A Situationist manifesto for the 21st century: Against capitalism, against the state. Written in a venomous but lyrical prose, appropriately total disdain for western society is communicated in both the text and the aura. Subtextual references are made to certain thinkers (they reappropriate terminology from Deleuze & Guattari frequently, writing in terms of flows and multiplicities against representation), but by and large this should be understood as a series of interconnected analyses of the ills of market democracy. The critical point they reach, and it is a crucial one, is that these crises are inherent in capitalism, they are co-existence with it; you can't have one without the other. Even the climate crisis is being repackaged as yet another means of putting us to work in order to preserve the production of producers and consumers, of sustaining capitalism and the state yet again.
The problem I have with this text, though not one which I take to fatally undermine the arguments of this text, ultimately comes down to one of political praxis, which is of central concern to these anonymous French anarchists in this short book's later chapters. They condemn Marxism for its failure to realise in practice what it advocated for in theory; yet the tactical micro-politics advocated for in this manifesto (a manifesto written, appropriately, in 2007) have evidently likewise failed to properly enact the results they have hoped for. The successes of these micro-political actions - of communes, which [a: Comité invisible|935255|Comité invisible|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] place at the centre of their 'program', of riots, self-organisation, the rejection of all forms of hierarchy and representation - have evidently failed to bring about any serious or fundamental changes in the character of western capitalism. I look forward therefore to reading their more recent thoughts as I hope will be developed in [b:To Our Friends|24783898|To Our Friends|Comité invisible|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1426733812l/24783898.SY75.jpg|44417204] and [b:Now|34551014|Now|Comité invisible|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490786297l/34551014.SY75.jpg|55691754] which might take stock, take account, of the limitations clearly faced by these tactics in the intervening years.
A powerful, beautifully written, provocative manifesto burning with a hatred for the world and a hope that things could be better.
Beyond this, a few passages stood out to me as particularly noteworthy.
On subjectivity:
"Contrary to what has been repeated to us since childhood, intelligence doesn't mean knowing how to adapt–or if that is a kind of intelligence, it is the intelligence of slaves. Our inadaptability, our fatigue are only problems from the perspective of what aims to subjugate us. They indicate rather a starting point, a meeting point, for new complicities. They reveal a landscape more damaged, but infinitely more sharable than all the fantasy lands this society maintains for its purpose. We are not depressed; we're on strike." p. 34
On the postmodernisation of work:
"Here lies the present paradox: work has totally triumphed over all other ways of existing, at the same time as workers have become superfluous. Cains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanization, automated and digital production have so progressed that they have almost reduced to zero the quantity of living labor necessary in the manufacture of any product. We are living the paradox of a society of workers without work, where entertainment, consumption and leisure only underscore the lack from which they are supposed to distract us. The mine at Carmaux, famous for a cenntury of violent strikes, has now been converted into Cape Discovery. It's an entertainment 'multiplex' for skateboarding and biking, distinguished by a 'Mining Museum' in which methane blasts are simulated for vacationers." p. 46
On 'the environment':
"There is no 'environmental catastrophe'. The catastrophe is the environment itself. The environment is what's left to man after he's lost everything. Those who live in a neighborhood, a street, a valley, a war zone, a workshop–they don't have an 'environment', they move through a world peopled by presences, dangers, friends, enemies, moments of life and death, all kinds of beings. Such a world has its own consistency, which varies according to the intensity and quality of the ties attaching us to all of these beings, to all of these places. It's only we, the children of the final dispossession, exiles of the final hour–who come into the world in concrete cubes, pick our fruits at the supermarket, and watch for an echo of the world on television–only we get to have an environment. And there's no one but us to witness our own annihilation, as if it were just a simple change of scenery, to get indignant about the latest progress of the disaster, to patiently compile its encyclopedia." p. 74
On civilizational collapse:
"The West is a civilization that has survived all the prophecies of its collapse with a singular stratagem. Just as the bourgeoisie had to deny itself as a class in order to permit the bourgeoisification of society as a whole, from the worker to the baron; just as capital had to sacrifice itself as a wage relation in order to impose itself as a social relation–becoming cultural capital and health capital in addition fo finance capital; just as Christianity had to sacrifice itself as a religion in order to survive as an affective structure–as a vague injunction to humility, compassion, and weakness; so the West has sacrificed itself as a particular civilization in order to impose itself as a universal culture. The operation can be summarized like this: an entity in its death throes sacrifices itself as a content in order to survive as a form." p. 91
