It will be quite sufficient if we have the texts by Asasco and Durruti by July. In any case, the most important thing is that you finish your book [on Poland].
I am convinced that Gerard [Lebovici] will be delighted to publish it. In any case, you can count on me to correct the French version.
Your thesis appears exact to me (since [the revolution in] Portugal, it has been easy to comprehend that the cleaning out of the fitters' school[1] was the beginning of the expected blow). I believe that it is necessary to emphasize that the army -- not quite trustworthy, and about which a different strategy got through to the people, as in Hungary -- was especially on display, and to emphasize that, for the real repression, the shock troops of the police were especially engaged. Two or three days after the putsch of the Stalinist State,[2] the young people in Warsaw publicly distributed a tract that demanded "all power to the National Strike Council."
Since the summer of 1980, the most profound strategic basis of the entire affair has been this: a revolutionary proletarian movement, which must inevitably want the abolition of the State and the classes, has for a long time been disguised as a unionist movement that cannot exist. Concerning the possibility of this existence, certain people (a large part of the population) have believed in it; others (Walesa and Kuron,[3] among them) have seemed to believe in it; and still others (the revolutionary workers and the proprietary bureaucrats) have never believed in it.
This is a good occasion to recall all that Leninist-Stalinism is, not by accident but by nature, and who their trustworthy allies -- with respect to their shared enemy -- are in the world: the bankers, informers, diplomats and politicians of all the governments and all the "oppositions." They have worked overtime since 13 December [1981].
Congratulations of saving the Bakunin archives!
Best wishes,[1] On 14 December 1981, the militia attacked the School of the Fitters in Warsaw, which had been occupied by the workers, and evacuated it by force.
[2] Proclamation of a state of war, 13 December 1981.
[3] Jacek Kuron, leader of the Workers Defense Committee.
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 5: Janvier 1979-Decembre 1987 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2006. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! May 2007. Footnotes by Alice Debord.)