The reason that the situationist analysis of the "spectacle" is a better theoretical lens than the Frankfurt School's concept of the "culture industry" is that the concept of the "culture industry" is based on a concept of "regression" that allowed theorists like Benjamin and Adorno to pass off reactionary cultural politics as Marxism.
Lenin the Moralist
"Unprincipled practical politics are the most impractical politics." - V. I. Lenin It will probably cause me to lose friends all across the political spectrum when I say that the problem with Lenin was that he was too moral. Deal with it. Moreover, modern-day soi-disant Leninists are even more moralistic than he was - and therefore, all the more romantic and delusional, and their analyses all the more pointless. I do not mean to imply that Lenin was not responsible for the deaths of many people - he was. Nor am I saying that Lenin did not commit enough atrocities - that he was not violent enough, not ruthless enough, too timid to accomplish his goals, or anything of the like. No, no, no. My point is that Lenin's ideology diverted sharply from Marx's critique of political economy, and in part this was because he tried to reinterpret Marxism into a kind of moral campaign, when Marx had intended nothing of the kind - and, by the way, Lenin...
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