Theory of Immediate World Revolution

Published in 1958 by Les Lèvres 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 Mariën, 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 René Magritte: The Revealing Image *

Marcel Mariën (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, Mariën would become both a critic and a historian of the group, publishing prolific oeuvres and correspondences of Belgian Surrealism in its aftermath. While Mariën’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, Mariën fought for Belgium during World War II. For nine months, he was held in Görlitz as a prisoner of war. Mariën spent most of his life in Brussels and he also spent significant time in New York City and Communist China.

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