A brief statement on culture, from Internationale Situationniste #3 (December 1959)
1
The question of culture, that is to say, in the final analysis, of its integration into everyday life, is integral to the necessity of the overthrow of contemporary society. Making a social and political revolution is not sufficient unless such a transformation is accompanied by a qualitative disruption in culture of the same magnitude as that brought about by the revolutionary creation of socialist society, at a superior stage of a society which is no longer simply the antithesis of capitalist society, but the expression of socialism in its totality.
2
All cultural revolutions of the past were inseparable from the social conditions imposed on artists. Today, capitalism has separated them from culture, substituting what should be the real practice of life with false modes of life and leisure. To this false dichotomy of technology and culture is born a false unitary vision of civilization. The future and the present of every political and social revolution depend above all on the consciousness of this second alienation, more profound and more intractable than economic alienation.
Just as the proletariat risks disappearing without having made its revolution, without having assumed the historical role that Marx had assigned it, the cultural revolution risks becoming more and more dependent on what is conveniently known as "public relations" if it is not assigned above all to the essential revolutionary task of the century: the dissolution of the technological milieu by technology itself.
Frankin's first thesis modifies the second paragraph of the Appeal printed above1 . The second replaces the fifth and sixth paragraphs.
Translated by Reuben Keehan. Text from: https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/platform.html
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