In response to your letter of 22 September [1970], we must say the following.
We propose this allocation:
1) because we are the ones who found this money, we were the ones who told you about it;
2) because we are keeping in mind, not precise and numbered projects, but what can be undertaken in the short term, on the one hand, by three isolated comrades in three different countries (cf. Tony’s projects in Holland),[1] and, on the other hand, a group of six comrades who must preoccupy themselves with a second [issue of the] journal in Italy and with Spain[2] (to say nothing of what we must continue in France).
We do not like your administrative demand concerning “projects” that would justify your proposed allocation. Likewise, we do not want to ask which precise projects would justify Jon and Tony’s expenses, just as we do not want to tell you ours after you have demanded them in the way you did. We do not like the administrative style, as you must remember.[3] But, moreover, we will not agree to enter into petty discussions about money, and this you still do not realize.
In such conditions, we have decided to share the money we currently have by dividing it equally among all the current members of the SI (which is the simplest and least debatable form of our principles of participation).
The SI has 10 million + 1.2 million lira (this last sum being the remainder of the previous Italian account). Thus, rounded off: 1.25 million lira per situationist. Thus, any moment now, you will receive, in the name of Jon, 2.5 million lira [converted] in[to] dollars, representing your two shares.
Fraternally,[1] Tony Verlaan was in Holland, Jonathan Horelick was in the USA, and J.V. Martin was in Denmark.
[2] A country that would much preoccupy Guy Debord in the 1970s, after the dissolution of the Situationist International.
[3] The SI had objected to the “administrative style” of Robert Chasse and Bruce Elwell, former members of the American section of the SI.
(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. All footnotes by the translator.)