I received the Naude[1] the day before yesterday. Thank you.
Having no other news from you since your letter #1 of 3 November, it's only today that I send you several documents. The letter from Juju [Juvenal Quillet] (dated 4 November) is to be sent to me after you've read it.
I hope you have received my letter #2. I expect news, notably concerning the voyage of Lamargelle.[2]
See you soon.P.S. Can you see if it is perhaps necessary to respond to Claudio [Pavan]; and perhaps via the Professor?[3] (Information on your expulsion [from France] and the mysterious document[4] received in Paris on the three Italians of the "anarcho-Trotskyist movement.")
Do you know the superb letter from Engels to Marx of 13 February 1851, after the schism of the League of Communists?
"One more time -- and for the first time in a long while -- we have the occasion to show that we have no need of popularity, nor of 'support' from any party in any country and that our position is absolutely independent of trifles of this kind. Henceforth, we are only responsible to ourselves [...]
"Have we not acted for years as if all kinds of people constituted our party, while we didn't have the slightest party, and the people that we, at least officially, considered as our party did not even comprehend the elements of our doctrine? How can people such as us, who flee official situations like the plague, be in a party? People such as us, who spit on popularity and who would distrust ourselves if we began to become popular? Truly! it won't be a loss if we no longer pass for 'the exact and adequate expression' of the dull people with whom we have associated these last few years [...]
"For the moment, the essential for us is to print, either a quarterly journal in which we can directly attack and secure our position with respect to these people, or big books in which we can do the same thing without having to mention one of these dirty beasts."
[1] Gabriel Naude, Political Considerations on Coups d'Etat.
[2] Jean-Pierre Voyer.
[3] Paolo Salvadori.
[4] See the letters of 2 April 1971 to Paolo Salvadori and of 7 April 1971 to Gianfranco Sanguinetti.
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 4, 1969-1972. Footnotes by Alice Debord. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! July 2005.)