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156-544: The Situationist International ( SI ) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists . It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution in 1972. The intellectual foundations of the Situationist International were derived primarily from libertarian Marxism and the avant-garde art movements of

312-536: A "homeland of communism" from which revolution could be spread around the globe. Though world revolution continued to figure prominently in Soviet rhetoric for decades, it no longer superseded domestic concerns on the government's agenda, especially after the ascension of Joseph Stalin . Despite this, the Soviet Union continued to foster international ties with communist and left-wing parties and governments around

468-596: A "systematic misunderstanding of situationist theses"; the understanding that at least one Gruppe SPUR member, sculptor Lothar Fischer , and possibly the rest of the group, were not actually understanding and/or agreeing with the situationist ideas, but were just using the SI to achieve success in the art market ; and the betrayal, in the Spur #7 issue, of a common agreement on the Gruppe SPUR and SI publications. The exclusion

624-545: A considerable number of new communist governments succeeded in assuming power during the late 1960s and 1970s. The United States and its allies perceived this as an example of Soviet expansionism and this aspect of Brezhnev's foreign policy negatively affected diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the West. Outside of the Warsaw Pact, Cuba embraced its own aggressive theory of proletarian internationalism, which

780-435: A game of events". The situationists argued that advanced capitalism manufactured false desires; literally in the sense of ubiquitous advertising and the glorification of accumulated capital , and more broadly in the abstraction and reification of the more ephemeral experiences of authentic life into commodities . The experimental direction of situationist activity consisted of setting up temporary environments favorable to

936-573: A left wing tendency within Lettrism , an artistic and literary movement led by the Romanian-born French poet and visual artist Isidore Isou , originating in 1940s Paris. The group was heavily influenced by the preceding avant-garde movements of Dadaism and Surrealism , seeking to apply critical theories based on these concepts to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and political theory . Among some of

1092-409: A mechanistic part of an industrialised system of production, from being a person capable of defining their value through direct, purposeful activity. Moreover, the near-total mechanisation and automation of the industrial production system would allow the (newly) dominant bourgeois capitalist social class to exploit the working class to the degree that the value obtained from their labour would diminish

1248-808: A member of the Lettrist International , and Asger Jorn of the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus , brought together a group of artistic collectives for the First World Congress of Free Artists in Alba , Italy. The meeting established the foundation for the development of the Situationist International, which was officially formed in July 1957 at a meeting in Cosio di Arroscia , Italy. The resulting International

1404-402: A narrowly defined, minimum-wage "job" meant to extract maximal profit from individual labour as determined by and dictated under the capitalist mode of production. In the classless, collectively-managed communist society, the exchange of value between the objectified productive labour of one worker and the consumption benefit derived from that production will not be determined by or directed to

1560-542: A parallel category, socialist internationalism. Socialist internationalism was considerably less militant than proletarian internationalism as it was not focused on the spread of revolution, but diplomatic, political and to a lesser extent cultural solidarity between preexisting regimes. Under the principles of socialist internationalism, the Warsaw Pact governments were encouraged to pursue various forms of economic or military cooperation with each other and Moscow. At

1716-430: A price that yields a maximal profit . Aside from the workers having no control over the design-and-production protocol, alienation ( Entfremdung ) broadly describes the conversion of labour (work as an activity), which is performed to generate a use value (the product), into a commodity, which—like products—can be assigned an exchange value . That is, the capitalist gains control of the manual and intellectual workers and

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1872-533: A prominent role. These wars result furthermore from the incessant race for armaments by militarism, one of the chief instruments of bourgeois class rule and of the economic and political subjugation of the working class. Wars are favored by the national prejudices which are systematically cultivated among civilized peoples in the interest of the ruling classes for the purpose of distracting the proletarian masses from their own class tasks as well as from their duties of international solidarity. Wars, therefore, are part of

2028-417: A rereading of Karl Marx 's Das Kapital and advocates a cultural revolution in western countries . During the first few years of the SI's founding, avant-garde artistic groups began collaborating with the SI and joining the organization. Gruppe SPUR , a German artistic collective, collaborated with the Situationist International on projects beginning in 1959, continuing until the group officially joined

2184-431: A result of postwar military occupations by the Soviet Union . The Soviet government defined its relationship with Eastern European states it occupied such as Bulgaria , Czechoslovakia , Poland , and Hungary as based on the principles of proletarian internationalism. The theory was used to justify installing " people's democracies " in these states, which were to oversee the transition from fascism to communism . By

2340-597: A series of proposals. The SI thus were first led to distinguish the situation from the mere artistic practice of the happening , and later identified it in historical events such as the Paris Commune in which it exhibited itself as the revolutionary moment. The SI's interest in the Paris Commune was expressed in 1962 in their fourteen "Theses on the Paris Commune" . The first edition of Internationale Situationniste defined psychogeography as "the study of

2496-636: A significant presence. Repression in Europe and internal divisions between the anarchist and Marxist currents led eventually to its dissolution in 1876. Shortly thereafter, the Marxist and revolutionary socialist tendencies continued the internationalist strategy of the IWA through the successor organisation of the Second International, though without the inclusion of the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movements. Proletarian internationalism

2652-550: A tendency towards political theory over the more artistic aspects of the SI. The shift in the intellectual priorities within the SI resulted in more focus on the theoretical, such as the theory of the spectacle and Marxist critical analysis, spending much less time on the more artistic and tangible concepts like unitary urbanism , détournement , and situgraphy . During this period the SI began having more and more influence on local university students in France. Taking advantage of

2808-476: A threat to the ruling class order. Marxists would also point out that in times of intense revolutionary struggle (the most evident being the revolutionary periods of 1848 , 1917–1923 , and 1968 ) internationalism within the proletariat can overtake petty nationalisms as intense class struggles break out in multiple nations at the same time and the workers of those nations discover that they have more in common with other workers than with their own bourgeoisie. On

2964-412: Is a form of ideological control exercised by the capitalist bourgeoisie through its cultural hegemony . Furthermore, in the capitalist mode of production the philosophic collusion of religion in justifying the relations of production facilitates the realisation and then worsens the alienation ( Entfremdung ) of the worker from their humanity; it is a socio-economic role independent of religion being "

3120-431: Is an aspect of exploitation . Furthermore, with such a reified system of industrial production, the profit (exchange value) generated by the sale of the goods and services (products) that could be paid to the workers is instead paid to the capitalist classes: the functional capitalist, who manages the means of production; and the rentier capitalist , who owns the means of production. In the capitalist mode of production ,

3276-449: Is conditioned by their relationships with the people and things that facilitate survival, which is fundamentally dependent upon cooperation with others, thus, a person's consciousness is determined inter-subjectively (collectively), not subjectively (individually), because humans are a social animal. In the course of history, to ensure individual survival societies have organised themselves into groups who have different, basic relationships to

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3432-575: Is conveyed in Debord's darkly romantic meaning of palindrome. Two excursions organized by Andre Breton serve as the closest cultural precedents to the dérive . The first in 1921, was an excursion to the Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre with the Parisian Dadaists ; the second excursion was on 1 May 1923, when a small group of Surrealists walked toward the countryside outside of Blois . Debord

3588-528: Is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie —who own the means of production —in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus value in the course of business competition among industrialists. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1932), Karl Marx expressed the Entfremdung theory—of estrangement from the self. Philosophically,

3744-598: Is external to the worker, i.e. it does not belong to his essential being. A person's mind should be free and conscious, instead it is controlled and directed by the capitalist, "the external character of labour for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own but someone else's, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another." This means he cannot freely and spontaneously create according to his own directive as labour's form and direction belong to someone else. The Gattungswesen ('species-essence' or 'human nature'), of individuals

3900-404: Is external to the worker," it is not a part of their essential being. During work, the worker is miserable, unhappy and drained of their energy, work "mortifies his body and ruins his mind." The production content, direction and form are imposed by the capitalist. The worker is being controlled and told what to do since they do not own the means of production they have no say in production, "labour

4056-417: Is not discrete (separate and apart) from their activity as a worker and as such species-essence also comprises all of innate human potential as a person. Conceptually, in the term species-essence , the word species describes the intrinsic human mental essence that is characterised by a "plurality of interests" and "psychological dynamism," whereby every individual has the desire and the tendency to engage in

4212-459: Is occupied by the enemy. We are living under a permanent curfew. Not just the cops—the geometry". Dérive, as a previously conceptualized tactic in the French military, was "a calculated action determined by the absence of a greater locus", and "a maneuver within the enemy's field of vision". To the SI, whose interest was inhabiting space, the dérive brought appeal in this sense of taking the "fight" to

4368-484: Is summed up in the slogan coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , " Workers of the world, unite! ", the last line of The Communist Manifesto , published in 1848. However, Marx and Engels' approach to the national question was also shaped by tactical considerations in their pursuit of a long-term revolutionary strategy. In 1848, the proletariat was a small minority in all but a handful of countries. Political and economic conditions needed to ripen in order to advance

4524-448: Is that a worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of these actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items of value from goods and services, produced by their own labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realised human being, as an economic entity this worker

4680-462: Is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature. Within this antithesis, the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, and the proletarian the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter the action of annihilating it. In discussion of " aleatory materialism " ( matérialisme aléatoire ) or "materialism of the encounter," French philosopher Louis Althusser criticised

4836-528: The Industrial Revolution —the rearranged economic order of the social classes favoured the social class who controlled the technologies (the means of production) that made possible the change in the relations of production. Likewise, there occurred a corresponding rearrangement of the human nature ( Gattungswesen ) and the system of values of the owner-class and of the working-class, which allowed each group of people to accept and to function in

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4992-825: The Internationalist Communist Tendency (formerly the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party, which includes the PCInt) follow the Luxemburgist and Bordigist interpretations of proletarian internationalism as do some libertarian communists . In contrast, some socialists have pointed out that social realities such as local loyalties and cultural barriers militate against proletarian internationalism. For example, George Orwell believed that "in all countries

5148-544: The University of Nanterre and spread to the Sorbonne. The police tried to take back the Sorbonne and a riot ensued. Following this a general strike was declared with up to 10 million workers participating. The SI originally participated in the Sorbonne occupations and defended barricades in the riots. The SI distributed calls for the occupation of factories and the formation of workers' councils , but, disillusioned with

5304-415: The art dealers and praised by the dominant culture. The SI received many offers to sponsor "creations" that would just have a "situationist" label but a diluted political content, that would have brought things back to order and the SI back into the old fold of artistic praxis. The majority of SI continued to refuse such offers and any involvement on the conventional avant-garde artistic plane. This principle

5460-504: The capitalist mode of production remained fundamentally correct; they rearticulated and expanded upon several classical Marxist concepts, such as his theory of alienation . In their expanded interpretation of Marxist theory , the situationists asserted that the misery of social alienation and commodity fetishism were no longer limited to the fundamental components of capitalist society, but had now in advanced capitalism spread themselves to every aspect of life and culture. They rejected

5616-608: The dérive , an unplanned tour through an urban landscape directed entirely by the feelings evoked in the individual by their surroundings, serving as the primary means for mapping and investigating the psychogeography of these different areas. During this period the Letterist International also developed the situationist tactic of détournement , which by reworking or re-contextualizing an existing work of art or literature sought to radically shift its meaning to one with revolutionary significance. In 1956, Guy Debord,

5772-476: The economic base of a given society; accordingly, they rejected "situationism" as an absurd and self-contradictory concept. In The Society of the Spectacle , Debord asserted that ideology was "the abstract will to universality and the illusion thereof" which was "legitimated in modern society by universal abstraction and by the effective dictatorship of illusion". The situationist movement had its origins as

5928-422: The estrangement (German: Entfremdung ) of people from aspects of their human nature ( Gattungswesen , 'species-essence') as a consequence of the division of labour and living in a society of stratified social classes . The alienation from the self is a consequence of being a mechanistic part of a social class, the condition of which estranges a person from their humanity. The theoretical basis of alienation

6084-407: The existentialists do. Hegel views both of these conditions as evils, because people have a deep and abiding need to inhabit a social world that is a home. People are subjectively alienated in two cases: 1) when the world they inhabit is a home but they fail to understand this; 2) when the world they inhabit is not a home, yet they believe it to be. Hegel believes the first of these two cases to be

6240-429: The means of production establish a competitive labour-market meant to extract from the worker as much labour (value) as possible in the form of capital . The capitalist economy's arrangement of the relations of production provokes social conflict by pitting worker against worker in a competition for "higher wages", thereby alienating them from their mutual economic interests; the effect is a false consciousness , which

6396-503: The means of production . One societal group (class) owned and controlled the means of production while another societal class worked the means of production and in the relations of production of that status quo the goal of the owner-class was to economically benefit as much as possible from the labour of the working class. In the course of economic development when a new type of economy displaced an old type of economy— agrarian feudalism superseded by mercantilism , in turn superseded by

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6552-420: The proletariat until compelling them to social revolution for survival. Yet, social alienation remains a practical concern, especially among the contemporary philosophers of Marxist humanism . In The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State-Capitalism (1992), Raya Dunayevskaya discusses and describes the existence of the desire for self-activity and self-actualisation among wage-labour workers struggling to achieve

6708-817: The war with Poland in 1920, proposed armistice with the Entente and temperance with staging anti-British revolts in the Middle East. By the time World War II broke out in 1939, only a few prominent communists such as the Italian Marxist Onorato Damen and the Dutch council communist Anton Pannekoek remained opponents of Russia's embrace of national self-determination, while the left communist Amadeo Bordiga remained in support of national determination for regions that had not yet moved past their pre-capitalist modes of production. Following

6864-622: The Caribbean. Proponents of proletarian internationalism often argued that the objectives of a given revolution should be global rather than local in scope—for example, triggering or perpetuating revolutions elsewhere. Proletarian internationalism is closely linked to goals of world revolution , to be achieved through successive or simultaneous communist revolutions in all nations. According to Marxist theory , successful proletarian internationalism should lead to world communism and eventually stateless communism . Proletarian internationalism

7020-470: The Construction of Situations (1957), defined the construction of situations as "the concrete construction of momentary ambiances of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality." Internationale Situationniste No. 1 (June 1958) defined the constructed situation as "a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and

7176-593: The Durruti Column ", Andre Bertrand 's détourned comic strip. They then invited the situationists to contribute a critique of the University of Strasbourg, and On the Poverty of Student Life , written by Tunisian situationist Mustapha/Omar Khayati was the result. The students promptly proceeded to print 10,000 copies of the pamphlet using university funds and distributed them during a ceremony marking

7332-623: The Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy ), which (inspired by Bruno Bauer ) purported to be the cynical writing of "Censor", a powerful industrialist. The pamphlet argued that the ruling class of Italy supported the Piazza Fontana bombing and other covert, false flag mass slaughter for the higher goal of defending the capitalist status quo from communist influence. The pamphlet was mailed to 520 of Italy's most powerful individuals. It

7488-454: The May 1968 revolts and the strategies that will need to be adopted in future revolutions, the SI was dissolved in 1972. The Spectacle is a central notion in situationist theory, developed by Guy Debord in his 1967 book, The Society of the Spectacle . In its limited sense, spectacle means the mass media, which are "its most glaring superficial manifestation." Debord said that the society of

7644-693: The Moscow International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties in June 1969, seventy-five communist parties from around the world formally defined and endorsed the theory of socialist internationalism. One of the key tenets of socialist internationalism as expressed during the conference was that the "defense of socialism is the international duty of communists", meaning communist governments should be obliged to assist each other militarily to defend their common interests against external aggression. Khrushchev's successor, Leonid Brezhnev ,

7800-660: The Philippines founder and activist Jose Maria Sison writes that while every proletarian party and state must be guided by proletarian internationalism, "this does not mean that revolution can be imported or exported from one country to another. Rather, revolutionary struggles must first take a national form." Some political groupings such as the International Communist Party , the International Communist Current , and

7956-576: The Poverty of Student Life , Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, and The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem. The first English-language collection of SI writings, although poorly and freely translated, was Leaving The 20th century edited by Christopher Gray. The Situationist International Anthology edited and translated by Ken Knabb , collected numerous SI documents which had previously never been seen in English. Proletarian internationalism Proletarian internationalism

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8112-482: The SI in 1961. The role of the artists in the SI was of great significance, particularly Asger Jorn , Constant Nieuwenhuys and Pinot Gallizio . Asger Jorn, who invented Situgraphy and Situlogy , had the social role of catalyst and team leader among the members of the SI between 1957 and 1961. Jorn's role in the situationist movement (as in COBRA ) was that of a catalyst and team leader. Guy Debord on his own lacked

8268-548: The SI were a very small group, they were expert self-propagandists, and their slogans appeared daubed on walls throughout Paris at the time of the revolt. SI member René Viénet 's 1968 book Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement, France, May '68 gives an account of the involvement of the SI with the student group of Enragés and the occupation of the Sorbonne . The occupations of 1968 started at

8424-428: The Second International followed suit by supporting national governments and the Second International was dissolved in 1916. Proletarian internationalists characterized the combination of social democracy and nationalism as social chauvinism . The hopes of internationalists such as Lenin, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were dashed by the initial enthusiasm for war. Lenin tried to re-establish socialist unity against

8580-417: The Situationist International; the term also refers to any individuals engaged in the construction of situations, or, more narrowly, to members of the Situationist International. Situationist theory sees the situation as a tool for the liberation of everyday life, a method of negating the pervasive alienation that accompanied the spectacle . The founding manifesto of the Situationist International, Report on

8736-602: The Spectacle (1972). By 1950, a much younger and more left-wing part of the Lettrist movement began to emerge. This group kept very active in perpetrating public outrages such as the Notre-Dame Affair , where at the Easter High Mass at Notre Dame de Paris , in front of ten thousand people and broadcast on national TV, their member and former Dominican Michel Mourre posed as a monk , "stood in front of

8892-411: The ability of the worker to materially survive. As a result of this exploitation, when the proletarian working-class become a sufficiently developed political force, they will effect a revolution and re-orient the relations of production to the means of production —from a capitalist mode of production to a communist mode of production . In the resultant communist society , the fundamental relation of

9048-579: The altar and read a pamphlet proclaiming that God was dead". André Breton prominently came out in support of the action in a letter that spawned a large debate in the newspaper Combat . In 1952, this left wing of the Lettrist movement, which included Debord, broke off from Isou's group and formed the Letterist International , a new Paris-based collective of avant-garde artists and political theorists. The schism finally erupted when

9204-523: The apathy of their colleagues, five "Pro-situs", situationist-influenced students, infiltrated the University of Strasbourg 's student union in November 1966 and began scandalising the authorities. Their first action was to form an " anarchist appreciation society" called The Society for the Rehabilitation for Karl Marx and Ravachol ; next they appropriated union funds to flypost "Return of

9360-453: The attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there... But the dérive includes both this letting go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities. SI engaged in a play-form that was also practiced by its predecessor organization, the Lettrist International , the art of wandering through urban space, which they termed dérive , whose unique mood

9516-403: The battleground against imperialism encompasses the entire world...the enemy is one and the same, the same one who attacks our shores and our territory, the same one who attacks everyone else. And so we say and proclaim that the revolutionary movement in every corner of the world can count on Cuban combat fighters". By the mid-1980s, it was estimated that up to a quarter of Cuba's national military

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9672-571: The beginning of the academic year . This provoked an immediate outcry in the local, national and international media. The Situationists played a preponderant role in the May 1968 uprisings, and to some extent their political perspective and ideas fueled such crisis, providing a central theoretic foundation. While SI's member count had been steadily falling for the preceding several years, the ones that remained were able to fill revolutionary roles for which they had patiently anticipated and prepared. The active ideologists ("enragés" and Situationists) behind

9828-428: The benefits of their labour, with a system of industrial production that converts this labour into concrete products (goods and services) that benefit the consumer. Moreover, the capitalist production system also reifies labour into the "concrete" concept of "work" (a job), for which the worker is paid wages— at the lowest-possible rate— that maintain a maximum rate of return on the capitalist's investment capital ; this

9984-597: The blind tool of imperialism in subjugating the Arab masses". Trotskyists argue that there must be a permanent revolution in Third World countries in which a bourgeoisie revolution will inevitably lead to a worker's revolution with an international scope. This can be seen in the October Revolution before the movement was stopped by Stalin, a proponent of socialism in one country . Because of this threat,

10140-527: The bourgeoisie in Third World countries will willingly subjugate themselves to national and capitalist interests in order to prevent a proletarian uprising. In a 1936 interview with journalist Roy W. Howard , Stalin articulated his rejection of world revolution and stated that "We never had such plans and intentions" and that "The export of revolution is nonsense". Internationalists would respond that capitalism has proved itself incapable of resolving

10296-555: The collapse of the Mussolini regime in Italy in 1943, communists in Italy clandestinely regrouped and founded the Internationalist Communist Party (PCInt). The first edition of the party organ, Prometeo ( Prometheus ), proclaimed: "Workers! Against the slogan of a national war which arms Italian workers against English and German proletarians, oppose the slogan of the communist revolution, which unites

10452-687: The communism of the East or the capitalism of the West." They also made up the majority in the Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne . An important event leading up to May 1968 was the scandal in Strasbourg in December 1966. The Union Nationale des Étudiants de France declared itself in favor of the SI's theses, and managed to use public funds to publish Mustapha Khayati 's pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life . Thousands of copies of

10608-512: The competing claims of different nationalisms and that the working class (of all countries) is oppressed by capitalism, not by other workers. Moreover, the global nature of capitalism and international finance make " national liberation " an impossibility. For internationalists, all national liberation movements, whatever their " progressive " gloss, are therefore obstacles to the communist goal of world revolution. Marx%27s theory of alienation Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes

10764-489: The concept of 20th-century art that is separated from topical political events. The SI believed that the notion of artistic expression being separated from politics and current events is one proliferated by reactionary considerations to render artwork that expresses comprehensive critiques of society impotent. They recognized there was a precise mechanism followed by reactionaries to defuse the role of subversive artists and intellectuals, that is, to reframe them as separated from

10920-605: The concepts and artistic innovations developed by the Lettrists were the lettrie , a poem reflecting pure form yet devoid of all semantic content, new syntheses of writing and visual art identified as metagraphics and hypergraphics , as well as new creative techniques in filmmaking. Future situationist Guy Debord , who was at that time a significant figure in the Lettrist movement, helped develop these new film techniques, using them in his Lettrist film Howlings for Sade (1952) as well as later in his situationist film Society of

11076-421: The conditions for unity between the workers in both oppressing and oppressed nations. Specifically, Lenin claimed: "The bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression and it is this content that we unconditionally support". By contrast, Luxemburg broke with the mainstream Polish Socialist Party in 1893 on the national question. She argued that

11232-955: The conflict; and on the other side Leninists and their allies who formed the new communist parties that were organised into the Third International , which was established in March 1919. During the Russian Civil War , Lenin and Leon Trotsky more firmly embraced the concept of national self-determination for tactical reasons. In the Third International, the national question became a major bone of contention between mainstream Marxist-Leninists and " left communists ". Trotsky's biographer, Isaac Deutscher , has explicitly contrasted his support for proletarian internationalism against his opposition to revolution by military conquest as seen with his documented opposition to

11388-440: The constructed situation as "a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events." As the SI embraced dialectical Marxism, the situation came to refer less to a specific avant-garde practice than to the dialectical unification of art and life more generally. Beyond this theoretical definition, the situation as a practical manifestation thus slipped between

11544-557: The countries involved, supported by the coordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau, to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation. In case war should break out anyway, it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize

11700-549: The creation of large-scale economic units, the weighting of approval and disapproval in accordance with revolutionary possibilities, and their specific enmity to Russia". Russia was seen as the heartland of European reaction at the time. The trade unionists who formed the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), sometimes called the First International , recognised that the working class

11856-622: The early 1960s, this thinking was considered obsolete as most of the "people's democracies" had established cohesive postwar communist states. Communist ideologues believed that proletarian internationalism was no longer accurate to describe Soviet relations with the newly emerging Eastern European communist bloc , so a new term was coined, namely socialist internationalism. According to Soviet internationalist theory under Nikita Khrushchev , proletarian internationalism could only be evoked to describe solidarity between international peoples and parties, not governments. Inter-state relationships fell into

12012-401: The early 20th century, particularly Dada and Surrealism . Overall, situationist theory represented an attempt to synthesize this diverse field of theoretical disciplines into a modern and comprehensive critique of mid-20th century advanced capitalism . Essential to situationist theory was the concept of the spectacle , a unified critique of advanced capitalism of which a primary concern was

12168-510: The economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule. However, Luxemburg and Lenin had very different interpretations of the national question. Lenin and the Bolsheviks opposed imperialism and chauvinism by advocating a policy of national self-determination , including the right of oppressed nations to secede from Russia. They believed this would help to create

12324-485: The elementary goals of material life in a capitalist economy. In Chapter 4 of The Holy Family (1845), Marx said that capitalists and proletarians are equally alienated, but that each social class experiences alienation in a different form: The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognises estrangement as its own power, and has in it

12480-399: The essential nature of a human being is actualised when an individual— within their given historical circumstance— is free to subordinate their will to the internal demands they have imposed upon themselves by their imagination and not the external demands imposed upon individuals by other people. Whatever the character of a person's consciousness ( will and imagination ), societal existence

12636-512: The expense of the greater society. Under the collective ownership of the means of production, the relation of each worker to the mode of production will be identical and will assume the character that corresponds to the universal interests of the communist society. The direct distribution of the fruits of the labour of each worker to fulfil the interests of the working class—and thus to an individual's own interest and benefit— will constitute an un-alienated state of labour conditions, which restores to

12792-489: The finer points of this theoretical paradox, ultimately producing "Theory of the Dérive" in 1958, a document which essentially serves as an instruction manual for the psychogeographic procedure, executed through the act of dérive ("drift"). In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by

12948-666: The formation), the Danish artist Asger Jorn (who after parting with the SI also founded the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism ), the architect and veteran of the Hungarian Uprising Attila Kotanyi , and the French writer Michele Bernstein . Debord and Bernstein later married. In June 1957, Debord wrote the manifesto of the Situationist International, titled Report on the Construction of Situations . This manifesto plans

13104-451: The fraternal parties with strict observance of the equality and independence of each". Under Brezhnev, the Soviet and Warsaw Pact governments frequently evoked proletarian internationalism to fund leftist trade unions and guerrilla insurgencies around the globe. Foreign military interventions could also be justified as "internationalist duty" to defend or support other communist states during wartime. With Soviet financial or military backing,

13260-467: The fulfillment of true and authentic human desires in response. The Situationist International strongly resisted use of the term "situationism", which Debord called a "meaningless term", adding "[t]here is no such thing as situationism, which would mean a doctrine for interpreting existing conditions". The situationists maintained a philosophical opposition to all ideologies , conceiving of them as abstract superstructures ultimately serving only to justify

13416-524: The future members of the radical Lettrists disrupted a Charlie Chaplin press conference for Limelight at the Hôtel Ritz Paris . They distributed a polemic entitled "No More Flat Feet!", which concluded: "The footlights have melted the make-up of the supposedly brilliant mime. All we can see now is a lugubrious and mercenary old man. Go home Mister Chaplin." Isou was upset with this, his own attitude being that Chaplin deserved respect as one of

13572-435: The generation of products (goods and services) is accomplished with an endless sequence of discrete, repetitive motions that offer the worker little psychological satisfaction for "a job well done." By means of commodification , the labor power of the worker is reduced to wages (an exchange value); the psychological estrangement ( Entfremdung ) of the worker results from the unmediated relation between his productive labour and

13728-491: The geographical environment, whether consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The charmingly vague adjective psychogeographical can be applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery. By definition, psychogeography combines subjective and objective knowledge and studies. Debord struggled to stipulate

13884-403: The great creators of the cinematic art. The breakaway group felt that his work was no longer relevant, while having appreciated it "in its own time," and asserted their belief "that the most urgent expression of freedom is the destruction of idols, especially when they claim to represent freedom," in this case, filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. During this period of the Letterist International , many of

14040-559: The group, Guy Debord , generally became considered the organization's de facto leader and most distinguished theorist. Other members included theorist Raoul Vaneigem , the Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys , the Italo-Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi , the English artist Ralph Rumney (sole member of the London Psychogeographical Association, Rumney suffered expulsion relatively soon after

14196-549: The hands of wealth owners, combined with government enforced taxes compel workers to labour. In a capitalist world, our means of survival is based on monetary exchange, therefore we have no other choice than to sell our labour power and consequently be bound to the demands of the capitalist. The worker "[d]oes not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself;" "[l]abor

14352-424: The idea that advanced capitalism's apparent successes—such as technological advancement, increased productive capacity, and a raised general quality of life when compared to previous systems, such as feudalism—could ever outweigh the social dysfunction and degradation of everyday life that it simultaneously inflicted. When the Situationist International was first formed, it had a predominantly artistic focus; emphasis

14508-440: The important concepts and ideas that would later be integral in situationist theory were developed. Individuals in the group collaboratively constructed the new field of psychogeography , which they defined as "the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals." Debord further expanded this concept of psychogeography with his theory of

14664-564: The individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses , and, hence, a power beyond all doubt . ... Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx distinguishes four results of alienated labour: alienated labour alienates the worker, first, from the product of his labour; second, from his own activity; third, from what Marx, following Feuerbach, calls species-being ; and fourth, from other human beings. The design of

14820-414: The individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve self-activity, but also, merely, to safeguard their very existence. That humans psychologically require the life activities that lead to their self-actualisation as persons remains a consideration of secondary historical relevance because the capitalist mode of production eventually will exploit and impoverish

14976-534: The institutions of the modern social world, but to change the way in which society is understood by its members. People are completely alienated if they are both subjectively and objectively alienated. Where Hegel believes this to be a condition unique to people in ancient Rome and medieval Europe , Marx sees this as the condition of contemporary society. Marx stated that in a capitalist society , workers are alienated from their labour - they cannot decide on their own productive activities, nor can they use or own

15132-573: The level of the avant-gardes in other countries. The next significant split was in 1962, wherein the "Nashists," the Scandinavian section of the SI led by Jørgen Nash , were excluded from the organization. Nash created the 2nd Situationist International . By this point the Situationist International consisted almost exclusively of the Franco-Belgian section, led by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem . These members possessed much more of

15288-464: The many activities that promote mutual human survival and psychological well-being, by means of emotional connections with other people, with society. The psychic value of a human consists in being able to conceive (think) of the ends of their actions as purposeful ideas, which are distinct from the actions required to realise a given idea. That is, humans are able to objectify their intentions by means of an idea of themselves as "the subject" and an idea of

15444-438: The materialist perspective of the conditioning of life and thought by objective nature. Geography, for example, deals with the determinant action of general natural forces, such as soil composition or climatic conditions, on the economic structures of a society, and thus on the corresponding conception that such a society can have of the world. Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of

15600-424: The modern social world. There are three forms of alienation: objective , subjective , and complete. People are objectively alienated if the social world they inhabit is not a home. Individuals may live in a world that is not a home without experiencing feelings of alienation. Conversely, they may experience feelings that the world is not a home while also accepting this experience as a metaphysical fact , as

15756-567: The modern world from the point of view of everyday life. The core arguments of the Situationist International were an attack on the capitalist degradation of the life of people and the fake models advertised by the mass media, to which the Situationist responded with alternative life experiences. The alternative life experiences explored by the Situationists were the construction of situations, unitary urbanism , psychogeography , and

15912-401: The most common cause of alienation. People are subjectively but not objectively alienated. They reject the modern social world because it appears to them as not a home, even though it objectively is. Hegel sees acceptance that subjective alienation is a persistent feature of modern social life as part of the task of becoming reconciled to the modern social world. He wishes not to reform or change

16068-500: The most topical events, and divert from them the taste for the new that may dangerously appeal the masses; after such separation, such artworks are sterilized, banalized, degraded, and can be safely integrated into the official culture and the public discourse, where they can add new flavors to old dominant ideas and play the role of a gear wheel in the mechanism of the society of the spectacle. According to this theory, artists and intellectuals that accept such compromises are rewarded by

16224-415: The narrow interests of a bourgeois capitalist class, but instead will be directed to meet the needs of each producer and consumer. Although production will be differentiated by the degree of each worker's abilities, the purpose of the communist system of industrial production will be determined by the collective requirements of society, not by the profit-oriented demands of a capitalist social class who live at

16380-652: The nature of Russia had changed since Marx's day as Russia was now fast developing as a major capitalist nation while the Polish bourgeoisie now had its interests linked to Russian capitalism. This had opened the possibility of a class alliance between the Polish and Russian working class. The leading party of the Second International, the Social Democratic Party of Germany , voted overwhelmingly in support of Germany's entry into World War I by approving war credits on 4 August 1914. Many other member parties of

16536-466: The naval ports of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven that brought the war to an end in November 1918. However, once this revolutionary wave had receded in the early 1920s, proletarian internationalism was no longer mainstream in working class politics. Defunct Following World War I, the international socialist movement was irreconcilably split into two hostile factions: on the one side, the social democrats, who broadly supported their national governments during

16692-474: The opiate of the masses ". The concept of alienation does not originate with Marx. Marx's two main influences in his use of the term are Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach . For Hegel, alienation consists in an "unhappy consciousness". By this term, Hegel means a misunderstood form of Christianity , or a Christianity that hasn't been interpreted according to Hegel's own pantheism . In The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel described

16848-466: The pamphlet were printed and circulated and helped to make the Situationists well known throughout the nonstalinist left. Quotations from two key situationist books, Debord's The Society of the Spectacle (1967) and Khayati's On the Poverty of Student Life (1966), were written on the walls of Paris and several provincial cities. This was documented in the collection of photographs published in 1968 by Walter Lewino , L'imagination au pouvoir . Though

17004-427: The personal warmth and persuasiveness to draw people of different nationalities and talents into an active working partnership. As a prototype Marxist intellectual Debord needed an ally who could patch up the petty egoisms and squabbles of the members. When Jorn's leadership was withdrawn in 1961, many simmering quarrels among different sections of the SI flared up, leading to multiple exclusions. The first major split

17160-488: The poor are more national than the rich". To this, Marxists might counter that while the rich may have historically had the awareness and education to recognize cross-national interest of class, the poor of those same nations likely have not had this advantage, making them more susceptible to what Marxists would describe as the false ideology of patriotism . Marxists assert that patriotism and nationalism serve precisely to obscure opposing class interests that would otherwise pose

17316-413: The possibility of proletarian revolution. For instance, Marx and Engels supported the emergence of an independent and democratic Poland, which at the time was divided between Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Rosa Luxemburg's biographer Peter Nettl writes: "In general, Marx and Engels' conception of the national-geographical rearrangement of Europe was based on four criteria: the development of progress,

17472-411: The possibility of solidarity between Palestinians and Israelis in the current Middle East situation, writing that "Israel is not a colony suppressed by imperialism, but a settler’s citadel, a launching pad of imperialism. It is a tragedy that some of the very people who had been persecuted and massacred in such bestial fashion should themselves be driven into a chauvinistic, militaristic fervour, and become

17628-406: The problem of alienation. In these works, Feuerbach argues that an inappropriate separation of individuals from their essential human nature is at the heart of Christianity. Feuerbach believes the alienation of modern individuals consists in their holding false beliefs about God. God is not an objective being, but is instead a projection of man's own essential predicates. Christian belief entails

17784-422: The product and how it is produced are determined, not by the producers who make it (the workers), nor by the consumers of the product (the buyers), but by the capitalist class who besides accommodating the worker's manual labour also accommodate the intellectual labour of the engineer and the industrial designer who create the product in order to shape the taste of the consumer to buy the goods and services at

17940-446: The progressively increasing tendency towards the expression and mediation of social relations through images . The situationists believed that the shift from individual expression through directly lived experiences, or the first-hand fulfillment of authentic desires, to individual expression by proxy through the exchange or consumption of commodities , or passive second-hand alienation, inflicted significant and far-reaching damage to

18096-518: The quality of human life for both individuals and society. Another important concept of situationist theory was the primary means of counteracting the spectacle; the construction of situations, moments of life deliberately constructed for the purpose of reawakening and pursuing authentic desires, experiencing the feeling of life and adventure, and the liberation of everyday life. The situationists recognized that capitalism had changed since Karl Marx 's formative writings, but maintained that his analysis of

18252-579: The question of imperialism and national determination, proponents of Third-Worldism argue that workers in "oppressor" nations (such as the United States or Israel) must first support national liberation movements in "oppressed" nations (such as Afghanistan or Palestine) before there can be any basis for proletarian internationalism. For example, Tony Cliff , a leading figure of the British Socialist Workers Party , denied

18408-421: The rearranged status quo of production-relations. Despite the ideological promise of industrialisation—that the mechanisation of industrial production would raise the mass of the workers from a brutish life of subsistence existence to honourable work—the division of labour inherent to the capitalist mode of production thwarted the human nature ( Gattungswesen ) of the worker and so rendered each individual into

18564-439: The reified spectacle. As early as 1958, in the situationist manifesto , Debord described official culture as a "rigged game", where conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have direct access to the public discourse . Such ideas get first trivialized and sterilized, and then they are safely incorporated back within mainstream society, where they can be exploited to add new flavors to old dominant ideas. This technique of

18720-453: The revolutionary events in Strasbourg, Nanterre and Paris, numbered only about one or two dozen persons. This has now been widely acknowledged as a fact by studies of the period, what is still wide open to interpretation is the "how and why" that happened. Charles de Gaulle , in the aftermath televised speech of 7 June, acknowledged that "This explosion was provoked by groups in revolt against modern consumer and technical society, whether it be

18876-460: The sacrifice, the practical denial or repression, of essential human characteristics. Feuerbach characterises his own work as having a therapeutic goal – healing the painful separation at the heart of alienation. In Part I: "Feuerbach – Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook" of The German Ideology (1846), Karl Marx said the following: Things have now come to such a pass that

19032-435: The semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated, this means that they cease to exist in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and in the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel, in its abasement, the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its condition of life, which

19188-524: The specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals." The term was first recognized in 1955 by Guy Debord while still with the Letterist International: The word psychogeography, suggested by an illiterate Kabyle as a general term for the phenomena a few of us were investigating around the summer of 1953, is not too inappropriate. It does not contradict

19344-429: The spectacle came to existence in the late 1920s. The critique of the spectacle is a development and application of Karl Marx's concept of fetishism of commodities , reification and alienation , and the way it was reprised by György Lukács in 1923. In the society of the spectacle, the commodities rule the workers and the consumers instead of being ruled by them. The consumers are passive subjects that contemplate

19500-485: The spectacle is sometimes called recuperation , and its counter-technique is the détournement . A détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International , and consist in "turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself," like turning slogans and logos against the advertisers or the political status quo. Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that

19656-598: The stages in the development of the human Geist ('spirit'), by which men and women progress from ignorance to knowledge of the self and of the world. Developing Hegel's human-spirit proposition, Marx said that those poles of idealism — "spiritual ignorance" and "self-understanding"— are replaced with material categories , whereby "spiritual ignorance" becomes "alienation" and "self-understanding" becomes man's realisation of his Gattungswesen (species-essence). The middle-period writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, where he critiques Christianity and philosophy , are pre-occupied with

19812-828: The streets and truly indulging in a determined operation. The dérive was a course of preparation, reconnaissance, a means of shaping situationist psychology among urban explorers for the eventuality of the situationist city. Defunct Twelve issues of the main French edition of journal Internationale Situationniste were published, each issue edited by a different individual or group, including: Guy Debord , Hadj Mohamed Dahou , Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio , Maurice Wyckaert , Constant Nieuwenhuys , Asger Jorn , Helmut Sturm , Attila Kotanyi , Jørgen Nash , Uwe Lausen , Raoul Vaneigem , Michèle Bernstein , Jeppesen Victor Martin , Jan Strijbosch , Alexander Trocchi , Théo Frey , Mustapha Khayati , Donald Nicholson-Smith , René Riesel , and René Viénet . Classic Situationist texts include: On

19968-764: The students, left the university to set up The Council for the Maintenance of the Occupations (CMDO) which distributed the SI's demands on a much wider scale. After the end of the movement, the CMDO disbanded. By 1972, Gianfranco Sanguinetti and Guy Debord were the only two remaining members of the SI. Working with Debord, in August 1975, Sanguinetti wrote a pamphlet titled Rapporto veridico sulle ultime opportunità di salvare il capitalismo in Italia ( The Real Report on

20124-897: The theory of Entfremdung relies upon The Essence of Christianity (1841) by Ludwig Feuerbach , which states that the idea of a supernatural god has alienated the natural characteristics of the human being . Moreover, Max Stirner extended Feuerbach's analysis in The Ego and its Own (1845) that even the idea of 'humanity' is an alienating concept for individuals to intellectually consider in its full philosophic implication. Marx and Friedrich Engels responded to these philosophical propositions in The German Ideology (1845). The terms Entfremdung ("alienation" or "estrangement") and Entäusserung ("externalisation" or "alienation"), derived from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , indicate that people are "alienated" because they are not at home in

20280-413: The thing that they produce, "the object." Conversely, unlike a human being, an animal does not objectify itself as "the subject" nor its products as ideas, "the object," because an animal engages in directly self-sustaining actions that have neither a future intention, nor a conscious intention. Whereas a person's Gattungswesen does not exist independently of specific, historically conditioned activities,

20436-471: The two aforementioned texts, along with other situationist publications, proved greatly influential in shaping the ideas behind the May 1968 insurrections in France ; quotes, phrases, and slogans from situationist texts and publications were ubiquitous on posters and graffiti throughout France during the uprisings. The term "situationist" refers to the construction of situations, one of the early central concepts of

20592-619: The union of play, freedom and critical thinking . A major stance of the SI was to count on the force of a revolutionary proletariat . This stance was reaffirmed very clearly in a discussion on "To what extent is the SI a political movement?", during the Fourth SI Conference in London. The SI remarked that this is a core Situationist principle, and that those that don't understand it and agree with it, are not Situationist. The SI rejected all art that separated itself from politics,

20748-414: The value of what they produce. In the " Notes on James Mill " (1844), Marx explained alienation thus: Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings . . . In my production I would have objectified my individuality , its specific character , and, therefore, enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also, when looking at the object, I would have

20904-418: The very nature of capitalism; they will cease only when the capitalist system is abolished or when the enormous sacrifices in men and money required by the advance in military technique and the indignation called forth by armaments, drive the peoples to abolish this system. The resolution concluded: If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in

21060-422: The wages paid to him for the labour. The worker is alienated from the means of production via two forms: wage compulsion and the imposed production content. The worker is bound to unwanted labour as a means of survival, labour is not "voluntary but coerced" (forced labour). The worker is only able to reject wage compulsion at the expense of their life and that of their family. The distribution of private property in

21216-490: The war at the Zimmerwald Conference , but the majority of delegates took a pacifist rather than a revolutionary position. In prison, Luxemburg deepened her analysis with The Junius Pamphlet of 1915. In this document, she specifically rejects the notion of oppressor and oppressed states: "Imperialism is not the creation of one or any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in

21372-409: The worker the fullest exercise and determination of their human nature. Capitalism reduces the labour of the worker to a commercial commodity that can be traded in the competitive labour-market, rather than as a constructive socio-economic activity that is part of the collective common effort performed for personal survival and the betterment of society. In a capitalist economy, the businesses who own

21528-538: The workers of the world against their common enemy — capitalism". The PCInt took the view that Luxemburg, not Lenin, had been right on the national question , though the Bordigists would later split in opposition to this view among others in 1952. There was a revival of interest in internationalist theory after World War II, when the extent of communist influence in Eastern Europe dramatically increased as

21684-609: The workers to the means of production would be equal and non-conflictual because there would be no artificial distinctions about the value of a worker's labour; the worker's humanity ( Gattungswesen ) thus respected, men and women would not become alienated. In the communist socio-economic organisation, the relations of production would operate the mode of production and employ each worker according to their abilities and benefit each worker according to their needs . Hence, each worker could direct their labour to productive work suitable to their own innate abilities, rather than be forced into

21840-532: The world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will". Proletarian internationalists now argued that the alliances of World War I had proved that socialism and nationalism were incompatible in the imperialist era, that the concept of national self-determination had become outdated and in particular that nationalism would prove to be an obstacle to proletarian unity. Anarcho-syndicalism

21996-765: The world. It played a fundamental role in the establishment of several socialist states in Eastern Europe after World War II and backed the creation of others in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The Soviets also funded dozens of insurgencies being waged against colonialist governments by leftist guerrilla movements worldwide. A few other states later exercised their own commitments to the cause of world revolution. Cuba frequently dispatched internationalist military missions abroad to defend communist interests in Africa and

22152-556: Was a fusion of these extremely small avant-garde collectives: the Lettrist International , the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (an offshoot of COBRA ), and the London Psychogeographical Association (though, Anselm Jappe has argued that the group pivoted around Jorn and Debord for the first four years). Later, the Situationist International drew ideas from other groups such as Socialisme ou Barbarie . The most prominent member of

22308-525: Was a recognition that Gruppe SPUR 's "principles, methods and goals" were significantly in contrast with those of the SI. This split however was not a declaration of hostilities, as in other cases of SI exclusions. A few months after the exclusion, in the context of judicial prosecution against the group by the German state, Debord expressed his esteem to Gruppe SPUR, calling it the only significant artist group in (Germany) since World War II , and regarding it at

22464-565: Was affirmed since the founding of the SI in 1957, but the qualitative step of resolving all the contradictions of having situationists that make concessions to the cultural market, was made with the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR in 1962. The SI noted how reactionary forces forbid subversive ideas from artists and intellectuals to reach the public discourse , and how they attack the artworks that express comprehensive critique of society, by saying that art should not involve itself into politics. The first edition of Internationale Situationniste defines

22620-535: Was an even more outspoken proponent of both proletarian and socialist internationalism. In 1976, Brezhnev declared that proletarian internationalism was neither dead nor obsolete and reaffirmed the Soviet Union 's commitment to its core concepts of "the solidarity of the working class, of communists of all countries in the struggle for common goals, the solidarity in the struggle of the peoples for national liberation and social progress, [and] voluntary cooperation of

22776-403: Was an international class which had to link its struggle on an international scale. By joining across national borders, the workers would gain greater bargaining power and political influence. Founded in 1864, the IWA was the first mass movement with a specifically international focus. At its peak, the IWA had 5 million members according to police reports from the various countries in which it had

22932-648: Was another working class political current that characterised the war as imperialist on all sides, finding organisational expression in the Industrial Workers of the World . The internationalist perspective influenced the revolutionary wave towards the end of World War I, notably with Russia's withdrawal from the conflict following the October Revolution and the revolt in Germany beginning in

23088-541: Was cautious however to differentiate between the derive and such precedents. He emphasized its active character as "a mode of experimental behavior" that reached to Romanticism , the Baroque, and the age of chivalry, with its tradition of long adventures voyages. Such urban roaming was characteristic of Left Bank bohemianism in Paris. In the SI's 6th issue, Raoul Vaneigem writes in a manifesto of unitary urbanism, "All space

23244-586: Was deployed overseas, fighting with communist governments or factions in various civil conflicts. The Cuban military saw action against the United States while fighting on behalf of the Marxist New Jewel Movement in Grenada . It was also instrumental in installing a communist government in Angola and fighting several costly campaigns during that nation's civil war . Communist Party of

23400-584: Was perhaps best expressed in the resolution sponsored by Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg at the Seventh Congress of the Second International at Stuttgart in 1907 which asserted: Wars between capitalist states are, as a rule, the outcome of their competition on the world market, for each state seeks not only to secure its existing markets, but also to conquer new ones. In this, the subjugation of foreign peoples and countries plays

23556-520: Was placed on concepts like unitary urbanism and psychogeography . Gradually, however, that focus shifted more towards revolutionary and political theory. The Situationist International reached the apex of its creative output and influence in 1967 and 1968, with the former marking the publication of the two most significant texts of the situationist movement, The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord and The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem . The expressed writing and political theory of

23712-628: Was primarily exercised through support for leftist revolutionary movements. One of the fundamental aspects of Cuban foreign policy between 1962 and 1990 was the "rule of internationalism", which dictated that Cuba must first and foremost support the cause of international revolution through whatever means are available to her. At the founding of the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America in 1966, Cuban President Fidel Castro declared that "for Cuban revolutionaries,

23868-465: Was received as genuine and powerful politicians, industrialists and journalists praised its content. After reprinting the tract as a small book, Sanguinetti revealed himself to be the true author. In the outcry that ensued and under pressure from Italian authorities Sanguinetti left Italy in February 1976, and was denied entry to France. After publishing in the last issue of the magazine, an analysis of

24024-431: Was reprised by the punk movement in the late 1970s and inspired the culture jamming movement in the late 1980s. The Situationist International, in the 15 years from its formation in 1957 and its dissolution in 1972, is characterized by a Marxist and surrealist perspective on aesthetics and politics, without separation between the two: art and politics are faced together and in revolutionary terms. The SI analyzed

24180-535: Was strongly embraced by the first communist party, the Communist League , as exercised through its slogan " Proletarians of all countries, unite! ", later popularized as "Workers of the world, unite!" in English literature. This notion was also embraced by the Bolshevik Party . After the formation of the Soviet Union , Marxist proponents of internationalism suggested that country could be used as

24336-430: Was the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR, the German section, from the SI on 10 February 1962. Many different disagreements led to the fracture, for example; while at the Fourth SI Conference in London in December 1960, in a discussion about the political nature of the SI, the Gruppe SPUR members disagreed with the core situationist stance of counting on a revolutionary proletariat ; the accusation that their activities were based on

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