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I believe that the SI’s critique of the councilism of SouB was more than a catalyst for Dauvé et al’s critique of councilism. Indeed, their critique of SouB’s councilism did not only implicitly pose the limitations of the councilism of Castoriadis et al, but began to project of posing its beyond, explicitly, under Vaneigem’s idea of “generalised self-management” (autogestion généralisée). No doubt this was only an incomplete opening to its more nuanced development in the French ultra-left of the 1970s and 80s, but it is more than simply catalytic to this later critique (even if it is also this). Your idea of the “swerve” (clinamen) better captures this sense than “catalyst” to my mind.

Dauvé would later admit to the limitations of his earlier, 1970s critique of the SI—see, for instance, “Back to the Situationist International” (https://troploin.fr/node/5), but in particular some of the footnotes to his new introduction to the English translation of “Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement” (Oakland: PM Press, 2015, fn. 1, pp. 99/158, and p. 100). I examine both Dauve’s critique of the SI, and the SI’s conception of “generalised self-management” as an explicit critique of councilism/self-management in an an article I wrote in 2018: “On Gilles Dauvé and the Situationist International” (https://thesinisterquarter.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/on-gilles-dauve-and-the-situationist-international/#_ftn7).

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