Beer, Plumbers, and Anarchists – Two new books

The following new books may be of interest:

Tom Goyens’s forthcoming Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914 will be attractive to anyone with an interest in anarchism, New York’s radical history, and/or oppositional culture generally (University of Illinois Press, September 2007). The publisher writes:

Understanding an infamous political movement’s grounding in festivity and defiance, Beer and Revolution examines the rollicking life and times of German immigrant anarchists in New York City from 1880 to 1914. Offering a new approach to an often misunderstood political movement, Tom Goyens puts a human face on anarchism and reveals a dedication less to bombs than to beer halls and saloons where political meetings, public lectures, discussion circles, fundraising events, and theater groups were held. Goyens brings to life the fascinating relationship between social space and politics by examining how the intersection of political ideals, entertainment, and social activism embodied anarchism not as an abstract idea, but as a chosen lifestyle for thousands of women and men. He shows how anarchist social gatherings were themselves events of defiance and resistance that aimed at establishing anarchism as an alternative lifestyle through the combination of German working-class conviviality and a dedication to the principle that coercive authority was not only unnecessary, but actually damaging to full and free human development as well. Goyens also explores the broader circumstances in both the United States and Germany that served as catalysts for the emergence of anarchism in urban America and how anarchist activism was hampered by police surveillance, ethnic insularity, and a widening gulf between the anarchists’ message and the majority of American workers.

Those interested in the state’s impact on oppositional culture, or oppositional culture’s impact on the the state (of Massachusetts), may want to check out Christine Bold’s Writers, Plumbers, and Anarchists: The WPA Writer’s Project in Massachusetts (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006). The publisher writes:

The Works Progress Administration (1935–1943) housed America’s largest arts funding program ever, part of the New Deal’s foray into nationwide work relief. In Massachusetts its acronym could well have stood for “Writers, Plumbers, and Anarchists,” in tribute to the state’s distinctive contribution to the writers’ wing of the program. Beginning in 1935, the Massachusetts writers’ project took a huge range of white- and blue-collar workers off the breadlines and put them to work as government writers. This motley group produced approximately two dozen state, regional, and community guides, which included stories that ran the gamut from the quirky to the disturbing. WPA writers in the state were routinely accused of being “plumbers” and, after publication of the state guide, the project was accused of supporting anarchists and other subversives.

The Massachusetts writers’ project was often mired in dramas and scandals. The most notorious concerned the censorship of guidebook copy on the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, the true story of which remained hidden for almost seventy years. Struggles also broke out over the representation of people of color, as the guides shifted the state’s image away from an ethnically homogeneous “cradle of the nation” to a much more culturally diverse and politically volatile society.

Making excellent use of the extensive surviving records, Christine Bold offers a unique glimpse into what New Deal pieties meant in practice for the “worker-writers” in its employ. As the first book to pursue the WPA writers’ project in a single state, this work probes the Massachusetts experience to discover the consequences of New Deal patronage for writers-in-the-making, for community image-making, and for minority groups attempting to achieve cultural citizenship in America.