From the Archives

Much of the work of Viewpoint has revolved around presenting translations of significant texts from international traditions of revolutionary theory. This is not accidental; we are convinced that to meet the challenge of understanding the present we have to look beyond narrowly conceived political or national traditions. However, we have come to realize that this work of expanding the toolbox also has to begin closer to home. Indeed, much of the American radical tradition seems just as foreign and forgotten to us today, and a wealth of material in English has been simply abandoned to the archives. Yet it is impossible to understand the contemporary problems of political practice without revisiting the history of the American Left, in the spirit of critical and non-sectarian reinvention.

1,500,000 Gas Masks: Appalachia as a Resource Colony in Rod Harless & Dan Cutler's The Hillbillys: A Book for Children

1,500,000 Gas Masks: Appalachia as a Resource Colony in Rod Harless & Dan Cutler’s The Hillbillys: A Book for Children

The Hilllbillys is hardly a children’s book. The illustrations are raw, and it is a bleak story that carries pessimistic despondency rare to see from movement documents in the era. Harless and Cutler offer a deeply frustrated parable of exploitation and environmental destruction in the Appalachian region. 

The Revolt of Living Labor: An Interview With Ferruccio Gambino

The Revolt of Living Labor: An Interview With Ferruccio Gambino

What even the repression in Italy could not cancel was how seriously the so-called “workerists” took the whole dimension of human activity. That was an aspect of what made the extraparliamentary left in Italy different. It already contained, at least in embryo, the claims about who has produced what, who commands what, and who destroys what. 

Letter from America (1969)

Letter from America (1969)

Fifty years ago, Dan Georgakas wrote dispatches on developments in Black Power and New Left movements for European comrades eager to follow the evolving political scene in the United States. Until now published only in Italian in Quaderni Piacentini and in French in Les Temps Modernes, we are excited to offer one of these transmissions in English for the first time.