Autorentext

Ken Knabb has lived in Berkeley, California, since 1965. He has translated numerous works by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, including The Society of the Spectacle. His own writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Klappentext

“It may seem absurd to talk about revolution. But all the alternatives assume the continuation of the present system, which is even more absurd.”

Best known for his meticulous translations of numerous works by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, Ken Knabb is also the author of numerous radical texts. The Joy of Revolution is widely considered his masterpiece. While there have been numerous histories of past revolutions and countless debates about the merits and drawbacks of different radical tactics, it would be difficult to name a single book that more clearly and concisely explores the problems and possibilities of a modern, situationist-type revolution.

Beginning with a brief overview of the absurdity of the present society and the failures of various efforts to change it, it examines the pros and cons of a wide range of radical tactics, first in the context of “normal” or “ordinary” conditions, then in the very different context of radical situations——those rare breakthroughs where numbers of people start to call everything into question and real change becomes possible. The book then concludes with some speculations on how a global liberated society might work, and what it might be like to live in.

For this new edition, Knabb has updated his book (originally published in 1997) and appended several of his more recent texts, including a series of articles on the Occupy movement, in which he was an enthusiastic participant.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: The Fix We’re In

• Utopia or bust
• Stalinist “communism” and reformist “socialism” are merely variants of capitalism
• Representative democracy versus delegate democracy
• Irrationalities of capitalism
• Some exemplary modern revolts
• Some common objections
• Increasing dominance of the spectacle Chapter 2: Tactics During “Ordinary” Conditions 

• Personal breakthroughs
• Critical interventions
• Theory versus ideology
• Avoiding false choices and elucidating real ones
• The insurrectionary style
• Radical film
• Oppressionism versus playfulness
• The Strasbourg scandal
• The poverty of electoral politics
• Reforms and alternative institutions
• Political correctness, or equal opportunity alienation
• Drawbacks of moralism and simplistic extremism
• Advantages of boldness
• Advantages and limits of nonviolence   Chapter 3: Tactics During Radical Situations

• Causes of social breakthroughs
• Postwar upheavals
• Effervescence of radical situations
• Popular self-organization
• The situationists in May 1968
• Workerism is obsolete, but workers’ position remains pivotal
• Wildcats and sitdowns
• Consumer strikes
• What could have happened in May 1968
• Methods of confusion and cooption
• Terrorism reinforces the state
• The ultimate showdown
• InternationalismChapter 4: Revolution and Beyond

• Utopians fail to envision postrevolutionary diversity
• Decentralization and coordination
• Safeguards against abuses
• Consensus, majority rule, and unavoidable hierarchies
• Eliminating the roots of war and crime
• Abolishing money
• Absurdity of most present-day labor
• Transforming work into play
• Technophobic objections
• Ecological issues
• The blossoming of free communities
• More interesting problemsRELATED TEXTS 

• Public Secrets (comic, 1998)
• The Poverty of Primitivism (2001)
• Reflections on the Uprising in France (2006)
• On the Occupy Movement (seven texts, 2011‒2012)
• Pregnant Pause: Remarks on the Corona Crisis (2020)
  Index