PROCHAINE PLANÈTE (13 juillet 1954)

Les constructeurs en sont perdus, mais d’inquiétantes pyramides résistent aux banalisations des agences de voyage.

Le facteur Cheval a bâti dans son jardin d’Hauterives, en travaillant toutes les nuits de sa vie, son injustifiable «Palais Idéal» qui est la première manifestation d’une architecture de dépaysement.

Ce Palais baroque qui détourne les formes de divers monuments exotiques, et d’une végétation de pierre, ne sert qu’à se perdre. Son influence sera bientôt immense. La somme de travail fournie par un seul homme avec une incroyable obstination n’est naturellement pas appréciable en soi, comme le pensent les visiteurs habituels, mais révélatrice d’une étrange passion restée informulée.

Le Palais idéal

Ébloui du même désir, Louis II de Bavière élève à grands frais dans les montagnes boisées de son royaume quelques délirants châteaux factices — avant de disparaître dans des eaux peu profondes.

La rivière souterraine qui était son théâtre ou les statues de plâtre dans ses jardins signalent cette entreprise absolutiste, et son drame.

Il y a là, bien sûr, tous les motifs d’une intervention pour la racaille des psychiatres ; et encore des pages à baver pour les intellectuels paternalistes qui relancent de temps en temps un «naïf». Mais la naïveté est leur fait. Ferdinand Cheval et Louis de Bavière ont bâti les châteaux qu’ils voulaient, à la taille d’une nouvelle condition humaine.

« Prochaine planète », Potlatch. Bulletin d'information du groupe français de l'Internationale lettriste, numéro 4, 13 juillet 1954

Hohenschwangau

*******

Neuschwanstein

*******

Linderhof

*******

Herrenschiemsee

LE MINIMUM DE LA VIE (13 juillet 1954)

On ne dira jamais assez que les revendications actuelles du syndicalisme sont condamnées à l'échec; moins par la division et la dépendance de ces organismes reconnus que par l'indigence des programmes.

On ne dira jamais assez aux travailleurs exploités qu'il s'agit de leurs vies irremplaçables où tout pourrait être fait; qu'il s'agit de leurs plus belles années qui passent, sans aucune joie valable, sans meme avoir pris les armes.

Il ne faut pas demander que l'on assure ou que l'on élève le « minimum vital », mais que l'on renonce à maintenir les foules au minimum de la vie. Il ne faut pas demander seulement du pain, mais des jeux.

Dans le « statut économique du manœuvre léger », défini l'année dernière par la Commission des conventions collectives, statut qui est une insupportable injure à tout ce que l'on peut encore attendre de l'homme, la part des loisirs — et de la culture — est fixée à un roman policier de la Série Noire par mois.

Pas d'autre évasion.

Et de plus, par son roman policier, comme par sa Presse ou son Cinéma d'Outre-Atlantique, le régime étend ses prisons, dans lesquelles il ne reste rien à gagner — mais rien à perdre que ses chaînes.

La vie est à gagner au-delà.

Ce n'est pas la question des augmentations de salaires qu'il faut poser, mais celles de la condition faite au peuple en Occident.

Il faut refuser de lutter à l'intérieur du système pour obtenir des concessions de détail immédiatement remises en cause ou regagnées ailleurs par le capitalisme. C'est le problème de la survivance ou de la destruction de ce système qui doit être radicalement posé.

Il ne faut pas parler des ententes possibles, mais des réalités inacceptables: demandez aux ouvriers algériens de la Régie Renault où sont leurs loisirs, et leur pays, et leur dignité, et leurs femmes? Demandez-leur quel peut être leur espoir? La lutte sociale ne doit pas être bureaucratique, mais passionnée. Pour juger les désastreux résultats du syndicalisme professionnel, il suffit d'analyser les grèves spontanées d'août 1953; la résolution de la base; le sabotage par les centrales jaunes: l'abandon par la C.G.T. qui n'a su ni provoquer la grève générale ni l'utiliser alors qu'elle s'étendait victorieusement. Il faut, au contraire, prendre conscience de quelques faits qui peuvent passionner le débat: le fait par exemple que partout dans le monde nos amis existent, et que nous nous reconnaissons dans leur combat. Le fait aussi que la vie passe, et que nous n'attendons pas de compensations, hors celles que nous devons inventer et bâtir nous-mêmes.

Ce n'est qu'une affaire de courage.

Pour l'Internationale lettriste :

Michèle I. BERNSTEIN,
André-Frank CONORD,
Mohamed DAHOU,
G.-E. DEBORD,
Jacques FILLON,
Gil J WOLMAN.


« Le Minimum de la vie », Potlatch. Bulletin d'information du groupe français de l'Internationale lettriste, numéro 4, 13 juillet 1954

TOUT S'EXPLIQUE (BERNSTEIN, 6 juillet 1954)

Ce sont des gens qu'on appelle « lettristes », comme on disait « jacobins », ou « cordeliers »...

Michèle-Ivich BERNSTEIN, « Tout s'explique », Potlatch. Bulletin d'information du groupe français de l'Internationale lettriste, numéro 3, 6 juillet 1954

CONSTRUCTION DE TAUDIS (A.-F. CONORD, 6 juillet 1954)

Dans le cadre des campagnes de politique sociale de ces dernières années, la construction de taudis pour parer à la crise du logement se poursuit fébrilement. On ne peut qu’admirer l’ingéniosité de nos ministres et de nos architectes urbanistes. Pour éviter toute rupture d’harmonie, ils ont mis au point quelques taudis types, dont les plans servent aux quatre coins de France. Le ciment armé est leur matériau préféré. Ce matériau se prêtant aux formes les plus souples, on ne l’emploie que pour faire des maisons carrées. La plus belle réussite du genre semble être la «Cité Radieuse» du génial Corbusier, encore que les réalisations du brillant Perret lui disputent la palme.

Dans leurs œuvres, un style se développe, qui fixe les normes de la pensée et de la civilisation occidentale du vingtième siècle et demi. C’est le style « caserne » et la maison 1950 est une boîte.

Le décor détermine les gestes : nous construirons des maisons passionnantes.

A.-F. CONORD, « Construction de taudis », Potlatch. Bulletin d'information du groupe français de l'Internationale lettriste, numéro 3, 6 juillet 1954

À LA PORTE (WOLMAN, 29 juin 1954)

L'Internationale lettriste poursuit, depuis novembre 1952, l'élimination de la « Vieille Garde » :

quelques exclus - quelques motifs

ISIDORE GOLDSTEIN, alias JEAN-ISIDORE ISOU : Individu moralement rétrograde, ambitions limitées.

MOÏSE BISMUTH, alias MAURICE LEMAÎTRE : Infantilisme prolongé, sénilité précoce, bon apôtre.

POMERANS, alias GABRIEL POMERAND : Falsificateur, zéro.

SERGE BERNA : Manque de rigueur intellectuelle.

MENSION : Simplement décoratif.

JEAN-LOUIS BRAU : Déviation militariste.

LANGLAIS : Sottise.

IVAN CHTCHEGLOV, alias GILLES IVAIN : Mythomanie, délire d'interprétation - manque de conscience révolutionnaire.

Il est inutile de revenir sur les morts, le blount s'en chargera.

Gil J Wolman, « À la porte », Potlatch. Bulletin d'information du groupe français de l'Internationale lettriste, numéro 2, 29 juin 1954

EXERCICE DE LA PSYCHOGÉOGRAPHIE (29 juin 1954)

Piranèse est psychogéographique dans l’escalier.

Claude Lorrain est psychogéographique dans la mise en présence d’un quartier de palais et de la mer.

Le facteur Cheval est psychogéographique dans l’architecture.

Arthur Cravan est psychogéographique dans la dérive pressée.

Jacques Vaché est psychogéographique dans l’habillement.

Louis II de Bavière est psychogéographique dans la royauté.

Jack l’Éventreur est probablement psychogéographique dans l’amour.

Saint-Just est un peu psychogéographique dans la politique*.

André Breton est naïvement psychogéographique dans la rencontre.

Madeleine Reineri est psychogéographique dans le suicide**.

Et Pierre Mabille dans la compilation des merveilles,

Évariste Gallois dans les mathématiques,

Edgar Poe dans le paysage,

et dans l’agonie Villiers de l’Isle-Adam.

Guy-Ernest DEBORD, « Exercice de la psychogéographie », Potlatch. Bulletin d'information du groupe français de l'Internationale lettriste, numéro 2, 29 juin 1954

____________________

* La Terreur est dépaysante.

** Voir Hurlements en faveur de Sade.

HURLEMENTS EN FAVEUR DE SADE (Première version, avril 1952)

HURLEMENTS EN FAVEUR DE SADE (Première version, ION, numéro 1, avril 1952. Directeur : Marc-Gilbert GUILLAUMIN)



Guy-Ernest DEBORD



BANDE SONORE & IMAGES

(Les mots en capitales seront écrits en blanc sur l’écran noir.



Le terme rencontres désigne uniformément toutes les images dont l’érotisme ne sera tempéré que par l’existence, scandaleuse et à peine croyable d’une police.)

***

Au début de cette histoire, il y avait des gens faits pour l’oublier ; et le beau temps qui a été plus perdu que dans un labyrinthe.
Images : Défilé de troupes de l’Armée des Indes au siècle dernier.



(Long silence.)

Images : Écran noir.
Gros plan de Guy-Ernest Debord.
Écran noir.



Croyait que le soir passerait tout entier dans sa bouche. Mais il était malade à cause de cette impossibilité d’être compris ; et au hasard des connaissances et des ruptures, il trouvait peu à peu une métaphysique du refus.
Images : Gros plan d’une fille suçant une glace.
Panoramique ascendant de la Tour Saint-Jacques, répété plusieurs fois.



Qu’est-il devenu ?



(Dernière strophe de Marche de François Dufrêne, dite très doucement.)



Arthur Cravan sous des eaux profondes.
((-Dit par un noir américain.-))
Images : Vues d’un cuirassé de la bataille de Tsoushima.



Sa trace se perd à peu de temps de là dans le golfe du Mexique où il s’est engagé de nuit sur une embarcation des plus légères.
Images : Rencontres.




(Cors de chasse, d’Apollinaire, qu’accompagne une improvisation supersonique de Marc,O.)
Images : Défilé de troupes de l'Armée des Indes.



Emmanuel Dieu attend l’heure sidérale que sa tête s’en aille.
Images : Rencontres.



Une science des situations est à faire, qui empruntera des éléments à la psychologie, aux statistiques, à l’urbanisme et à la morale. Ces éléments devront concourir à un but absolument nouveau : une création consciente de situations.
Images : Scènes d'émeutes.



Je n’aime pas le cinéma, mais une insurrection qui m’est promise chaque matin quand je revois Violette Nozières, ou le monument élevé à la mémoire de Serge Berna.
Images : Rencontres.
Une fillette de douze ans sourit en passant et descend dans une bouche de métro.
Vues de Notre-Dame sous divers angles.




(Un air de Vivaldi commence.)
Images : Écran noir.




Se souvenait de ce bar où il attendait que le demi-siècle change, en pensant à tout ce qui allait finir une fois de plus et
Images : Gros plan de Guy-Ernest Debord.
Une fille assise, le visage contre une table où ses cheveux s’étendent en avant.




(Long silence.)
Images : Écran noir.




toujours attachés à l’heure, aux dernières secondes, jusqu’à minuit.
Images : Écran noir.
Des yeux en gros plan.
Écran noir.



(La musique continue un instant, puis s’arrête.)
Images : Match de Boxe.



Alors il sortit dans la rue froide, et les sirènes se mirent à hurler.
Images : Lacher de parachutistes.




((- Mots épelés.-))
T,E,L,L,E,M,E,N,T, V,I,D,E, À, H,U,R,L,E,R, À, H,U,R,L,E,R,
Images : pellicule brossée jusqu'à la destruction complète de l'image.



(Coups de sifflets.)



Sa mémoire la retrouvait toujours, dans un éblouissement brûlé par tous les feux d’artifice du sodium au contact de l’eau.
Images : Visage d'une fille endormie.




Savait bien qu’il ne resterait rien de ces gestes dans une ville qui tourne avec la Terre, et la Terre tourne dans sa Galaxie qui est une partie assez peu considérable d’un îlot qui fuit l’infini hors de nous-mêmes.
Images : Écran noir.
Gros plan de Guy-Ernest Debord.
Écran noir.
Match de boxe.




((- Mots épelés.-))
C,O,R,P,S, À, C,O,R,P,S, P,E,R,D,U,S,



Il se promenait et



(Silence.)
Images : Écran noir.
Guy-Ernest Debord en plan américain boit un verre.



plus désespéré que
Images : Écran noir.
Vues de plusieurs cheminées d'usines.




(Fragments de « J’interroge et j’invective », poème à hurler de François Dufrêne.)
Images : Pellicule brossée.



La première merveille est de venir devant elle sans savoir lui parler. Les mains prisonnières ne bougent pas plus vite que les chevaux de course filmés au ralenti, pour toucher sa bouche et ses seins ; en toute innocence, les cordes deviennent de l’eau, et nous roulons ensemble vers le jour.
Images du ciel nocturne, au télescope.



((-Les phrases soulignées seront dites par une fille à l’accent bulgare*.-))

Je crois que nous ne nous reverrons jamais.
Images : Rencontres, au ralenti.

Près d’un baiser les lumières des rues de l’hiver finiront.

En ce moment à Tahiti, c’est l’aube.

Paris était très agréable à cause de la grève des transports.

Jack l’Éventreur n’a jamais été pris.

Il est amusant, le téléphone.

Quel amour-défi, comme disait Madame de Ségur.

Je vous raconterai des histoires de mon pays qui font très peur, mais il faut les raconter le soir pour avoir peur.

Ma chère Ivich, les quartiers chinois sont malheureusement moins nombreux que vous ne le pensez. Vous avez quinze ans.

Les couleurs les plus voyantes un jour ne se porteront plus.

Je vous connaissais déjà.

Séoul et d’autres nébuleuses.

La forêt vierge l’est moins que vous.

Guy, j’ai si froid.

Le démon des armes, vous vous souvenez, c’est cela. Personne ne nous suffisait. Que voudront dire plus tard, Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, l’inceste et l’écolière ?




(Hurlements.)
Images : Scènes d'émeutes.



Tout de même…

La grèle sur les bannières de verre. On s’en souviendra de cette planète.

Un monde de cris a été perdu.

((- répété trois fois mécaniquement et légèrement crescendo.-))
Images : Isou, en gros plan, sourit à la salle.

Images : Écran noir.



pensait à quelques lignes d’un journal, en 1950.
Images : Gros plan de Guy-Ernest Debord.
Écran noir.
Scènes d'émeutes.


((-Voix monotone.-))

Une jeune vedette de la radio se jette dans l’Isère.
Images : Rencontres.

Grenoble. La petite Madeleine Reineri, douze ans et demi, qui animait, sous le pseudonyme de Pirouette, l’émission radiophonique des Beaux Jeudis, au Poste Alpes-Grenoble, s’est jetée dans l’Isère, vendredi après-midi, après avoir déposé son cartable sur la berge de la rivière.

((-Doucement.-))

VARALINE
VARADALINE
SIANE MARIALE MALIVOLANE.
Images : Corps de jeunes gens tués dans les rues d'Athènes



Ma petite sœur, nous ne sommes pas beaux à voir. L’Isère et la misère continuent. Nous n’avons pas de pouvoirs.
Écrits en blanc sur l'écran noir : ET LA JEUNESSE SE DÉCOMPOSERA UN PEU PLUS



Le Soulèvement de la Jeunesse…
Images : Gros plan de Marc,O.

(Coups de sifflets stridents ; puis chœur lettriste en fond sonore dominé par des cris et des coups de sifflets.)
Images : Intérieur du Mabillon avec ses clients habituels.



Considérations sur les rapports sexuels en France vers la fin de l’ère chrétienne.

Presque toutes les filles âgées de moins de quinze ans nous sont interdites.

La plupart des perversions sont mal vues du grand public.
Images : Match de boxe.



La police parisienne est forte de trente mille matraques.

Il y a encore beaucoup de gens que le mot de morale ne fait ni rire, ni crier.

(Fin du chœur lettriste.)

Christiane est en prison.

L’ordre règne et ne gouverne pas.



((- Mécaniquement.-))



La psychologie tridimensionnelle, ou le complexe architectural défini comme moyen de connaissance.
Images : Vues extérieures du Musée de Cluny.




Le chien andalou s’est enfermé dans les maisons du sommeil, comme un argonaute étranglé.
Images : Scènes d'émeutes.

Tant d’indulgence et la victoire de Kossovo, les plaies secrètes. Au coin de la nuit les marins font la guerre ; et les bateaux dans les bouteilles sont pour toi qui les avais aimés. Tu te renversais dans la plage comme dans les mains plus amoureuses que la pluie, le vent et le tonnerre mettent tous les soirs sous ta robe.

La vie est belle l’été à Cannes.

Le viol, qui est défendu, se banalise dans nos souvenirs.

Quand nous étions sur le Chattanooga.

Oui. Bien sûr.
Images : Pellicule brossée.

Et l’ensablement de ces visages qui furent les éclatements du désir, comme l’encre sur un mur, qui furent des étoiles folles.

Que le gin, le rhum et le marc coulent comme la grande Armada.

Ceci pour l’éloge funèbre.

Mais tous ces gens étaient vulgaires.



(Applaudissements et coups de sifflets simultanément.)
Images : Écrits en blanc sur l'écran noir : LE DÉSORDRE POUR LE DÉSORDRE.



Le supplice de la caresse recommence avec elle et la faiblesse se refuse et augmente.
Images : Match de boxe.



La chute verticale vide un tonneau des Danaïdes, un tonneau de gel et de lèvres.
Images : Pellicule brossée.



Le tapis tourne dans une autre dimension du temps, se tache.



Comme un sucre qui fond.
Images : Lacher de parachutistes.


La musique borne le rouge et le vert des signaux.


La nuit est à toi.La musique triomphale s’élargit.
Images : Rencontres.



Il est couché à la nage dans un fleuve très chaud, une mer d’huile.



Déjà ce n’est plus qu’une affaire de cheveux.

Je n’ai jamais beaucoup aimé la Wodka, ni les confidences.



((- Voix monotone.-))



La petite Madeleine Reineri, douze ans et demi, qui animait, sous le pseudonyme de Pirouette, l’émission radiophonique des Beaux-Jeudis, au Poste Alpes-Grenoble, s’est jetée dans l’Isère…
Images : Lacher de parachutistes.




Mademoiselle Reineri, dans le quartier de l’Europe, vous avez toujours votre visage étonné et ce corps, la meilleure des terres promises.
Images : Plaque de la rue de Lisbonne.
Progression de l'infanterie française en Indochine.



Les dialogues répètent comme le néon leurs vérités définitives.



(Solo lettriste improvisé sur un râle.)
Images : Écrits en blanc sur l'écran noir : JE T’AIME.
CE DOIT ÊTRE TERRIBLE DE MOURIR.
AU REVOIR.
TU BOIS BEAUCOUP TROP.
QUE SONT LES AMOURS ENFANTINES ?
JE NE TE COMPRENDS PAS.





Je savais. À une autre époque je l’ai beaucoup regretté.
Images : Écrits en blanc sur l'écran noir : VEUX-TU UNE ORANGE ?
LES BEAUX DÉCHIREMENTS DES ÎLES VOLCANIQUES.
AUTREFOIS.


Je n’ai plus rien à te dire.
Images du ciel nocturne au télescope.


(Fin de l’improvisation lettriste.)



Après toutes les réponses à contretemps, et la jeunesse qui se fait vieille, la nuit retombe de bien haut.



(Cris de François Dufrêne :)
Images : Scènes d'émeutes.

VI

XIII ad lib.

KWORXE KOWONGUE KKH
WOZ BU WONZ GGH
WEXPI GWÈGNS
PIV
HIGNS CHTABUHI
HIGNS
STOBOHU STOBOHU KAX
GONX
KWORXE KOWONGUE KKH
WOZ BU WONZ GGH
Images : Pellicule brossée.

TIYNDOLLF, TIYNDOLLF,
TIYNDOLLF (bis).
GLILEUS, GLILEUS, GLILEUS,
GLILEUS, GLILEUS (bis).
CHTAM, CHTAM, CHTAM,
CHTAM, BAOUMPE (bis).
KFRACHIKANNKLE
KLEX



XIV



KLWATWORZZ…
CHFARBONR CHFIDRE,
CHFIDRE, CHFIDRE (bis).
CHFARBONR CHGLIFT !

VI


À propos de ces souvenirs j’ai détruit le cinéma, parce que c’était plus facile que de tuer les passants.



((- Ici le commentaire se limite à la lecture de divers articles du Code Civil et d’extraits d’un manuel de Littérature Française.-))
Images : Pendant le reste du film, succession d’images absolument quelconques ; en dehors de toute intention d’humour, de montage, ou de provocation.




Les mondes poétiques se ferment et s’oublient en eux-mêmes.
Images : Visage d’une fille masqué par ses cheveux.



Sur la place Gabriel-Pomerand le brouillard dissimule des rendez-vous qui tournent au suicide.
Images : Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, déserte.




Nous vivons en enfants perdus, nos aventures incomplètes, nos aventures démesurément petites.
Images : Rencontres.



La dérive des continents éloigne chaque jour davantage une fille aussi belle de Gilles de Rais.
Images : Guy-Ernest Debord sort de l’Escapade et descend la rue Dauphine.



Vous savez, tout cela n’a pas d’importance.
Images : Écran noir.


(Un court silence, puis des cris très violents dans le noir.)


_________________
* ici, en caractères gras

PHILOSOPHY AND MYTH IN KARL MARX

Gajo PETROVIC (1927-1993)

Robert C. TUCKER, Philosophy & Myth in Karl Marx, Cambridge University Press, 1961

It is usually too simple a procedure to divide a book into its “good” and “bad” sides. But there are books where such a procedure is justified, books which are so unequal and contradictory that the reviewer without falling into self-contradiction can both “praise” and “blame,” them. In my opinion Tucker’s Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx is a book of this kind. It has its successful parts where the author corrects certain widespread prejudices about Marx, but it also has parts which contribute to the generation of new misunderstandings.

Tucker sees very well that one should distinguish between Marx’s authentic Marxism and later Marxism ; as the subject of his study he has chosen « Marx’s own Marxism — its pre-history in German philosophy before Marx, its genesis and evolution in Marx’s mind, and its basic meaning »(p, 11).

In discussing the prehistory and genesis of Marx’s thought Tucker rightly points out both the decisive importance of Hegel, and also Marx’s own originality even in his “Hegelian” phase. He also insists that after having suffered the influence of Feuerbach Marx did not simply reject Hegel. Feuerbach in fact “cured” Marx of his Hegelianism by giving him a life-long case of the disease, so that the new “anti-Hegelian” Marx was in a sense “more Hegelian than ever” (p, 97). In stressing the decisive importance of Hegel for the formation of Marx’s thought, Tucker does not diminish the impact of Feuerbach, and he emphasizes the often overlooked influence of Moses Hess.

In studying the evolution of Marx’s Own Marxism Tucker rightly maintains that there is “an underlying continuity of Marx’s thought from the early philosophical manuscripts to the later stage.” (p. 7), and he opposes the thesis that it is possible to discover two basically different Marxisms, even in the work of Marx himself. Accepting the division into “original” and “mature” Marxism, Tucker maintains that “the foundations of mature Marxism were laid in the act of creating original Marxism” (p. 167). In accordance with this he criticizes not only those who deny unity in Marx’s thought, but also those who like Herbert Marcuse assert that Marx’s early writings were “merely preliminary stages to his mature theory, stages that should not be overemphasized” (p, 168).

Through an analysis of the texts of Marx and Engels Tucker successfully shows that neither of them recognized the existence of two Marxisms and that Marx himself regarded his manuscripts of 1844 as the birthplace of mature Marxism (p. 170). A continuity connects Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Draft of the Criticism of Political Economy and Capital, so that Marx’s Capital is “ simply a farm in which he completed the book he started to write in his manuscripts of 1844. (p. 204). In stressing the unity of all the “economic” works of Marx, Tucker rightly criticizes the view that Marx was a political economist and asserts that Marx “always remained a critic of political economy” (p. 204). He also rejects the assumption that Marxism is “a scientific system of thought” (p. 12) and the view that Marx was the founder of “dialectical materialism conceived as a doctrine of nature separated from human history. According to Tucker dialectical materialism in this sense is “a development of the later, scholastic period of Marxism,” a period which to be sure began within the lifetime of Marx, but in the later writings of Engels, not in those of Marx.

Tucker regards self-alienation to be the central concept of original Marxism. Original Marxism presented history as a story of man’s self-alienation and ultimate transcendence of it in communism. (p. 188) Mature Marxism retells the tale in other words. “It remains however, essentially the same story (p, 188).

We can largely agree with the ideas summarized so far. One should mention however that these are not the original thoughts of Tucker although he expresses s them in his own way. They show that he agrees with a number of contemporary thinkers who in recent decades have revolted against the misinterpretation of Marx’s thought in Stalinism, and returned to Marx himself in an attempt to rediscover his authentic thought. There have been relatively few such endeavours in the English speaking area so far (although some that there have been are very important, such as those of E. Fromm). Thus the authentic thought of Marx is still insufficiently known there. Through emphasizing certain of the basic truths about Mans thought, Tucker’s book can therefore still play a positive role in the English speaking countries.

However the ideas presented above represent only the first step towards an understanding of authentic Marxism. This is not to say that Tucker does not take more than the first step. Going boldly into further analysis, he even achieves a considerable degree of originality; unfortunately just where he is most original, he is also weakest.

In the section on German classical idealism Tucker shows a tendency to a doubtful psychoanalytic approach in historico-philosophical analysis. He maintains that Kent’s philosophy “identified the neurotic personality as the normal mama (p. 38). In a reinforced form the same criticism its directed at Hegel. According to Tucker Hegelianism is an anti-Christian “religion of self-worship” and a “colosal embodiment and rationalization of pride” (p. 43). Solipsism is for Hegel “the philosophical goal and ideal” (p. 54), and knowledge is for him “aggrandizement of the self through aggression against the object” (p. 61), an “acquisitive process” through which the greedy knowing self appropriates all the world forms as its private property (p. 62). The generic tendency of man according to Hegel as interpreted by Tucker is megalomania (p. 66) !

Feuerbach’s opposition to religion is regarded by Tucker as “more anti-Hegelian that anti-Christian.” Hegelianism is “a philosophical and religious affirmation of pride,” whereas Feverbach’s philosophy, despite its apparent atheism, “contains elements of a critique of pride” (pp, 93-94). According to Tucker Marx followed Feuerbach in such an anti-pride orientation. Perhaps the essential difference between Marx and Hegel can be most clearly seen in their attitude towards the acquisitive drive “For Hegel the appropriation of the world cognitively as property of the ego is the way in which the spirit’s self-alienation is overcome and freedom is achieved. For Marx it is just the reverse. The acquisitive striving is the force that turns man’s creative activity into compulsive alienated labour and depersonalizes him. It is the ground and source of his alienation from himself.” (p. 143).

The supreme concern and the central theme of Marx’s thought was always man’s self-alienation and its transcendence. In this Marx was “very modern and in advance of his time” (p. 238). But how did Marx conceive self-alienation? In reminding us that ,,alienation” is “an ancient psychiatric term meaning loss of personal identity or the feeling of personal identity” (p. 144), Tucker maintains that Marx used this term exactly in this psychological-psychiatric sense. The process of self-alienation, as described by Marx, is according to Tucker “a recognizably psychiatric phenomenon, a sickness of the self” (p. 144).

Although at first he generally maintains that Marx conceived alienation as a psychological, or psychiatric tear Tucker later corrects himself in making a difference in this connection between “original” and “mature” Marxism. Whereas original Marxism interpreted alienation psychologically, the conflict of the alienated man with himself later became the conflict between “work” and “capital.” “Self-alienation was projected as a social phenomenon, and Marx’s psychological system turned into his apparently sociological mature one” (p. 175).

This change of system is especially reflected in that the “mature” Marx does not speak about self-alienation any more. But this does not mean that the content of the idea disappeared. Self-alienation was merely transformed into a social relation of production and got a new name. The “division of labour” became “the comprehensive category of mature Marxism corresponding to the category ,,self-alienation” in original Marxism” (p. 185). After 1844. Marx “read the division of labour as alienation. That is, he found the same meaning in the division of labour that he had preciously found in the idea of alienation” (p. 188). In trying to substantiate this assertion, Tucker observes :

In fact, all the symptoms that Marx had previously treated under the heading of “alienation” are now attributed to the disease of division of labour” (p. 190).

The picture of alienation painted by the young Marx is extremely highly valued by Tucker: “No work of literature or psychiatry known to this writer has portrayed with comparable descriptive power the destructive and dehumanizing essence of the neurotic process of self-alienation” (p: 215). But Marx’s decision to treat self-alienation as being, for all practical purposes, a social-relation of man to man, a decision allegedly made in 1844, is regarded by Tucker as “fateful” (p. 215). Thorough this decision Marx turned from philosophy to myth. From now an he represented the “internal Inferno” in the alienated- man as an “external Inferno” in society (p. 226).

Tucker thinks that according to his inner nature alienation is neither a fact of religion, nor a fact of political economy. “Inherently or in itself it is a fact of the life of the self, i. e. a spiritual or, as we say today, psychological fact.... No matter how many individual men may belong to this category it is always an individual matter” (pp. 239, 240). Therefore alienation can not be overcome through social action, especially not through violent action, but only by a “moral revolution” in the individual, “a revolution within the self” (p. 241).

Tucker holds that Marx was originally within reach of the insight that alienation is essentially a fact of individual psychology. This is seen from his assertion of 1845. that man alienates himself from himself when he produces under the pressure of an “egoistic need.” But Marx “failed to trace this egoism to its real source within the personality of the alienated individual himself,” and this is why he also failed to understand that “it is only there, and by the individual’s own moral effort, that the egoism can be undone and the revolutionary “change of self” achieved” (p. 240).

However not only did Marx not arrive at an adequate understanding of means for transcending alienation. In a very important sense, his whole system represented a flight from it. “Magnifying the problem to the proportions of humanity in general, Marx exempted alienated man in particular from all moral responsibility for striving to change himself. Self-change was to be reached by a revolutionary praxis that would alter external circumstances, and the war of the self was to be won through transference of hostilities to the field of relations between man and man. Men were told, in effect, that violence against other men was the only possible means by which they themselves could become new men. Not moral orientation but escape was the burden of this message. Marx created in Marxism gospel of transcendence of alienation by other means than those which alone can encompass the end, a solution that evades the solution, a pseudo-solution” (p. 241).

We cannot here enter into a discussion of all details of Tucker’s interpretation and evaluation of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach and Marx. But we must say something at least about his main interpretative thesis that the “original” Marx conceived alienation as a “psychological,” and the “mature” Marx as a “social” fact, as well as about his basic belief that alienation was a fact of individual psychology which can be overcome only at an individual psychological level, through the personal moral efforts of individuals.

First of all it is an untenable view that the young Marx up to 1844. conceived alienation as a fact of individual psychology. In his essay “Toward the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right to mention just one example, Marx says that man is “no abstract being, squatting outside the world” that he is “the world of man, the state, society,” and in accord with this he maintains that the task of philosophy, “once the saintly form of human self-alienation has been unmasked, is to unmask self-alienation in its unholy forms.” As such “unholy” forms, “law” and “politics,” consequently certain forms of man’s social life are mentioned. In the same essay Marx maintains that man’s alienation cannot be abolished through philosophical criticism only, because the weapon of criticism cannot be a substitute for the criticism of weapons, and material force can be overthrown by material force only. As such a material force Marx in the same essay discovered the proletariat, and he proclaimed that the head of man’s emancipation is philosophy and its heart the proletariat. How one can maintain then that Marx at that time conceives alienation and de-alienation as individual psychological phenomena which can exist only at an individual-psychological level ?

It would be odd to the point of actually being ridiculous to maintain that Marx conceived alienation as a fact of psychology, psychopathology, or psychiatry in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. Tucker is himself obviously aware of this when he observes that the lever of the metamorphosis of the psychological conception of alienation into a socially interpreted division of labour should be sought in “Marx’s decision in the manuscripts of 1844 to treat man’s self-alienation as a social relation between the working man and another man outside him” (p. 185). However what appears to Tucker as a special decision taken in 1844, is only one of the aspects of Marx’s conception of alienation which had been developed in the Manuscripts, a conception according to which self-alienation is not only (and not in the first place) either a “psychological” or a “sociological” category, but is first and foremost a category of general philosophy, a category of “ontology” and “anthropology.” Self-alienation as it is analysed by Marx in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts is something which can occur and actually does occur both with the individual man and with society, and not only with the “psychological” aspect of man’s life, but also with all the rest of them, with man as an integral being. This is why Marx even in this period does not see the road towards de-alienation either in an “internal moral rebirth of individuals, or merely in a social action changing “external circumstances,” but in a simultaneous “internal” and “external” revolutionary transformation, in a revolutionary praxis the essence of which is (as he observes in his third thesis on Feuerbach) in the coinciding change of circumstances and self-change.

The decisive message of the whole work of the “young” Marx is that the revolutionary change of inhuman “ external circumstances” is impossible without “inner” free, humane personalities which are ready to fight for such a change, and the full afflorescence of free personalities is impossible without a resolute change of inhuman social “ circumstances.” The “mature” Marx remained faithful to his “ original” viewpoint. The thesis that Marx originally conceived alienation psychologically is also unfounded, and thus the thesis that the mature Marx conceived alienation as an exclusively social fact is artificially constructed. The thesis that “division of labour” means for the mature Marx the same thing as self-alienation for the “original” Marx is in particular wrong. Neither for the “young” nor for the “old” Marx were self-alienation and division of labour the same thing, but the division of labour is one of the forms and expressions of man’s self-alienation, that form which characterizes the sphere of work (and this is however merely one of the spheres in which self-alienated man exists). Tucker says rightly that Marx ascribes to the division of labour all those characteristics which in other places, in his early writings, he ascribes to alienation. But it does not follow from this that self-alienation and division of labour are one and the same. It only means that division of labour as one of the forms of self-alienation, has all the general characteristics of self-alienation.

All Tucker’s objections directed against Marx’s alleged reduction of the problem of de-alienation to the problem of the “external” circumstances, are unjustified for the simple reason that Marx never reduced the problem in such a way. On the contrary one could rightly object that Tucker in his insistence on the “moral revolution” and inner change” as something which can be achieved quite independently from social “revolution” and from “external changes” does not oppose to Marx a “higher” and “profounder” conception, but only one variant of those one-sided, essentially conservative, and even reactionary conceptions which Marx knew, had in mind and in his work transcended.

When he ascribes to the “mature” Marx the conception of alienation as a social phenomenon, and appropriates to himself — a consistent development of the vague anticipation of the young Marx about alienation as a psychopathological phenomenon which can be abolished only through an internal moral change, Tucker in fact ascribes to Marx a caricature of one element or aspect of his integral conception, and appropriates to himself a caricatured form of another. However Marx’s conception is in neither of the two aspects (and especially not in their caricatures), and it is not even a synthesis of them. Alienation and de-alienation are for Marx primarily neither psychological, nor sociological phenomena, they are ontologico-anthropological. That philosophical angle of approach which is in-dispensable to see the phenomenon of alienation in the right way obviously remained strange and inaccessible to Tucker. Therefore, in rejecting the classification of Marx among “economists” and “scientists” he does not know where to place him; so he counts him among “moralists,” more specifically among the “moralists of a religious kind” (p. 21).

A choice between objective science and subjective morals seems unavoidable to those who do not understand the essence of philosophy as an activity through which the opposition between “science” and “morals,” between a mere factual “is” and unfounded evaluative “ought” is transcended and abolished.


Gajo PETROVIC, compte rendu publié dans Praxis, numéro 1, 1965.

Ideology first appeared in English in 1796, as a direct translation of the new French word ideologie which had been proposed in that year by the rationalist philosopher Destutt de Tracy. Taylor (1796) : « Tracy read a paper and proposed to call the philosophy of mind, ideology ». Taylor (1797) : « … ideology, or the science of ideas, in order to distinguish it from the ancient metaphysics ». In this scientific sense, ideology was used in epistemology and linguistic theory until C19.

A different sense, initiating the main modern meaning, was popularized by Napoléon Bonaparte. In an attack on the proponents of democracy — « who misled the people by elevating them to a sovereignty which they were incapable of exercising » — he attacked the principles of the Enlightenment as « ideology ».

It is to the doctrine of the ideologues — to this diffuse metaphysics, which in a contrived manner seeks to find the primary causes and on this foundation would erect the legislation of peoples, instead of adapting the laws to a knowledge of the human heart and of the lessons of history — to which one must attribute all the misfortunes which have befallen our beautiful France.

This use reverberated throughout C19. It is still very common in conservative criticism of any social policy which is in part or in whole derived from social theory in a conscious way. It is especially used of democratic or socialist policies, and indeed, following Napoleon’s use, ideologist was often in C19 generally equivalent to revolutionary. But ideology and ideologist and ideological also acquired, by a process of broadening from Napoleon’s attack, a sense of abstract, impractical or fanatical theory. It is interesting in view of the later history of the word to read Scott (Napoleon, vi, 251): « ideology, by which nickname the French ruler used to distinguish every species of theory, which, resting in no respect upon the basis of self-interest, could, he thought, prevail with none save hot-brained boys and crazed enthusiasts » (1827). Carlyle, aware of this use, tried to counter it : « does the British reader ... call this unpleasant doctrine of ours ideology ? » (Chartism, vi, 148; 1839).

There is then some direct continuity between the pejorative sense of ideology, as it had been used in early C19 by conservative thinkers, and the pejorative sense popularized by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology (1845-7) and subsequently. Scott had distinguished ideology as theory « resting in no respect upon the basis of self-interest », though Napoleon’s alternative had actually been the (suitably vague) « knowledge of the human heart and of the lessons of history ». Marx and Engels, in their critique of the thought of their radical German contemporaries, concentrated on its abstraction from the real processes of history. Ideas, as they said specifically of the ruling ideas of an epoch, « are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas ». Failure to realize this produced ideology : an upside-down version of reality.

If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life process. (German Ideology)

Or as Engels put it later :

Every ideology ... once it has arisen develops in connection with the given concept-material, and develops this material further; otherwise it would cease to be ideology, that is, occupation with thoughts as with independent entities, developing independently and subject only to their own laws. That the material life-conditions of the persons inside whose heads this thought process goes on in the last resort determine the course of this process remains of necessity unknown to these persons, for otherwise there would be an end to all ideology. (Ludwig Feuerbach)

Or again:

Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously indeed but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him, otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he imagines false or apparent motives. Because it is a process of thought he derives both its form and its content from pure thought, either his own or his predecessors. (Letter to Mehring, 1893)

Ideology is then abstract and false thought, in a sense directly related to the original conservative use but with the alternative — knowledge of real material conditions and relationships — differently stated. Marx and Engels then used this idea critically. The « thinkers » of a ruling class were « its active conceptive ideologists, who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief source of livelihood » (German Ideology, 65). Or again : « the official representatives of French democracy were steeped in republican ideology to such an extent that it was only some weeks later that they began to have an inkling of the significance of the June fighting » (Class Struggles in France, 1850). This sense of ideology as illusion, false consciousness, unreality, upside-down reality, is predominant in their work. Engels believed that the « higher ideologies » — philosophy and religion — were more removed from material interests than the direct ideologies of politics and law, but the connection, though complicated, was still decisive (Ludwig Feuerbach, 277). They were « realms of ideology which soar still higher in the air . . . various false conceptions of nature, of man’s own being, of spirits, magic forces, etc. ... » (Letter to Schmidt, 1890). This sense has persisted.

Yet there is another, apparently more neutral sense of ideology in some parts of Marx’s writing, notable in the well-known passage in the Contribution to the Critique of Political Philosophy (1859) :

The distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production ... and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological — forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out (... kurz, ideologischen Formen, worin sich die Menschen diesen Konflikts bewusst werden … )

This is clearly related to part of the earlier sense : the ideological forms are expressions of (changes in) economic conditions of production. But they are seen here as the forms in which men become conscious of the conflict arising from conditions and changes of condition in economic production. This sense is very difficult to reconcile with the sense of ideology as mere illusion.

In fact, in the last century, this sense of ideology as the set of ideas which arise from a given set of material interests or, more broadly, from a definite class or group, has been at least as widely used as the sense of ideology as illusion. Moreover, each sense has been used, at times very confusingly, within the Marxist tradition. There is clearly no sense of illusion or false consciousness in a passage such as this from Lenin :

Socialism, insofar as it is the ideology of struggle of the proletarian class, undergoes the general conditions of birth, development and consolidation of an ideology, that is to say it is founded on all the material of human knowledge, it presupposes a high level of science, demands scientific work, etc. … In the class struggle of the proletariat which develops spontaneously, as an elemental force, on the basis of capitalist relations, socialism is introduced by the ideologists. (Letter to the Federation of the North)

Thus there is now « proletarian ideology » or « bourgeois ideology », and so on, and ideology in each case is the system of ideas appropriate to that class. One ideology can be claimed as correct and progressive as against another ideology. It is of course possible to add that the other ideology, representing the class enemy, is, while a true expression of their interests, false to any general human interest, and something of the earlier sense of illusion or false consciousness can then be loosely associated with what is primarily a description of the class character of certain ideas. But this relatively neutral sense of ideology, which usually needs to be qualified by an adjective describing the class or social group which it represents or serves, has in fact become common in many kinds of argument. At the same time, within Marxism but also elsewhere, there has been a standard distinction between ideology and SCIENCE (q.v.), in order to retain the sense of illusory or merely abstract thought. This develops the distinction suggested by Engels, in which ideology would end when men realized their real life-conditions and therefore their real motives, after which their consciousness would become genuinely scientific because they would then be in contact with reality (cf. Suvin). This attempted distinction between Marxism as science and other social thought as ideology has of course been controversial, not least among Marxists. In a very much broader area of the « social sciences », comparable distinctions between ideology (speculative systems) and science (demonstrated facts) are commonplace.

Meanwhile, in popular argument, ideology is still mainly used in the sense given by Napoléon. Sensible people rely on EXPERIENCE (q.v.), or have a philosophy ; silly people rely on ideology. In this sense ideology, now as in Napoléon, is mainly a term of abuse.

See DOCTRINAIRE, EXPERIENCE, IDEALISM, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE.

Raymond WILLIAMS, « Ideology », Keywords : A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Revised edition. New York : Oxford University Press, 1985.

***

IDEOLOGY : DEFINITIONS (Terry EAGLETON, Ideology: An Introduction, 1991)

a) the process of production of meanings, signs and value in social life ;

b) a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class ;

c) ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power ;

) false ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power ;

e) systematically distorted communication ;

f) that which offers a position for a subject ;

g) forms of thought motivated by social interests ;

h) identity thinking ;

i) socially necessary illusion ;

j) the conjuncture of discourse and power ;

k) the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world ;

l) action-oriented sets of beliefs ;

m) the confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality ;

n) semiotic closure ;

o) the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relation to a social structure ;

p) the process whereby said life is converted to a natural reality.

DE LA RÉIFICATION (I)

The act (or result of the act) of transforming human properties, relations and actions into properties, relations and actions of man‑produced things which have become independent (and which are imagined as originally independent) of man and govern his life. Also transformation of human beings into thing‑like beings which do not behave in a human way but according to the laws of the thing‑world. Reification is a « special» case of ALIENATION, its most radical and widespread form characteristic of modern capitalist society.

There is no term and no explicit concept of reification in Hegel, but some of his analyses seem to come close to it e.g. his analysis of the beobachtende Vernunft (observing reason), in the Phenomenology of the Spirit, or his analysis of property in his Philosophy of Right. The real history of the concept of reification begins with Marx and with Lukács's interpretation of Marx. Although the idea of reification is implicit already in the early works of Marx (e.g., in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts), an explicit analysis and use of 'reification' begins in his later writings and reaches its peak in the Grundrisse, and Capital. The two most concentrated discussions of reification are to be found in Capital I, ch. I sect. 4, and in Capital III, ch. 48. In the first of these, on COMMODITY FETISHISM, there is no definition of reification but basic elements for a theory of reification are nevertheless given in a number of pregnant statements :

The mystery of the commodity form, therefore, consists in the fact that in it the social character of men's labour appears to them as an objective characteristic, a social natural quality of the labour product itself . . . The commodity form, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connexion with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. It is simply a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things ... This I call the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities . . . To the producers the social relations connecting the labours of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, thinglike relations between persons and social relations between things.... To them their own social action takes the form of the action of things, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them.

In the second discussion, Marx summarizes briefly the whole previous analysis which has shown that reification is characteristic not only of the commodity, but of all basic categories of capitalist production (money, capital, profit, etc.). He insists that reification exists to a certain extent in 'all social forms insofar as they reach the level of commodity production and money circulation', but that 'in the capitalist mode of production and in capital which is its dominating category . . . this enchanted and perverted world develops still further'. Thus in the developed form of capitalism reification reaches its peak :

In capital‑profit, or still better capital‑interest, land‑ground rent, labour‑wages, in this economic trinity represented as the connection between the component parts of value and wealth in general and its sources, we have the complete mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the reification [Verdinglichung] of social relations and immediate coalescence of the material production relations with their historical and social determination. It is an enchanted, perverted, topsy‑turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost‑walking as social characters and at the same time directly as things. (Capital III, ch. 48.)

As equivalent in meaning with Verdinglichung Marx uses the term Versachlichung, and the reverse of Versachlichung he calls Personifizierung. Thus he speaks about « this personification of things and reification of the relations of production ». He regards as the ideological counterparts of « reification » and « personification », « crude materialism » and « crude idealism » or « fetishism » : « The crude materialism of the economists who regard as the natural properties of things what are social relations of production among people, and qualities which things obtain because they are subsumed under these relations, is at the same time just as crude an idealism, even fetishism, since it imputes social relations to things as inherent characteristics, and thus mystifies them. » (Grundrisse, p. 687).

Despite the fact that the problem of reification was discussed by Marx in Capital, published partly during his life time, and partly soon after his death, which was generally recognized as his master work, his analysis was very much neglected for a long time. A greater interest in the problem developed only after Lukács drew attention to it and discussed it in a creative way, combining influences coming from Marx with those from Max Weber (who elucidated important aspects of the problem in his analyses of bureaucracy and rationalization ; see Lowith 1932) and from Simmel (who discussed the problem in The Philosophy of Money). In the central and longest chapter of History and Class Consciousness on « Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat », Lukács starts from the viewpoint that « commodity fetishism is a specific problem of our age, the age of modern capitalism » (p. 84), and also that it is not a marginal problem but 'the central structural problem of capitalist society » (p. 83). The « essence of commodity‑structure », according to Lukács has already been clarified, in the following way : « Its basis is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a « phantom objectivity », an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all‑embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature : the relation between people » (p. 83). Leaving aside « the importance of this problem for economics itself » Lukács undertook to discuss the broader question : « how far is commodity exchange together with its structural consequences able to influence the total outer and inner life of society ? » (p. 84). He points out that two sides of the phenomenon of reification or commodity fetishism have been distinguished (which he calls the « objective » and the « subjective ») : « Objectively a world of objects and relations between things springs into being (the world of commodities and their movements on the market). . . . Subjectively — where the market economy has been fully developed — a man's activity becomes estranged from himself, it turns into a commodity which, subject to the non‑human objectivity of the natural laws of society, must go its own way independently of man just like any consumer article. » (p. 87). Both sides undergo the same basic process and are subordinated to the same laws. Thus the basic principle of capitalist commodity production, « the principle of rationalization based on what is and can be calculated » (p. 88) extends to all fields, including the worker's « soul », and more broadly, human consciousness. « Just as the capitalist system continuously produces and reproduces itself economically on higher levels, the structure of reification progressively sinks more deeply, more fatefully and more definitively into the consciousness of man » (p. 93).

It seems that the problem of reification was somehow in the air in the early 1920s. In the same year as Lukács book appeared, the Soviet economist I. I. Rubin published his Essays on Marx's Theory of Value, the first part of which is devoted to « Marx's Theory of Commodity Fetishism ». The book was less ambitious than Lukács's (concentrating on reification in economics) and also less radical; while Lukács found some place for « alienation » in his theory of reification, Rubin was inclined to regard the theory of reification as the scientific reconstruction of the utopian theory of alienation. Nevertheless, both Lukács and Rubin were heavily attacked as « Hegelians » and « idealists » by the official representatives of the Third International.

The publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts was a great support for the kind of interpretation of Marx begun by Lukács but this was fully recognized only after the Second World War. Although the discussion of reification never became as extensive and intense as that about alienation, a number of outstanding Marxists such as Goldmann, J. Gabel and K. Kosik have made valuable contributions to it. Not only have the works of Marx and Lukács been discussed afresh, but also Heidegger's Being and Time, which concludes with the following remarks and questions : « That the ancient ontology works with « thing‑concepts » and that there is a danger « of reifying consciousness » has been well known for a long time. But what does reification mean ? Where does it originate from ? . . . Why does this reification come again and again to domination? How is the Being of consciousness positively structured so that reification remains inadequate to it ? » Goldmann maintained that these questions are directed against Lukács (whose name is not mentioned) and that the influence of Lukács can be seen in some of Heidegger's positive ideas.

A number of more substantial questions about reification have also been discussed. Thus there has been much controversy about the relation between reification, alienation, and commodity fetishism. While some have been inclined to identify reification either with alienation or with commodity fetishism (or with both), others want to keep the three concepts distinct. While some have regarded alienation as an « idealist » concept to be replaced by the « materialist » concept of « reification », others have regarded « alienation » as a philosophical concept whose sociological counterpart is 'reification'. According to the prevailing view alienation is a broader phenomenon, and reification one of its forms or aspects. According to M. Kangrga « reification is a higher, that is the highest form of alienation » (1968, p. 18), and reification is not merely a concept but a methodological requirement for a critical study and practical « change, or better the destruction of the whole reified structure. » (ibid. p. 82).

Gajo PETROVIC, « Reification », A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, edited by Tom BOTTOMORE, Laurence HARRIS, V.G. KIERNAN, Ralph MILIBAND, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1983.

ON NOUS ÉCRIT DE VANCOUVER (Juin 1954)

On ne m'a pas encore sorti du Canada !... Cela ne saurait tarder peut-être ? Mon comportement n'est pas seulement une énigme, il terrorise, sans qu'on puisse me reprocher aucun geste, aucun mot illicites. Au contraire, conduite exemplaire qui achève de dépayser...

Patrick STRARAM

« On nous écrit de Vancouver », Potlatch. Bulletin d'information du groupe français de l'Internationale lettriste, numéro 2, 29 juin 1954

SANS COMMUNE MESURE (29 Juin 1954)

Les plus beaux jeux de l'intelligence ne nous sont rien. L'économie politique, l'amour et l'urbanisme sont des moyens qu'il nous faut commander pour la résolution d'un problème qui est avant tout d'ordre éthique.

Rien ne peut dispenser la vie d'être absolument passionnante. Nous savons comment faire.


Malgré l'hostilité et les trucages du monde, les participants d'une aventure à tous égards redoutable se rassemblent, sans indulgence.

Nous considérons généralement qu'en dehors de cette participation, il n'y a pas de manière honorable de vivre.


pour l'Internationale lettriste :

Henry DE BÉARN,
André-Frank CONNORD,
Mohamed DAHOU,
Guy-Ernest DEBORD,
Jacques FILLON,
Patrick STRARAM,
Gil J WOLMAN


« Sans commune mesure », Potlatch. Bulletin d'information du groupe français de l'Internationale lettriste, numéro 2, 29 juin 1954

MODE D'EMPLOI DE « POTLATCH » (29 Juin 1954)

Nous rappeler à votre bon souvenir ne présente pas d'intérêt. Mais il s'agit de pouvoirs concrets. Quelques centaines de personnes déterminent au petit bonheur la pensée de l'époque. Nous pouvons disposer d'eux, qu'ils le sachent ou non. Potlatch envoyé à des gens bien répartis dans le monde nous permet de troubler le circuit où et quand nous le voulons.

Quelques lecteurs ont été choisis arbitrairement. Vous avez tout de même une chance d'en être.

LA RÉDACTION (Henry DE BÉARN, André-Frank CONNORD, Mohamed DAHOU, Guy-Ernest DEBORD, Jacques FILLON, Patrick STRARAM, Gil J WOLMAN), « Mode d'emploi de Potlatch », Potlatch. Bulletin d'information du groupe français de l'Internationale lettriste, numéro 2, 29 juin 1954