Suite Guy Bodson et la FA
from Guy Bodson
To the Situationist InternationalWednesday 15 June 1966
Comrades:
When the next issue is published, can you make a deposit at the Publico bookstore, 3 rue Ternaux?
Thanks in advance.
P.S. Is it possible for you to sell or even lend copies of the five first issues of your journal?
Currently one can not say that your ideas are seen particularly well in the Anarchist Federation. It seems that the simple fact of quoting Marx makes them catalogue you as Marxist (refusal of an article by Andre Bertrand).
Nevertheless, your idea on the question appears much more interesting. It will be necessary to remove a lot of dust.
G. Bodsonfrom Guy Debord
To Guy Bodson[1]4 July 1966
Comrade:
Today I sent you the first five issues of the journal Internationale Situationniste. Send them back to us a day after reading them. We recently heard this story of censorship at [Le Monde] Libertaire, when we met Andre Bertrand,[2] whom we did not know before then. Certainly we are still "seen badly" by the so-called "Marxists." But it is normal to expect the worst from those who want to be experts in dissimulation. But what remains of the anarchists when their minuscule authority opposes itself to freedom of expression, hides the manifestation of the truth, protects falsification?
I am distressed for you: Le Monde Libertaire too much resembles the rest of the press of its era.Debord
[1] Guy Antoine Bodson, member of the Boulogne Anarchist Group of the Anarchist Federation.
[2] Andre Bertrand, author of an article on the situationists that was refused by Le Monde Libertaire on the pretext that it cited Marx. Creator of several comics, including The Return of the Durruti [sic] Column, in October 1966.
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 3, 1965-1968. Footnotes by Alice Debord. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! August 2005.)
from Guy Bodson
To Guy Debord[no date]
Comrade:
First of all, thank you for the loan of the issues of I.S. [Internationale Situationniste].
If I am not completely in agreement with the formulation "perfect falsification,"[1] on the contrary I am in agreement on the result that "the M[onde] L[ibertaire] too much resembles the rest of the press of its era." There are many reasons for this, including, among others, the manner in which it is made.
My position with respect to the SI can seem to you to be that of a "partisan" (mimeographed version -- which I send you -- of "Report on the Construction of Situations").
In Le Monde Libertaire #121, #122 [and] #123, there appeared articles that I signed Guy Antoine, articles which are quite moderate and the development of which has been insignificant. The article by Andre Bertrand had the merit of being a hundred times clearer.
In fact, for this [forthcoming] article,[2] everything revolves around the term libertarian research, about which I reach the conclusion that no one knows what they mean when they say: 1) research 2) libertarian. There are only two of us to defend it,[3] but this (perhaps) is explained by the fact that the SI is little read in the libertarian milieu.
G. Bodson[1] In his letter to Guy Bodson dated 4 July 1966, Guy Debord had asked, "But what remains of the anarchists when their minuscule authority opposes itself to freedom of expression, hides the manifestation of the truth, protects falsification?"
[2] What is situationism?, published in Le Monde Libertaire #127, December 1966.[3] Bodson himself and the future situationist Rene Riesel.
(Never published. Private distribution. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! September 2005.)
from Guy Bodson
To Guy Debord
[no date]
Comrade:
By the same courrier, I have shipped back to you the issues of the I.S. [Internationale Situationniste] that you loaned me.
In the next Monde Libertaire there will be an article on the situationists -- which I do not think is genial, in any case you will critique it -- I suppose.
I hope that you will make a small rectification concerning the CNT,[1] insofar as I judge -- not much -- that you seem to be influenced by Accion Communista on this subject.
Likewise, in your article "The Decline and Fall of the Spectacular-Commodity Society," you know well that it wasn't only the POUM that resisted, but also the base of the CNT, obviously not those [of the CNT] who were in the government. Of course, the CNT didn't have a trial, which is another thing.
Good health
G. Bodson
[1] The CNT was disparaged in On the Poverty of Student Life.
(Never published. Private distribution. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! September 2005.)
2 December [19]66
Dear Comrade:
Thank you for the return of the journals. We will read your article[1] attentively.
We do not believe we are influenced by Accion comunista on the history of the Spanish Revolution; rather, it is we who have exhorted this group to study and critique better a past of which its seems to underestimate the richness.
We quite willingly specify that those who have negotiated with the Phalangist unions have quickly repudiated them; but is this not a question of the old leaders, who are known and respected throughout the CNT in Spain for their struggles and long terms in prison?
We know well the essential weight of the CNT in the victory of 1936. If we have only cited the POUM in our article on America,[2] this is because we are opposed to the naive adhesions to the international brigades, which were manipulated by Stalinism and were a much more critical and revolutionary position that was then taxed by pure betrayal.
It is a fact that one might accuse the POUMists of being conscious agents of Franco, an accusation that, all the same, has not been made against the anarchists in a cynical form. I do not want to say that the positions of the POUM appear to me as a highly satisfactory revolutionary model. But it is a fact that the Spanish Revolution was dead after the days of May [1937].
Guy Debord
[1] "What is Situationism?" which appeared in Le Monde Libertaire #127, December 1966.
[2] "The Decline and Fall of the Spectacular-Commodity Society" (cf. I.S. #10, pp. 3-11).
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 3, 1965-1968. Footnotes by Alice Debord.
[no date]
Comrade:
By the same courrier, I have shipped back to you the issues of the I.S. [Internationale Situationniste] that you loaned me.
In the next Monde Libertaire there will be an article on the situationists -- which I do not think is genial, in any case you will critique it -- I suppose.
I hope that you will make a small rectification concerning the CNT,[1] insofar as I judge -- not much -- that you seem to be influenced by Accion Communista on this subject.
Likewise, in your article "The Decline and Fall of the Spectacular-Commodity Society," you know well that it wasn't only the POUM that resisted, but also the base of the CNT, obviously not those [of the CNT] who were in the government. Of course, the CNT didn't have a trial, which is another thing.
Good health
G. Bodson
[1] The CNT was disparaged in On the Poverty of Student Life.
(Never published. Private distribution. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! September 2005.)
from Guy Debord
To Guy Bodson2 December [19]66
Dear Comrade:
Thank you for the return of the journals. We will read your article[1] attentively.
We do not believe we are influenced by Accion comunista on the history of the Spanish Revolution; rather, it is we who have exhorted this group to study and critique better a past of which its seems to underestimate the richness.
We quite willingly specify that those who have negotiated with the Phalangist unions have quickly repudiated them; but is this not a question of the old leaders, who are known and respected throughout the CNT in Spain for their struggles and long terms in prison?
We know well the essential weight of the CNT in the victory of 1936. If we have only cited the POUM in our article on America,[2] this is because we are opposed to the naive adhesions to the international brigades, which were manipulated by Stalinism and were a much more critical and revolutionary position that was then taxed by pure betrayal.
It is a fact that one might accuse the POUMists of being conscious agents of Franco, an accusation that, all the same, has not been made against the anarchists in a cynical form. I do not want to say that the positions of the POUM appear to me as a highly satisfactory revolutionary model. But it is a fact that the Spanish Revolution was dead after the days of May [1937].
Guy Debord
[1] "What is Situationism?" which appeared in Le Monde Libertaire #127, December 1966.
[2] "The Decline and Fall of the Spectacular-Commodity Society" (cf. I.S. #10, pp. 3-11).
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 3, 1965-1968. Footnotes by Alice Debord.
from Charles-August Bontemps
To Guy Antoine Bodson5 December 1966
Comrade:
After some some discussion, I fear having to reply to your paper on situationism[1] (I detest this term, which isn't even advertising). Therefore, I have read what you've written and I consider that your exposition has its place in the "M.L." [Monde Libertaire], of which I haven't ceased saying that it is too often behind the times.
Where I am not in agreement -- I would say rather -- where I see a defect is in the too-easy opposition of situationism to libertarian philosophy and the reduction of the former to the only social-revolutionary action.
In a word, you contest the cultural action of anarchism. In short, I reply to you that the contrary is true. It is free and [word illegible] culture that equals and resides in anarchism.
When one speaks of Proudhon, one seems unfamiliar with his great work: "Of Justice in the Revolution and the Church." By Reclus: "Man and the Earth." By Kropotkin: "Mutual Assistance" and also "Ethics," surpassed in its perspective but still existent. All of the individualist school, from Stirner to Han Ryner, and even Armand is preoccupied by man insofar as he is man.
Finally, permit me to indicate to you that all that you report about situationism on the level of the supercession of the revolution, of the conditioning of diversions, of aesthetics as an inseparable element of ethics, of the irrational as a fundamental element of surrealism, these are all themes that I have appealed to in anarchism, that I have treated in a sense very close to that of situationism, for thirty to forty years, in articles, innumerable interventions at the Club des Faubourg and many conferences, and that, finally, I have assembled, summarized and systematized them in "Anarchism and the Real."
Then why refuse to the anarchists, why impute to the benefit of non-anarchists, views that we had before them?
I can give you the response, but it is a little disappointing. There are many anarchists who are anarchist. What isn't in "the line" is stifled. It took more than two years for a congress of the A.F. [Anarchist Federation] to finally cite my book. Cited it but no more. One doesn't contest it. One doesn't know it.
Here is a significant fact. My first attempts are widely beneficial. For the genre and without an editor, this isn't bad. It is to the society of the People of Letters and not rue Ternaux[2] that I have made my remarks. Therefore -- with the exception of "Anarchism and the Real," which has all the same retained the attention of the comrades -- it is to the rue Ternaux that I have sold the fewest number of copies: the figure is insignificant. Currently, it is priests and Catholic professors who discuss my disk "Praise for Egoism" -- I have had the displeasure of hearing a well-known journalist say to me, concerning the M.L. critique of this disk, "Bontemps, it appears that a disk by Brassens has more importance for the anarchists than a disk on a libertarian theme!"
This was a way of asking me, one more time: "What are you fucking around with here?"
Personally, I know what I have accomplished and I know where to plant the seeds. But I still can not resist irritation when an article such as yours is not oriented in a fashion to emphasize that what is valuable is already among the anarchists. It is a shame that they are the first not to know it.
Quite cordially,
Aug. Bontemps
[1] See What is situationism?, published in Le Monde Libertaire #127, December 1966.
[2] The location of the Publico bookstore.
(Never published. Private distribution. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! September 2005.)
from Guy Antoine
To Charles-August Bontemps[no date]
Comrade:
First, thank you for writing to me,[1] because it is preferable to have a written critique than a critique by "word of mouth."[2]
I believe that it is necessary to make certain things precise again: there is no "situationism," even if my article[3] carried this title -- there are only situationists.
I contest the cultural activity of anarchism (like that of "Marxism") in the sense that it is a cultural activity of the XIXth Century. Because it is quite necessary to recognize that the appearance of "theoreticians" dates from this era and that we are linked to them.
All of the meaning of the article can be false if one doesn't bear in mind that it is a question of the culture of today, in the sense of a pseudo-culture and a pseudo-science (Planete).
To speak of liberty today can only be to make a sad pleasantry if one doesn't refer to the central themes of the "milieu," of conditioning and propaganda.
At this level, all of the ideologies are the same, even the libertarian ideology, because the words no longer carry the same meanings. All the powers currently speak of liberty . . . the greatness of man, etc. . . . In brief, they are all humanists -- in the sense that the Nazis constructed stalags for their prisoners.
In any case, I think that this article will not please anyone, neither the anarchists, nor the situationists. But I estimate that I have been foolishly honest. Because to develop certain themes, I was obliged to mention the texts of the SI.
On the subject of your book, I must say that I have not read it. But in admitting that in it you respond to all the problems of the era, you do so theoretically but not in practice. The individual in our era has the value of a fly on a sticky paper-strip.
Finally, seeing that I can not develop everything here, I would like to respond to your last phrase, which motivates your letter -- "is not oriented in a fashion to emphasize that what is valuable is already among the anarchists." Actually, [in anarchism] there are many things, quite often scattered, without coherence (theoretically, at least). In the indicated sense, I have been obliged to make a "libertarian apology."
Thus, I will not insist on the positive sides of anarchy.
But, for example, were there anarchists capable of being interested in the surrealism of their era?
In any case, I think that, instead of critiquing "situationism" through a short article, it would be better to read their pamphlets -- Situationist International -- The Old Mole [bookstore], rue des fosses-jacques, Paris, 5th -- I send you the pamphlet by the Strasbourg situationists along with this letter.
For you to judge.
Cordially,
Guy Antoine
[1] See letter dated 5 December 1966.
[2] The French employed here is qu'en dira-t'on.
[3] See What is situationism?, published in Le Monde Libertaire #127, December 1966.
(Never published. Private distribution. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! September 2005.)
from Guy Debord
To Guy Bodson11 December [19]66
Dear Bodson:
Those of my comrades who have already read your article on the SI have all found it very good; and we appreciate the quantity of exact information that you have gathered together in a page.
It would not be great praise to say that it is the best article on the subject so far, since you know that the practically serious articles have been very few.
To the question that you justly pose at the beginning, "why doesn't one speak of it?" I believe that one can respond more precisely: on the one hand, there still are not visible currents in modern society seeking a global critique (I mean to say: in an actually new way); on the other hand, we have not accepted, on one of a crowd of occasions, to be partially recognized and received in cultural recuperation -- in the "Godard generation" -- with the result that we have remained as badly seen as theoreticians as "artists." The latter would be the minimum of the required seriousness!
The principal merit of your article is certainly that you say how we are close to the anarchists on the fundamental options and, at the same time, you show where the difference, which is essential, resides. Such confrontations will certainly be necessary in the general movement of supercession of the old positions of revolutionary critique.
Cordially,
Guy Debord
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 3, 1965-1968.
from Guy Bodson
To Guy Debord[no date]
Comrade:
Re-reading my text,[1] I think that it can be critiqued in the sense of the expression "totality."
Indeed, a sector has been left to the side; in re-thinking it, perhaps it would be a question on my part of a thoughtless reaction, insofar as "painting" is concerned.
It is quite certain that each person finds himself touched by an aspect of your global critique and this in his [area of] specialization: unionist, artist, "Marxist," etc. . . .
It is very rapidly becoming a question of the degree of compromise in existence, either concerning work or any other thing. Perhaps something remains between integrated and dead?
In any case, the publication of the article, following by the pamphlet [On the Poverty of Student Life] has clearly diminished the degree of "tolerance" [in the Anarchist Deferation].
Already certain responses are ready[2] and they -- unfortunately -- go in the direction you critiqued.
Good health
G. Bodson
[1] What is situationism?, published in Le Monde Libertaire #127, December 1966.
[2] Those responses would include Charles-August Bontemps' Open letter to Guy Antoine on Situationism and Maurice Joyeux's Tough Customers!.
(Never published. Private distribution. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! September 2005.)
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