situationist revolution

"The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry."

-Raoul Vaneigem.

The situationists, like Vaneigem--although ultimately failing politically--made us remind that the struggle for socialism, is essentially, a struggle for life, control, and freedom. The stalinist counterrevolution, both in the realm of ideas and praxis, detourned the socialist struggle into a boring, ascetic endeavour for self-mortification.

The quest for "generalized self-management", as the situationists would call it, is not only a quest for empty declarations of "justice" and "equality", it is a quest for the qualitative change of our everyday lives. Technology in the first world has made it possible for the possibility of a world based on abundance, were boring labor could be reduced considerably.

Am I an utopian? If being "utopian" is embracing the tradition of "trying to reach the stars", even if being confronted by the abyss, then yes I am an utopian. People who submit willingly to death and stop trying to reach the stars, are already dead in their hearts and imaginations.

I will quote Ricardo Flores Magón, early 20th century Mexican anarchist:

"¡El abismo no nos detendrá; el agua es más bella despeñandose!"

Which roughly translates to:

"The abyss shall not stop us! Water is the most beautiful when falling."