Fifth Estate 313, Summer, 1983 Add to the Bookbuilder

For us, here in inner-city Detroit, the crumbling of a “progress” oriented society is very real and present. Its tangible effects are concentrated here. Its evidence—ragged empty shells of concrete, lining streets leading to their untimely ends, amputated by expressways or isolated corporate megaliths, the occasional pathetic charades of well-being, the razed and desolate spaces—pervades everything we do, even attempts to distract ourselves from the ruin. Everyone living here is profoundly aware of the failure. It is bred in our bones, as during our lives we’ve witnessed, not just this city’s demise, but the cumulative result of misdeeds performed through history by an increasingly urban society impelled by a limitless want of power brought to self-destruction.

...

When an economic system produces 32 million unemployed in the industrialized nations, it would almost seem unnecessary to inveigh against its profound inadequacies. But several factors make it worthwhile to look at the present state of disarray in which world capitalism is currently mired.

Although some wag (either a queen, Marx or the Bible) once said that the poor have always been with us, most people know by now that this is a culture-bound observation and no more than a justification for the privilege of society’s wealthy. However, the saying is nonetheless true for the modern world.

...

Fifth Estate:

The debate on sex; the burning of Porno Palaces, etc. was quite amusing. Last issue’s letter writer fumed over the actions of the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade who stated with alarming urgency—“the struggle for universal sexual freedom ought to be a top priority among anti-authoritarians” (see FE #312, Spring 1983).

...

Fifth Estate

The Fifth Estate is a co-operative project, published by a group of friends who are in general, but not necessarily complete agreement with the articles herein. Each segment of the paper represents the collective effort of writing, typesetting, lay-out and proofreading.

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN No. 0015–0800) is published quarterly at 5928 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48202 USA; phone (313) 831–6800. Office hours vary, so please call before visiting. Subscriptions are $5.00 a year; $7.00 foreign including Canada. Second class postage paid at Detroit MI. No copyright. No paid advertisements.

Technology. We know that it offers no evidence whatsoever of having any sympathy for the nature of the world, and has nothing to do with human desires for an earth on which to dwell.

We’re the people who create it, perfect it and make it part of the American dream. We bring you the computer, which touches all our lives in ways we can hardly begin to imagine. And who can say what lies ahead?

...

Resistance to the draft is happening around the world. The Fifth Estate recently received information from the editors of “A” Rivista Anarchica about Mauro Zanoni, a 20-year-old anarchist who was arrested February 13, 1983 in the “Pavia” di Pesaro, Italy army barracks for his total refusal to cooperate with the military. Zanoni had been scheduled to report four months earlier to fulfill the one-year military “service” required of all Italian men.

...

The chaos of a hundred packing boxes has finally been cleared away, lost correspondence found and misplaced book orders filled, and our new office space is beginning to take on the feeling of home. It’s quite a change since the paper was in its last office for 12 years, but the fact that we are sharing quarters with three other groups has made the transition one of positive expectations. The large building we are occupying is just a few blocks uptown from the old address (in the shadow of the General Motors world headquarters) and features office space in front with a large performance area in the rear. The latter will be utilized by the Layabouts, a new wave band (three of whose members also contribute to the FE), the Dramatic Research Company (the old Freezer Theatre Players), and the Duck Club Players (from the infamous club of the same name), so music, satire and plays will abound. We had a big, bang-up, Detroit style grand opening and May Day celebration (Workers of the World Relax!) and a small Fifth Estate open house to show off our new quarters and bookstore. A full schedule of events is not yet set, but with the above crew situated, events in the manner of the old Grinning Duck and Freezer Theatre can be expected.

...

The following was received by the Fifth Estate as a “Declaration to the Libertarian Movement in the West.”

We are a group of anarchists and anti-authoritarian left-wingers in Warsaw who came together in a discussion circle (Sigma) at the beginning of 1980. We all agreed on a general opposition to the existing political system in our country. Most of us came to anarchism via literature. For example, at the beginning of the 1950s some works of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin were published in Poland in small editions. All of them were accessible to everyone in the public libraries. Another important source for us was a series called Library of Socialist Thought in which, during the 1960s, along with texts of Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier, some works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin were published. In addition, a very badly edited collection of works of the most important Polish anarchist, Edward Abromowski, was published.

...

Every crime in Oklahoma was added to his name.

—Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd by Woodie Guthrie

Seizing five anarchists on 17 charges of sabotage and conspiracy in British Columbia early this year (see FE #312, Spring 1983) gave the Canadian government the excuse it needed to begin “clearing” other unsolved bomb cases by attributing them to the arrested five.

...

This statement was received July 7 from the publishers of Bulldozer magazine.

On June 13^th the Metropolitan police raided our house on Cambridge Ave. as part of the ongoing investigation into the bombing of the Litton Systems Plant outside the city last October (see FE #311, Winter 1982–83).

On one level, this is just one of a series of raids which have taken place in Toronto. Unfortunately, there are many indications that this is a definite escalation of the harassment that has been directed against anti-authoritarians and activists within the peace movement.

...

this courtroom is a public urinal reeking

with the suicidal odor of protocol

the oily horror of boredom illuminates my nausea

on a never ending ride into the hinterlands

of the loneliest chaos I have ever known

does the defendant waive time?

my lawyer winks flirtatiously

yes, your honor

he learned his ABCs

...

Just as today’s most obsessive notion is that of the material reality of time, self-existent time was the first lie of social life. As with nature, time did not exist before the individual became separate from it. Reification of this magnitude—the beginning of time—constitutes the Fall: the initiation of alienation, of history.

...

In response to “Beginning of Time, End of Time,” FE #313, Summer, 1983.

The question of time and its relationship to domination is central to understanding our captivity. John’s article attempts to come to grips with this very difficult subject; while what follows is often critical of his attempt, I do not want to slight its radical intent or the hard work he put into it. Nor should these criticisms obscure the fact that it is an important introduction- to the question of time: it helps us to see our perception of time as unnatural, as something imposed upon us, as a force to be overthrown if we are to liberate ourselves.

...

GREEK LIBERTARIANS: As of May 14, Greek libertarians, Photis Danatos and Kyriakos Miras were in their 54^th day of a hunger strike. They were arrested on the apparently minor charge of “hooliganism”—a catch-all charge used to imprison protesters (peaceful or otherwise). The arrests took place during a march (to protest at the “suiciding” and torture of, prisoners in Greece under the so-called “socialists”) that took place in Piraeus when a motorist (presumably a provocateur/extremist) drove into the crowd so as to break up the march. In the resulting melee the two—who were in the crowd protesting and are known by the police as “politicals”—were picked up and they have been in prison ever since.

...

The FE Book Service is located in the same place as the Fifth Estate Newspaper, both of which are located at 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit MI 48201 — telephone (313) 831–6800. The hours we are open vary considerably, so it’s always best to give us a call before coming down.

INTERNATIONAL BLACKLIST by the Blacklist Group

...

The always provocative and irreverent The Match! (P.O. Box 3488, Tucson AZ 85722) is currently involved in a raging debate on pornography in which it inveighs against any censorship even by women who maintain they are victimized by it. “No one,” states The Match! “is fit to be a censor!”

Also, Kent Winslow’s serialized novelette, “Dream World,” is worth the price of admission alone.

...

a review of

Israel’s Global Role: Weapons for Repression. Israel Shakak. Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., Belmont MA, 61 pp., 1982, $2.95.

Our Roots Are Still Alive: The Story of the Palestinian People. Peoples Press Palestine Book Project, Institute for Independent Social Journalism, New York, 1981, 190 pp., $5.45.

...

from The Eighth Night of Creation: Life on the Edge of Human History by Jerome Deshusses

Today there is no city that the automobile has not turned into a vast parking lot, no avenue that is not a rectilinear traffic artery bordered by concrete sidewalks and strips of sickly, dying dusty, grayish grass. It will soon be impossible for people to talk to each other in the street except by walkie-talkie, impossible to breathe except high up in the mountains (where the air is only a little less toxic than elsewhere, and cars will soon be as numerous as tourists, anyway), impossible to cross a lane without thinking of the danger of being run down and killed, impossible to regard other human beings as other than so many Sunday mechanics mucking about underneath the artificial armor of their coachwork....

...