Lexique Marxien progressif

Voici le ba-ba du Jargon employé par les marxiens de la "Théorie de la Valeur"  tel que le donne le site: http://critiquedelavaleur.over-blog.com

Marx éxotérique/ Marx ésotérique: Par ces deux appellations, on entend distinguer deux interprétations différentes de l'oeuvre du vieux barbu, l'une étant celle traditionnellement admise (exotérique), reposant principalement sur un point de vue qui se fait à partir du travail et dont l'objet d'étude est surtout la lutte des classes. Cette interprétation traditionnelle se focalise sur le mode de distribution. L'autre, et c'est celle qui nous intéresse ici, est bien moins connue (ésotérique). Elle se fait non plus cette fois du point de vue du travail mais plutôt de la possibilité de son abolition. Le Marx ésotérique est celui qui critique aussi bien le mode de distribution que le mode de production capitaliste en partant de l'analyse des catégories historiquement déterminées que sont la valeur, la marchandise, l'argent, le travail, le capital.

Travail: Il ne faut surtout pas entendre le travail ici comme l'activité, valable à toute époque, d'interaction entre l'homme et la nature, comme l'activité en générale. Non, le travail est ici entendu comme l'activité spécifiquement capitaliste qui est automédiatisante, c'est à dire que le travail existe pour le travail et non plus pour un but extérieur comme la satisfaction d'un besoin par exemple. Dans le capitalisme le travail est à la fois concret et abstrait.

"Critiquer le travail n'aurait aucun sens si on l'identifie avec l'activité productive en tant que telle, qui, bien sûr, est une donnée présente dans toutes sociétés humaines. Mais tout est différent si on entend par travail ce que le mot désigne effectivement dans la société capitaliste : la dépense auto-référentielle de la simple force de travail sans égard à son contenu. Ainsi conçu, le travail est un phénomène historique, appartenant à la seule société capitaliste et qui peut être critiqué et éventuellement aboli." (Anselm Jappe in Crédit à Mort, Ch "Politique sans politique". Ed Lignes.)

Travail concret/ travail abstrait: Pour saisir la dualité du travail dans l'analyse de Marx, il faut la comprendre comme historiquement déterminée dans ses deux dimensions. Disons que le travail concret se réfère à "l'activité de peine"(comprise qualitativement) et le travail abstrait se réfère à la fonction de médiation du travail dans le capitalisme (comprise quantitativement). La spécificité du travail dans le capitalisme est qu'il médiatise les interactions humaines avec la nature, aussi bien que les relations sociales entre les gens.  Travail abstrait et concret ne sont donc pas deux types de travaux différents mais bien deux aspects du travail sous le capitalisme.

Marchandise: la marchandise n'est pas un simple objet. Elle est en fait pleine de "subtilités métaphysiques". Contrairement au simple produit, elle a une nature double : à la fois valeur d'usage et valeur. Ce qui fait qu'elle peut être utiliser ou consommer est ce qui détermine sa valeur d'usage, ce qui fait qu'elle peut être échangée contre n'importe quelle marchandise ou simplement vendue signifie qu'elle possède une valeur sans rapport avec ses qualités particulières d'objet. Elle est une matérialisation du temps abstrait.

Valeur d'usage: L'une des deux "faces" de la marchandise, elle est comme le support de la valeur. Un verre a, par exemple, comme valeur d'usage le fait de contenir un liquide qui peut être bu. Cette valeur d'usage, contrairement à la valeur, ne peut être comparée quantitativement à une autre valeur d'usage, elle est une qualité incommensurable et elle rentre ainsi, pour ainsi dire, "en conflit" avec l'autre face de la marchandise qu'est la valeur qui est par essence quantifiable. Il serait pour autant ridicule de partir d'une défense de la valeur d'usage comme base à une théorie de l'émancipation. En effet, elle est une des catégories historiquement déterminées par le capitalisme.

Fétichisme: Marx compare le rapport des individus face aux marchandises au sein de la société capitaliste à celui des sociétés primitives face aux totems ou autres fétiches. En accordant une puissance extérieur à sa propre production, l'être humain se soumet à une forme de non-conscience. Le caractère fétiche de la marchandise implique une inversion du rapport sujet/objet si bien que les individus se retrouvent dominés par les objets qu'ils produisent.
La logique d'accumulation abstraite de la valeur (la valorisation de la valeur) engendre un double mouvement: d'une part, une chosification des personnes et de leurs relations (réification) et d'autre part, une personnification des choses.
Le fétichisme capitaliste se retrouve dans le fait d'attribuer un caractère naturel aux catégories capitaliste que sont le travail, la marchandise (de même que la proportion dans laquelle elles s’échangent semble appartenir à leur nature, de la même manière que les propriétés chimiques du carbone ou de l’hydrogène déterminent la forme d'un corps), le marché ou bien l'Etat.
Dans ce monde réellement renversé, les rapports entre les hommes prennent la forme de rapports entre les choses.

Le caractère fétiche de la marchandise et son secret  en pdf

Fukushima and Capitalism

This article was originally published in: Streifzuege March 2011 http://www.streifzuege.org/2011/fukushima-kapitalismus and is translated on the Internet.

The shock and horror are unending. Fukushima is the 9/11 of the fossil- nuclear energy system. The horror of a world that knows only profit and capital condensed in a nightmarish way in this nuclear reactor and its invisible deadly radiation. The pictures and news from Japan are like a disaster film. It was as though our ideas of the destructive energy indwelling capital had materialized. We can imagine destruction and mass suffering more than life in a world of sharing, carefulness and community. The world appears as we conceive and imagine it to the end of time because it appears that way.

Capitalism and its countless horrors seem more credible to us than an alternative. We believe in capital, the deadly promise of endless growth. We cynically pay it tribute as though the rule of people over people and nature were something dignified. If we didn’t have capitalism, the productive powers would not have developed so enormously, we hear everywhere. If we didn’t have capitalism, we would still be living in dark stone shacks and slaving away on meager fields. If we didn’t have capitalism, there would be no cell phones and no Internet. If we didn’t have capitalism, we could not treat the cancer caused by the radioactive radiation of its reactors. If we didn’t have capitalism, people infer, everything would be much worse.

A world of sharing, carefulness and community is obviously nonsense. Still this nonsense has a system.

Tasteless Riches

Comparing the supposed achievements of capital with the incredible suffering that it has caused, is causing and will keep causing until it is overcome is tasteless but necessary. The technical possibilities released by the human spirit, exploited by ruthless capital against concrete needs and ecological limitations and brought into play to our harm cannot be ascribed to capital.

Inventors and inventiveness always operate where people team up. The completely senselessend-in-itself and ruthless machine of money-making for the sake of money-making can be ascribed to capital, subordinating everything in its way as soon as money becomes the dominant form of “riches” – a word hardly expressed in this world that models itself according to money. Money together with the market economy becomes the undisputed form of “riches,” the seemingly inescapable way that people organize their life but is really the cause of enormous, unnecessary suffering and the obstacle to an alternative.

That is the reality of capital. Some must sell their labor power because otherwise they would have nothing from which they could live. Others buy their labor power because they own the means of production, the machines, factories, raw materials and the land. Buying and selling, money and market constitute its context. Market and capital are two aspects of a system. The market is the sphere in which capital rakes in its profit through honest sales and can appropriate the objects of its exploitation without revolts through harmless purchases: natural substances, human material, metals, energy, land and labor power.

The state guarantees that nothing changes in this: through so-called social benefits so wage-earners surrender to their fate and find everything all right, through the periodic deployment of the police and army when people rebel, through a growing control to nip unrest, resistance and alternatives in the bud when the state cannot bind them in its machine. The state is not only police, military, administration of justice and government but the whole conglomerate of unions, educational institutions, economic associations, newspapers, television stations, NGOs, parties and all the other organizations of the status quo whose function is to prevent the abolition of capitalism with fear and incentives.

A Tale of Woe

The devastation (named capital) is planted in these social conditions from the very start in the members. Its elements are: the expulsion of farmers from their land in western Europe since the beginning of the modern age; in state-capitalist states of the so-called command socialism into a catch-up modernization that has cost millions of lives; their forcible resettlement and expropriation in former colonies after formal independence; the removal of whole harvests vital for millions for the consumption of the arising working class; the mass enslavement of Africans; the intensified subordination of women through the obliteration of their freedom possibilities, knowledge assets, and power positions taken by men; the ransacking of colonies, racist branding of their inhabitants and their state privatization for the needs of capital; the targeted destruction of the crafts in Europe and the colonies; the forcing of people into the army, workhouses, prisons, psychiatric wards, schools and planned cities and the wiping out of those who absolutely could or would not join, rebelled and began something different, a hu7man society of sharing and community.

The devastation continues wherever capital settles: in its constant crises and phases of prosperity that only increases the force of the next crisis and opens up a deceptive prosperity of goods consumption to some wage-earners that should compensate for the lack in self-determination and pay them for their service to the capitalist system, in the impoverishment of those washed up by capital, in the slums, sweatshops and factories and in the wars and military campaigns of destruction waged by capital and its state. One time this was calculated coolly as in the 1973 neoliberal coup against Allende in Chile and another time at the limit to madness as in Richard Nixon’s madman-tactic toward the end of the Vietnam war or at the front lines of the First World War when masses of people ran into the no man’s land of mines and grenades with the prospect of death and finally in the zone of sheer madness in Nazi Germany toward the end of the Second World War when the murder of Jews was subordinated to the rationality of warfare.

The global catastrophe that capital represents is not yet visible to the whole extent. Much of what most contemporaries impute to capital as “progress’ and “blessing” has a deadly legacy whose true face will first appear in the coming years, decades and centuries: climate change, nuclear waste, poisons, genetically-changed organisms, purged landscapes, dead parts of the ocean and an infrastructure together with the production runs, human passions and institutions that depend on a life-threatening energy system.

This energy system must adjust anyway to pure resource shortage. Nuclear power is part of this system that can make life on earth into an inescapable hell – if we don’t turn it off.

From Hiroshima to Fukushima

Japan relied on development of nuclear power because the land passed through a capitalist modernization and lacks sufficient possibilities of energy production on its territory. At the beginning of the Second World War, boycott by the US threatened Japan. Japan feared above all being cut off from oil deliveries that were the foundation of the expanding system of capital, market and state at that time and responded with a brutal strategy of imperialist expansion. At the end after the unspeakable suffering of the world war, nuclear energy was used by the US for pure annihilation devoid of the abstruse logic of military necessity connected with the names Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was a beginning of the development of a civilian nuclear industry that with great hesitation has been vigorously underway since the 1980s and provided Japanese capital and the lifestyle of wage-earners with more and more energy.

What began with Hiroshima did not inevitably end with Fukushima. While the suffering made intolerable because it was man-made catches one’s eye and makes one speechless, Fukushima will only be a picture for a landscape of horror and devastation that capital prepares for us if we don’t remove it. The Fukushima in northeast Honshu in Japan will be followed by a coal-Fukushima intensifying climate change even more which nevertheless is zealously praised by defenders of the system as a “clear alternative” to nuclear power. This is already accompanied by the bio-fuel-Fukushima which robs a multitude of people of their life foundations in a global conquest and settlement that can hardly be imagined and holds ready “endless green energy” for the defenders of the system. A raw material-Fukushima looms on the horizon that could encourage the development of renewable energy systems which according to the opinion of many supporters should feed the immense energy-hunger of capital: exploitation of the earth to the last gram of metal, destruction of living conditions up to the last sanctuary and destruction of alternatives to complete mental emptiness. The catastrophe that capital represents becomes the media infinite loop. The public is horrified and nods apathetically.

Fukushima is Everywhere. Fukushima is Capitalism

An alternative would end capital, market and the state. This alternative opens up and develops the world of sharing and community – the foundation of human society as long as it will exist. Human society will only be able to exist in the long run when this world of sharing and community gains the upper-hand. This must happen quickly.

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To Paolo Salvadori

18 September 1978
Dear Paolo:

I was happy to read your letter of 2 September: given the general circumstances at the moment, I was worried when I did not receive news from you.

I was also very happy with your analysis of the [Aldo] Moro affair. It suffices that this said, so that no one can support another hypothesis with the least appearance of logic. As this analysis is already quite rich, I will make precise these two nuances:

1) The most profound question is, indeed, that of the management of society in the era of the contested spectacle. And this is a worldwide affair, in which Italy finds itself in the avant-garde, but it is not alone in this. For example, just about everywhere there is an extraordinary progress of the lie of power, which goes even further than Goebbels, because the socio-material conditions of the reception of the lie have evolved since 1930. I consider the assassination of Baader[1] to be a very significant turning point. The dazzling absurdity of the "governmental truth" -- this time -- is not a fault in the execution of the operation. I think that the intention was to register on such a basis the formal accord of everyone (that is to say, all those who can speak in the spectacle) with this purely unbelievable version of the facts, but which must be registered just the same. Thus, one openly measures the engagement in the program (the most trivial reality that has become perfectly inverted) of the authorities that affirm themselves to be democratic (Giscard d'Estaing) and also the definitive cowardice[2] of all of the marginals whose opinions one wants to cite (Cohn-Bendit). In this case, the strategy that commanded the Moro affair has its recognized place, and is certainly sustained, in an international struggle, although there is no doubt a real Italian "Censor" who played this card, and not the CIA or the German [secret] services.

2) When I say that the Italian Stalinists are accomplices [in the murder of Moro], I do not believe that they themselves participate in pseudo-terrorism. They are accomplices, all the same, at the same time that they are victims, in that they do not want to really denounce pseudo-terrorism, because there are -- being what they are and what they have become -- inconveniences in denouncing it and advantages in not doing so. Nevertheless, one of the principal elements of their own game is exactly the threat of denouncing all of it, if one goes too far against them: from whence comes their terrifying allusions at certain moments. You have sent me several very remarkable quotations of their threats from 4-5 May [1978]. At that time, I had only seen a quotation of four or five words in the French press. And soon after I concluded that "now Moro will die." Because it was clear that the Stalinists had, from the beginning, accepted the necessity of Moro's death, but suffered enormously from the blackmail that was prolonged the entire time that he was condemned but not executed. By making such threats, the Stalinists immediately made the enemy realize that it had reached "the culminating point of the offensive." This type of allusion is exactly comparable to nuclear "dissuasion" in the pseudo-war of our epoch: all are de facto allies and none want to nor can actually start a conflict, and simultaneously the attitudes of each of the allies are still slightly hostile and often very hostile on several points, so that -- every time that it is necessary to do so -- each ally saves itself by issuing the reminder that it is not permitted to push too far an advantage without seeing all of the rules of the game collapse, to the absolute detriment of all the associated powers. Consider as well how the current state of the world, surrounded by lies that change from one day to the next, permits this: in 1870, a war began because someone did not receive an ambassador with politeness. Today, after being [continuously] threatened with total destruction, one continues to be linked through commerce and the police. Likewise, in a political party such as that of Lenin, one could only hold on to one's militants after having said what the PCI[3] said at the beginning of May; fortunately for it, it no longer has militants but "vitelloni spettatori."[4] This is also its misfortune.

Do you think that the text that you sent me could be the basis for a book, which would have great importance, even if it were quite short? It would bring together a complete explication of this [Moro] affair, officially so mysterious, with the very theory that explains it. The revolution expounding its most advanced theory by showing that it alone can clearly write the history of its adversaries -- this is the method of The Class Struggles in France/The 18th Brumaire,[5] and nothing so striking has been attempted in this genre in our epoch. I am convinced that no Italian publisher would want it, but Champ Libre could publish it in French and, based on this, there would surely be a pirate edition in Italy.

Can you come see me, for four or five days, around 20 October? I am in the mountains of Auvergne, but I must leave here to take several short trips. Write to this address.

Tell me if you are thinking of coming by train or by car and, accordingly I will explain the route to follow.

Best wishes. Transmit them to Elvio, etc.

Guy

P.S. The last "leader" of the B.R.s[6] to be arrested does not fit the image of a skillful practitioner of clandestinity: he lived in the midst of an arsenal and a stack of documents; one says that he was a "model worker" up to 1974; he had a permit for military conduct, as well as police entry-permits!

Anarcharsis Cloots,[7] a Prussian baron, was the most extreme man in the bourgeois revolution in France. An internationalist who wanted to exterminate all the tyrants as far away as China and to make Paris the capital of the world; "the personal enemy of Jesus Christ," etc. Such historical contradictions, which he could not see, caused him to be guillotined by Robespierre insofar as he "exaggerated" and was probably "an agent of the Mikado and Wall Street" (back then one said "Pitt and Cobourg"). He was systematically forgotten by the historians, but only for less than two centuries. I will ask Champ Libre to send you the book [that it published]. Perhaps it can be translated into Italian.

I do not know who Michael Borgia is (anything is possible where [Raoul] Vaneigem is concerned), but until now I only knew the misery detective stories that he has written with [Mustapha] Khayati, in the manner of the "Black Series," published by Lattes, etc., under the pseudonyms Bastid and Martens.

[1] Translator's note: Andreas Baader, one of the leaders of the German group "The Red Army Factor," was shot to death while in prison during the night of 18 October 1977.

[2] Translator's note: that is to say, a "Machiavellian" industrialist and/or political leader.

[3] Translator's note: Italian Communist Party.

[4] "Lazy spectators."

[5] The Class Struggles in France (1850) and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852) by Karl Marx.

[6] Translator's note: The Red Brigades.

[7] Translator's note: The following two points seem to have been made in answer to specific questions that Salvadori asked.

(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 5: Janvier 1973-Decembre 1978 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2005. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! April 2007. Footnotes by Alice Debord, except where noted.)

Operation Green Rights

Anonymous a décidé de s’en prendre aux géants de l’énergie qui causent du tort à la planète. Enel a été la cible d’une attaque DDOS et a été indisponible aujourd’hui. General Electric a aussi fait les frais d’une attaque DDOS avant Enel. La prochaine cible est EDF. Anonymous a décidé de lancer cette opération après l’explosion de la centrale de Fukushima pour pointer du doigt les responsabilités des géants de l’énergie dans la conservation de l’environnement:

Les énormes limites de la technologie et de la science constatées dans le cadre des évènements dramatiques de Fukushima suite au tremblement de terre désastreux, confirment la nécessité de changer le modèle de développement global en investissant davantage dans la recherche et la connaissance.

 Aussi, depuis l’aube de ce drame nous sommes aussi en droit d’espérer certaines contributions majeures de la part de la communauté scientifique mondiale. En effet, ces dernières semaines, de nombreux chercheurs à travers le monde ont animé de nombreux débats avec beaucoup d’application une fois de plus, afin de démontrer l’extrême richesse de notre extraordinaire planète, malheureusement humiliée et souillée par des politiques d’investissements aveuglées ces dernières années par la course au profit.

 Nous avons besoin de plus d’efficacité dans notre action de défense de la nature, et le signifier fermement aux  grandes institutions étatiques en attaquant ces dernières ; notamment le conglomérat nommé Ritem demeure certainement l’arme la plus importante dans les mains des partisans de l’immobilisme absolu. Nous savons que nous avons les moyens de mettre en place une politique énergétique propre et mondiale à l’échelle de la planète. Nous savons également que ce n’est pas dans l’intérêt des lobbys et des Etats, dont les comptes en banques ne peuvent se passer des pétrodollars.

 Or aujourd’hui, la science s’occupe aussi bien de l’énergie, que de sa production et jusqu’à sa distribution (dont nous savons à quel point elle est impactante pour le sort de la planète).

L’objectif est de rappeler à la Communauté Scientifique qu’elle détient entre ses mains le fruit de milliers d’années de travail collaboratif et de découvertes personnelles et collectives et qu’elle se doit par conséquent de mettre son travail au service de l’Humanité. Cela implique qu’elle place l’éthique bien avant le besoin de rentabiliser les investissements de ceux qui l’emploie dans l’ordre de ses priorités. Jusqu’ici les chercheurs et inventeurs, hésitent encore souvent à perturber leur carrière, en se rendant par-delà complices de la régression de la qualité de vie de la planète…Et donc des gens la peuplant eux-mêmes.

Nous voulons croire que la communauté scientifique est déjà détentrice des solutions répondant aux problèmes énergétiques majeurs auxquels le monde est aujourd’hui confronté ; nous voulons croire qu’avec elle, nous battrons les puissantes multinationales de l’énergie non contrôlée et dangereuse mise à mal à Fukushima. Nous voulons croire que les impératifs financiers ne prendront plus le pas sur les impératifs humains.

L’attaque contre General Electric s’explique par la participation de cette dernière à la construction de la centrale de Fukushima:

Nous savons que le réacteur utilisé à Fukushima était de type Mark 1, fabriqué par General Electric. Dale G. Brindenbaug et d’autres ingénieurs ont construits le réacteur Mark 1, mais nous savons que Dale G. Brindenbaugh et deux de ses collèges à General Electric (GE) ont quittés leur travail après être de plus en plus convaincus que le réacteur nucléaire Mark 1 n’était pas capable de supporter l’immense pression qui résulterait d’une perte de pouvoir de refroidissement du réacteur. Le désastre

Les énormes limites de la technologie et de la science constatées dans le cadre des évènements dramatiques de Fukushima suite au tremblement de terre désastreux, confirment la nécessité de changer le modèle de développement global en investissant davantage dans la recherche et la connaissance.

 Aussi, depuis l’aube de ce drame nous sommes aussi en droit d’espérer certaines contributions majeures de la part de la communauté scientifique mondiale. En effet, ces dernières semaines, de nombreux chercheurs à travers le monde ont animé de nombreux débats avec beaucoup d’application une fois de plus, afin de démontrer l’extrême richesse de notre extraordinaire planète, malheureusement humiliée et souillée par des politiques d’investissements aveuglées ces dernières années par la course au profit.

 Nous avons besoin de plus d’efficacité dans notre action de défense de la nature, et le signifier fermement aux  grandes institutions étatiques en attaquant ces dernières ; notamment le conglomérat nommé Ritem demeure certainement l’arme la plus importante dans les mains des partisans de l’immobilisme absolu. Nous savons que nous avons les moyens de mettre en place une politique énergétique propre et mondiale à l’échelle de la planète. Nous savons également que ce n’est pas dans l’intérêt des lobbys et des Etats, dont les comptes en banques ne peuvent se passer des pétrodollars.

 Or aujourd’hui, la science s’occupe aussi bien de l’énergie, que de sa production et jusqu’à sa distribution (dont nous savons à quel point elle est impactante pour le sort de la planète).

 L’objectif est de rappeler à la Communauté Scientifique qu’elle détient entre ses mains le fruit de milliers d’années de travail collaboratif et de découvertes personnelles et collectives et qu’elle se doit par conséquent de mettre son travail au service de l’Humanité. Cela implique qu’elle place l’éthique bien avant le besoin de rentabiliser les investissements de ceux qui l’emploie dans l’ordre de ses priorités.

Jusqu’ici les chercheurs et inventeurs, hésitent encore souvent à perturber leur carrière, en se rendant par-delà complices de la régression de la qualité de vie de la planète…Et donc des gens la peuplant eux-mêmes.

 Nous voulons croire que la communauté scientifique est déjà détentrice des solutions répondant aux problèmes énergétiques majeurs auxquels le monde est aujourd’hui confronté ; nous voulons croire qu’avec elle, nous battrons les puissantes multinationales de l’énergie non contrôlée et dangereuse mise à mal à Fukushima. Nous voulons croire que les impératifs financiers ne prendront plus le pas sur les impératifs humains.

Les critiques adressées par enel sont propres à l’Italie qui a une situation particulière:

En 1987, soit un an après la catastrophe de Tchernobyl (Ukraine), il fut décidé par référendum de la sortie du nucléaire civil en Italie. Les quatre centrales nucléaires présentes en Italie furent arrêtées, la dernière en 1990.

Un moratoire sur la construction de nouvelles centrales, initialement voté de 1987 à 1993, a depuis été prolongé indéfiniment.

L’Italie importe de l’électricité nucléaire (notamment de France), et la société italienne Enel SPA investit dans la construction de réacteurs nucléaires en France et en Slovaquie, ainsi qu’au développement de la technologie de l’EPR.

En mai 2008, le nouveau gouvernement de Silvio Berlusconi a annoncé le retour à l’énergie nucléaire dans les cinq ans. Le gouvernement italien se propose de poser la première pierre d’un premier EPR d’ici à 2013, pour une mise en service en 2018.

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Grande Victoire des Polices Françaises !

Plus la police entrave le trafic, plus les impayés de loyers auraient tendance à grimper dans les quartiers dit "sensibles".

À mesure que la pression policière contre les trafics s'accentue, les offices HLM rencontreraient des difficultés à encaisser les loyers dans les quartiers pauvres. Comme si les liquidités ne circulaient plus comme avant chez certains locataires. Le phénomène aurait notamment été observé en Seine-Saint-Denis. Les policiers y voit «une conséquence directement imputable au succès éblouissant des opérations antidrogue», conduites sous l'autorité du préfet du département, Christian Lambert (starlette a face de Bull-terrier). Un haut fonctionnaire à la préfecture évoque même une baisse des encaissements de loyers de 40% sur certains groupes d'immeubles de La Courneuve, particulièrement ciblée par les opérations de police. Quel avantage incroyable !

Payant cher des logements sans valeur et mal construits volontairement pour les parquer loin des villes, les habitants ne peuvent plus faire face au racket publique des pompes-a-fric HLM.

«Il serait facile de conclure que l'argent de la drogue sert à payer le loyer d'une partie des familles en difficulté, mais on peut naturellement se poser la question», estime le capitaine Vuillermet, dans une revue pseudo-syndicale.

«l'imbrication entre l'argent sale et le système légal peut être forte dans certains quartiers». Si étroite que l'État doit agir avec discernement, s'il ne veut pas trop perturber l'économie locale....

Ouaffffff

Une imposture peut en cacher dix autres

Voici un texte qui dénonce les impostures de la vedette Noam Chomsky. Quelle découverte, le "Gouvernement technique mondialisé" se choisirait ses opposants...

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To Robert Chasse, Bruce Elwell, Tony Verlaan

14 December 1967
Dear comrades:

We were quite surprised by your letter.[1] It disappoints us, coming after what Raoul [Vaneigem] had believed he could communicate to us as objective trust in you. We distinguish two parts to your letter. The first, in our opinion, quite peripheral, concerns the relations between us all, on the one hand, and [Ben] Morea-Murray [Bookchin], on the other. The second part, essential, concerns the divergences between the positions expressed by your letter and the real bases of the SI.

-- First part: with respect to Morea and Murray.

Raoul has made a report to us on the accord with Tony [Verlaan] and Robert [Chasse]; thus, on the break with [Allan] Hoffman and Morea. Our divergences with them are numerous. We consider some of these divergences (for example, authoritarian activism) to be sufficient for a complete organizational break. We consider other divergences (for example, calumny or collusion with mysticism) as demanding a total break, even personal. Thus Raoul, on his oral report upon his return from New York, had quite insisted on Hoffman’s case as typical of the general poverty accepted by the American avant-garde until now. When Morea wrote us, Raoul had already departed on another trip, and we responded with very sufficient arguments anyway. Now returned, Raoul informs us of new specifications concerning the justification for this break – a justification that we have never doubted.

We judged it necessary to respond to Morea due to the following points.

Morea pretends to be ignorant as to why there was such a violent break with him. Because of what we know about the confusionism of the Black Flag milieu (we have seen Murray, in Paris, make a pact with those liars; on the other hand, Raoul has reported to us the stupefying news that Beatrice has claimed to have heard Guy say that he didn’t know who Tony was), we wanted to clearly communicate to Morea several minimal reasons for our refusal to be associated with him. We believe that this was the correct procedure. We did not expect a honest self-critique from him, and his response was perfectly clear. We will no longer accept any contact with Morea, Bookchin or Hoffman, and this can only be the result of the discussion between you and us.

-- Second part: concerning your relations with the SI.

We have determined that there are very important divergences between you and us. And they are very surprising given the history of your approach to the SI and the basis of your interviews with Raoul. At this moment, we want to bring forth these divergences in a fraternal spirit, and insofar as it will be possible to favorably surpass them. We must say that this accord can only be sought on the bases that we enunciate below. We will try to enumerate these questions, beginning with the most important ones.

1) The existing situationist movement is not a federation of autonomous groups, but a single internationalist grouping of autonomous individuals who cooperate in a coherent manner. Naturally, there is a more immediate practical cooperation between geographically grouped individuals. But we hold to democratic decision-making by the majority of the entirety of the members of the SI. Likewise, we hold to the “universal” recognition of the participation of an individual in the SI (for example, if Tony, after having been a situationist in the USA, returns to Europe, we would find it completely necessary that he would be received as if at home by other situationists in Paris, London or elsewhere).

2) We believe that you neglect the history of the relations between us in the current exposition of your positions. We have never sought to recruit in any country, and we have never encouraged premature admissions to the SI. In America, there has been a special process: Tony has translated (well or poorly is a less important question to discuss) and distributed texts signed Situationist International; and he has opened, without asking our opinion or even telling us in advance, a post office box in the name [of the SI].

3) You have quite neglected all the practical problems that are objectively posed by your approach to the SI. Likewise, you have too much neglected the practical reality of our actions. There isn’t “London” and “Paris” or “Copenhagen,” but nevertheless we must make a certain effort to organize meetings or send delegates. For example, to discuss the American question, two English comrades came to Paris for several days. Likewise, we find an astonishing incoherence, even at the simply logical level, in your attitude when, simultaneously, you say that you still aren’t members of the SI (with the result that you have not kept decisions of the majority in mind), and yet demand of us that we accept, without any other examination, all the breaks that you might declare in America. We really accept being automatically in solidarity with all of your actions from the moment that you are recognized situationists, confirmed by practice, on the American terrain. But you are not yet so. And when we raise the question, you produce new distance. It is only in such case this distance can be surmounted (theoretically and practically) that we can take up and deepen the accord sketched out with Raoul.

We do not at all understand your notion of “prospective members” of the SI. In Europe, there are several dozen individuals in excellent relations with us who are possible members of the SI in the future. Around one in three or four of them will become actual members. But so long as they are not, all of them obviously abstain from presenting themselves as being in a community of action with us and able to engage us.

We also think that you neglect practice by creating an artificial opposition between the amicable style of your long meeting with Raoul and the telegraphic style – which you are wrong to call administrative or bureaucratic – of a formal summary of positions, a summary that has a complementary function and is subject to other necessities. We find truly regrettable the irrational touchiness that makes you write that you were shocked to receive ideas that are yours as a decision “officially” formulated by the majority of the SI! Wouldn’t it be better for you to congratulate yourself on this proof of coherence? (By placing things in the terms that you use, you could also find in the already published issues of the journal I.S. something very much like a “directive” that might offend you, to the extent that these texts express ideas that you now share.)

4) There are many other things in your document that we must contest. If you are in agreement on the preceding points, our next emissary to America – because we remain firmly attached to the practical principle of the delegate, for ourselves and for any coherent future revolutionary organization – will discuss these questions with you. For example, we are not at all opposed to Bruce [Elwell], but it is completely absurd on your part to reproach us for ignoring his evolution since Raoul’s departure. When Raoul was with you, you had agreed that Bruce still wasn’t on your bases; you never wrote to us concerning his change. Thus it is inadmissible that you write to us, as a reproach, that we must have known that he was with you thenceforth. By telepathy perhaps?

The question of translations: we have said that they were very bad ([in particular] the translation of the Address,[2] made by situationists in Strasbourg, and unnecessary to reprint). We maintain that they are bad, not for stylistic reasons, but because they contain mistranslations. With respect to the “Durruti comics,”[3] beyond any question of translation, it was bad to reprint them for a deeper and more obvious reason: they are meaningless outside of Strasbourg.

Likewise, a strange and displeasing bad humor leads you to not understand a simple phrase in our letter: what we call “postal interference” is the possibility that a letter might be seized by the police in London or Paris (it is you yourselves who explained to us that the lack of relations between Tony and us for several months derived from the fact that the mail at your post office box was systematically seized by the New York police!).

Comrade C[hristopher] G[ray] will address these questions and several others with you to the extent that you can respond in a satisfactory fashion to the three preceding points.

Amicably,

http://www.notbored.org

For the SI

Guy Debord, Mustapha Khayati, Raoul Vaneigem, Rene Vienet

[1] To Raoul Vaneigem, 10 December 1967.

[2] Translator: “Address to Revolutionaries in Algeria and All Countries,” July 1965.

[3] Le Retour de la colonne Durruti, by Andre Bertrand.

(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, except where noted.)

Tricards !

Google boycotte lesoir.be

Le Soir, explique le conflit qui oppose les éditeurs de presse francophone belge au géant du web Google.  En attendant ils ne sont plus référencés...
Couic...
En juin c'était le site dazibaoueb qui perdait ses seuls revenus pub...

http://www.lesoir.be

NI DIEU NI DARWIN

Ce que ne dit pas ce texte c'est que depuis 30 ans Patrick Tort fait le nécessaire pour casser cette idéologie particulièrement mensongère. Établissant des bases solides pour mettre fin aux désinformations sur Darwin.  

Depuis plusieurs années, plusieurs chaînes de télévision (La 5, FR3, Animaux, Planète, Disney TV, Arte), un nombre important de périodiques récréatifs pour enfants, et plusieurs radios nationales (France inter, France info, France culture) diffusent des émissions dites « scientifiques » sur les êtres vivants, leur lutte pour la survie, leur combat pour la reproduction, et leur investissement dans la transmission de leurs gènes.

Mélange trivial d’anthropomorphisme, de fausses évidences, de spectaculaire violent et d’idéologie libérale (au sens «la loi du plus fort», ce discours, s’appuie sur une discipline fort en vogue, l’écologie comportementale, et se fonde sur le néodarwinisme qui se présente pour ses partisans comme la seule vérité universelle sur l’évolution du vivant et sur ses formes actuelles.)
Drapé de la « bénédiction » de quelques scientifiques patentés ayant compris tout l’intérêt qu’ils pouvaient tirer à titre personnel et professionnel de cette reconnaissance médiatique, ces articles et ces émissions propagent à tout va un discours typiquement capitaliste réduisant l’histoire du vivant à une compétition féroce et sans fin entre des gènes avides de domination planétaire. Des termes comme « maximiser son succès reproducteur », « coût et bénéfice d’une stratégie », « investissement parental », « budget-temps », « capitalist breeder », « optimal foraging » fleurissent à longueur de discours tant dans les revues scientifiques de l’écologie comportementale (voir «Écologie comportementale» de E. Danchin, L. A Giraldeau et F. Cézilly, aux Editions Dunod) que dans les émissions et les articles de vulgarisation sur le vivant. La vie et ses mécanismes réduits à un flux d’énergie et à une compétition entre gènes cyniques et calculateurs, voilà le monde tel qu’il fonctionne depuis l’apparition de la vie sur notre planète si l’on écoute les chantres du « monde génique » ! Un économiste (même marxiste, il en reste !) se trouverait là fort à son aise, mais de façon surprenante, très peu de scientifiques s’inquiètent de la grande convergence ainsi instituée entre la vision marchande du monde des humains et les lois de la nature. On voudrait expliquer à des enfants (de tout âge) que le capitalisme est « naturel » puisqu’il fonctionne de la même façon que la nature, que l’on ne s’y prendrait pas autrement. Il est à noter d’ailleurs que le monde scientifique fonctionne sur le même schéma.
Le succès reproducteur d’un scientifique se mesure aux nombres de publications qu’il a produit à l’issu d’une âpre compétition avec ses collègues scientifiques. Et de plus en plus, les thèmes de recherche sont définis en fonction des potentialités de publications de haut niveau que l’on peut espérer: lire l’opuscule de Bruno Latour (« Le métier de chercheur, regard d’un anthropologue » éditions INRA) qui parle de capitalisme scientifique et d’investissement du crédit que gagne le scientifique en faisant de « bons » articles dans de nouvelles alliances qui lui permettent de gagner encore plus de crédit). Comme dans l’entreprise existe des marchés porteurs, il existe en science des thématiques porteuses, c’est à dire garantissant des postes, des crédits et des carrières.

La remise au goût du jour des thèses créationnistes et autre mysticisme, grâce notamment au lobby protestant étasunien, offre aux tenants d’une vision «capitaliste» du vivant une nouvelle virginité. Alors que les impasses actuelles de la génétique apparaissent au grand jour (si les séquençages du génome de plusieurs organismes _dont l’homme_ existent dorénavant, l’incompréhension générale persiste sur les mécanismes complexes liant les gènes au fonctionnement complexe des organismes (lire «Ni Dieu, ni gène» de J.-J. Kupiec et P. Sonigo aux Editions Seuil, ou «La fin du tout génétique» de H. Atlan aux Editions Inra) et que d’OGM en thérapie génique, on assiste à une course folle d’apprentis sorciers courant après leurs promesses frauduleuses de bonheur et d’immortalité par la science, l’opposition Dieu contre Darwin va générer une réduction totale du débat sur le vivant à une dualité fausse et stérile. Demain encore plus qu’aujourd’hui, qui critiquera le néodarwinisme et ses prétentions d’explication synthétique de l’évolution se verra taxé de créationnisme aigu. Qui proposera de nouvelles hypothèses pour expliquer des mécanismes biologiques déterminant les formes actuelles du vivant et ses modes d’organisation devra sous peine d’anathème choisir l’un ou l’autre camp !
Et pourtant, bien d’autres alternatives intéressantes (fascinantes ?) existent depuis les théories de l’autopoièse (lire « L’arbre de la connaissance » de H. Maturana et F. Varela chez Addison-Wesley) et de l’auto-organisation des formes (lire « Forme et croissance » de D’Arcy Thompson aux éditions de Seuil et « How the leopard changed its spots » de B. Goodwin chez Charles Scribners’s sons) jusqu’à celles de l’enaction (lire « Invitation aux sciences cognitives » de F. Varela aux éditions du Seuil) et de l’exaptation (lire « Exaptation - a missing term in the science of form » de S.J. Gould et E. Vrba dans Paleobiology Vol. 8). Mais entre un « designer intelligent » et des « gènes égoïstes », entre deux vérités absolues et définitives, il n’y a plus de place pour la raison première de l’activité scientifique : s’interroger de façon ouverte et non sectaire sur le monde pour mieux le comprendre.

Actuellement, plusieurs mails circulent dans le milieu scientifique hexagonal appelant à faire pression sur la chaîne Arte pour qu’elle ne diffuse pas une émission présentant « la théorie révolutionnaire de l’engrammation ». Aux dires des auteurs des mails, il s’agit de créationnisme déguisé et de scientifiques suspects financés par une fondation religieuse. La riposte proposée par ces mails est de demander la déprogrammation de l’émission, et le conseil donné est de ne pas parler de créationnisme et de donner l’impression d’appels indépendants. Les auteurs du mail se targuent d’avoir par cette technique put faire annuler une table ronde sur un sujet voisin à Grenoble. Belle démonstration de la pratique de la science ouverte au débat, objective, et transparente. Car au fond, c'est tenants d’un Darwinisme total et définitif utilisent les mêmes armes que les prêtres et bondieusards d’antan : la censure et la falsification. Plus désolant encore, sans nul doute pour diaboliser encore plus la chose, ces vrais scientifiques « objectifs » n’hésitent pas à glisser le mot « nazi » dans leur texte, affirmant qu’un des auteurs de la théorie de l’engrammation traite les rationalistes de nazis. On connaît le procédé, mais on le pensait réservé aux politiciens sans scrupule.

Peut être sommes-nous aujourd’hui à la veille d’une nouvelle bataille de clocher, à moins qu’il ne s’agisse d’une guerre de religion. Dès lors, que nous soyons les sujets dociles d’un « dieu despote » ou les « simples véhicules fugaces et futiles de gènes guerriers et calculateurs », il nous faudra accepter d’être les anonymes sujets d’un monde qui nous excède et nous (pré)détermine. D’aucuns pourront toujours se risquer à mettre en doute la prétention de la synthèse néodarwinienne de tout expliquer, ils seront alors rejetés au rang d’ignares et de dévots. D’autres pourront tenter de proposer des mécanismes explicatifs de l’évolution faisant l’économie d’un déterminisme génétique fort, ils seront montrés du doigt pour parjure scientifique.
On aurait tendance à proposer la relecture de vieux ouvrages tel que «La structure des révolutions scientifiques « de T. Kuhn (Editions Champs Flammarion) ou «Autocritique de la science» de A. Jaubert et J. M. Levy-Leblond (Editions Seuil). On aurait envie de demander aux néodarwiniens quels sont leurs liens via les OGM et la thérapie génique avec l’industrie pharmaceutique et l’agro-alimentaire. On aurait presque l’audace de leur demander pourquoi la mise en doute de la théorie de « la sélection du plus apte » est interdite. On aura surtout la sagesse de ne pas tomber dans le piège qui consiste sous couvert de « vérité scientifique » à substituer la censure au débat. Et puis avant tout, entre deux totalitarismes de la pensée, on ne choisit pas. La vie, sa richesse, sa diversité et la soif de savoir de l’homme finissent toujours par échapper aux dogmes.
Salutations libertaires

source 

http://inventin.lautre.net

Le mythe noir de la Houille blanche

Une petite histoire de mythes industriels à Grenoble

On en dit parfois beaucoup en peu de mots. Ainsi, Pierrette Rigaud dans "Le mythe noir de la Houille blanche", quelques pages qui renversent les volumes d’histoire et d’économie publiés depuis des décennies sur le prétendu mythe grenoblois.

On connaît l’antienne. Grenoble, bourgade de montagne à l’écart des circuits commerciaux et dénuée de toute matière première - au rebours de Lyon ou Saint-Etienne par exemple - aurait connu un "miracle économique" grâce à deux ingrédients : la Houille blanche et la matière grise. C’est-à-dire l’électricité industrielle produite pour la première fois en 1867 par les turbines d’Aristide Bergès, à la Combe de Lancey ; et la succession de laboratoires, d’usines et d’activités qui en sont issus : électrochimie, électrométallurgie, électromagnétisme, nucléaire, micro-informatique, nanotechnologies, etc. - Mais - dit Pierrette Rigaud, il y avait une matière première, l’eau de la cuvette grenobloise, dont l’histoire et la mythologie sont ici retracées. Des âges géologiques à celui du silicium. Quant à la matière grise, on y verra surtout un bluff publicitaire et la capacité de travestir 150 ans de ravages industriels en "développement endogène innovant", suivant le jargon universitaire. En un mot, deux mythes à mort.

A Grenoble il n’y a pas de charbon, pas de pétrole, pas de métal précieux. Il y a mieux : à Grenoble, il y a de l’eau. Aux origines de la Cuvette, elle a façonné notre paysage. C’est par elle que l’hydroélectricité autre-fois, et aujourd’hui la microélectronique, ont colonisé ce territoire.L’eau est la matière première de l’industrialisation locale, mais elle est surtout à la source des deux mythes industriels locaux: la houille blanche et les nouvelles technologies. Voici l’histoire, en 3 épisodes, de la flotte et de son exploitation autour de la Cuvette grenobloise.

I. Aux origines de la Cuvette.

De la roche, de la glace et de l’eau : il y a 200 000 ans commence la dernière grande glaciation. Une longue période froide, pendant laquelle les Alpes se couvrent de glaciers gigantesques. Leurs langues s’étalent sur des centaines de kilomètres, jusque dans les grandes plaines alentour. Celui du Rhône s’avance jusqu’à l’emplacement où se tient de nos jours la ville de Lyon. Et à la place de Grenoble, un glacier d’un kilomètre de haut, descendant lentement la vallée, entraîne avec lui les roches arrachées à son passage.

PDF complet 

http://www.piecesetmaindoeuvre.com

To Michel Bounan

French-français

13 December 1990

Dear Michel Bounan:

I thank you very much for your book.[1] Having read it, I retrospectively understand much better your previous letter: after mature reflection, I did not then know how to respond to you, [because] so many of the questions broached appeared to me to be far from my competencies. Without pretending now to understand you exactly on several different practical points, I can assure you that I find myself in very great sympathy with the bases of your thought and socio-historical critique, obviously. I will speak with you quite willingly about some of the perspectives that are opened up by this work. Tell me the days of the week that you are the freest.
Cordially,

Guy Debord

[1] The Time of AIDS.

(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 7: Janvier 1988-Novembre 1994 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2008. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! January 2009. Footnote by the publisher.)

To Michel Bounan

22 December 1990

Dear Michel:
 
Thank you for the correspondence with the stupid publishers[1] and especially for the disk by Florencie,[2] which is so moving: I had never heard him sing "La Place Maubert."
Here are several documents from 1958.[3] The Moineau-Bistro was on rue Guenegaud after the first [one], at 22 rue du Four, around 1950-1955. La Manouche was very briefly at the rue Mazarine in 1957, and the Mont-Blanc was on the rue de la Huchette.
We were charmed to meet you, as with your book. We must see each other in January.
Cordially,

Guy

[1] Who had refused The Time of AIDS.
[2] Jacques Florencie sings Bruant and Coute.
[3] See the posters in Guy Debord, Works, Gallimard quarto edition, pp. 376-369.

(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 7: Janvier 1988-Novembre 1994 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2008. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! January 2009. Footnotes by the publisher.)

To Michel Bounan

21 January 1991

Dear Michel:

To refuse your manuscript was not a good sign for the publishing house.[1] Or for the century?
See you Thursday,
Cordially,

Guy

[1] In June 1990, Anita Blanc [an employee of Editions Gerard Lebovici] returned, "due to the death of Madame Lebovici [...] The Time of AIDS, in which she had been interested." [Translator: Bounan's The Time of AIDS was eventually published by Editions Allia.]

(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 7: Janvier 1988-Novembre 1994 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2008. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! January 2009. Footnote by the publisher.)

To Michel Bounan

6 February 1991

Note for Michel

The single document photocopied here[1] is sufficient; it is the basis for everything (the others are or will be hidden or suspect).
Nicolas [Lebovici] affirms that he never signed anything and that one has never made an accounting of anything to him; neither during his adulthood, when his mother was still alive, nor since her death. This is notably obvious with respect to Editions Gerard Lebovici, where he was clearly the majority owner, being the inheritor of 75% of Floriana Lebovici's estate, which itself represented 99% ownership of the firm.
One was happy to tell him, and he was happy to hear, that he was the owner of "half," but that his well-known [mental] incapacity prevented him from getting involved, with the result that he truly bears the responsibility for the stupidities sovereignly made by the other "half," supported by a dishonest secretary who was supposed to be "competent,"[2] with this agreement sufficing to make the enterprise run without any supervision. Nicolas thus found himself at the center of an extremely crude conspiracy (the lawyer played a role).
A criminal complaint of inveigling of inheritance is necessary. This must be [done] immediate[ly]. The mother having died on 19 February 1990. Isn't there a prescription of contestations after a year? From almost that date onwards, one has risked seeing the emergence of nicely fabricated documents.
It seems to me that the goal is not only to destroy Editions Lebovici, but to efface a certain number of books that have become too celebrated and could perturb the social peace that we so harmoniously enjoy. The possible political implications could come from the socialist coterie in power (many of the lawyers who are involved in this affair have long been part of Georges Kiejman's movement[3]).
It could also be that one arranges a conspiracy, "familial" or not, to make Nicolas appear crazy, delirious and "manipulated" by evil geniuses who have already done so much harm to the preceding Lebovici generation (there was a psychiatrist in the family, who no doubt will be against Nicolas, following the lies of his amiable half-brother). Thus you should immediately and formally become his doctor. You already wrote him a prescription.
I advised him to marry as soon as possible the charming and intelligent young woman with whom he has lived for a long time. He consented. I had more difficulty convincing him that he must not keep around him at that moment an old friend, whom he [Nicolas] believed was devoted to him, but who was in fact devoted to his enemy-brother. I am convinced that this person sought to exert influence in favor of the enemies, and could even be dangerous to him, simply by being there.
It would be a beautiful example of historical humor if the author who was fraudulently refused[4] by these ignoble saboteurs and thieves happened to save "our publisher." Thanks, in any case.
Pardon me for the comminatory tone of this note. I judge the danger to be very serious and very urgent (and not only for Nicolas). Therefore, you know your metier.
See you soon,

Guy

[P.S.] I add for you alone a confidential note, linked to the other (I will give Nicolas a copy of the latter). You will see that Nicolas is not at all gripped by persecution mania, but unfortunately the opposite: he most often believes that the entire world conspires in his favor; to admire him; to please him; to love him as he merits. Thus, being truly intelligent, he can make stupid mistakes that a half-cretin wouldn't even consent to hear about. Although very inexperienced, he has the artistic sensibility, and even an exact sense of what life must be. All this is gravely darkened by his dominant tendency to spontaneously and firmly believe that the world doesn't exist in any objective manner outside of himself.
I must suppose that all of those people who have clumsily flattered him have a very high opinion of their own intellectual value and good hearts, due to the sole fact that they have so unequivocally manifested their great taste and excellent intentions.
Alice and I are perhaps the only ones who have never flattered him. He tolerates Alice quite well, but finds me to be rude, especially now. Because he has felt, rather than understood, how others have hatefully thrown him into so many traps; due to the fact that, through what I call his musical sensibility, he follows the justness of my reasoning; because he sees that we are his only friends -- in sum, one can say that he puts his trust in us. But especially do not believe that he can be reassured because of my historical experience, or even my reputation as an author of his publishing house. Such trivialities do not have any influence on a way of thinking that is so grandiosely emancipated from illusions of vulgarity.


[1] A certificate of ownership, established by Mr. Voitey on 2 May 1984, was deposited by Michel Bounan at the Institute for Social History in Amsterdam, along with the totality of the letters and other documents that were communicated.
[2] Translator's note: Anita Blanc.
[3] Translator's note: Kiejman was a member of Francois Mitterand's "socialist" government from 1990 to 1992.
[4] Bounan's The Time of AIDS was refused by Editions Gerard Lebovici.

(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 7: Janvier 1988-Novembre 1994 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2008. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! January 2009. Footnotes by the publisher, except where noted.)

To Michel Bounan

15 February 1991

Dear Michel:
 
I have a meeting on Tuesday with the lawyer[1] most highly recommended by the excellent Chanson.[2]
Your treatment appears to have already calmed my excessive tendency to stay awake. To complete your documentation, I send you a kind of graphological portrait drawn, without my knowledge, based upon three lines of my handwriting, by an important expert who knew me very vaguely by reputation and who had several motives to one day present me in an unfavorable light. Apart from two or three choices in his vocabulary, I can subscribe to it.
If you estimate that it would be useful in your struggle with the publisher at Allia,[3] at least to test the possibility of censorship, you can say to this person that I was surprised at the great futility of the "technical" pretext that he gave you.[4]
A friend in Italy who suffers from hypothyroid, I believe, and who is quite well cared for by an acupuncturist who also uses oligo-elements[5] will telephone you soon on my behalf. I will call you, so that we can see each other again, when things have cleared up a little. Thanks, again.
Cordially,
French-Français

Guy

[1] Mr. Yves Cournot, specialist in literary questions.
[2] Mr Jacques Chanson, introduced to Guy Debord by Michel Bounan.
[3] Translator's note: Editions Allia published Bounan's The Time of AIDS in 1990.
[4] Faced with the author's determination to place the Christ of Gruenewald (recovered from Issenheim) on the cover of his book.
[5] Translator's note: trace minerals suspended in a liquid glycerin aqueous solution.

(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 7: Janvier 1988-Novembre 1994 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2008. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! January 2009. Footnotes by the publisher, except where noted.)

To Michel Bounan

Saturday, 23 March 1991

Dear Michel:

I thank you for the magnificent historical analysis of the illness that has thus merited my preference. Ah! in what gallant terms are such things described![1] I am quite convinced that I made the right choice among all the illnesses that have been accessible to me; and I hope that this will also be, as one previously used to say, "the judgment of history."[2]
If I cannot regret this illness, I would not say the same thing for the allopathic poisons that one has led me to ingest and that I hope you can deliver me from. I judge just as you do the intentions of such remedies. The society that worked so hard to suppress pleasure has also claimed that it suppressed sorrow: although here its success has remained much more questionable. I have begun your treatment.
We must see each other soon to speak of something else. Alice will telephone you.
I have given your book[3] to my English publisher (Verso). He writes me that he will ask for an option from [Editions] Allia. He agreed with me that the subject could impassion the Americans faster than [those] here.
Cordially,

Guy

French-Français

French2-français2

Logic of Terrorism

Le Temps du SIDA

[1] "The illnesses of gout are always of the living who are endowed with strong creative, intellectual, sexual or social activity [...] and Hippocrates remarked that it always spared the eunuchs."
[2] Translator's note: when Guy Debord took his life on 30 November 1994, he cited polynevrite alcoolique as the cause of his distress and dated its onset from Autumn 1990.
[3] Translator's note: The Time of AIDS (Editions Allia, 1990).

(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 7: Janvier 1988-Novembre 1994 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2008. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! January 2009. Footnotes by the publisher, except where noted.)