Posted on December 18th, 2010 in AK News
These sweet little sheets are going out with books until the current edition is sold out. For those of you not equipped to read tiny jpegs on the internet, here’s what it says:
Two selections in We are an Image From the Future were erroneously credited to Panagiotis Kalamaras. They are found on pages 14–16 and 234–235. The publishers and editors wish to apologize to Mr. Kalamaras for the mistake and will correct it in future editions. Tasos Sagris, A.G. Schwarz, and Void Network are preparing a research chapter for the next edition that will offer a much clearer, complete, and inclusive history of the modern Greek radical movements.
Posted on December 17th, 2010 in Reviews of AK Books
A really nice review of Ben Dangl’s Dancing with Dynamite by NACLA reviewer Jason Tockman. You can visit NACLA here.
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Book Review: Dancing with Dynamite
Dec 14 2010
Jason Tockman
Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America
Benjamin Dangl, AK Press (2010), 206 pp., $15.95 (paperback)
Amidst the flurry of recently published books on the dynamics of contemporary Latin American politics, Ben Dangl’s Dancing with Dynamite stands out for his reporting on social and political change from the vantage point of social movements themselves. In this polemical book, Dangl studies subaltern struggles vis-à-vis states, drawing primarily from targeted interviews with social movement activists and analysts. The resulting product is a view from below, in which Dangl portrays the state most frequently as an antagonistic agent of repression, usurpation, and cooptation, yet also as an apparatus that can sometimes lend itself to progressive designs so long as social movements maintain sufficient autonomy.
In fast-moving and colorful narratives, Dangl dedicates a chapter to each of seven South American countries that are generally seen as part of the region’s “pink tide,” covering the social movement contestation that emerged from recent histories of neoliberal rule – the shortcomings of which led to the election of left and left-leaning governments. The case studies depict the particularities of the “dances” that have taken place between states and social movements under these left-of-center presidencies – ranging from somewhat collaborative in Venezuela and Bolivia to more repressive and demobilizing in Ecuador and Paraguay, with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay falling somewhere in between.
Opening with Bolivia, Dangl constructs an analysis based on his interviews with sociologists, politicians, and social movement participants, including those involved in neighborhood associations in El Alto, community radio programming in Uyuni, a feminist group in La Paz, and the landless workers movement in the department of Beni. He finds that social movements have largely stood behind Evo Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party, which they feel listens to them where former administrations did not. “Nowhere else in Latin America has a grassroots party maintained such close ties to social movements after taking office,” he asserts, “And nowhere else have the boundaries between the party and the social movements been so confused.” But this has benefited the MAS much more than the country’s increasingly demobilized and uncritical social movements, which, Dangl and most of his informants believe, have surrendered a significant degree of autonomy. While a series of social gains have been won by Bolivian social movements, this has occurred within the domain and according to the logic of the state.
Most of the other cases present an even less rosy assessment of state-social movement relations, despite some modest gains in social programs. Again, Dangl builds his analyses primarily from the positions articulated by leaders and members of social movements – including indigenous confederations, labor and campesino organizations, and environmental groups – as well as political party activists and social scientists. Of the seven countries he examines, Ecuador under President Rafael Correa seems to present the most dismal scenario, where the president, ever more at odds with social movements opposed to his resource extraction agenda, has criminalized dissent, using legal maneuvers, verbal attacks, and military repression to silence organizations like the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and the environmental group Acción Ecológica. Meanwhile, in Argentina, former President Néstor Kirchner is portrayed as co-opting, dividing, and demobilizing the social movements – the piqueteros and workers’ recovery of factories – that arose during the country’s 2001-2002 economic crisis. The Broad Front in Uruguay and the Workers Party in Brazil have apologetically embraced many of the neoliberal policies the parties were formed to combat, “betraying” many of the social movements that gave the parties legitimacy. Dangl sees an even deeper betrayal in Paraguay, where Fernando Lugo has failed to deepen democracy or confront social and economic inequality (i.e. through agrarian reform). In Paraguay, he argues, even as the state fails to fulfill its promises, the country’s social movements have fallen into disarray.
Dancing with Dynamite depicts the Venezuelan state as the one most favorable to social movement mobilization – that is, at least, social movements of the left. There, Dangl speaks with activists ranging from volunteer broadcasters with the Catia-based “Radio Rebelde” to Venezuela’s Housewives’ Union in Mérida – and finds that concomitant with the dramatic social investment (educational programs, health clinics, discounted food markets, etc.), Hugo Chávez has done what other South American leaders have not: empowered the somewhat autonomous development of civil society groups, such as the constitution of tens of thousands of community councils. While noting the perilous centralization of power and the Bolivarian project’s dependency on a charismatic leader, Venezuela under Chávez seems to come closest to the “genuine collaboration” pole in Dangl’s “dance” between the state and social movements.
Throughout these chapters, the piquant observation to which Dangl repeatedly returns is that social movements are frequently most vulnerable to cooptation or corruption during electoral campaigns and referenda, in which their constituent power is channeled into the logic of the state. “During elections in particular,” he argues, “parties work against the autonomy of movements.” When social movements concede to picking between the lesser of two evils – a center-left candidate over a free market fundamentalist – “electoral politics traps movements into accepting limitations on their struggle for social change.” In contrast, Dangl notes that in Venezuela, a great deal of activism occurs outside the electoral realm, and does not directly contribute to Chávez’s power.
In Dancing with Dynamite, Dangl himself attempts a difficult analytical dance that seeks to reconcile his evident distrust for states and the governments that run them, and his recognition that certain administrations, such as those of Chávez and Morales, have expanded the capacity of social movements to organize, even in fairly autonomous ways. While he acknowledges that state-society relations can be collaborative and mutually beneficial, his prose typically defaults to skepticism about such shared projects, favoring a competitive, zero-sum disposition as opposed to a dialectical relationship that his conception of a state-society “dance” might suggest. To be sure, this is a product of Dangl’s deliberate methodological approach of allowing his interviews with social movement participants to inform his own analysis, and this positioning of a North American researcher certainly hedges against misinterpretation. However, the analysis would have been strengthened by a closer engagement with the broader literature on state-society relations. That it does not draw on theoretical contributions of thinkers like Marx, Gramsci, Weber, or Foucault is an omission for a book on states and social movements.
Take, for example, the chapter on Argentina. There, Dangl critiques Kirchner’s use of “liberal economic policies to create employment and stability” as demobilizing and “buying off” the middle class with “crumbs,” which fractured the “class-blind” alliance that had been constructed autonomously and was oriented toward revolution. But such a framing is based on two unlikely assumptions: that the middle class was otherwise inclined to maintain an alliance with subaltern groups and steer a revolutionary course once the crisis subsided, and that the state did not view employment and institutional stability as legitimate ends in themselves, but wielded them cynically to foment class division. More likely, there were – and often are – goals shared by the state and the middle class, just as there can be between a leftist government and social movements. It is not that Argentina’s middle class was bribed with jobs; more plausibly, they were quite happy to leave the streets and return to normalcy when the economy ticked upward and just a few of the “todos” had been thrown out.
On the whole, Dangl guides the reader through a rapid and fascinating survey of South America’s “pink tide”, capturing the vicissitudes of today’s relationships between social movements and states. That the book is more a combination of journalism and polemic than an academic text generally works to its advantage in terms of readability and accessibility, although it does miss opportunities to dialogue with, and be informed by a broader body of thought on the nature of the state and its relationship to society. However, Dancing with Dynamite serves as a good primer for the newcomer to the region’s contemporary politics, while its revealing interviews add additional texture for closer observers of Latin America.
Jason Tockman is a Ph.D. student of political science at the University of British Columbia, and a regular contributor to NACLA.
https://nacla.org/node/6845
Posted on December 16th, 2010 in AK Authors!, Current Events
Soon-to-be-AK-author Franco “Bifo” Berardi posted the following commentary to almighty Facebook:
What is happening in Rome and in many other Italian cities, what happened in London only few days ago, marks the beginning of the decade. It’s going to be a decade of conflict and self-defense of society, against a ruling class that is violent and corrupt, against financial capitalism that is literally starving the social sphere, against mafia that is using power to embezzle social resources.
In Rome, on December 14th a Parliament of corrupts celebrates the Godfather‘s victory. In London, on December 9th, a Parliament of liars has ordained the destruction of public education.
The multitude of students, researchers and workers who gathered in Rome in the day of the scandalous vote that anointed the corrupter, did not have the purpose of pulling down a government of mafiosi and of installing a government of exploiters. The purpose of the movement is to destroy power in its very foundations, to bring conflict in every place, to destabilize the order of exploitation and of ignorance, to organize autonomy, to gain
Now we know that in the black hole of the Italian Parliament sits a majority of corrupts. The Godfather who sits as Premier has bought them with the money that he is has taken away from the school, from the workers, from society as a whole. We’ll not respect the law of the mafia. Everywhere we’ll bring revolt, and we’ll organize the desire of autonomy of life from capitalism.
Students in Rome have answered to the violence in the same vein of the Londoners some days before: occupying the city, defending with cultural shields the right to speak out, and declaring that European insurrection has begun, and will last all the time necessary.
It will last.
It’s not a brief explosion, it is the rising up of a generation, it is the declaration of autonomy of collective intelligence from the decay of a violent, ignorant, lugubrious system. It’s the change of cultural climate announcing a decade of fight and construction of a world free from exploitation.
Posted on December 16th, 2010 in About AK, AK Distribution, AK News, Recommended Reading, Uncategorized
New Stuff at AK Press…
Order NOW for holiday delivery!
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Important Holiday Ordering Information
For all you last-minute types, there’s still hope!
Order by the end of the day TODAY (Thursday, 12/16), and choose UPS Ground shipping if you need your order to arrive before the 25th.
Priority Mail may also arrive on time, but is not fully trackable or guaranteed, so USPS shipping is at your own risk. Please see the guidelines on our website to find out more about shipping methods and transit times, and how to make things go smoothly with your holiday ordering! |
| New from AK Press Publishing:
 Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance
Jason Hribal
AK Press/Counterpunch
$11.95 (25% off list price of $15.95!)
“Until the lion has his historian,” the African proverb goes, “the hunter will always be a hero.” Jason Hribal fulfills this promise and turns the world upside down. Taking the reader deep inside the circus, the zoo, and similar operations, he provides a window into the hidden struggle and resistance that occurs daily. Chimpanzees escape their cages. Elephants attack their trainers. Orcas demand more food. Tigers refuse to perform. Indeed, these animals are rebelling with intent and purpose. They become the true heroes, and our understanding of them will never be the same.
And look, you can read an excerpt from the book on our blog!
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| New from AK Press Distro:
 How and Why: A Do-It-Yourself Guide
Matte Resist
Microcosm
$14.00
Following in the footsteps of the popular Making Stuff & Doing Things (and charting all-new DIY territory!), this essential new handbook explores a wide range of simple and advanced projects, with the underpinning notion that anyone is capable and qualified with a little encouragement. Includes step-by-step instructions for projects such as building your own musical instruments, making your own solar panel out of soda cans, building a bicycle sidecar (or doing simple bike upgrades), making greywater improvements to your home, seed saving and gardening… and countless other ways to lead a simpler, more sustainable life!
 Edible Secrets: A Food Tour of Classified U.S. History
Mia Partlow & Michael Hoerger
Microcosm
$10.00
What do top-secret CIA assassination plots, Black Panther arrests, and Reaganomics have in common? Food, of course! For the first time ever, a collection of declassified government documents with food as a theme! Over 500,000 memos, debriefings, and transcripts were combed to uncover some of the most important and iconic people and narratives from U.S. history. These documents are like reality TV for politicos and foodies-assassinations by milkshake, subliminal popcorn cravings, Reagan’s love of hydroponics, and what could be Fred Hampton’s most radical action, giving ice cream to small children. (more…) |
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Posted on December 15th, 2010 in Reviews of AK Books
We were honored last week by two reviews of AK Press books by friends and mentors that elevate the act of reviewing to an art form in and of itself! As one of AK’s publicity folks, I read a lot of book reviews, and it’s always a distinct pleasure to find authors who don’t just write about the book they’re reading, but really take those primary texts as an opportunity and an invitation to explore and experience a much broader world than the one delimited by the boundaries of the printed page. And, happily, both of these reviews underscore the critical element at work in two of our most exciting, and creative fall releases: history.
Flash: In the Ruins of the Perfect Future
On December 3, Scott Borchert from Monthly Review Press published “In the Ruins of the Perfect Future,” a deeply lyrical review of our first new fiction title, Flash, by labor educator and activist Jim Miller. Here’s one of our favorite sections of the review, where Scott rightly establishes Jim’s novel not just as a work of fiction, but as an uncanny work of history … though the history it tells isn’t the one we might expect:
History, the novel suggests, is not about uncovering “what happened” in the past but involves the construction of knowledge in the present, derived from information that is transmitted to us from the past in a complicated and profoundly dialectical fashion. In other words, history is a noisy (and contingent) scene, and Miller gives us a sense of this in the way he gathers up multiple created narratives and displays them in the process of their becoming.
Likewise, we begin to feel, as Jack does, that we must learn to see the present as history. Miller’s writing here is particularly incisive, and rather than merely provide a snapshot view he lays bare the social relations underpinning life in twenty-first century capitalism. (Lukács, following Engels, drew this distinction regarding Zola [the superficial snapshot] and Balzac [the dynamic social relations]—despite their progressive or reactionary politics, respectively.) As he investigates the life of Bobby Flash, Jack moves through a world that is bound up in—and the product of—the very same class struggle Flash encountered in a previous era. It’s a world populated by alienated working stiffs: in “the dirty white light” of a train car Jack sees “the tired, after-work faces of cashiers, janitors, secretaries, security, and the homeless men” (14), evoking the train cars once ridden by Bobby Flash and likewise packed with weary proles. Human interaction in the novel, especially between strangers, tends to be mediated by the commodity form—people meet when money is exchanged; they experience each other through the totalizing logic of the market.
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Posted on December 13th, 2010 in Current Events
In today’s installment of “what the media doesn’t tell you,” has everyone been following what’s going on in Georgia where thousands of prisoners—thousands—went on strike last Thursday in over a half dozen of the state’s prisons and penitentiaries to protest their treatment and demand their human rights. From the small drips and drabs of information leaking out, it appears that many of the prisons are still on lockdown, and many of the prisoners participating in the strike are suffering violent retribution for their peaceful protest.
Here’s a bit of text from the press release issued by former Panther Party chairperson Elaine Brown, who serves as the primary contact and advisor on the outside for the strike organizers:
These thousands of men, from Baldwin, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Smith and Telfair State Prisons, among others, state they are striking to press the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) to stop treating them like animals and slaves and institute programs that address their basic human rights. They have set forth the following demands:
- A LIVING WAGE FOR WORK: In violation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, the DOC demands prisoners work for free.
- EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES: For the great majority of prisoners, the DOC denies all opportunities for education beyond the GED, despite the benefit to both prisoners and society.
- DECENT HEALTH CARE: In violation of the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, the DOC denies adequate medical care to prisoners, charges excessive fees for the most minimal care and is responsible for extraordinary pain and suffering.
- AN END TO CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS: In further violation of the 8th Amendment, the DOC is responsible for cruel prisoner punishments for minor infractions of rules.
- DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS: Georgia prisoners are confined in over-crowded, substandard conditions, with little heat in winter and oppressive heat in summer.
- NUTRITIONAL MEALS: Vegetables and fruit are in short supply in DOC facilities while starches and fatty foods are plentiful.
- VOCATIONAL AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES: The DOC has stripped its facilities of all opportunities for skills training, self-improvement and proper exercise.
- ACCESS TO FAMILIES: The DOC has disconnected thousands of prisoners from their families by imposing excessive telephone charges and innumerable barriers to visitation.
- JUST PAROLE DECISIONS: The Parole Board capriciously and regularly denies parole to the majority of prisoners despite evidence of eligibility.
Prisoner leaders issued the following call: No more slavery. Injustice in one place is injustice to all. Inform your family to support our cause. Lock down for liberty!
The excellent Black Agenda Report reported the strike on December 9, as soon as it began. A quick web search turns up next to nothing in terms of mainstream news coverage, though it does provide one article from the New York Times that seems mostly excited by the fact that prisoners used contraband cellphones to organize across prison boundaries, coordinating simultaneous strikes in several units spread across Georgia (which is admittedly pretty amazing). Bruce Dixon, managing editor of Black Agenda Report posted a really helpful update on December 11 that’s made its way around the web: http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/ga-prisoner-strike-continues-second-day-corporate-media-mostly-ignores-them-corrections-offi. And, KPFA‘s Hard Knock Radio aired a great interview with Elaine Brown on December 9, the day the strike began, but it’s now four days later, and while Georgia newspapers confirm that several prisons are still on lockdown, it’s unclear what the exact situation is inside the prisons, and what’s become of the strike and the strikers.
Anybody else been able to turn up more information? Some reports cite this as the largest prisoner protest in history … and it’s almost non-existent in the media at the moment. Figures. Here’s hoping that those inside the Georgia prisons are standing strong, and know that folks on the outside stand with them in any way we can.
UPDATE: Here’s an article from the Chattanooga Times Free Press that has a little more info, and confirms that at least four prisons are still on lock down, as well as including a lovely quote from Georgia representative Barbara Massey Reece:
“I can’t see paying inmates anything…. I would much rather take that money and put 25 more state troopers on the highway.”
Charming. Read the full article: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/dec/14/georgia-inmates-strike-in-fight-for-pay/?local
And, Democracy Now! finally catches on: Elaine Brown on DN! this morning. http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2010/12/13
Posted on December 10th, 2010 in AK Allies, Happenings
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Plans for the second conference of the North American Anarchist Studies Network are shaping up. It’ll be in lovely Toronto this year, January 15 & 16 at the Steelworkers Hall.
Go here for an html version of the schedule, or here for a snazzy, detailed PDF “info-package.” And you can check out my (and Kate’s) thoughts about last year’s conference here. |
Posted on December 9th, 2010 in AK Authors!, Current Events
Franco Berardi (AKA Bifo, whose book, After the Future, AK will publish in the Spring) just emailed me to say that he’s contributing to a new online news & theory project with the irresistible title of URGE: Ultimate Reseau General-intellect (after)Europe. I’ll be reposting some of his ruminations here from time to time, but I urge (ha) you to check out the site in its entirety! In the meantime, here’s what Bifo posted today about the arrest of Julian Assange, founder, as you all know, of WikiLeaks:
The arrest of Julian Assange
The arrest of Julian Assange sounds the death knell for Western democracy. They caught him, they cut off the wires and the funds. But what did this man exactly do? Simply demonstrate the power of the Network. Western authorities, despite their disdain for Chinese Censorship, behave exactly like Hu Jintao as soon as the power of the networks threatens to introduce Glasnost, to suggest any form of transparency or even, perhaps, expose the realities of power.
What does the experience of Wikileaks teach us? That the military was paid to suppress civilians, that diplomats had been paid to sugar the pill; this we already knew. But that was not the lesson that comes from Wikileaks.
This experience, rather, teaches that the diffuse network of the Cognitariat can challenge and beat the institutions of power. In these structures (military, diplomatic and financial) are cognitive workers: computer programmers, journalists and technicians, who are rapidly discovering the infinite power of collective intelligence.
The battle against the dictatorship of financial idiocy, of Semiocapitalism, has begun.
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Posted on December 6th, 2010 in Events
FREE admission, but donations (to go to MacPhee’s partner, Dara Greenwald, who is battling cancer) gratefully accepted.
Featured Speakers: Sabiha Basrai, graphic designer, Design Action Collective, www.designaction.org Lincoln Cushing, poster historian, www.docspopuli.org
There’s a good chance that during some point in your life you’ve seen a Celebrate People’s History poster, decorating the walls of your classroom, community center or neighborhood book shop. Initiated by Josh MacPhee in 1998, this far-reaching project uses poster art to expose the hidden history of feminist organizing, indigenous uprisings, civil rights leaders, union struggles, LGBT activism and much more.
For the first time ever, a complete set of these posters has been released in hardback by the Feminist Press. Edited by Josh MacPhee with a foreword by Rebecca Solnit, Celebrate People’s History: the Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution reprints over 100 posters along with many new designs commissioned for this affordable, 256-page volume.
Bay Area history stands out prominently in the book with tributes to the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz, the 1966 transgender riot at Compton’s Cafeteria and the 10-year anti-eviction battle by Filipino seniors at the International Hotel. The posters also honor San Francisco’s youth-led demonstrations of 2008 against immigration raids and the successful defense of Los Siete de la Raza, a group of Mission activists who were framed for the murder of a policeman in 1969.
The book includes talented Bay Area printmakers Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes, Eric Drooker, Art Hazelwood, Fernando Marti, Jos Sances and Miriam Klein Stahl along with many well-known national artists such as Sabrina Jones, Cristy Road, Nicole Schulman, Chris Stain, Swoon and Laura Whitehorn.
Come to the book’s West Coast premiere for a poster exhibit, book signing by Bay Area contributors and artist panel.
Josh MacPhee is the co-editor of Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures – 1960s to Now (2010), Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority (2007) and Reproduce and Revolt (2008). He is also the author of Stencil Pirates: a Global Study of the Street Stencil (2004) and the founder of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative.
Guest speaker Sabiha Basrai is a graphic designer with the Design Action Collective, a former-staff member of Philadelphia’s Public Interest GRFX and co-coordinator of the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA).
Guest speaker Lincoln Cushing is the author of Revolucion: Cuban Poster Art (2003), co-author of Chinese Posters (2007), co-author of Agitate! Educate! Organize! – American Labor Posters (2009) and editor of Visions of Peace & Justice (2007).
Posted on December 6th, 2010 in AK Distribution, AK News
Catalog day is always an exciting day at AK Press. After several weeks of frantically updating our databases and scanning covers and making sure all the good new stuff is in stock, not to mention the joys of playing with cover fonts and the pains of fighting with computer programs, we finally get to see the awesome catalog that we’ll be mailing out to you all and putting out on our tables for the next six months!
Besides all the new, forthcoming, and recommended titles, this catalog also includes excerpts from two upcoming books—Autonomy, Solidary, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader and Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs. Plus, since last year’s was such a hit, we’ve included a 2011 pull-out calendar in the center spread—this time featuring Josh MacPhee’s cover art from our gorgeous Work: 2011 Calendar.
If you’ve bought anything from us online or signed up for our mailing list in the last couple of years, you should be receiving one of these beauties in your mailbox any day now. If you’re not already on our mailing list, you can order a print copy of the catalog here. And for now, if you’re the type who prefers to look at this sort of thing on a computer screen—or the type who demands instant gratification—check out the catalog on Scribd, where you can browse it, download it, or share it online to your heart’s content.
Want to help us get these babies out into the world? If you’ve got a good spot for some catalogs (your local cafe? library? show space? community center?), just e-mail macio@akpress.org, and we’ll make sure you get a stack!
