Association of Musical Marxists

The Association of Musical Marxists (AMM) was a London-based cultural and political organisation active from 2010 to 2015. The organisation was formed by former Socialist Workers Party (UK) (SWP) members, including writer Ben Watson Ben Watson and Andy Wilson, to combine revolutionary politics with free improvisation and avant-garde music.

The AMM resisted professionalisation of both politics and the arts, endorsing instead radical and revolutionary history, creative improvisation, and mutual enjoyment. Its events were collective and combined political argument, reading of poetry, musical improvisation, and drinking, with a wish to overcome political-cultural boundaries. The AMM manifesto encouraged loyalty to revolutionary art and rejection of what they perceived as commodification of culture. They advocated the adoption of high-quality music as an example of restructuring human beings and as an entrance to the dialectic.

By combining improvised music and revolutionary politics, the AMM sought to subvert careerism and establish "both revolutionary art and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and Unkant Books are an attempt to fuse these two explosive concepts." Ultimately, however, political disagreements led to the AMM's demise.

Many people spoke, read or performed at AMM meetings including, Ben Watson ("Out To Lunch"), Andy Wilson, Keith Fisher, Sean Bonney, Oscillatorial Binnage, Helene le Bohec, Nina Power, Ben "Chewing Gum Man" Wilson, Dave Black, Esther Leslie, Robert Dellar, Alastair Kemp, Alternative TV.

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