Conversation with Raoul Vaneigem

I.A.J. Karass 651 says:

The only real civil disobedience would be the disruption of civic services. To concern oneself constantly with the masses as an evolutionary socio-economic force is tantamount to confusing dynamite with opium. There is no class- consciousness. As Raoul Vaneigem asserts, his membership of the inchoate situationist movement was a personal evolution. The problem situationism faced, at its very beginning, was it’s own recuperation. Psychogeography is the intellectual noodling of the new (ha!) leftist media, as it relies not a wit (sic) on the morphic properties of any historical event, nor takes account of its recuperation and the metaphysical effects of its mediated translation. This means that signifiers do not reflect the reality, and that the signs which may lead one to suppose that any location might be of psychogeographical interest are likely removed from context, therefore recuperated. Any idea that the superseding of predatory behaviour can be overcome without a period of predatory behaviour are misguided and pie-in-the-sky. In true revolutionary form, Vaneigem rejects the very thing he is blamed for starting. The best way to make people’s blood boil? Forget art. Spend your every moment amongst the masses, stopping them when they drop litter, reporting them for any misdemeanour, report every council failure and failing in writing, grass on work colleagues who waste time, steal from the boss, and lie to get time off, phone the police – from a call box – every time a vehicle obstructs a public right-of-way, employ only immigrants where possible and always pay them the correct pay, copy everything you own and give it away for free, run for office and then blatantly abuse your position, et al, ad infinitum. The only way to destroy consumer capitalism is to completely overburden the state and its organs to the point of internal collapse. When the state has been completely negated, the proper power structure can kick in, and we can see how to deal with the predatory phase, without the mediated conscience-easing phase. The only thing predators respect is more dangerous predators. Eat them, round them up and corral them, who cares? You won’t expose them with art, erudite argument or tears. You won’t stop them with reflection on May 1968, which is of course recuperated. nor publicity, nor rationale. You won’t beat them with anything but more than they’ve got, of what they’ve got. This can only be achieved by remote viewing, communal immediatism and non-verbal communication. The theories of 70 years ago have their implementation – and evolutionary strength – outside the dialectic. Time to start thinking outside the box if you want your children to be free to think of new and unthought-of wonders. Your time, my friend, is up. While the left eschews the reality of superstition as the governing factor in the subjugation of the mass of people, it cannot hope to combat it (not that anyone is waiting for the left, one hopes). Financial capitalism is not collapsing: it is merely undergoing a shift that could be predicted by reading any situationist work properly. This shift is completely in line with the morphology inherent in any mathematical system, once it reaches a catastrophe (empirical zenith). This catastrophe is not predictable in strict terms – just like the weather – but to suppose that head honcho capitalists have all forgotten that their umbrellas even exist is naive in the extreme. They may not be able to predict exactly how or when the shift in economic modes would occur, but you can bet your behind, they’ve had models running for decades. To return to the premise of the first sentence of this comment (yes, it’s overlong), the disruption and destruction of social structures IS first. Be prepared for lots of predatory behaviour. You don’t make an omelette without cracking eggs, and you’d still be better off with a steamroller to crack these ones – who cares if the omelette’s ruined in the process? Intellectualism? (humbug). The steady mind, and the immediacy of the true idea realised without effort, are the conjoined paths to freedom – be it at the lowest common denominator, and at the heaviest of losses – freedom. Remember Durruti, and stop at nothing until the work is done. The artist is the destroyer of the creative principal in all hir spectators.