The Society of the Spectacle

“The spectacle subjugates living men to itself to the extent that the economy has totally subjugated them. It is no more than the economy developing for itself. It is the true reflection of the production of things, and the false objectification of the producers.” 

This is a central passage that already foreshadows Debord’s argument in the second chapter. The society of the spectacle, i.e. capitalist society, is defined not simply by the production of commodities. What defines the spectacle is that everything in society is governed by and acts in accordance with the market’s demand for endless accumulation of value and wealth. Thus, we work not to produce and meet our most basic needs, but in order to support an economic system that is at odds with human necessity.

“With the generalized separation of the worker from his product every unitary viewpoint of accomplished activity and all the direct personal communication among producers, are lost. Accompanying the progress of the accumulation of separate products and the concentration of the productive process, unity and communication become exclusively the attribute of the directorate of the system. The success of the economic system of separation is the proletarianization of the world.” 

What Debord has in mind in this passage is Marx’s insight that as capital expands and develops across the globe, there will be an increasing need for workers, or what Marx calls ‘labor-power.’ It is in this sense that the “success” of capitalism to have become globally integrated means the “proletarianization of the world.”

“However, when commodity production met the social conditions of large scale commerce and of the accumulation of capitals, it seized the total domination of the economy […] This incessant deployment of economic power in the form of the commodity, which transformed human labor into commodity-labor, into wage-labor, cumulatively led to an abundance in which the primary question of survival is undoubtedly resolved, but in such a way that it is constantly rediscovered; it is posed over again each time at a higher level.” 

This passage builds upon Debord’s earlier argument that what is definitive of the capitalist economy and the society of the spectacle is not simply exploitation of labor for profit. Rather, what defines capitalist economies from previous economic forms throughout history is its ability to organize all of a society’s capacities towards the singular end of ever-increasing accumulation and expansion.