Potlatch #4: Information Bulletin of The French Section of The Lettrist International

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13 July 1954
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Translated by Gerardo Dens and Reuben Keehan
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The Minimum Life - Bernstein, Conord, Dahou, Debord, Fillon, Wolman

The Best News of the Week
A Lettrist International Survey - Dahou
Next Planet
Valid Everywhere
The Right to Respond
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The Minimum Life
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One can never tire of saying that unionism's current concessions are
condemned to failure; less by their division and their dependence on official
organizations than by the poverty of their programs.
protagonists
terminology
notes & sources

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One can never tire of telling the exploited workers their lives are at stake,
lives that are irreplacable and boundless in potential; that their most
beautiful years are at stake, passing slowly but surely by, without any
worthwhile enjoyment, without their ever having taken up arms.
We don't need to demand greater security or a raise in the 'minimum wage,'
but that the masses are no longer kept at a minimum life. We don't just
need to demand bread, we need to demand fun.
In the "Economic statute on light labour," defined last year by the
Commission of Collective Conventions, a statute that is an unbearable
injury to all that can still be expected from humans, the role of leisure not
to mention culture was set at the level of serialized detective novels.
There's no other way out.
And what's more, with its detective novels, as with its Press and its transAtlantic Cinema, this regime extends its prisons in which nothing is left to
gain but where there is nothing to lose but our chains.
It is not the question of increase to salaries that should be posed, but that of
the conditions forced on people in the West.
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8/21/14 3:12 PM
It is necessary to refuse to struggle inside the system to obtain concessions

to details immediately called into question or regained elsewhere by
capitalism. The problem of the survival or destruction of the system must be
posed radically.
It is not necessary to talk of possible compromises, but of unacceptable
realities: just ask the Algerian workers at the Regi Renault plant where
their free time is, or their country, their dignity, their wives. Ask them they
have to hope for. The social struggle must not be bureaucratic, it must be
passionate. To judge the disastrous effects of professional unionism, it is
enough to analyze the spontaneous strike of August 1953; its basic
resolution; its sabotage by scabs; its abandonment by the CGT, who had
neither brought about the strike nor used it to extend itself victoriously. It is
necessary, on the contrary, to become aware of a few facts that can make
the debate passionate: for example, the fact that our friends exist all over
the world, and that in their struggles, we see ourselves; the fact also that
we do not expect any compensation outside of what we must invent and
build ourselves.
This is a matter of courage.
for the Lettrist International:
MICHLE I. BERNSTEIN, ANDR-FRANK CONORD,
MOHAMED DAHOU, G.-E. DEBORD, JACQUES FILLON,
GIL J. WOLMAN
The Best News of the Week

General Franco received US Senator Byrd in his Prado palace yesterday
for a lengthy discussion on France, which according to Franco is "in dire
straits." He indicated to the senator that, for his part, he had almost given
up hope for its future as a great power.
An exhibition of influential metagraphs opened on 11 June at the Galerie du
Double Doute and made it to 7 July without serious incident.
A Lettrist International Survey

What necessity do you see in COLLECTIVE PLAY in modern society?
What attitude should be taken toward reactionary Tour de France style
dtournements of this need?
Send your responses to Mohamed Dahou, Editor-in-chief, Internationale
Lettriste, 32 rue de la Montagne-Genevive, Paris 5e.
Next Planet
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8/21/14 3:12 PM
Although their builders are gone, a few disturbing pyramids resist the efforts
of travel agencies to render them banal.
The postman Cheval, working every night of his life, built his inexplicable
Ideal Palace in his garden in Hauterive, the first example of an architecture
of disorientation.
In this baroque palace, which dtourns the forms of certain exotic
monuments and stone vegetation, one can only lose oneself. Its influence
will soon be immense. The life-work of a single incredibly obstinate man
cannot, of course, be appreciated in itself, as most visitors think, but instead
reveals a strange and unarticulated passion.
Struck by the same desire, Louis II of Bavaria built, at great expense in the
mountain forests of his kingdom, hallucinatory artificial castles, before
disappearing in shallow waters.
The underground river that was his theater and the plaster statues in his
gardens intimate a project as absolute as it was tragic.
There are plenty of reasons for riffraff psychiatrists to intervene and for
paternalistic intellectuals to launch a new-found "navet" with page upon
page of nonsense.
But the navet is theirs. Ferdinand Cheval and Louis of Bavaria built the
castles that they wanted to build, in accordance with a new human
condition.
Valid Everywhere
"The strange outcome of the national election has not gone unnoticed.
When the tally was announced, one could have easily have asked oneself if
'the people' isn't a group composed completely of millionaires, whose only
opposition is an elite minority of workers."
Extract from Les Lvres Nues #1, Brussels, Belgium.
The Right to Respond

Everyone knows that the extreme Right in France are preparing a show of
strength. The provocations of 14 July 1953, as well as the riots following
General Castries' surrender at Dien Bien Phu, are particular examples of
this. These riots were organized by shock groups ostensibly supported by
the police, and formed by Indochina veterans (cf. France-Observateur of 25
June) and marginally more intelligent young student elements. Each week,
left wing newspaper vendors are attacked by thugs who seem determined
to make a habit of it.
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8/21/14 3:12 PM
To all violence, it is necessary to respond with even greater violence:

fortunately, a combative minority with an advanced revolutionary
consciousness has existed in France for several years among the North
African workers, who are particularly numerous in Paris and cities in the
North and the East. A serious effort at propaganda among them would be
extremely "profitable." The advantages of this alliance are as numerous as
they appear: their street fighting techniques are equal or superior to those
of highly trained paramilitary groups, and their bases are many in the
districts where the Algerian cafs are full of unemployed workers.
In short, the North Africans in Paris are agreed on a number of subjects:
they are more than ready to take on fascists of every stripe, no matter what
they call themselves.
Despite their assistance by the police, ridding the public highways of these
rogues should be a rather simple matter.
THE EDITORS
Editor in Chief: Andr-Frank Conord, 15 rue Duguay-Trouin, Paris 6e.
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8/21/14 3:12 PM

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Situationist International Online

text archives > presituationist texts > lettrist international >

information bulletin of the french section of the lettrist

situationist international archive

Translated by Gerardo Dens and Reuben Keehan

The Minimum Life - Bernstein, Conord, Dahou, Debord, Fillon, Wolman

news & updates

The Minimum Life

notes & sources

Situationist International Online

It is necessary to refuse to struggle inside the system to obtain concessions

The Best News of the Week

A Lettrist International Survey

Situationist International Online

The Right to Respond

Situationist International Online

To all violence, it is necessary to respond with even greater violence:

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