’un courant critique réel d’aujourd’hui. Car voir une telle critique est du même coup voir le vide de la F.A., et la manière dont ce vide se défend.
in IS n°11
Il a été proche de l’Internationale situationniste et il a eu une correspondance avec Guy Debord.
Il participe à la revue Absinthe des Amis d’Alfred Jarry.
Peintre il a exposé à L’usine en 1999, en 2000, en 2003 et en 2004.
We all know that the possibilities of productivity have progressed in the same way that all of the technical sciences have brought capitalism to its advanced form of over-consumption, which is obligatory to its survival and this in all the sectors of production, from the automobile to armaments and the work of art; all sell themselves, all buy into the ultima ratio[1] of a world in which the commodity extends its rule. Quality disappears to the profit of quantity; the use-value of the object (for example: the automobile) disappears behind its exchange-value.
The SI only exists in relation to the society of consumption that currently spreads over the planet by imposing its behaviors (conditioned liberty), its habitat, its work, its diversions and its spectacle. The situationists condemn (in principle) the lack of efficacity of current political struggles and categorical claims because they are partial and do not contest the social construction as a whole. Herbert Marcuse, whom the SI studied, summarizes the position of current society faced with the problem of "culture":
The situationists are at the center of a debate that must open on to the theoretical and practical possibilities of the revolutionary movement. Paradoxically, they are the only ones to affirm that the revolutionary movement has disappeared: "If there is something derisive in speaking of revolution, this is obviously because the organized revolutionary movement disappeared long ago from the modern countries, in which the possibilities of a decisive transformation of society are concentrated" (I.S. #6). The situationists do not claim to constitute a party. Their disabused tone with respect to what they call the old revolutionary movement explains itself by their historic classification: "One can accept that the classic workers' movement began fifty years before the official constitution of the [First] International, with the first liaison of the communist groups from several countries that Marx and his friends organized in Bruseels in 1845. And that it was completely finished after the failure of the Spanish revolution, that is to say, the day after the 'May Days' in Barcelona in 1937" (I.S. #7).
Situationist activity can be qualified at first sight as anti-cultural; this aspect is less clear when one knows that the founders of the movement were "artists" who came from the Lettrist left, partisans of the supercession of art. The Situationist International was constituted on 28 July 1957 at the Conference at Cosio d'Arroscia. Composed of the Lettrist International and other avant-garde artistic movements: Cobra, the Imaginist Bauhaus, and the Psychogeographical Institute. From their inception, the situationists arrived at the conclusion (subsequent research, the "Potlatch" journal, 1954-1957) that it isn't a question of producing works of art, but realizing life as a work of art, life liberated from restraints in the sense of a great game. For the situationists, this could only happen in a collective manner, in having the possibility of utilizing the modern means of production in the free construction of the milieu: "The construction of situations begins beyond the modern collapse of the notion of spectacle. It is easy to see at which point the principle of the spectacle is attached to the alienation of the old world: non-intervention. Inversely, one sees that the most valuable revolutionary investigations in culture have sought to break the psychological identification of the spectator with heroes, to involve the spectator in activity. . . . Thus, the situation is made to be lived by its constructors" (I.S. #3).[5]
The situationists were led to critique surrealist activity, as much as artistic activity produces commodities and as much as revolt put in the museum: "The success of surrealism lies in the fact that the ideology of this society, which is the most modern on its face, has abdicated to a hierarchy of artificial values, but in its turn feels itself to be openly irrational" (I.S. #4).[5] The situationists were also led to critique the "crazy love" style: "Participation in this bourgeois propaganda that presents love as the only possible adventure in modern conditions of existence. . . ." (I.S. #2).
The situationists give a precise meaning to the words that they employ -- detournement, derive, unitary urbanism, constructed situation, spectacle. One of the words that is constantly used to designate the ensemble of conditioning is "spectacle," which is used for both the cultural activities and the politics of this world. [Asger] Jorn summarizes it thus: "But what is the truth of this spectacular conflict? John Kenneth Galbraith, occupied with the administration of strategic bombardments in the war, an officer of military security, medaled as he must be, confessed in his book The affluent society[6] that modern capitalism, believing itself to be anti-socialism, today holds fast to several obviously Marxist dogmas, ignorant of their origin and always cursing Karl Marx. One can see in parallel how Russian society, believing itself always Marxist, has actually cursed Marx by honoring him."[7] In the system of compensation generalized in this world, we can cite the extreme point of this "collaborationism" of power: "The two camps do not actually prepare for war, but the unlimited conservation of this equilibrium, which is in the image of the internal stabilization of their power. It goes without saying that this will involve the mobilization of gigantic resources, since it is imperative to always raise higher in the spectacle the possible war." (I.S. #7).
We indicated at the beginning of this article that there were certain aspects far from the libertarian movement. It seems that there is no concordance on the term "ideology": "Everywhere the ideologies of the old world are critiqued and rejected, but nowhere is 'the real movement that suppresses existing conditions' free from an 'ideology' in Marx's sense: ideas that serve the masters."[8] To seize what this implies, it is necessary to re-locate this phrase into the context in which men used it in their time: Hegel, the end of philosophy; Kierkegaard, the end of theology (concept of anguish); Marx, the end of ideology. The situationists reclaim these themes in "supercession," that is to say, it is a question for them of actually realizing these disappearances by the creation of another life. All of these problems being no more than the problems of man's prehistory. It is a question of a return of these elements to their origins, which are, moreover, little understood. For example, Sartre calls himself a "Marxist," but isn't since he believes in philosophy.
In the libertarian movement, preoccupation with these themes is practically nonexistent. Why? Because it seems that there is a fixation on the political action of Marx at the time that he was denounced as an enemy by Bakunin, and that there is also little interest in dialectical reasoning. It doesn't seem that the situationists envision it in the same way: "Plagiarism is necessary: progress implies it. It stays close to the phrase of an author, makes use of his expressions, effaces a false idea, replaces it with an exact one."[9] "To know Marx's thought, it is always necessary to specify it, correct it, reformulate it in the light of a hundred years of reinforcement of alienation and the possibilities of its negation. Marx needs to be detourned by those who continue his historic route and not quoted stupidily by the thousand varieties of recuperators" (I.S. #10). Here we are on a terrain that has barely been verified by libertarian thought, wrongly, without doubt.
It is certain that the revolutionary movement needs to reconsider its own givens as a function of its era. If situationist propositions do not encourage an excessive enthusiasm, perhaps they are permitted an exact re-evaluation of these times, which must be "our" era.
Guy ANTOINE Bodson [10]
[1] Translator: "last argument" or "final accounting." Latin in original.
[2] Reified: see Definitions [below]: reification.
[3] Translator: English in original.
[4] "Are we not men?" Text by Marcuse, I.C.O. #52 and #53.
[5] G.-E. Debord. Report on the Construction of Situations, June 1957.
[6] Translator: English in original.
[7] Text by [Asger] Jorn: "Guy Debord and the problem of the accursed." Introduction to the presentation of three films by Debord in a book published by the Institute for Comparative Vandalism, Guy Debord against the cinema.
[8] "Address to the revolutionaries of Algeria and all countries," November 1965.
[9] Lautreamont. Poetry.
[10] Translator: Guy Bodson's full name was Guy Antoine Bodson.
Some definitions
What does the word situationist mean? -- ". . . the term situationist, in the sense of the SI, is exactly the contrary of what in Portugeuse one currently calls a 'situationist,' that is to say, a partisan of the existing situation, Salazarism" (I.S. #9).
Situationism. -- Word deprived of meaning, abusively forged by derivation from the preceding term. There isn't any situationism, which would signify a doctrine of interpretation of existing facts. The notion of situationism is obviously conceived by antisituationists.
Derive. -- Manner of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: technique of hasty passage through various ambiances. More particularly, this designates the duration of a continuous exercise of this experiment.
Detournement. -- An abbreviation of the formula: detournement of prefabricated aesthetic elements. Integration of current productions of the arts into a superior construction of the milieu. In this sense, one can not have situationist painting or music, but a situationist usage of these means. In a more primitive sense, detournement in the interior of the old cultural speheres is a method of propaganda that testifies to the usage and the loss of importance of these spheres.
(Last three definitions, I.S. #1.)
Unitary urbanism. -- "Unitary urbanism is not a doctrine of urbanism but a critique of urbanism."
"If the Nazis had known contemporary urbanists, they would have transformed the concentration camps into H.L.M. [Translator: social housing blocs.] But this solution appears too Mr Chombart de Lauwe. Ideal urbanism must engage each person, without malaise or revolt, towards the final solution of the problem of Man." ("Comments against urbanism," I.S. #6.)
Reification. -- The term reification designates the multiple situations in which the human being sees himself snatched away from himself, rendered a stranger to himself, submitted to 'another thing,' surrendered to abstraction or split. Reification constitutes the limit-case of alienation, in which man tends towards the condition of a thing.
(Written by Guy Bodson and published in Le Monde Libertaire #127, December 1966. Footnotes by author, except where noted. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! September 2005.)
_______________
Guy Bodson (Guy Antoine Bodson)
Il a été proche de l’Internationale situationniste et il a eu une correspondance avec Guy Debord.
Il participe à la revue Absinthe des Amis d’Alfred Jarry.
Peintre il a exposé à L’usine en 1999, en 2000, en 2003 et en 2004.
What is 'Situationism'?
"If you have now understood that there is no situationism, then you have not wasted your evening." The IVth Conference of the SI (#5).Nine years ago a movement was born that is quite close to certain aspects of the libertarian movement and very far from other aspects. Why don't we speak of it? It seems that this silence is linked, on the one hand, to the very powerful theoretical aspect of the texts by the Situationist International, and, on the other hand, to situationist preoccupations that appear to interest only a small minority. What are the causes? One of the most important among them is, without doubt, the fact that professional revolutionaries from Lenin to Bakunin have always separated politico-economic action from action in culture. In their opinion, one must at first change the material basis of life and only occupy oneself with the rest (the problems of art and style of life) in a second phase, without seeing that they thus leave "culture" in the hands of the bourgeoisie.
"Are you Marxists? Quite as much as Marx when he said, 'I am not a Marxist.'" I.S. (#9).
We all know that the possibilities of productivity have progressed in the same way that all of the technical sciences have brought capitalism to its advanced form of over-consumption, which is obligatory to its survival and this in all the sectors of production, from the automobile to armaments and the work of art; all sell themselves, all buy into the ultima ratio[1] of a world in which the commodity extends its rule. Quality disappears to the profit of quantity; the use-value of the object (for example: the automobile) disappears behind its exchange-value.
The SI only exists in relation to the society of consumption that currently spreads over the planet by imposing its behaviors (conditioned liberty), its habitat, its work, its diversions and its spectacle. The situationists condemn (in principle) the lack of efficacity of current political struggles and categorical claims because they are partial and do not contest the social construction as a whole. Herbert Marcuse, whom the SI studied, summarizes the position of current society faced with the problem of "culture":
In the cultural domain, in place of a total desublimation, one sees the unitary order of this society at work. There is an identity or better a confusion between leisure time and work time, so much so that man fundamentally no longer finds during his leisure time what was offered to him at work: one permits him all modes of behavior necessary to permit him to work more. Above all, he will identify his spirit with business. In literature, in art, the impossibility of communicating in a reified language[2] will aggravate itself more. And even all acts of accusation against society can no longer express themselves without being immediately and inevitably transformed into a best-seller,[3] that is to say, directly absorbed by the market, bought, sold, paid for by the same society that it critiques.[4]If the situationists were among the first to have perceived that power claims to take hold of free time (diversions), they were the first to clearly formulate a position of attack against this form of appropriation. Power needs to have its products and passivity consumed by its "spectators" (read: the proletariat); thus, the constant propaganda of the style of bourgeois life is one of the principle bases of the alienation of the "massified" proletariat. Thus the SI has something to say: "Revolutionary thought must critique everyday life in bourgeois society: spread another idea of happiness" (I.S. #2). Because, up to the present, the old ways of life of the old society still reconstitute themselves, even among revolutionaries. For the SI, it is necessary to change the exterior and the interior: "Communication between people isn't assured by communal political programs, even in the most anti-hierarchical and libertarian groups" (I.S. #6). The appearance of the Provo movement, which troubles sociologists so much, thus corresponds to the experimental value of life expressed by the SI, but as much as the situationists try to systematize and coordinate theory and action, the Provos are spontaneous and little theorized in action and thus easily recuperable by power. It seems that the word 'recuperation' is a key word by which to understand the situationists -- power creates nothing, it [simply] recuperates. If we can say that the formation of the First International was a (positive) copy of the international[ism] of the exploiters, the situationists recuperate in the opposite sense of power, taking elements from very different domains: sociology, political economy, psychoanalysis, urbanism, etc., so as to form a coherent and critical whole. "The qualitative is our striking force" (I.S. #8), and thus arrives at a global formulation of this society (the project being inseparable from its own critique).
The situationists are at the center of a debate that must open on to the theoretical and practical possibilities of the revolutionary movement. Paradoxically, they are the only ones to affirm that the revolutionary movement has disappeared: "If there is something derisive in speaking of revolution, this is obviously because the organized revolutionary movement disappeared long ago from the modern countries, in which the possibilities of a decisive transformation of society are concentrated" (I.S. #6). The situationists do not claim to constitute a party. Their disabused tone with respect to what they call the old revolutionary movement explains itself by their historic classification: "One can accept that the classic workers' movement began fifty years before the official constitution of the [First] International, with the first liaison of the communist groups from several countries that Marx and his friends organized in Bruseels in 1845. And that it was completely finished after the failure of the Spanish revolution, that is to say, the day after the 'May Days' in Barcelona in 1937" (I.S. #7).
Situationist activity can be qualified at first sight as anti-cultural; this aspect is less clear when one knows that the founders of the movement were "artists" who came from the Lettrist left, partisans of the supercession of art. The Situationist International was constituted on 28 July 1957 at the Conference at Cosio d'Arroscia. Composed of the Lettrist International and other avant-garde artistic movements: Cobra, the Imaginist Bauhaus, and the Psychogeographical Institute. From their inception, the situationists arrived at the conclusion (subsequent research, the "Potlatch" journal, 1954-1957) that it isn't a question of producing works of art, but realizing life as a work of art, life liberated from restraints in the sense of a great game. For the situationists, this could only happen in a collective manner, in having the possibility of utilizing the modern means of production in the free construction of the milieu: "The construction of situations begins beyond the modern collapse of the notion of spectacle. It is easy to see at which point the principle of the spectacle is attached to the alienation of the old world: non-intervention. Inversely, one sees that the most valuable revolutionary investigations in culture have sought to break the psychological identification of the spectator with heroes, to involve the spectator in activity. . . . Thus, the situation is made to be lived by its constructors" (I.S. #3).[5]
The situationists were led to critique surrealist activity, as much as artistic activity produces commodities and as much as revolt put in the museum: "The success of surrealism lies in the fact that the ideology of this society, which is the most modern on its face, has abdicated to a hierarchy of artificial values, but in its turn feels itself to be openly irrational" (I.S. #4).[5] The situationists were also led to critique the "crazy love" style: "Participation in this bourgeois propaganda that presents love as the only possible adventure in modern conditions of existence. . . ." (I.S. #2).
The situationists give a precise meaning to the words that they employ -- detournement, derive, unitary urbanism, constructed situation, spectacle. One of the words that is constantly used to designate the ensemble of conditioning is "spectacle," which is used for both the cultural activities and the politics of this world. [Asger] Jorn summarizes it thus: "But what is the truth of this spectacular conflict? John Kenneth Galbraith, occupied with the administration of strategic bombardments in the war, an officer of military security, medaled as he must be, confessed in his book The affluent society[6] that modern capitalism, believing itself to be anti-socialism, today holds fast to several obviously Marxist dogmas, ignorant of their origin and always cursing Karl Marx. One can see in parallel how Russian society, believing itself always Marxist, has actually cursed Marx by honoring him."[7] In the system of compensation generalized in this world, we can cite the extreme point of this "collaborationism" of power: "The two camps do not actually prepare for war, but the unlimited conservation of this equilibrium, which is in the image of the internal stabilization of their power. It goes without saying that this will involve the mobilization of gigantic resources, since it is imperative to always raise higher in the spectacle the possible war." (I.S. #7).
We indicated at the beginning of this article that there were certain aspects far from the libertarian movement. It seems that there is no concordance on the term "ideology": "Everywhere the ideologies of the old world are critiqued and rejected, but nowhere is 'the real movement that suppresses existing conditions' free from an 'ideology' in Marx's sense: ideas that serve the masters."[8] To seize what this implies, it is necessary to re-locate this phrase into the context in which men used it in their time: Hegel, the end of philosophy; Kierkegaard, the end of theology (concept of anguish); Marx, the end of ideology. The situationists reclaim these themes in "supercession," that is to say, it is a question for them of actually realizing these disappearances by the creation of another life. All of these problems being no more than the problems of man's prehistory. It is a question of a return of these elements to their origins, which are, moreover, little understood. For example, Sartre calls himself a "Marxist," but isn't since he believes in philosophy.
In the libertarian movement, preoccupation with these themes is practically nonexistent. Why? Because it seems that there is a fixation on the political action of Marx at the time that he was denounced as an enemy by Bakunin, and that there is also little interest in dialectical reasoning. It doesn't seem that the situationists envision it in the same way: "Plagiarism is necessary: progress implies it. It stays close to the phrase of an author, makes use of his expressions, effaces a false idea, replaces it with an exact one."[9] "To know Marx's thought, it is always necessary to specify it, correct it, reformulate it in the light of a hundred years of reinforcement of alienation and the possibilities of its negation. Marx needs to be detourned by those who continue his historic route and not quoted stupidily by the thousand varieties of recuperators" (I.S. #10). Here we are on a terrain that has barely been verified by libertarian thought, wrongly, without doubt.
It is certain that the revolutionary movement needs to reconsider its own givens as a function of its era. If situationist propositions do not encourage an excessive enthusiasm, perhaps they are permitted an exact re-evaluation of these times, which must be "our" era.
Guy ANTOINE Bodson [10]
[1] Translator: "last argument" or "final accounting." Latin in original.
[2] Reified: see Definitions [below]: reification.
[3] Translator: English in original.
[4] "Are we not men?" Text by Marcuse, I.C.O. #52 and #53.
[5] G.-E. Debord. Report on the Construction of Situations, June 1957.
[6] Translator: English in original.
[7] Text by [Asger] Jorn: "Guy Debord and the problem of the accursed." Introduction to the presentation of three films by Debord in a book published by the Institute for Comparative Vandalism, Guy Debord against the cinema.
[8] "Address to the revolutionaries of Algeria and all countries," November 1965.
[9] Lautreamont. Poetry.
[10] Translator: Guy Bodson's full name was Guy Antoine Bodson.
Some definitions
What does the word situationist mean? -- ". . . the term situationist, in the sense of the SI, is exactly the contrary of what in Portugeuse one currently calls a 'situationist,' that is to say, a partisan of the existing situation, Salazarism" (I.S. #9).
Situationism. -- Word deprived of meaning, abusively forged by derivation from the preceding term. There isn't any situationism, which would signify a doctrine of interpretation of existing facts. The notion of situationism is obviously conceived by antisituationists.
Derive. -- Manner of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: technique of hasty passage through various ambiances. More particularly, this designates the duration of a continuous exercise of this experiment.
Detournement. -- An abbreviation of the formula: detournement of prefabricated aesthetic elements. Integration of current productions of the arts into a superior construction of the milieu. In this sense, one can not have situationist painting or music, but a situationist usage of these means. In a more primitive sense, detournement in the interior of the old cultural speheres is a method of propaganda that testifies to the usage and the loss of importance of these spheres.
(Last three definitions, I.S. #1.)
Unitary urbanism. -- "Unitary urbanism is not a doctrine of urbanism but a critique of urbanism."
"If the Nazis had known contemporary urbanists, they would have transformed the concentration camps into H.L.M. [Translator: social housing blocs.] But this solution appears too Mr Chombart de Lauwe. Ideal urbanism must engage each person, without malaise or revolt, towards the final solution of the problem of Man." ("Comments against urbanism," I.S. #6.)
Reification. -- The term reification designates the multiple situations in which the human being sees himself snatched away from himself, rendered a stranger to himself, submitted to 'another thing,' surrendered to abstraction or split. Reification constitutes the limit-case of alienation, in which man tends towards the condition of a thing.
(Written by Guy Bodson and published in Le Monde Libertaire #127, December 1966. Footnotes by author, except where noted. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! September 2005.)
___________________
Open letter, or 'Situationism' and the Situation of the A.F.
"I am for freedom of thought . . . but if there are any situationists in the room, then they should get out." -- Professor Lhuillier, according to Le Nouvel Observateur[1]
In Le Monde Libertaire #127, an article entitled What is 'situationism'? appeared; at the same moment, the "situationists" of Strasbourg published their pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life, the ensemble giving the impression of a concerted action. If the article in the M.L. appeared sufficiently colorless, although it wasn't comprehensible by the "workers," the pamphlet once again gave them a savior.
The reaction didn't delay itself: in M.L. #128, we had two articles attacking the pamphlet: an article by Father Easy/Maurice Joyeux and a letter by A. Bontemps.
WHAT IT WAS A QUESTION OF
It wasn't a question of becoming "situationist," but of "beginning" to pose questions and to respond to them, but in another ambiance and in a more global manner than the famous specialization of tendencies. In any case, it was necessary to pose the problems here and now, things that up until then the A.F. [Anarchist Federation] didn't seem to want to do.
Personally, what is the origin of all this? After reading Orwell and issues of Internationale Situationniste, it appeared to me that a new orientation was possible, at least at the level of critique. And a priori without contradiction to (but with differences from) the anarchist movement.[2]
Several timid attempts in this direction were made, in the M.L. articles entitled "The war of diversions has begun" (#121), "Well-being" (#122), [and] "Of cultural decomposition" (#123); apart from their faults, they can be qualified as vaguely pro-situationist. In sum, this lasted a long time -- without ever completely quoting the theses of the SI, of course.
The incriminated article (M.I. #128) wanted to respond to a part of the accusation that had been made against the SI, moreover with reason, as a by-product without reference and, on the other hand, as the result of quotations such as this: ". . . the Situationist International, which finally produced its tenth issue. One has wanted to be conciliatory with the SI, of which the always-intelligent thought is really revolutionary" ("Across the journals," #123). If the A.F. waited for the appearance of [the next issue of] I.S., this position had never been demonstrated, only indicated[3] precisely in "Across the journals." Because it is certain that one could count on one's fingers the comrades who had read "the situationists" and wanted to discuss them. Obviously, judging the SI on the basis of 7 lines concerning the anarchists in a pamphlet is simpler. If "the situationists" make declarations of love to the "anarchists" under the form of a slap, this must be effective. Alas, no. The A.F. immediately surrendered.
How are the situationists so different from the anarchists? It is exactly that they do not employ the "anarchist" label. Here is what they say about labels: "In the existing order, where the thing takes the place of man, any label is compromised. Nevertheless, the one that we have chosen carries its own critique in it: in that it opposes itself to 'situationism,' it summarizes the other labels chosen for us. Moreover, it will disappear when each of us will be situationists entirely apart, and no longer proletarians struggling for the end of the proletariat. In the short-term, as derisive as a label is, ours has the merit of cutting [trancher] between the old incoherence and a new requirement. What intelligence has lacked the most for several dozen years is precisely the cutting edge [le tranchant]." (I.S. #9)
At the risk of repeating ourselves, [we say that] the situationists are essentially different from the anarchists due to the critique of "ideology" -- critique of "Marxism" by Marx's own method -- or ideology and its treatment by the propaganda that deforms it, the propaganda that creates another ideology (the problem of democratic propaganda).
From the theoretical point of view, the SI rests upon the critique of the commodity economy (dialectical materialism -- but see also the theses on culture), which inevitably catalogues them as Marxists. "Marx's address to the Central Council of the Communist League (March 1850) is, at one and the same time, just in that it puts the workers on guard against the absence of an autonomous politics and the consequences of an attitude that is dependant on the petite bourgeoisie, and quite dangerous in that (in the final part) it defends the most Jacobin Statist centralism. The first part is exactly applicable to Spain and the coming crisis. The end is rejected by all of the proletarian revolution of our time and was already inapplicable to the Spanish situation of 1936, where regional autonomy was the basis on which the most radical tendencies expressed themselves" (I.S. #10).
The use of Marx, which, however, is critical, makes certain libertarians reject the situationists en bloc, because, for these libertarians, any nuance or critique concerning "Marxism" is a "mystification." They are thus incapable of responding on the exterior [of their organization] or replying to the diffuse "Marixism" of our era. In brief, how can these people (the situationists) dare to speak badly of all the magnificent "French revolutionary" organizations, in which everything is always resolved in advance, either by Trotsky (the facts!) or by anarchism (ideology)? Mystery! It is here that a reading imposes itself.
NOW THE A.F.
"Therefore what is expressed by the miniscule pamphlet entitled 'Basic Principles of the Anarchist Federation'? On page 1, one extols the abolition of the State and its replacement by libertarian federalism. Bravo. But such a formula, without other explication, is equivalent to a slogan. What is the modern State? What is a federation that is adapted to the modern world? These are questions that the anarchists of the second half of the XXth century leave unanswered."[4]
All this is quite just and actually there is no response to it and there will be no response to it, at least insofar as the general anarchist spirit will remain in its current disposition. "The under-development of revolutionary theory in the entire world is the primary underdevelopment that must now be left behind."[5]
"No one prevents them from doing what we have done and proving their abilities in creating their own organ in place making trouble."[6] Thanks all the same; I indicate to the author of this amiable phrase (he who loves politeness) that, up until now, I have been among the editors of the M.L., the "stupidity" of which is well known.
As far as the Association (the owners), it is the "property" of "anarchism," since one can say that the A.F. is the newspaper. This association can act if things go "badly," in case the spirit goes counter to orthodox anarchism. At least a text will always be well regarded, naturally: the anarchists are right; the anarchists are intelligent; they have already foreseen it; etc. Which obviously proves nothing, but satisfies those who understand NOTHING.
And this poses the problem of the militant: we know that the militant of a [political] party is someone who claims to hold the truth (which permits him to act at least for a certain time); in fact, he is conditioned (he was or he is conditioned). Introducing an element of ambivalence in such a "milieu" provokes an immediate reaction: one cries "This is propaganda!" It is true that it is propaganda that cries the most about propaganda,[7] its propaganda being good, but not that of the others, obviously: "Finally, our newspaper is the essential element of our propaganda."[8] One can perhaps pose the problem: "What is anarchist propaganda?"
As for the individualist [August] Bontemps, who only intervenes to extract foreign bodies from the sick part, he has found a casuist solution: "From now on, it is permitted to consider that an anarchist can kill himself, at the least to render existence difficult and uncertain if he doesn't practice, lucidly and voluntarily, a double morality: one for himself and his relations with those close to him, and another for everyone else in the social milieu." What is it he comes to sing to us, he who has so many "relations" with technocrats? They are so intelligent.
As far Father Joyeux-Easy, he doesn't fail to let the amalgam effectuate itself. "An article informs us" is savory, since he has read no situationist texts, aside from the pamphlet and, more precisely, the 7 lines in it that he believes were addressed to him.
Even feeling insulted (which is understandable in this instance), no newspaper has dared to publish an article as reactionary as his.
What to say to these people, who relate everything to the past? "Their strength is ignorance."
G. Bodson, alias Guy Antoine
[1] Translator: 21 December 1966. Lhuillier was a professor at the University of Strasbourg.
[2] "This independence of opinions at the heart of associations that are simply liberal: would it paradoxically be excluded from the libertarian milieu?" A.B. [August Bontemps] Anarchism and the Real [1963].
[3] M.L. #41-42, August-September 1958.
[4] Maurice Fayolle (Congress of 1965).
[5] Translator: "The Class Struggles in Algeria," Siituationist International, 1965.
[6] Here I repeat that I am not a situationist, not being [a member] in "The Occult International"; finally, if the phrase of Bontemps doesn't concern me (by chance), it concerns Strasbourg, which proves that Bontemps has the greatest respect for the unions.
[7] [Jacques] Ellul, Propaganda, A. Colin.
[8] Internal Bulletin #60. "Motion of the Louise-Michel Group." A magnificent example of stupidity.
(Unpublished. No date [January 1967?]. Unpublished. Footnotes by author, except where noted. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! September 2005.)
In the most recent issue of our newspaper, an article informed us of 'Situationism.' Father Easy[1] would like to deposit in this dossier an edifying text that appeared in a pamphlet for students[2] and edited by these shocking intellectuals.
I must add that these idiots who address themselves "to the masses," to the "proletariat," can count on the fingers of two hands the numbers they have mobilized.
For a century, our libertarian movement has treated well groups of intellectuals who at twenty descend (symbolically) into the street and who at forty travel through the factory (actually) with a whip in hand. Our movement will treats others well, too.
Furthermore, it is curious to see the eagerness of the bourgeois press, which refuses to pass on information emanating from the revolutionary workers' movement, take up and popularize the gesticulations of these puppets. It doesn't deceive itself! It knows what the ell is worth! It awaits "the revolutionaries of the schoolyard" at the turn. It knows well that it can recuperate them at the desired moment.
The terrain [for the situationists] to occupy is among the crowds of Briands and Herves.[3] It suffices for them to adjust the blow; but, in any case, ultra-Leftism remains the ideal springboard for the Maria-Louises of the busy bourgeoisie to sow their wild oats.
[signed]
FATHER EASY
[1] In French, Pere Peinard.
[2] Of course, On the Poverty of Student Life was not "for" students, but was directed against them.
[3] People from bourgeois backgrounds.
(Written by Maurice Joyeux and published in Le Monde Libertaire #128, January 1967. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED!)
Although I no longer collaborate on Le Monde Libertaire, I do not like to see it denigrated by one who publishes in it, nor to see one avoid, with a perjorative intention, all allusions to libertarian action with regards to situationism, this new form of Baroque-ism.
Those who have taken the pains and the risks of founding Le Monde Libertaire are also young. They have known how to usefully understand the old militants who remain in the breach. If the young ones of the present can not support the diversity of opinions that was and remains the rule of the initiators, if the editors of a certain pamphlet,[1] published by the students of Strasbourg, believing that they can, on the subject of the A.F. [Anarchist Federation], take the liberty of imparting that "these people actually tolerate anything since they can tolerate each other," then no one prevents them from doing what we have done and proving their capacities in creating their own organ, instead of making problems.
The A.F., the Association that has permitted the purchase of the shop, the foundation of the bookstore and, at first, the newspaper, has been organized in such a fashion that all evolutions are possible in it. Evolutions, but not evictions or substitutions. I can specify this completely objectively because, practically, I am no longer completely on the path.
As far as sending me to the "sources" of situationism, as you have done,[2] this is ignorant of the fact that the debates in which I am constantly engaged, and in which I have had dealings with these specialists, oblige me to keep myself informed. Nevertheless, a pamphlet such as that by the young Strasbourgeois leads me to an affidavit. It is impossible for lads of your age to read the anarchist newspapers and pamphlets of the diverse tendencies that were abundant in the 1900s. Because of this, they can not pretend that they have discovered America. I have read the texts of the pamphlet in question (style, intentions and insults) dozens of times before 1914. Though they are lesser, the Provos replace the activists of direct action (without Vaillant, Henry and others). The beatniks are substituted for those individualists who would like to be asocial and, like them, return to the ranks at the age of twenty-five.
In what concerns the constructive part [of On the Poverty of Student Life], it is regretable that its authors do not know that, well before them, at the end of the other century, theoreticians of quality had elaborated it under different forms. If it is necessary to re-visit their theories, it is puerile to reinvent them and claim to give them lessons. These reduce down to the very old formula: "All power to the Workers' Councils." Previously, one said to the Republicans: "All power to those elected by the People." All this is so new and modern that, going back to Proudhon, I must say for the first time in a long time how much I mistrust powers, even those delegated by the people or by the workers, who have in fact freed themselves. This is only my opinion. It remains that the modernism of the situationists smells too much of patch-work for one to await their directives. Above all, the current conjuncture poses the problems of ability and responsibility for the responsible people who are not their own judges. At the level of the planetary mechanism, this requires a little more than bullshit.
You also tell me that libertarians have done nothing for culture. I will not tell you to read the catalogue of Publico but, since you believe that they were ignorant of "surrealism in its time," I will respond to you that at that time I was in good relations with Andre Breton and Robert Desnos. But, insofar as I was an anarchist, specifically, I was opposed to their inconsistencies, to their apology for the irrational while their anti-clericalism was virulent, to their taste for mystery while all mystery, according to etymology, supposes initiates, thus mystifiers. If it is true that these inconsistencies finally led an Andre Breton from communism to anarchism, others were drawn to Moscow or Rome when they did not desert. It is they who, alas! sank into asylums or committed suicide.
I have written in other libertarian publications that surrealism cleaned rationalism of its university crusts and gave the fighting spirit a style. Is this being uninterested in culture? But an anarchist culture is what it is, at the margins of knowledge, an involvement in the will for lucidity and a conscious contentment in the rigor of fact.
As for the modern world, understanding of it begins when someone among us turns twenty. This was the way it was in 1914. There has been a half-century of debates and physical age has nothing to do with it. As far as mental age, one knows and regrets that too many adolescents are a little retarded. On the other hand, Rutherford was 48 when he realized the first transmutation of the atom in 1919. This said, one only asks to exchange views on the becoming of anarchism, on anarchist activities that will cease to be anarchist if they are unified. Unification is the business of sects and parties. It isn't the business of a group of mutual aid and solidarity. As for individuals, nothing prohibits us from all kinds of participations as long as one acts at a point and doesn't mask oneself. It is thus that anarchists actually manifest themselves in the current world.
Among us, in the exchanges of concepts, the margin is wide and the modern materials too abundant to be of easy access. One must admit that, to speak with some sagacity, courtesy isn't superfluous. It is a prejudice like any other to hold vulgarity to be a form of emancipation. Since you are interested in culture, you will be in agreement on this point that the choice of words matters to both the ear and the spirit.
[1] On the Poverty of Student Life.
[2] See What is situationism?, published in Le Monde Libertaire #127, December 1966.
(Written by Charles-August Bontemps and published in Le Monde Libertaire #128, January 1967. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! September 2005.)
www.situationniste.net
_______________________
Subversive Remarks
Tough Customers!
In the most recent issue of our newspaper, an article informed us of 'Situationism.' Father Easy[1] would like to deposit in this dossier an edifying text that appeared in a pamphlet for students[2] and edited by these shocking intellectuals.
"As far as the diverse 'anarchist' groupuscules, who are collective prisoners of this name, they possess nothing other than an ideology reduced to a simple label. The unbelievable Monde Libertaire, which is obviously drafted by students, attains the most fantastic degree of confusion and stupidity. These people can actually tolerate anything, because they tolerate each other."At all times, bourgeois youth -- in veins of exhibitionism -- have loved to place their asses to the window, so as to shock the ladies and anger the passers-by. The verbal gesticulations of the situationists are of no consequence; and we can reassure the reader that we will find them once again in several years, their police records clean, their buttocks plump, their bank accounts comfortably furnished, holding forth Sunday mornings at the Cafe du Commerce, waiting for their ladies, who are occupied with giving bread to the poor at the Great Mass at 11 o'clock. Meanwhile, I would like to draw the attention of the reader to the dusty style of this "proletariat of the college," these intellectuals of the baccalaureat.
"The self-management of militant alienation will only make men the programmers of their own survival: it is the squaring of the circle."Certainly Corneille has taught us that value isn't a function of age. These gentlemen are quite convinced. Father Easy thinks that fuckery is no longer a question of age. You have the proof!
I must add that these idiots who address themselves "to the masses," to the "proletariat," can count on the fingers of two hands the numbers they have mobilized.
For a century, our libertarian movement has treated well groups of intellectuals who at twenty descend (symbolically) into the street and who at forty travel through the factory (actually) with a whip in hand. Our movement will treats others well, too.
Furthermore, it is curious to see the eagerness of the bourgeois press, which refuses to pass on information emanating from the revolutionary workers' movement, take up and popularize the gesticulations of these puppets. It doesn't deceive itself! It knows what the ell is worth! It awaits "the revolutionaries of the schoolyard" at the turn. It knows well that it can recuperate them at the desired moment.
The terrain [for the situationists] to occupy is among the crowds of Briands and Herves.[3] It suffices for them to adjust the blow; but, in any case, ultra-Leftism remains the ideal springboard for the Maria-Louises of the busy bourgeoisie to sow their wild oats.
[signed]
FATHER EASY
[1] In French, Pere Peinard.
[2] Of course, On the Poverty of Student Life was not "for" students, but was directed against them.
[3] People from bourgeois backgrounds.
(Written by Maurice Joyeux and published in Le Monde Libertaire #128, January 1967. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED!)
Open letter to Guy Antoine on Situationism
Although I no longer collaborate on Le Monde Libertaire, I do not like to see it denigrated by one who publishes in it, nor to see one avoid, with a perjorative intention, all allusions to libertarian action with regards to situationism, this new form of Baroque-ism.
Those who have taken the pains and the risks of founding Le Monde Libertaire are also young. They have known how to usefully understand the old militants who remain in the breach. If the young ones of the present can not support the diversity of opinions that was and remains the rule of the initiators, if the editors of a certain pamphlet,[1] published by the students of Strasbourg, believing that they can, on the subject of the A.F. [Anarchist Federation], take the liberty of imparting that "these people actually tolerate anything since they can tolerate each other," then no one prevents them from doing what we have done and proving their capacities in creating their own organ, instead of making problems.
The A.F., the Association that has permitted the purchase of the shop, the foundation of the bookstore and, at first, the newspaper, has been organized in such a fashion that all evolutions are possible in it. Evolutions, but not evictions or substitutions. I can specify this completely objectively because, practically, I am no longer completely on the path.
As far as sending me to the "sources" of situationism, as you have done,[2] this is ignorant of the fact that the debates in which I am constantly engaged, and in which I have had dealings with these specialists, oblige me to keep myself informed. Nevertheless, a pamphlet such as that by the young Strasbourgeois leads me to an affidavit. It is impossible for lads of your age to read the anarchist newspapers and pamphlets of the diverse tendencies that were abundant in the 1900s. Because of this, they can not pretend that they have discovered America. I have read the texts of the pamphlet in question (style, intentions and insults) dozens of times before 1914. Though they are lesser, the Provos replace the activists of direct action (without Vaillant, Henry and others). The beatniks are substituted for those individualists who would like to be asocial and, like them, return to the ranks at the age of twenty-five.
In what concerns the constructive part [of On the Poverty of Student Life], it is regretable that its authors do not know that, well before them, at the end of the other century, theoreticians of quality had elaborated it under different forms. If it is necessary to re-visit their theories, it is puerile to reinvent them and claim to give them lessons. These reduce down to the very old formula: "All power to the Workers' Councils." Previously, one said to the Republicans: "All power to those elected by the People." All this is so new and modern that, going back to Proudhon, I must say for the first time in a long time how much I mistrust powers, even those delegated by the people or by the workers, who have in fact freed themselves. This is only my opinion. It remains that the modernism of the situationists smells too much of patch-work for one to await their directives. Above all, the current conjuncture poses the problems of ability and responsibility for the responsible people who are not their own judges. At the level of the planetary mechanism, this requires a little more than bullshit.
You also tell me that libertarians have done nothing for culture. I will not tell you to read the catalogue of Publico but, since you believe that they were ignorant of "surrealism in its time," I will respond to you that at that time I was in good relations with Andre Breton and Robert Desnos. But, insofar as I was an anarchist, specifically, I was opposed to their inconsistencies, to their apology for the irrational while their anti-clericalism was virulent, to their taste for mystery while all mystery, according to etymology, supposes initiates, thus mystifiers. If it is true that these inconsistencies finally led an Andre Breton from communism to anarchism, others were drawn to Moscow or Rome when they did not desert. It is they who, alas! sank into asylums or committed suicide.
I have written in other libertarian publications that surrealism cleaned rationalism of its university crusts and gave the fighting spirit a style. Is this being uninterested in culture? But an anarchist culture is what it is, at the margins of knowledge, an involvement in the will for lucidity and a conscious contentment in the rigor of fact.
As for the modern world, understanding of it begins when someone among us turns twenty. This was the way it was in 1914. There has been a half-century of debates and physical age has nothing to do with it. As far as mental age, one knows and regrets that too many adolescents are a little retarded. On the other hand, Rutherford was 48 when he realized the first transmutation of the atom in 1919. This said, one only asks to exchange views on the becoming of anarchism, on anarchist activities that will cease to be anarchist if they are unified. Unification is the business of sects and parties. It isn't the business of a group of mutual aid and solidarity. As for individuals, nothing prohibits us from all kinds of participations as long as one acts at a point and doesn't mask oneself. It is thus that anarchists actually manifest themselves in the current world.
Among us, in the exchanges of concepts, the margin is wide and the modern materials too abundant to be of easy access. One must admit that, to speak with some sagacity, courtesy isn't superfluous. It is a prejudice like any other to hold vulgarity to be a form of emancipation. Since you are interested in culture, you will be in agreement on this point that the choice of words matters to both the ear and the spirit.
[1] On the Poverty of Student Life.
[2] See What is situationism?, published in Le Monde Libertaire #127, December 1966.
(Written by Charles-August Bontemps and published in Le Monde Libertaire #128, January 1967. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! September 2005.)
www.situationniste.net
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