A Basic Introduction to the Situationists
Situationism is the sequel to Marx's critique of capitalism
If you're seeking to wrap your head around the ideas of the Situationists, there are two must-read books: Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" and Raoul Vaneigem's "The Revolution of Everyday Life".
In terms of their political beliefs, think of the Situationists as communists who didn't quite agree with the State's role - a bit like anarchists. They had a lot of respect for Marx's ideas, but they didn't quite fall into the classic anarchist camp, even though they shared some common ground, especially when it came to the resistance against State power.
There's a mistaken belief that the Situationists are just too hard to understand, being a bunch of Marxist intellectuals. So, people tend to think they don't have much to offer the everyday folks who are more interested in the simple, straightforward ideas of anarchists.
This misunderstanding often resonates with anarchists who are a bit allergic to anything that smacks of "Marxist" or "theoretical". And it's also appealing to those anarchists who aren't really into the depths of Marxist theory or anarchist principles. They're more about the surface-level allure of identity politics or leftist preaching. Other misconceptions crop up when people disconnect the idea of the 'Spectacle' from Debord’s critique of capitalism, or when they focus only on the surface-level elements of Situationist International — like their lifestyle or aesthetic.
To really get the Situationists, you've got to see them in the same frame as Marx. They viewed their own mission as a kind of sequel to Marx's takedown of capitalism (I'll be diving deeper into this in the next part of this essay).
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it,” wrote Marx. “So far philosophers and artists have only interpreted situations; the point now is to transform them,” wrote the Situationists.
In a lot of ways, the Situationist's approach to bringing art into everyday life (and pushing away its exclusive status) mirrors Marx's move to integrate philosophy into the common person's worldview and lifestyle. Just like Marx, the Situationists were energized by Hegel's ideas. In their mission to keep Marx's theory alive, they kept coming back to Hegel for inspiration.
In the early days, Situationists wanted to shake up the monotonous rhythms and roles of everyday life under capitalism. They were all about crafting unique, high-passion "situations." They had a thing for cityscapes and architecture. They used to roam around cities in these aimless, adventurous strolls, they called 'derives'. It was their way of soaking in the urban vibe, seeing the city in a fresh light, and noting down their observations and experiences.
The Situationists took to “[t]he study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals,” which they termed “psychogeography.”
Situationists held a strong belief that art shouldn't be confined to galleries or museums, but should seep into our everyday lives. They aimed to dismantle the conventional concept of art as a segregated realm, and wanted to infuse the passion and beauty of art into our day-to-day existence.
In shaping their political theory, Situationists were influenced by a mix of philosophers and thinkers. They borrowed ideas from Marx, Hegel, and Lukacs. A French group called 'Socialism or Barbarism' inspired their critique of the Soviet Union. They looked up to humanist Marxist Henri Lefebvre, who questioned the monotony of everyday life. And to some extent, they also found inspiration in the ideas of Wilhelm Reich and Nietzsche.
Some concepts of the Situationists:
Recuperation and Detournement
Recuperation is like a safety valve for the system, a way to redirect social unrest into actions that actually keep capitalism ticking along. To get recuperation, you've got to see how it keeps the lid on workers' struggles, how it smooths their demands into the flow of capitalism's game plan. Recuperation isn't some accidental byproduct—it's a key job of the media and modern labor unions.
Think about how punk rock fashion, once a symbol of rebellion, is now sold in high-end stores. That's recuperation in action. The sad truth is, punk culture, with all its bravado, hasn't really managed to pose a meaningful challenge to the status quo. That's what makes it such an easy target for recuperation. And let's not forget the left. Seen as the loyal opposition to capitalism, it often ends up embodying political recuperation—it helps keep things within the realm of politics and representation.
Detournement is a sort of a counter-move to recuperation. It's about grabbing images or ideas and giving them a twist to poke at the mainstream culture. Imagine it like this: the Situationists took popular comic strips and swapped out the characters' original words for revolutionary ideas and catchphrases. Now that is detournement in action.
Alienation and Separations
In his 1844 writings, Marx highlighted how capitalism creates a disconnect, which he called 'alienation.' He noted that workers in a capitalist society have to trade their time and effort (what he calls labor-power) to business owners just to get by. This trade-off means that instead of work being a way for people to express their creativity and follow their passions, it becomes more like a chore that's forced upon them by others. So, in essence, the worker “alienates” and hands over their labor-power, their ability to work, to get their pay-check.
Marx realised that this setup alienates the worker in four ways:
From the result of his work - the worker doesn't get to decide what happens to what they've created.
From the work itself - the way they work is decided by the business owner, not the worker.
From their human nature - work isn't just about survival, it's about growth and creativity. But in a capitalist system, the focus is solely on survival.
From other people - workers aren't able to choose their tasks collaboratively, and instead, have to answer to a boss who makes all the decisions.
The Situationists, unlike their Marxist-Leninist counterparts, leaned heavily on Marx's theory of alienation to dissect and understand modern capitalism. They were clear that fighting the sense of alienation in society couldn't be done using tools that perpetuated that very feeling. In other words, systems that don't let people freely decide how they want to work together — like hierarchies — only fuel this alienation. These structures push people to labor for causes or ideals that aren't their own.
In line with a group called Socialism or Barbarism, the Situationists wanted to erase the line dividing those who give orders and those who take them. Their deep disapproval of the alienating effect of such divisions was what made them oppose the state so vehemently — seeing it as a prime example of a system that perpetuates this alienation. The Situationists also characterised spectacular society (a deep dive on the Spectacle will be published later) as a system of separations.
As the situationist-influenced Against Sleep And Nightmare writes, “As the market expands, it needs to sell more commodities. To sell the commodities, a capitalist has to make people not just want the commodity but need the commodity. By fragmenting more areas of previously undifferentiated social life into quantifiable units, the capitalists forced atomised workers to meet their needs externally rather than through community-direct non-market relations.”
As the grip of the economy tightens, reaching further into our lives and dictating more of our actions, we feel a growing distance from each other and even our own wants and abilities. The Situationists offered a framework for understanding this growing sense of alienation we see mirrored in modern art and literature. They held a firm belief: only by dismantling capitalism can we truly escape the all-consuming control of the economy over every aspect of our lives.
Specialisation and Militant-ism
Marx once noted that societies with distinct social classes often have work divided up between mental and physical tasks. Capitalism takes this further, carving up our lives into more and more areas that need managing and overseeing. This gives rise to an army of experts — psychologists, academics, scientists, and so on - whose roles often serve to keep the wheels of capitalism turning. Most of the time, we don't consciously decide to rely on these specialists, it's simply how the system operates. A prime example is our political system, where a group of specialized individuals, known as politicians, make decisions on behalf of the people, whether the people asked for this representation or not.
The Situationists had a bone to pick with the role of the militant left-wing activist. In their eyes, these activists just played into the divisions they despised — those people who passionately champion a cause and then work to persuade others to join them. These activists often end up claiming to speak for "the people" and to know what's best for "the people". In essence, they become would-be bureaucrats. The Situationists saw this critique of specialisation as a broader criticism of a society divided by class, and a way to emphasize the values of a communist society.
As Marx once put it, "In a communist society there are no painters but at most people who engage in painting among other activities."
In other words, everyone should be free to explore different aspects of life without being boxed into a single role.
Subjectivity
The Situationists stood against the impersonal nature of both Marxism-Leninism and corporate capitalism. They celebrated the power of individuals to be active participants in shaping history, not just passive pawns in a bureaucratic game. Despite the ever-growing wealth and our ability to buy more and more stuff, they pointed out a crippling perpetual boredom and deepening sense of dissatisfaction with daily life. They were vocal critics of the drudgery and dullness of a society obsessed with commodities.
They gave voice to the subjective feelings of being oppressed and passive that many people feel in a capitalist society, rather than just focusing on economic battles or political disputes. Vaneigem, one of the Situationists, really stood out for his focus on our personal desires and how they're often frustrated in our society.
Survival
The Situationists saw a world increasingly dominated by work culture and felt compelled to point out that just getting by isn't the same as truly living. Their focus on our individual feelings and experiences brought this issue into sharp focus. Marx himself had taken a hard look at how our jobs can devalue our humanity. Marx said, in essence, that a job isn't fulfilling a need, but just a way to meet other needs. You work, get a pay-check, and use that to buy things, but you don't really have any control over what you're making.
This idea became a cornerstone of the Situationists' view of life versus mere survival. To them, living means embracing your desires and creativity, while survival boils down to working, buying stuff, and mindlessly watching TV. Often, they took Marx's ideas and built upon them, a necessary step considering how much capitalism had changed in a hundred years.
Ideology
“Revolutionary theory is now the sworn enemy of all revolutionary ideology, and knows it,” wrote Debord in The Society of the Spectacle.
The Situationists were known to remind their audience that Marx had a bone to pick with ideology. Marx didn't dig deep into this critique, but it's threaded through much of his work, especially in "The German Ideology" where he challenged the thinking of German philosophers.
Think of ideology as a kind of smokescreen, created and upheld by those in power to keep their place on top. A prime example of this is the concept of the 'divine right of kings.' Other concepts like Racism, Social Darwinism, Liberalism, and Progress also fall into this category. These are all ideas that capitalism has leveraged at different times and for different reasons. Under capitalism, ideology tends to appear as what's called reification of thought, or a disconnect between theory and practice. When theory gets cut off from action like this, it can often slide into becoming ideology itself.
The Situationists understood the issue when a theory about worker's control is distanced from the reality, as shown by the ideology of the Bolsheviks. The Soviet Bureaucracy maintained power by peddling the idea of worker's control or a "worker's state," creating a kind of smokescreen to hide the ongoing exploitation of workers. According to this myth, the workers weren't exploited because everything they did was supposedly for the betterment of the worker's state - which they were part of. So, if workers protested against this state, they were labelled as counter-revolutionaries, essentially turning them into enemies of what was considered the embodiment of revolution.
Ideology has a certain religious element to it. On a personal level, it looks like ideas ruling over individuals — people living their lives for an ideology (much like a deity), rather than pursuing their own desires.
Final commentary
The ideas of the Situationists are more than just intellectual thoughts; they're a way to understand our daily lives in a world that often feels superficial and driven by money. They teach us about the ways work can feel disconnected and how even rebellion can be turned into a commodity. But their message goes beyond criticism. They invite us to see art and life as connected, to use the ideas of thinkers like Marx to make sense of today's world, and to break down the barriers that hold us back. They challenge us to not just get by but to truly live, guided by our own creativity and desires. By listening to the Situationists, we can see a way to make our lives more colorful and free, where our ideas and our everyday experiences are part of the same rich picture.