In cyberspace, nobody can tell when your porch needs painting

We've belatedly added the Virtual Stoa to the blogroll. If you're trying to keep your dead socialists sorted, Chris Brooke is your man.

We'd love to help him with a dead socialist for today. The best we can offer is French publisher Claude Gallimard, who relinquished control over his physical means of production this day in 1991. No idea what his politics were, but surely we may regard him as a socialist in the broad (i.e., sophisticated and Parisian) sense. For what surer mark of sinistrality, than invective hurled by other leftists? In 1969 Guy Debord together with some of his comrades in l'Internationale situationniste sent Gallimard a nasty letter, a letter that greatly amused him. The IS replied, with typical Gallic elegance:

Tu as peu de raisons de trouver amusante notre lettre du 16 janvier.... Tu l’as dans le cul.

They also told him he'd never publish another work by a situationist. And in a way they were right. Gallimard's publishing house didn't bring out its edition of Debord's La société du spectacle until 1992, the year after Claude's death.