1. Introduction
Alienation awaits those in the working class (Braverman, 1974; Jackson, 2022; Sawyer & Gampa, 2020). The mode of production within a society shapes and constrains aspects of work, leisure, consumption, and life itself (Brand, 2022; Johnson, 2021). The modern, capitalist mode of production is primarily characterized by the private ownership of the means of production (e.g., factories, equipment, technology, tools), extraction of surplus value, capital accumulation, and wage-based labor (Cahen-Fourot, 2020; Neckel, 2020). Debord (2014) explained that “in societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation” (p. 2, emphasis in original). Marked by the capitalist mode of production, wage-based labor, and pronounced consumerism, modern society has long been a spectacle (Blühdorn, 2020; Stratton, 2020). This is most pronounced in terms of the prominence of consumerism in modern society.
Consumerism is central to both the modern economy (Degli Antoni & Faillo, 2022; Ortega Alvarado et al., 2023) and society (Berkey, 2021; Murray, 2020). Whereas this mode of being is generally accepted, perhaps taken for granted, it is worth noting that the degree of consumerism within modern societies was manufactured by design. Propaganda was used and continues to be used, by corporations to manipulate citizens, transforming them from people into consumers (Bernays, 2005; Rubin, 2022). Consumption is presented as a means of personal fulfillment (Atkinson & Kang, 2022; Ganassali & Matysiewicz, 2021). Rather than being a source of satisfaction, the need for perpetual consumption has led to both alienation and conformity (Chéron et al., 2022; Gilabert, 2020). Breaking free from this spectacle perpetuated through consumption, perpetuated through consumption, is facilitated by an awareness of the roles of both ideology and revolution.
Without resistance, the spectacle of modern consumption replicates and expands throughout society. Informed resistance against this spectacle can be achieved through an examination of the ideological sediment of mass consumerism. Ideology, in this context, is the unconsciously accepted constraints associated with social existence (Roucek, 1944; Schmitt et al., 2022). Overcoming this ideology requires a revolution. In this context, a revolution is a conscious action of transcending subconsciously accepted ideology (Moll, 2022; Ponce de León & Rockhill, 2020). Communication approach is influenced by rhetorical context (Reboulet & Jackson, 2021). This is relevant for understanding Guy Debord’s (2014) The Society of the Spectacle. Sussman (1989) indicated that “it is reductive and misleading to enumerate…concepts out of context,” and that by examining this work of Debord’s, one can revitalize the “condition of everyday life through a transformation of its signs and gestures” (p. 8). Such a revolution requires confronting the underlying ideology dominant within society. As such, ideology and revolution reside at the core of understanding and overcoming the spectacle. Examining Debord’s usage of the variants of the terms ideology and revolution in The Society of the Spectacle, is useful to those who find themselves exhausted and disillusioned by modern consumerism. This understanding can form a basis for individual and collective liberation.
For Debord (2014), a spectacle is not a collection of images but rather a social relationship mediated by images in a consumer economy. In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord examined this spectacle and, in so doing, identified its ideological and revolutionary components. This study examined the variants of the terms ideology and revolution as used by Debord in The Society of the Spectacle. The approach taken was an application of the Key Word In Context (KWIC) textual analysis technique (Brezina, 2018; Jackson & Heath, 2023; Jockers, 2014), performed at the sentence level of observation. These observations were subsequently analyzed both semantically using the Bing sentiment lexicon in the dplyr package in RStudio (Wickham et al., 2023b) and thematically using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) approach (Silge & Robinson, 2017). Through this analysis of Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, with its focus on the terms ideology and revolution, the results provide a foundation for understanding a critique of consumerism.
This study of The Society of the Spectacle seeks to understand how modern consumer societies perpetuate alienation and maintain power structures through hidden ideologies. By examining Debord’s (2014) concepts of ideology and revolution, the study aims to reveal how consumerism is legitimized and highlights the potential for revolutionary change. Ultimately, the study provides insights for challenging and transforming societal structures, empowering individuals and groups towards meaningful liberation. The format of this paper is a survey of the literature, methods, results, limitations, and conclusion. A review of prior research on ideology, revolution, and Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle follows (Section 2).
2. Survey of Literature
Concern with worker alienation is not new. Neither is the awareness of the subjugating effect of mass consumerism. Prior research has examined worker exploitation (Boersma & Nolan, 2022; Manokha, 2020; Quirk et al., 2020), consumer debt (Greenberg & Mogilner, 2021; Jaikumar & Sharma, 2021; Leandro & Botelho, 2022), the manufacturing of insatiable demand for consumer products (Bziker, 2021; Harvey, 2020; Pettini & Musikanski, 2023), and the use of propaganda to generate support for free-market capitalism (Beder, 2024; Klikauer, 2021; Oreskes et al., 2020). Placing the existing research in context benefits from an organizing schema. This survey of literature examines insights derived from prior research on ideology (Section 2.1), revolution (Section 2.2), and The Society of the Spectacle (Section 2.3).
2.1. Ideology
Capitalist ideology has been examined and critiqued from a variety of perspectives, including surplus value (Ford, 2021; Selwyn, 2020), class consciousness (Fuchs, 2021; Ji, 2020), and equality (Milner, 2021; Platz, 2020). Whereas each application is unique in terms of its specific content and insight, common features emerge regarding the form, content, and function of ideology. Central to any coherent critique of the capitalist ideology is an understanding of what ideology is and how it functions within a society. The first step in that process of understanding is to define ideology as clearly as possible.
Whereas there is no single definition of ideology, Geuss’s (2008) definition of ideology as “a set of beliefs, attitudes, preferences that are distorted as a result of the operation of specific relations of power,” in which “the distortion will characteristically take the form of presenting these beliefs, desires, etc., as inherently connected with some universal interest, when in fact they are subservient to particular interests” (p. 52), hits upon key aspects of ideology worthy of elaboration. First, as defined by Geuss, ideology reflects a distortion of reality based on specific relations of power. In this case, the relation of power exists between the working and capitalist classes. Second, this ideological distortion takes hold collectively using some universal interest (e.g., freedom, patriotism), which is invoked to mask the underlying particular interest (e.g., profit, power). Ideology exists to legitimate existing regimes of power. As Althusser (2014) explained, “in the domain of ideologization, all this constitutes the multi-form arsenal of a power whose center is and remains the state, that is to say, the (bourgeois) holders of state power, who exercise their class power through the various specialized apparatuses with which the state is endowed” (p. 87). Ideology is enacted directly and indirectly through institutions for the benefit of those in power. In this way, ideology is a conservative force insofar as it exists to maintain the status quo. Specific, real, material considerations within a given society are the basis of subsequently formed ideological positions. Gramsci (2021) noted that, “material forces are the content and ideologies are the form” (p. 377). It is the existing material conditions associated with a regime of power that are legitimated through ideology. Given the centrality of capitalism within modern society, the use of ideology to legitimate its practices and consequences is readily available.
In the absence of brute force, capitalism, a system built upon a foundation of the widespread exploitation of the working class, requires the effective use of ideology for its general acceptance by those it exploits. Such ideological legitimation is multifaceted and mutually reinforcing. The ideological “pieces” of the system work together to strengthen the acceptance of the whole. Oliga (1996) defined “three ideological pillars that sustain and reproduce individualism in capitalist society: utility as the basis of value, self-interest as the basis of rational behavior, and free market competition as the basis of social efficiency” (pp. 45-46). The focus on the individual under the capitalist regime of power is essential because it precludes, or at least impedes, the development of class consciousness and solidarity among workers that would challenge the status quo. Gros (2020) described how “mass capitalism produces standardized behaviors…uniformizing their modes of consumption and normalizing their desires” (p. 87). At the macro level, the ideology of capitalism is focused primarily on ensuring its own reproduction. As Althusser (2014) explained, it is “under the forms of ideological subjection that the reproduction of the qualification of labor-power is ensured” (p. 52). The capitalist system is designed to replicate, regenerate, adapt, and expand. Capitalism is totalizing in its aim. Its ideology is used to gain and sustain mass acceptance by the people it exploits.
Research on ideology reveals that it functions largely in obscurity. General interests, desired by most, are used to cloak specific interests that benefit a few. Using direct and indirect means, those in power can normalize the dominant ideology and have it passively accepted by the masses without much, if any, conscious thought. This is by design. To overcome the ideology of the capitalist class, one must first become aware of it. After awareness is gained by the masses, revolutionary action is possible.
2.2. Revolution
Revolutions are fundamental and significant changes, typically occurring in a relatively short period, involving the transformation of an existing system, structure, or society and leading to the establishment of a new order or paradigm (Amann, 1962; Goldstone, 2023). Metaphorically, Alinsky (1989) linked ideology and revolution by stating that “revolution has always advanced with an ideological spear just as the status quo has inscribed its ideology upon its shield” (p. 10). Revolutions can occur in a variety of areas, each bringing about profound changes in their respective fields. Among others, there are political (Smith, 2018; Ticktin, 2024), social (Duong, 2019; Lachapelle et al., 2020), technological (Khan et al., 2022; Park & Kim, 2020), economic (Guy, 2020; Huafang, 2024), cultural (Bai & Wu, 2020; Huang et al., 2020), and scientific (Ju et al., 2020; Kuhn, 1996) revolutions. Whereas each of these areas is distinct from the others as academic disciplines, the effects and consequences of actual revolutions tend to ripple out from its source of origin influencing a multitude of interrelated fields within a society. Overcoming the dominant ideology of the capitalist class and emancipating people from consumerism entails a political, economic, social, and cultural revolution.
A critique of consumerism requires an examination of the capitalist ideology. Fromm (2010) explained that “capitalism puts things (capital) higher than life (labor). Power follows from possession, not from activity” (p. 56), and “production is guided by the principle that capital investment must bring profit, rather than by the principle that the real needs of people determine what is to be produced” (p. 57). The capitalist ideology privileges the accumulation of wealth over labor. This is consequential for those in the working class. Workers are subjugated by the capitalist system. As Lenin (2011) described the dynamic between labor and capital, “the proletariat is oppressed, the laboring masses are enslaved by capitalism” (p. 96). Such perpetual degradation holds the potential to radicalize workers to the point of revolution. Such a view is consistent with Debray’s (2017) assessment that “the Revolution will arise from existing or latent economic struggles, which will be sharpened to the point of becoming a mass insurrection” (p. 36). Ultimately, the choice is between working towards their emancipation or working to make a tighter cage. Braverman (1974) explained how workers “remain servants of capital instead of freely associated producers who control their own labor and their own destinies, work every day to build for themselves more ‘modern,’ more ‘scientific,’ more dehumanized prisons of labor” (p. 233). Under such circumstances, revolution is a reasonable response.
Through its extraction of surplus value, capitalism enlarges the size of the working class. Engels (2020) described that “whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution” (p. 67). Politically, socially, and organizationally, there is debate as to whether reform is preferable to revolution. Time is wasted on what amounts to a semantic difference lacking a pragmatic distinction. As Luxemburg (2024) explained, “legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of historic development,” they are, in fact, “different factors in the development of class society…every legal constitution is the product of a revolution…revolution is the act of political creation” (pp. 78-79). Getting bogged down in the semantic distinctions between reform and revolution is a ploy of the capitalist ideology designed to delay action. Revolutionary action.
That capitalism creates the conditions calling for revolution does not mean there is agreement as to what the ensuing revolution should contain or how it should be pursued. The content and tactics are contestable. According to Debray (2017), “there is no exclusive ownership of the revolution” (p. 125). Given that ambiguity, it is constructive to examine previous revolutionary attempts. Marcuse (1969) described that those engaged in the Paris protests of May 1968, “raised…the specter of a revolution which subordinates the development of productive forces and higher standards of living to the requirements of creating solidarity for the human species, for abolishing poverty and misery…they have taken the idea of revolution out of the continuum of repression and placed it into its authentic dimension: that of liberation” (pp. ix-x). The need for greater solidarity is shared by Alinsky (1989) who noted that “a major revolution to be won…is the dissipation of man’s illusion that his own welfare can be separate from that of all others” (p. 23). Such solidarity does not negate the role of the individual. In fact, revolution requires the coherent integration of individual action. For Gros (2020), “the core of a revolution is when each person refuses to leave to anyone else their ability to efface themselves so that justice may be restored, when each person discovers themselves to be irreplaceable in their service to humanity as a whole, when each has the experience of the impossibility of delegating care for the world to others” (p. 157). Capitalist ideology emphasizes the individual over all else. That prioritization precludes the development of the class consciousness needed for revolution. Solidary does not erase the individual; it provides the space necessary for its authentic expression with that of others for revolutionary effect.
Revolution is possible. In fact, “the revolution is already on the agenda” (Althusser, 2014: p. 6). The revolution against the spectacle of consumerism at the core of the capitalism is overdue. Its delay betrays the power and pervasiveness of the capitalist ideology. Prior to enacting the revolution, it is beneficial to narrow the focus to include existing research on Debord’s (2014) The Society of the Spectacle (presented in Section 2.3).
2.3. The Society of the Spectacle
Prior to his suicide, Debord (1998) indicated that “when the spectacle was concentrated, the greater part of surrounding society escaped it; when diffuse, a small part; today, no part. The spectacle has spread itself to the point where it now permeates all reality” (p. 9). Existent research on Debord’s (2014) The Society of the Spectacle, has focused on alienation (Bunyard, 2017; Ringer & Briziarelli, 2016), media (Faucher, 2018; Kellner, 2005), consumerism (de Castro, 2015; Dutriaux & Tholas, 2018; Eagles, 2012; Russell, 2019; Worrell, 2009), ideology (Brown, 2016; Bunyard, 2023; Pătraşcu, 2013; Teurlings, 2013), social relations (Briziarelli & Armano, 2017; Leung, 2010; Fearnley, 2019), and revolution (Bunyard, 2023; Kaplan, 2012; Yan, 2018). Collectively, this research is useful for understanding the content, applications, and consequences of Debord’s work. Here, the previous research on consumerism, ideology, and revolution is particularly relevant. Key findings from the research related to ideology in The Society of the Spectacle are presented first.
Since the publication of Debord’s (2014) The Society of the Spectacle, in 1967, subsequent research has developed insights related to the role ideology plays in the society of the spectacle. Teurlings (2013) described how “the viewer or ideological subject is ‘sutured’ into the dominant ideology, not because the spectacle is so effective but because the foregrounding of the machinery creates the illusion of mastery over the spectacle, and therefore offers even more pleasure in viewing it” (p. 521). The two elements of mastery and pleasure are important. First, the ideological subject thinks one has control, or mastery, over the spectacle. One does not. Second, through the false sense of mastery, one derives pleasure from engagement with and in the spectacle. The ideological core of the spectacle is not acknowledged by the ideological subject, just the mastery and the pleasure. The ideology embedded and hidden within the spectacle is not accidental. Those in power can ensure its incorporation into mass media. As Pătraşcu (2013) explained those in power were, “aware of the force represented by the media (in the forms existing at the time: written press, radio and the national television) and their importance as a means for the propagation of its ideology” (p. 688). All mass media are part of the spectacle and infused with the dominant ideology, which in this case is the consumerist ideology of the capitalist class. Bunyard (2023) examined the basis of Debord’s perspective, concluding that “Debord’s chief concern…was with a society that had become structure and spellbound by commodity relations” which informs his “opposition to dogma, ideology, and religion” (p. 39). Research analyzing Debord’s work reveals that ideology plays an essential role in his theory and praxis. A concern with consumerism is also observable in existent research.
Consumerism is central to the spectacle because it is integral to capitalism and its ideology. Worrell (2009) described that the “spectacle means that nobody is left out or excluded from consumption” (p. 35). Again, this is intentional, not accidental. Products were (and are) marketed in such a way that consumption becomes part of one’s patriotic duty. Dutriaux and Tholas (2018) explained that “advertisers went as far as promoting that consuming was not an empty, materialistic gesture but a civic activity,” when shopping an individual was “exercising and gaining rights and consumer capitalism could offer a new freedom – freedom of choice” (p. 2). That “freedom” is ideological, and the pursuit of that freedom results in indentured servitude. In short, one becomes entrapped by the pursuit of one’s freedom through consumption. Media play a role in propagating this consumerist ideology. According to de Castro (2015) “throughout the 20th Century, the consumer and the cinematic dimensions of the spectacle…achieve even greater integration” (p. 119). The tight integration between consumerism and media enhances the pervasiveness and power of the spectacle. A lack of focus on the spectacle contributes to its persistence within society. Russell (2019) defined the spectacle as “the name for the reigning identity of production and consumption, of work and leisure, of culture and commodity, of state and economy, of ideology and the material environment” and that the spectacle “renders commensurate…the distinctions between production and consumption” (p. 84). As such, the spectacle is a working-class concern. Overcoming the spectacle and the consumerist ideology of capitalism requires revolution. Previous research has explored this aspect of Debord’s (2014) work as well.
Revolution holds a position of prominence within The Society of the Spectacle (Debord, 2014). Kaplan (2012) described how, “revolutionary collective action in Debord can be understood as the individual laboring subject writ large;” that “through radical direct action, diverse individuals can dispense with separation and alienation and become one unified, transparent, collective revolutionary subject” (p. 468). In short, solidarity can be achieved. Debord can be understood as a revolutionary theorist. From that perspective, Bunyard (2023) explained that Debord’s work suggests that “revolutionary theory needs to understand the dynamics and tensions within a social whole, in order to engage with them and steer its transformation” (p. 38). However, Yan (2018) expanded the focus by indicating that, “most of Debord’s current researchers have positioned him as a pure theorist or poetic artist, not paying enough attention to his radical ideas of cultural revolution” (p. 261). The revolutionary work of Debord is not just in theory, but in action. Some twenty years later, in reflecting on his own work, Debord (1998) explained that “the coherence of spectacular society proves revolutionaries right, since it is evident that one cannot reform the most trifling detail without taking the whole thing apart” (p. 80).
Research on ideology (Section 2.1), revolution (Section 2.2), and The Society of the Spectacle (Section 2.3) points to the constraints imposed by mass consumerism on autonomy, authenticity, and solidarity. Not only is work alienating but within the spectacle, so too is the mass consumerism fueled by the expenditures of one’s income. Escaping this trap laid by capitalist ideology requires first an awareness of the ideology itself. This is complicated by the fact that attempts are made to obfuscate ideology (Jackson, 2022). Once consciousness of the issue is raised, a revolution is possible. It is possible to escape the spectacle. Existent research establishes the centrality of ideology and revolution to Debord’s (2014) The Society of the Spectacle. However, there is a gap in the existing research related to a comprehensive review and assessment of these concepts in his work. An understanding of Debord’s (2014) usage of variants of the terms ideology and revolution in, The Society of the Spectacle, holds emancipatory potential. This study is a comprehensive examination of that usage along with an analysis of the corresponding sentiment and themes. The method of this study is presented next (Section 3).
3. Method
At its core, this study is a textual analysis of Debord’s (2014) usage of the variants of the terms ideology and revolution used within The Society of the Spectacle. This section details the three major aspects of the method used in this study. First, the location and preparation of the text are presented. Second, the approach used to conduct the sentiment and thematic analyses is explained. Lastly, the method used for word and bigram frequency analysis is presented. A PDF copy of Debord’s (2014) The Society of the Spectacle was obtained from Libcom.org on 2 September 2024 (https://tinyurl.com/5bzhn2tf). The PDF document contained 160 pages. Ancillary material at the front of the text, consisting of 9 pages, and at the back of the text, consisting of 34 pages, were excluded from the analysis. The text, as analyzed, contained 9 chapters, consisting of 117 pages and 221 sections. This trimmed text was analyzed for variants of the terms ideology and revolution.
The stem ideolo* was used to capture the variants of the term ideology used in the text, and the stem revolut* was used to capture the variants of the term revolution. Once the variants and the count of each variant used were established, the text was scanned for each occurrence. The sentence for each occurrence was transcribed into an Excel workbook containing three columns. The first column was for the occurrence number of a given term variant (e.g., 1, 2, …n). The second column was for the section number of the book in which the sentence occurred. The third column was for the sentence itself. If a sentence contained two or more occurrences of the same term variant, the number count was used to reflect that more than one occurrence of the variant was to be found in the sentence. If a sentence contained two or more occurrences of different term variants, and the sentence could be split into intelligible fragments, the sentence was split into sentence fragments. When that approach was used the statement contains ellipsis (e.g., “…”) to indicate the split. If a sentence containing two different term variants could not be split intelligibly into sentence fragments, the sentence was included in the list of sentences for each term variant. The Excel workbook was then loaded into RStudio for analysis.
Within the free, RStudio, software environment (Boehmke & Jackson, 2016), the tidytext (Silge & Robinson, 2017) approach was used to analyze the sentence-level data for this study. A variety of R packages were used to conduct these analyses. For reading the Excel file into RStudio, the readxl (Wickham et al., 2023a) and xlsx (Dragulescu & Arendt, 2020) packages were used. For the textual analysis, the dplyr (Wickham et al., 2023b), textdata (Hvitfeldt & Silge, 2024), tidyr (Wickham et al., 2024), tidytext (Robinson & Silge, 2024), tidyverse (Wickham, 2023a), and stringer (Wickham, 2023b) packages were used. For the sentiment analysis, the Bing sentiment lexicon, which contains semantic designations (i.e., positive or negative) for 6,785 words and is available in the dplyr package (Wickham et al., 2023b), was used. The Bing semantic lexicon provides a basic assessment of the semantic polarity in terms of either positive or negative sentiment. The Latent Dirichlet Allocation (Silge & Robinson, 2017) approach was taken for the thematic analysis. For the thematic analysis, the topicmodels (Grün & Hornik, 2024), pdftools (Ooms, 2024), tm (Feinerer & Hornik, 2024) packages were used.
Using the RStudio packages previously listed, it was possible to conduct word frequency and bigram frequency analyses. These analyses were useful in providing granular details for the thematic analyses’ results. When a theme was assigned, word and bigram frequencies made it possible to examine dominant words and phrases that contributed to a given thematic designation. Such granularity is beneficial for the contextualization and interpretation of the computer-generated results. No further validation of the results was considered necessary (Heath & Jackson, 2013).
The textual analysis method of this study provided a basis for assessing Debord’s (2014) usage of variants of the terms ideology and revolution in The Society of Spectacle. Examining the sentiment and themes associated with these statements, along with the context associated with word and bigram frequencies, provides a foundation for understanding Debord’s critique of the consumerist ideology embedded in the spectacle of the modern capitalist economy. This understanding provides a basis for the awareness needed for the revolutionary redefinition of society. The results are presented next (Section 4).
4. Results
As indicated in the methodology, this analysis is based on a sentence-level analysis of the statements made by Debord (2014) in The Society of the Spectacle for the variants of the stemmed terms ideolo* (Section 4.1) and revolut* (Section 4.2). This study also examined the sentiment and themes associated with these statements, which were aggregated by variant terms (Section 4.3). The first step of the analysis was to identify the specific term variants. The frequency analysis associated with the variants of the terms ideology and revolution is presented in Table 1.
In total, there were seventeen variants analyzed in this study between the stemmed words ideolo* (n = 8) and revolut* (n = 9). As indicated in Table 1, the variants of the stem ideolo* used by Debord (2014) were ideology (n = 51), ideological (n = 25), ideologies (n = 5), ideologically (n = 2), anti-ideology (n = 1), ideologization (n = 1), ideologue (n =1), and ideologues (n =1). The variants of stem revolut* were revolutionary (n = 54), revolution (n = 47), revolutions (n = 9), revolutionaries (n = 3), counterrevolutionary (n = 3), revolution’s (n = 2), revolutionism (n = 1), postrevolutionary (n = 1) and pseudo-revolutionary (n =1). For analyzing the statements, the variants ideologically, anti-ideology, ideologization, ideologue, and ideologues were combined into the category “Ideology Other.” Similarly, the variants revolutionaries, counterrevolutionary, revolution’s, revolutionism, postrevolutionary, and pseudo-revolutionary were combined into the category “Revolution Other.” Debord’s statements including the variant ideology are presented in Table 2 (Section 4.1).
Table 1. Frequencies of the variants of the stemmed terms ideolo* and revolut*.
Stem |
Variant |
Frequency |
Stem |
Variant |
Frequency |
Ideolo* |
Ideology |
51 |
Revolut* |
Revolutionary |
54 |
Ideological |
25 |
Revolution |
47 |
Ideologies |
5 |
Revolutions |
9 |
Ideologically |
2 |
Revolutionaries |
3 |
Anti-ideology |
1 |
Counterrevolutionary |
3 |
Ideologization |
1 |
Revolution’s |
2 |
Ideologue |
1 |
Revolutionism |
1 |
Ideologues |
1 |
Postrevolutionary |
1 |
|
|
Pseudo-revolutionary |
1 |
Total |
|
87 |
|
|
121 |
4.1. Results for Variants of Ideology
The statements containing a reference to ideology (n = 51) vary in terms of their specific content. Among the statements are included references to science, the proletariat, anarchism, Marxism, social-democrats, bureaucracy, and revolution. Whereas each statement contains something of value for context and understanding, a few statements will be focused upon here for their specific relevance to the overarching focus of this study. As indicated in Table 2, Debord (2014) explained, “when ideology has become total through its possession of total power, and has changed from partial truth to totalitarian falsehood, historical thought has been so totally annihilated that history itself, even at the level of the most empirical knowledge, can no longer exist” (sec. 108). Further, Debord explained that “ideology is the intellectual basis of class societies within the conflictual course of history” (sec. 212). For Debord, when “materialized ideology has no name, just as it has no formulatable historical agenda” (sec. 213), and “the spectacle is the epitome of ideology…” (sec. 215). These statements suggest a great deal as to how ideology functions in society. First, when materialized within a society, it is both unacknowledged and false. It has no name and has lost any partial truth it contained. Second, ideology is the intellectual basis of class societies. Lastly, all the deficiencies of ideology come to perfection within the spectacle. It is possible to
Table 2. Comprehensive summary of statements including the term ideology.
No. |
Sec. |
Statement |
1 |
81 |
“We recognize only one science: the science of history” (The German Ideology). |
2 |
88 |
The proletariat cannot make use of any ideology designed to disguise partial goals as general goals, because the proletariat cannot preserve any partial reality that is truly its own. |
3 |
91 |
The First International’s initial successes enabled it to free itself from the confused influences of the dominant ideology that had survived within it. |
4 - 5 |
92 |
It is the ideology of pure freedom, an ideology that puts everything on the same level and eliminates any conception of historical evil. |
6 |
93 |
...by providing a terrain that facilitates the informal domination of each particular anarchist organization by propagandists and defenders of their ideology, specialists whose mediocre intellectual activity is largely limited to the constant regurgitation of a few eternal truths. |
7 - 8 |
94 |
The illusion more or less explicitly maintained by genuine anarchism is its constant belief that a revolution is just around the corner, and that the instantaneous accomplishment of this revolution will demonstrate the truth of anarchist ideology and of the form of practical organization that has developed in accordance with that ideology. |
9 - 10 |
95 |
The “orthodox Marxism” of the Second International is the scientific ideology of socialist revolution, an ideology which identifies its whole truth with objective economic processes and with the progressive recognition of the in evitability of those processes by a working class educated by the organization. |
11 |
95 |
This ideology revives the faith in pedagogical demonstration that was found among the utopian socialists, combining that faith with a contemplative invocation of the course of history. |
12 |
96 |
The ideology of the social-democratic organizations put those organizations under the control of the professors who were educating the working class, and their organizational forms corresponded to this type of passive apprenticeship. |
13 |
96 |
This ideology of revolution inevitably foundered on the very successes of those who proclaimed it. |
14 |
96 |
The social democrats’ scientific ideology confidently affirmed that capitalism could not tolerate these economic reforms, but history repeatedly proved them wrong. |
15 - 16 |
97 |
Bernstein, the social democrat least attached to political ideology and most openly attached to the methodology of bourgeois science, was honest enough to point out this contradiction (a contradiction which had also been revealed by the reformist movement of the English workers, who never bothered to invoke any revolutionary ideology). |
17 |
98 |
As a Marxist thinker, Lenin was simply a faithful and consistent Kautskyist who applied the revolutionary ideology of “orthodox Marxism” within the conditions existing in Russia, conditions which did not lend themselves to the reformist practice carried on elsewhere by the Second International. |
18 - 19 |
99 |
Lenin did not reproach the Marxism of the Second International for being a revolutionary ideology, but for ceasing to be a revolutionary ideology. |
20 |
105 |
Leninism was the highest voluntaristic expression of revolutionary ideology, a coherence of the separate governing a reality that resisted it. |
21 |
105 |
With the advent of Stalinism, revolutionary ideology returned to its fundamental incoherence. |
22 |
105 |
At that point, ideology was no longer a weapon, it had become an end in itself. |
23 |
105 |
This particular materialization of ideology did not transform the world economically, as did advanced capitalism; it simply used police-state methods to transform people’s perception of the world. |
24 |
107 |
Each bureaucrat is thus totally dependent on the central seal of legitimacy provided by the ruling ideology, which validates the collective participation in its “socialist regime” of all the bureaucrats it does not liquidate. |
25 |
108 |
When ideology has become total through its possession of total power, and has changed from partial truth to totalitarian falsehood, historical thought has been so totally annihilated that history itself, even at the level of the most empirical knowledge, can no longer exist. |
26 |
108 |
The Lysenko fiasco is just one well-known example of how much the scientific application of ideology gone mad has cost the Russian economy. |
27 |
109 |
Although fascism rallies to the defense of the main icons of a bourgeois ideology that has become conservative (family, private property, moral order, patriotism)… |
28 |
110 |
This ideology has lost the passion of its original expression, but its passionless routinization still has the repressive function of controlling all thought and prohibiting any competition whatsoever. |
29 |
110 |
The bureaucracy is thus helplessly tied to an ideology that is no longer believed by anyone |
30 - 31 |
110 |
Just as its actual history contradicts its facade of legality and its crudely maintained ignorance contradicts its scientific pretensions, its attempt to vie with the bourgeoisie in the production of commodity abundance is stymied by the fact that such abundance contains its own implicit ideology and is generally accompanied by the freedom to choose from an unlimited range of spectacular pseudo-alternatives a pseudo-freedom that remains incompatible with the bureaucracy’s ideology. |
32 |
113 |
Since the neo-Leninist illusion carried on by present day Trotskyism is constantly being contradicted by the reality of modern capitalist societies (both bourgeois and bureaucratic), it is not surprising that it gets its most favorable reception in the nominally independent “underdeveloped” countries, where the local ruling classes’ versions of bureaucratic state socialism end up amounting to little more than a mere ideology of economic development. |
33 |
124 |
Revolutionary theory is now the enemy of all revolutionary ideology, and it knows it. |
34 |
137 |
Feudal society was born from the merging of “the organizational structures of the conquering armies that developed in the process of conquest” with “the productive forces found in the conquered regions” (The German Ideology), and the factors contributing to the organization of those productive forces included the religious language in which they were expressed. |
35 |
144 |
But the revolutionary ideology of general freedom that had served to overthrow the last remnants of a myth-based ordering of values, along with all the traditional forms of social control, was already unable to completely conceal the real goal that it had draped in Roman costume: unrestricted freedom of trade. |
36 |
177 |
“The country represents the complete opposite: isolation and separation” (The German Ideology). |
37 |
Ch. 9 |
Ideology Materialized |
38 |
212 |
Ideology is the intellectual basis of class societies within the conflictual course of history. |
39 - 40 |
212 |
This interconnection is intensified with the advent of the spectacle-the materialization of ideology brought about by the concrete success of an autonomized system of economic production-which virtually identifies social reality with an ideology that has remolded all reality in its own image. |
41 |
213 |
Once ideology, the abstract will to universality and the illusion associated with that will, is legitimized by the universal abstraction and the effective dictatorship of illusion that prevail in modern society, it is no longer a voluntaristic struggle of the fragmentary, but its triumph. |
42 |
213 |
...that is itself presumed to be beyond ideology. |
43 |
213 |
Materialized ideology has no name, just as it has no formulatable historical agenda. |
44 - 45 |
214 |
Ideology, whose whole internal logic led toward what Mannheim calls “total ideology’’, the despotism of a fragment imposing itself as pseudo-knowledge of a frozen totality, as a totalitarian worldview, has reached its culmination in the immobilized spectacle of nonhistory. |
46 |
214 |
When that society itself is concretely dissolved, ideology, the final irrationality standing in the way of historical life, must also disappear. |
47 |
215 |
The spectacle is the epitome of ideology… |
48 - 49 |
217 |
The parallel between ideology and schizophrenia demonstrated in Gabel’s False Consciousness should be considered in the context of this economic materialization of ideology. |
50 |
217 |
Society has become what ideology already was. |
51 |
217 |
Ideology is at home; separation has built its own world. |
extend these insights by examining Debord’s use of the variant ideological, which are presented in Table 3.
Table 3. Comprehensive summary of statements including the term ideological.
No. |
Sec. |
Statement |
1 |
Ch. 3 |
This polemic is a reflection, on the ideological level, of the acute and complex class struggle taking place in China and in the world. |
2 |
58 |
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. |
3 |
91 |
…but each losing the unity of historical thought and setting itself up as an ideological authority. |
4 |
93 |
The anarchists, who explicitly distinguish themselves from the rest of the workers movement by their ideological conviction, reproduce this separation of competencies within their own ranks… |
5 |
93 |
The anarchists’ ideological reverence for unanimous decision-making has ended up paving the way for uncontrolled manipulation of their own organizations by specialists in freedom… |
6 |
99 |
...offered its hierarchical and ideological model to the proletariat of all countries, urging them to adopt it in order to “speak Russian” to their own ruling classes. |
7 |
103 |
In the numerous conflicts within the Bolshevik leadership, Lenin was the most consistent advocate of concentrating dictatorial power in the hands of this supreme ideological representation. |
8 |
105 |
The totalitarian ideological pronouncement obliterates reality as well as purpose; nothing exists but what it says exists. |
9 |
106 |
The ruling totalitarian-ideological class is the ruler of a world turned upside down. |
10 |
107 |
The members of the ruling bureaucratic class have the right of ownership over society only collectively, as participants in a fundamental lie: they have to play the role of the proletariat governing a socialist society; they have to be actors faithful to a script of ideological betrayal. |
11 |
109 |
...while mobilizing the petty bourgeoisie and the unemployed workers who are panic-stricken by economic crises or disillusioned by the socialist movement’s failure to bring about a revolution, it is not itself fundamentally ideological. |
12 |
110 |
But this denunciation remains Stalinist, arbitrary, unexplained, and subject to continual modification, because the ideological lie at its origin can never be revealed. |
13 |
110 |
The bureaucracy cannot liberalize itself either culturally or politically because its existence as a class depends on its ideological monopoly, which, for all its cumbersomeness, is its sole title to ownership. |
14 |
111 |
The bureaucracy’s ideological title to ownership is already collapsing at the international level. |
15 -16 |
113 |
Their international maneuvering between those two poles of capitalist power, along with their numerous ideological compromises (notably with Islam) stemming from their heterogeneous social bases, end up removing from these degraded versions of ideological socialism everything serious except the police. |
17 |
123 |
It thus demands of “people without qualities” more than the bourgeois revolution demanded of the qualified individuals it delegated to carry out its tasks, because the partial ideological consciousness developed by a segment of the bourgeois class was based on the economy, that central part of social life in which that class was already in power. |
18 |
138 |
This is what Augustine was doing when, in a formula that can be seen as the archetype of all the modern ideological apologetics, he declared that the Kingdom of God had in fact already come long ago-that it was nothing other than the established Church. |
19 |
138 |
The fact that they hesitated to act until they had received some external sign of God’s will was an ideological corollary to the insurgent peasants’ practice of following leaders from outside their own ranks. |
20 |
180 |
The history that gave rise to the relative autonomy of culture, and to the ideological illusions regarding that autonomy, is also expressed as the history of culture. |
21 |
212 |
Ideological expressions have never been pure fictions; they represent a distorted consciousness of realities, and as such they have been real factors that have in turn produced real distorting effects. |
22 |
213 |
At that point, ideological pretensions take on a sort of flat, positivistic precision: they no longer represent historical choices, they are assertions of undeniable facts. |
23 |
213 |
The specifically ideological forms of system-supporting labor are reduced to an “epistemological base”… |
24 |
215 |
...because in its plenitude it exposes and manifests the essence of all ideological systems: the impoverishment, enslavement and negation of real life. |
25 |
216 |
In contrast to the project outlined in the “Theses on Feuerbach” (the realization of philosophy in a praxis transcending the opposition between idealism and materialism), the spectacle preserves the ideological features of both materialism and idealism, imposing them in the pseudo concreteness of its universe. |
Like that of ideology (Table 2), the statements associated with the variant ideological (n = 25), presented in Table 3, are an assortment in terms of focus. Within this collection of statements are references to anarchy, China, Bolsheviks, totalitarianism, bureaucracy, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, and history. Extending the focus developed previously, Debord (2014) indicated that, “the totalitarian ideological pronouncement obliterates reality as well as purpose; nothing exists but what it says exists” (sec. 105), but “ideological expressions have never been pure fictions; they represent a distorted consciousness of realities, and as such they have been real factors that have in turn produced real distorting effects” (sec. 212). This has consequences for organizations. As indicated by Debord, “the bureaucracy cannot liberalize itself either culturally or politically because its existence as a class depends on its ideological monopoly, which for all its cumbersomeness, is its sole title to ownership” (sec. 110). Again, these statements are suggestive of the all-encompassing nature of ideology. These are not pure fictions, but they obliterate reality in their totalitarian power. This power can be seen comparatively be examining ideology in the plural. The statements associated with the variant ideologies are presented in Table 4.
Table 4. Comprehensive summary of statements including the term ideologies.
No. |
Sec. |
Statement |
1 |
91 |
Thus two ideologies of working-class revolution opposed each other, each containing a partially true critique… |
2 |
91 |
Powerful organizations such as German Social Democracy and the Iberian Anarchist Federation faithfully served one or the other of these ideologies; and everywhere the result was very different from what had been sought. |
3 |
92 |
…the very social conditions which in their turn foster separate ideologies. |
4 |
213 |
In such a context, the particular names of ideologies tend to disappear. |
5 |
213 |
Which is another way of saying that the history of different ideologies is over. |
There are significantly fewer statements associated with the variant ideologies (n = 5). As such, there is less empirical material available to analyze. Even still, within these statements there are references to working-class revolution, powerful organizations, social conditions, and history. In terms of specific statements, Debord (2014) explained that “social conditions…foster separate ideologies” (sec. 92). Consistent with previous statements, Debord again notes that “the particular names of ideologies tend to disappear” (sec. 213). This last statement echoes the essential insight that societies are likely unaware of the ideological underpinnings which shape and constrain their understandings, actions, and legitimations of regimes of power. This insight has been articulated by Debord in statements using the variants ideology (Table 2), ideological (Table 3) and ideologies (Table 4), which could suggest the importance attributed to the point. The last section for the variants of the stem ideolo* is the aggregate category “ideology other.” These statements are presented in Table 5.
Given that the information in Table 5 is an amalgam of disparate variants, these statements are bound to be at least somewhat idiosyncratic. These statements use the variants ideologization, ideologically, ideologue(s), and anti-ideology, and contain references to Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and Lukács, each of whom was a Marxist theorist or adherent. Whereas one is encouraged to read each of the statements for context, for the purpose of this study, only one will be focused upon here. Debord (2014) indicated that, “détournement is the flexible language of anti-ideology” (sec. 208). Jackson (2016) applied détournement in an anti-ideological way in an analysis of analytics as organizational propaganda, showing the potential of détournement as a means of critique.
Collectively, Debord’s (2014) statements on ideology and its variants are suggestive that societies operate on false ideologies which are obfuscated from consciousness and that these ideologies constrain individual action, authentic
Table 5. Comprehensive summary of statements including other variants of ideology.
No. |
Sec. |
Statement |
1 |
84 |
The scientific-determinist aspect of Marx’s thought was precisely what made it vulnerable to “ideologization,” both during his own lifetime and even more so in the theoretical heritage he left to the workers movement. |
2 |
90 |
This ideologically alienated theory was then no longer able to recognize the practical verifications of the unitary historical thought it had betrayed when such verifications emerged in spontaneous working-class struggles; instead, it contributed toward repressing every manifestation and memory of them. |
3 |
112 |
The only current partisans of the Leninist illusion are the various Trotskyist tendencies, which stubbornly persist in identifying the proletarian project with an ideologically based hierarchical organization despite all the historical experiences that have refuted that perspective. |
4 |
112 |
Despite his profound theoretical work, Lukács remained an ideologue, speaking in the name of the power that was most grossly align to the proletarian movement, yet believing and pretending that he found himself completely at home with it. |
5 |
193 |
Clark Kerr, one of the foremost ideologues of this tendency, has calculated that the complex process of the production, distribution and consumption of knowledge already accounts for 29% of the gross national product of the United States; and he predicts tht in the second half of this century culture will become the driving force of the American economy, as was the automobile in the first half of this century and the railroad in the last half of the previous century. |
6 |
208 |
Détournement is the flexible language of anti-ideology. |
solidarity, and legitimate existing regimes of power. Debord situates this understanding within the context of the spectacle of modern, consumerist economics. Overcoming this ideology requires revolution. Establishing the role of revolution in overcoming consumerist ideology, as envisioned by Debord, is facilitated by an examination of his statements referencing revolution and its variants. Statements referencing revolutionary are presented in Table 6 (Section 4.2).
4.2. Results for Variants of Revolution
As indicated in Table 6, statements containing the variant revolutionary (n = 54) included references to theory, Marx, political economy, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, anarchism, Bolsheviks, bureaucracy, and the working class. Statements by Debord (2014) include the insight that “the proletarian class is formed into a subject in its process of organizing revolutionary struggles…” (sec. 90). Debord’s insights related to revolutionary organizations identified that “a revolutionary organization that exists before the establishment of the power of workers councils will discover its own appropriate from through struggle; but all these historical experiences have already made it clear that it cannot claim to represent the working class” (sec. 119) and “revolutionary organization is the coherent expression of the theory of praxis entering into two-way communication with practical
Table 6. Comprehensive summary of statements including the term revolutionary.
No. |
Sec. |
Statement |
1 |
78 |
Historical thought can be salvaged only by becoming practical thought; and the practice of the proletariat as a revolutionary class can be nothing less than historical consciousness operating on the totality of its world |
2 |
78 |
All the theoretical currents of the revolutionary working-class movement, Stirner and Bakunin as well as Marx-grew out of a critical confrontation with Hegelian thought. |
3 |
79 |
The inseparability of Marx’s theory from the Hegelian method is itself inseparable from that theory’s revolutionary nature, that is, from its truth. |
4 |
80 |
The critique of political economy is the first act of this end of prehistory: “Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself.” |
5 |
82 |
The revolutionary movement remains bourgeois insofar as it thinks it can master current history by means of scientific knowledge. |
6 |
84 |
In this way revolutionary practice, the only true agent of this negation, tends to be pushed out of theory’s field of vision. |
7 |
85 |
The weakness of Marx’s theory is naturally linked to the weakness of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat of his time. |
8 |
85 |
As a result, revolutionary theory could not yet be fully realized. |
9 |
86 |
...all ultimately result from identifying the proletariat with the bourgeoisie with respect to the revolutionary seizure of power. |
10 |
87 |
As early as the Communist Manifesto, Marx’s effort to demonstrate the scientific legitimacy of proletarian power by citing a repetitive sequence of precedents led him to oversimplify his historical analysis into a linear model of the development of modes of production, in which class struggles invariably resulted “either in a revolutionary transformation of the entire society or in the mutual ruin of the contending classes.” |
11 |
87 |
The linear schema loses sight of the fact that the bourgeoisie is the only revolutionary class that has ever won; and that it is also the only class for which the development of the economy was both the cause and the consequence of its taking control of society. |
12 |
88 |
These are also the only two revolutionary classes in history, but operating under different conditions. |
13 |
90 |
The proletarian class is formed into a subject in its process of organizing revolutionary struggles… |
14 |
90 |
But this crucial question of organization was virtually ignored by revolutionary theory during the period when the workers movement was first taking shape, the very period when that theory still possessed the unitary character it had inherited from historical thought (and which it had rightly vowed to develop into a unitary historical practice). |
15 |
91 |
The feud between the Marxists and the Bakuninists, which eventually became irreconcilable, actually centered on two different issues—the question of power in a future revolutionary society and the question of the organization of the current movement, and each of the adversaries reversed their position when they went from one aspect to the other. |
16 |
91 |
Marx, who believed that the concomitant maturation of economic contradictions and of the workers’ education in democracy would reduce the role of a proletarian state to a brief phase needed to legitimize the new social relations brought into being by objective factors, denounced Bakunin and his supporters as an authoritarian conspiratorial elite who were deliberately placing themselves above the International with the harebrained scheme of imposing on society an irresponsible dictatorship of the most revolutionary (or of those who would designate themselves as such). |
17 |
93 |
...and revolutionary anarchism expects the same type of unanimity, obtained by the same means, from the masses once they have been liberated. |
18 |
95 |
Those who failed to realize that for Marx and for the revolutionary proletariat unitary historical thought was in no way distinct from a practical attitude to be adopted generally ended up becoming victims of the practice they did adopt. |
19 |
96 |
For the activity of all these people to have retained any appearance of being revolutionary, capitalism would have had to have turned out to be conveniently incapable of tolerating this economic reformism, despite the fact that it had no trouble tolerating the legalistic political expressions of the same reformism. |
20 |
97 |
Bernstein, the social democrat least attached to political ideology and most openly attached to the methodology of bourgeois science, was honest enough to point out this contradiction (a contradiction which had also been revealed by the reformist movement of the English workers, who never bothered to invoke any revolutionary ideology). |
21 |
97 |
The profound social upheaval provoked by World War I, though it led to widespread awakenings of radical consciousness, twice demonstrated that the social-democratic hierarchy had failed to provide the German workers with a revolutionary education capable of turning them into theorists... |
22 |
98 |
As a Marxist thinker, Lenin was simply a faithful and consistent Kautskyist who applied the revolutionary ideology of “orthodox Marxism” within the conditions existing in Russia, conditions which did not lend themselves to the reformist practice carried on elsewhere by the Second International. |
23 |
99 |
The bloody end of the democratic illusions of the workers movement transformed the entire world into a Russia, and Bolshevism, reigning over the first revolutionary breakthrough engendered by this period of crisis… |
24-25 |
99 |
Lenin did not reproach the Marxism of the Second International for being a revolutionary ideology, but for ceasing to be a revolutionary ideology. |
26 |
101 |
The revolutionary representation of the proletariat had at this stage become both the primary cause and the central result of the general falsification of society. |
27 |
102 |
The organization of the proletariat on the Bolshevik model resulted from the backwardness of Russia and from the abandonment of revolutionary struggle by the workers movements of the advanced countries… |
28 |
103 |
This debate was eventually resolved in practice by a factor that had not figured in any of the hypotheses: a revolutionary bureaucracy that placed itself at the head of the proletariat, seized state power, and proceeded to impose a new form of class domination. |
29 |
104 |
After Kronstadt, the bureaucracy consolidated its power as sole owner of a system of state capitalism, internally by means of a temporary alliance with the peasantry (the “New Economic Policy’’) and externally by using the workers regimented into the bureaucratic parties of the Third International as a backup force for Russian diplomacy, sabotaging the entire revolutionary movement and supporting bourgeois governments whose support it in turn hoped to secure in the sphere of international politics (the Kuomintang regime in the China of 1925-1927, the Popular Fronts in Spain and France, etc.). |
30 |
105 |
Leninism was the highest voluntaristic expression of revolutionary ideology, a coherence of the separate governing a reality that resisted it. |
31 |
105 |
With the advent of Stalinism, revolutionary ideology returned to its fundamental incoherence. |
32 |
109 |
Between the two world wars the revolutionary working-class movement was destroyed by the joint action of the Stalinist bureaucracy and of fascist totalitarianism (the latter’s organizational form having been inspired by the totalitarian party that had first been tested and developed in Russia). |
33 |
112 |
The distance that separates Trotskyism from a revolutionary critique of present-day society is related to the deferential distance the Trotskyists maintain regarding positions that were already mistaken when they were acted on in real struggles. |
34 |
116 |
“The long-sought political form through which the working class could carry out its own economic liberation” has taken on a clear shape in this century, in the form of revolutionary workers councils that assume all decision-making and executive powers and that federate with each other by means of delegates who are answerable to their base and revocable at any moment. |
35 |
119 |
A revolutionary organization that exists before the establishment of the power of workers councils will discover its own appropriate form through struggle; but all these historical experiences have already made it clear that it cannot claim to represent the working class. |
36 |
120 |
Revolutionary organization is the coherent expression of the theory of praxis entering into two-way communication with practical struggles, in the process of becoming practical theory. |
37 |
120 |
At the revolutionary moment when social separations are dissolved, the organization must dissolve itself as a separate organization. |
38 |
121 |
A revolutionary organization must constitute an integral critique of society, that is, it must make a comprehensive critique of all aspects of alienated social life while refusing to compromise with any form of separate power anywhere in the world. |
39 |
121 |
In the organization’s struggle against class society, the combatants themselves are the fundamental weapons: a revolutionary organization must thus see to it that the dominant society’s conditions of separation and hierarchy are not reproduced within itself |
40 |
122 |
As capitalism’s ever-intensifying imposition of alienation at all levels makes it increasingly hard for workers to recognize and name their own impoverishment, putting them in the position of having to reject that impoverishment in its totality or not at all, revolutionary organization has had to learn that it can no longer combat alienation by means of alienated forms of struggle. |
41 |
123 |
The development of class society to the stage of the spectacular organization of nonlife is thus leading the revolutionary project to become visibly what it has already been in essence. |
42-43 |
124 |
Revolutionary theory is now the enemy of all revolutionary ideology, and it knows it. |
44 |
138 |
Modern revolutionary hopes are not irrational continuations of the religious passion of millenarianism, as Norman Cohn thought he had demonstrated in The Pursuit of the Millennium. |
45-46 |
138 |
On the contrary, millenarianism, revolutionary class struggle speaking the language of religion for the last time, was already a modern revolutionary tendency, a tendency that lacked only the consciousness that it was a purely historical movement. |
47 |
143 |
By demanding to live the historical time that it produces, the proletariat discovers the simple, unforgettable core of its revolutionary project; and each previously defeated attempt to carry out this project represents a possible point of departure for a new historical life. |
48 |
144 |
The bourgeoisie thus entered into a compromise with that religion, a compromise also reflected in its presentation of time: the Revolutionary Calendar was abandoned and irreversible time returned to the straitjacket of a duly extended Christian Era. |
49 |
163 |
The revolutionary project of a classless society, of an all embracing historical life, implies the withering away of the social measurement of time in favor of a federation of independent times—a federation of playful individual and collective forms of irreversible time that are simultaneously present. |
50 |
176 |
For Marx, one of the greatest revolutionary merits of the bourgeoisie was the fact that it “subjected the country to the city,” whose “very air is liberating.” |
51 |
179 |
The most revolutionary idea concerning urbanism is not itself urbanistic, technological or aesthetic. |
52 |
189 |
The attempts to establish a normative classicism or neoclassicism during the last three centuries have been nothing but short-lived artificial constructs speaking the official language of the state, whether of the absolute monarchy or of the revolutionary bourgeoisie draped in Roman togas. |
53 |
191 |
Though they were only partially conscious of it, they were contemporaries of the last great offensive of the revolutionary proletarian movement, and the defeat of that movement, which left them trapped within the very artistic sphere whose decrepitude they had denounced, was the fundamental reason for their immobilization. |
54 |
203 |
A critical theory of the spectacle cannot be true unless it unites with the practical current of negation in society; and that negation, the resumption of revolutionary class struggle, can for its part only become conscious of itself by developing the critique of the spectacle, which is the theory of its real conditions, the concrete conditions of present day oppression, and which also reveals that negation’s hidden potential. |
struggles, in the process of becoming practical theory” (sec. 120). Further, Debord indicated that “a revolutionary organization must constitute an integral critique of society, that is, it must make a comprehensive critique of all aspects of alienated social life while refusing to compromise with any form of separate power anywhere in the world” (sec. 121) and “in the organization’s struggle against class society, the combatants themselves are the fundamental weapons: a revolutionary organization must thus see to it that the dominant society’s conditions of separation and hierarchy are not reproduced within itself” (sec. 121). Complicating this, Debord notes that “revolutionary theory is now the enemy of all revolutionary ideology, and it knows it” (sec. 124). These insights are amplified further as one moves to analyze Debord’s statements on revolution (Table 7).
Table 7. Comprehensive summary of statements including the term revolution.
No. |
Sec. |
Statement |
1 |
42 |
With the “second industrial revolution,” alienated consumption has become as much a duty for the masses as alienated pro duction. |
2 |
57 |
Just as it presents pseudo-goods to be coveted, it offers false models of revolution to local revolutionaries. |
3-4 |
76 |
“Even as a philosophy of the bourgeois revolution, it does not reflect the entire process of that revolution, but only its concluding phase. |
5-6 |
76 |
It is thus a philosophy not of the revolution, but of the restoration” (Karl Korsch, “Theses on Hegel and Revolution”). |
7 |
79 |
Bernstein implicitly revealed this connection between the dialectical method and historical partisanship when in his book Evolutionary Socialism he deplored the 1847 Manifesto’s unscientific predictions of imminent proletarian revolution in Germany: “This historical self-deception, so erroneous that the most naive political visionary could hardly have done any worse, would be incomprehensible in a Marx who at that time had already seriously studied economics if we did not recognize that it reflected the lingering influence of the antithetical Hegelian dialectic, from which Marx, like Engels, could never completely free himself. In those times of general effervescence this influence was all the more fatal to him.” |
8 |
85 |
The German working class failed to initiate a permanent revolution in 1848; the Paris Commune was defeated in isolation. |
9 |
86 |
The theoretical shortcomings of the scientific defense of proletarian revolution, both in its content and in its form of exposition… |
10 |
88 |
The bourgeois revolution has been accomplished. |
11-12 |
88 |
The proletarian revolution is a yet-unrealized project, born on the foundation of the earlier revolution but differing from it qualitatively. |
13 |
90 |
...and in its reorganization of society at the moment of revolution. |
14 |
90 |
Instead, the organizational question became the weakest aspect of radical theory, a confused terrain lending itself to the revival of hierarchical and statist tactics borrowed from the bourgeois revolution. |
15 |
91 |
But the defeat and repression that it soon encountered brought to the surface a conflict between two different conceptions of proletarian revolution, each of which contained an authoritarian dimension that amounted to abandoning the conscious self emancipation of the working class |
16 |
91 |
Bakunin did in fact recruit followers on such a basis: “In the midst of the popular tempest we must be the invisible pilots guiding the revolution, not through any kind of overt power but through the collective dictatorship of our Alliance—a dictatorship without any insignia or titles or official status, yet all the more powerful because it will have none of the appearances of power.” |
17 |
91 |
Thus two ideologies of working-class revolution opposed each other, each containing a partially true critique, but each losing the unity of historical thought and setting itself up as an ideological authority. |
18 |
92 |
The fact that anarchists have seen the goal of proletarian revolution as immediately present represents both the strength and the weakness of collectivist anarchist struggles (the only forms of anarchism that can be taken seriously the pretensions of the individualist forms of anarchism have always been ludicrous). |
19-20 |
94 |
The illusion more or less explicitly maintained by genuine anarchism is its constant belief that a revolution is just around the corner, and that the instantaneous accomplishment of this revolution will demonstrate the truth of anarchist ideology and of the form of practical organization that has developed in accordance with that ideology. |
21-22 |
94 |
In 1936 anarchism did indeed initiate a social revolution, a revolution that was the most advanced expression of proletarian power ever realized. |
23 |
94 |
Furthermore, inasmuch as the revolution was not carried to completion during its opening days (because Franco’s forces controlled half the country and were being strongly supported from abroad, because the rest of the international proletarian movement had already been defeated, and because the camp of the Republic included various bourgeois forces and statist working-class parties)... |
24 |
94 |
Its recognized leaders became government ministers, hostages to a bourgeois state that was destroying the revolution even as it proceeded to lose the civil war. |
25 |
95 |
The “orthodox Marxism” of the Second International is the scientific ideology of socialist revolution, an ideology which identifies its whole truth with objective economic processes and with the progressive recognition of the inevitability of those processes by a working class educated by the organization. |
26 |
96 |
This ideology of revolution inevitably foundered on the very successes of those who proclaimed it. |
27 |
97 |
Although full of illusions in other regards, Bernstein had denied that a crisis of capitalist production would miraculously force the hand of the socialists, who wanted to inherit the revolution only by way of this orthodox ritual. |
28 |
97 |
The ex-worker Ebert, who had become one of the social-democratic leaders, apparently still believed in sin since he admitted that he hated revolution “like sin.” |
29 |
101 |
In the present revolution, the troops protecting the old order are not fighting under the insignia of the ruling class, but under the banner of a ‘social-democratic party.’ |
30 |
101 |
If the central question of revolution was posed openly and honestly-Capitalism or socialism?—the great mass of the proletariat would today have no doubts or hesitations.” |
31 |
103 |
A strictly bourgeois revolution had been impossible; talk of a “democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants” was meaningless verbiage; and the proletarian power of the soviets could not simultaneously maintain itself against the class of small landowners, against the national and international White reaction, and against its own representation which had become externalized and alienated in the form of a working-class party that maintained total control over the state, the economy, the means of expression, and soon even over people’s thoughts. |
32 |
103 |
Trotsky and Parvus’s theory of permanent revolution, which Lenin adopted in April 1917, was the only theory that proved true for countries with underdeveloped bourgeoisies, but it became true only after this unforeseen factor of bureaucratic class power came into the picture. |
33 |
104 |
As Ante Ciliga noted while in one of Stalin’s prisons, “Technical questions of organization turned out to be social questions” (Lenin and the Revolution). |
34 |
109 |
Although fascism rallies to the defense of the main icons of a bourgeois ideology that has become conservative (family, private property, moral order, patriotism), while mobilizing the petty bourgeoisie and the unemployed workers who are panic-stricken by economic crises or disillusioned by the socialist movement’s failure to bring about a revolution, it is not itself fundamentally ideological. |
35 |
112 |
...(though still, of course, in the name of revolution). |
36 |
112 |
Once he had become an unconditional partisan of the Bolshevik form of organization (which he did during the second Russian revolution), he refused for the rest of his life to recognize that the bureaucracy was a new ruling class. |
37-39 |
114 |
It bears a revolution that cannot leave anything outside itself, a revolution embodying the permanent domination of the present over the past and a total critique of separation; and it must discover the appropriate forms of action to carry out this revolution. |
40 |
116 |
But it is precisely within this form of social organization that the problems of proletarian revolution can find their real solution. |
41 |
123 |
Proletarian revolution depends entirely on the condition that, for the first time, theory as understanding of human practice be recognized and lived by the masses. |
42 |
123 |
It thus demands of “people without qualities” more than the bourgeois revolution demanded of the qualified individuals it delegated to carry out its tasks, because the partial ideological consciousness developed by a segment of the bourgeois class was based on the economy, that central part of social life in which that class was already in power. |
43 |
138 |
The millenarians were doomed to defeat because they were unable to recognize their revolution as their own undertaking. |
44 |
162 |
Behind the fashions that come and go on the frivolous surface of the spectacle of pseudocyclical time, the grand style of an era can always be found in what is governed by the secret yet obvious necessity for revolution. |
45 |
172 |
The efforts of all the established powers since the experiences of the French Revolution to increase the means of maintaining law and order in the streets have finally culminated in the suppression of the streets. |
46 |
178 |
Proletarian revolution is this critique of human geography through which individuals and communities will be able to create places and events commensurate with the appropriation no longer just of their work, but of their entire history. |
47 |
Ch. 8 |
“Do you really believe that these Germans will make a political revolution in our lifetime? |
As indicated in Table 7, the statements containing the variant revolution (n = 47) included topics ranging from the bourgeois to the proletariat, and from Hegel to Marx. Topics also included anarchism, fascism, and the working class. Consumerism resides at the core of the spectacle. Debord (2014) explained that “with the ‘second industrial revolution,’ alienated consumption has become as much a duty for the masses as alienated production” (sec. 42). In terms of organizing, Debord noted that “…the organizational question became the weakest aspect of radical theory, a confused terrain lending itself to the revival of hierarchical and statist tactics borrowed from the bourgeois revolution” (sec. 90). The linchpin for Debord is that “proletarian revolution depends entirely on the condition that, for the first time, theory as understanding of human practice be recognized and lived by the masses” (sec. 123). If the working class is to overcome the consumerist ideology, it must have an informed theory that influences praxis. Debord hits upon the challenging of accomplishing this awareness through his reference to revolutions (Table 8).
A variety of topics are addressed when Debord (2014) discussed revolutions (Table 8), including topics such as the bourgeoisie, dialectics, class struggle, Hegel, Marx, political power, and democracy. As indicated previously, the success of the proletarian revolution, for Debord, requires an awareness of a theory that informs praxis. However, Debord asserted that “the science of revolutions then concludes that consciousness always comes too soon, and has to be taught” (sec. 84). Of course, it is essential to interrogate who will do such teaching and what pedagogy will be used. In terms of being too soon, revolutionary consciousness can provoke counterrevolutionary responses. These are examined more fully subsequently (Table 9).
Like the information in Table 5, Table 9 contains other variants of the term revolution. These variants include revolution’s, revolutionaries, postrevolutionary, revolutionism, counterrevolutionary, and pseudo-revolutionary. Topics in this
Table 8. Comprehensive summary of statements including the term revolutions.
No. |
Sec. |
Statement |
1 |
75 |
The class struggles of the long era of revolutions initiated by the rise of the bourgeoisie have developed in tandem with the dialectical thought of history—the thought which is no longer content to seek the meaning of what exists, but which strives to comprehend the dissolution of everything that exists and in this process breaks down every separation. |
2 - 3 |
76 |
Hegel’s paradoxical stance—his subordination of the meaning of all reality to its historical culmination while at the same time proclaiming that his own system represents that culmination—flows from the simple fact that this thinker of the bourgeois revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sought in his philosophy only a reconciliation with the results of those revolutions. |
4 |
80 |
The radical transformation carried out by Marx in order to “salvage” the thought of the bourgeois revolutions by “transplanting” it into a different context does not trivially consist of putting the materialist development of productive forces in place of the journey of the Hegelian Spirit toward its eventual encounter with itself—the Spirit whose objectification is identical to its alienation and whose historical wounds leave no scars. |
5 |
84 |
The science of revolutions then concludes that consciousness always comes too soon, and has to be taught. |
6 |
101 |
“In all previous revolutions,” wrote Rosa Luxemburg in Die Rote Fahne of December 21, 1918, “the combatants faced each other openly and directly, class against class, program against program. |
7 |
131 |
With the emergence of political power—which seems to be associated with the last great technological revolutions (such as iron smelting) at the threshold of a period that would experience no further major upheavals until the rise of modern industry—kinship ties begin to dissolve. |
8 |
134 |
It was democracy of the masters of society—a total contrast to the despotic state, where power settles accounts only with itself, within the impenetrable obscurity of its inner sanctum, by means of palace revolutions. |
9 |
206 |
Hegel’s characteristic practice of reversing the genitive was an expression of historical revolutions, though that expression was confined to the form of thought. |
Table 9. Comprehensive summary of statements including other variants of revolution.
No. |
Sec. |
Statement |
1 |
41 |
With the Industrial Revolution’s manufactural division of labor and mass production for a global market, the commodity finally became fully visible as a power that was colonizing all social life. |
2 |
57 |
Just as it presents pseudo-goods to be coveted, it offers false models of revolution to local revolutionaries. |
3 |
93 |
Furthermore, the anarchists’ refusal to take into account the great differences between the conditions of a minority banded together in present-day struggles and of a postrevolutionary society of free individuals has repeatedly led to the isolation of anarchists when the moment for collective decision-making actually arrives, as is shown by the countless anarchist insurrections in Spain that were contained and crushed at a local level. |
4 |
94 |
…the organized anarchist movement proved incapable of extending the revolution’s partial victories, or even of defending them. |
5 |
96 |
It was a manifestly reformist practice carried on in the name of an illusory revolutionism. |
6 |
97 |
…first, when the overwhelming majority of the party rallied to the imperialist war; then, following the German defeat, when the party crushed the Spartakist revolutionaries. |
7 |
98 |
The Bolshevik practice of directing the proletariat from outside, by means of a disciplined underground party under the control of intellectuals who had become “professional revolutionaries,” became a new profession, a profession that refused to negotiate or compromise with any of the professional ruling strata of capitalist society. |
8 |
102 |
...and those same backward conditions also tended to foster the counterrevolutionary aspects that that form of organization had unconsciously contained from its inception. |
9 |
111 |
This division of labor between two mutually reinforcing forms of the spectacle comes to an end when the pseudo-revolutionary role in turn divides. |
10-11 |
112 |
Trotsky was doomed by his basic perspective, because once the bureaucracy became aware that it had evolved into a counterrevolutionary class on the domestic front, it was bound to opt for a similarly counterrevolutionary role in other countries |
section include the division of labor, mass production, global markets, commodities, and anarchism. As indicated, statements related to counterrevolutionary movements are particularly of interest in the context of this study. As Debord (2014) indicated, backward conditions can tend “to foster the counterrevolutionary aspects that that form of organization [the Bolshevik organizational model in Russia] had unconsciously contained from its inception” (sec. 102) and that “once the bureaucracy became aware that it had evolved into a counterrevolutionary class on the domestic front, it was bound to opt for a similar counterrevolutionary role in other countries” (sec. 112). These statements suggest the peril associated with revolutions. Bureaucratization of revolutionary positions can ossify into counterrevolutionary practices. Those interested in pursuing emancipatory praxis benefit from keeping this tendency in mind.
Collectively, these statements of Debord provide insight into the role of ideology and revolution in confronting the spectacle of modern consumerism. Based on the understanding derived from examining these statements, it is possible to assess the statements, when grouped by word variant, in terms of their respective sentiment and themes. The results of those analyses are presented in Table 10 (Section 4.3).
4.3. Sentiment & Thematic Analysis Results
In terms of the aggregate sentiment of Debord’s (2014) statements (Table 10)
Table 10. Sentiment & thematic analysis of variants of the stemmed terms ideolo* and revolut*.
Variant |
Bing Sentiment |
Themes |
Ideology |
Positive |
History|Society|Economic |
Ideological |
Negative |
Class|Bourgeois|Proletarian |
Ideologies |
Positive |
Thought|Historical|Power |
Ideology Other |
Negative |
Thought|Historical|Power |
Revolutionary |
Positive |
Class|Historical|Organization |
Revolution |
Negative |
Class|Bourgeois|Proletarian |
Revolutions |
Negative |
Thought|Historical|Power |
Revolution Other |
Negative |
History|Society|Economic |
when analyzed by word variant, there were more variants with negative sentiment (n = 5) than those with positive sentiment (n = 3). The variants assessed as having a negative sentiment were ideological, ideology other, revolution, revolutions, and revolution other. The variants assessed as having a positive sentiment were ideology, ideologies, and revolutionary. Given that societies largely attempt to perpetuate the status quo, it is perhaps not surprising that statements associated with the variants of ideology and revolution tend to have a negative sentiment. In terms of the identified themes (Table 10), there is significant overlap among the variants. The variants ideology and revolution other were identified as having the dominant themes of history, society, and economics. The variants ideological and revolution were identified as having the dominant themes of class, bourgeois, and proletarian. The variants ideologies, ideology other, and revolutions were identified as having the dominant themes of thought, historical, and power. Lastly, the revolutionary variant was identified as having the dominant themes of class, historical, and organization. Collectively, the thematic analysis suggests that Debord’s statements on ideology and revolution are historically grounded and reflective of class consciousness. Examining some of the common terms found within these statements provides more granularity as to the specific content of these general themes.
A better understanding of the general themes identified in this study can be achieved through an examination of the specific content, which will inform the determination of the respective abstractions. Within the statements analyzed for this study, some variant of the names of Marx (n = 20) and Lenin (n = 11) appeared frequently along with variants of the names of Hegel (n = 7) and Stalin (n = 5). Those occurrences, along with the number of references to variants of class (n = 47), proletariat (n = 30), bourgeois (n = 29), and worker (n = 17), suggest that the identified themes of class, economics, history, organization, power, and society, along with the critique developed by Debord in The Society of the Spectacle, considered more broadly, is decidedly Marxian in nature. Such an understanding suggests why the work holds the potential for liberation from the consumerist ideology at the core of modern American society. Doing so effectively requires the formation of a revolutionary ideology within a revolutionary organization. As such, those two bigrams are of potential relevance for the purpose of this study.
Within The Society of the Spectacle, Debord (2014) made use of the phrase revolutionary class (n = 8), revolutionary ideology (n = 7), and revolutionary organization (n = 5) suggesting the importance of solidarity in revolutions. The words and phrases used by Debord in The Society of The Spectacle indicate the hidden ideology embedded in the consumerist form of economics and the revolution required to overcome it. Awareness is the first step; action is subsequently required. The implications of this study are offered within the context of the study’s conclusion.
5. Limitations
This study examined Debord’s (2014) The Society of the Spectacle, and focused on two stemmed words, ideolo* and revolut*. Whereas the insights from this analysis are constructive, the critique of consumerism would benefit from a broader analysis. Relatedly, the work analyzed was from the mid-1960s. Much has changed since then. Conducting a similar study on more recent works might reveal important similarities and differences in focus, tone, and response. Additionally, this study made use of the Bing sentiment lexicon, which reduces sentiment to a basic polarity. Whereas there is a utility to be derived from such an assessment, it is potentially too reductionist. Expanding the analysis by using a more nuanced lexicon would add insight. Lastly, the gap between individual awareness and collective action remains. Insights developed in this study point to a need for solidarity in addressing the spectacle, but creating a praxis for doing so remains.
6. Conclusion
There is an online image of a protest sign from the late 1960’s, with the following message on the sign, “a revolution is not a spectacle! There are no spectators! Everyone participates whether they know it or not” (Anonymous, 1968). There is a disjointed irony associated with that image, its location in cyberspace, its rhetorical content, and its relation to the focus of this study. As Debord (2014) explained, a spectacle is not an image or a collection of images, but a social relationship mediated by images in a consumer economy. The results of this study suggest that the ideology of consumption operating within this society goes largely unidentified and unnamed. As such, ideology is not so much what one thinks; it is what one accepts without thinking. The sentiment of the variants of ideology was mixed, and the themes were identified as being historical, economic, and focused largely on class antagonisms. For Debord (2014), the ideology of consumerism, calls for revolutionary action. When the variants of revolution were examined, the sentiments were largely negative, with the themes focused largely on class. A detailed analysis of the statements revealed significant reverences to Marx, Marxism, and Marxist theories. This is not surprising given that the critique of capitalism is central to the work of Marx, and his insights are useful for those engaged in a critique of consumerism. The results of this study add to such a critique. As Debord explained:
“A critical theory of the spectacle cannot be true unless it unites the practical current of negation in society; and that negation, the resumption of revolutionary class struggle, can for its part only become conscious of itself by developing the critique of the spectacle, which is the theory of its real conditions—the concrete conditions of present-day oppression.” (sec. 203)
The spectacle offers an illusion of consumer choice. Behind each manifestation of the spectacle is the same alienation. Aimless, persistent consumption does not lead to personal fulfillment but to drudgery. Revolutionary freedom from the spectacle can only be achieved by overcoming the consumerist ideology embedded at the core of work and the capitalist regime of power.
This analysis of Debord’s (2014) The Society of the Spectacle offers practical implications highlighting the need for individuals and groups to critically examine and challenge the consumerist ideologies that dominate modern societies. By understanding the interplay between ideology and revolution, the research empowers people to develop strategies for meaningful resistance and transformation. This involves fostering collective awareness and action to dismantle entrenched power structures and achieve genuine liberation. Ultimately, the study provides actionable insights for reshaping societal norms and promoting authentic engagement beyond mere consumption.
It is imperative to recognize the urgent need for a collective awakening to the influence of the spectacle in contemporary society. The results of this study underscore the need to transcend the allure of consumerism, which perpetuates alienation and undermines genuine personal fulfillment. To dismantle the entrenched ideology of consumerism, a renewed sense of solidarity and collective action is needed; a progressive agenda is dedicated to moving beyond consumption and toward authentic engagement in meaningful, concerted efforts to reshape the society of the spectacle into something more liberating for us individually and collectively.