Summation of Guy Debord's Spectacle

Not an analysis perse

Obviously Debord was not thinking about TikTok in specific when writing this but these two passages really made me think of the unique way in which media is translated on that app. ‘ The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, that has become an objective reality.’ / ‘ The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.’ 

- This makes me think of Romanticism as an Art movement and how industrialization effected the paintings in its later movements. ‘ In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.’ In Art we end up moving away from the natural because it is an Artist job to portray the culturally relevant. 

- ‘the spectacle is both the result and project of the present mode of production. / the spectacle is the model of the prevailing way of life. it is the omni present affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production.’ - I like this idea surrounding consumption and the product versus project actually being more interlinked. Especially in late stage capitalism. 

- This is such a good quote I need to place it in my memory for all the Marxist essays I write in the future, ‘Economic expansion consists primarily of the expansion of this particular sector of industrial production. The “growth” generated by an economy developing for its own sake can be nothing other than a growth of the very alienation that was at its origin.’ - So succient, so beautiful AhhHHH. 

- ‘ The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images.’ 

- Very true, very sad. Interesting to think about in relation to cryptocurrency  ‘ The constant decline of use value that has always characterized the capitalist economy has given rise to a new form of poverty within the realm of augmented survival-alongside the old poverty which still persists, since the vast majority of people are still forced to take part as wage workers in the unending pursuit of the system’s ends and each of them knows that they must submit or die.’ 

- Really interesting when applying to the question of will we ever actually get a rebellion? It’s hard to not fetishize past revolutions because it’s impossible to imagine a life in which we are economically free. ‘Once society discovers that it depends on the economy, the economy in fact depends on the society. When the subterranean power of the economy grew to the point of visible domination, it lost its power.’ 

- ‘Although the struggles between different powers for control of the same socio-economic system are officially presented as fundamental antagonisms, they actually reflect that system’s fundamental unity, both internationally and within each nation.’

- ‘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).’ 

- I think I might be reaching a little bit but when Debord said; ‘The anarchists, who explicitly distinguish themselves from the rest of the workers movement by their ideological conviction, reproduce this separation of competencies within their own ranks by providing a terrain that facilitates the informal domination of each particular anarchist organization..’ I really liked it as I dislike when people on the left will think less of other leftists because of their ‘official’ name. i.e Anarchists disliking Trad Marxists. So ridiculous and counterintuitive. 

-  ‘ As capitalism’s ever-intensifying imposition of alienation at all levels makes it increasingly hard for workers to recognize and name their own impoverishment…’ Love this in terms of the divide between Middle class and Working class seems so silly in terms of being anti-capitalist 

- ‘Proletarian revolution entirely depends on … It requires that workers become dialecticians and put their thought into practice.’ I think this is so interesting more so as a quote you can use to back up arguments surrounding whether theory is inherently classist. As, whilst its hard to grasp at times it really is the only way for revolution. 

- ‘The bourgeoise thus entered into a compromise with religion.’ 

-  I had a lecture where we spoke about the Romantic period and how industrialization actually brought the concept of time into a lot narrower confines and I think this is interesting in relation to that idea; ‘With the development of capitalism, irreversible time has become globally unified. Universal history becomes a reality because the entire world is brought under the sway of this time’s development.’

-  n short, you can really understand this book only by using it. This makes it more of a challenge, but it is also why it remains so pertinent nearly half a century after its original publication while countless other social theories and intellectual fads have come and gone.

Comments on the Spectacle

A good half of this interested elite will consist of people who devote themselves to maintaining the spectacular system of domination.’ (pp.1)

‘The spectacle would be merely the excess’s of media, who’s nature, unquestionably good since it facilitates communication , is sometimes driven to extremes.’ (pp.7)

‘The society whos Modernisation has reached the stage of the integrated spectacle.’ (app.11)

On ww2 - ‘it has greatly reinforced spectacular authority by surrendering everybody to the mercy of specialists, to their calculations and to their judgements which always depend on them. The integration of state and economy is the most evident trend of the century. It is at the very least the motor of all recent economic developments.’ (Pp.12)

‘Generalised society stands behind the spectacle as the decisive complement of all it displays.’ (pp.12)

‘contemporary art can no longer exist, it becomes difficult to judge classical art. Ignorance is only created in order to be exploited.’ (pp.50)

‘What is false creates taste and reinforces itself by knowingly eliminating any possible reference to the authentic. And what is genuine is reconstructed as quickly as possible to resemble the false.’ (pp.50)

‘Our society is built on secrecy. From the front organisations which draw an impenetrable screen over the concentrated wealth of their members to the official secrets which allow the state a vast field of operation free from any legal constraint. From the often freight ending secrets of shoddy production.’ (pp.52)

‘It is always a mistake to try and explain something by opposing Mafia and state: they are never rivals.’ (pp.67)

‘Surveillance would be much more dangerous had it not been led by its ambition for absolute control of everything to a point where it encountered difficulties created by its own process.’ (pp.81)

‘There is a contradiction between the mass of information collected on a growing number of individuals and the time and intelligence available to analyse it, not to mention actual interest.’ (pp.81)

‘Management of surveillance and manipulation is uncoordinated.’(pp.81)

‘Each control comes to overvalue his agents, as well as his opponents.’(pp.81)

Phrase I like:

- bourgeoise has widely disseminated

- tendency to replace the real with the artifices

- fruitful union of the two has learnt to employ both these qualaties on the grander scale

- erasure of the personality - permanent self denial is the price individual pays for tiniest bit so social status

- ‘autocratic reign on the market economy’