Defense of Anarchism against Guy Debord
By: Alexander Hope
Tags: Communism, Left Communism, Situationist, Guy Debord, Anarchism

Guy Debord, the French Marxist situationist or what some might accurately label as a left communist or an advocate of council communist tendencies has delivered a certain critique against Anarchism in The Society of the Spectacle, Chapter 4: The Proletariat as Subject and Representation.

Some of his baseless assertions are supplied to the reader without context, as Debord tried to depict Bakunin as an advocate of the dictatorship of the proletariat without accurately understanding what Bakunin meant by ‘‘The invisible dictatorship of the proletariat’’ — He criticizes both Marxism and Anarchism as having been subject to ‘‘failure’’ and therefore he presents to us a synthesis of the two, in hopes that this new vision can lead to success.

Anarchism has only proven throughout the years, that people can be stopped through a counter-revolutionary war, just like any other revolutionary movement in history. Marxism has proven throughout the years, that even though they won the war, the theorethical basis of Marxism simply destroyed socialism from within with internal contradictions and conflicts of the party that could not be reconciled. The contradictions of society within anarchist experiments such as CNT in Spain and Makhnovia, were resolved amongsts the people, meanwhile the contradictions within the communist party resulted in the inner destruction of the communist party and therefore the destruction of the implemenetation of socialism on the whole through Marxism.

Debord’s council communism, Lenin’s Marxism and Anarchism could all be defeated through ‘‘counter-revolutionary’’ forces — To say that ‘‘Anarchism’’ has failed because Franco’s forces had overtaken the anarchists is to imply that every other revolutionary movement, such as ‘‘Marxism’’ in the paris commune also failed because counter-revolutionary forces won. Numerous communist vanguards were stopped halfway because of the bourgeois forces that were unleashed on them — This is the reality of ‘‘War’’ and not the reality of ideological failure. It seems that Debord and those who accuse anarchism to have failed because of counter-revolutionary acitivity, seem to know nothing about the reality of ‘‘war’’ — No matter how much ideological strenght you have, if the opposing military has a cleverer strategy then you shall lose. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have in playing chess, because even an unexperienced player of chess with a greater strategy can win the grandmaster Chess player with experience.

According to Debord, Bakunin was expelled from the Working Man’s international because of a conspiracy,

‘‘Marx, who believed that the concomitant maturation of economic contradictions and of the workers’ education in democracy would reduce the role of a proletarian state to a brief phase needed to legitimize the new social relations brought into being by objective factors, denounced Bakunin and his supporters as an authoritarian conspiratorial elite who were deliberately placing themselves above the International with the harebrained scheme of imposing on society an irresponsible dictatorship of the most revolutionary (or of those who would designate themselves as such). Bakunin did in fact recruit followers on such a basis: “In the midst of the popular tempest we must be the invisible pilots guiding the revolution, not through any kind of overt power but through the collective dictatorship of our Alliance — a dictatorship without any insignia or titles or official status, yet all the more powerful because it will have none of the appearances of power.” — Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, Chapter 4: The Proletariat as Subject and Representation.

Debord tries to proof how Bakunin’s conspiracy was a reality — But how possibly can this be a ‘‘secretive conspiracy’’ — if everyone pretty much knew about Bakunin’s method to recruit his followers. Bakunin found himself in contradiction against Marx and as a result, Bakunin was seen as a threat that has to be neutralized. Bakunin’s method of recruiting anarchists for the revolution cannot possibly be Debord’s way to justify Marx’s action to banish Bakunin from the international. Bakunin’s method of recruiting anarchists is ‘‘one thing’’ and being banished from the international because of an unproven conspiracy is ‘‘totally another thing’’ — Bakunin was talking about the revolution, he was not talking about performing an act of overtaking the international to himself. The idea of Bakunin’s dictatorship of the proletariat is the ‘‘invisible dictatorship of the proletariat’’ — the idea that some people within the anarchist movement can guide other people by convincing them of their advice through voluntary action. The word ‘‘Invisible dictatorship of the proletariat’’ was a bit of a strong word by Bakunin probably to mimick or spite Marx, but what Bakunin actually meant was a system where those most experienced in affairs of anarchism and revolutionarism can give advice and guidance to others within and after the revolution takes place — I am certain that such a system of guidance and advisorship has nothing to do with the dictatorship of the proletariat as the marxists understand it.

Guy Debord’s book, Society of the Spectacle has more Aporias than John’s Gospel! In the same book which he denounced the invisible dictatorship of the proletariat of Bakunin, he also introduced his idea of the antistate Dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the most ironic moment in his book. Guy Debord like many other marxists criticisez the work of anarchists, takes from their ideas and then alters their work to fit his agenda. Marx critiqued Stirner, but then took up his idea of alienation, he critiqued Hegel, and took his dialectics with a few alterations, he took Proudhon’s critique of private property and his coinage and explanation of scientific socialism by first critiquing Proudhon and then altering his work. Mao first critiqued the anarchists, but then applied mutual aid within the party and outside the party the communes. All Marxists whether Marx himself, the Leninist kind or the Left communist kind of Marxist have done a diservice to anarchism by a political strategy, namely,

Criticize the anarchist theorist in order to render that theorist irrelevant Take up the theory of the anarchist who they have just criticized Alter the theory slightly so it doesn’t look like an exact copy of the one you have just critiqued.

The reason they employ this tactic and strategy is in order to disempower anarchism and empower themselves by critiquing anarchist theorists and ridiculing them in front of the media, and then altering their work and adding it unto their own. Debord does the same thing with his criticism of Bakunin’s insivisible DOTP, he first criticizes it, and then slightly alters it in the form of the anti-state DOTP. He firstly misinterpreted Bakunin’s idea as an actual ‘‘dictatorship’’ and then Marxified Bakunin’s insivible DOTP, then in order to fit Debord’s anti-stalinist agenda, he formulated finally the antistate DOTP.

Debord continues to misinterpret anarchism in his attempt to disempower anarchism and the stalinist variants of marxism in order to fit his own agenda, to make his mark in history by being the one to introduce a new variant of ideology.

‘‘The fact that anarchists have seen the goal of proletarian revolution as immediately present represents both the strength and the weakness of collectivist anarchist struggles (the only forms of anarchism that can be taken seriously — the pretensions of the individualist forms of anarchism have always been ludicrous). From the historical thought of modern class struggles collectivist anarchism retains only the conclusion, and its constant harping on this conclusion is accompanied by a deliberate indifference to any consideration of methods. Its critique of political struggle has thus remained abstract, while its commitment to economic struggle has been channeled toward the mirage of a definitive solution that will supposedly be achieved by a single blow on this terrain, on the day of the general strike or the insurrection. The anarchists strive to realize an ideal. Anarchism is still an ideological negation of the state and of class society — the very social conditions which in their turn foster separate ideologies. It is the ideology of pure freedom, an ideology that puts everything on the same level and eliminates any conception of historical evil. This fusion of all partial demands into a single all-encompassing demand has given anarchism the merit of representing the rejection of existing conditions in the name of the whole of life rather than from the standpoint of some particular critical specialization; but the fact that this fusion has been envisaged only in the absolute, in accordance with individual whim and in advance of any practical actualization, has doomed anarchism to an all too obvious incoherence. Anarchism responds to each particular struggle by repeating and reapplying the same simple and all-embracing lesson, because this lesson has from the beginning been considered the be-all and end-all of the movement. This is reflected in Bakunin’s 1873 letter of resignation from the Jura Federation: “During the past nine years the International has developed more than enough ideas to save the world, if ideas alone could save it, and I challenge anyone to come up with a new one. It’s no longer the time for ideas, it’s time for actions.” This perspective undoubtedly retains proletarian historical thought’s recognition that ideas must be put into practice, but it abandons the historical terrain by assuming that the appropriate forms for this transition to practice have already been discovered and will never change.’’ Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, Chapter 4: The Proletariat as Subject and Representation.

There are many things that are incorrect with Debord’s statements on anarchism. First and foremost, the fact that anarchists have always viewed anarchism as something that is ‘‘immediately present’’ — this does not imply that anarchists have throughout history has believed that anarchism can be achieved within 24 hours. Every major anarchist in history has seen anarchism as ‘‘Immediately graspable’’ but also as a gradual process. Kropotkin treated anarchism as something that is graudally achieved through an evolutionary process of society. Proudhon, the father of anarchism has had a gradual approch of history, when he claims that,

‘‘Property and royalty have been crumbling to pieces ever since the world began. As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy’’ — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is property? P.224

It is clear that Proudhon is highligting a gradual process of the crumbling of property and authority (royalty) — therefore anarchism is not something immediate, but something that we strive towards gradually. What the anarchists talk about when they say, ‘‘Anarchy is immediately achievable’’ is not the final late-stage anarcho-communism — what is immediately possible is the overthrowal of the state. The state can be overthrown immediately with the necessary disciplined and organized anarchist forces, however the road to anarcho-communism is a long and gradual one — just because we have abolished the state, does not mean that we have achieved communism in 24 hours, it merely means we have achieved the first step towards communism in 24 hours. Debord is incorrect when he claims that anarchists view their ‘‘ideal society’’ as something that can be achieved immediately. Secondly he affirms that the positions of individualism is ludicrous without even bothering to explain, I guess we’re supposed to take ‘‘his word for it’’ — such is the way of Left communism — the only Non-ludicrous form of socialism!

Debord assumes that all anarchists somehow believe that ‘‘Anarchism’’ can be attained on the eve of the insurrection or the general strike, he seems to imply that anarchists give attention only to the ‘‘ending’’ and not to the ‘‘beginnings’’ that they use in order to achieve their goal. Again he is incorrect, does he not know that Malatesta’s entire essay is focused on the ‘‘means’’ by which anarchists strive for anarchism, and also the ‘‘ends’’ of those means? Does Debord not know that platformists focus on building and enhancing their platform, all for preparation’s sake towards the ‘‘final blow’’ against the state and the bourgeois forces, — of course there’s no such thing as final blow, but many consecutive evolutionary blows that gradually transform society into an anarcho-communist one.

The anarchists strive towards an ‘‘ideal’’ — So does the marxists and literally every socialists in existence. We can only imagine that which is ‘‘yet to exist’’

It is also a lie that we reject present conditions — Anarchism evolves along the conditions of the time, more than Marxism-leninism ever did. It was anarchism that consecutively throughout history has implemented anarchism in slightly different ways, such as in Rojava and Zapastias. While Marxism for the last 40 years has remained in the musuem of antiquity, no longer able to pick itself up. It has suffered a severe blow to the head through the fall of the soviet union, and through the revisionism that has restored capitalism in the remaining few socialist countries. Murray Bookchin back in 1971 wrote,

‘‘All the old crap of the thirties is coming back again — the shit about the “class line,” the “role of the working class,” the “trained cadres,” the “vanguard party,” and the “proletarian dictatorship.” It’s all back again, and in a more vulgarized form than ever. The Progressive Labor Party is not the only example, it is merely the worst. One smells the same shit in various offshoots of SDS, and in the Marxist and Socialist clubs on campuses, not to speak of the Trotskyist groups, the International Socialist Clubs and the Youth Against War and Fascism. In the thirties, at least it was understandable. The United States was paralyzed by a chronic economic crisis, the deepest and the longest in its history. The only living forces that seemed to be battering at the walls of capitalism were the great organizing drives of the CIO, with their dramatic sitdown strikes, their radical militancy, and their bloody clashes with the police. The political atmosphere through the entire world was charged by the electricity of the Spanish Civil War, the last of the classical worker’s revolutions, when every radical sect in the American left could identify with its own militia columns in Madrid and Barcelona. That was thirty years ago. It was a time when anyone who cried out “Make love, not war” would have been regarded as a freak; the cry then was “Make jobs, not war” — the cry of an age burdened by scarcity, when the achievement of socialism entailed “sacrifices” and a “transition period” to an economy of material abundance. To an eighteen-year old kid in 1937 the very concept of cybernation would have seemed like the wildest science fiction, a fantasy comparable to visions of space travel. That eighteen-year-old kid has now reach fifty years of age, and his roots are planted in an era so remote as to differ qualitatively from the realities of the present period in the United States. Capitalism itself has changed since then, taking on increasingly statified forms that could be anticipated only dimly thirty years ago. And now we are being asked to go back to the “class line,” the “strategies,” the “cadres” and the organizational forms of that distant period in almost blatant disregard of the new issues and possibilities that have emerged. When the hell are we finally going to create a movement that looks to the future instead of the past? When will we begin to learn from what is being born instead of what is dying? Marx, to his lasting credit, tried to do that in his own day; he tried to evoke a futuristic spirit in the revolutionary movement of the 1840’s and 1850’s. “The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living,” he wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. “And when they seem to be engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something entirely new, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle slogans and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and borrowed language.’’ — Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism in ‘‘Listen Marxist!’’, 1971, p.108

The critique that Debord delivers to Anarchism as being something that ‘‘repeats the same battle cry and the same methods over and over again’’ is more suitable as a criticism against Marxism rather than too Anarchism. It is a lie that anarchists repeat the same rhetoric, Murray bookchin as a theorist of anarchism is proof that anarchism has evolved, Abdullah Öcalan is proof that anarchism revises itself according to the present conditions. Every anarchist in history has revised anarchism according to present conditions, while Proudhon talked about mutualism, Bakunin gave us a vision of collectivist anarchism, while Stirner gave us an egoist vision of anarchism, meanwhile Kropotkin gave us a scientific view of anarcho-communism. Others tried new synthesis, such as Emma Goldman’s synthesis of Kropotkin’s scientific anarcho-communism and stirnerite egoism. Over the years, Anarchism has tried numerous different stratagies, some workerd better than others, some like the ‘‘Propoganda of the deed’’ were only affective in order to give rise to a ‘‘spontaneous revolutionary movement’’ but this tactic was abandoned and instead the anarchists focused on syndicalism, unionism. After the failure in Makhnovia, the makhnovists came together and formulated platformism and later on in a south American and African contest, Especifismo was developed.

How can Debord with a straight face lie to us, that anarchism is always applying the same methods over and over again? Isn’t it rather the marxists who repeat the same methods and bring back the ‘‘past’’ in a future with conditions where the past methods no longer apply?

Debord uses Bakunin’s statement in order to justify his position against anarchism as if to prove that Bakunin’s views is somehow representative of all ‘‘Anarchist theory’’ and of all the anarchists. Debord uses the quotation by Bakunin in bad faith. Bakunin does not reject ‘‘the development of ideas’’ — he merely loathes the idea that one should waste too much time on idea and less on direct action. Debord claims that Bakunin’s statement to ‘‘take action’’ implies that anarchists don’t base their analysis on historical transition — This is extremely laughable — if each and every time a socialist revolutionary said, ‘‘Let us take action’’ And Debord met him in a pub and said, ‘‘Listen fellow chap, I understand that you might want action, but don’t you think it would be better to sit on our asses all day, so that history can do it’s job’’

This is laughable for two main reasons — If Debord means to say that anarchists don’t give attention to historical analysis just because they propose ‘‘direct action’’ — then literally every revolutionary that has sought out direct action in history, including left communists and leninist themselves are all just like the ‘‘anarchists’’ who according to Debord, ‘‘ abandons the historical terrain by assuming that the appropriate forms for this transition to practice have already been discovered and will never change.’’

Perhaps even Lenin and Mao themselves abandoned the historical terrain by assuming that the appropriate forms for this transition to practice have already been discovered and will never change? — How can we possibly know when the conditions are ripe for revolution? — The answer is quite simple, when the revolution happens, when people through direct action make revolution happen, then it will signifity quite simply that the conditions necessary already existed and were ripe. If the revolution fails, then you will know that the conditions were not ripe. No Anarchist and no marxists could ever foretell the future — we know when conditions are right or wrong if the revolution succeeds or not. Bakunin is right, ‘‘Why should we prattle when conditions are right or wrong? , let us just take action, because without action, we will never know when the appropriate conditions are right, and society will remain at rest’’

Let us look now, at two other assertions of Debord against Anarchism,

‘‘The anarchists, who explicitly distinguish themselves from the rest of the workers movement by their ideological conviction, reproduce this separation of competencies within their own ranks by providing a terrain that facilitates the informal domination of each particular anarchist organization by propagandists and defenders of their ideology, specialists whose mediocre intellectual activity is largely limited to the constant regurgitation of a few eternal truths. The anarchists’ ideological reverence for unanimous decision-making has ended up paving the way for uncontrolled manipulation of their own organizations by specialists in freedom; and revolutionary anarchism expects the same type of unanimity, obtained by the same means, from the masses once they have been liberated. Furthermore, the anarchists’ refusal to take into account the great differences between the conditions of a minority banded together in present-day struggles and of a postrevolutionary society of free individuals has repeatedly led to the isolation of anarchists when the moment for collective decision-making actually arrives, as is shown by the countless anarchist insurrections in Spain that were contained and crushed at a local level. The illusion more or less explicitly maintained by genuine anarchism is its constant belief that a revolution is just around the corner, and that the instantaneous accomplishment of this revolution will demonstrate the truth of anarchist ideology and of the form of practical organization that has developed in accordance with that ideology. In 1936 anarchism did indeed initiate a social revolution, a revolution that was the most advanced expression of proletarian power ever realized. But even in that case it should be noted that the general uprising began as a merely defensive reaction to the army’s attempted coup. Furthermore, inasmuch as the revolution was not carried to completion during its opening days (because Franco’s forces controlled half the country and were being strongly supported from abroad, because the rest of the international proletarian movement had already been defeated, and because the camp of the Republic included various bourgeois forces and statist working-class parties), the organized anarchist movement proved incapable of extending the revolution’s partial victories, or even of defending them. Its recognized leaders became government ministers, hostages to a bourgeois state that was destroying the revolution even as it proceeded to lose the civil war.’’ Guy Debord ,The Society of the Spectacle, Chapter 4: The Proletariat as Subject and Representation.

Again Debord asserts that the specialist within anarchism with their mediocore intellect keep anarchism alive through these ‘‘Few eternal truths’’ — although I wouldn’t expect Debord to understand that Anarchism encompasses hundreds upon hundreds of different truths, whether of an egoist nature, of the criticism of property by Proudhon, whether of the pre-existence of anarchism in older societies as observed by Kropotkin and the truths of the practice of mutual aid across history, different societies, different eras and economies and across the animal kingdom. The list is endless.

Debord also assumes that a few ‘‘specialists’’ manipulate the rest of the anarchists, but Debord himself claims that these specialists are ‘‘specialists’’ in freedom, so how can they possibly manipulate anyone if they are free? This is an aporia in Debord’s way of phrasing things. These ‘‘Specialists’’ which Debord mentions act like ‘‘Guides’’ of the rest, not because they have ‘‘authority’’ but because they have skills. Just like fisherman have skills to fish, and singers have skill to sing, these figures shine outwardly and can lead people. Jesus for instace is such a figure, when he told his apostles to ‘‘follow him’’ — he did not compell them, but simply voluntarily allowed them freedom. Likewise Makhno as a ‘‘Leader figure’’ did not lead because he had some special authority from the state, but because he had skill in leading and people voluntarily looked up to him, there were many anarchists who had skills in leading, just as there were those anarchists who prefered to act as advisors or to support the cause from the backround.

Like the other fools that don’t understand ‘‘war’’ — debord jumps to the conclusion that a loss of war implies the ideological weakness of anarchism, when countless of marxist-leninist vanguards throughout history have been crushed in the same manner on a local level — some didn’t even make it through abolishing the state itself and were imprisoned and destroyed before they could even start the revolution — Some were destroyed internally through splits between so-called revisionist and those of ‘‘True Orthodox Marxist Doctrine’’. Debord assumes that the reason why anarchist lost the war was because of the ideological weakness of collective decision-making, rather than simply understanding that ‘‘war’’ is unpredictable. Debord believes that the anarchists believe that Revolution is just around the corner — perhaps the anarchists might have thought that in the 1930’s, in our society, in 2021, no one ever thinks, whether Marxist or Anarchist, that the ‘‘revolution is around the corner’’ — instead we are aware that the revolution is very far away, and we need much effort in order to get it closer again. Tensions in Europe was high in the 1930’s, of course every revolutionary thought that ‘‘the revolution was around the corner’’ — Debord of couse is writing the society of spectacle in 1967, where tensions were not of a ‘‘revolutionary nature’’ but of a ‘‘cold war nature’’

According to Debord, Anarchism was born only out of a reaction against the army’s attempted coup.. He seems to argue that while marxism develops because it is ‘‘scientific’’ — Anarchism being just an ‘‘idealist philosophy’’ simply develops out of opportunity or not at all. This seems extremely reminiscient of Rosa Luxemburg’s accusation against anarchism as a parasitic force, that it forms like a school of lumpen proletariat sharks, wherever there is proper marxist revolution, anarchists will appear out of thin air and simply do their little revolution in the marxist’s revolutionary backyard. Debord furthermore claims that anarchists were incapable of even defending the revolution. What Debord forgot to mention is that the anarchist revolution that took place in Spain occured on an industrial first-wordlist capitalist country and not some ‘‘Feudal backwards monarchy’’ in the far East with an army of swords and hungry cold horses. Rather it was a war against fascists, against modern machines of war in an industrial country. Secondly, Debord and Rosa’s accussation that anarchism has no basis in reality and therefore it merely develops out of opportunities which Marxists create is incorrect, Rojava and Zapastias are proof that anarchism can develop on it’s own and protect the anarchist revolution in modern times.

Debord like every other casual left communists simps Lenin and Cringes every time he hears the name ‘‘Stalin’’,

‘‘Leninism was the highest voluntaristic expression of revolutionary ideology — a coherence of the separate governing a reality that resisted it. With the advent of Stalinism, revolutionary ideology returned to its fundamental incoherence’’

I am sure that Lenin’s New economic policy was the highest voluntaristic expression of revolutionary ideology! The bourgeoisification of Russia, was the greatest proletarian expression! The future is with Leninism (I say all this with sarcasm on the tip of my tongue)

Guy Debord suggests that the new form of socialism is presented to us in councils,

‘‘ As Pannekoek rightly stressed, opting for the power of workers councils “poses problems” rather than providing a solution. But it is precisely within this form of social organization that the problems of proletarian revolution can find their real solution. This is the terrain where the objective preconditions of historical consciousness are brought together — the terrain where active direct communication is realized, marking the end of specialization, hierarchy and separation, and the transformation of existing conditions into “conditions of unity.” In this process proletarian subjects can emerge from their struggle against their contemplative position; their consciousness is equal to the practical organization they have chosen for themselves because this consciousness has become inseparable from coherent intervention in history. With the power of the councils — a power that must internationally supplant all other forms of power — the proletarian movement becomes its own product. This product is nothing other than the producers themselves, whose goal has become nothing other than their own fulfillment. Only in this way can the spectacle’s negation of life be negated in its turn. The appearance of workers councils during the first quarter of this century was the most advanced expression of the old proletarian movement, but it was unnoticed or forgotten, except in travestied forms, because it was repressed and destroyed along with all the rest of the movement. Now, from the vantage point of the new stage of proletarian critique, the councils can be seen in their true light as the only undefeated aspect of a defeated movement. The historical consciousness that recognizes that the councils are the only terrain in which it can thrive can now see that they are no longer at the periphery of a movement that is subsiding, but at the center of a movement that is rising.’’

Earlier on Guy Debord criticized Anarchism because it repeated the same method over and over again. Here now is Debord in all his revolutionary glory who claims that the ‘‘ apperance of workers councils during the first quarter of the century was the most advanced expression of the old proletarian movement, but it was unnoticed or forgotten’’ — He then claims that from the new stage of proletarian critique, the councils can be seen in their true light as the only undefeated aspect of a defeated movement. Although he criticized Anarchism for repeating ‘‘methods of old’’ — Debord does the same thing by repeating the rhetoric of old, not only the rhetoric of something that is old, but something that was forgotten. There is a reason why council communism was forgotten — it’s because it could not be applicable to reality. Debord claims like Rosa, that anarchism like a school of shark develops from the mouth of marxist revolution and therefore has no basis in reality — but what about the council communism that Debord preaches that has been forgotten to time itself — Doesn’t it also have no basis in reality?

The only council vision that worked in reality was of an anarchist kind, not of a marxist kind. Democratic confederalism for instance is different from Marxist council communism. We can argue therefore that while anarchism has a basis in reality, council communism with marxist characteristics does not.

Debord’s logic is like this: ‘‘Anarchism was defeated therefore bad’’ — ‘‘Marxism was defeated therefore bad’’ — ‘‘Council communism was never defeated’’ because it was never practiced, therefore it’s Good.

I can say the same thing about some stupid ideology, in fact I can copy Debord’s logic in a witty manner, ‘‘Marxism and Anarchism were defeated therefore they were bad’’ — ‘‘The theories of Posadism that were forgotten and never practiced is the only undefeated aspect of a defeated movement.’’

What If I were to create a new ideology in history that everyone will just forget ten years later, does that make my ideology undefeated?

‘‘Return to Monke Primitivist anarcho-nilhist monarchist ideology union’’ was the only undefeated aspect of a defeated movement. Now, everyone will clap at me, I will become a new celebrity! and I will become a second Debord!

As a conclusion, I would like to say, that we anarchists should becareful who we simp — I have noted many anarchists that have taken a liken to Debord’s work, but they never criticize his views, nor do they challenge the situationist and left communist paradigm that has taken shape throughout the years.