Translated material
"Overlot" Raul Vaneigem
For more than fifty years, Raul Vaneigem has consistently defended the idea of destroying the society of consumption and building a new society in its place on the basis of self -government and gratuitousness. His key thoughts are in the new issue of the heading "Oil."
On the significance of the May events of 1968:
“Despite the fact that today we are observing how reanimated ideologies and weak outdated religions are hastily flooded and thrown back in order to quench the universal despair on which the frauds are profitable, all this cannot hide the civilizational shift made by the 1968 May events for a long time. The gap with patriarchal values is final. We are moving towards the end of the exploitation of nature, work, trade, predation, alienation, sacrifice, feelings of guilt, misfortune, fetishization of money, power, hierarchy, fear, contempt for women, deceiving children, the dominance of intelligence, military and police despotism, religions, ideologies and suppression. The described by me is not a failed fact, but an ongoing process that requires us to be increased vigilance, awareness and unity with life. We must restructure on human grounds the world that was turned into ruins inhumanity of the cult of consumption. ”
About the current state of society:
“We are witnesses of the predictable collapse of financial capitalism. Even among economists - where you can find even more idiots than in politics - many were alarming ten years ago. Our situation is paradoxical: the repressive forces have never been so weakened before in Europe, and the exploited masses are so passive. However, the rebellious consciousness is sleeping in a certain eye; arrogance, incompetence and powerlessness of the ruling classes sooner or later will arouse him from sleep. ”
About the revolution:
“Any ideology is a falsification of reality. For me, ideology means a thought separated from life. The performance is the result of a thought that has become autonomous. I continue to insist on the need to work at the basic level, that is, at the level of everyday life. The revolutionary struggle consists precisely in sequentially monitor the phenomena to their origins in order to prevent distortion and deviation from the path. The fact that the revolutions of the past ended with a massacre does not mean that such movements do not need to start again and again. Just without repeating, but creating again. As an eternal return: it all starts again, each time in different historical circumstances, but always with the same determination, unbridled, like a vulgar life itself. ”
About empires:
“For decades, people were afraid that the Red Army could attack Europe and capture it. However, very soon it became clear that this army was undermined from the inside and was completely incapable, which was quite satisfied with Western democracies. The exaggeration of the danger allowed them to hide corruption and decomposition in their own rows. The immense Stalinist empire collapsed in a few weeks, discovering its true essence of a handful of fragmented mafia bureaucracles. Today before our eyes, international corporations crash, but most people continue to be wrapped instead of laying the foundations of a society in which solidarity and universal good will be restored. It is necessary to break with the system that destroys us, and to establish communities with an environment that will finally start living. ”
About life and survival:
“Survival is a cut life. The systematic exploitation of nature and man, which began with intensive agriculture in the middle of the Neolithic, led to involution, as a result of which creativity - the exceptional quality of a person - was supplanted by work. The creative life, which began to emerge during the Paleolithic time, fell into decay and gave way to the animal struggle for food. Since then, predation - the determining form of animal behavior - has become a condition for all economic processes. It was during this period that the Institute of Religion arose, layers of society formed and the dominance of the Patriarchate began with its contempt for women and a series of wars, destruction and violence. Creativity gave way to work, life - survival, joy of life - the economy of appropriation. In this sense, market civilization is a regression in which human progress was replaced by technical. ”
About today's youth:
“Young people should learn to live instead of selling themselves. Young people will be able to get to this on their own, when they realize what slavery awaits them in the labor and firing market; When they abandon competition (an economic mechanism that turns us into robots), ambitions and worship of money and make their priority a vitality and personal life, preserving the environment, revealing their potential and the only social wealth-wealth, and not to have; When they understand that the question is not to be the best, but to live better; when they refuse to support governments that build prisons and close schools, and not vice versa; When they rebel against such a concentration camp of the education system, which encourages violence and is contrary to the meaning of true human education: to learn in order to transmit their knowledge to others. Life has all rights, predation - no. The battle is just beginning. ”
About money:
“We live during the unprecedented chaos of material conditions and moral principles. Human values will have to compensate for the consequences of the only value that has prevailed so far - money. But the collapse of financial totalitarianism also means that the currency is doomed to the depreciation and loss of any meaning. The absurdity of money gains specific outlines. Over time, the currency will give way to new forms of exchange, which will accelerate its disappearance and lead to the gift economy. ”
About gratuitousness:
“The principle of gratuitousness is the only absolute weapon that can crush a powerful self -destruction machine launched by the consumer society, and still continues to poison society with its toxic miasm: profit -orientation, financial benefit, greed and predation. Of course, museums and other cultural places should be free; But the same applies to public services that today have become a source of profit for states and international corporations: free trains, buses and metro; free health care; free schools; free water; Free electricity - all this should be created by alternative communities. As the principle of gratuitousness is spreading, the newly formed communities of solidarity will destroy the stronghold of consumption. For life is a gratuitous gift and constant work, which vile market speculation deprives us of. ”
About nationalism:
“Nationalism has no other future other than self -destruction. What is closed on itself is doomed to decay and decomposition. Personally, I reject regionalism. I have a disgust for a tradition that proclaims the slogan "Our country, our language, our Earth." It creates a nationalist background that claims coloring, but in practice is only disgusting. For me, my tongue has never indicated nationality. I never felt like a Pardonian and refuse to consider myself a Walloon or Belgian. Moreover, I believe that humanity will take a huge step forward when all personality certificates are burned. ”
About military training:
“Given that we have always considered ourselves as a“ shock group ”in the enemy, we cannot underestimate the importance of the tactical and strategic aspects of our business. Despite the fact that I am a convinced antimilitarist, I see in military preparation a useful equipment that is worth it to accept it into service. I made a lot of efforts to study military methods to be, so to speak, “fully armed” for the revolution. I can handle a rifle, throw grenades and shoot from a grenade launcher. During my youth, military service was still mandatory, but as a university student, I had the right to choose an officer school, training in which allowed to quickly reach a high rank. I started with a corporal, then became a sergeant and, in the end, a lieutenant. I extracted a truly Machiavelle pleasure from my service: “If they only knew who they took into their ranks!” “I thought to myself.”
About alcohol:
“Alcohol consumption has a liberating aspect - it contributes to a certain disclosure of the mind. There is generosity in alcohol. We can, quite justified, mock the tendency of the drunkard to glorify the universal fraternity, in which every good and beautiful, and then instantly become embittered, realizing that in reality everything is completely wrong. However, the positive effects of alcohol also deserve attention. Usually people tend to believe that alcohol stimulates creativity and generosity, but then the opposite occurs: a person returns to his usual isolation. In reality, this relapse is easy to avoid: alcohol, drunk in an atmosphere of joy, friendship and unity, has a creative effect. ”
About writing:
“I am not a writer or a philosopher. I consider myself a craftsman in search of the most mark of the phrase; The wording, best suitable for the expression of my thought. I do not like the phrase for herself, but I am satisfied when the phrase exactly corresponds to the thought that it expresses. The form of the phrase is closely related to its content. I can’t imagine how to describe the sound of rain, knocking on the window, but I admire this talent in other writers. Similarly, I refuse to be called a philosopher. I adopted the words of Marx: "The former philosophers thought how to interpret the world, and we set the task of remaking it." If I was engaged in the analysis of the world, then exclusively in order to redo it. ”