Anarchist Archive 9 Our Collections 9 Allan Antliff Fonds/Collection 9 Fredy and Lorraine Perlman – Black & Red Press Collection

Fredy and Lorraine Perlman – Black & Red Press Collection

Biographical History

In 1970 the Perlmans established the Black & Red Printing Co-Operative in Detroit, Michigan. Many early books and pamphlets are notable for their layout, use of colour, and illustrations, which Fredy Perlman designed or played a role in designing (Having Little, 59). “Black & Red Press” was founded by the Perlmans in Kalamazoo, Michigan and was an off-shoot of a journal of the same name.

Scope and Content

The collection consists of journals, pamphlets and books published by Black and Red Press.

Journal Black and Red

  1. Black and Red #1–6 (September 1968–March 22, 1969) published at Kalamazoo, Michigan by the Perlmans and collaborators following Fredy Perlman’s return from France, where he participated in the uprisings in Paris (Having Little, 49). This journal is very rare and marks the beginning of the Perlmans’ activist-related publishing and writing activities.

Pamphlets and Books

The dates of the pamphlets and books are varied and related information is gleaned from Lorraine Perlman’s biography, Having Little, Being Much: A Chronicle of Fredy Perlman’s Fifty Years. The Allan Antliff Fonds contain first editions (or early editions) of these publications, many which were gifted by Lorraine Perlman.

Situationist

  1. Fredy Perlman, The Reproduction of Everyday Life (Kalamazoo, 1969); a seminal Situationist influenced statement later published as a pamphlet by the Black & Red Press.
  2. Raoul Veneigem, Traté de savoir—vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations (Detroit: Black & Red, 1970; Having Little, 66); this is the first English-language translation of an excerpt from The Revolution of Everyday Life, a foundational Situationist publication later translated in full by the anarchist Left Bank Books collective in 1983.
  3. The Fetish Speaks (Detroit: Black & Red, 1973); a Situationist inspired pamphlet produced by the B&R collective.
  4. Situationist International, On the Poverty of Student Life: Ten Days that Shook the University (Detroit: Black & Red, 1983; reprint of 1973 edition); another seminal Situationst publication first translated into English by B&R.
  5. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: co-published by Radical America and Black & Red, a Black & Red translation, 1970); this is the first English-language edition of the most important Situationist statement. This first edition book includes a photo juxtaposed with the text to subtly critique the Situationists themselves; Having Little, 71–74; photo, 74).

Other

  1. Fredy Perlman, Revolt in Socialist Yugoslavia (Detroit: Black & Red, 1873; reprint of Birth of a Revolutionary Movement in Yugoslavia published in 1969 by the Perlmans as a Black & Red pamphlet). The Black & Red Publishing Co-Op edition included colour illustrations and Fredy Perlman’s logo for the Black & Red Printing Co-Op: the “Industrial Workers of the World” emblem indicates their membership in this anarchist-syndicalist union; Perlman added the slogan, “abolish the wage system, abolish the state” (Having Little, 64).
  2. Fredy Perlman, Plunder: A Play (Detroit: Black & Red, 1973; dated New York City, June 1962, this is a first edition “reprint” of a typed manuscript; Having Little, 66). Note the colour variations.
  3. Fredy Perlman, The Incoherence of the Intellectual: C. Wright Mill’s Struggle to Unite Knowledge and Action (Detroit: Black & Red, 1970). Written in 1969 after the Perlmans move to Detroit and printed before the establishment of the Printing Co-Op, this pamphlet is a very important statement by Perlman: Having Little, 53).
  4. Fredy Perlman, The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism (Detroit: Black & Red, 1985).
  5. R. Gregoire and Fredy Perlman, Worker-Student Actions Committees France May ’68 (Kalamazoo: Black & Red, 1969)–this was co-produced with an anarchist from France who, like Perlman, participated in the actions it discusses (see Having Little, 49).
  6. Bob Maier, Observerman (no date; Bob Maier was a member of the Black & Red Press group in Kalamazoo—this pamphlet was produced in 1969).
  7. Andrée Hoyles, General Strike, France 1968: A Factory-by-Factory Account (Chicago: Sojourner Truth Organization, 1970); this was not a B&R production, but it was among the pamphlets Lorraine Perlman filed with her B&R materials.
  8. Linda Lanphear, How I Became an Outside Agitator (Detroit: Black & Red, 1969); this pamphlet was produced in Kalamazoo before the author departed for France, where she joined the Situationist International and ‘repudiated’ her activities with Black & Red (Having Little, 71).
  9. Michael Velli, Generation of Revolutionaries (Detroit: Red & Black, 1972); a promotional pamphlet excerpt from the forthcoming book, Manual for Revolutionary Leaders.
  10. Michael Velli, Manual for Revolutionary Leaders, complied and edited by Lorraine and Fredy Perlman, (Detroit: Black & Red, 1972); first edition signed by Black & Red co-op member Judy Campbell (Having Little, 74–76), this book, written by the fictional revolutionary leader “Michael Velli,” was a collection of citations from writings by “New Left” political figures and the Marxist leaders they sought to emulate. It was intended to expose the influence of Marxist authoritarianism in the New Left. Ironically, many took it on face value as a manual for how to exercise leadership: the Perlmans included an explanatory statement in the second edition (Having Little, 79–81).
  11. Andy Anderson, Hungary, ’56 (Detroit: Black & Red, 1976).
  12. I.C.O., Poland: 1970–71—Capitalism and Class Struggle (Detroit: Black & Red, 1977).
  13. Maurice Brinton, The Irrational in Politics (Detroit: Black & Red, 1976). A reprint of a publication of the London Solidarity Group: the author Chris Pallis, was a leading figure in this group, which was critical of Marxism’s authoritarian foundations.
  14. Fredy Perlman, “Essay on Commodity Fetishism” (Kalamazoo, March 1968): this important early statement was Perlman’s response to Essays on Marx’s Theory of Social Value by early Soviet economist I.I. Rubin which he co-translated (from the Russian) in 1967. It would serve as the introduction to the B&R English-language edition (Having Little, 43).
  15. I.I. Rubin, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Social Value, “Introduction: Commodity Fetishism” by Fredy Perlman (Detroit: Black & Red, 1972).
  16. LIP and the Self-Managed Counter-Revolution, translated by Peter Rachleff and Alan Wallach from Négation #3 (Detroit: Black & Red, 1975): in the mid-1970s the Perlmans were exploring the critical theory of far left currents in France. This French-language critique of conventional unionism is a theme that B&R publications developed in tandem with the Fifth Estate (Having Little, 84).
  17. G. Munis, J. Zerzan, Unions against Revolution (Detroit-Chicago: Black & Red/New Space, 1975): a translation of a French-language critique of union bureaucracies and an essay on “the revolt against work” by John Zerzan—features an explanatory note and a critical interplay between photos and text (Having Little, 84).
  18. Jacques Camatte, The Wandering of Humanity (Detroit: Black and Red, 1975): a translation of French-language essays originally published in the French journal Invariance no. 3 (1973). This publication influenced the development of “anarchist-primitivism” in the Fifth Estate milieu (Having Little, 84–85).
  19. Judith Malina, Love and Politics (Detroit: Black & Red, 2001): poems by a co-founder (1947) of the Living Theatre.
  20. Noam Chomsky, Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship, with an introduction by Peter Werbe (Detroit: Black & Red, 1997).
  21. Jacques Baynac, The Story of Tatiana (Detroit: Black & Red, 1994).
  22. David Watson, Beyond Bookchin: preface for a future social ecology (Detroit: Black & Red, 1996). The author, David Watson, was a contributor to the Fifth Estate.
  23. David Watson, Against the Megamachine: essays on Empire & its Enemies (New York: Autonomedia, 1997).
  24. Peter Archinov, History of the Makhnovist Movement, 1918–1921, trans., by Fredy and Lorraine Perlman (Detroit-Chicago: Black & Red Solidarity, 1974): this is the English-language edition of a first-hand account (published in 1923) of the anarchist insurrection in Ukraine during the Russian civil war. This edition includes an explanatory note, an appendix of documents translated from Russian, and an introduction by the Russian anarchist Voline.
  25. Sophia Machalo and Yarostan Vochek, Letters of Insurgents (Detroit: Black & Red, 1976): a historical compendium by way of fictional letters. The book was printed by the Kitchener, Ontario-based Dumont Press. The Perlmans spent “various periods of the summer and fall [of 1976]” in Kitchener, helping with production (Having Little, 91–95; 102–103).
  26. Fredy Perlman, The Strait (Detroit: Black & Red, 1988): first edition with map insert, typeset at Dumont Press.
  27. Fredy Perlman, Against Leviathan, Against His-tory (Detroit: Black & Red, 1983; third printing, 2010).
  28. Fredy Perlman, Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Program (Detroit: Black & Red Press, 2002).
  29. Christina V. Pacosz, Some Winded, Wild Beast (Detroit: Black & Red, 1985).
  30. Lorraine Perlman, Having Little, Being Much: A Chronicle of Fredy Perlman’s Fifty Years (Detroit: Black & Red, 1996).
  31. Henri Simon, Poland, 1980–82: Class Struggle and the Crisis on Capital, translated by Lorraine Perlman (Detroit: Black & Red, 1996): first edition, typeset at Dumont Press.
  32. Fredy Perlman, Critical Evaluation (Factory School, 2004): reprint of an essay written by Perlman in 1967 while he was living in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Gifts from Federico Arcos (click for film interview)

  1. Federico Arcos, Momentos, with illustrations by Alfredo Monros (Detroit: Black & Red, 1976)—Frederico slipped a card with two poems by his wife, Pura Arcos, into the book.
  2. José Peirats, Appendix to Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution (Detroit: Black & Red, 1993) with an insert list of B&R publications.

Black Rose Press Reprints of B&R Publications

  1. Voline, The Unknown Revolution (Montreal: Black Rose Books, November 1975). This includes an explanatory note on previous imprints, noting Fredy Perlman’s translation this edition. On Black Rose and Dimitri Roussopoulos see Having Little, 69–71.
  2. Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control (Montreal: Black Rose Books, Third English-language edition, 1975). This includes an explanatory note on previous translations/editions—”first English-language edition Solidarity, 1970; second English-language edition Black & Red, 1974.”