Customer Reviews

All the Power: Revolution Without Illusion (Punk Planet Books)

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I was moved to write a review here, something I never do, by the inaccuracy or apathy expressed in the only other review of this radical text. This is a book for those striving to achieve success in social justice movements.

I have been involved in movements for social change since I was a teenager, and even more so once I was introduced to punk culture. Punk is not just music. Punk is not just an aesthetic. Punk is an attempt to re-frame and alter the injustice that is pervasive among the many, and championed by the few.

Andersen wants us---punks, activists, feminists, environmentalists, anarchists, etc---to learn from his vast experience. He has an important story to tell. As Jello Biafra states on the book's jacket: "In your grasp is a heartfelt, brick-by-brick guide from a committed veteran activist on heart, soul, music, his own life's surprises, and how we can all bring ongoing change to our own communities."

I emphatically encourage anyone with any interest in social change or activism to read this book!

Andersen's book provides an intimate, clear-eyed retrospective on a lifetime of activism, carefully illuminating what works and what doesn't when we're seeking to organize for change. At a time when many of us are hoping for an 'American Spring' vis-a-vis Occupy Wall Street and other populist uprisings, it's important that we don't descend into lifestyle niches, but truly build a broad-based coalition across class and cultural lines. 'All the Power: Revolution Without Illusions' is a power-full wake-up call that should be read alongside more basic primers like 'Rules for Radicals' if we're to bring revolutionary change into the real world.

Mark Andersen probably means well. However the admonitions about how radicals "should" behave are paternalistic, poorly thought out, and occasionally offensive.

Nobody but nobody who wants to change anything needs to have this kind of deadening advice at any point. It's not because Mark isn't entitled to his opinion or even that it's necessarily wrong (I guess I agree with a lot of what's in here). But if you want to tell other people how they should behave in potential future situations, it would be better to be direct and to use a bit more humility. Mark seems to want to construct big old "we" statements in this confusing mixture of personal anecdote and opinion. He'd have done much better to stick to purer I and you statements and leave people the room and dignity not only to make up their own minds but to find their own ways--ones that may be better than anything Mark can imagine.

There is a deep lack of respect for other people's different tactics. So in a way this is just another book by someone who has already decided what a better world looks like and is trying to get everyone not only to share that same vision but to use the same tactics to get there.

Many former punk rockers seem to have got religiously censorious in their old age. My notion during the 70s and 80s was that a lot of punk rockers were working stuff out in art that they'd have done better working out in sex or politics. Today many of them seem to be divorced from their emotions and hearts (and their emotions don't seem to have matured or been nurtured much) but that's all my personal junk--bottom line is that the tone of this book gives me the creeps.

"All the Power" is confusing. It's semi-biographical and semi-activism information. Written by Mark Anderson, a classic punk, it should be good, right? Right?

Wrong.

The problem with this book is that it's just too boring. And by boring I mean I rather put a bullet in my face than even think about trying to get through this again.