Fifth Estate 304, December 31, 1980 Add to the Bookbuilder

This article is being written just as the pressure of a Soviet invasion of Poland is being eased and under the assumption that such an attack is not about to occur. Amid an atmosphere of continuing political crisis, growing worker militancy, continuing economic problems, and constant reshuffling of the Polish government personnel, Solidarity, the recently formed “independent” labor organization, looks like it is about to become a permanent part of Polish society.

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Comrades:

At the recent cena (dinner) held by the Italian comrades $1,061 was raised. It was decided to divide it among the following publications: Black Flag, Fifth Estate, Freedom, Internationale, Open Road, Revista A, SRAF, North American Anarchist, Work and Pay, and Voluntà.

Best Wishes

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Tomoga Therion

Primitivo Solis

Angela Di Sante

Larry Talbert

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Coquilles St. Jacques

E.B. Maple

Wanda Lust

Dora Kaplan

David Watson

Bill Watson

T. Fulano

Linda Wiens.

Mr. Venom

Don Kirkland

Ralph Rinaldi

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN 0015–0800) is published bi-monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA; phone (313) 8316800. 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.

The letters on this page are responses to John Zerzan’s “The Refusal of Technology” which appeared in the October 20, 1980 edition [#303] of the Fifth Estate; below are our comments on the question. In the article, Zerzan accuses those whose vision of revolution contains a dependence upon “‘advanced’ technology” as not significantly breaking with the world as it is. We have edited each of the contributions for purposes of space and we can only hope that we have left intact the authors’ intent.

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This issue is in your hands for two reasons: 1) your generous and numerous response to our plea for financial assistance and 2) the feeling of support we got from the accompanying letters you sent in. Our problem was really two-fold, but we only told you about the money side of the difficulties we faced. The other, a feeling of demoralization and a questioning of the purpose of our project, was really a more serious matter, but your desire for the Fifth Estate to continue infused a similar determination in us as well. We did discriminate, though, in a manner we should apologize for; we sent direct letters of thanks to large contributors and left our small donors to receive our appreciation in this space. We know that often it is as hard for some of you (and us) to find a spare five dollars where others are fortunate enough to have larger sums to contribute. We meant no slight but just couldn’t possibly thank everyone personally. We were exceptionally fortunate to have gotten the money we did as we had several large expenses relating to our office plus sent off several hundred dollars to book publishers such as Partisan Press, Cienfuegos, Black & Red, and Bratach Dubh. These important projects are experiencing much of the same difficulties as we are and we thought the least we could do was to pass along your donations to us for the debts we owed them. We don’t know what the future looks like financially, but we feel that if we can publish fairly regularly and offer an interesting selection of books, we can continue our projects. Still, we were just informed by our printer that his price is going to rise by 50%, our postage costs are already up, and we may have to switch mailing companies, all of which will entail a goodly sum. Ugh! So, any of you who feel the spirit to pledge a certain sum per month to the maintainance of the paper, you can join the small group of sustainers who receive the paper first class mail each issue and are a vital part of keeping us afloat...

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There has been a lot of activity during the past seven months in Zurich, Switzerland. It began last May when the young people of the city began demanding a free space where they could have an independent, self-governing or autonomous youth center. There were a number of general assembly meetings, followed by street demonstrations with anywhere between two and four thousand participants.

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There she is, looking vaguely pornographic on the glossy covers of the weekly magazines, the planet Saturn. What have we discovered? I don’t know, I haven’t read them, feeling squashed as I do to the Earth by the giddying inertia of this century which plummets like a flaming satellite towards the nothingness. Grey skies, the weather turning cold, sirens in the distance. Some citizens walk by whispering reverently of the wonders of Saturn, disputing the number of rings and moons according to the latest counts, as the corroding universe about them threatens to be annihilated. They drool over photographs of a planet most of them couldn’t spot in a clear night sky—that is, if the night sky hadn’t already been colonized and obliterated by the city light and the lethal dust of the very civilization which made it possible to send gadgets and technicians to the stars. But everything is so groovy on Saturn, so colorful and tempestuous. They know because they watched it all on television.

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Related: see FE Staff introduction, “Against Civilization,” in this issue.

The only possible opening for a statement of this kind is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of “legitimate” thinking; what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world’s ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.

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The following text, “On The Future of the Earth,” is a talk given by Russell Means at the Black Hills International Survival Gathering held last July at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The gathering was attended by groups which spanned the spectrum from local Indians and farmers, to Marxist-Leninists politicos, Sierra Club activists, Greenpeace, anti-power-line activists, to “alternative technology” entrepeneurs.

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a review of

Wartime Strikes: The Struggle Against the No-Strike Pledge in the UAW During World War II by Martin Glaberman, 1980, Bewick Editions, Detroit, 158 pp., $6 (Available from Fifth Estate Books).

Marty Glaberman’s account of auto worker militancy during the war years from the perspective of both an observer and a participant is essentially a tale of resistance to the orders of bosses—both union and government—to participate in the war mobilization under terms unfavorable to the workers.

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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.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

1) List the title of the book, quantity wanted, and price of each;

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FROM PARTISAN PRESS:

Partisan Press is pleased to announce the long-awaited release of Scottish anarchist Stuart Christie’s autobiography The Christie File.

British orders can be placed with Cienfuegos Press; all non-U.K. orders can be sent to us ($9.95). Coming Spring 1981: Festival and Revolt Italy anthology), Heretic (a new left libertarian journal), and more. Donations needed urgently! Join the Partisan Sustainer fund: $30/year (all publications for that year), or $100+ (lifetime). For orders and inquiries, write Partisan Press, P.O. Box 2193, Seattle WA 98111.

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What they do...

“It was in Hiroshima, that morning of August 6. I had joined a team of women who, like me, worked as volunteers in cutting firepaths against incendiary raids by demolishing whole rows of houses. My husband, because of a raid alert the previous night, had stayed at the Chunichi (Central Japan Journal), where he worked.

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