CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/25/2019

Junking the capitalist carcass with Danielle Aubert's new book on the legendary Detroit Printing Co-op

If you recognize this cover for the first English-language edition of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, you're probably going to want a copy of The Detroit Printing Co-op: The Politics of the Joy of Printing, Danielle Aubert's enlightening new book on the DIY leftist Motor City printing cooperative founded by Fredy Perlman in 1969. Originally active under the name Revolutionary Printing Co-operative, the endeavor was formed to provide typesetting and printing "without censorship or pressure," to provide "a means of subsistence for individuals who refuse to accept the bureaucratic organization of a capitalist enterprise," and "to make available a small stock of means of production to a restless population's growing needs for self-expression." Aubert quotes one of the group's founding statements: "The printing coop is not its own goal. Attempting to survive within the capitalist carcass, its activity is restricted by the laws of capitalist commodity production. But survival within capitalism is not its aim (nor is this activity an efficient way to survive within capitalism). Its aim is to contribute to the junking of the capitalist carcass, and thus of itself as an activity which survived within it."