A lively new polemic about
the concepts one divides into two and two
fuse into one is unfolding on the philosophical
front in this country. This debate is a struggle between
those who are for and those who are against the materialist
dialectic, a struggle between two conceptions of the world:
the proletarian conception and the bourgeois conception.
Those who maintain that one divides into two
is the fundamental law of things are on the side of the
materialist dialectic; those who maintain that the fundamental
law of things is that two fuse into one are
against the materialist dialectic. The two sides have
drawn a clear line of demarcation between them, and their
arguments are diametrically opposed. This polemic is a
reflection, on the ideological level, of the acute and
complex class struggle taking place in China and in the
world.
Red Flag (Beijing), 21
September 1964
54
The spectacle, like modern society itself, is at once united
and divided. The unity of each is based on violent divisions.
But when this contradiction emerges in the spectacle, it
is itself contradicted by a reversal of its meaning: the
division it presents is unitary, while the unity it presents
is divided.
55
Although the struggles between different powers for control
of the same socio-economic system are officially presented
as irreconcilable antagonisms, they actually reflect that
systems fundamental unity, both internationally and
within each nation.
56
The sham spectacular struggles between rival forms of separate
power are at the same time real, in that they express the
systems uneven and conflictual development and the
more or less contradictory interests of the classes or sections
of classes that accept that system and strive to carve out
a role for themselves within it. Just as the development
of the most advanced economies involves clashes between
different priorities, totalitarian state-bureaucratic forms
of economic management and countries under colonialism or
semicolonialism also exhibit highly divergent types of production
and power. By invoking any number of different criteria,
the spectacle can present these oppositions as totally distinct
social systems. But in reality they are nothing but particular
sectors whose fundamental essence lies in the global system
that contains them, the single movement that has turned
the whole planet into its field of operation: capitalism.
57
The society that bears the spectacle does not dominate
underdeveloped regions solely by its economic hegemony.
It also dominates them as the society of the spectacle.
Even where the material base is still absent, modern society
has already used the spectacle to invade the social surface
of every continent. It sets the stage for the formation
of indigenous ruling classes and frames their agendas. Just
as it presents pseudogoods to be coveted, it offers false
models of revolution to local revolutionaries. The bureaucratic
regimes in power in certain industrialized countries have
their own particular type of spectacle, but it is an integral
part of the total spectacle, serving as its pseudo-opposition
and actual support. Even if local manifestations of the
spectacle include certain totalitarian specializations of
social communication and control, from the standpoint of
the overall functioning of the system those specializations
are simply playing their allotted role within a global
division of spectacular tasks.
58
Although this division of spectacular tasks preserves the
existing order as a whole, it is primarily oriented toward
protecting its dominant pole of development. The spectacle
is rooted in the economy of abundance, and the products
of that economy ultimately tend to dominate the spectacular
market and override the ideological or police-state protectionist
barriers set up by local spectacles with pretensions of
independence.
59
Behind the glitter of spectacular distractions, a tendency
toward banalization dominates modern society the
world over, even where the more advanced forms of commodity
consumption have seemingly multiplied the variety of roles
and objects to choose from. The vestiges of religion and
of the family (the latter is still the primary mechanism
for transferring class power from one generation to the
next), along with the vestiges of moral repression imposed
by those two institutions, can be blended with ostentatious
pretensions of worldly gratification precisely because life
in this particular world remains repressive and offers nothing
but pseudo-gratifications. Complacent acceptance of the
status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness
dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon
as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process
that particular raw material.
60
Stars spectacular representations of living human
beings project this general banality into images
of permitted roles. As specialists of apparent life,
stars serve as superficial objects that people can identify
with in order to compensate for the fragmented productive
specializations that they actually live. The function of
these celebrities is to act out various lifestyles or sociopolitical
viewpoints in a full, totally free manner.
They embody the inaccessible results of social labor
by dramatizing the by-products of that labor which are magically
projected above it as its ultimate goals: power and
vacations the decisionmaking and consumption
that are at the beginning and the end of a process that
is never questioned. On one hand, a governmental power may
personalize itself as a pseudostar; on the other, a star
of consumption may campaign for recognition as a pseudopower
over life. But the activities of these stars are not really
free, and they offer no real choices.
61
The agent of the spectacle who is put on stage as a star
is the opposite of an individual; he is as clearly the enemy
of his own individuality as of the individuality of others.
Entering the spectacle as a model to be identified with,
he renounces all autonomous qualities in order to identify
himself with the general law of obedience to the succession
of things. The stars of consumption, though outwardly representing
different personality types, actually show each of these
types enjoying equal access to, and deriving equal happiness
from, the entire realm of consumption. The stars of decisionmaking
must possess the full range of admired human qualities:
official differences between them are thus canceled out
by the official similarity implied by their supposed excellence
in every field of endeavor. As head of state, Khrushchev
retrospectively became a general so as to take credit for
the victory of the battle of Kursk twenty years after it
happened. And Kennedy survived as an orator to the point
of delivering his own funeral oration, since Theodore Sorenson
continued to write speeches for his successor in the same
style that had contributed so much toward the dead mans
public persona. The admirable people who personify the system
are well known for not being what they seem; they attain
greatness by stooping below the reality of the most insignificant
individual life, and everyone knows it.
62
The false choices offered by spectacular abundance
choices based on the juxtaposition of competing yet mutually
reinforcing spectacles and of distinct yet interconnected
roles (signified and embodied primarily by objects)
develop into struggles between illusory qualities designed
to generate fervent allegiance to quantitative trivialities.
Fallacious archaic oppositions are revived regionalisms
and racisms which serve to endow mundane rankings in the
hierarchies of consumption with a magical ontological superiority
and pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless
succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections.
Wherever abundant consumption is established, one particular
spectacular opposition is always in the forefront of illusory
roles: the antagonism between youth and adults. But real
adults people who are masters of their own lives
are in fact nowhere to be found. And a youthful transformation
of what exists is in no way characteristic of those who
are now young; it is present solely in the economic system,
in the dynamism of capitalism. It is things that
rule and that are young, vying with each other and constantly
replacing each other.
63
Spectacular oppositions conceal the unity of poverty.
If different forms of the same alienation struggle against
each other in the guise of irreconcilable antagonisms, this
is because they are all based on real contradictions that
are repressed. The spectacle exists in a concentrated
form and a diffuse form, depending on the requirements
of the particular stage of poverty it denies and supports.
In both cases it is nothing more than an image of happy
harmony surrounded by desolation and horror, at the calm
center of misery.
64
The concentrated spectacle is primarily associated with
bureaucratic capitalism, though it may also be imported
as a technique for reinforcing state power in more backward
mixed economies or even adopted by advanced capitalism during
certain moments of crisis. Bureaucratic property is itself
concentrated, in that the individual bureaucrat takes part
in the ownership of the entire economy only through his
membership in the community of bureaucrats. And since commodity
production is less developed under bureaucratic capitalism,
it too takes on a concentrated form: the commodity the bureaucracy
appropriates is the total social labor, and what it sells
back to the society is that societys wholesale survival.
The dictatorship of the bureaucratic economy cannot leave
the exploited masses any significant margin of choice because
it has had to make all the choices itself, and any choice
made independently of it, whether regarding food or music
or anything else, thus amounts to a declaration of war against
it. This dictatorship must be enforced by permanent violence.
Its spectacle imposes an image of the good which subsumes
everything that officially exists, an image which is usually
concentrated in a single individual, the guarantor of the
systems totalitarian cohesion. Everyone must magically
identify with this absolute star or disappear. This master
of everyone elses nonconsumption is the heroic image
that disguises the absolute exploitation entailed by the
system of primitive accumulation accelerated by terror.
If the entire Chinese population has to study Mao to the
point of identifying with Mao, this is because there is
nothing else they can be. The dominion of the concentrated
spectacle is a police state.
65
The diffuse spectacle is associated with commodity abundance,
with the undisturbed development of modern capitalism. Here
each individual commodity is justified in the name of the
grandeur of the total commodity production, of which the
spectacle is a laudatory catalog. Irreconcilable claims
jockey for position on the stage of the affluent economy’s
unified spectacle, and different star commodities simultaneously
promote conflicting social policies. The automobile spectacle,
for example, strives for a perfect traffic flow entailing
the destruction of old urban districts, while the city spectacle
needs to preserve those districts as tourist attractions.
The already dubious satisfaction alleged to be obtained
from the consumption of the whole is thus constantly
being disappointed because the actual consumer can directly
access only a succession of fragments of this commodity
heaven, fragments which invariably lack the quality attributed
to the whole.
66
Each individual commodity fights for itself. It avoids
acknowledging the others and strives to impose itself everywhere
as if it were the only one in existence. The spectacle is
the epic poem of this struggle, a struggle that no fall
of Troy can bring to an end. The spectacle does not sing
of men and their arms, but of commodities and their passions.
In this blind struggle each commodity, by pursuing its own
passion, unconsciously generates something beyond itself:
the globalization of the commodity (which also amounts to
the commodification of the globe). Thus, as a result of
the cunning of the commodity, while each particular
manifestation of the commodity eventually falls in battle,
the general commodity-form continues onward toward its absolute
realization.
67
The satisfaction that no longer comes from using
the commodities produced in abundance is now sought through
recognition of their value as commodities. Consumers
are filled with religious fervor for the sovereign freedom
of commodities whose use has become an end in itself. Waves
of enthusiasm for particular products are propagated by
all the communications media. A film sparks a fashion craze;
a magazine publicizes night spots which in turn spin off
different lines of products. The proliferation of faddish
gadgets reflects the fact that as the mass of commodities
becomes increasingly absurd, absurdity itself becomes a
commodity. Trinkets such as key chains which come as free
bonuses with the purchase of some luxury product, but which
end up being traded back and forth as valued collectibles
in their own right, reflect a mystical self-abandonment
to commodity transcendence. Those who collect the trinkets
that have been manufactured for the sole purpose of being
collected are accumulating commodity indulgences
glorious tokens of the commoditys real presence
among the faithful. Reified people proudly display the proofs
of their intimacy with the commodity. Like the old religious
fetishism, with its convulsionary raptures and miraculous
cures, the fetishism of commodities generates its own moments
of fervent exaltation. All this is useful for only one purpose:
producing habitual submission.
68
The pseudoneeds imposed by modern consumerism cannot be
opposed by any genuine needs or desires that are not themselves
also shaped by society and its history. But commodity abundance
represents a total break in the organic development of social
needs. Its mechanical accumulation unleashes an unlimited
artificiality which overpowers any living desire. The
cumulative power of this autonomous artificiality ends up
by falsifying all social life.
69
The image of blissful social unification through consumption
merely postpones the consumers awareness of
the actual divisions until his next disillusionment with
some particular commodity. Each new product is ceremoniously
acclaimed as a unique creation offering a dramatic shortcut
to the promised land of total consummation. But as with
the fashionable adoption of seemingly aristocratic first
names which end up being given to virtually all individuals
of the same age, the objects that promise uniqueness can
be offered up for mass consumption only if they have been
mass-produced. The prestigiousness of mediocre objects of
this kind is solely due to the fact that they have been
placed, however briefly, at the center of social life and
hailed as a revelation of the unfathomable purposes of production.
But the object that was prestigious in the spectacle becomes
mundane as soon as it is taken home by its consumer
and by all its other consumers. Too late, it reveals its
essential poverty, a poverty that inevitably reflects the
poverty of its production. Meanwhile, some other object
is already replacing it as representative of the system
and demanding its own moment of acclaim.
70
The fraudulence of the satisfactions offered by the system
is exposed by this continual replacement of products and
of general conditions of production. In both the diffuse
and the concentrated spectacle, entities that have brazenly
asserted their definitive perfection nevertheless end up
changing, and only the system endures. Stalin, like any
other outmoded commodity, is denounced by the very forces
that originally promoted him. Each new lie of the
advertising industry is an admission of its previous
lie. And with each downfall of a personification of totalitarian
power, the illusory community that had unanimously
approved him is exposed as a mere conglomeration of loners
without illusions.
71
The things the spectacle presents as eternal are based
on change, and must change as their foundations change.
The spectacle is totally dogmatic, yet it is incapable of
arriving at any really solid dogma. Nothing stands still
for it. This instability is the spectacles natural
condition, but it is completely contrary to its natural
inclination.
72
The unreal unity proclaimed by the spectacle masks the
class division underlying the real unity of the capitalist
mode of production. What obliges the producers to participate
in the construction of the world is also what excludes them
from it. What brings people into relation with each other
by liberating them from their local and national limitations
is also what keeps them apart. What requires increased rationality
is also what nourishes the irrationality of hierarchical
exploitation and repression. What produces societys
abstract power also produces its concrete lack of freedom.
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