We have just received your letter of 21 December [1970]. Thank you for the documents that were included.
The attacks against comrade Renson[1] are indeed stupid. The fact that he was absent for a year from an action in which he had begun to take part (and this fact is itself five year old) obviously cannot be used as a reproach his whole life, nor can it diminish in some way whatever he has been able to do since then, even more so because there was not any serious urgency [for his participation] at that moment in our practice. Thus we do not even see in the name of what anyone could reprimand him for since then. As for us, we only had to take action, [because] from the point of view of the communal organization of what we had to do, he obviously wasn’t there. In I[nternationale] S[ituationniste] #11, page 55, we made sure to specify “that we have not had any other reproach to formulate concerning these comrades” (Renson and Strijbosch).[2]
Today, such attacks can only come from lamentable admirers of the SI: there’s a multitude of them among the cretins who compensate for their inability to live and think with an ultra-formalist pro-radicalism that, finally, is quite religious! These contemplative “extremists” go over and over their badly understood reading materials so as to console themselves for knowing nothing of what there is to do at present.
Your impressions of the members of the G.R.C.A.[3] are very close to ours. Nevertheless, one must say that we didn’t know anything more about them when they formed their group, and we don’t know what they’ve done since. But they are surely not on a good path.
We estimate that the SI is only a detail and that the important thing is the proletarian movement that now begins to know itself and to struggle.
Cordially,[1] Rudi Renson, Belgian situationist, resigned in 1966.
[2] Jan Strijbosch, Dutch situationist, excluded in July 1966.
[3] Translator: see letter dated 22 July 1970.
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol "4": Janvier 1969 - december 1972 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2004. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! March 2012. Footnotes by the publisher, except where noted.)