Fredy Perlman
Libertarian Marxist turned primitivist who, while still a Marxist, made some highly important contributions to working class theory and history.
Birth of a Revolutionary Movement in Yugoslavia
Self-published pamphlet, 1969.
Birth of a Revolutionary Movement in Yugoslavia
by Fredy Perlman
Black & Red
P.O. Box 973
Kalamazoo, MI 49005
1969
"Heretics are always more dangerous than enemies," concluded a Yugoslav philosopher after analyzing the repression of Marxist intellectuals by the Marxist regime of Poland. (S. Stojanovic, in Student, Belgrade, April 9, 1968, p. 7.)
Review: Letters of Insurgents - Fredy Perlman
Freddy Perlman's Letters Of Insurgents is a thoroughly brilliant story about anarchist ideas. It takes the form of fictional letters between two eastern european workers who were separated after a failed revolution; one spent twelve years in statist jails, the other escaped to the west.
Yarostan and Sophia work in a factory in eastern Europe. They live, argue and take action. The workers rebel, a general strike, an armed uprising, They rule at the streets and in the factory, argue about the future, for a moment the world belongs to them. But soon there is a new government, a workers government, a new army, a red army.
Fredy Perlman's views on the Situationists' membership criteria
Perlman's reaction to his former friends' 'break' with him; an attempt to prove their ideological conformity as a necessary condition of entrance into the Situationist International.
...Militants from Europe also visited us in Kalamazoo. One of them, Roger Gregoire, stayed with us for several months, working with Fredy on an account and evaluation of experiences the two had shared in May and June 1968 while members of the Citroen Worker-Student Action Committee.
Ozimandias - Review: Against His-story! Against Leviathan! by Fredy Perlman - Wildcat (UK)
Review: Against His-story! Against Leviathan! by Fredy Perlman, Black & Red, Detroit 1983.
Against His-story! is an attempt to take opposition to Progress to its logical conclusion. So is this belated review.
Perlman summarises the whole history of Civilisation from the viewpoint of its victims: we, the "zeks", free people who were enslaved then taught to identify with the enslaving monster: Leviathan.
OZYMANDIAS
ROCK OF STAGES
The Fetish Speaks! - Marx and Perlman
Marx spoke of the commodity - now the commodity speaks of Marx (and itself). PDF of illustrated quotations from 'Capital'.
First printed in Black & Red No. 5 January 1969. Reprinted as a fold-out concertina leaflet by Black & Red, Detroit, 1973.
Commodity Fetishism - Fredy Perlman
Fredy Perlman's 1968 Introduction to I.I. Rubin's "Essays on Marx's Theory of Value", Black Rose Books, Montreal, 1973.
The text of Rubin's book can found online here; http://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/index.htm
The reproduction of daily life - Fredy Perlman - Treason pamphlet
Fredy Perlman's pamphlet of working class economics, as compiled by Treason Press, February 2004.
Originally published 1969
A better formatted version of this text can be found here: http://libcom.org/library/reproduction-everyday-life-fredy-perlman
Worker-Student Action Committees, France May '68 - Roger Gregoire and Fredy Perlman
An in-depth look at the worker-student action committees of France May '68
Taken from the excellent John Gray site - http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/
Worker-Student Action Committees, France May '68 - Roger Gregoire and Fredy Perlman
The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism - Fredy Perlman
An excellent analysis by the late Fredy Perlman of the enduring appeal of nationalism to statist rulers of both left and right.
This essay originally appeared in the Winter, 1984 Fifth Estate, and is also available as a pamphlet published by Black & Red.
Progress & Nuclear Power - Fredy Perlman
The Following text first appeared in a special anti-nuclear issue of Fifth Estate magazine on April 8, 1979. It was written earlier in that year just after an accident at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in eastern Pennsylavania. As news of the accident spread, official messages insisted, "There is no need to overreact, the situation is stable, the leaders have everything under control," but eventually people living near the plant had to be evacuated. Here Fredy reminds us how the original inhabitants of this region were duped and destroyed by the platitudes, promises and police that always accompany Capital.
