The Society of the Spectacle

The spectacle is the material reconstruction of the religious illusion.

“spectacular domination has succeeded in raising an entire generation molded to its laws.”

But the spectacle is not merely a matter of images, nor even of

The spectacle is rooted in the economy of abundance, and the products of that economy ultimately tend to dominate the spectacular market and override the ideological or police-state protectionist barriers set up by local spectacles with pretensions of independence.

Philosophy, in the process of being superseded by historical thought, has thus arrived at the point where it can glorify its world only by denying it, since in order to speak it must presuppose that the total history to which it has relegated everything has already come to an end, and that the only tribunal where truth could be judged is closed.

For it is one thing to recognize that something is inevitable, and quite another to put oneself in the service of that inevitability”

The spectacle is the stage at which the commodity has succeeded in totally colonizing social life.

“Static societies” are societies that have reduced their historical movement to a minimum, that have managed to maintain their internal conflicts and their conflicts with the natural and human environment in a constant equilibrium. Although the extraordinary diversity of the institutions established for this purpose bears eloquent testimony to the

The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having—human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed.