Roll Over Picasso: E. F. Higgins III, His Life, Art, Legend, by Istvan Kantor
Price: $17.95
Roll Over Picasso is Istvan Kantor’s third major biographic account narrating the legends of artists emerging from the 80s New York Underground, in the pre-gentrified, wild, anti-authoritarian territory of the Lower East Side. Kantor’s main focus is on the insurgent street artist gang of the Rivington School of which E.F. Higgins III was a founding member: visionary graffiti artists; welders; noise makers; beer drinkers; ardent guerrilla fighters striving against conformist museum art. The 80s Lower East Side was the birthplace of legends. Among the ruined buildings, surrounded by misery and decay, a new spirit of desire burst forth. Fires burned in oil drums nourished by art history books; sparks from welding torches covered the ground; rough-looking lads and filthy gals were beating trashcans to death. Sirens of firetrucks added to the noise. That’s where E.F. Higgins III found himself a new living/working territory to manifest his eccentric and divine ‘wingnut’ ideas and start his Doo Da Post mail-art crusade....
Read more about: Roll Over Picasso: E. F. Higgins III, His Life, Art, Legend, by Istvan Kantor »May The Wind Get Off My Back: Short Stories by Kevin Riordan
Price: $14.95
“Kevin Riordan reminds me a lot of Thomas Pynchon with his
high-voltage word-play and post-hip sensibility. But he’s got a
sharp, sarcastic edge that is pure Chicago, more Algren than
New Age. And like Algren, Riordan has a fine eye for the wacky
in human nature, and an affinity for what is gut-wrenching funny
about so-called ordinary people. Open your Blatz beer, light up
your doobie, and prepare for a hilarious blast of Chi-Town
nostalgia.” — Gerald Nicosia, author of Memory Babe: A Critical
Biography of Jack KerouacISBN:9781570274091
... Read more about: May The Wind Get Off My Back: Short Stories by Kevin Riordan »
118 pages, 6×9 inch trim, paperbound,$14.95What Do We Need Bosses For? Toward Economic Democracy, by Pete Dolack
Price: $24.95
Incessant propaganda endlessly blares “there is no alternative” to capitalism. But there is always an alternative. Humanity need not be condemned to sit by helplessly as an uncontrollable economic and political system spanning the world brings us devastating inequality, precarious jobs, life-threatening environmental destruction and global war. What Do We Need Bosses For? Toward Economic Democracy analyzes past and present efforts to establish systems of economic democracy on a national or society-wide basis, dissecting the mounting inequalities of capitalism and theorizing how we might organize a better world. Workers everywhere have repeatedly sought to create that better world, organizing to reverse their subordinate positions under cap-italism and to take charge of their working lives and their workplaces through egalitarian movements that sought to build economies for everybody rather than for a minuscule capitalist elite. Political de-mocracy is impossible without economic democracy. Economic democracy, in turn, is impossible under capitalism. As ever more people realize the present world system offers them nothing but more hard-ship,...
Read more about: What Do We Need Bosses For? Toward Economic Democracy, by Pete Dolack »Protocols for Postcapitalist Expression, by Dick Bryan, Jorge Lopez and Aksell Virtanen
Price: $23.00
Protocols for Postcapitalist Economic Expression. Agency, Finance and Sociality in the New Economic Space
Dick Bryan, Jorge Lopez and Akseli VirtanenWhat would an Internet native economic system look like? Could economic power be systematically shared amongst individuals and their self-defined groups, with no central economic authority? And could that system secure collectively defined social and environmental benefits and create liquidity for their production?
In Protocols for Postcapitalist Economic Expression Bryan, Lopez and Virtanen build the conditions for such a system. Where economic processes are not dictated by profit, what counts as value-creation, and is rewarded by dividends, can be collectively determined by the network. Care, the arts, the environment will not be after-thoughts, to be subsidized by states or the rich: they can be at the core of the economy’s value proposition.
This book develops protocols that can generate all these processes. A blend of theoretical engagement with big economic ideas (Marx,...
Read more about: Protocols for Postcapitalist Expression, by Dick Bryan, Jorge Lopez and Aksell Virtanen »SDS: Students For A Democratic Society, by Kirkpatrick Sale
Price: $29.95
SDS, or Students for a Democratic Society, was one of the largest national student activist organizations of the 1960s, with over 300 college campus chapters by 1965. This influential New Left group was founded in 1960 as a student offshoot of the socialist League for Industrial Democracy (LID). With the publication in 1962 of their manifesto, The Port Huron Statement, SDS outlined their belief in participatory democracy and their goal to fight social injustices through non-violent means. Initially the group focused on promoting citizen engagement with politics and the civil rights movement, but pivoted to anti-war demonstrations and protests of the Vietnam War and the draft, and then to anti-communist, anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian struggles more generally. While SDS ultimately splintered and disbanded in 1969, in more recent years younger students have struggled to revive it.“Sale’s objective and detailed treatment of this period… gives the best overall sense of what was transpiring.” — Abbie Hoffman
“This big, painstakingly researched history… easily qualifies as the definitive work.” — New York Times
“Written just years after the collapse of the organization, and with access to their extensive archives…. Full of first-hand accounts organized chronologically through the organization’s ten-year history… an essential source for research.”— Anti-imperialist.org
“Sale gives us…a history of tactics more and more radical followed by repression more and more severe.” — Journal of Contemporary Sociology
With the author’s new contextual preface, 50 years after original publication.
Clearly Kabouter: Chronicle of a Radical Dutch Movement, 1969-1974, by Coen Tasman
Price: $24.95
“With Coen Tasman’s Clearly Kabouter: Chronicle of the Dutch Counterculture, Autonomedia adds yet another valuable publication to its series on the history of Holland’s radical ‘mythical’ era (between 1965 and 1974). From the Provo Movement and the artists and freethinkers who launched the Assault on the Impossible, we turn here to the countercultural Kabouter Movement. Coen Tasman offers us an authentic account of the collective effort to create a greener car-free city center, shops with pesticide-free food, resistance to the developer-generated housing shortage, and many other innovative ideas that came to public attention in exuberantly playful ways, both within and outside the City Council. The Kabouter Movement’s legacy remains highly relevant today.” — Annemarie de Wildt, curator, The Amsterdam Museum“The essential sourcebook for all Kabouterphiles past, present and future, finally translated into English by Jordan Zinovich!” — Ron Sakolsky, author, Dreams of Anarchy and the Anarchy of Dreams: Adventures at the Crossroads of Anarchy & Surrealism
“Coen Tasman gives us a first-hand account of a unique and daring attempt to create a joyful society. The Kabouter Movement mushroomed half a century ago in the Netherlands and its spores are now more pertinent than ever.” — Hans Plomp, founding squatter of Amsterdam’s Ruigoord Cultural Free Port
“As a cultural critic of sorts, I find that my writings often concentrate almost exclusively on negative critique. Not so for this exploration of the Kabouter Movement! Coen Tasman’s Clearly Kabouter documents gnomish dances in hallowed Amsterdam streets. In response to the old Cherneschevskian question (What Is To Be Done?), it guides us to the mycelium that will power future clashes with Miserabilism. Break out the nose flutes. All Power to the Nature Spirits of the True Revolution!” — Hakim Bey, author, TAZ
