CHARLES H. KERR
PUBLISHING
COMPANY
Knowledge and freedom 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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Dreams & Everyday Life Dreams
& Everyday Life Dreams & Everyday Life Dreams
& Everyday Life Dreams & Everyday Life Dreams
& Everyday Life Dreams & Everyday Life |
By Penelope Rosemont
ANDRÉ BRETON, Surrealism, the IWW,
Rebel Worker, Students for a Democratic Society and the Seven Cities of
Cibola in Chicago, Paris & London ... A 1960s Notebook.
"The book is wonderful! I read
nothing else till I finished it; a great and passionate evocation of
those times–unapologetic and real."—Diane di Prima
"Few books like this one give us the
feeling of the elusive thing called "the spirit of the 60's." —Michael Löwy
"Readers would be hard-pressed to
find a better reminiscence of those days when, for an extended
historical moment, Chicago again became the center of radical energies.
Still, in all this, it is the personal that is most interesting and
charming. The personalities, large and small, many of them oddball in
the extreme, seemed perfectly suited to a moment in history when, as
Rosemont says, life was supercharged with developments that we somehow
expected would go on for decades—to know about the inner life of the
sixties, this book is a good place to start." —Paul Buhle
"Thanks Penelope! Here’s to justice
and remembrance of all our working class heroes!"—Studs Terkel
"A remarkable life record."—Leon Despres
"Rosemont's book is a passionate
remembering. In an era when we are taught that there is no real history
because nothing ever changes, that today's society is the way it has
always been and will always be, amen!, remembering becomes a useful and
subversive tool."—Len Wallace
250 pages. $17 Paper
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SURREALISM IN '68 SURREALISM
IN '68 SURREALISM IN '68 SURREALISM
IN '68 SURREALISM IN '68 SURREALISM
IN '68 SURREALISM IN '68 SURREALISM
IN '68 |
SURREALISM IN ‘68: Paris,
Prague, Chicago
Dreams of Arson
& the Arson of Dreams
Including Long Live Adventurism! From L’Archibras, June 18, 1968
Letters from François-René Simon, Marie-Dominique Massoni, Jean Benoît
and Michel Zimbacca
With a Statement in Defense of the Students, June-July 1968
By Don Lacoss
THIS ESSAY is a brief examination into surrealist activities in 1968, triangulated between Prague, Paris, and Chicago and anchored to two key surrealist texts, The Prague Platform and "Situation of Surrealism in the U.S." My intention is to show how surrealism responded to and participated in the electric events of ‘68, and to suggest how an understanding of the movement’s past can help instigate the next tremors to run through the atmosphere. To paraphrase Lautréamont, it is only a matter of having the awareness and insolence to accept them.
Historians will argue about the degree to which the global rebellions
of 1968 can be linked together or what (if any) catalysts
triggered the
transnational movements. But there can be no mistaking the pronounced
cross-pollination of surrealist ideas and activities in ‘68.
32 pages. Paper $5.00
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BENJAMIN PÉRET BENJAMIN PÉRET BENJAMIN PÉRET BENJAMIN PÉRET BENJAMIN PÉRET BENJAMIN PÉRET BENJAMIN PÉRET BENJAMIN PÉRET BENJAMIN PÉRET |
Selected Writings
Introduction by Franklin Rosemont. Afterword by Don LaCoss
"In Péret ‘bad conscience’ is done
away with, censorship no longer exists, and ‘all is permitted'." —André Breton
This collection is based on the pioneering anthology of Péret’s
writings that first appeared in August 1970 in the SDS journal Radical
America, introduced by Franklin Rosemont. This new, expanded and
illustrated edition includes a selection of Péret’s incomparable poetry
and stories, a wide range of critical essays on the practice of poetry,
the struggle against capitalism, slave revolts in Brazil, Pre-Columbian
art, and appreciations of the great surrealist artists Wifredo Lam,
Jindrich Styrsky, and Toyen. An Afterword by Don LaCoss discusses the
ecological dimension of Péret’s work.
"In this world of specialists and
appointed robots, a man of truth is an archaism. Our time is one of
nihilism, Péret, a man of hope, is a figure of the past. But at the
same time is this not proof that he is the man and poet of the future?"
—Octavio Paz
"One of the most militant of the
surrealist poets, Péret wrote about how poetry serves the revolution
only when the revolution serves poetry. " —from the Afterword by Don LaCoss
148 pages. Paper $14.00
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FLIVVER KING FLIVVER KING FLIVVER KING FLIVVER KING FLIVVER KING FLIVVER KING FLIVVER KING FLIVVER KING FLIVVER KING FLIVVER KING |
FLIVVER KING, A STORY OF FORD AMERICA
By
Upton Sinclair
Paperback $14.00.
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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 |
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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JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE JACQUES VACHE |
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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BIG RED SONGBGOOK BIG RED SONGBGOOK BIG RED SONGBGOOK BIG RED SONGBGOOK BIG RED SONGBGOOK BIG RED SONGBGOOK BIG RED SONGBGOOK |
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
|
American Labor's First
Strike American Labor's
First Strike American
Labor's First StrikeAmerican
Labor's First Strike
American Labor's First Strike American Labor's First Strike |
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
|
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
|
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
|
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
|
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. Paper $17. Cloth $25
|
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
|
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).
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
656 pages. Illustrated.
Paper $19.00. Cloth $35.00
|
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 t