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The Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held in London in 1967, was a unique expression of the politics of modern dissent, in which existential psychiatrists, Marxist intellectuals, anarchists, and political leaders met to discuss the key social issues of the following decade. Edited by David Cooper, this volume compiles speeches by Stokely Carmichael, Herbert Marcuse, R. D. Laing, Paul Sweezy, and others. The collection explores the roots of violence in society. Against the backdrop of rising student frustrations, racism, class inequality, and environmental degradation, this conference aimed to create genuine revolutionary momentum by fusing ideology and action on the levels of the individual and of mass society. These speeches clearly indicate the rise of a new, forceful, and (to some) ominous style of political activity.
About the author
David Cooper (1931-1986) was a South African-born theorist and existential psychiatrist.Lucien Goldmann was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin. As a professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, he was an influential Marxist theorist.Herbert Marcuse, 1898-1979, was a member of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. He was forced to leave Germany in 1933, eventually settling in the USA. His classic studies of capitalist society, Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man, were important influences on the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s and his libertarian socialism remains an important intellectual resource.Stokely Carmichael was a revolutionary leader in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and later, the global Pan-African movement. He later adopted the name Kwame Ture.
He was a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He later joined the Black Panther Party and became its "Honorary Prime Minister." In 1967, Carmichael co-authored Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America with Charles V. Hamilton. He also helped to establish the All-African People's Revolutionary Party and worked as an aide to Guinea's prime minister, Sekou Toure.
Carmichael died of cancer on November 15th, 1998.
