Fifth Estate 303, October 20, 1980 Add to the Bookbuilder

On September 1, Lech Walesa, the worker who negotiated the end of the recent Polish strike wave, climbed two flights of wooden stairs to the temporary offices of the new Independent Trade Union which he heads. Walesa carried a two-foot crucifix, a bunch of gladiolas and a pennant from a bicycle club, all to adorn the headquarters of what he and the Western press have hailed as a “triumph” for the strikers—the right to organize a labor organization independent of the government-controlled official union federations.

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The following is reprinted from a section of “Mass Strikes in Capitalist Poland,” which appeared in the August/September, 1980 issue of World Revolution magazine available from BM Box 869, London WC1V 6XX, Great Britain. It is authored by C D Ward.

As the whole eastern bloc, under Russian hegemony, gears up its war economy in response to increasing inter-imperialist tensions, workers will be asked to make even greater sacrifices. More capital will be invested in heavy industry and arms production, less in the consumer sector. Production norms will be increased, wage levels held down. Thus for the workers of the eastern bloc, the rallying cry of Stalinism and Trotskyism—“defend the USSR against imperialism”—has a very concrete meaning: work harder, eat less, prepare to die for the fatherland.

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Dear FE:

“Carter’s Phony War Crisis” (FE #301, Feb. 26, 1980) was excellent. I’d only fault it in one respect—I feel that ‘you’re unduly optimistic in stating that, “Third World countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia...(will become) the super consumers of tomorrow.” My reasons are:

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Buster Brown

Bob Brubaker

Angela Di Sante

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Jim Gilman

Blue Jesus

E.B. Maple

Richard Rollins

Primitivo Solis

Larry Talbert

Mr. Venom

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

John Zerzan

Suzie

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN 0015–0800) is published bi-monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA; phone (313) 831–6800. Office hours vary, so please call before visiting. Subscriptions are $4.00 for six issues; $6 for foreign including Canada. Second class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright. No paid ads accepted.

When we start receiving letters asking if we are still publishing, we know it’s time to get an issue out. One reason that the gap between our last issue and this one must appear so large to those who receive the FE by mail is that the edition published at the time of the Republican Convention was not mailed to subscribers. Because of a shortage of staff and funds at the time, we distributed it in Detroit only. Unfortunately, none remain available for distribution but a reproduction of it is on the opposite page as well as a selection from the text.

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We should have realized that the anti-convention efforts in Detroit were going to be a flop when only two people responded to the FE article about planned activity which invited others to “join us in a game with no rules” (See FE #301, Feb. 26, 1980). And a flop it was. Only about 200 people turned up here to greet the Republicans July 13–16 coming mostly from cult/sect/political groups like the Communist Workers Party but also including a few valiant Yippies who refused to believe it wasn’t 1968. A sponsoring coalition of leftists and liberals (the FE declined to participate) planned a series of protests aimed at the delegates and the media but each event proved to be more disastrous than the one preceding it.

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To the left is a reproduction of a one-page broadsheet published as a Convention Extra and distributed to the delegates who it managed to shock and enrage and to Detroit residents who took it a bit better. Reprinted below is the lead story to give a flavor of the paper.

We mean it; pack your bags and leave Detroit! Take your vile political party, your cadaverous candidate, your stinking love for the state, your vicious racism, your blatant sexism, your hatred for the poor, your insane war plans, your nauseating patriotism, your putrid Christianity, your antiquated sexual morality, your contempt for the rest of the world, your millionaire officials, your middle-class sensibilities and your pathetic lack of vision and get out of our city!

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FE Introduction: Members of the Fifth Estate staff and our friends (as well as some not so friendly) have been debating the role of technology and its function within the larger system of domination almost since the inception of our tenure with this paper. At that time we were greatly influenced by the writings of the French Situationists and giddily shared their utopian dreams of cities on tracks that could be wheeled to the seashore each day and similar exotic visions of what a “liberated” technology could bring.

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Reprinted from Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the 20^th Century by Harry Braverman, Monthly Review, July-August 1974 edition; pages 55–58.

The function of the capitalist is to represent capital and to enlarge it. This is done either by controlling the production of surplus value [profit] in the productive industries and activities, or by appropriating it from outside those industries and activities. The industrial capitalist, the manufacturer, is an example of the first; the banker of the second. These management functions of control and appropriation have in themselves become labor processes. Here the productive processes of society disappear into a stream of paper—a stream of paper, moreover, which is processed in a continuous flow like that of the cannery, the meat-packing line, the car assembly conveyor, by workers organized in much the same way.

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You were mad about Iran, mad about Afghanistan, mad about that and a whole lot more. You want to fight communism and the foreign scurvy who undermine our American way of life? Well, are you ready to go toe-to-toe with the Ruskies, no holds barred, for an all-out fight? Be prepared, America! Don’t lag behind your leaders! We’re doing it all for you—Presidential Directive Number 59 has given us the go-ahead to prepare for a prolonged but limited nuclear war, with cruise missiles, neutron bombs and first-strike capability!

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The message relayed by the U.S. Strategic Air Command headquarters’ computer was unmistakable—Soviet missile attack! SAC B-52 bomber engines roared to life, their bomb bays laden with 20-megaton thermonuclear weapons; intercontinental ballistic systems were switched to command function—all that was necessary was the order from the President and the Armageddon of World War Three would commence.

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Unlike the computer failures mentioned in the article above, they couldn’t hide this one on the back page of the newspapers. When a fuel explosion rocked the underground Titan II nuclear missile silo sending flaming debris 500 feet in the air, everyone for a hundred miles around knew something had blown. The accident that occurred September 19 near Damascus, Arkansas destroyed the missile and left one dead and 21 injured (all Air Force officers) and was only one of hundreds of mishaps involving the missiles since the 54 ICBMs were first deployed in 1963. Since that time 55 persons have died and scores have been injured in the numerous incidents.

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“As long as the oppressive relations of capitalist production prevail, the character of work will continue to assume all of the features of a bad acid trip.”

—Karl Marx, The Communist Dreambook

Work engenders the progressive unemployment of the mind by encouraging the formation of bituminous warts hanging like dead fingernails from the brain. In severe work situations these growths may feel like entire fingers curling inward.

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Demonstrators on the steps of the “Defense” Dept. during the March 22, 1980 Washington DC rally against the draft and war.

When bullet-headed Selective Service Director Bernard D. Rostker looked sternly into the TV cameras last July and predicted that all but 2% of the nation’s 19- and 20-year-old men would comply with the scheduled draft registration his self-confidence was chilling. It was easy to believe that a generation of youth untouched by the protests of the ’60’s and ’70’s and raised on the Fonz and skateboards would march dutifully off to their local Post Office to become willing parts of the state military machine.

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The FE Bookstore is located in the same place as the Fifth Estate and can be found at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit—telephone (313) 831–6800. The hours that we’re open vary quite a bit, so it’s always best that you give us a ring before coming down.

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SHOCK! HORROR! It’s the basis for most of the non-events that fill the pages of so many British newspapers. Used the most often to spice up the trivial affairs of a newlyweds’ honeymoon of horror (“Dad made off with my wife” confesses a distraught groom) or a mother’s feeling of hopelessness over her teenager’s actions (“Susan shocked me with staying out late”), this SHOCK! HORROR! syndrome of British journalism was recently unleashed when Cienfuegos Press released their latest publication: Towards A Citizens’ Militia: Anarchist Alternatives to NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

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