Some kind soul has scanned in all of the Spectacular Times booklets which were produced by the late Larry Law in the 80s. These, and things like Vague which reproduced them were probably many people’s introductions to situationist theory during that period. Certainly they seemed to be directed at the burgeoning anarchist movement rather than “the left”, although I have no idea what Debord would have made of them, especially the “Animals” one. (Indeed I seem to recall that one the piece in Vague critising the ALF started yet another feud, this time between Tom Vague and Larry Law.)

So whilst some of it is dated in that precise 80s way which appeals to people my age, there is still a lot of valuable stuff in there as well.

For example maybe things are less black and white now, but the sacred nature of work time is ever present – as outlined by Martin in his excellent Back to work, scum! piece.

We are increasingly being forced to work outside our contracted hours, being expected to take work home, or when ill, or when traumatised by a terrorist attack… Tescos has recently clamped down severely on workers’ taking sick leave by reducing what is the “acceptable” days one can be unwell in a year and by axeing sick pay.

And all of this actually makes people unwell:

There are millions more workers who don’t struggle openly. They remain silent, collapse in on themselves, become depressed or neurotic, or they turn to religion or drugs or alcohol, they burn out and become nervous wrecks, go mad or become ill to the point they are no longer able to work efficiently or work at all.

In the U.K., one of the industrialised developed centres and certainly not a “third world” country, on any given work day there is an average of 6 million workers and people of working age who are officially too sick to work, that’s if you total up the long-term sick and unable to work with the short term sick and those phoning in sick.

In 1980 in the U.K. there was 0.5 million of working age on long-term sickness benefit or incapacity benefit. Today the figure is well over 2 million.

Against capitalist work and production, for many workers who do not have the strength to struggle openly, the weapon of default is growing ILLNESS. I am myself an unemployed temp worker getting older and tired and ill.

excerpt from Lots of Awkward Questions

Maybe one day we’ll get sick of all this illness…