[1] Essential to situationist theory was the concept of the spectacle, a unified critique of advanced capitalism of which a primary concern was the progressively increasing tendency towards the expression and mediation of social relations through images.

[1][3] The situationists recognized that capitalism had changed since Karl Marx's formative writings, but maintained that his analysis of the capitalist mode of production remained fundamentally correct; they rearticulated and expanded upon several classical Marxist concepts, such as his theory of alienation.

[1] In their expanded interpretation of Marxist theory, the situationists asserted that the misery of social alienation and commodity fetishism were no longer limited to the fundamental components of capitalist society, but had now in advanced capitalism spread themselves to every aspect of life and culture.

[3] The situationists maintained a philosophical opposition to all ideologies, conceiving of them as abstract superstructures ultimately serving only to justify the economic base of a given society; accordingly, they rejected "situationism" as an absurd and self-contradictory concept.

[4] Among some of the concepts and artistic innovations developed by the Lettrists were the lettrie, a poem reflecting pure form yet devoid of all semantic content, new syntheses of writing and visual art identified as metagraphics and hypergraphics, as well as new creative techniques in filmmaking.

[12][13] In 1952, this left wing of the Lettrist movement, which included Debord, broke off from Isou's group and formed the Letterist International, a new Paris-based collective of avant-garde artists and political theorists.

[17] During this period the Letterist International also developed the situationist tactic of détournement, which by reworking or re-contextualizing an existing work of art or literature sought to radically shift its meaning to one with revolutionary significance.

Other members included theorist Raoul Vaneigem, the Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys, the Italo-Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi, the English artist Ralph Rumney (sole member of the London Psychogeographical Association, Rumney suffered expulsion relatively soon after the formation), the Danish artist Asger Jorn (who after parting with the SI also founded the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism), the architect and veteran of the Hungarian Uprising Attila Kotanyi, and the French writer Michèle Bernstein.

The shift in the intellectual priorities within the SI resulted in more focus on the theoretical, such as the theory of the spectacle and Marxist critical analysis, spending much less time on the more artistic and tangible concepts like unitary urbanism, détournement, and situgraphy.

[35] Charles de Gaulle, in the aftermath televised speech of 7 June, acknowledged that "This explosion was provoked by groups in revolt against modern consumer and technical society, whether it be the communism of the East or the capitalism of the West.

[52] The Union Nationale des Étudiants de France declared itself in favor of the SI's theses, and managed to use public funds to publish Mustapha Khayati's pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life.

Working with Debord, in August 1975, Sanguinetti wrote a pamphlet titled Rapporto veridico sulle ultime opportunità di salvare il capitalismo in Italia (The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy),[55] which (inspired by Bruno Bauer) purported to be the cynical writing of "Censor", a powerful industrialist.

The pamphlet argued that the ruling class of Italy supported the Piazza Fontana bombing and other covert, false flag mass slaughter for the higher goal of defending the capitalist status quo from communist influence.

As early as 1958, in the situationist manifesto, Debord described official culture as a "rigged game", where conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have direct access to the public discourse.

[4] They recognized there was a precise mechanism followed by reactionaries to defuse the role of subversive artists and intellectuals, that is, to reframe them as separated from the most topical events, and divert from them the taste for the new that may dangerously appeal the masses; after such separation, such artworks are sterilized, banalized, degraded, and can be safely integrated into the official culture and the public discourse, where they can add new flavors to old dominant ideas and play the role of a gear wheel in the mechanism of the society of the spectacle.

[28] This principle was affirmed since the founding of the SI in 1957, but the qualitative step of resolving all the contradictions of having situationists that make concessions to the cultural market, was made with the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR in 1962.

[28] The SI noted how reactionary forces forbid subversive ideas from artists and intellectuals to reach the public discourse, and how they attack the artworks that express comprehensive critique of society, by saying that art should not involve itself into politics.

The SI thus were first led to distinguish the situation from the mere artistic practice of the happening, and later identified it in historical events such as the Paris Commune in which it exhibited itself as the revolutionary moment.

The charmingly vague adjective psychogeographical can be applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery.

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there...

Defunct Twelve issues of the main French edition of journal Internationale Situationniste were published, each issue edited by a different individual or group, including: Guy Debord, Hadj Mohamed Dahou, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, Maurice Wyckaert, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Asger Jorn, Helmut Sturm, Attila Kotanyi, Jørgen Nash, Uwe Lausen, Raoul Vaneigem, Michèle Bernstein, Jeppesen Victor Martin, Jan Strijbosch, Alexander Trocchi, Théo Frey, Mustapha Khayati, Donald Nicholson-Smith, René Riesel, and René Viénet.

[81] The concept of revolution created by the Situationist International was anti-capitalist,[82][83][84] Marxist, Young Hegelian,[35] and from the very beginning in the 50s, remarkably differently from the established Left, anti-Stalinist and against all repressive regimes.

Those who announce their agreement with our theses while crediting the SI with a vague spontaneism simply don't know how to read.According to situationist Ken Knabb, Debord pointed out the flaws and merits of both Marxism and anarchism.

[35] The concept of revolution created by the Situationist International was anti-capitalist,[82][83][84] Marxist, Young Hegelian,[35] and from the very beginning in the 1950s, remarkably differently from the established Left, anti-Stalinist and against all repressive regimes.

She cites a letter written by Jacqueline de Jong, Jorgen Nash, and Ansgar Elde protesting the expulsion of the Spur group in 1962 which highlights the political repression in Paris at that time.

[114] Other musical artists whose lyrics and artwork have referenced situationist concepts include the Clash, Pussy Riot,[115] Crass, Tom Robinson Band, Ian Dury, X-Ray Spex, Sham 69, Buzzcocks, the Fall, Patrik Fitzgerald, Conflict, the Royal Family and the Poor, Angelic Upstarts, Chaos UK, Chaotic Dischord, MDC, Dead Kennedys,[116] Reagan Youth, Chumbawamba and Manic Street Preachers.

... Nel Rapporto di Debord si legge inoltre una durissima critica allo sfruttamento capitalistico delle masse anche nel tempo libero attraverso l'industria del divertimento che abbrutisce la gente con sottoprodotti dell'ideologia mistificata della borghesia.In particular the key issue, of how and why the situationists came to have a preponderant role in May 1968—that is, how and why their brand of politics participated in, and to an extent fueled, a crisis of the late-capitalist State—is still wide open to interpretation.The word "Left" ... much of the time is used descriptively, and therefore pessimistically, to indicate a set of interlocking ideological directorships stretching roughly from the statist and workerist fringes of social democracy and laborism to the para-academic journals and think tanks of latter-day Trotskyism, taking in the Stalinist and lightly post-Stalinist center along the way.In May 1968, the Situationist-inspired Paris riots set off "a chain reaction of refusal" against consumer capitalism.L'I.S.

Fabbri P. 2002, p. 40), di una tattica che sarebbe poi stata facilmente sfruttata e fatta propria da quel momento in avanti dall'industria culturale mainstream.

sorge ed e' coeva alla denuncia dello Stalinismo.So far as Wollen is concerned, the anger was provoked by his essay on the history of the SI, and specifically his three-sentence treatment of the organization in its last decade.

We wanted to denounce a loose conspirancy of silence and misrepresentation which has been the response of a portion of the Left to the challenge that the SI poses to their model of political action.I think you probably know that his work [Debord's] is read now more than when he was alive.