In March [1967], several situationists accidentally encountered the members of the "Union of Anarcho-Communist Groups" (address: Edith Dard, post box 114 Paris, 10th arr.), who accepted the principle of a subsequent discussion in full knowledge of the fact that the critiques of them would be tough: the theses of the U.A.C.G, which propose to surpass frozen anarchist ideology and to bear in mind a certain revolutionary contribution from Marxism, in reality move towards rallying the worst ideological and organizational debris of sub-Leninism, as if it were a new thing that was unquestionable. These anarcho-communists nevertheless say they have moved beyond the positions that they expressed the preceding year in their document addressed To the international anarchist movement. This was surely a move in the worst possible direction, because one of their tracts, which we happened to see a little later, allied the two counter-truths that concluded their debilitated argument this way: "In Yugoslavia, the Workers' Committees manage the business enterprises. In Vietnam, the Viet Cong have created committees of popular self-management. Why not in France?"

We immediately wrote to them: "Given this tract, you will understand that it is impossible for us to meet you." They responded to us as follows (with a quotation from [Peter] Archinoff's History of the Makhnovist Movement that makes one think that the U.A.C.G. sees itself participating in the beginning of a new 1917 revolution):

"Comrades, precisely given this tract, it is a shame that you can not meet us. Moving from a lucid critique of society to the means of touching the popular strata at the level that they can understand it is something other than demagoguery. We believe that your dialectical spirit, the quality of which, it seems to us, hides something other than aristocratic habits -- perhaps arrogantly revolutionary [ones] -- will allow you to feel this."

This conception of the "popular strata" [couches populaires] seems to us beneath comment.

(Published as an editorial note in Internationale Situationniste #11, October 1967. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! March 2006.)