Remembering Tomorrow: From Sds to Life After Capitalism: A Memoir

by Michael Albert

In this lucid political memoir, veteran anticapitalist activist Michael Albert offers an ardent defence of the project to transform global inequality. Albert, a uniquely visionary figure, recounts a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1583227423
• ISBN13: 9781583227428
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A remarkable, inspirational memoir

I have long admired Michael Albert and his contributions to left activism and vision. Remembering Tomorrow charts his intellectual and political development. It is well written, quite witty at times, and always thought-provoking and insightful. Albert is a man who understands himself, the Left and the Movement in America, and the moral and political implications of what we dream of and struggle for. Highly recommended.

A Fascinating Memoir

I've never read a radical leftist's activist memoir before, so maybe I find this book more exciting and nuanced than more experienced readers would. At any rate, I found this book fascinating. Michael Albert's ideas about tactics and strategy for activism were intriguing to me. In particular, his ideas regarding what he calls "the stickiness problem" and :the vision problem" are particularly insightful. I agree that one of the major problems of the left is its inability to maintain its members and grow in size. I agree with Michael that Leftist elitism toward those not part of the professional/middle/managerial/coordinator class is an extremely important point that doesn't get discussed much among the left. Furthermore, I agree ideas addressing the vision problem, such as participatory economics, do require further discussion, testing, and evaluation. The people Michael Albert has encountered in the context of his activism and political and economic studies are another fascinating part of his book. Michael Albert's discussion about living and interacting with non-radicalized people is interesting. I think his analysis of himself and the world around him described from the point of view of a radical leftist can be useful for future leftists. In particular, I think memoirs, such as this one, can help future radical leftists cope and enjoy life while still making attempts to improve the world around them.

Valuable lessons and interesting vignettes

Michael Albert, a prolific radical writer on everything from economics to gender issues, history and physics, has published his memoirs under the title "Remembering Tomorrow". Although he himself admits that writing isn't his greatest asset, the book is very readable and accessible, and of direct interest to everyone with left-wing sympathies. Albert tells us everything, from his family background to his activism at MIT (where he was expelled for being succesful at resisting the Vietnam War), from his failed PhD attempt in Economics to his collective publishing undertaking known as South End Press, and much more. The format of the book is a series of short vignettes, most of them no more than two or three pages, where Albert tells us of some experience he has had and the important lesson for left-wing activism he learned from it. Although many of these insights and experiences truly are useful and interesting to read (for me as a young leftist), it can get tiresome after a while: sometimes the "moral of the story" gets a little too pushy. Michael Albert also describes some of his theoretical work in colloquial terms, explaining why he ditched Marxism (in my view not a very convincing point), how he came to the theory of the "coordinator class" and its importance for his worldview, and the struggles he has had with academia. He has a remarkable array of friends who are well-known in left-wing circles, such as Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Howard Zinn, which lends additional color to the book. Also described are his many collaborations with his erstwhile best friend Robin Hahnel, many of which are quite good books - it is sad to read that their friendship has ended. Albert's many experiences in leftist activism, which he has been involved in more or less non-stop for some four decades, are invaluable for radical thinkers and doers today. His criticisms of many persistent errors on the left, such as disdain for working-class interests and activities like sports and television, ring true, and the expansive amount of self-criticism in this book is commendable and rare for memoirs. The book could have used a better editor, though. There are some odd sentences here and there, some parts are quite repetitive, and thee are also absolutely baffling errors: for example, when Albert describes being given an award on behalf of the President of the Italian Republic (from context this seems to have been in 2004), he then comments that this was "at the time the proto-fascist Enrico Berlinguer". But Berlinguer was the chairman of the Communist Party of Italy, so not a "proto-fascist" by any stretch, had been dead for twenty years, and was never in his life President of Italy! In reality, the nonpartisan Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was President in 2004. This is just an example, but it shows that the book needed a double-checking before publishing. Otherwise, a good read.

Radical History: Remembering Tomorrow: A Memoir

This is a wonderful personal memoir of the last fifty years as viewed and lived by one of the more important revolutionaries of our time. Among other subjects Michael Albert takes us through the years of establishing South End Press, Z Magazine and Znet, all of which he helped create. His description of his relationship with Noam Chomsky as well as his analysis of Chomsky the man and Chomsky the pursuer of social justice is worth the price of the book, but he provides us with many more gems. The book also details Albert's involvement in the peace movement when he was a student at MIT with the intention of becoming a scientist. Politics intervened, however, and aside from radical politics he embarked on a career as an economist. This would eventually lead him to begin mapping out the vision of what a post-capitalist society would look like. This system he calls paracon, short for participatory economics. The book also details the various prices a committed revolutionary must pay, losing friends along the way, having one's best work largely ignored and struggling to raise funds for important projects. Mr. Albert also details his personal life, particularly his long relationship with Lydia Sargent who has been his closest ally in most of his projects through the years. I have admired Michael Albert, from afar, for many years, but that admiration took a giant leap with the reading of this book. My only criticism is over his statement that he doesn't think he is a very good writer. If inspiring a reader is a reflection of good writing then Mr. Albert is indeed a fine writer.