Claude Anet

Mitchell Abidor

Ariane, a Young Russian Girl

David Berry

Daniel Guerin

For a Libertarian Communism

The Bisbee Deportation Of 1917

I'll Forget It When I Die!

The mass protests that shook France in May 1968 were exciting, dangerous, creative, and influential, changing European politics to this day. Students demonstrated, workers went on general strike, and factories and universities were occupied. Before it was all over, children, homemakers, and the elderly were swept up in the life-changing events that targeted bureaucratic capitalism and the staid Communist Party. The French state was on the ropes and feared civil war or revolution. Fifty years later, here are the powerful oral testimonies of those young rebels who demanded the impossible. "May Mad Me" reveals the legacy of the uprising: how those explosive experiences changed both individuals and history.

an oral history of the 1968 uprising in France

May made me

Q: “You threw paving stones at [the cops]?” A: “Oh yeah. I had no problem doing that. And I threw marbles as well that we stole from stores. And towards the end we even managed to steal tractors from construction sites and we knocked over trees with them.” The mass protests that shook France in May 1968 were exciting, dangerous, creative, and influential, changing European politics to this day. Students demonstrated, workers went on general strike, and factories and universities were occupied. Before it was all over, children, homemakers, and the elderly were swept up in the life-changing events that targeted bureaucratic capitalism and the staid Communist Party. The French state was on the ropes and feared civil war or revolution. Decades later, here are the eye-opening oral testimonies of those young rebels who demanded the impossible. Published on the 50th anniversary of those momentous events, May Made Me presents the legacy of the uprising: how those explosive experiences changed both the individual and history. “These powerful and moving testimonies create an eye-opening account of the inspiring events of May ’68, which are more relevant for today’s activists than ever before.” —Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

An Oral History of the 1968 Uprising in France

May Made Me

Voices of the Paris Commune

Communards: The Story of the Paris Commune of 1871, As Told by those Who Fought for It. Texts selected, edited, and translated by Mitchell Abidor. Published by Marxists Internet Archive Publications, 2010. In this unique collection of texts translated into English for the first time, we hear the genuine voices of the Paris Commune of 1871. Every Communard drew something different from the experience of the Commune, and "Communards" allows all of them to have their say. "If socialism wasn't born of the Commune, it is from the Commune that dates that portion of international revolution that no longer wants to give battle in a city in order to be surrounded and crushed, but which instead wants, at the head of the proletarians of each and every country, to attack national and international reaction and put an end to the capitalist regime." - Edouard Vaillant, a member of the Paris Commune. Documents include the records of stormy meetings of the Commune deciding on the execution of hostages, minutes of meetings of the First International throughout the siege as well as reminiscences of participants written down 25 years after the event. Much of this would be new to French-speakers; it is all new for those who do not normally read in the French language. No history of the Commune may be written in the future without reference to "Communards." Communards is available only through Erythros Press and Media and proceeds go towards the operations of the Marxists Internet Archive.

The Story of the Paris Commune of 1871, as Told by Those who Fought for it

Communards

Down with the Law

The Propagandists of the Deed

Death to Bourgeois Society

Richard Greeman

Victor Serge (1890-1947) was famous both as a revolutionary and a novelist. A stateless Russian who wrote in French, he has successively an anarchist, a syndicalist, a Bolshevik, a persecuted anti-Stalinist, and a supporter of the Spanish POUM. Greeman and Abidor's biography seeks the core unity of Serge's multiple facets in his underlying devotion to revolutionary probity and respect for the individual. 'The Writer as Witness' emphasizes Serge's fiction and traces his personal, political and artistic evolution through the series of identity crises that punctuated his eventful life. It is also a work of cultural history, placing Serge in the context of what he called the 'Vanished Worlds' of early 20th Century radicalism. Based on interviews, original letters and archival research collected in five countries over 50 years, this critical biography compliments Serge's justly celebrated 'Memoirs of a Revolutionary' intended as a political-historical rather than autobiographical work.

The Writer As Witness

Victor Serge

On July 12, 1917, in the mining town of Bisbee Arizona, twelve hundred striking miners and their supporters were rounded up by forces organized by the town sheriff and the mining companies, marched through the town, parked in the town’s baseball field, and then put in boxcars and shipped into the New Mexican desert. The deportees were largely members or supporters of the radical IWW labor union and mostly foreign-born. The roundup and deportation was part of a xenophobic and anti-radical campaign being carried out by bosses and the government throughout the country in the early days of US participation in World War I. The mine owners then took control of the town and patrols prevented any union miners from even entering it. This little-known story is a shocking and fascinating one on its own, but the sentiments exploited and exposed in Bisbee in 1917 speak to America today.

The Bisbee Deportation of 1917

Mitchell Abidor

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