The Big Game

Benjamin Péret ; translated with an introduction by Marilyn Kallet.

Black Widow Press, 357 pages.

Black Widow Press has released a translation (by Marilyn Kallet) of The Big Game, a 1928 work by Surrealist Benjamin Péret. In addition to being André Breton’s most committed Surrealist co-thinker, Péret was the the Surrealist most consistently involved as an organizationally engaged revolutionary. He was one of the contributing founders of Brazilian Trotskyism (see Robert Alexander’s Trotskyism in Latin America for details), participated in the ranks of an anarchist militia in the Spanish revolution, and co-led a dissenting troika (with Grandizo Munis and Natalia Trotsky) within the Fourth International which agitated against the official line of defensism and workers’-statism.

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Sex, Race and Class—the Perspective of Winning: A Selection of Writings 1952-2011 (Forthcoming March 2012)

Selma James

PM Press, 300 pages.

PM Press continues to offer an interesting list of new titles including Sex, Race and Class—the Perspective of Winning, a forthcoming collection of works by feminist and theorist of the wages for housework movement Selma James. James was a member of the Johnson-Forest Tendency and a co-author of A Woman’s Place, the feminist pamphlet issued by Correspondence Committees in 1953. She accompanied C.L.R. James to England after he was forced to leave the U.S. under threat of deportation that year and the two were married. She worked with him during his extended stays in Trinidad, the couple active first as supporters, then critics of, Eric Williams. Selma James became grew estranged from her husband during this period and became heavily involved in the British radical feminist movement. She also established links with the Italian feminist movement and worked with Mariarosa Dalla Costa. Criticism &c. looks forward to this book and in particular its potential to rekindle much-needed discussion on the relationship of Marxism and feminism.