Purchasing power is a license to purchase power. The old proletariat sold its labour power in order to subsist; what little leisure time it had was passed pleasantly enough in conversations, arguments, drinking, making love, wandering, celebrating and rioting. The new proletarian sells his labour power in order to consume. When he’s not flogging himself to death to get promoted in the labour hierarchy, he’s being persuaded to buy himself objects to distinguish himself in the social hierarchy. The ideology of consumption becomes the consumption of ideology.

One of the longest SI members and frequent editor of the journal Internationale Situationniste Vaneigem finally left the SI in November 1970 citing their failures as well as his own in his letter of resignation. Soon after Debord issued a typically scathing response denouncing both Vaneigem and his critique of the Situationist International. org "The voice of Raoul Vaneigem was one of the strongest of the Situationists.

Vaneigem's slogans frequently made it onto the walls of Paris during the May 1968 uprisings. Raoul Vaneigem (Dutch: [raˈul vɑnˈɛiɣəm]; born 1934) is a Belgian writer and philosopher. Counterpoised to Guy Debord's political and polemic style Vaneigem offered a more poetic and spirited prose.