Situationist International

The Situationist International (SI) was an internationalist group of revolutionaries based mainly in Europe with very restricted membership. Founded in 1957, it reached its peak of influence in the May 1968 protests in France.

With their ideas rooted in Marxism and the 20th-century European artistic avant-gardes, they advocated experiences of life alternative to those admitted by advanced capitalism, for the fulfillment of human desires. For this purpose they suggested and experimented with the "construction of situations", namely the setting up of environments favorable for the fulfillment of such desires. Using methods drawn from the arts, they developed a series of experimental fields of study, including unitary urbanism and psychogeography.

Their theoretical work peaked with the highly influential book The Society of the Spectacle in which Guy Debord argued that the spectacle is a fake reality which masks capitalist degradation of human life. To overthrow this system, the SI supported the May '68 revolts, and called for workers to occupy their factories and to run them through workers' councils.

After publishing in the last issue of its magazine an analysis of the May '68 revolts and the strategies that will need to be adopted in future revolutions, the SI was dissolved in 1972.