Dancin' In The Streets!: Anarchists, IWWs, Surrealists, Situationists & Provos In The 1960s - As Recorded In The Pages Of The Rebel Worker & Heatwave (Sixties Series) [Paperback]

Franklin Rosemont (Editor), Charles (eds) Radcliffe (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0882863010 | ISBN-13: 978-0882863016 | Publication Date: March 8, 2005 | Edition: First Edition

While square critics derided them as "the left wing of the Beat Generation," the multi-racial, working-class editorial groups of 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. 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 introduced countless readers to important writings by and about surrealists, situationists, IWWs, anarchists, libertarian Marxists, Provos, the Japanese Zengakuren, and other political/cultural revolutionary-minded individuals and movements from all over the world. This lavish tome provides dozens of selections from all the editions of both journals, with a wealth of related documents, communiques and articles, a bibliography, and detailed introduc tions by the original editors. What a book! What other work could Murray Bookchin, Sam Dolgoff and Guy Debord all agree was worthwhile and revolutionary!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Franklin Rosemont was born on October 2, 1943, in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Henry, was a labor activist, and mother, Sally, a jazz musician. He edited and wrote an introduction for What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings of Andre Breton, and edited Rebel Worker, Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DIL PICKLE and Juice Is Stranger Than Friction: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim. With Penelope Rosemont and Paul Garon he edited THE FORECAST IS HOT!. His work has been deeply concerned with both the history of surrealism (writing a forward for Max Ernst and Alchemy: A Magician in Search of Myth) and of the radical labor movement in America, for instance, writing a biography of Joe Hill. He died on April 12, 2009, in Chicago.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Charles H Kerr; First Edition edition (March 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882863010
• ISBN-13: 978-0882863016
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #439,121 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We Need Dancin's Ideas More Than Ever Before!, September 24, 2005

By 

Gale Ahrens "Thought Vaccine" (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dancin' In The Streets!: Anarchists, IWWs, Surrealists, Situationists & Provos In The 1960s - As Recorded In The Pages Of The Rebel Worker & Heatwave (Sixties Series) (Paperback)

To get a feel for the 60's, read Dancin': a compilation of radical essays and texts from the period. They make it clear that there's no liberty or freedom without the abolition of all the misery producing authoritarian institutions that make up the established order: jails, armies, work, governments, schools, churches, capitalism, the commodity spectacle, electoral politics and of the master/slave (employer/employee) classes. They offer an end to the reality/misery principle through the tenants of radicalism of all sorts and surrealism that exalts the pleasure principle. Dancin' also gives us a peek at the personalities and internal struggles involved in emerging revolutionary movements of the day.

Editors Rosemont and Radcliffe today continue their revolutionary zeal so that we realize that these ideas are eternal, that they are far more than hiccoughs in history, interesting but over except as blueprints for miserablists on how to keep down the working class. We realize that in the face of globalization, corporate domination, the rise of political and religious fundamentalism, we need these ideas more than ever. You get caught up just in the exhilaration of Dancin's ideas of joyful living, imagine the exhilaration to come upon their reification. With the continued spread of Dancin's antidotes to human enslavement, we can we bury this corpse that's been offered to us by the established ruling class as life.

Of all the impossibles that ever were, the impossibility of human liberty couldn't be more possible. As Percy Shelley wrote "Arise like lions after slumber/In unvanquishable number/ Shake your chains to earth like dew/Which in sleep have falled [sic] on you/Ye are many/they are few." Why wait? Shake off your chains here and now, instead of heading to the salt mines, let's together head straight to the streets and once there, do some Dancin'!