New Albert Memoir: Remembering Tomorrow
 
Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2007 09:43:47 -0500 (CDT)


Hello,

Here is another ZNet Free Update, this time relaying news of Michael
Albert's new book: Remembering Tomorrow: From SDS to Life After
Capitalism.  Albert's new book, a memoir, is available from Seven
Stories Press, Amazon.com, etc. Here is the description of the book
from the jacket:

"In this candid memoir of the American Left, veteran anticapitalist
activist Michael Albert offers a characteristically unadorned
personal account of recent American movements to transcend inequality.
A uniquely visionary figure, Remembering Tomorrow recounts a life
of uncompromising commitment, whether chronicling the battles against
the Vietnam War and his own political awakening as a member of SDS
or recounting the challenges of creating alternative social models,
Albert strikes a balance between resistance and vision. Reflections
on the life of a child of the sixties and would be physicist cum
radical economist, Albert's story is a lesson in the profound hope
that inspires social change." The book includes, in its 450 pages
and 34 chapters, the history of ZNet, Z, South End Press, Parecon,
and much of the left from SDS to the WSF over the past forty years,
including matters of belief, motives, values, organization and
structure, funding, policy, people, and interpersonal relations.
The book page for Remembering Tomorrow is at
http://www.zmag.org/remtom.html and includes the cover, table of
contents, introduction, various comments, links for purchase, etc.
We hope you will visit it! Below we relay some comments by early
readers and below that, Albert's author interview about the book.

--- Early Comments on Remembering Tomorrow... About the book, Noam
Chomsky writes on the jacket:

"Michael Albert's accomplishments in his life and work have been
truly remarkable.... This lively memoir not only adds new dimensions
to understanding his own perspective and ideas, but also provides
revealing and often surprising insights into the exciting history
of the past forty years, the popular movements and the institutional
structures that have sought to contain and undermine them, their
successes and failures, and the prospects for moving on. It is quite
an achievement." Barbara Ehrereich also writes on the jacket:
"Remembering Tomorrow is the deeply engaging story of Michael
Albert's evolution from frat boy to one of the world's premiere
utopian thinkers--not just a tale of the sixties, it'll be just as
relevant in the late 21st century."  And Howard Zinn, writes, also
on the jacket:  "Michael Albert is an important thinker who takes
us beyond radical denunciations and pretentious analysis to a
thoughtful, profound meditation on what a good society can be like."
The book is just out, this being the first public notice, and there
haven't been many readers yet, obviously - though a few people had
pre publication copies and we do have a few comments they have
offered for display. Brian Kelly, a prominent SDS organizer at Pace
University and in NYC wrote:  "Remembering Tomorrow provides an
incredible array of practical lessons from the past that we can
apply directly to our lives in the present and future. Its look at
the sixties and decades since, addressing culture, political events,
and especially activist organizing, presents history not only
honestly, but as we need it. Its focus on vision and strategy
challenges our current over emphasis on only critique. Its exploration
of what type of society we really want by way of historical examples
and experiences is mind altering. Weaving together issues of sex,
gender, race, and class, of what has been and of what could be, of
people and their lives, places and their conflicts, and events and
their implications, all culled from personal experiences, makes for
a wonderfully human book that is also inspiring and edifying.
Remembering Tomorrow is a must read for every young organizer who
is serious about struggling to win. I have read it twice and am
going back for a third time!" Cynthia Peters, Boston Organizer and
writer and past staff person at South End Press wrote:  "Sometimes
poetic, sometimes analytical, always provocative, tenacious, and
hopeful, Michael Albert brings his unique understanding of the past
and his fearless vision of the future together in this remarkable
memoir. These are not just the reminiscences of a 60s radical, this
is the story of someone for whom the lessons of the time took root
and grew into a lifelong commitment to create alternative institututions
that address the pain of the oppressive systems that hurt us all.
That pain is never far from the surface in Remembering Tomorrow.
(Expect to cry while you read.) But nor is the hopefulness that a
radically better world is possible.

(You can expect to feel that as well.) It is a rare honor and
pleasure to get to know this organizer, thinker, economist, media
activist, and true visionary through his deeply felt reflections
on war, patriarchy, classism, and racism -- all emerging through
the lens of someone who has spent the last 40 years on the front
lines of social change work. Read Remembering Tomorrow. You won't
emerge unscathed. But you will emerge with a new sense of the
possible and with a set of insights and lessons that should help
us all deal with current realities while pointing ourselves toward
a better future." Brian Dominick, Syracuse activist and collective
member at The Newstandard, wrote:  "What is most significant to me
about Michael Albert's memoir is not its insight into how he formed
his radical worldview, but its insight into how he has maintained,
expanded and applied it in the decades since. Becoming a radical,
as Michael insists was true for him and certainly was for me, is
no major feat. More often than not, it just happens, for many people
requiring no extra effort. But resisting social pressures to surrender
one's radicalism -- not just during a life phase but over a lifetime
-- is another matter entirely.

For younger people with decades to go in the development of our
beliefs and the application of our own radical principles, this
book is a series of countless lessons in how not to be overcome
with despair, how not to sell out and how to be most effective in
applying one's energies while carving out a workable and fulfilling
life. But Remembering Tomorrow isn't a series of lectures, and it's
anything but a compilation of crotchety observations by a tired
dinosaur of the Sixties. It's a captivating read that even an old
friend of Michael's will find filled with surprising thoughts,
encounters and tangents about everything from organizing and violence
to money and personal relations, about people, places, and yes,
even things. If you want or need hope about building movements and
institutions capable of truly revolutionary social change, this is
the book for you."Justin Podur, a Toronto journalist and activist,
who volunteers with ZNet, as well, wrote:  "The institutions we
live in, Michael Albert teaches, prevent us from thinking clearly
about what is important. They also prevent us from connecting with
each other. In such a world, our visions of a better future can
become convoluted and disconnected.

Michael Albert's life's work has been to present a case for a vision
of a better future that is clear, lucid, and not convoluted. By
giving us the human story out of which that case emerged, he helps
us to connect it - with a history and trajectory of struggle, with
the movement that taught him so much, and with the tradition of
ideas that informs his insights into economic vision and political
strategy. I read Remembering Tomorrow for this, for the stories,
and to learn more about ideas and people that influenced me."Chris
Spannos, Editor of AK Press's forthcoming Parecon and the Good
Society and Hope, Reason, and Revolution, and a ZNet Staff Member
wrote: "How do we envision, create, strategize and seize libratory
institutions for libratory outcomes -- ultimately on a societal
scale? Sadly, currently social movements often reinvent the wheel,
sometimes not even as well as those who have come before.

We too often overlook lessons of the past. Remembering Tomorrow
provides diverse lessons extrapolated from a breadth of intense
movement experiences combined with a rigorous effort at theorizing
vision and strategy -- in all realms of life. For me, the lynch pin
of Albert's memoir was his decision to become a full time revolutionary,
and not a professional physicist, mathematician, academic economist,
professor, social worker, or a co-opted chemical company hack; all
of which would probably have been easier for him, but a great loss
for our Left movements. Albert has been instrumental in creating
South End Press, Z Magazine, and ZNet, and in developing the
Participatory Economic vision. Remembering Tomorrow uses the memoir
approach to navigate from 1960 through 2005. Humorous, moving,
revealing, Remembering Tomorrow is a vehicle conveying empowerment,
insight, and inspiration.

Remembering Tomorrow is eloquent, audacious, pugnacious and necessary.
We owe it to ourselves and to our social movements to learn from
it and carry its lessons forward."Andrej Grubacic, anarchist historian
wrote: "This gripping memoir is Michael Albert's gift to the
revolutionaries of my own generation.

His writing emerges from his life, one of consistent visionary
activism. A delightful, amusing, shrewd and very perceptive look
at American radicalism, "Remembering Tomorrow" is the first historical
perspective on the New Left of the 60's and the New Left of the
contemporary global social movements - and the links between them.
A pleasure to read, "Remembering Tomorrow" is the book from which
much can be learned."-Again, the book page link for Remembering
Tomorrow is http://www.zmag.org/remtom.html  Please visit. ------And
here is the ZNet author interview with Albert, about Remembering
Tomorrow...

Remembering Tomorrow ZNet Book Interview Michael Albert (1) Can you
tell ZNet, please, what your new book, Remembering Tomorrow, is
about? What is it trying to communicate?  Remembering Tomorrow is
not organized in a linear historical flow, as are most memoirs.
Instead, Remembering Tomorrow's main sections and chapters feature
broad types of content such as the Sixties, activist organizing
since the Sixties, teaching and learning experiences, building new
media and activist institutions, international experiences, money
and the left, portraits of people I've met and worked with, music
and culture and the left, personal life and the left, and the ups
and downs of creating and advocating vision and strategy.  In the
large, Remembering Tomorrow tries to communicate the intimate
characteristics of dissent, resistance, and building new and better
social relations. It explores what happens in such projects, who
is involved, people's choices and beliefs, and our institutions and
movements. Remembering Tomorrow personally presents left logic,
motives, and feelings. Why did we act as we did - both in the
Sixties, and in the decades since? What do we feel about what we
have done and how we have done it? How do others react? It isn't
religious, but there is plenty of revelation.  Remembering Tomorrow
highlights organizing and features consciousness raising. It focuses
on activism and demonstrations, on institution building, writing,
and speaking, but also on academia and teaching, book and magazine
publishing, internet and media activism, and developing and evaluating
ideas for movement building.  Organizations from SDS to the WSF and
many in between are prominent. Many individuals pass through the
pages, some notable and others not, some effective and others not.

Finances and fund raising make a substantial appearance, as does
left culture and community. Large scale moral, emotional, social,
and intellectual failings and successes are explored. And Remembering
Tomorrow is also about personal daily life choices including
friendships and hostilities, the logic and impact of people's sexual
and career choices, and of movement interpersonal relations.
Remembering Tomorrow is about worries and it is about hopes. (2)
Can you tell ZNet something about writing the book? Where does the
content come from? What went into making the book what it is? I
have been author, co-author, or editor of nearly twenty books, and
publisher of over a hundred, but this was the hardest to complete.
Partly I was intimidated by the material. I felt like I couldn't
convey the reality and lessons of the Sixties unless the prose
matched the topic, and trying to attain that was very difficult.
Dauntingly, once I got going, the same held for most other parts
of the book as well, for example the history of South End Press or
Z, or describing the process of the development of the participatory
economic vision. In these cases too, not to mention personal
experiences, I wanted to convey the actual feelings and thoughts
that arose along the way, not just the final results.The phrasing
and nuance of the writing, and not just its substance, had to fit
the people, ideas, events, and actions of the times. The tone had
to excite readers and also communicate both the texture and content
of the events explored. In short, not just the book's literary
logic, but also its styleistic pacing had to both communicate and
interrogate the ideas relayed. I was intimidated by that stylistic
need, especially regarding the older period called the Sixties. It
was also hard  to remember content from times past, and to reject
lots of stories that mattered to me but didn't present material of
more general value. You write a book like this and for the duration
you are dredging up and assessing decades of not always pleasant
events. That made this project much harder than writing a more
analytic work.

Books on how to write memoirs tell prospective authors that you
must communicate as a novel does, with texture and detail. They
say, if you don't remember who wore what at the event you are
describing, the weather on the day of the event, who said what to
whom at the event, and so on, well then you should just make it up.
This may sound incredible to you - it certainly did to me - but
that is the advice memoirists receive, and it's what memoirists
typically do, too. Books with advice about writing memoirs also
say, don't show a memoir to anyone until after its publication.
They say, put in your memoir everything that is dramatic, leave out
anything that isn't, or, better, tweak it until it is. In other
words, books about writing memoirs have lots of crummy, commercial,
self serving, and anti-social advice which memoirists generally
live by. I naturally ignored all that advice. I checked Remembering
Tomorrow's stories with those involved. I didn't make up anything.
I included what I thought had meaning and might resonate usefully.
I left out what didn't, however dramatic it may have been. But,
yes, I also tried to write Remembering Tommorrow congenially,
emotively, personally, and of course accessibly. The book's content
comes from the period addressed, nearly half a century. What went
into making Remembering Tomorrow was that history, and everyone
involved in it, and a lot of heartfelt writing and editing that
utilized help from many readers - as is the case with most books.
(3) What are your hopes for Remembering Tomorrow? What do you hope
it will contribute or achieve, politically? Given the effort and
aspirations you have for the book, what will you deem to be a
success? What would leave you happy about the whole undertaking?
What would leave you wondering if it was worth all the time and
effort?  Everything I write and do politically has one overarching
purpose, to contribute to efforts to revolutionize society and
history. So if the book contributes to movement growth and to
successful struggle I am happy about it.

If it doesn't contribute, then I am sad about it.  I tried to make
the accounts in Remembering Tomorrow instructive about what is wrong
with society, what we might prefer as vision, and how we might
attain our aims, but I also tried to make the book's stories about
people, places, institutions, and acts not only true and accurate,
but also engaging, inspiring, tear-jerking, provocative, instructive,
and revealing. I hope the book accomplishes all that sufficiently
to make a difference in how readers think about themselves, about
their actions and choices, and about their aims and methods.  More
specifically, Remembering Tomorrow has three broad audiences who I
am most trying to address. First, there are people of my generation
who were once and who may or may not still be involved with social
change. I hope Remembering Tomorrow reawakens or otherwise strengthens
their commitment for justice and their willingness to act insightfully
on it. There are, after all, millions of us. Then there are young
people in high schools, colleges, and at work, who have recently
become politically active, including in the new SDS, for example.
I hope Remembering Tomorrow provides its young readers a useful
look at past experiences of the Sixties and of the decades since.
I hope Remembering Tomorrow helps them navigate the tricky and
crucial life choices they face, helping in particular with the tasks
of personal development, consciousness raising, mapping their
futures, and organizing. And then, finally, there are people who
who have been heretofore uninvolved in the left but who are curious
about leftists and about left history,and who wonder who leftists
are, what we are about, what we do, what we feel and think, and the
whys and wherefores of it all. I hope Remembering Tomorrow can give
them some answers that will simultaneously inspire and provoke them,
perhaps affecting their choices in coming years.  Judging one's
work, whether writing, or organizing, or even just living, is awfully
hard. For example, you travel a long way and give a talk, one time,
and there are ten people there, who listen quietly, ask few questions,
and leave. Another time, you travel similarly and there are a
thousand people who react with great gusto, ask many questions, and
seem quite excited. It is tempting, almost unavoidable, to feel
that the first effort was a relative failure and the second a big
success. But what if one of those ten people had a life altering
experience and became the modern day equivalent of Rosa Parks? And
what it, on the other hand, the thousand people, much as they enjoyed
your talk and applauded until their hands were raw, weren't altered
by it at all? They just heard something they liked, which, however,
added nothing to their lives. Now which talk was the success?

I think it is like that with a book too. Do I want more readers
than less?

Yes, of course, I do. Do I hope for wide discussion and debate about
the book's contents? Naturally I do. Do I hope that this book will
inspire many people to additionally pick up more detailed works on
parecon? Yes, for sure.

But is all that essential for Remembering Tomorrow to prove itself
worth the time expended on it? No, probably not, but as to what
would be decisive in that regard, honestly, I wish I knew. Regarding
self assessment, I generally hope for the best and just keep plugging.
I imagine that will be my reaction to whatever success or lack of
success this book has in the months ahead, too.

http://www.zmag.org/remtom.html