Fredy Perlman (August 20, 1934 – July 26, 1985)
was an author, publisher and activist. His most popular work, the
book
Against
His-Story, Against Leviathan!, details the rise of state
domination with a retelling of history through the
Hobbesian metaphor of the
Leviathan. The book remains a major source
of inspiration for
anti-civilisation perspectives in
contemporary anarchism.
Though Perlman detested ideology and would claim that the only
"-ist" he would to respond to was
cellist,
his work both as an author and publisher has been very influential
on modern
anarchist thought.
Childhood and youth
Perlman
was born in Brno
, Czechoslovakia
. He emigrated with parents to Cochabamba
, Bolivia
in 1938 just
ahead of the Nazi takeover.
The
Perlman family came to the United States
in 1945 and finally settled in Lakeside Park,
Kentucky
.
In 1952 he
attended Morehead State College in Kentucky and then UCLA
from
1953-55. Perlman was on the staff of
The Daily Bruin, the school newspaper, when the
university administration changed the constitution of the newspaper
to forbid it from nominating its own editors, as the custom had
been. Perlman left the newspaper staff at that time and, with four
others, proceeded to publish an independent paper,
The
Observer, which they handed out on a public sidewalk at the
campus bus stop, since they were forbidden by the administration to
distribute in on the campus.
In 1956-59 he attended
Columbia
University, where he met his life-long companion,
Lorraine Nybakken. He enrolled as a
student of English literature but soon concentrated his efforts in
philosophy, political science and European literature. One
particularly influential teacher for him at this time was
C. Wright
Mills.
Travel and study
In late 1959, Perlman and his wife took a cross-country motor
scooter trip, mostly on two-lane highways traveling at 25 miles per
hour.
From
1959 to 1963, they lived on the lower east side of Manhattan
while Perlman worked on a statistical analysis of
the world's resources with John
Ricklefs. They participated in anti-bomb and pacifist
activities with the
Living Theatre
and others. Perlman was arrested after a sit-down in Times Square
in the fall of 1961. He became the printer for the Living Theatre
and during that time wrote
The New Freedom, Corporate
Capitalism and a play,
Plunder, which he published
himself.
In 1963,
the husband and wife left the U.S. and moved to Belgrade
, Yugoslavia
after living some months in Copenhagen and
Paris. Perlman received a master's degree in economics and a
PhD at the
University of Belgrade's
Law School; his dissertation was titled "Conditions for the
Development of a Backward Region," which created an outrage among
some members of the faculty.
During his last year in Yugoslavia, he was a
member of the Planning Institute for Kosovo
and
Metohija.
Professional life
During
1966-69 the couple lived in Kalamazoo
, Michigan
. Perlman taught social science courses at
Western
Michigan University
and created outrage among some members of the
faculty when he had students run their own classes and grade
themselves. During his first year in Kalamazoo, he and
Milos Samardzija, one of his
professors from Belgrade, translated
Isaac Illych Rubin's
Essay on Marx's
Theory of Value. Perlman wrote an introduction to the book:
"An Essay on Commodity Fetishism."
In May
1968, after lecturing for two weeks in Turin
, Italy,
Perlman went to Paris on the last train before rail traffic was
shut down by some of the strikes that were sweeping Western Europe
that season. He participated in the May unrest in Paris and
worked at the Censier center with the Citroen factory committee.
After returning to Kalamazoo in August, he collaborated with Roger
Gregoire in writing
Worker-Student Action Committees, May
68.
During his last year in Kalamazoo, Perlman had left the university
and together with several other people, mostly students,
inaugurated the
Black and Red magazine, of which six
issues appeared.
Typing and layout was done at the Perlman
house and the printing at the Radical Education
Project in Ann Arbor, Michigan
. In January 1969 Perlman completed
The
Reproduction of Daily Life. While traveling in Europe in the
spring of 1969, he spent several weeks in Yugoslavia and there
wrote
Revolt in Socialist Yugoslavia, which was suppressed
by the authorities, who called it a CIA plot.
In August 1969 he and his wife moved to Detroit, where he wrote
The Incoherence of the Intellectual and with others
translated
Guy Debord's
Society of the Spectacle. This
edition was indicated by Debord himself as containing "obvious
weaknesses."
In 1970 Perlman was one of a large group that set up the Detroit
Printing Co-op with equipment from Chicago. For the next decade,
Black & Red publications were printed there, along
with countless other projects ranging from leaflets to newspapers
to books.
Between 1971 and 1976 he worked on several books, originals as well
as translations, including
Manual for Revolutionary
Leaders,
Letters of
Insurgents,
Peter Arshinov's
History of the Makhnovist
Movement,
Voline's
The Unknown
Revolution, and
Jacques
Camatte's
The Wandering of Humanity. During the same
years, Perlman began playing the cello, often in chamber music
sessions twice a week. In 1971 he and his wife traveled to Alaska
by car.
In 1976 Perlman underwent surgery to replace a damaged heart valve.
After, he helped write and perform
Who's Zerelli? a play
critiquing the authoritarian aspects of the medical
establishment.
During 1977-80 he studied (and charted) world history. During these
years, he traveled to Turkey, Egypt, Europe and regions of the U.S.
to visit historic sites with Lorraine. In 1980 he began a
comprehensive history of
The Strait (Detroit and
surroundings). He did not finish this work, and the first and last
chapters remain unwritten. In July 1985, he estimated that it would
take him eight or ten months to complete and edit the
manuscript.
Both Perlman and Lorraine helped on the anti-authoritarian
magazine,
Fifth
Estate, doing typesetting and proofreading as well as
contributing articles. His most recent contributions were
Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom and
The Continuing
Appeal of Nationalism.
During 1982-83, he suspended work on
The Strait to write
Against His-story, Against Leviathan!.
In 1983, Perlman joined the cello section of the Dearborn Orchestra
and in June 1985 performed quartets by Mozart and Schumann at a
program for Physicians for Social Responsibility.
On July 26, 1985, Perlman underwent heart surgery at Henry Ford
Hospital, where he died.
In 1989, his widow Lorraine Perlman published a biography of Fredy,
Having Little, Being Much on the press they founded, Black
& Red. Lorraine Perlman continues to run the press in Detroit,
Michigan and still contributes to
Fifth Estate.
Selected Publications
See also
References
External links
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