New Edition of a Situationist Classic

The Freedom Shop has released several new pamphlets lately, including a new edition of On the Misery of the Student World (AKA On the Poverty of Student Life).

This text came about in 1966 after five situationist-influenced students were elected to the University of Strasbourg’s students’ union. The group formed an ‘anarchist appreciation society’ The Society for the Rehabilitation of Karl Marx and Ravachol and appropriated union funds to flypost a detourned comic strip, Return of the Durruti Column. They then invited the ‘Situationist International’ to contribute a critique of the University of Strasbourg, and this text, which despite the title critiques the whole of Western society, rather than just the role of students, was the result. Credited to ‘Members of the Situationist International and students of Strasbourg University’, it was actually mostly written by Tunisian situationist Mustapha Khayati.

Formed in 1957, the situationists were a small group that mixed avant-garde art with political theorising, seeking to update Marxism to take into account the realities of capitalism in fairly prosperous Western countries. The group took Marx’s ideas on alienation and refined them, creating an analysis that saw the boredom and disconnection of modern life, rather than its economic injustices, as a motivation for revolution.

The students used university funds to print and distribute 10,000 copies of the pamphlet, provoking a moral panic amongst the capitalist media. The students responsible were expelled and the student union closed by a court order, as a judge decided that the publication had nothing to do with the aims of the student union. In a surprisingly accurate assessment the judge said:

“One has only to read what the accused have written, that these five students, scarcely more than adolescents, lacking all experience of real life, their minds confused by ill-digested philosophical, social, political and economic theories, and perplexed by the drab monotony of their everyday life, make the empty, arrogant, and pathetic claim to pass definitive judgments, sinking to outright abuse, on their fellow students, their teachers, God, religion, the clergy, the governments and political systems of the whole world. Rejecting all morality and restraint, these cynics do not hesitate to commend theft, the destruction of scholarship, the abolition of work, total subversion and a worldwide proletarian revolution with “unlicensed pleasure” as its goal.

“In view of their basically anarchist character, these theories and propaganda are eminently noxious. Their wide diffusion in both student circles and among the general public, by the local, national and foreign press, are a threat to the morality, the studies, the reputation and thus the very future of the students of the University of Strasbourg.”

Thanks in part to the judge’s positive review, and the publicity these events created, the text, became one of the most widely read pieces of situationist writing, inspiring many who took part in the May 1968 uprising in Paris. While some parts are dated, or reference now forgotten political movements, in many ways it’s more relevant now than ever.

The ‘Situationist International’ never had more than about 20 members, it was down to two when it closed in 1972. Books by Raoul Vaneigem and Guy Debord achieved some success in political circles and the group was influential beyond its small numbers. The punk movement took a lot from its ideas and methodologies, and the trajectory of capitalism – towards the successful production of commodities, but also of alienation, tedium and depression suggests their analysis was largely correct.

If the ‘Situationist International’ can sound like a bunch of arrogant, egotistic, young pricks at times, it’s because they were. It can be argued that ‘situationism’ remains immersed in the European theoretical tradition, with an understanding of class, but paying little attention to colonisation, gender and race, despite the primary author of this pamphlet, Mustapha Khayati, being a Tunisian later involved in Palestinian struggles and writing on Arab history. Regardless of that argument, for those of us in Western countries, and for others increasingly mired in societies intent on following the Western capitalist model, here there are deep insights into the nature of the society we are stuck in, and the possible route out.

The first part of this pamphlet, mostly slagging off university students, has a nice style but, whether right or wrong, does get a bit tedious. Note that ‘student’ in this pamphlet always refers to tertiary students. Primary and high school students are referred to by different French terms. The second, more reasoned, section, not only provides a critique of the radical movements of the 1960s, but also introduces ideas and history that is little mentioned in today’s US-centric hippie-dominated understanding of 60s radicalism.

The third section, laying out the situationist call for revolution as a complete reinvention of everyday life, is in refreshing contrast to the mediocrities offered by most of today’s left, hampered by cowardice, a lack of imagination, adherence to ancient ideologies, or all three at once.

In a world that increasingly appears bent on self-destruction, where boredom offers the sole respite from terror, all that remains to those of us advocating a better world is to take up the situationist slogan ‘Be realistic – demand the impossible!’