Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

H e n r i L e F e b v r e
necessity; the other turned a repetitive necessity into a supposed
freedom. Yet Critique of Everyday Life aimed to get inside both
systems, expose their pitfalls, journey beyond them. “It is ludicrous
to define socialism solely by the development of the productive
forces,” Lefebvre writes. “Economic statistics cannot answer the
question: ‘What is socialism?’ Men do not fight and die for tons
of steel, or for tanks and atomic bombs. They aspire to be happy,
not to produce.” 18 They aspire to be free, not to work—or else to
work less. Thus, Arthur Rimbaud’s provocative plea of the “right
to be lazy” is a right socialism needed to reconcile. 19 Changing
life, inventing a new society, can be defined only, Lefebvre says,
“concretely on the level of everyday life, as a system of changes in
what can be called lived experience.” 20 But here, too, lived experience
was changing in advanced capitalist countries; it was under
fire from forces intent on business and market expansion, producing
fast cars and smart suburban houses, consumer durables and
convenience food, processed lives and privatized paradises.
As such, everyday life possessed a dialectical and ambiguous
character. On the one hand, it’s the realm increasingly colonized
by the commodity, and hence shrouded in all kinds of mystification,
fetishism, and alienation. “The most extraordinary things
are also the most everyday,” Lefebvre quips, reiterating Marx’s
comments on the “fetishism of commodities” from Capital 1; “the
strangest things are often the most trivial.” 21 On the other hand,
paradoxically, everyday life is a primal arena for meaningful
social change—the only arena—“an inevitable starting point for
the realization of the possible.” 22 Or, more flamboyantly, “everyday
life is the supreme court where wisdom, knowledge and power
are brought to judgment.” 23 Nobody can get beyond everyday life,
which literally internalizes global capitalism, just as global capitalism
is nothing without many everyday lives, lives of real people
in real time and space. Lefebvre is adamant that a lot of Marxists
held a blinkered notion of class struggle, a largely abstract and
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