Dissidence: Essays Against the Mainstream
Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos

This collection, written over thirty years, drives towards the building of the community way of life: a participatory democracy. It reflects conscientious objection, not just to war, but to the whole fabric of a dehumanized society. It stands for civil disobedience, not just of individuals, but hopefully by large numbers of alienated people. This definition of dissent is not intended as an empty moral gesture, but as a determined attempt to transform society by abolishing concentrations of power. To dissent means to live simply, speak truth to power, and to keep people at the forefront of the mind. This is not a part-time, but a full-time vocation, standing and working outside the mainstream and its dominant institutions. The motive is always the same; to stir intelligent people to thought, to controversy, and to action. 

Reflecting the Montreal Left, the writings of Dimitrios Roussopoulos demonstrate the unique politico-cultural cauldron the city created from the sixties to the eighties, revealing the origins of the "New Left" in Canada and its continuing legacy. Published in 1992, Dissidence is a time capsule of leftist thought on nuclear disarmament, the state, Canadian nationalism, ecology, and more. 

Dimitrios Roussopoulos is a political activist, ecologist, writer, editor, publisher, community organizer, and public speaker. Educated in philosophy, politics and economics at several Montreal universities and London. Roussopoulos has sought to keep himself free from any academic confinement, and apart from having taught for two years in the late sixties at a college that followed the progressive education philosophy of John Dewey, he has remained institutionally independent.

Table of Contents:

CHAPTER ONE: THE PEACE MOVEMENT AND THE POLITICS OF PEACE

• Internationalisng the Nuclear Disarmament Movement
• "My Country, Right or Wrong" ... A Dangerous Lunacy
• International Peace Action
• International Confederation For Disarmament and Peace
• The Purpose of Our Generation
• Towards a Peace and Freedom Movement
• What Next?
• The Hemisphere Conference in Montreal
• On the Nuclear State
• The Politics of the Peace Movement
• Notes to the Reader

CHAPTER TWO: THE NATIONAL QUESTION - LOOKING AT QUEBEC AND CANADA

• On Quebec
• Social Classes and Nationalism in Quebec
• May 1972 - Quebec's General Strike
• The Canadian Elections
• Canadian Independence and the Marxist Left
• The Waffle and Electoralism
• Quebec and Radical Social Change
• McCarthyism in Canada: Our Response
• Addendum

CHAPTER THREE: THE SOCIAL QUESTION: THE NEW LEFT

• The State of the Movement
• Struggle Is Freedom, It's Just Beginning
• The CYC: The Bird That Cannot Even Fly...
• What is the New Radicalism?
• Historical Perspectives
• Stalin is Dead, But Neo-Stalinism Lives
• Community Control
• Root and Branch: The Political Origins of the 1960s New Left and the Future

CHAPTER FOUR: POLITICAL ANALYSIS AND POLITICAL THEORY

• The Politics of a Creative Disorder
• Towards an Extra-Parliamentary Opposition in Canada
• The Radical Implications of the Ecology Question
• The State
• State Power and Political Parties or, Why the PQ Lost the By-elections
• The State and the Movement for Change

CHAPTER FIVE: THE URBAN QUESTION - THINK GLOBALLY AND ACT LOCALLY

• The Future Of Canadian Cities and the Limits of the City: Think Globally and Act Locally
• Beyond Reformism: The Ambiguity of the Urban Question

1992; 222 pages

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