Theory of Immediate World Revolution - A Handbook for the Avant-Garde

In 1958, Belgian surrealist Marcel Mariën drafted a plan to topple capitalism on a global scale—achievable in a single year, in any place, at any time. The catch? It required three hundred accomplices, and it was destined to fail.

Mariën’s text dares to imagine the unimaginable, offering a blueprint as much for play as for politics. By fusing the spirit of surrealism with the urgency of the atomic age, Mariën exposes the thin line between theory and performance, reality and fiction. This book captures one of his boldest gestures: a proposal not to succeed, but to alter the very way we think about revolution.

About the author

Marcel Mariën (1920-1993) was a writer, artist, and filmmaker immersed in a wide breadth of criticism and philosophy. His publications and writings included essays, journalism, fiction, poetry, histories, autobiography, scripts, and genre-bending experiments. The youngest member of the Belgian Surrealist movement, Mariën would become both a critic and a historian of the group, publishing prolific oeuvres and correspondences of Belgian Surrealism in its aftermath. While Mariën’s political alignments shifted over the course of his life, he consistently upheld the necessity to reject fascism, dedicating many of his writings to understanding fascism's ideological functionalities. Born in Antwerp, Mariën fought for Belgium during World War II. For nine months, he was held in Görlitz as a prisoner of war. Mariën spent most of his life in Brussels and he also spent significant time in New York City and Communist China

Product details

• Authors: Marcel Mariën
• Assisted by: Anna O'Meara (Editor), Wark McKenzie (Foreword), Nadège Lejeune (Translation), Anna O'Meara (Translation), Ian Thompson (Translation)
• Publisher: Pan macmillan Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 11.08.2026
• EAN: 9781788733656
• ISBN: 978-1-78873-365-6
• No. of pages: 208
• Weight: 300 g
• Subjects: Capitalism, PHILOSOPHY / Political, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Capitalism, Political science & theory, Economic systems & structures, Far-left political ideologies and movements, Political science and theory, Socialism & left-of-centre democratic ideologies, Left-of-centre democratic ideologies, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Free Enterprise & Capitalism, Marxism & Communism