Archive for April, 2011
April 19, 2011 at 11:03 pm · Filed under Internal Memos, posted by pfm
We’re absolutely heartbroken to have to announce that the print run for our new book Work has been discovered to contain a high number of books with a production defect where the front cover can easily become detached from the rest of the book. We’ve fielded enough reports over the last few days to be sure the problem is not isolated, and thusly, we are suspending shipments of the book immediately. We are currently in negotiations with the printer as to how to fix this problem, and it is likely to take several weeks to resolve. You can be sure that until we are certain we have books in hand that do not have the defect, we won’t be sending any out.
For details on the problem itself, and how we are going to make things right with people already in possession of faulty books, read on.
April 14, 2011 at 9:18 pm · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by b. traven
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Today is April 15: Steal Something from Work Day! Take those motherfuckers for all they’re worth. Goodness knows they’re doing the same to you! Perhaps, like countless other employees, you already do this every day; in that case, the thing that makes this day special is that today you know thousands of others are stealing in solidarity with you, imagining a better world.
In the US, April 15 is also Tax Day. The government is stealing your money and turning it into overseas occupations and death tolls; nowadays they’re cutting the few programs through which they used to give a little of it back to you. The way they’re slashing university budgets these days, next they’ll be going to schools and ripping out the copper pipes to sell on the black market. Much of the tax money they loot from you goes directly back into corporate pockets–the same corporations that are exploiting people like you! And despite the record profits the corporate sector is raking in once again, politicians claim they have no idea how to resolve their budget crises.
In this web of theft, your only hope is to redirect some of these resources to more sensible ends. Surely you and your coworkers, friends, and neighbors could come up with better uses for them! Be careful, though–unlike other days of action, Steal Something from Work Day should go by without the authorities noticing anything at all.
If you have any exciting adventures stealing from work today, write up an account and email it anonymously to us at stealfromworkday@gmail.com. Here follows a premium example of such a narrative.
Epic narrative from the Copying Wars after the jump!
April 4, 2011 at 10:39 am · Filed under Hot Off the Presses, posted by ret marut
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After so much technological progress, why do we have to work more than ever before? How is it that the harder we work, the poorer we end up compared to our bosses? When the economy crashes, why do people focus on protecting their jobs when no one likes working in the first place? Can capitalism survive another century of crises?
Our newest book, entitled Work, addresses these questions and a great many more. To answer them, we had to revisit our previous analysis of employment and develop a more nuanced understanding of the economy. We spent months studying obscure history and comparing notes about how we experience exploitation in our daily lives, slowly hammering out a grand unified theory of 21st century capitalism.
In addition to distilling our findings in this book, we’ve also prepared a poster to diagram the system it describes. The poster is based on the classic illustration of the pyramid of the capitalist system published in the Industrial Worker in 1911. With the assistance of Packard Jennings, we’ve created a new version, much more detailed than the original and updated to account for all the transformations of the past one hundred years.
In combination, the book and poster explore the positions we occupy within this pyramid and the mechanics that maintain it. From the industrial revolution to the internet, from the colonization of the Americas to the explosion of the service sector and the stock market, from the 2008 financial crisis to the upheavals taking place right now, Work offers an overview of how capitalism functions in the 21st century and what we can do to get beyond it it.
CrimethInc. Far East will be tabling with these books and posters and a whole lot more at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair April 9 and 10; there will be a presentation about the book at 4 pm on April 10. The following weekend, Test Their Logik will host a release party for the book at the Toronto Anarchist Book Fair.
April 4, 2011 at 10:38 am · Filed under Hot Off the Presses, posted by b. traven
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As we announced last week, we’re debuting a new larger size of posters as a benefit project to help us keep the rest of our prices low. Two of these are classics—the Gender Subversion and Your Life Is Your Life posters—while the third is our new poster depicting the pyramid of the capitalist economy, designed to accompany our new book, Work.
We chose these posters as a fundraiser because in contrast to our standard posters, which are designed for public wheatpasting and have to remain affordable to teenage vandals, oversize posters are a sort of luxury. We made them accordingly luxurious: they’re truly enormous (fully two feet by three feet), printed on durable, high-quality, recycled, matte-coated paper, and we mail them rolled up in a poly bag secured inside a poster tube to keep them in pristine condition. If you’re looking for a durable poster to put up in your classroom or kitchen, or if you simply want to help us keep going, feel free to order one. Even as a benefit, they’re still cheaper than anyone else would make them; and you can get a much cheaper price by ordering several, so perhaps they can serve to raise funds for your infoshop or literature distribution as well.
April 4, 2011 at 10:38 am · Filed under Hot Off the Presses, posted by pfm
We’ve just reprinted three of our best-known titles: Days of War, Nights of Love, Expect Resistance, and Off the Map. For the new printing of Days of War, we went the extra mile and subtly improved the entire design from cover to cover. The lighthearted do-it-yourself aesthetic of our first book remains one of its charms, but we’ve learned a lot in the intervening decade and couldn’t resist the opportunity to polish it up a bit. When things here settle down a bit, we’ll post a thorough review of the changes and the ideas behind them. Needless to say, it’s a constant temptation to go back and improve older projects rather than focusing on new ones, but rest assured we’re not about to rest on our laurels any time soon. The new printings of Expect Resistance and Off the Map include no significant departures from the last ones—though a few small production gremlins that haunted the last printing of ER have been eradicated, and there is a tiny surprise awaiting people who receive this new version. Starting immediately, all orders will receive the ‘new’ versions.
As foreshadowed in our “State of the Union Address,” we’re also increasing the prices of our books slightly. This will help us stay solvent so we can take on other printing projects rather than simply retreating to the obscurity of virtual publishing. A quick glance at our colleagues’ prices will confirm that our books are still more affordable than almost anyone else’s.
The flip side of the price increases is that later in 2011 we plan to debut free electronic versions of all our books, refined, adjusted, and enhanced to make the most of various digital formats. These will take us some time to prepare, however, so please be patient.
April 2, 2011 at 9:53 am · Filed under Internal Memos, posted by pfm
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To set the stage for next week’s announcements, we present to you the free bookmark that will be included in the first 999 orders of the new book. Hand printed on the letterpress in our garage, it might just be possible to feel some of the excitement and thrill we had making these in preparation for the book’s release.
More photos and letterpress geekery after the jump.
