The emptiness of "Society of the Spectacle": Chapter 4, "The Proletariat as Subject and Representation". pt 1
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The intent of this critique is to serve as a beginning for a larger critique of The Society of the Spectacle as a whole. This is focused on the chapter that I find, so far, to be the most odious and idealist perversion of marxism contained within (Debord would not be kind to me for using the word “marxism” as, like many of his ilk, he treats recognition with a set of ideals and tactics as something to be reviled no matter how self-contradictory the result may be. However, he clearly identifies with marxist ideology even if he’ll kick and scream about that not being the case.) I will be ordering this similarly to the order of the book itself. For short passages I will quote the entire passage, for longer ones I will quote only where needed.
81: “Marx’s theory is closely linked with scientific thought insofar as it seeks a rational understanding of the forces that really operate in society. But it ultimately goes beyond scientific thought, preserving it only by superseding it. It seeks to understand struggles, not laws. “We recognize only one science: the science of history” (The German Ideology)”
Debord’s attempt to distinguish the science of marxism as something that goes “beyond scientific thought” is merely the positions of Bernstein and Popper disguised in a positive cloak of artistic prosé. Marxism is a science, it encompasses the philosophy of socialism with the real practical experiments of implementing socialism within society and building the foundations for a new world. Marxism is just as much a science as Astronomy, Sociology, etc. it uses the same method of experimentation to dialectically define and redefine the tasks of the revolutionary class. By denying the scientific aspects of Marxism, Debord falls into the same petty bourgeois trap that leads only to defeatist reformism and becoming a mouthpiece for the bourgeoisie to exert their class dominance. Marxism does not go “beyond” science as there is nothing that IS beyond science. Science is the constant search of knowledge using practical and real methods beyond the pure logic of the philosophers, anything “beyond science” is merely pseudoscience.
82: “The project of transcending the economy and mastering history must indeed grasp and incorporate the science of society, but it cannot itself be a scientific project. The revolutionary movement remains bourgeois insofar as it thinks it can master current history by means of scientific knowledge”
Debord continues down this well traveled dead end road of unscientific marxism and only continues to dig a deeper hole for himself. Debord’s constant separation of science from the revolutionary movement of history leads only to the blind leading the blind, of placing ideals above and beyond the material reality we live in, of placing socialism into the noumenal world whereby the phenomenal, real application of socialism remains only a bastardization of the platonic form. Debord places socialism as outside of the social relations between man, and therefore departs from revolutionary marxism and only reinforces capitalist hegemony, as any socialism currently existing or has existed in history is planted as merely corrupted and twisted by the eternal grip of capitalism and class dominance, an attitude fit the defeatists and reformists but not for revolutionaries.
84: “The scientific-determinist aspect of Marx’s thought was precisely what made it vulnerable to “ideologization,” both during his own lifetime and even more so in the theoretical heritage he left to the workers movement”
The often cited “determinist marxism” argument shows itself barefaced in Debord’s work, which is quite embarrassing for Debord as it’s merely a strawman of the theory of historical materialism. The arguments against this teleological reading of marxism are many, but a quick argument against it is necessary. Historical materialism is not a handbook for history, a readymade guide just waiting to be followed. Historical materialism illuminates the progression of history in a dialectical manner, seeing the internal issues of the current hegemonic class society and showing the path it leads down. History does not end, it is not pre-determined, but it, like everything in nature, follows laws that can be analyzed and understood. Historical materialism is as “determinist” as physics calculating how far an object thrown will travel.
85: “The weakness of Marx’s theory is naturally linked to the weakness of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat of his time. The German working class failed to initiate a permanent revolution in 1848; the Paris Commune was defeated in isolation. As a result, revolutionary theory could not yet be fully realized. The fact that Marx was reduced to defending and refining it by cloistered scholarly work in the British Museum had a debilitating effect on the theory itself. His scientific conclusions about the future development of the working class, and the organizational practice apparently implied by those conclusions, became obstacles to proletarian consciousness at a later stage.”
Debord’s retreat from Marxism is approaching a rapid pace now, as he departs from dialectical thinking altogether in favor of pure metaphysics. Debord, confusingly, insists that Marx learning from the failed Paris commune and German revolution is a departure from socialism. Once again, Debord turns back to metaphysical thinking and analyzes socialism from the viewpoint of its platonic form, that Marx did not take a theory (as that would be scientific) and develop it, but instead turned his back on the authentic, real, noumenal truth of socialism that only needs to be revealed and practiced. Communism, then, is not “the real movement that abolishes the present state of things” but merely an unchanging truth that heretofore nobody has grasped. We see here how Debord’s abandonment of scientific socialism leads him down the same tired path of the other faux-radical revolutionary artists. Truly, Debord was punk before punk existed and that is not meant as a compliment but only to give a basis to understand the vacuousness of his “magnum opus”
103: “Trotsky and Parvus’s theory of permanent revolution, which Lenin adopted[...]”
Completely and utterly incorrect. Lenin was never a proponent of Trotsky’s revisionist idea of the permanent revolution. In fact, he called it “absurdly left” and wrote an entire article on how Trotsky was a wrecker in the party! Either Debord is blatantly lying, or he knows nothing about the bolsheviks, in either case it’s a mistake that glaringly reflects his poor judgement.
98: “The Bolshevik practice of directing the proletariat from outside, by means of a disciplined underground party under the control of intellectuals who had become ‘professional revolutionaries,’ became a new profession - a profession that refused to negotiate or compromise with any of the professional ruling strata of capitalist society.”
Debord’s vacuous understanding of the vanguard continues to show his improper understanding of leninism as a whole. To begin with, the vanguard is not a group of “professional intellectuals” who “direct the proletariat from outside”. Instead, the vanguard is the unity of the most advanced members of the proletariat who are able to raise the proletarian’s class consciousness from mere economist trade-union consciousness into a revolutionary marxist consciousness. Secondly, the vanguard does not stubbornly refuse to negotiate or compromise. In fact, Lenin wrote Left Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder after being accused of being too willing to negotiate!
103: “At the Tenth Congress, as the Kronstadt soviet was being crushed by arms and buried under a barrage of slander[...]”
The libertarian socialists still cry over the poor sailors of Kronstadt as if they were not anti-semitic, reactionary forces! Just because they shouted ultra-left slogans does not make them the true voice of the proletariat, but merely the petty bourgeois, reactionary sect that acted in self interest alone. As much as it hurts me to quote from Trotsky, I must say to Debord; continue to hue and cry over Kronstadt.
104: “The Russian bureaucracy then carried this consolidation of power to the next stage by subjecting the peasantry to a reign of terror, implementing the most brutal primitive accumulation of capital in history.”
Debord continues to boldly lie to our faces! The collectivization of the peasants was far from a “reign of terror”, even less “primitive accumulation” as the products from the collective farms belonged to the workers, the only products taken by the state were collected through a tax in kind! Call me amoral, but I have no sympathy for the kulaks who held the Russian peasant masses under their grip!
Now, my original intent was to finish my entire response to this chapter and post it all in one to see if I wanted to continue. However, considering the length of this chapter I feel it’d be best to split it into 2 or 3 parts.