Deleuze said in 1968 that it was a "phenomenon of clairvoyance: a society suddenly saw what it contained that was intolerable and also saw the possibility of something else." To which Benjamin adds: "Clairvoyance is the vision of that which is taking form. [ . . . ] Perceiving exactly what is taking place is more decisive than knowing the distant future in advance." In ordinary circumstances most people do end up seeing, but when it is much too late-when it's become impossible not to see and, quite often, seeing no longer serves any purpose. This aptitude owes nothing to any great body of knowledge, which often serves for overlooking what's essential. Conversely, ignorance can crown the most banal insistence on not seeing. Let's say that social life demands of everyone that they not see, or at least act as if they didn't see anything. It makes no sense to share things if one doesn't begin by communizing the ability to see. Without that, living the communist way is like a wild dance in utter darkness; one crashes against the others, one gets hurt, one inflicts bruises on the body and the soul without meaning to and without even knowing exactly who to be angry with. Compounding every­ one's capacity for seeing in every domain, composing new perceptions and endlessly refining them, resulting in an immediate increase of potential, must be the central object of any communist development. Those who don't want to see any­ thing cannot help but produce collective disasters. We must become seers, for ourselves as much as for others. The Invisible Committee, Now, p.151-152

The assault of the first workers movement against the whole organization of the old world came to an end long ago, and nothing can bring it back to life. It failed. Certainly it achieved immense results, but not the ones it had originally intended. No doubt such deviation toward partially unexpected results is the general rule in human actions; but the one exception to this rule is precisely the moment of revolutionary action, the moment of the all-or-nothing qualitative leap. The classical workers movement must be reexamined without any illusions, particularly without any illusions regarding its various political and pseudotheoretical heirs, for all they have inherited is its failure. The apparent successes of this movement are actually its fundamental failures (reformism or the establishment of a state bureaucracy), while its failures (the Paris Commune or the 1934 Asturian revolt) are its most promising successes so far, for us and for the future. This movement must be precisely delineated in time. The classical workers movement can be considered to have begun a couple decades before the official formation of the International, with the first linkup of communist groups of several countries that Marx and his friends organized from Brussels in 1845. And it was completely finished after the failure of the Spanish revolution, that is, after the Barcelona May days of 1937. We need to rediscover the whole truth of this period and to reexamine all the oppositions between revolutionaries and all the neglected possibilities, without any longer being impressed by the fact that some won out over others and dominated the movement; for we now know that the movement within which they were successful was an overall failure. Marx's thought is obviously the first which must be rediscovered -- a task that should not present much difficulty in view of the extensive existing documentation and the crudeness of the lies about it. But it is also necessary to reassess the anarchist positions in the First International, Blanquism, Luxemburgism, the council movement in Germany and Spain, Kronstadt, the Makhnovists, etc. Without overlooking the practical influence of the utopian socialists. All this, of course, not with the aim of scholarship or academic eclecticism, but solely in order to contribute toward the formation of a new, profoundly different revolutionary movement, a movement of which we have seen so many premonitory signs over the last few years, one of which is our own existence. We must understand these signs through the study of the classical revolutionary project and vice versa. It is necessary to rediscover the history of the very movement of history, which has been so thoroughly hidden and distorted. There is no other way to be faithful to, or even simply to understand, the actions of our comrades of the past than to profoundly reconceive the problem of revolution, which has been increasingly deprived of thought as it has become posed more intensely in concrete reality. Situationist International, The Bad Days will End, Internationale Situationniste #7, https://libcom.org/article/bad-days-will-end-0

The formation of new organizations depends on a deeper critique, translated into acts. There must be a complete break with ideology, in which revolutionary groups think they possess official titles guaranteeing their function (that is, we must resume the Marxian critique of the role of ideologies). It is thus necessary to leave the terrain of specialized revolutionary activity -- the terrain of the self-mystification of "serious politics" -- because it has long been seen that such specialization encourages even the best people to demonstrate stupidity regarding all other questions; with the result that they end up failing even in their merely political struggles, since the latter are inseparable from all other aspects of the overall problem of our society. Specialization and pseudoseriousness are among the primary defensive outposts that the organization of the old world occupies in everyone's mind. A revolutionary association of a new type will also break with the old world by permitting and demanding of its members an authentic and creative participation, instead of expecting a participation of militants measurable in attendance time, which amounts to recreating the sole control possible in the dominant society: the quantitative criterion of hours of labor. A genuine enthusiastic participation on the part of everyone is necessitated by the fact that the classical political militant, who "devotes himself" to his radical duties, is everywhere disappearing along with classical politics itself; and even more by the fact that devotion and sacrifice always engender authority (even if only purely moral authority). Boredom is counterrevolutionary. In every way. Situationist International, The Bad Days will End, Internationale Situationniste #7, https://libcom.org/article/bad-days-will-end-0

There is no other way to be faithful to, or even simply to understand, the actions of our comrades of the past than to profoundly reconceive the problem of revolution, which has been increasingly deprived of thought as it has become posed more intensely in concrete reality. But why does this reconception seem so difficult? Starting from an experience of free everyday life (that is, from a quest for freedom in everyday life) it is not so difficult. It seems to us that this question is quite concretely felt today among young people. And to feel it with enough urgency enables one to rediscover lost history, to salvage and rejudge it. It is not difficult for thought that concerns itself with questioning everything that exists. It is only necessary not to have abandoned philosophy (as have virtually all the philosophers), not to have abandoned art (as have virtually all the artists), and not to have abandoned contestation of present reality (as have virtually all the militants). When they are not abandoned, these questions all converge toward the same supersession. The specialists, whose power is geared to a society of specialization, have abandoned the critical truth of their disciplines in order to preserve the personal advantages of their function. But all real researches are converging toward a totality, just as real people are going to come together in order to try once again to escape from their prehistory. Situationist International, The Bad Days will End, Internationale Situationniste #7, https://libcom.org/article/bad-days-will-end-0

We believe that the role of theorists - a role which is indispensable, but which must not be dominant - is to provide information and conceptual tools that can shed light on people's hidden desires and on the social crisis they are experiencing; to clarify things and show how they fit together; to make the new proletariat aware of the "new poverty" that must be named and described. Situationist International, Ideologies, Classes and Domination, Internationale Situationniste #8, https://libcom.org/article/ideologies-classes-and-domination-nature