CHARLES H. KERR
PUBLISHING
COMPANY
Subversive literature for the whole family since 1886.
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"The Charles H. Kerr Company is a truly extraordinary example of
living history. Here is the publisher of Gene Debs, Clarence Darrow, Mother
Jones, Mary Marcy, Jack London, Carl Sandburg and hundreds of other outstanding
figures-still at it, still fighting the good fight after a hundred glorious
years. The American labor movement has a great heritage, and the Charles H.
Kerr Company is a precious part of it. It deserves every support." -Studs Terkel
"What a remarkable history! How can it ever be estimated, the
influence of the Kerr Company over all these years? Above all in this era of
communication and the rising of the people all over the world, such a bond with
expressions and education of the people must be truly celebrated-more than a
statue of liberty: the Kerr Company is a true beacon." -Meridel LeSueur
"Charles H. Kerr has a magnificent record . . . . More importantly,
it continues that tradition of courageous publishing in these difficult times.
Kerr's list of titles provides us with excellent material to continue the fight
for a just society." -Dennis Brutus
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JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE
JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES
VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES |
JACQUES VACHE
AND THE ROOTS OF
SURREALISM
Including Vaché’s
War Letters
& Other Writings
By
Franklin Rosemont
Vaché is magnificent! An important work. Comprehensive
and impressive! - Nancy J. Peters, City Lights Books
THE DECADE that gave the world Krazy Kat, Rube Goldberg, and Buster Keaton also marked the emergence of Jacques Vaché. A bold jaywalker at the crossroads of history, and an ardent exemplar of freedom and revolt, Vaché challenged all prevailing values, from church and state to white supremacy, and was especially gifted at the fine art of ridiculing the dominant ethics and aesthetics of the emerging age of imperialism. Conscripted into the French Army in World War One, he soon became not only the unsurpassed champion of “Desertion from Within,” but also the master of “Disservice with Diligence.” His post-humous slim book, War Letters (1919)—included in the present volume—is a classic of surrealist anti-militarism and subversion. Renowned as the Inventor of Umour (Humour without the H), Vaché was—along with Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont—the major inspirer of André Breton and the surrealist revolution. The first of its kind in English, this book chronicles Vaché’s boundless originality, creative nonconformity, revolutionary morality (or umoral-ity), and his all-out turn-the-world-upside-down hilarity. Welcomed by André Breton himself into the Paris Surrealist Group in 1966, Franklin Rosemont took part in the Paris group’s activities for several months and went on to co-organize the Chicago Surrealist Group later that year.
A great job, and stirring great interest in Paris! - Guy Ducornet
This lively study of a central figure in the origins of
the movement puts the accent on surrealism’s revolutionary significance today!”
- David R. Roediger
Full of information, subversive surprises, and wild
humor, this revelatory account of Jacques Vaché is just the book for our time. - Gale Ahrens.
396 pages. Profusely illustrated with Vaché’s own cartoons. Paper $20. Cloth
$35
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BEN FLETCHER BEN FLETCHER BEN FLETCHER
BEN FLETCHER BEN FLETCHER BEN FLETCHER BEN FLETCHER BEN FLETCHER BEN FLETCHER
BEN FLETCHER BEN FLETCHER |
BEN FLETCHER
THE
LIFE AND TIMES OF
A
BLACK WOBBLY
Including
Fellow Worker Fletcher’s
Writings
& Speeches
By Peter Cole
Ben Fletcher’s all-out revolutionary industrial unionism
exemplifies Wobbly-style working class solidarity at its creative best. - Franklin Rosemont
ONE OF THE GREATEST HEROES of the American working class movement! The great African American Wobbly organizer, Benjamin Fletcher (1890-1949), was noted for his brilliant organizing ability and imaginative on-the-job strategies, as well as for his courage, humor, and excellence as a soapbox orator. Not surprisingly, he was one of the IWW’s most admired and best loved figures. Along with a biographical sketch of Fletcher, reminiscences of him by fellow workers who knew him well, and an impressive selection of Fletcher’s own writings and speeches, Peter Cole’s impressive introductory biographical essay also chronicles the ups and downs of the Philadelphia waterfront union in which Fletcher played such a leading role: Local 8 of the IWW’s Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union 510.
One of the leading organizers of the industrial Workers
of the World. He has a vision far beyond that of almost any Negro leader we
know. - A. Phillip Randolph
Courageous and dedicated to the emancipation of the
working class. - Matilda Rabinowitz
Robbins
In a union noted for great organizers, Fletcher was one
of the greatest. Local 8's achievements are still a model for us all. - Carlos Cortez
158 pages. Illustrated. Paper $18
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ARCHIE GREEN IWW SONGS ARCHIE GREEN IWW
SONGS ARCHIE GREEN IWW SONGS ARCHIE GREEN IWW SONGS ARCHIE GREEN IWW SONGS
ARCHIE GREEN IWW SONGS |
THE
BIG RED
SONGBOOK
Edited by Archie Green, David
Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, Salvatore Salerno
ARCHIE GREEN HAS JUST RECEIVED THE
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FROM THE FOLKLORE CENTER OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS!
America's foremost folklorist and the founder of “laborlore...and his
collaborators explore the IWW song tradition with marvelous insight. - Paul
Buhle
Best collection of rebel workers’ songs and poems ever compiled: all the songs that appeared in the IWW’s celebrated “little red songbook” from 1909 through 1973—plus scores of others. Songs of Joe Hill, T-Bone Slim, Dick Brazier, Ralph Chaplin, “Dublin Dan” Liston, Covington Hall, John Brill and other Wobbly “greats.” For the first time anywhere, a good selection of songs by women Wobbies: Agnes Thecla Fair, Laura Payne Emerson, Sophie Fagin, Jane Street, Laura Tanne and others. Not least, songs and poems by the colorful bunch of Wob soapboxers who frequented Chicago’s Dil Pickle Club and Bughouse Square including G. G. Florine, Lionel Moise, James Rohn, Jim Seymour, and Bert Weber. A special section focuses on variants and parodies of IWW songs: a Depression-era version of “Hallelujah I’m a Bum,” Jack Langan’s 1960s version of “Solidarity Forever,” an Earth First! adaptation of Joe Hill’s “There is Power” by Walkin’ Jim Stoltz, and Hazel Dickens’ bold update of “The Rebel Girl.” The essays by the editors and Judy Branfman, Richard Brazier, James Connell, Carlos Cortez, Bill Friedland, Virginia Martin, Haywire Mac, Fred Thompson and Utah Phillips not only provide historical/ biographical context, but also a wide range of perspectives on the Wobbly counterculture and its enduring legacies.
Beautifully illustrated and full of fascinating detail, a
must for anyone interested in song, labor history, workers’ culture, and the
struggle for a better world. - Paul
Garon
538 pages. Illustrated. Discography. Index.
Paper $24. Cloth $36
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MUHAMMAD AHMAD MUHAMMAD AHMAD MUHAMMAD
AHMAD MUHAMMAD AHMAD MUHAMMAD AHMAD MUHAMMAD AHMAD MUHAMMAD AHMAD MUHAMMAD
AHMAD |
WE WILL RETURN
IN THE
WHIRLWIND
By Muhammad Ahmad
"This book is dedicated to all freedom and
liberation fighters of African descent, past, present, and future, and to all
our friends and allies: the freedom-loving people of the world." - Muhammad Ahmad
About the Author: Dr. Muhammad Ahmad was national field chairman of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) during the mid-1960s and founder of the African People’s Party in the 1970s. He has worked closely with Malcolm X, Jesse Gray, Amiri Baraka, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), James and Grace Lee Boggs, James Forman, Robert and Mabel Williams, and Queen Mother Audley Moore, among others, in founding and carrying out various Black liberation projects and organizations. In 1968 he helped organize the Third National Black Power Conference, and co-chaired its political workshop. He has consistently worked to build a Black united front. Now in his sixties, he is a member of N/COBRA and teaches in the department of African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia.
"At last we have a major assessment of some of the
important Black radical organizations of the 1960s by one of the major figures
involved. Muhammad Ahmad (Maxwell Stanford, Jr.) has given us a study of the
Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party
(BPP), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), and the League of Revolutionary
Black Workers (LRBW) that only he could have done. Drawing upon his extensive
network of personal and political contacts and his unique understanding of the
connections between persons, organizations, and events (too often viewed in
isolation), Ahmad has made a significant contribution toward deepening our
understanding of a period whose complexities might otherwise be lost to future
generations." - From the Introduction
by John Bracey
350 Pages. Paper $18. Cloth $35
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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PRINTERS UNIONS
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PRINTERS UNIONS BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PRINTERS UNIONS BENJAMIN
FRANKLIN PRINTERS UNIONS |
AMERICAN
LABOR’S
FIRST
STRIKE
Articles on
Benjamin Franklin,
The
1786 Philadelphia Journeymen’s Strike,
Early
Printers’ Unions in the U.S.,
& Their Legacy
By Henry P.
Rosemont
Introduction by David Roediger
"In countless columns in ITU and other labor
publications, Henry P. Rosemont distilled the history of his union. His
interests and insights are brilliantly informed by the everyday, but never
confined to the narrow." —
From the Introduction by David Roediger
June 2, 1786, journeymen printers in Philadelphia added a whole new dimension to worker’s struggles. For the first time workers went on strike demanding a specific wage, and devised methods of mutual aid to sustain their collective direct action. This book goes on to examine other significant developments in the rise of printing trade unionism, and notably the International Typographical Union. America’s First Strike explores the role of Benjamin Franklin in the June 1786 strike; his lasting influence on organized labor; the early union printers’ support for the abolition of slavery; their leadership in the broader U.S. labor movement, and the struggle for an 8-hour day. Other articles focus on the problems of technological change, and on such epochal labor battles as the Haymarket Affair of 1886, the 1938-40 Newspaper Guild Strike, and the Chicago newspaper strike of 1947-49. Rosemont profiles many brave and thoughtful individuals involved in this colorful history: the 1786 strikers, revolutionary printer-editor George Henry Evans, anarchist Albert Parsons, and others. The son and grandson of printers, Henry P. Rosemont (1904-1979) was himself a lifelong printer and labor activist. Author of much of the ITU’s agitational and educational literature over a span of fifty years, he was also recognized —not only in his own local (Chicago No. 16) but also throughout the international organization—as one of union printerdom’s foremost historians. His massive collection of union printers’ documents is housed at The Newberry Library, Chicago.
"A wondrously effective tribute, it is also a
valuable contribution to the history of the American past. Enthusiastic
congratulations!" - Leon M. Despres
122 pages. Paper $15
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CHANGING SOCIETY CHANGING SOCIETY
CHANGING SOCIETY SOCIETY CHANGING SOCIETY SOCIETY CHANGING SOCIETY SOCIETY
CHANGING SOCIETY SOCIETY CHANGING SOCIETY |
CHANGING
SOCIETY:
The
Lives of Worker Heroes
Who
Made a Difference
By Bob Breving
"Nineteen years ago when I started teaching union members at Roosevelt University, I knew very little about labor history and neither did the students. As we went on a mutual journey, I began to learn about labor history through the papers the students wrote. I read and wrote about John Peter Altgeld, Mother Jones, Walter Reuther, A. Philip Randolph and Eugene V. Debs. A. Philip Randolph, a prominent leader in the civil rights movement is almost never referred to in the telling of the civil rights struggle. I decided to tell also about Delores Huerta and Regina Polk, women important to today. These biographies focus on their contributions to improve the lives of working people." – Bob Breving, teacher at DePaul Labor Education Center in Chicago.
88 pages. Paper $9
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SURREALISME SURREALISME SURREALISME
SURREALISME SURREALISME SURREALISME SURREALISME SURREALISME SURREALISME
SURREALISME SURREALISME SURREALISME |
SURREALISME
& ATHEISME
By Guy Ducornet
SPECIAL IMPORT
FROM PARIS!
This surrealist critique includes the text of the French Surrealists’ classic 1948 anti-clerical text, with translations by German, English, U.S., Spanish, Greek, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Czech and Arabic surrealist groups.
Supply Limited!
258 pages. Illustrated. Paper $25
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COMMUNICATING VESSELS COMMUNICATING
VESSELS COMMUNICATING VESSELS COMMUNICATING VESSELS COMMUNICATING VESSELS
COMMUNICATING VESSELSj |
COMMUNICATING
VESSELS
An Anthology
By Anthony Leskov
A collection of essays, parables, poems and reviews from the lively periodical published in Portland.
189 pages. Illustrated. Paper $10
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HISTORY AGAINST MISERY HISTORY AGAINST
MISERY HISTORY AGAINST MISERY HISTORY AGAINST MISERY HISTORY AGAINST MISERY
HISTORY AGAINST MISERY |
HISTORY AGAINST MISERY
By David Roediger
IN THIS LAVISHLY illustrated collection
of activist essays, articles and reviews from the late 70s to the present, the
noted author of The Wages of Whiteness, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness and
other pathbreaking critical studies of America's "white problem"
focuses on the complex issue of MISERABILISM in its many and invariably
oppressive forms.
"David Roediger is renowned for his brilliant writings on
whiteness, but few readers acknowledge what lay at the root of his work: his
abiding hatred of all forms of oppression and exploitation. If you didn't know
this before, History Against Misery ought to make it clear, for Roediger has
put together a powerful collection of rants and chants against miserabilism,
and a surrealist road map to liberated futures. This is one of those books we
must keep close to us as we struggle to overthrow misery once and for all." -Robin
D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical
Imagination
"An exquisite corpus of work! Like any great history, Roediger's
work is an act of rescue and restoration. The words, acts and deeds have always
been out there, and here he meticulously gathers and reconstructs for us what
has been willfully over-looked and disappeared. It is to the summer of our
discontent that the surrealist brings us a wintry elation: humor, a poetics of
resistance, purpose-ful deviance motivated by genuine compassion and a love of
truth." -Blake Schwarzenbach,
musician/writer
In this terrific collection of essays, the great radical historian David
Roediger digs deep into his engagement with surrealism, sports, and subversion.
It is unusual to read someone so good on such a range of topics, from Travis
Tritt to W.E.B. Du Bois, from Andr_ Breton to Bugs Bunny. Those familiar with
his other books will find here Another Side of David Roediger, but in this book
he brings it all back home." -Eric
Lott, author of
Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class
This wonderful collection of essays is not only a powerful indictment of
late capitalism-the system that "dulls and narrows human desire"-but
also a fascinating survey of resistance voices, from the IWW to the
Surrealists, from the "Chicago Idea" Anarchists to Black Liberation.
David Roediger persuasively shows that rebel poetry, free imagination,
workers' direct action and Black freedom struggles are all part of the same
great movement against the established order and its (miserable) ideology
of "whiteness."' -Michael
Lowy, author of On Changing the World: Essays in Political
Philosophy, from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin (1993)
184 pages. Illustrated. Paper $17.00
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BLACK HOBOES BLACK HOBOES BLACK HOBOES
BLACK HOBOES BLACK HOBOES BLACK HOBOES BLACK HOBOES BLACK HOBOES BLACK HOBOES
BLACK HOBOES |
What's the
Use of Walking
if There's a Freight Train Going Your Way?
Black Hoboes
& their Songs
By Paul Garon & Gene Tomko
In this exciting new book,
Paul Garon -– celebrated author of The Devil's Son-In-Law: Peetie
Wheatstraw and His Songs; Blues
and the Poetic Spirit; and with Beth Garon,
Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie's Blues -– tells the story of African American migratory workers and the
songs they sang: at work, in boxcars and hobo jungles, in jail, in country
roadhouses and urban nightspots. Focused on the years 1910-1940, Garon's
narrative and the powerful lyrics of 100-plus songs relate in detail the Black
hobo experience with racism and other injustice as well as with jobs as varied
as turpentining, track-laying, circus work, lumber, agriculture and mining.
Here, too, are fascinating digressions on Black Wobblies, Southern Tenant Farmers'
Union organizers, and the hobohemian counterculture. This invaluable study
comes with a 25-track CD.
"Paul Garon has produced yet another masterpiece of cultural
history. The stories and songs he gathers together in this remarkable book
disrupt common notions of what we mean by 'freedom' when it comes to black
folk. Hoboes represented a significant segment of the black working class, and
their constant movements were both evidence of constraints and acts of freedom.
And as he so eloquently demonstrates, the men and women who took to
the road and their bards have much to teach us about America's 'bottom
rail.'" - Robin D. G. Kelley,
author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
"The music and the poetry of black workers in motion-hoboing,
hitchhiking, timbering, mining, railroading, loving, leaving, fighting back and
searching for a new job, a new life and even a new world are brilliantly
recorded and explained in this arresting collection." -David Roediger, author of History
Against Misery
"A fascinating book in which Paul Garon has brought together a truly
remarkable collection of blues and blues songs, created by African American
hoboes and ex-hoboes, which reveals a new dimension of the personal and the
experiential nature of the poetic spirit in the blues. The main motivation of
the black hobo travelers was to find work, and the author has meticulously
researched the nature and conditions of the lumber and turpentine industries,
mining, levee-building and other employment that they sought, and about which
they also sang. This is not a book solely for blues enthusiasts, for whom it is
indispensable, but it is strongly recommended to all who are interested in
popular culture, its forms, its expression and meaning."- Paul Oliver, author of Blues Fell
This Morning, The Story of the Blues, etc.
288 pages. Illustrated with 25-track CD. Paper $22
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FACING REALITY FACING REALITY FACING
REALITY FACING REALITY FACING REALITY FACING REALITY FACING REALITY FACING
REALITY FACING REALITY FACING REALITY |
Facing
Reality
With a new Introduction by John H.
Bracey
By C. L. R. James & Grace C.
Lee
with
the collaboration of Cornelius Castoriadis
"Springing forth from the utopian flames of self-emancipation
kindled by the workers councils of the Hungarian Revolution, this pivotal book
offers a socialist indictment of the miserabilism of state capitalism and calls
for the ongoing rejection of both vanguardism and the bureaucratic rationalism
of state power." - Ron Sakolsky,
author of Creating Anarchy
In this celebrated
"underground classic," also known as "C. L. R. James's most
anarchist book," the author of The Black Jacobins, History of
Pan-African Revolt and Beyond a
Boundary examines the practical process of
social revolution in the modern world. Inspired by the October 1956 Hungarian
workers' revolution against Stalinist oppression, as well as the U.S. workers'
"wild-cat" strikes (against Capital and the union bureaucracies),
James and his co-authors looked ahead to the rise of new mass emancipatory
movements by African Americans as well as anti-colonialist/anti-imperialist
currents in Africa and Asia. Virtually alone among the radical texts of the
time, Facing Reality also
rejected modern society's mania for "conquering nature," and welcomed
women's struggles "for new relations between the sexes."
First published in 1958 by a tiny group of James's supporters in Detroit,
Facing Reality was popularized by the Chicago Rebel Worker group, Solidarity
Bookshop, and other anti-authoritarians all through the 1960s. Later taken up
by the SDS journal Radical America in its early IWW/surrealist-oriented period,
Facing Reality became -like the works of Herbert Marcuse and E. P. Thompson
-one of the most discussed and debated books of revolutionary theory in the
late 20th century.
This new 21st-century edition includes a new introduction by James's
longtime friend, John H. Bracey, situating the book in its 1950s/60s context,
and accenting its continued relevance in our time.
"Among the most forward-looking books of the 1950s, Facing Reality
is not only a merciless critique of the reactionary rationalism that then
passed for Marxism, but also a passionate celebration of workingclass
creativity and revolutionary internationalism at their inspired
best."-Franklin Rosemont, author of Revolution in the Service of the
Marvelous (2004). "Facing Reality was written in response to
specific historical circumstances half a century ago, but recent events insist
on reminding us why issues of class, race, state authority, and military
aggression are as urgent now as they were in 1958. It is a keen and relevant
text for readers of today who are troubled by the globalized violence of
neoliberal avarice and neoconservative hubris. Facing Reality poses the kinds
of questions about freedom that need to be asked openly and repeatedly during
miserable times." - Don LaCoss,
co-editor of Surrealism, Politics & Culture (2003)
188 pages. Paper $18.00
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DANCIN' IN THE STREETS DANCIN' IN THE STREETS
DANCIN' IN THE STREETS DANCIN' IN THE STREETS DANCIN' |
AT LAST, A DIFFERENT BOOK ON THE SIXTIES!
DANCIN'IN THE STREETS!
Anarchists, IWWs,
Surrealists,
Situationists & Provos in the 1960s
Edited with Introductions by
Franklin Rosemont & Charles Radcliffe
"The dreamkillers won't have finished working over the 1960s until
they flatten the soaring visions of that decade into petty quarrels between
vanguardists and aspiring Democratic Party functionaries. They won't be done
until they turn the movement into one without humor, without poetry, and indeed
almost without motion. But dreamkilling just got lots harder. This brilliant
collection gives us back the audacity, imagination, energy, laughs, wildness
and chance that animated freedom dreams that are as alive today as they were 40
years ago." -David Roediger
MOST BOOKS on the 1960s focus on large liberal organizations
and reformist politics. This one is unabashedly devoted to the far left of the
far left. The Rebel Worker was a mimeo'd magazine started by young members of
the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Chicago, 1964. Multi-racial and
working class, they were inspired not only by the hobo wisdom of the Wobblies,
but also by surrealism. While square critics derided them as "the left
wing of the Beat Generation," The Rebel Worker and its sister journal Heatwave
in London became well known for their highly original revolutionary
perspective, innovative social/cultural criticism, and uninhibited class-war
humor and cartoons. Rejecting traditional left dogma, and proudly affirming the
influence of Bugs Bunny and the Incredible Hulk, these playful rebels against
work expanded the critique of Capital into a critique of daily life and
developed a truly radical theory and practice, rooted in poetry, provocation,
blues, jazz and the pleasure principle. Active in strikes, free-speech fights
and other tumults, they also ran the IWW's celebrated Solidarity Bookshop and
introduced countless readers to writings by surrealists, situationists, IWWs,
anarchists, libertarian Marxists, Provos, Japanese Zengakuren, etc.
Here for the first time in book-form are dozens of selections from both of
these legendary journals, with lengthy introductions by Franklin Rosemont
(editor of The Rebel Worker) and Charles Radcliffe (editor of Heatwave).
More pre-publication comments on Dancin' in the Streets
"Look here for links between the Beat Generation and the later
Underground Press, but also between traditional Marxist theory and the new
"critique of everyday life" developed by an increasingly defiant and
countercultural young left that made Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancin' in
the Streets" its international anthem."-Paul Buhl
"Thanks for Dancin'! We surely need it!"-Diane di Prima
"A remarkable collection, full of interesting material. If I were
still an editor, I would be looting stuff from it." -Colin Ward (editor of the London Anarchy, 1960s)
"A very handsome book, and an important history of an era and a
milieu."-Lorraine Perlman
"I really enjoyed Dancin' in the Streets. I didn't agree with it
all, but what the hell! It has given me many hours of pleasure."-Ken Weller (a mainstay of the London
Solidarity group from the early 1960s on)
"Here is the missing link of books on the Sixties, an essential
text: It tells a lot of heretofore untold stories and fills in a lot of gaps.-Ron Sakolsky
"More than other recent
collections, Dancin' has a certain surreal punch stemming from the exponential
contrast between its pure youthful spirit and the current miserabilism. Anyone
with any life in them will want to flip all the way back and pick up the lost
thread of those days."-Joseph
Jablonski
Sixties Series, 450 pages. Illustrated. Cloth $25, paper $17
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STARVING AMIDST STARVING AMIDST STARVING AMIDST S TARVING AMIDST STARVING |
STARVING AMIDST
TOO MUCH
& Other IWW Writings on the Food
Industry by
T-Bone Slim, L. S. Chumley,
Jim Seymour & Jack Sheridan
Edited & Introduced by Peter
Rachleff
Foreword by Carlos Cortez
"What the Wobblies of yesteryear had to say about the all-important
"food question" is still relevant in our time. These writings clearly
deserve wider circulation, and should be considered and discussed by working people today." -Carlos Cortes (from the Foreword)
THIS IS A BOOK about the
irrepressible conflict between the poorly paid workers who actually feed the
world and the parasitical multi-billionaire corporate powers that make the
rules and grab the profits. Reproduced here are rare classic documents on the
"food question" by four old-time members of North America's most
creative, colorful and uncompromising union: the revolutionary Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW), known as Wobblies.
Here is the greatest Wob writer of them all, the one and only T-Bone Slim,
whose detailed critique of the industry-chockful of penetrating insight and
knockout black humor-is reminiscent of Jonathan Swift and Benjamin P_ret.
Organizer L. S. Chumley portrays the horrid living and working conditions of
hotel and restaurant workers circa 1918, stressing the need for workers' direct
action. Here, too, is Wobbly troubadour Jim Seymour, with his inspired saga of
"The Dishwasher" and reflections on the possibilities of a radically
different diet. Jack Sheridan's fascinating 1959 survey of the role of food in
ancient and modern civilization, especially in economic development, is also a
crash-course in the materialist conception of history at its Wobbly soapboxer
best.
In the introduction, historian/activist Peter Rachleff traces the history of
food-workers' self-organization, and brings the book up to date with a look at
current point-of-production struggles to break the haughty power of an ecocidal
agri-business and the union-busting fast-food chains.
Informative and provocative, this lively collection provides just the kind
of background and inspiration needed by young workers today, who are striving
to build a new revolutionary movement based on direct action and solidarity.
"The pamphlets, columns, and articles collected in this volume make
available to us a rich wellspring of ideas. . . . These are far more than
historical artifacts. They offer today's workers a first class breakfast, a
place to begin consideration of all our places in the food chain, from farming
to processing and production to the preparation and serving of meals. The
metaphor reminds us of the ways that workers and consumers are bound in their
work and by their most fundamental of bodily practices-eating-by broad economic
and social decisions from which workers' input has been excluded. We are bound
by these chains of the food industry. T-Bone Slim, L.S. Chumley, Jack Sheridan,
and Jim Seymour offer us acute analyses of these industries and processes, and,
even more importantly, they offer us access to the IWW vision of how to break
these chains, how to change the world."
-Peter Rachleff (from
the Introduction)
128 pages. Illustrated. Paper $12
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JOE HILL JOE HILL JOE HILL JOE HILL JOE HILL JOE
HILL JOE JOE HILL JOE HILL JOE HILL JOE HILL JOE HILL JOE |
NOW IN ITS SECOND PRINTING!
"In Franklin Rosemont, Joe Hill has finally found a chronicler
worthy of his revolutionary spirit, sense of humor, and poetic imagination.
This is no ordinary biography. It is a journey into the Wobbly culture that
made Joe Hill and the capitalist culture that killed him. But as Rosemont
suggests in this remarkable book, Joe Hill never really dies. He will live in
the minds of young rebels as long as his songs are sung, his ideas are
circulated, and his political descendants keep fighting for a better day."
-Robin D. G. Kelley, , author
of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002)
"This is an exceptionally important book in many ways, and Franklin
Rosemont has done us all a great favor in writing it. The fine chapter on
Hill's involvement in the Mexican Revolution is alone well worth the cove
price, for no other study comes even close to offering so much information, so
much rich detail, on that crucial moment in his life. There's no doubt about
it: This is the best book ever written about Joe Hill."
-Utah Phillips
"Extraordinarily interesting ... a tremendous achievement, full of
insight into Joe Hill, carefully separating his life from his post-mortem
elaboration, and substantiating all of it. Hill is not quite as alive a you and
I, but almost, and this book has contributed to his long life."-Leon M. Despres
JOE HILL
The IWW & the Making of a
Revolutionary Workingclass
Counterculture
By Franklin Rosemont
JOE HILL (1877-1915) is the best-known
figure in the heroic history of the Indus trial Workers of the World (a.k.a.
Wobblies). U.S. labor's most world-renowned martyr and celebrated song-writer,
he is remembered above all for his songs in the Little Red Song Book:
"The Preacher and the Slave" ("Pie in the Sky"), "Mr
Block," "There Is Power in a Union," and many more that are
still popular on picketlines today.
Franklin Rosemont's important new book presents a fresh and in-depth study
of the life and work of the famous Wobbly bard, and of the revolutionary
counter-culture he came to personify. Older books on Hill focused on the crime
he didn't commit, his frame-up and martyrdom. This study sheds new light on
those topics -particularly on the ongoing use of frame-up in the U.S."justice"
system-but its overall focus is on Hill's ideas and activity: as songwriter,
poet, artist, hobo, thinker, humorist, and archetypal rank-and-file Wobbly.
No other book discusses in such detail Hill's views on capitalism, white
supremacy, gender issues, religion, wilderness, law, and prison, as well as on
songwriting, humor, direct action, and revolutionary industrial union-ism.
Several chapters explore Hill's little-known work as a cartoonist. Collected
here for the first time is all his art, including his one surviving painting.
The scores of other illustrations feature Hill-inspired art by IWWs from Ralph
Chaplin to Carlos Cortez, and by such other labor artists as Mike Alewitz, Gary
Huck, Mike Konopacki, and Lisa Lyons.
Examining Hill's status as a "near-mythic" figure in history as
well as his enormous influence-on Wob artists; other radicals, songwriters, and
poets; on movements as varied as the 1910s Chicago Renaissance and the 1950s
Beat Generation-Rosemont also examines the many appearances by Hill and the IWW
in popular culture, including mass-market mysteries, science-fiction, and
rock'n'roll. In chapters on "The Hobo Contribution to Critical
Theory," "Wobblies Against Whiteness," "Forerunners of
Earth First! and Eco-Socialism," and "Surrealism, Wobbly Style"
he argues that Hill's legacy -the profound but playful old-time Wobbly
counter-culture-is still the "most important inspiration and model for a
new revolutionary movement" today.
Franklin Rosemont's nearly thirty books include T-Bone Slim: Juice Is
Stranger Than Friction, and From Bug-house Square to the Beat
Generation: Selected Ravings of Slim Brundage,
both published by Charles H. Kerr, and Penelope: A Poem (Surrealist Editions).
656 pages. Illustrated. Cloth $35.00, paper $19.00
A Few Words About Franklin Rosemont's JOE HILL
"A remarkable book, and badly needed."-Paul Avrich
"This full-length study . . . discusses for the first time the
Wobbly bard's contributions to labor cartooning, wilder-ness radicalism,
women's liberation, and the struggle against white supremacy. Far more than a
biography, this book is a fundamental re-examination of the IWW, its rich and
manysided culture, and its relation to such currents as romanticism, Futurism,
the Chicago Renaissance, the Beat Generation, and surrealism, emphasizing
throughout the significance of the Wobblies' multiple legacies for
revolutionary struggle in our own time."
-Ron Sakolsky, in Surrealist Subversions: Rants, Writings and
Images by the Surrealist Movement in the U.S. (2002)
"It's the right man by the right biographer at the right time. ...
This magnificent, practical, irreverent, and (as one might say) magisterial
book has sixteen chapters and more than 600 pages, profusely illustrated ... It
is written in a direct, passionate, sometimes funny, deeply searching style. It
is a labor of love. Rosemont's book, like E. P. Thompson's Making of the
English Working Class, has a job to do-making the class which brings to birth a
new world from the ashes of the old. ...The Wobbly vocabulary of mutual aid
that Thompson called for is not going to be found in theory, or in instinct,
but it might be found in song. Here we need Rosemont and Joe Hill."
-Peter Linebaugh, Counterpunch
"It has been a long time since so much new material on Joe Hill and
the Wobblies has been collected in one volume. All students of the IWW, labor
cartoons and songs, radical humor, and the history of blue-collar
countercultures in the U.S., will find this book indispensable."
-Salvatore Salerno, author
of Red November, Black November (1989)
"Extraordinarily interesting . . . a tremendous achievement." -Leon Despres
"Exceptionally important . . . The fine chapter on Hill's
involve-ment in the Mexican Revolution is alone well worth the cover price. . .
. No doubt about it: This is the best book ever written about Joe Hill."-Utah Phillips
"Blends the best of labor history with popular culture [and] debunks
the many myths surrounding Hill. . . Rosemont's passion for IWW history and
lore is compelling". - Julie
Herrada, Fifth Estate
"Informative, fascinating, fun to read-a little like The New Yorker,
with great cartoons every other page".
-Tom Geoghegan
"In these 600-plus pages there is not one bit of tedious reading.
This is an important book." - Industrial
Worker
|
LUCY PARSONS LUCY PARSONS LUCY PARSONS
LUCY PARSONS LUCY PARSONS LUCY PARSONS LUCY PARSONS LUCY |
LUCY PARSONS
FREEDOM, EQUALITY & SOLIDARITY
Writings & Speeches,1878-1937
Edited & Introduced by Gale Ahrens
With an Afterword by Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz
"The most prominent black woman radical of the late nineteenth century,
Lucy Parsons [was also] one of the brightest lights in the history of
revolutionary socialism."-Robin D. G. Kelley, in Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.
"Lucy Parsons's writings are among the best and strongest in the
history of U.S. anarchism. Although written long ago, these texts tackle the
major problems of our time. Her long and
often traumatic experience of the capitalist injustice system-from KKK terror
in her youth, through Haymarket and the judicial murder of her husband, to the
U.S. government's war on the Wobblies -made her not "just another
victim" but an extraordinarily articulate witness to, and vehement crusader against, all injustice. That kind of direct experience gave her a
credibility and an actuality that
those who lack such experience just don't have. Lucy Parsons's life and
writings reflect her true-to-the-bone heroism. Her language sparkles with the
love of freedom and the passion of revolt."
- Gale Ahrens, Introduction
"More dangerous than 1000 rioters!" That's what the Chicago police called Lucy
Parsons- America's most defiant and persistent anarchist agitator, whose
cross-country speaking tours inspired hundreds of thousands of working people.
Her friends and admirers included William Morris, Peter Kropot-kin, "Big
Bill" Haywood, Ben Reitman, Sam Dolgoff-and the groups in which she was
active were just as varied: the Knights of Labor, IWW, Dil Pickle Club, International
Labor Defense, & others. Here for the first time is a hefty selection of
her powerful writings & speeches-on anarchism, women, race matters, class
war, the IWW, and the U.S. injustice system.
"Lucy Parsons's personae and historical role provide material for
the makings of a truly exemplary figure ... Think of it: a lifelong anarchist,
labor organizer, writer, editor, publisher, and dynamic speaker, a woman of
color of mixed black, Mexican, and Native American heritage, founder of the
1880s Chicago Working Woman's Union that organized garment workers, called for
equal pay for equal work, and even invited housewives to join with the demand
of wages for housework; and later (1905) co-founder the Industrial Workers of
the World (IWW), which made the organizing of women and people of color a
priority. . .For a better understanding of the concept of direct action and its
implications, no other historical figure can match the lessons provided by Lucy
Parsons."
- Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Afterword
192 Pages. Illustrated. Paper $17.00
A few copies are available of
Lucy Parsons:
American Revolutionary
by Carolyn Ashbaugh.
Published by Charles H. Kerr in 1976. This is the only biography available.
288 pages. Paper $24.00
|
LESSON LESSON LESSON LESSON LESSON LESSON
LESSON LESSON LESSON LESSON LESSON LESSON LESSON LESSON |
"Six important speeches by Wendell Phillips, one of the great
figures in American history, mark this volume as an indispensable source that
should be read by all serious students of the national past and present."
-Sterling Stuckey, University
of California at Riverside, author of Slave Culture and Going Through the Storm
THE LESSON
OF THE HOUR
Wendell Phillips on Abolition &
Strategy
Edited & Introduced by Noel
Ignatiev
DURING the winter of 1860-61, as
southern states announced their intention to secede from the Union, the great
Abolitionist Wendell Phillips walked the streets of Boston under threat of
attack from mobs that blamed him for the breakup. Barely one year later, when
Phillips traveled to Washington, the Vice President of the United States
welcomed him to the Senate chamber, the Speaker of the House invited him to
dinner, and President Lincoln received him as a guest at the White House.
The Abolitionists were revolutionaries, willing to tear up the Southern
economy and society by the roots, wreck Northern commerce, and disrupt the
Union irretrievably. They renounced all traditional politics. They openly hoped
for the defeat of their own country in the Mexican War. They preached and
practiced racial equality. They fought for the equality of women. They
understood the need to break up the Union in order to reconstitute it without
slavery.
Have ever revolutionaries been more thoroughly vindicated by events?
Although William Lloyd Garrison was the founder of the movement and remains
the most widely known of the Abolitionists, Wendell Phillips was the real
leader. This volume is the only collection of his work generally available. It
includes six speeches charting a revolutionary course for abolition, with an
introduction establishing their historical context.
160 pages. Cloth, $28.00; paper, $12.00
"This collection of Wendell Phillips's speeches brings back to light
one of the magnificent rhetoricians of the abolition movement. Noel Ignatiev's
introduction makes a compelling case for treating Phillips as the "real
leader" of nineteenth century American radicalism, and the orator's words
as a guide to an alternative society."
-David W. Blight, Amherst College, author of Race and Reunion:
The Civil War in American Memory
Noel Ignatiev is the author of How the Irish Became White and the coeditor of Race Traitor: journal
of the new abolitionism. He teaches in the
Department of Critical Studies at Massachusetts College of Art.
|
PUNCHING OUT PUNCHING OUT PUNCHING OUT
PUNCHING OUT PUNCHING OUT PUNCHING OUT PUNCHING OUT |
"Autoworker, historian, humorist, sociologist, poet, and baseball
coach, Marty Glaberman had as close a knowledge of working people as any
intellectual of his generation. He also had, as these wonderful collected
writings show, the most firm confidence in their revolutionary potential."
-David Roediger
PUNCHING OUT:
Selected Writings of Martin Glaberman
Edited & introduced by Staughton Lynd
GLABERMAN is the most important
writer on labor matters in the United States during the second half of the
Twentieth century. He developed distinctive concepts concerning the nature of
trade unionism; the unfolding of working-class consciousness; and the forms of
revolutionary organization appropriate to modern industrial society ...
Glaberman received a bachelor's degree from City College of New York. He was
working on a master's degree in Economics at Columbia University when he dropped
out to become a radical doing full-time industrial work. There followed twenty
years laboring for wages in plants in and around Detroit as an assembly line
worker and machinist. On the eve of World War II, Glaberman associated himself
with the West Indian Marxist intellectual, C.L.R. James [and] became a member
of the Johnson-Forest Tendency within American Trotskyism. This small but
enormously productive and influential group made the first trans-lation into
English of what came to be called the "early economic-philosophical
manuscripts" of Karl Marx.
-From the Introduction by Staughton
Lynd
246 pages. Cloth $35; paper $15.00
|
RAMBLING KID RAMBLING KID RAMBLING KID
RAMBLING KID RAMBLING KID RAMBLING KID RAMBLING KID |
THE RAMBLING KID
By Charles Ashleigh
CHARLES ASHLEIGH'S novel, The Rambling Kid, is one of the best and
most informative books concerning the IWW. It is also one of the rarest and
hardest to find. First published in London, 1930, it has never been reissued
and is practically impossible to locate, even in libraries.
Soapboxer, writer, poet, agitator, and publicist, the British-born Ashleigh
was active in the IWW from 1912 until his deportation in nine years later. As a
first-hand account of the Wobbly way of life in the 1910s, The Rambling Kid has
few equals.
ON THE ROAD WITH THE WOBBLIES
"Charles Ashleigh's semi-autobiographical novel fills a void in the
record of the events that led to the federal government's brutal attempts to
suppress the "One Big Union" during World War I. Ashleigh's
characters ride alongside IWW job delegates, bindle-stiffs, and gandy dancers
as they crisscross the country hopping freights en route to jobs and strikes
and everything in between. In the tradition of The Milk and Honey Route by Dean
Stiff (Nels Anderson), The Main Stem by William Edge, and Home to Harlem by
Claude McKay, The Rambling Kid offers an intimate glimpse into pre-World-War-1
workers' culture on the eve of the Russian Revolution. Steve Kellerman's superb
introduction provides the critical and biographical context for understanding
the importance of Ashleigh's work and the historical forces that produced The
Rambling Kid." - Salvatore Salerno,
Red November, Black November)
302 pages Paper $17.0