Franklin Rosemont’s 1978 collection of writings by André Breton, What is Surrealism? remains a treasure trove of rare and valuable texts. I have just come across a footnote by Rosemont to “On Proletarian Literature,” an interesting 1933 speech by Breton, which draws attention to the fact that the Surrealists were the first to publish in […]
The Marxists Internet Archive has just made available one of Raya Dunayevskaya’s analyses of the political aftermath of Stalin’s death in March of 1953. “Russian Regime Cannot Afford a Beria Show Trial,” which appeared in Correspondence on January 9, 1954, recounts the execution of Lavrenti Beria, chief of the Russian secret police, in the context […]
André Breton broke resolutely with the Communist Party of France and the international apparatus of Communist parties in 1935, leaving behind forever former Surrealists such as Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard. Breton’s criticisms of the counter-revolutionary monstrosity the Stalin version of socialism had become are magnificently expressed in the indispensable essays of Political Position of […]
Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) can be called the outsider of German Marxist thought. While the members of the Frankfurt School and its extended circle have practically become household names in American academia, Bloch’s highly individualistic blend of Expressionism, Marxism, “Left” Aristotleanism, and messianism remains acknowledged by, but not assimilated into, the academic canon of Critical Theory. […]
David Ames Curtis has long been identified with the work of philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997), one of the founding members of the French revolutionary group Socialism or Barbarism, which published an influential journal from 1949 to 1965. Curtis has championed Castoriadis’s writings and has been responsible for most of the translations that have published in […]
Urbane Revolutionary: C.L.R. James and the Struggle for a New Society (University Press of Mississippi , 2008, 282 pages) *** While not exactly a new book, Frank Rosengarten’s Urbane Revolutionary: C.L.R. James and the Struggle for a New Society is an important addition to the large body of James literature and deserves a serious critical […]
Out of Ruin, Haiti’s Visionaries *** André Breton’s connection to Haiti was mentioned briefly in this interesting article in The New York Times this week. In a special museum section (in Thursday’s print national edition), Holland Cotter describes the effects of the recent earthquake on Haiti’s artists. He mentions Breton in reference to damage to […]
Randolph Bourne (1886-1918) was an important and, sadly, now little-known American literary and cultural figure. He was brought to my attention by Franklin Rosemont’s Jacques Vaché and the Roots of Surrealism (reviewed earlier on this blog). I provide here a link to a HathiTrust scanned image of his most enduring essay, “The War and the […]
Red & Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957 Matthew J. Smith (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) *** Even for those sympathetic to Haiti, the big events—the great revolution at the close of the eighteenth century, the brutal Duvalier regime, and the roller coaster ride of Aristide’s political career—are probably all they […]
The government of the one-party police state of Cuba stands rebuked before the world for the death in custody of dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo. The highest levels of the Communist Party of Cuba bear direct responsibility for his death. Friends of freedom around the world should take this unwelcome news as a call to renew […]
Criticism &c. 