The Society of the Spectacle

Perhaps the most central theme running through Debord’s text is that of the Spectacle, which is Debord’s term for the contemporary form that alienated existence takes under capitalist society. Marx’s original definition of alienation outlined four main components. First, workers are alienated from the objects of their labor insofar as, under the conditions of industrial production in the 19th century, what they produced held little opportunity for an individual to see themselves and take pride in what they had made, since many of their products were individual, isolated parts, such as paneling for automobiles or machines, or everyday items like nuts and bolts.

Second, workers were alienated from other workers since each sees all others as someone they are in competition with, and thus not someone with whom they share a common and mutually-beneficial goal. Third, workers were alienated from themselves and from the ability to develop their talents since they were forced to spend most of their day working and only had the energy to rest and recover for the next work day once they were off the clock. Fourth, and finally, workers were alienated from society since their entire existence was organized and structured around the demands of production.

Debord’s contribution to this analysis is to show that not only do individuals continue to be alienated in all these ways today, individuals are also alienated from the very fact of their role in society as workers. Today, workers encounter a world that advertises a life of luxury, fame, and power, images whose power is seen in the decline in an individual taking pride in the fact of their working class roots. Thus, the spectacle manifests itself in this double alienation. Not only are we alienated in all the ways Marx originally identified, today we are alienated from the very possibility of understanding and taking pride in the reality of our situation and are encouraged to buy into the unlikely possibility of upward mobility. It is this more contemporary sense of alienation that leads Debord to rename alienation as “spectacle.”