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Time Tested Books
is proud to present
Max Elbaum
reading / signing / Q&A
Revolution in the Air:
Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che
Sunday, May 20th, 4:00pm
Co-sponsored by
The sixties were a time when radical movements learned to embrace twentieth-century Marxism. Revolution in the Air
is the definitive study of this turning point, and examines what the
resistance of today can learn from the legacies of Lenin, Mao and Che.
It tells the story of the “new communist movement” which was the most racially integrated and fast-growing movement on the Left. Thousands of young activists, radicalized by the Vietnam War and Black Liberation, and spurred on by the Puerto Rican, Chicano and Asian-American movements, embraced a Third World oriented version of Marxism. These admirers of Mao, Che and Amilcar Cabral organized resistance to the Republican majorities of Nixon and Ford.
By the 1980s these groups had either collapsed or become tiny shards of the dream of a Maoist world revolution. Taking issue with the idea of a division between an early “good sixties” and a later “bad sixties,” Max Elbaum is particularly concerned to reclaim the lessons of the new communist movement for today’s activists who, like their sixties’ predecessors, are coming of age at a time when the Left lacks mass support and is fragmented along racial lines.
A New, Third Edition of Revolution in the Air rolled off the press April 10, 2018, with a Foreword by Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter.
It tells the story of the “new communist movement” which was the most racially integrated and fast-growing movement on the Left. Thousands of young activists, radicalized by the Vietnam War and Black Liberation, and spurred on by the Puerto Rican, Chicano and Asian-American movements, embraced a Third World oriented version of Marxism. These admirers of Mao, Che and Amilcar Cabral organized resistance to the Republican majorities of Nixon and Ford.
By the 1980s these groups had either collapsed or become tiny shards of the dream of a Maoist world revolution. Taking issue with the idea of a division between an early “good sixties” and a later “bad sixties,” Max Elbaum is particularly concerned to reclaim the lessons of the new communist movement for today’s activists who, like their sixties’ predecessors, are coming of age at a time when the Left lacks mass support and is fragmented along racial lines.
A New, Third Edition of Revolution in the Air rolled off the press April 10, 2018, with a Foreword by Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter.
“Max
Elbaum has given us an incisive and critical history of the Other New
Left – the radicals who brought class struggle and Third World
liberation to the forefront, looked to the world for allies, and tried
their best to work through the dynamics of race and class. If you
still believe sixties radicalism was nothing more than youthful
middle-class class confusion or parochial identity politics, then open
these pages and dig.” --Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
MAX ELBAUM has been involved in peace and anti-racist movements since
joining students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Madison, Wisconsin
in the 1960s. He is currently one of the editors of Organizing Upgrade. His writings have
appeared in many publications including The Nation, Radical History Review, Z Magazine and the Encyclopedia of the American Left. Between 1995 (when Max started work on Revolution in the Air) and
December 2017, Max has run 39 marathons with a personal best time of
3:26:53. Each fall he runs a Marathon for Peace to benefit antiwar and
antimilitarist projects, most recently US Labor Against the War.
This event is FREE and everyone is invited.
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