I very much regret the blunders of those from Brussels concerning the bringing of texts to you and the eventual content of those texts. The most serious misunderstanding must be located between [Robert] Dehoux and Bakir, because the people from Brussels believed they were coming, not to an informational meeting, but to a meeting that would decide upon and write a programmatic text.
I perfectly understand the care you took to provide the comrades from Liege with time for a more exhaustive political reflection. It is very unfortunate that this wasn't understood by all (and before the meeting of 12 March [1961]).
It is also quite obvious that it wasn't possible to extend the P. O.[1] group to Liege by having you participate in it.
This group, even provisionally reduced to Brussels, must come to the fore; but the absence of solid and experienced militants, like those from Liege, renders still more difficult the constitution of an effective political programme. The contacts they have with Paris fortunately engender a certain critical action on their platform, which they will not definitively adopt without getting our opinion. But this can not off-set, from afar, the influence of trustworthy worker-militants who lack their own organization.
If the liaison committee that you formed in Liege at this moment truly represents the maximum agreement possible, even with Bakir, then try to make the best use of it. I admit that I am very sceptical of such a formulation, except if this committee actually prepares a new, precise platform. Otherwise, this formulation will reinforce the illusions concerning the "respective organizations" -- except the JGS [2] -- that do not at all seem to come from sustainable milieux.
Thus, I await with interest the documents that will be elaborated in Liege. But I do not at all see how I must "choose Brussels or Liege," as you have invited me to do. All the same, I suppose that the first task of your liaison committee can not be to critique and combat the P. O. group in Brussels! I hope that, before long, you yourselves will attempt a re-grouping of all the elements of the avant-garde, at first in Belgium, and later in liaison with the international regroupment then in motion.
Cordially yours,[1] Pouvoir Ouvrier [Workers' Power].
[2] Jeunes Gardes Socialistes [Young Socialist Guards], a youth organization sponsored by the Belgian Socialist Party.
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 2, 1960-1964. Footnotes by Alice Debord. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! April 2005.)