The disagreement is serious, rightly so. It cannot be “transposed to the ideological plane” because it isn’t founded on considerations that aren’t ideological.
For us – and I believed until recently that the surrealists I knew shared this demand – intelligence is worth nothing if it is isolated from a morality and a way of living that, in particular, excludes concessions and messy contact with the Dufrenes.[2]
The debate on such a poor subject is unacceptable to my friends and I because in principle its presupposes that we could recognize excuses from, defenses of and even the possible interest in degraded creatures of the Francois Dufrene kind, whose politically reactionary engagements and, in particular, whose ignoble behavior and [personal] associations we know all about.
Naturally, while such suspicious people and problems are posed among you, any other dialogue is impossible.
A thousand regrets,[1] A member of the surrealist group that concerned itself with “a serious disagreement” [with the Lettrist International] because of “a certain Francois Du . . .,” who was the cause of a possible “disagreement – on the ideological plane, which alone interests us.” [Translator: but Dufrene was never a member of the LI, and so the question was mute.]
[2] Cf. Internationale Lettriste #3, “Vagabondage special” (reproduced in Guy Debord, Oeuvres, Gallimard, 2006, p. 103).
(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! February 2011. Footnotes by the publisher.)