Facing Reality
Date
1974
Format
- Book 588
Type of Work
- Finished work 5243
Printers
Publishers
Techniques
Dimensions
5 × 9 in
Printed Pages
12
Locations Made
- Detroit 91
"Facing Reality was written by C. L. R. James, with Grace Lee Boggs and Cornelius Castoriadis (Pierre Chaulieu is a pseud-onym). Originally published in 1958, just a couple of years after a worker’s revolution in Hungary against Stalinist state oppression, it has been de-scribed as James’ most anarchist book. It was originally pub-lished in Detroit by the Correspondence Publishing Committee, and parts were later reprinted in Radical America. The book deals with the practical process of bringing about social revolution in the world. It is intensely critical of Leninism and the state authority that it brought about. The authors describe the inefficacy of Marxist organizing and the inevitable burnout after years of producing newspapers, pam-phlets, and attending confer-ences. They write that Lenin’s idea of a vanguard party “must now be rejected root and branch.” The authors propose alternate forms of organization, such as workers councils. The 1974 Bewick/ed edition appears to be using the 1958 typeset text with the addition of pages with contemporary black-and-white photographs of workers on strike, or otherwise taking control of their situations: a 1973 sit-in at a Chrysler plant in Detroit; workers managing the Lip watch factory in France in 1973; a woman carrying a sign in 1972 Quebec that reads Nous, le monde ordinaire (We, the ordinary people); an auto worker in Germany sleeping on the factory floor; FIAT workers on strike in Italy in 1969; Renault workers on strike in France in 1968."
The Detroit Printing Co-op by Danielle Aubert
Front cover.