I received your letter of 20 July and, at the same time, they telephoned me that my recording sessions[1] must begin, and thus conclude, slightly after the previous estimated start-date.
Thus, we expect you on Saturday, 9 August. Go by train to Darsac, where we will be waiting in a taxi. From the gare de Lyon, take the train at 12:25 pm. You must change at Clermont-Ferraud at 4:30, then change again at Saint-Georges d’Aurac at 6:11. There a railcar will pleasantly convey you to Darsac at 6:50.
Send a telegram or telephone if you cannot come on that day. Apart from the Capstan,[2] we don’t need anything. Thanks.
In Portugal, the dice have been rolled again. The radio informs me that the MFA[3] postponed its assembly today “so that its divergences do not explode publicly.” But they have little face to save, and even less time to lose. What took place in Porto last week was of a very great significance: the Stalinists collapsed after having tried in extremis to lean upon the workers’ autonomous organizations, which clearly didn’t want to support either the Stalinists or [Socialist Prime Minister] Soares, behind whom everyone who isn’t revolutionary, Stalinist or Stalinoid has regrouped. The bastards, like Ravenel in Le Monde on the 23th, who evoke “the organs of working-class power” and “direct democracy” are in fact speaking of the reveries of Carvalho – now a tourist in Cuba, no doubt forcibly so – thus including all the infiltrations already accomplished or stupidly hoped for by the Stalinists. But they never speak of the concrete reality of this autonomy, this autonomous liaison of the factory assemblies that demonstrated [in the streets] on 17 June and 4 July in Lisbon, and on 19 July in Porto (I do not have good information about last week-end[4] in Lisbon). Obviously, one must especially evoke this strength in the postscripts to foreign editions.[5]
Guégan[6] really seeks to bring down my wrath!
See you soon. Best wishes.[1] Recording of [the voice-over to] Réfutation de tous les jugements élogieux qu’hostiles, qui ont été jusqu’ici portés sur le film “La Société du Spectacle.”
[2] Translator: Capstan brand tobacco. See letter dated 17 July 1975.
[3] Movimento das Forcas Armadas.
[4] Translator: English in original.
[5] Translator: of Jaime Semprun’s La Guerre sociale au Portugal, published by Editions Champ Libre.
[6] Regarding Gérard Guégan, see letter dated 19 February 1976.
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol "0": Septembre 1951 - Juillet 1957: Complete des "lettres retrouvees" et d l'index general des noms cites by Librairie Artheme Fayard, October 2010. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! April 2011. Footnotes by the publisher, except where noted.)