Raoul Vaneigem said...Our situation is paradoxical: never in Europe have the forces of repression been so weakened, yet never have the exploited masses been so passive. Still, insurrectional consciousness always sleeps with one eye open. The arrogance, incompetence, and powerlessness of the governing classes will eventually rouse it from its slumber…We are at war, yes, but this is not an economic war. It is a world war against the economy. Against the economy that for thousands of years has been based on the exploitation of nature and man. And against a patched-up capitalism that will try to save its skin by investing in natural power and making us pay the high price for that which—once the new means of production are created—will be free as the wind, the sun, and the energy of plants and soil. If we do not exit economic reality and create a human reality in its place, we will once again allow market barbarism to live on.
These are extracts from an interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist for e-flux, the whole of which is here.
Many thanks for posting the link to the Vaneigem interview. Extremely fascinating to read and it clearly shows situationist theory is not some archaic micro-ideology forever frozen in May 1968 as a kind of avant-garde politcal curiousity....its incredible really how staying outside the academy effectively silences philsophers of praxis when Vaneigem should be considered an ontological and cognitive equal of Deleuze & Guattari, Foucault & Virilio.
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