Fredy Perlman

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Fredy Perlman (1934–1985) was an American author, publisher, and activist. His best-known work, Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, retells the historical rise of state domination (and domination generally) through a poetic investigation of the Hobbesian metaphor of the Leviathan.

Early lifeEdit

Perlman was born August 20, 1934, in Brno, Czechoslovakia, to Henry and Martha Perlman. His family immigrated first to Cochabamba, Bolivia<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> to escape the Holocaust<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and later to the United States. Perlman received a master's degree from Columbia University and a PhD from University of Belgrade. He married Lorraine Nybakken in January 1958.<ref name=DeathsFredy>Template:Cite news</ref>

CareerEdit

His best-known work,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Against His-Story, Against Leviathan (1983) rewrites the history of humanity as a struggle of free people resisting being turned into "zeks" (a Soviet term for forced labour that Perlman borrowed from The Gulag Archipelago) by Leviathans (a term used by Thomas Hobbes for the sovereign nation-state).<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The book influenced the anarcho-primitivist author John Zerzan.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Philosopher John P. Clark states that Against His-Story, 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.<ref>John P. Clark, "Anarchism" in Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, edited by Bron Taylor; New York : Continuum, 2008, pp.49–56. Template:ISBN</ref>

DeathEdit

Perlman died on July 26, 1985, while undergoing heart surgery in Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital. He was survived by his wife and a brother.<ref name=DeathsFredy />