Fredy Perlman

76

Fredy Perlman : biography

August 20, 1934 – July 26, 1985

In 1976 Perlman underwent surgery to replace a damaged heart valve. After, he helped write and perform Who’s Zerelli? a play critiquing the authoritarian aspects of the medical establishment.

During 1977-80 he studied (and charted) world history. During these years, he traveled to Turkey, Egypt, Europe and regions of the U.S. to visit historic sites with Lorraine. In 1980 he began a comprehensive history of The Strait (Detroit and surroundings). He did not finish this work, and the first and last chapters remain unwritten. In July 1985, he estimated that it would take him eight or ten months to complete and edit the manuscript.

Both Perlman and Lorraine helped on the anti-authoritarian magazine, Fifth Estate, doing typesetting and proofreading as well as contributing articles. His most recent contributions were Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom and The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism.

During 1982-83, he suspended work on The Strait to write his indictment of technological society, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!. Anarchist historian John P. Clark states that Against His-tory,Against Leviathan! describes Perlman’s critique of what he saw as "the millennia-long history of the assault of the technological megamachine on humanity and the Earth." Clark also notes the book discusses "anarchistic spiritual movements" such as the Yellow Turban movement in ancient China and the Brethren of the Free Spirit in medieval Europe.John P. Clark, "Anarchism" in Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, edited by Bron Taylor; New York : Continuum, 2008, pp.49-56. ISBN 978-1-84706-273-4

In 1983, Perlman joined the cello section of the Dearborn Orchestra and in June 1985 performed quartets by Mozart and Schumann at a program for Physicians for Social Responsibility.

In 1984 Perlman wrote a work on the subject of nationalism called The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism In it he argues that "Leftist or revolutionary nationalists insist that their nationalism has nothing in common with the nationalism of fascists and national socialists, that theirs is a nationalism of the oppressed, that it offers personal as well as cultural liberation." And so "To challenge these claims, and to see them in a context," he asks "what nationalism is – not only the new revolutionary nationalism but also the old conservative one." And so he concludes that nationalism is an aid to capitalist control of nature and people regardless of its origin. Nationalism thus provides a form through which "Every oppressed population can become a nation, a photographic negative of the oppressor nation" and that "There’s no earthly reason for the descendants of the persecuted to remain persecuted when nationalism offers them the prospect of becoming persecutors. Near and distant relatives of victims can become a racist nation-state; they can themselves herd other people into concentration camps, push other people around at will, perpetrate genocidal war against them, procure preliminary capital by expropriating them."

During 1985, Perlman wrote two essays on Nathaniel Hawthorne, who Perlman regarded – along with Hawthorne’s contemporaries Thoreau and Melville – as a critic of technology and imperialism.

On July 26, 1985, Perlman underwent heart surgery at Henry Ford Hospital, where he died.

In 1989, his widow Lorraine Perlman published a biography of Fredy, Having Little, Being Much on the press they founded, Black & Red. Lorraine Perlman continues to run the press in Detroit, Michigan and still contributes to Fifth Estate.

Childhood and youth

Perlman was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia. He emigrated with parents to Cochabamba, Bolivia in 1938 just ahead of the Nazi takeover. The Perlman family came to the United States in 1945 and finally settled in Lakeside Park, Kentucky.

In 1952 he attended Morehead State College in Kentucky and then UCLA from 1953-55. Perlman was on the staff of The Daily Bruin, the school newspaper, when the university administration changed the constitution of the newspaper to forbid it from nominating its own editors, as the custom had been. Perlman left the newspaper staff at that time and, with four others, proceeded to publish an independent paper, The Observer, which they handed out on a public sidewalk at the campus bus stop, since they were forbidden by the administration to distribute in on the campus.

In 1956-59 he attended Columbia University, where he met his lifelong companion, Lorraine Nybakken. He enrolled as a student of English literature but soon concentrated his efforts in philosophy, political science and European literature. One particularly influential teacher for him at this time was C. Wright Mills.

Selected publications

  • “Essay on Commodity Fetishism”. 6 (Fall 1970). New York: Telos Press.