In post-industrial societies where mass production and media predominate, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles.
I don't know if the target of the text is only academics, but certainly it is at people who this opening sentence reminded them of another opening sentence -
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity.
Which is the opening of Marx's Capital. Marx was talking about (in this and after) how there were not wealthy people who owned and had a relationship to an immense accumulation of things, nor working and poor people who owned and had a relationship to no or much less things, but workers and capitalists, who had a social relationship from one class to another as well as an internal class relationship. The ruling class expropriating surplus labor time from the working class, the fulcrum of the exploitative relationship, the resulting alienation of the worker etc.
If this is the base of social relations in society, Debord was discussing the hegemonic superstructure, which became a more important topic than it was from World War I on, from Antonio Gramsci to his successors. Everything else in society aside from production - media, church, school - but especially media.
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The book opens
I don't know if the target of the text is only academics, but certainly it is at people who this opening sentence reminded them of another opening sentence -
Which is the opening of Marx's Capital. Marx was talking about (in this and after) how there were not wealthy people who owned and had a relationship to an immense accumulation of things, nor working and poor people who owned and had a relationship to no or much less things, but workers and capitalists, who had a social relationship from one class to another as well as an internal class relationship. The ruling class expropriating surplus labor time from the working class, the fulcrum of the exploitative relationship, the resulting alienation of the worker etc.
If this is the base of social relations in society, Debord was discussing the hegemonic superstructure, which became a more important topic than it was from World War I on, from Antonio Gramsci to his successors. Everything else in society aside from production - media, church, school - but especially media.