Theory of Immediate World Revolution
A Handbook for the Avant-Garde
Will be published approx. on 8. September 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-1-78873-365-6 (ISBN)
Description
In 1958, Belgian surrealist Marcel Marien 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.
Marien'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, Marien 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.
Marien'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, Marien 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.
Reviews / Votes
What if the path to world revolution lay through the actions of an invisible committee pulling the strings through an advertising and marketing company? What if you could fund the revolution with a line of credit which, after it succeeds, you wouldn't need to repay? Marcel Marien's delirious, surrealious, Swiftian text from 1958 remains a delightful manual for the meme wars in and against the disintegrating spectacle. -- McKenzie Wark, author of <i>Leaving the Twentieth Century: Situationist Revolutions</i> Published in 1958 by Les Levres nues, this book was written against the specific backdrop of the threat of nuclear destruction that then pitted the Eastern Bloc against the Western world. For Marcel Marien, it was nothing more and nothing less than proposing a method for seizing power aimed at "overthrowing capitalism across the entire world it controls, within a fixed timeframe of one year-a programme that could be implemented at any moment and everywhere at once. ", by turning one of its own weapons against it: advertising. Political fiction, joke, or real-life manual for a short-term revolution, this work-which met with no success at the time-is one of the most astonishing documents produced by Surrealism in Belgium, demonstrating its inseparable link to political action. * Xavier Canonne, author of <i>Rene Magritte: The Revealing Image</i> *More details
Edition
Paperback original
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 210 mm
Width: 140 mm
Weight
367 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78873-365-6 (9781788733656)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Marcel Marien (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, Marien would become both a critic and a historian of the group, publishing prolific oeuvres and correspondences of Belgian Surrealism in its aftermath. While Marien'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, Marien fought for Belgium during World War II. For nine months, he was held in Goerlitz as a prisoner of war. Marien spent most of his life in Brussels and he also spent significant time in New York City and Communist China.
Abigail Susik is Joint Editor of Bloomsbury's Transnational Surrealism Series and author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester UP, 2021). She is the editor of several volumes, including Surrealism and Film after 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries (Manchester UP, 2021) and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (Penn State UP, 2022).
Francois Coadou teaches philosophy of art at the National School of Art and Design in Limoges, and art history at the University of Limoges. He is the author of studies on the Situationist International, Lettrism and Surrealism. He notably edited Guy Debord's Lettres a Marcel Marien (La Nerthe, 2015) and edited a collective book on Marien: "Il creait des choses desagreables": Marcel Marien et l'activite surrealiste (ABM, 2022).
Anna O'Meara received her Ph.D. in Art History & Visual Studies from the University of Victoria in 2025. She is currently a research fellow at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. Research interests include the 20th Century avant-garde, the Situationist International, and Belgian Surrealism. In terms of recent publications, in 2022, she co-edited On the Poverty of Student Life with Mehdi El Hajoui for Common Notions.
Ian Thompson is a musician and writer with a deep interest in 20th century avant-garde artistic/political groups, particularly the Internationale Situationniste and Lettrisme. In addition to producing a number of translations, he published the first English-language study of '70s French underground music, Synths, Sax & Situationists, in 2025.
Nadege Lejeune is a Comparative Literature PhD with a passion for languages and literature. Originally from France, she now lives in Western NY with her husband and her their two children and works as a freelance editor and translator.
Abigail Susik is Joint Editor of Bloomsbury's Transnational Surrealism Series and author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester UP, 2021). She is the editor of several volumes, including Surrealism and Film after 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries (Manchester UP, 2021) and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (Penn State UP, 2022).
Francois Coadou teaches philosophy of art at the National School of Art and Design in Limoges, and art history at the University of Limoges. He is the author of studies on the Situationist International, Lettrism and Surrealism. He notably edited Guy Debord's Lettres a Marcel Marien (La Nerthe, 2015) and edited a collective book on Marien: "Il creait des choses desagreables": Marcel Marien et l'activite surrealiste (ABM, 2022).
Anna O'Meara received her Ph.D. in Art History & Visual Studies from the University of Victoria in 2025. She is currently a research fellow at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. Research interests include the 20th Century avant-garde, the Situationist International, and Belgian Surrealism. In terms of recent publications, in 2022, she co-edited On the Poverty of Student Life with Mehdi El Hajoui for Common Notions.
Ian Thompson is a musician and writer with a deep interest in 20th century avant-garde artistic/political groups, particularly the Internationale Situationniste and Lettrisme. In addition to producing a number of translations, he published the first English-language study of '70s French underground music, Synths, Sax & Situationists, in 2025.
Nadege Lejeune is a Comparative Literature PhD with a passion for languages and literature. Originally from France, she now lives in Western NY with her husband and her their two children and works as a freelance editor and translator.