"simar films presents the society of the spectacle" "a film written and directed by guy debord... based on his book "the society of the spectacle"" "in the detournment of preexisting films, use was made of the works of:" "as well as the works of a certain number of bureaucratic filmmakers of the so-called socialist countries." "the commentary of the present film, completed...." "October 1974, consists entirely of excerpts... from the first edition of "the society of the spectacle" (1967)" "Since each particular sentiment... is only a partial aspect of life, and not the entirety of life... life burns to pour out... through the diversity of the sentiments, and thus rediscover itself in the sum of diversity." "In love, the separate still exists, but not as separated:" "as united, and the living reencounters the living." "THIS FILM IS DEDICATED TO ALICE BECKER-HO." "Al life in societies where modern conditions of production reign... announces itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles." "All that was directly lived... has moved away into a representation." "The images which have detached themselves from each aspect of life, dissolve in a common flow." "where the unity of this life can no longer be established." "Reality considered partially... deploys itself in its own general unity... as a pseudo-world apart, an object only of contemplation." "The specialization of the images of the world finds itself again, fulfilled, in the world of the image made autonomous, where the liar has lied to himself." "The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living." "The spectacle presents itself at one and the same time as society itself, as part of society, and as instrument of unification." "As a part of society, it is the sector that concentrates all looking and all consciousness." "From the very fact that this sector is separate, it is the place of the abused gaze and of false consciousness, and the unification it accomplishes... is nothing other than an official language of... generalized separation." "At the end of these deliberations, we have appreciated what was... positive and also made plain that much remains to be done." "The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among persons, mediated by images." "The spectacle, understood in its totality, is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production." "It is not a supplement to the real world, its superadded decoration." "It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society." "In all its particular forms, information or propaganda, advertising or direct consumption of entertainment, the spectacle constitutes... the present model of socially dominant life." "It is the omnipresent affirmation of... the choice already made in production, and its corollary consumption." "Separation itself forms a part of the unity of the world, in the global social praxis... that has split into reality and into image." "Social praxis, in the presence of which the autonomous spectacle is set up, is also the real totality which contains the spectacle." "But the split in this totality... mutilates it to the point of making the spectacle appear as its goal." "In the world- which is in reality turned upside down- the true... is a moment of the false." "Considered in its own terms, the spectacle is the affirmation of appearance... and the affirmation of all human life, that is to say social life, as simple appearance." "But the critique that attains the truth of the spectacle... discovers it as the visible negation of life;" "as a negation of life... become visible." "The spectacle presents itself as an enormous, indisputable... and inaccessible positivity." "It says nothing more than:" ""what appears is good;" "what is good appears."" "The attitude that it requires as its principle... is this passive acceptance... that it has in fact already obtained... in its manner of appearing without reply, in its monopoly over appearance." "The spectacle forces the submission of living men... to the degree that the economy has forced their total submission." "It is no more than the economy developing on its own behalf." "It is the faithful reflection of the production of things, and the unfaithful objectification of the producers." "Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real beings, and the efficient motivations of an hypnotic behavior." "To the degree that necessity is socially dreamed, the dream becomes necessary." "The spectacle is the bad dream of enchained modern society, which ultimately expresses only its desire to sleep." "The spectacle is the guardian of this sleep." "The fact that the practical power of modern society... has broken off of its own accord... and established an independent realm in the spectacle... can only be explained by this additional fact... that practical power continued to lack cohesion," "and had remained in contradiction with itself." "The oldest social specialization, the specialization of power, is at the root of the spectacle." "The spectacle is thus... a specialized activity which speaks for the ensemble of the others." "It is the diplomatic representation of hierarchical society to itself, where every other form of speech is banned." "The most modern is here the most archaic as well." "The generalized split of the spectacle... is inseparable from the modern State, that is to say, from the general form of the split in society, product of the division of social labor... and agent of class domination." "In the spectacle, one part of the world represents itself to the world, and is superior to it." "The spectacle is merely the common language of this separation." "What binds the spectators... is merely the irreversible relation to the very center which... maintains their isolation." "The spectacle reunites the separated, but reunites it as separated." "The worker does not produce himself, it produces an independent power." "The success of this production, its abundance, returns to the producer as an abundance of dispossession." "All time and space of his world become strange to him... with the accumulation of his alienated products." "The very forces which have escaped us... show themselves in their full power." "Man, separated from his own production, produces ever more... powerfully the all the details of his world, and thus finds himself ever more separated from his world." "The more his life is now his own production, the more he is separated from his life." "The spectacle is capital... at such a degree of accumulation that it becomes image." "One might still recognize some cinematographic value in this film, if this rhythm were to be maintained, it will not be maintained." "Critical theory... should communicate itself in its own language." "It is the language of contradiction, which should be dialectical in its form, as it is in its content." "It is the critique of the totality, and historical critique." "It is not a "degree zero of writing", but its overturning." "It is not a negation of style, but the style of negation." "In its very style, the exposition of dialectical theory is a scandal... and an abomination according to the rules of the dominant language, and for the taste they have educated because in the... positive use of existing concepts," "it includes both the intelligence... of their rediscovered fluidity, and their necessary destruction." "The style which contains its own critique... should express the domination of present critique... over its entire past." "Through it, the mode of exposition of dialectical theory... attests to the negative spirit which is in it." ""Truth is not like the product in which the trace of the tool... can no longer be found."" "This theoretical consciousness of movement, in which the very trace of movement should be present, manifests itself by the overturning of established.." "relations between concepts, and by the detournement of all the acquisitions of previous critique." "Ideas improve." "The meaning of words participates in this." "Plagiarism is necessary." "Progress implies it." "It clings to an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, replaces it with the right idea." "Detuornement is the fluid language... of anti-ideology," "It appears in communication... that knows it cannot pretend definitely... possess any guaranty in itself." "It is, at the highest point, the language that no previous and supra-critical... reference can confirm." "On the contrary, it is its own coherence, in itself and with the practical facts, that can confirm the old grain of truth... that it brings back." "Detournement has based its cause on nothing... exterior to its own truth as present critique." "What, in theoretical formulation, presents itself as openly detourned, in denying all durable autonomy to the sphere... of the expressed theoretical, by causing the intervention there, by means of this violence, of the action that destroys and carries off all the existing order," "recalls that this existence of the theoretical... is nothing in itself, and only come to be known... through historical action, and the historical correction which... is its true fidelity." "What the spectacle has taken from reality... must now be retaken from the spectacle." "The spectacular expropriators must be expropriated in their turn." "The world is already filmed." "It's now a matter of transforming it." "It is a matter of possessing in fact... the community of dialogue and the play with time... which have been represented by poetico-artistic work." "When art, having become independent, represents its world with sparkling colors, a moment of life has grown old, and it may never again be rejuvenated... with sparkling colors." "It may be evoked only in memory." "The greatness of art... begins to appear... only at the end of life." "Having fun, Mr. Logan?" "I couldn't sleep." "That stuff help any?" "Makes the night go faster." "What's keeping you awake?" "Dreams." "Bad dreams." "Yeah, I get'em sometimes too." "Here, this'll chase'em away." "I tried that." "Didn't seem to help me any." "How many men have you forgotten?" "As many women as you have remembered." "Thus, after the direct practice of art has ceased... to be what is most eminent and this.." "predicate has devolved to the theory as such, it now breaks off from the latter, insofar as synthetic post-theoretical practice... is constituted, which has as its mission, first of all, to be the foundation and truth of art," "as well as of philosophy." "August von Cieszkowski, Prolegomena to Historiosophy" "Thought of the social organization of appearance... is itself obscured... by the generalized sub- communication that it defends." "The specialists of power of the spectacle, absolute power within its system of... language without reply, are absolutely corrupted... by their experience of contempt, and by the success of that contempt." "They find their contempt again confirmed... by the knowledge of the contemptible man... who the spectator really is." "In this essential movement of the spectacle, which consists of recapturing... within itself everything that existed in human activity... in a fluid state, in order to possess it... in a coagulated state, as things which have become the exclusive value," "by their formulation in negative of lived value, we recognize our old enemy... who knows so well how to appear at first glance... something trivial and ,self-evident when it is, on the contrary, so complex," "and so full of metaphysical subtleties, the commodity." "This is the principle of commodity fetishism, the domination of society by..." ""intangible things as well as by tangible things,"" "that reaches its absolute fulfillment in the spectacle." "where the tangible world finds itself replaced... by a selection of images which exists above it, and which at the same time has made itself... recognized as the tangible par excellence." "The world at once present and absent... that the spectacle makes visible... is the world of the commodity... dominating everything that is lived." "And the world of the commodity is thus shown as it is, for its movement is identical... to the distancing of men... from one another and from their global production." "The domination of commodity... was at first exercised in an occult fashion over the economy, that itself, as the material base of social life, remained unrecognized and misunderstood, like the familiar which remains nonetheless unknown." "In a society where the concrete commodity... remains rare or in the minority, the apparent domination of money presents itself... as the emissary with full powers... who speaks in the name of an unknown power." "With the industrial revolution, the division of labor in manufacturing... and mass production for the world market, the commodity effectively appears... as a power that actually comes to occupy social life." "It is then that political economy comes... to constitute the dominant science and the science of domination." "The spectacle is a permanent opium war... to enforce the identification of goods with commodities, and of satisfaction... with survival increasing according to its own laws." "But if consumable survival is something which should... always increase, it's because it never ceases to contain privation." "If there is nothing beyond increased survival, no point where it ceases to grow, it's because it is not itself beyond privation, but rather, it is enriched privation." "Exchange value could take form only as the agent of use value, but its victory by means of its own weapons... has created the conditions of its autonomous domination." "Mobilizing all human practice... and seizing the monopoly over satisfaction, it ends up directing practice." "The process of exchange... is identified with all possible practice, and reduces it to its mercy." "Exchange value is the condottiere of use value, that ends up waging the war in its own interest." "Use value, which was implicitly comprised... by exchange value, should now be explicitly proclaimed, in the inverted reality of the spectacle, precisely because its factual reality is eaten... away by the overdeveloped commodity economy;" "and because a pseudo- justification becomes... necessary for false life." "The concentrated result of social labor, at the moment of economic abundance, becomes apparent, and forces the submission of all reality to appearance, which is now its product." "Capital is no longer the invisible center... that directs the mode of production:" "its accumulation extends it to the periphery... in the form of tangible objects." "The entire expanse of society is its portrait." "The spectacle, like the modern society, is at once united and divided." "Like society, it builds its unity on tearing things to pieces," "But contradiction, when it emerges in the spectacle, is in its turn contradicted... by an inversion of its meaning;" "so that the division demonstrated is unitary, while the unity demonstrated is divided." "The struggle of powers, which have been.... set up for directing the same socio-economic system, is deployed as official contradiction, belonging in fact to real unity, this latter takes place... on a global scale as well as within each nation." "The spectacular false struggles... of the rival forms of separate power... are also real, in that they translate the unequal and conflict laden... development of the system, the relatively contradictory interests of the classes, or of the subdivisions of classes that recognize the system," "and define their own participation in its power." "These diverse oppositions can present themselves in... the spectacle by completely different criteria, as absolutely different forms of society." "But in terms of their actual reality, as particular sectors, the truth of their particularity... resides in the universal system that contains them:" "in the unique movement... that has made the planet its field, capitalism." "The movement of banalization, which, in the shimmering diversions of the spectacle, dominates modern society globally, also dominates it at every point... where the developed consumption of commodities... has in appearance multiplied... the roles and the objects from which to choose." "The survival of the religion and of the family- which remains the principal form of the inheritance of class power- and therefore of the moral repression which they assure, can be combined as one... with the redundant affirmation... of the enjoyment of this world," "this world being produced... precisely only as pseudo-enjoyment... which preserves repression within it." "To the smug acceptance of what exists, purely spectacular revolt can be added... as something identical:" "this translates the simple fact... that even dissatisfaction became a commodity at the moment... that economic abundance found itself capable... of extending its production... to the point of utilizing even that sort of raw material." "By concentrating in himself the image of a possible role, the star, the spectacular representation of living man, thus concentrates this banality." "The condition of the star... is the specialization of the apparently lived, the object of the identification... with apparent life without depth, that should compensate for the fragmentation of productive... specializations actually lived." "Stars exist in order to represent varied types of life styles... and styles of understanding society, free to be exercised globally." "They incarnate the inaccessible result of social labor... by miming the by-products of this labor... that are magically transferred above it as its goal:" "power and vacations, decision-making and consumption, that are at the beginning and the end of an undisputed process." "There, governmental power... is personified as pseudo-star;" "here, the star of consumption gets itself elected by plebiscite... as pseudo-power over the lived." "But, just as these star activities are not really global, neither are they varied." "It's the unity of poverty... that is hidden under spectacular oppositions." "If some of the diverse forms of the same alienation... do battle among themselves in the guise of total choice, it's because they're all built upon the real repressed contradictions." "According to the necessities of the particular stage of poverty... which they believe and maintain, the spectacle exists in a concentrated form, or in a diffused form." "In the two cases, it's only an image of happy unification... surrounded by desolation and terror, at the tranquil center of misfortune." "The concentrated spectacular... belongs essentially to bureaucratic capitalism, while it can be imported as a technique of state power... over more backward mixed economies, or in certain moments of crisis of advanced capitalism." "Bureaucratic ownership, in fact, is itself concentrated in the sense that... the individual bureaucrat has a relation to the possession... of the global economy... only through the intermediary of bureaucratic community, and only as a member of this community." "Besides, the less developed production of commodities... is represented as well in a concentrated form:" "the commodity the bureaucracy controls... is the totality of social labor, and what it sells back to society... is mass survival." "The dictatorship of bureaucratic economics... cannot allow the exploited masses... any notable margin of choice, since it is supposed to have chosen it all by itself... and since any other external choice, whether it concerns food or music," "is thus already the choice of its complete destruction." "The diffuse spectacular... accompanies the abundance of commodities, the unperturbed development of modern capitalism." "Here each commodity taken by itself... is justified in the name of the greatness of production... of the totality of objects, of which the spectacle is an apologetic catalogue." "Irreconcilable claims elbow their way on the stage of the unified... spectacle of the economics of abundance, to the point that different star-commodities... simultaneously support their contradictory projects... for managing society, where the spectacle of automobiles... aims at perfect traffic circulation which destroys old cities," "while the spectacle of the city itself requires museum districts." "So the already problematic satisfaction, which is reputed to belong to the consumption of the whole, is immediately falsified... in that the real consumer can directly touch only a succession... of fragments of this commodity happiness," "fragments from which... the quality lent to the whole is evidently absent every time." "Each given commodity struggles for itself, cannot recognize the others, claims to impose itself everywhere as if it were the only one." "The spectacle is then the epic poem of this confrontation... that the fall of no Troy could conclude." "The spectacle sings not men and their arms, but commodities and their passions." "It's in this blind struggle... that each commodity, by following its passion, in fact realizes in the unconscious something higher:" "the becoming-world of commodity, which is as well the becoming- commodity of the world." "Thus, by a ruse of commodity reasoning, the particularness of the commodity... is used up as it does battle, while the commodity-form... goes towards its absolute realization." "In the image of the happy unification of society... through consumption, the real division is suspended... only until the next non- accomplishment in the consumable." "Each particular product which should represent the hope... of a lightning shortcut, to the promised land of total consumption... is ceremoniously presented in its turn... as the decisive singularity." "But as in the case of the instantaneous spread... of fashions in apparently aristocratic first names... which practically all individuals the same age will be found to bear, the object from which one expects a singular power... can only be offered for the devotion of the masses," "because it's been manufactured in great enough numbers... to be consumed en masse." "The prestigious character of this product, whatever it may be, comes only from its having been placed... at the center of social life, as the revealed mystery... of the ultimate end of production." "The object that was prestigious in the spectacle.." "becomes vulgar the instant it enters one consumer's home, at the same time as the homes of all others." "It reveals too late its essential poverty, that is tied to the poverty of its production." "But already, there's another object that carries the justification of the system... ant the requirement of being recognized." "The imposture of satisfaction... must denounce itself in replacing itself, in following the change of products... and those of the general conditions of production." "What affirmed with the most perfect impudence... its own definitive excellence changes, however, in the diffuse spectacle- though it does so as well in the concentrated spectacle- ant it's the system alone which must continue:" "Stalin, as well as the outmoded commodity, are denounced by the same ones who imposed them." "Each new lie in advertising... is also the admission of the preceding lie." "Each collapse of a figure of totalitarian power... reveals the illusory community... that unanimously approved it, and which was only an agglomeration of solitudes... without illusions." "What the spectacle presents as perpetual... is founded upon change, and must change with its base." "The spectacle is absolutely dogmatic, and at the same time, can lead to no solid dogma." "Nothing stops for it, this is the state most natural to it... and yet the most contrary to its inclination." "The unreal unity which the spectacle proclaims... is the mask of the class division on which... on which the real unity of the capitalist mode of production rests." "What obliges producers to participate... in the construction of the world... is also what separates them from it." "What brings together men freed of their local and... national limitations is also what distances them from one another." "What requires the deepening of rationality... is also what nourishes the irrationality of hierarchical... exploitation and repression." "What makes the power of society abstract... makes its freedom concrete." "Are we living proletarians, are we living?" "This age, which we recount and where everything we account for... no longer belongs to us, is this life?" "And can we not perceive what we lose unceasingly with the years?" "Are rest and nourishment not weak remedies... for the continual illness that torments us?" "and what we call the last, is it anything, properly understood, but a redoubling, and the final attack, as it were, of the evil... that we bring into the world in being born?" "Capitalist production has unified space, which is no longer limited by external societies." "This unification is at the same time an extensive and intensive... process of banalization." "Just as the accumulation of commodities mass produced... for the abstract space... of the market was to break down... all regional and legal barriers, and all of the corporate restrictions of the middle ages... which maintained the quality of artisanal production" "it was also to dissolve the autonomy... and the quality of places." "This power of homogenization... is the heavy artillery... that brought down all the walls of China." "It is in order to become ever more identical with itself, to better approach motionless monotony... that the free space of the commodity... is henceforth constantly modified and reconstructed." "This society that suppresses geographical distance... gathers distance internally, as spectacular separation." "By product of the circulation of commodities, human circulation considered as a form of consumption, tourism reduces fundamentally to the leisure of going to see... what has become banal." "The economic management of the frequentation of different places... is already by itself the guarantee of their equivalence." "The same modernization that withdrew time from travel... withdrew from it as well the reality of space." "The society founded on the expansion of alienated... industrial labor becomes, quite normally from one end to the other, unhealthy, noisy, ugly, and dirty as a factory." "The society which models all of its surroundings... has constructed its own special technology... for working the concrete base of this set of tasks:" "its own territory." "Urbanism is this takeover of the natural and human... environment by capitalism, which... logically developing into absolute domination, can and must... remake the totality of space... as its own decor." "Man returns to inhabit caves but the worker now inhabits... them only by precarious title and they are for him... a strange power that he can daily lack, and from which... he can also daily be expelled if he does not pay." "And he must pay for this house of death." " Marx, 1844 Manuscripts" "If all the technological forces of capitalist economy... must be understood as affecting separations, in the case of urbanism, we are dealing with the outfitting of their general base, with the handling of the land suitable for their deployment;" "with the very technology of separation." "For the first time, a new architecture, which in every previous epoch had been reserved for the... satisfaction of the ruling classes, is directly destined for the poor." "The formal poverty and the gigantic expanse... of this new experience of habitat... both originate in its mass character, which is implied both by its destination... and by modern conditions of construction." "The authoritarian decision- making, that manages territory abstractly as the territory of abstraction, is of course at the center of these modern... conditions of construction." "The threshold crossed in the growth... of the material power of society, and the delay in the conscious domination of this power, are spread out for display in urbanism." "The environment, which is reconstructed ever more... hastily for repressive control and for profit, at the same time... becomes ever more fragile and incites further vandalism." "Capitalism, in its spectacular state, rebuilds a fake version of everything, and produces incendiaries." "Thus its decor becomes... everywhere inflammable as a high school in France." "History which threatens this twilight world... is also the force that can bring the submission of... space to lived time." "The proletarian revolution is this critique of human geography, through which individuals and communities... must construct the sites and events... corresponding to the appropriation, not only of their labor, but of their total history." "In this moving game-space, and from the freely chosen variations of the rules of the game, autonomy of place may be rediscovered, without reintroducing an exclusive attachment to the land, and thus, bring back the reality of the journey," "and of life, understood as a journey having its entire meaning... within itself." " What's your pleasure?" " Whiskey." "The time of production, the commodity-time, is an infinite accumulation of equivalent intervals." "It is the abstraction of irreversible time, of which all segments must prove on the chronometer... only their quantitative equality." "This time is, in its entire effective reality, just what it is in its exchangeable character." "the general time of human non-development... exists as well in the complementary aspect... of a consumable time which returns... to the daily life of society, from this determined production, as pseudo-cyclical time." "Pseudo-cyclical time... is that of the consumption of modern economic survival, augmented survival, where the experience of daily life... remains deprived of decision- making and is forced to submit, no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature... developed in alienated labor;" "and therefore this time quite... naturally rediscovers the old cyclical rhythm... which governs pre- industrial societies." "Pseudo-cyclical time both finds... its support in the natural imprints of cyclical time, and from them composes new homologous combinations:" "day and night, weekly work and leisure, the recurrence of vacation periods." "Consumable pseudo-cyclical time is spectacular time, both as the time of the consumption of images, in the narrow sense, and as the image of the consumption of time, in its entire extended sense." "The time of the consumption of images, the medium of all commodities, is inseparably the field... where the instruments of the spectacle hold full sway, and the goal that the latter presents globally, as the location and central figure... of all private consumption." "the social image of the consumption of time, for its part, is exclusively dominated... by moments of leisure pursuits and vacations, moments represented at a distance... and postulated as desirable, like all spectacular commodities." "These commodities are here explicitly presented... as the moment of real life, it is only a matter of waiting for its cyclical return." "But in these very moments assigned to life, it is still the spectacle... which is to be seen and reproduced, as it attains a greater intensity." "What was represented as real life... reveals itself simply... as more truly spectacular life." "While the consumption of cyclical time in ancient societies... was in accord with the real labor of these societies, the pseudo-cyclical consumption... of a developed economy finds itself in contradiction with... the irreversible abstract time of its production." "While cyclical time was the time of static illusion, really lived, spectacular time... is the time of reality as it transforms itself, lived in illusion." "What's always new in the process of... the production of things... is never found in consumption, which remains the extended return of the same." "Because dead labor continues to dominate living labor, in spectacular time the past dominates the present." "Another side of the deficiency of general historical life... is that individual life has as yet no history." "The pseudo-events that crowd... into spectacular dramatization, have not been lived by those who are informed by them, and what's more, they are lost in the inflation of their hurried replacement, with each thrust of the spectacular machinery." "Furthermore, what was really lived... is without relation... to the irreversible official time of the society, and in direct opposition... to the pseudo-cyclical rhythm of the... consumable by-products of this time." "This individual experience of separate daily life remains... without a language, without concept, without critical access to its own past, which is recorded nowhere." "It is not communicated." "It is not understood and is forgotten... to the profit of the false spectacular memory... of the non-memorable." "That's the way it goes, with friends." "Lose one, find one." "Play something for me, Mr. Guitar." "Anything special?" "Just put a lot of love in it." "He ain't gonna play so good all stretched out on that crap table." "What's eating the fancy man?" "I don't know, what's your trouble, Kid?" "I'm in no trouble, he is." "Fooling with strange woman can bring a man a lot of grief." "You a strange woman?" "Only to strangers." "What's going on with you two?" "Just what you see friend." "Ooh, you picked the wrong place to come to, mister." "The lady sent for me, not you." "Head, I'm gonna kill you mister;" "tails, you can play her a tune." "Play me a tune." "Play something else." "The spectacle, as the present social organization... of the paralysis of history and of memory, of the abandonment of history... erected on the basis of historical time, is the false consciousness of time." "Under the fashions... which cancel themselves and are recomposed on the frivolous... surface of contemplated pseudo-cyclical time, the grand style of the epoch is... always to be found in what is oriented by the obvious... and secret necessity of revolution." "It was approaching midnight." "And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, to entertain these fair well-spoken days," "[?" "]I am determined to prove a villain,[?" "]" "and hate the idle pleasures of these days." "Reasoning about history is, inseparably, reasoning about power." "Greece was the moment... when power and its transformations were... argued and understood, the democracy of the masters of society." "That was the inverse of the conditions known to the... despotic State, where power... settles its accounts only with itself, in the inaccessible obscurity... of its most concentrated point, through a palace revolution, that success or failure... render equally beyond discussion." "In the Chronicle of the North men act in silence, they make war, they conclude peace, but they themselves... never say, nor does the chronicle add, why they make war, for what reason they make peace;" "in the city in the court of the prince, there is nothing to be heard, all is silent, all sit behind... closed doors, and deliberate for themselves; the doors open, the men come out onto the scene, they perform some action, but... they act in silence." "Soloviev, History of Russia From the Most Ancient Times." "When the dry, unexplained chronology of... divinized power speaking to its servants, that wishes to be understood only as the earthly execution... of the commandments of myth, can be surmounted... and becomes conscious history," "it has been necessary for real participation in history... to be lived by extended groups." "Out of this practical communication... among those who recognized each other... as the possessors of a singular present, who experienced the qualitative richness of events... as their activity... and as the place where they resided -their epoch-," "is born the general language of historical communication." "Those for whom irreversible time existed... discover in it both... the memorable and the threat of oblivion:" ""Herodotous of Halicarnassus presents here the results... of his researches, so that time might not abolish the acts of men..."" " Good evening, York." " Good evening, sir." "How about a cup of coffee?" "Be prepared to remain all winter, all next winter, if necessary." "I've waited a long time for that order, Sir..." " which of course I didn't hear." " Of course you didn't hear." "If you fail," "I assure you the members of your court martial will... be the men who rode with us down at Shenandoah." "I'll hand pick'em myself." "Shenandoah." "I wonder what history will say about Shenandoah." "The victory of the bourgeoisie... is the victory of profoundly historical time, because it is the time... of the economic production that transforms the society, permanently and from top to bottom." "As long as agrarian production... remains the principal labor, cyclical time... which remains present at the base of society... nourishes the combined forces of tradition, that will put the breaks on movement." "But the irreversible time of bourgeois economics... extirpates these survivals, throughout the entire world." "History, that until then appeared only... as the movement of the ruling class, and thus written as the history of events, is now comprised of general movement, and in this harsh movement individuals are sacrificed." "History which discovers its base in political economy... now knows of the existence of what had been its unconscious, but which remains, nonetheless, the unconscious which it cannot bring to light." "It is only this blind prehistory, a new fatality which no one dominates, that the commodity economy has democratized." "Thus the bourgeoisie has made known to and... imposed upon society, an irreversible historical time, but refuses to society its usage." ""History was, but it is no more,"" "because the class of the owners of the economy, which cannot break with economic history, must repress as an immediate threat... any irreversible use of time." "The ruling class, made up of specialists in the possession of things, who are themselves, because of that, a possession of things, must tie their fate... to the maintenance of this reified history, to the permanence of a new immobility in history." "For the first time, the worker, at the base of society, is not a stranger to history in a material sense, for now it is by means of this base that society irreversibly moves." "In the demand to live the historical time that it makes, the proletariat finds, the simple unforgettable center of its revolutionary project;" "and each of its attempts, smashed until now, to execute this project... marks a possible point of departure... for new historical life." "With the development of capitalism, irreversible time is unified globally." "Universal history becomes a reality, for the entire world is assembled for the development of this time." "But this history which is everywhere at one the same, is still only, the intra- historical refusal of history." "The time of economic production, cut into equal abstract fragments, appears across the entire planet as the same day." "Unified irreversible time is the time of the world market, and as a corollary of the world spectacle." "The irreversible time of production is first of all... the measure of commodities." "Thus, the time which is officially affirmed across... the entire expanse of the globe as the general time of society, signifying only the specialized interests which constitute it, is merely one particular time." "The class struggles of the long... revolutionary epoch... inaugurated by the rise of the bourgeoisie... develop inseparably from historical thought, dialectics, thought which no longer stops at an investigation of the meaning... of what is, but rises to the knowledge of the dissolution... of all that is;" "and in the movement dissolves all separation." "This historical thought is still only the consciousness... which arrives late, and which declares its justification post festum." "Thus, it has surpassed separation only in thought." "The paradox which consists in suspending... the meaning of all reality in favor of... its historical accomplishment, and in revealing this meaning at the same time... by constituting itself as the accomplishment of history, devolves from the simple fact... that the thinker of the bourgeois revolutions... of the 17th and 18th centuries... sought in his philosophy... only reconciliation with their results." "When the proletariat demonstrates... by its own existence in acts that... this historical thought is not forgotten, the denial of the conclusion... is also the confirmation of the method." "The flaw of Marx's theory... is naturally the flaw in the revolutionary struggle... of the proletariat of his epoch." "The working class did not decree permanent revolution... in Germany in 1848;" "the Commune was defeated in isolation." "Revolutionary theory can thus not yet attain... its own total existence." "All theoretical insufficiency... in the scientific defense of proletarian revolution- in the content as well as in the form of its exposition- can be traced back to an... identification of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie... from the point of view of the revolutionary seizure of power." "The only two classes which effectively correspond to Marx's theory, the two pure classes towards which the entire analysis of Capital leads, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, are likewise, the only two revolutionary classes in history," "but under different conditions:" "the bourgeois revolution is over;" "the proletarian revolution is a project, born on the basis of the preceding revolution, but differing from it qualitatively." "By neglecting the originality of the historical role of the bourgeoisie, one masks the concrete originality... of the proletarian project... which can accomplish... nothing save by carrying its own colors... and by knowing "the immensity of its tasks"." "The bourgeoisie came to power... because it is the class of the economy in development." "The proletariat can become a power itself only by becoming... the class of consciousness." "The maturing of productive forces... cannot guarantee such power, even by the detour of increased dispossession that it brings." "The Jacobin seizure of the State... cannot be its instrument." "No ideology can... be of use to disguise partial goals as general goals, for it can maintain... no partial reality which actually belongs to it." "The ideological alienation of theory... can longer recognize then the practical verification of... unified historical thought which it betrayed, when such a verification arose... in the spontaneous struggles of workers;" "it can only conspire to repress... the appearance and memory of such a thing." "However, these historical forms which have appeared within the struggle... are precisely the practical milieu... which was missing for theory in order for it to be true." "They are a requirement of theory, but had not been formulated theoretically." "The Soviet, was not a discovery of theory." "And already, the highest theoretical truth... of the International Workingmen's Association... was in its existence in practice." "You'll learn just how much the bread of strangers tastes of salt, and just how rude a passage it is, to descend and to climb the stairways of strangers." "[?" "]And the heaviest burden you will carry,[?" "]" "will be the bad and inept company... that you will fall in with in this valley of exile." "[?" "]So that it will be a credit to your honor, thereafter,[?" "]" "to have been a party unto yourself alone." "The same historical moment, when bolshevism triumphed for itself in Russia, and... when social democracy fought victoriously for the old world, marks the outright birth... an order of things... at the heart of the domination of the modern spectacle," "worker representation... came into radical opposition to the class itself." "Those who want to institute a State capitalism as the... property of a totalitarian bureaucracy and not destroy the Councils;" "or those who want to abolish class society and do not condemn... all unions and the specialized hierarchical parties- they will... endure but a short while." "The stalinist epoch... reveals the ultimate reality of the bureaucracy:" "it is the continuation of the power of the economy, the salvaging of the essential of commodity society, that is, labor as commodity." "This is the proof of the independent economy... which dominates society... to the point of recreating for its own ends... the class domination necessary to it:" "that is, the bourgeoisie... created an autonomous power which... as long as this autonomy subsists, can even do without a bourgeoisie." "Totalitarian bureaucracy is not..." ""the last property-owning class in history"... in Bruno Rizzi's sense, but only a substitute ruling class... for the commodity economy." "Faltering capitalist ownership... is replaced by a simplified, less diversified by-product, concentrated in the collective ownership of the bureaucratic class." "This underdeveloped form of ruling class... is also the expression of the economic underdevelopment;" "its only perspective is the delay in this development... in certain regions of the world." "It is the worker's party, organized according to the bourgeois model of separation, which furnished the hierarchical-statist cadre... for this supplementary edition of the ruling class." "The ideological-totalitarian class in power... is the power of a world turned upside down:" "the stronger it is, the more it asserts it does not exist, and its power serves it foremost to assert its non-existence." "It is modest on this single point, for its official non-existence must also coincide... with the nec plus ultra of historical development, which is due simultaneously to its infallible leadership." "Spread out everywhere, bureaucracy should be the invisible class for consciousness, so that all of social life becomes insane." "The social organization of the absolute lie... devolves from this fundamental contradiction." "The higher we ascend in this bureaucracy of intelligence, the more wondrous are the pates that we encounter." "Marx, Remarks on the Recent Rulings by the Prussian Board of Censors" "Stalinism was the reign of terror within the bureaucratic class itself." "Terrorism which is the foundation of the power of this class... must also strike this class, for it has no juridical guarantee, no recognized existence as the class of ownership, that it could extend to each of its members." "Its real ownership is dissimulated, and it came to ownership... only by the route of false consciousness." "False consciousness maintains its absolute power... only by absolute terror, where any true motivation is ultimately lost." "The members of the bureaucratic class in power... have no right of possession over society, except collectively, as participants in a fundamental lie:" "they must play the role of the proletariat... directing a socialist society;" "they must be actors faithful to the text of ideological infidelity." "But effective participation... in this deceptive entity... requires this participation be recognized as truthful." "No bureaucrat can individually maintain his right to power, for to prove he is a socialist proletarian... would be to show himself as the opposite of a bureaucrat;" "and to prove he is a bureaucrat is impossible, since the official truth of the bureaucracy is not to be." "In this way, each bureaucrat is absolutely dependent... upon a central guarantee by ideology, which recognizes a collective participation... in its "socialist power"... by all bureaucrats it does not annihilate." "If the bureaucrats taken as a group decide upon everything, the coherence of their own class... can be assured only by the concentration... of their terrorist power in a single person." "In this person... resides the only practical truth of the lie in power:" "the indisputable fixing of its constantly corrected frontier." "Stalin decides with no possible appeal... who finally is a propertied bureaucrat, that is to say, who is to be called "proletarian in power", or else "traitor in the pay of the Mikado and Wall Street."" "Bureaucratic atoms... find the common essence of their right, only in the person of Stalin." "Stalin is this sovereign of the world, who knows himself in this way to be the absolute person, for whose consciousness there exists no higher spirit." "The sovereign of the world possesses the effective... consciousness of what he is:" "the universal power of effectivity- in the destructive violence that he exercises against... the Self of his subjects who form a contrast for him." "Just as he is the power which defines... the terrain of domination, he is also "the power ravaging this terrain."" "Comrades!" "Alarming news." "The Reichstag is in flames." "Fascist Radio claims... that Communists started the Reichstag fire." "A monstrous provocation by the Nazi government." "The meeting is over." "They want to outlaw our party... to choke off the voice of the working class." "As long as there are communists in Germany... the fight against Hitler will never end." "...fight for peace among all peoples for Hitler, comrades, Hitler is war!" "There is a valley in Spain called Jarama." "It's a place that we all know too well." "For 'tis there that we wasted our manhood." "And most of our old age as well." "This social peace, reestablished at great cost... had lasted but a few years when there appeared, in order to announce its end, those who were to enter... the history of crime under the name of "Situationists"." "When the proletariat discovers that its own exteriorized force... conspires in the permanent reinforcement of capitalist society, no longer just in the form of labor, but also in the form of the unions, of the parties or of the state power... that it had constituted in order to emancipate... itself, it discovers as well by concrete historical experience... that it is the class totally inimical... to all fixed exteriorization... and to all specialization of power." "It carries the revolution which can leave nothing outside itself, the requirement of the permanent domination... of the present over the past, and the total critique of separation;" "and it must find the adequate form in action of this." "No quantitative improvement of its poverty, no illusion of hierarchical integration, is a durable remedy for its dissatisfaction... for the proletariat cannot truly recognize itself... in a particular wrong which it might have suffered, nor for that matter in the redress of a particular wrong," "nor of a great number of these wrongs, but only in the absolute wrong... of being relegated to the margins of life." "Comrades: the Sud-Aviation factory at Nantes having been... occupied for two days by the workers and the students... of that city, the movement extending today to various... factories [N.M.P.P. Paris, Renault" " Cleon and others] the Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne calls for the immediate... occupation of all factories in France and the formation of workers councils." "Comrades, broadcast and reproduce this call as quickly as possible." "Sorbonne, May 16, 15:00" "Occupation of the factories." "Workers Councils." "And the month of May will never return, from today until the end of the world... of the spectacle, without us being remembered..." "Comrades!" "Humanity of will only be happy on the day when the..." "Down with spectacular commodity society!" "Don't flatter yourself that they have no such plan, they must of necessity have one; and if chance willed them... not to have formed one, the very force of things... would lead them to one;" "conquest engenders conquest, and victory gives the thirst for victory." "Machivaelli, Letter to Francesco Vetton" "Run quickly, comrade, the old world is behind you!" "From February 25th, a thousand strange systems... impetuously sallied forth from the spirit of the innovators... and spread through the troubled spirit of the masses..." "It seemed that from the shock of the revolution, society had... been reduced to dust and that a competition had opened... to determine the new form to be given to the edifice... to be built in its place; each one proposed his plan," "this one produced it in the newspapers, that one in posters... that quickly covered the walls;" "another in the open air by means... of spoken words." "One pretended to destroy inequality of fortunes, another the inequality of intelligence, a third undertook... to level the most ancient of inequalities, that of man and woman;" "they indicated specific remedies for poverty and remedies for this... evil of labor which has tormented humanity as long as it has existed." "Tocqueville, Memoirs." "But neither wood nor fire... found appeasement," "[?" "]nor satisfaction nor rest,[?" "]" "in any heat, small or great, nor in any semblance, until fire... was made one with wood... and communicated to it its very nature..." "But then it happens that they are accused of vandalism... and that their disrespect for the machine is blamed and... stigmatized." "These critiques would be founded if there were... on the part of the workers a systematic will to deterioration, with no concern for a goal." "However, this is not the case." "If the workers attack the machines it is not for pleasure or for casual... amusement it is because an imperious necessity... obliges them to do so." "Emile Pouget, Sabotage" "By the new signs of negation, misunderstood and falsified by the management of the spectacle, that are multiplying in the most economically advanced countries, one may already draw the conclusion that... a new epoch has opened:" "after the first attempt at worker subversion, it is now capitalist abundance which has failed." "When the anti-union struggles of western workers... are repressed first by the unions, and when rebellious currents of youth... launch a first formless protest, in which, however, the refusal of the old specialized politics," "of art, of daily life, is immediately implicated, it's there that may be found the two faces of a new... spontaneous struggle which begins with a criminal aspect." "These are the advance signs... of the second proletarian assault against class society." "Once more Poland is covered in a bloody winding sheet... and we have remained impotent spectators." "Declaration of French workers at the meeting of the foundation... of the Internationale, September 28, 1864" "When the ever deepening... realization of capitalist alienation at all levels, rendering ever more difficult for workers... the recognition and naming of their own property, leaves them with the alternative of... refusing the totality of their misery or nothing," "the revolutionary organization must know that it can no longer... combat alienation with alienated means." "The very development of class society... to the point of the spectacular organization of non-life... thus leads the revolutionary project to become visibly... what it was already essentially." "Revolutionary theory... is now the enemy of all revolutionary ideology, and knows that it is." "Let us consider, however, the content of this experience in its entirety:" "this content is work which disappears..." "The fact of disappearing is also effectively real, and is attached to the work and itself disappears with the latter;" "[?" "]the negative goes under with the positive, of which it is the negation.[?" "]" "It would obviously be very convenient to make history... if one had only to engage in struggle under unerringly... favorable circumstances." "To completely destroy this society, it is clearly necessary to be ready to launch against it, ten times in succession or more, assaults of an importance... comparable to that of May 1968;" "and to hold as inevitable... inconveniences a certain number of defeats and civil wars." "The goals which count in universal history must be.... affirmed with energy and will." "7th Michigan!" "Forward, ho!" "Trot, ho!" "Gallop, ho!" "Charge!" "5th and 6th Michigan!" "Forward, ho!" "Trot, ho!" "Gallop, ho!" "Charge!" "Fight, you Wolverines!" "1st Michigan, charge!" "What on the contrary constitutes the merit of our theory, is not the fact of its having a correct idea, but of having... been naturally led to conceive this idea." "In sum, one cannot... reiterate it too strongly that here -as in the entire domain... of praxis- theory is there much more to educate the practitioner, to give him a sense of judgment, then to serve him as an... indispensable support at every step that the accomplishment... of this task necessitates." "Clausewitz, The Campaign of 1814" "Subtitles by hellboytr based on the translation by Keith Sanborn"