Cavalcanti[1] says that there never was a Dreyfus Affair here [in Italy]. But, if the thing has unpleasant consequences, it is nevertheless not without remedy: an international Dreyfus case could be made in this poor country. Here, roughly, is a project to be made precise, because Niccolo[2] has received remarkable material concerning many historical examples of provocations, material that is hardly accessible and too little known, but could be printed without problems -- thanks to bad workers, of course -- as a kind of short manual, as follows:
Title: Soluzioni tecniche di questioni politiche e sociali; author: General Staff of the Army; subtitle: Manuale practico ad uso interno, con riferimenti storici, esempi utili, dove sono esaminati i risultati recenti dell'esperienza italiana.[3] Graphic identical to that of the E.M.; colophon: "75 copies of this manual have been printed in collaboration with the Higher Institute of Strategic Studies in London" (for example); thanks to the very useful collaboration of certain people, the celebrated admiral, etc. Date: just before the latest Italian affair.
Since it is here that one experiments with counter-revolutionary strategies, as Cavalcanti says, it seems to me that it is from now on that it is necessary to counter-attack, by taking up again the good custom of Messer Niccolo to "say the unsayable about the State."
R. a T.[4] is finally finished. It remains for me to correct it and type it up. Attached is the definitive table of contents[5] (around 200 printed pages, I think). The thing appears well conceived to me, and I want to believe it is executed as best as possible.
I can announce to Cavalcanti that the first Strasbourg of the factories[6] has taken place with the greatest imaginable success in Milan, thanks to a group of situ-[inspired] workers. Two factories, Motta and Alemagna, united under the name UNIDAL after they were purchased by the State, have thus fallen into bankruptcy. They used to produce food and cakes by employing more than 5,000 workers, which is not few.
It took two years, but the result was obtained. I was informed by one of the workers who came to find me: in Chapter XIII ("On sabotage considered as one of the fine arts"), I will make this scandal public: actually, the story of this bankruptcy produced a scandal, but all the terms were false, because they were relayed by the Corriere [della Sera] with the aid of artificial editorials, which hushed up the principle [aspects], that is to say, this bankruptcy was the determined and premeditated work of conscious, situationist[-inspired] workers, who quoted from the S. of the S. [Society of the Spectacle], etc. It took me thirty pages to recount the truly scandalous aspects of this story; I limit myself here to a very short summary. Aside from wildcat strikes, the workers caused the factory's bankruptcy by declaring to the entire country what its products actually contained; having also stolen from the management the list of all the Italian distributors of this food, they first put them on guard and then challenged them to sell poisoned things; this naturally created a great scandal, but this was not sufficient to convince the management to change production, nor to bankrupt the factory, the deficits of which were paid off by the State for two years. Then these workers declared to the public, in different ways, all very efficient, that they had begun to spit and piss in the poisoned food, which was dangerous not only to its consumers, but its producers as well: this -- plus certain practices that are still quite new to sabotage -- was sufficient.
In those two years, the workers amused themselves like crazy people with what they said; at the beginning, the situs [among them] were a very small group, but the malady quickly infected the others: three months after the arrival of my friend, he and several others were discharged but, supported by their comrades, went to a tribunal, at which they demonstrated with great facility that they had only acted in the interests of the factory's good name and the health of consumers: the tribunal then ordered the firm to re-hire them and pay them damages and interest; this example was then taken up elsewhere [in the factory] and many workers, strong from the first success, denounced the management of the factory, alleging nervous troubles due to the noise and a thousand other things, always winning their suits and thus money: a young worker was paid all year, but on the condition that she no longer had to show up at the factory, etc.
The drollest part of this story is that several workers, including my friend, got themselves discharged just before the bankruptcy, with extravagant indemnities, which they themselves calculated with the management, after a precise accounting of the damages that they would have experienced in the following three months, had they remained at work: and since they had always won on the terrain of the detournement of justice, the management agreed to what they demanded, or almost all of it. My friend, for example, who swore to me he had only worked two weeks in two years (although he went almost every day to the factory, but, alas! to do something else), received an indemnity of over six million Lira; but the moving spirit, the one who had first read Spectacle and was the first to make good use of it, received 13 million. If all this is not scandalous, I do not know what could be!
Today some of these workers are in South America, or travel the world that they want to change fundamentally, taking literally the famous publicity for the American airline company that says, above a photo of an exploding cocktail: "How can you claim to change the world if you still do not know it?"
My friend is in Greece, with his wife. I hardly deceive myself when I say that -- with such workers and such politicians, managers[7] and tribunals -- Italy will not last long!
Best wishes,Have you received the books that I sent to Chateau-Boujoum?
[1] Pseudonym adopted by Guy Debord in his letter to Sanguinetti dated 21 April 1978.
[2] Pseudonym adopted by Sanguinetti.
[3] "Technical solutions to political and social questions: practical manual for internal use, with historical references, useful examples, in which the recent results of the Italian experience are examined" in Italian.
[4] Remedy to Everything, of which only Chapter X ("On Terrorism and the State") would be published.
[5] See the table of contents.
[6] A reference to the circumstances surrounding the publication of On the Poverty of Student Life in Strasbourg, France, at the end of 1966.
[7] English in original.
[8] Gianfranco Sanguinetti.
(Published in Editions Champ Libre, Correspondence, Volume II, November 1981. Translated from the French and, where necessary, from the Italian, by NOT BORED! August 2007. Footnotes by the translator.)