"Communique From the SI Concerning Vaneigem"

Guy Debord

Part 2 [Continued from here]

This permanent refusal to envision a real historical development, which was the product of his awareness and his acceptance of a relative personal incapacity (which thus increased), was accompanied — as was normal with Vaniegem — by an enthusiastic insistence on a caricature of the totality, in the revolution as in the SI, on the magic fusion, one day, of a spontaneity finally liberated (for the masses and for Vaneigem personally) with coherence: in such a wedding of identifications, the vulgar problems of real society and real revolution would be instantaneously abolished even before one had the displeasure of considering them, which is obviously an amiable perspective for the philosophy of history at the end of a banquet.

Vaneigem handled the concept of the qualitative by the ton, but resolutely forget what Hegel, in The Science of Logic, called "the most profound and most essential quality," which is contradiction. "In relating to it, actually, identity is only the determination of what is simple and immediate, of what is dead, insofar as contradiction is the source of all movement, of all life. This is only to the extent that a thing includes within itself a contradiction that shows itself to be active and alive."

Vaneigem, except at the beginning, didn't love the life of the SI, but loved its dead image, which was a glorious alibi for his mediocre life and a totally abstract hope for the future. Seeing that Vaneigem was quite comfortably accomodated to such a phantom, one understands how he could totally disperse it with a single breath, exactly on 14 November 1970, when it became necessary for him to begin to express his dissatisfaction, because taking the side of satisfied silence was no longer sustainable.We certainly haven't at all insinuated that Vaneigem had "secret intentions." Our Declaration of 11 November is far from being devoted to Vaneigem alone; and he knows quite well that the American situationists had just addressed to us, in the space of several days, three letters that completely contradicted each other, none of which believed it to be its duty to cite or correct the preceding one, which obliged us, in this case, to formulate the hypothesis of the "hidden aims" of these comrades, because we did not for an instant believe in their mental debility. But the conduct of Vaneigem among us had always been known by all, and was of an incontestable, wretched transparence. The question — whittled down as time went on — was whether what, in the SI, had so many times merited critique or laughter would finally be surmounted or would last up until the end. One now knows the answer. Neither Vaneigem, nor any one else, was taken by surprise by a debate of which several texts — about which no one had ever expressed reservations — had, over the course of several months, affirmed that the debate was decisive, that its conclusion was urgent, that each member must know that our communal action was entirety at stake. Vaneiegm never had anything to fear from this "critique in good faith that one has so often seen spread itself after the fact [apres coup]."[9] Here, as elsewhere, his irony is ill-advised, because we know well that, in the SI, there have been several cases of sudden and surprising breaks, where the explication of the behavior of an individual has only been given to us after the fact. We know even better that one of the rare exercises of Vaneigem's radicality had always been his approval of the SI's exclusions and his trampling without regret upon individuals who, the night before, he'd not pained himself to critique. And what actually is the meaning of this anti-historical rage against "after the fact" judgments of what has caused the event? Must we not, for example, respond [after the fact] to the impoverishments that Vaneigem accumulated in his text of 14 November? He never breathed a word of them beforehand. Here, we are quite obliged to critique after the fact a precise manifestation of a lack of unawareness that it would been quite reckless to prognosticate in all of its details before Vaneigem's final blast of brilliance.

"The coherence of critique and the critique of incoherence are one and the same movement, condemned to destroying each other and freezing into ideologies the moment that separation introduces itself between the different groups in a federation, between individuals in an organization, and between the theory and practice of a member of this organization" (Vaneigem, in I.S. #11 ). One couldn't say it better; and one could hardly denounce with more impudence, in abstract universality, the very fault from which one suffers, so as to make it believed that, since one has denounced it precisely in general and everywhere, one will be completely exempt from it. Vaneigem wasn't unaware that, in the last analysis, his comrades would not cover an imposture of this kind, even if estimable memories, and the remains of an indulgent friendship founded on them, can delay for some time the conclusion that the least lucidity can impose, at first in all the details and then at the center of the problem. We don't have to pretend to ourselves that we are sure of anything or of anyone. We are only sure of the movement of history, insofar that we know how to recognize it by participating in it; and, without doubt, insofar as each one of us can recognize it in himself and is capable of proving it. In any case, it is obvious that the real and necessary complicity in an enterprise such as the SI isn't founded on a community of defects or on the "communal project" of dazzling from afar a multitude of followers, by the flat and foolish image of our collective splendor: we have always been in complete accord in rejecting these people and denouncing this image, but it is not possible to really accomplish this effort thoroughly when, even in the SI, this attitude of vague and soft effusion, this piety of the SI, exists in fact, without even having the excuse of ignorant distance. One has thus allowed the confortably optimistic notion of the complementarity of the participants, "without other proof," to affirm itself in too exaggerated a manner. Each finds himself and no one loses himself, since several specialties have their place in the sun: the Chamfort of the totality, the loyal drunkard, the thrower of paving stones of excellent intentions, etc.[10] It is here that absence becomes a politics of peaceful co-existence, and approbation becomes a necessity that passes itself off as chance. And it is here that Vaneigem has deceived the most, if not himself -- he has seen other deceptions -- then at least his comrades.

How can the contemplative situationists think — no matter how true their good will — to struggle against hierarchical follower-ism that is manifest around the SI, and that we have so strongly rejected and condemned, when they themselves are in fact followers in the SI, but adorned with an abstract and proclaimed intention to egalitarian participation? At this moment, scorn for exterior followers in fact becomes an imaginary confirmation of internal equality. But it is necessary to understand this "followerism" in its real complexity. Neither Vaneigem nor the others have ever been servile approvers of a politics that they have in fact disapproved: it is only Vaneigem's last text that, very unjustly, gives this image of himself. In reality, Vaneigem and the other comrades have always followed the decisions taken in the practice of the SI because they have truly approved them and, we dare say — as long as revolutionaries more consistent that us, or placed in more favorable conditions than we are, who have comprehended the strategy that we have followed and others that have been possible, haven't perceived our veritable errors — because they were good for our communal project. Vaneigem, always very firm against our enemies, has, in the last ten years, never done or envisioned doing anything opposed to the radicalism of the declared action of the SI. He has only cooperated very badly in the exercise of this radicalism. Vaneigem seems to have never wanted to face the simple fact that he who speaks so well commits himself to being there a little in a number of analyses and practical struggles, under pain of being radically deceptive. The SI, insofar as it is a half-community, can not discharge the obligation to manifest its violence or real perspectives on diverse, concrete occasions. The distance that Vaneigem had, for a long time, taken with respect to our action dissimulated for him many of the relationships, which in reality were hierarchical, that existed in this action and which his attitude of flight accepted and encouraged. But this same distance was precisely taken so as to not see this reality, instead of aiding the effort to surmount it. After having placed his trust in the SI as the radical guarantee of the personal life that he had accepted, he came to be in the SI as he was in his own life.

Thus, the Treatise on Living is part of a current of agitation of which one has not heard the last, and part of a movement from which its author has departed. He has spoken so as not to be. Nevertheless, the importance of this book does not escape anyone, because (over time) no one, not even Vaniegem, can ecsape its conclusions. As Vaneigem let the old world tread on his feet, the project in which he believed became exorcism, a vulgar sacralization of an everyday routine that, recognizing at every moment the extremely unsatisfying character of what he accepted, had all the more need to construct for itself an independent empire in the clouds of a spectacular radicality.

It is the totality that consoles, alas, and sustains he who has decided to endure everything in every detail, even by affecting to find almost everything to be very good. Apart from his opposition, affirmed once and for all, to the commodity, the State, hierarchy, alienation and survival, Vaneigem is quite visibly someone who is never opposed to anything in the specific life that is made for him, his entourage and his haunts [frequentations] — including, finally, his haunting of the SI. This strange timidity has prevented him from confronting what displeases him, but obviously not from resenting it sharply. He defends himself by circulating, by dividing his life into several permanent hourly and geographical sectors, between which he is left with a kind of railway freedom. Thus he consoles himself for a certain number of displeasures that he experiences everywhere by committing several miniscule acts of revenge on behalf of his so-often-humiliated radical importance, by engaging in small childish insolences, all likeably covered over with a gentle smile: in making people wait a little, in forgetting several times a very small detail of which he is in charge, in missing several meetings, in making himself, he believes, desired. It is in these things that he slightly compensates for the unhappy awareness of not having truly become Vaneigem, of having constantly withdrawn from adventure and even discomfort, and also from the search for the quality of moments and people; in brief, of not having done what he wants, after having said it so well.

Of the disastrous separation between theory and practice — which his whole life illustrates, to the point of having rapidly sterilized his capacities as a theoretician — without doubt nothing could be a more striking example than the following anecdote. On 15 May 1968, Vaneigem, having only arrived the night before, co-signed the circular To the members of the SI, to the comrades who have declared themselves in agreement with our theses, which called for immediate action on the most radical bases of what would become, in the following two or three days, the occupations movement. This circular analyzed the unfolding of the first days of May, said where we were (notably with respect to the Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne), envisioned the imminent possibilities of repression and even the possibility of a "social revolution." The first factory had been occupied the previous day and, at that time, the most imbecilic member of the most backward groupuscule didn't doubt that a very serious social crisis had begun. Nevertheless, Vaneigem, who was much better informed, as soon as he affixed his signature to our circular, boarded a train that very afternoon to return to the location of his Mediterranean vacation, which had long ago been scheduled. Several days later, learning abroad, from the mass media [English in original], of what had continued as foreseen in France, he naturally found it his duty to return, traversing with great difficulty the country, which was on strike, and rejoined us a week after his ridiculous blunder, that is, when the decisive days, during which we could do the most for the movement, had already passed. Therefore, we know well that Vaneigem truly loves revolution, and that it isn't courage that he lacks. We thus can only understand this as the limiting-case of the separation between a rigorous routine of an unskakably orderly everyday life and a real but greatly disarmed passion for revolution.

Now that the alibi of the SI has been withdrawn from Vaneigem, and given that he continues to proudly announce the objective of perfecting his coherence on foot and in cars, alone and "with the greatest number," he must wait for all those who will associate [frequenteront] themselves with him and will not be stupid enough — which will be a minority, without doubt — to ask him, at one time or another, how, where, doing what and struggling for which precise perspectives he will henceforth put in play his famous radicality and his remarkable "taste for pleasure." The charming silence that speaks volumes on the mysteries of the SI will no longer suffice; and his responses to these questions will be full of interest.

We have here responded seriously to what clearly no longer exists. This is because we continue to occupy ourselves with the theoretical tasks and the practical conduct of the SI, and because, in this single perspective, all this has importance. It is this change, and our bad humour or our impatience, that has obliged us to settle a state of fact, to break with a certain situationist conservatism that has for too long demonstrated its force of inertia and its pure will for reproduction. We no longer want with us, neither Vaneigem, nor those who still aspire to imitate him, nor other comrades whose participation can almost completely be summarized as a formalist game in the organization, hollow correspondences on trifles "between sections," false nuances and interpretations that are sustained and withdrawn, from one continent to another, and six months later, on simple decisions taken in ten minutes by all those who, being there, have direct experience of the question — while the participation of these same comrades in our theory and real activity reduces itself to something nearly imperceptible. The revolutionaries who are not members of the SI — without regally draping themselves in the "quality" of being a situationist — have done much more to diffuse our theory (and even, several times already, to develop it) than several immobilized "situationists." We will prove once again that we will not play with being the leadership of a new revolutionary current, by breaking as precisely as possible with the derisory myth of the SI, inside as well as outside of it. Today as before, the real activity of the SI pleases us more. And the reality of the revolutionary era in which we have entered is even more our veritable victory.

At the moment, in an out-of-date university style, Vaneigem affects to want to let "the historians" judge the action of which he has taken part. Among other things, he thus has forgotten that "the historians" do not judge, but history, that is to say, those who make it. As long as they haven't been eaten alive (as one of our friends from long ago once said), the professional historians only follow [history]. And so, on this question as on so many others, the historians will only confirm the judgment of the SI.

Signed, Guy Debord[11]

Notes

[1] The jours de fete might also suggest "birthdays," as in anniversaries of May 1968.

[2] The day that the "11 November 1970" tendency was declared by Guy Debord, Rene Riesel and Rene Vienet.

[3] Known as The Revolution of Everyday Life in English.

[4] The bouffonnerie fondamental carries an echo of the title of Vaneigem classic text, "Basic Banalities."

[5] An allusion to Marx's comments about the commodity in Das Capital:

The form of wood, for instance, is altered if a table is made out of it. Nevertheless, the table continues to be wood, an ordinary, sensuous thing. But as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were to begin dancing [umdrehen] of its own free will.

[6] A reference to Vaneigem's absence from Paris during the first-half of May 1968.

[7] "Some Theoretical Topics that Need to be Dealt With without Academic Debate or Idle Speculation," I.S. 10, March 1966; "Aiming for Practical Truth," I.S. 11, October 1967; and "Notice to the Civilized Concerning Generalized Self-Management," I.S. 12, September 1969.

[8] See the letter addressed by all sections of the SI by Debord, Rothe and Sebastiani, dated 14 February 1970.

[9] Apres coup can also mean "when it is too late."

[10] Raoul Vaneigem, Guy Debord, Patrick Cheval (?), etc.

[11] [Footnote by Alice Debord:] This communique would be co-signed by Rene Vienet.

[Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 4, 1969–1972. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! June 2005. Footnotes by NOT BORED! except where noted.]