'On one hand, anti-union struggles of Western workers are being repressed first of all by the unions; on the other, rebellious youth are raising new protests, protests which are still vague and confused but which clearly imply a rejection of art, of everyday life, and of the old specialized politics. These are two sides of a new spontaneous struggle that is at first taking on a criminal appearance. They foreshadow a second proletarian assault against class society. As the lost children of this as yet immobile army reappear on this battleground—a battleground which has changed and yet remains the same—they are following a new "General Ludd" who, this time, urges them to attack the machinery of permitted consumption.' (Thesis 115, p 61)
"the first proletarian assault against capitalism" is explained in the end note. '"it was completely finished after the defeat of the Spanish revolution, that is, after the Barcelona May days of 1937" (SI Anthology, p. 84; Expanded Edition, pp. 109-110).'
"lost children (enf ants perdus): old military term for soldiers or scouts assigned to particularly dangerous missions; by extension, people who are on the extreme cutting edge of a movement."
'"the significance obviously does not lie in the destruction itself, but in the rebelliousness which could potentially develop into a positive project going to the point of reconverting the machines in a way that increases people's real power over their lives" (SI Anthology, pp. 82; Expanded Edition, p. 108). Examples of the "new signs of negation" and of the vandalism against the "machinery of permitted consumption" in Italy, France, Belgium and Germany are described in the same article (pp. 82-84; Expanded Edition pp. 108-109). See also Debord's remarks on vandalism and looting in his analysis of the 1965 Watts riot, "The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy" (SI Anthology, pp. 153-160; Expanded Edition, pp. 194-203).' (Note 115, p 136–137)
'"The long-sought political form through which the working class could carry out its own economic liberation" has taken on a clear shape in this century, in the form of revolutionary workers councils that assume all decision-making and executive powers and that federate with each other by means of delegates who are answerable to their base and revocable at any moment. As Pannekoek rightly stressed, opting for the power of workers councils "poses problems" rather than providing a solution. But it is precisely within this form of social organization that the problems of proletarian revolution can find their real solution. This is the terrain where the objective preconditions of historical consciousness are brought together—the terrain where active direct communication is realized, marking the end of specialization, hierarchy and separation, and the transformation of existing conditions into "conditions of unity." In this process proletarian subjects can emerge from their struggle against their contemplative position; their consciousness is equal to the practical organization they have chosen for themselves because this consciousness has become inseparable from coherent intervention in history.' (Thesis 116, p 62–63)
'Pannekoek: Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960), Dutch revolutionary, author of Workers' Councils (1947). See also Serge Bricianer's Pannekoek and the Workers' Councils. “conditions of unity”: Cf. Marx and Engels’s The German Ideology (Part 1, chap. 4, section 6): “Communism . . . turns existing conditions into conditions of unity.”' (Note 116, p 137)