KRRIM
- PF-Verlag fuer Krankheit
KRRIM -
PF-Publisher Pro Illness
P.O. Box 12 10 41, 68061 Mannheim,
Germany
Email to Verso Books, New York
Copy to: Beatrice Adler-Bolton
and Artie Vierkant
November 2nd, 2021
Hello,
to your enquiry about the English-language rights for
"SPK - Turn Illness Into a Weapon" and
"reissuing an English-language
edition" at Verso Books, also
"allowing a new translation to be done","perhaps
with an introduction from current communist health agitators". You also write
that two of your authors, Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, are writing
a book ["Health communism: A Surplus Manifesto"] that is meant to
describe the
"work and praxis of SPK in depth".
KRRIM
- PF-Publisher PRO Illness, founded in 1986, is
the sole PRO-illness publishing house in the
world. It publishes the works and writings of illness of the Socialist
Patients' Collective (SPK), the Patients' Front (PF) and
of the SPK/PF-MFEs as well as translations into the most widely used foreign
languages, see the current list of publications (http://spkpfh.de/index_KRRIM.html).
The Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK) itself never
ceased to exist and it has
prevailed again and again despite of the most adverse circumstances while all
the other currents and movements, at that time (1970ies) being considered
"far
more revolutionary", have failed long since and have terminated or surrendered,
even if un-dissolved.
The SPK exists only as SPK within the Patients' Front, as SPK/PF(H).
Note and pay attention that:
The SPK had and has
nothing
to do with the RAF
nothing
to do with the politico-activists of the so-called 68-movement
nothing
to do with the so-called self-help groups and suchlike
nothing to do with the so-called anti-psychiatry or
other medical or non-medical specialist disciplines
but it had and has to do with illness against
iatro-capitalism.
At that time only the SPK had referred positively
to illness. No other political, socialist, communist, anarchist or
militarist grouping was disposed to do the same. In the meanwhile, however,
the SPK/PF(H) has spread worldwide stabilising itself in the common interest
and goal of opposing finally the doctors' class, which has been murdering
without punishment since thousands of years, at least with the beginning of a
Patients' Front and a patients' class. The principle of propagation of the
SPK/PF(H) is called, just as it was then, Multi-Focal Expansionism (MFE)
for instance, SPK/PF MFE Austria ("Stimme der Krankheit",
"Voice of Illness"),
and likewise MFE Spain, MFE Italy, MFE Greece, MFE Colombia, MFE Brazil, MFE
Canada and many others.
See:
http://spkpfh.de/Gossipcide.htm
"SPK
- Aus der Krankheit eine Waffe machen", originally published in German in 1972, nowadays has
seen authorised translations to many other languages, for example Spanish,
Italian, French and English. The 1st English edition, translated by
Huber himself, the founder of the SPK, was published by KRRIM already in 1993,
that is: nearly 3 decades ago, and it is still in print.
We are preparing a completely revised and enlarged
2nd edition of "SPK
- Turn Illness into a Weapon". For quite some
time now, the online version of the 2nd edition has been available at
our Stromzeitung (electronic newspaper),
http://spkpfh.de/SPK_Turn_illness_Contents.htm.
In contrast, both translations you and your author,
Beatrice Adler-Bolton, refer to:
- an English translation of 1972 and
- that of an
"anonymous (K.D.), Trans.
Circa 2013" *)
are neither authentic nor authorised
translations. They
distort the SPK contents, they are favouring the all dominating medical
doctors' class and they are hostile to the transnational fight of the patients'
class.
*) The
translation of an anonymous (K.D.), contrary to the original, was done mainly
in conformity with the mainstream of medical psychologisms. However, one of the
revolutionary achievements of the SPK, after all, was to reduce all
medical-psychological-psychoanalytical terms to concepts of materialist
dialectics and material dialectics based on the analysis of commodity [warenanalytische
Materialdialektik], respectively for the purpose of the accuracy of illness
as a weapon of knowledge and revolutionary change.
To write that the SPK-book is
"very
difficult to find in translation" to us seems rather bold, considering that
"SPK
- Turn Illness into a Weapon" is distributed in the UK by AK Distribution
(Edinburgh/Scotland) for nearly 30 years now and was available at the US
distributor AK Press for two decades.
Our books, brochures, cassettes etc. can be ordered
from all over the world directly at KRRIM
- PF-Verlag PRO Illness. Of course,
this also applies to
"SPK
- Turn Illness into a Weapon".
Furthermore, we find it fairly ignorant to propose "an introduction from current communist health agitators" to "SPK - Turn illness into a weapon". Already in the first leaflet of the SPK we wrote "Lets bury once and for ever the foolish hope for "health"!"
And in
"SPK
- Turn Illness
into a weapon"
itself you will find many passages on the fundamental and radical rejection of
"health" by the SPK. Already on the first
pages you can read:
"Health is nothing but an biologistic-nazistic
figment of the mind.
The function of this figment is to veil in
the heads of the making-stupids and of the made-stupids that illness is
conditioned by society, and also to veil the social function of illness".
Likewise, in his preface to the 1993
English edition of
"SPK
- Turn illness
into a weapon", Huber, the founder of the SPK, has taken a clear stand
against
"health":
"
The biggest industry is no longer that which produces weapons, computers, cars or interspace crafts. The biggest industry of nowadays is that which fakes to produce health, that is to say a thing which never has existed and which never will really exist, except as a product of illusion nourishing Nazism in all its past and coming variations [HEILwesen] "."
Health" is and always will be a norm, imposed on society by the medical doctors class. It is an extermination norm, directed against everyone who is sick, that is: against all (who wouldn't be sick these days?). "Health communism" (the title of a planned Verso book) cannot mean anything else but the dictatorship of the medical doctors' class. Today there exists a term for this doctatorship: IATROCRACY. (https://www.spkpfh.de/Iatrocracy_on_a_worldwide_scale.htm).Remember Huber's saying:
"death to therapy, death to
iatro-capitalist system" (in:
"SPK indeed
- What the SPK really did and
said", published by KRRIM in 2007, see:
http://spkpfh.de/SPK_Indeed_Information.htm, available online as
"Long Letter", http://spkpfh.de/Long_Letter.htm).
Either
"health"
- or SPK. Both do not go together. To associate the medical extermination ideology
"health" with the SPK is an attempt of total forgery of the SPK (http://spkpfh.de/Against_health.htm).
It seems that neither you nor
your authors are able to do a little reading on our website where you
could find all that, for decades now.
So, all in all, you seem to be widely misinformed. That casts a poor light on your authors, Beatrice
Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, and to think, that they would be any good
"writing
a book about the works and praxis of SPK in depth", casts also a poor
light on Verso itself.
The SPK is not
"a radical German mental health group", as B. Adler-Bolton
writes. No! Never! It is a collective of
frontpatients conducting a class war in favour of illness against the medical
doctors class and their murderous norm called "health".
Moreover, with "SPK indeed - What the SPK really did and said" there already exists an authentic book about the works and praxis of SPK in depth, written by Huber himself. "For the first time in SPK and continuing up to nowadays there exist liberated regions. Off limits for the doctors and for value. SPK/Patientenfront has reached its aim: living in illness, in arztfreier Wirklichkeit (reality, truth and effectiveness free of doctors). The history of illness just has begun."
So, it would be best to drop this book-project called
"Health communism" at once, or, at least, to leave SPK/PF(H) out of this
HEALTH-favouring, theoretical wasteland.
Concerning your authors, we recommend also the
following texts against SPK-falsificators in the music and art business:
http://spkpfh.de/Against_SPK-falsificators_in_the_arts_business.htm
http://spkpfh.de/Against_SPK-falsificators_in_the_music_business.htm
The doctors class has got to go
The classless society is the aim
Forward the patients class!
From: "The Communist Manifesto for the Third Millennium"
Through illness' strength!
Answer of Verso Books, November 4th,
2021
Re: New English edition of Turn Illness Into a Weapon?
/ Verso Books
Hello KRRIM,
Thank you very much for these clarifications, and
taking the time to send these links. I'm very glad to know that your approved
version is circulating in English in partnership with AK Press in the UK.
Verso has great respect for your decades of work, and
so please accept my apologies on behalf of the house for any offense my message
inadvertently caused. Should KRRIM ever wish to partner on any future project
with Verso, please take this email as an open invitation to contact us.
Yours in solidarity,
J.K.