Fifth Estate 414, Fall 2023 Add to the Bookbuilder

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In order to engage in electoral politics by claiming it as harm reduction, you have to ignore the fact that each new law creates new criminals, and that the state has always sought to isolate and punish criminals. Aside from whatever fantasy of minimizing damage Kathy Ferguson proffers in her article, “Anarchism & the Vote,” in FE #413, Spring, 2023, that’s an objective harm to individuals and even entire classes of people.

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Fifth Estate

Radical Publishing since 1965

Vol. 58, No. 2, #414, Fall 2023

The Fifth Estate is an anti-profit, anarchist project published by a volunteer collective of friends and comrades. www.FifthEstate.org

No ads. No copyright. Kopimi — reprint freely

Yes, it does often feel like we’re beating our heads against a brick wall. What do we do?

The now-cliched definition of insanity, although it originated with Albert Einstein, is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Do we meet that description? Anarchists fight against racism and there is an upsurge in violence against people of color. We fight the pipelines, and governments roll out more of them. We oppose the patriarchy, but in many ways it is as entrenched as ever. The climate crisis worsens each season and a dynamic fascist movement is on the rise.

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a review of

Abolish the Family! by Sophie Lewis. Verso, 2022

Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care by M.E. O’Brien. Pluto Press, 2023

As we all navigate the perilous shoals of capitalist austerity and precarity, many turn to the family as the last reserve of collectivity, care, and survival. For a lucky few, this is enough, but this notion of the “last reserve” is a deep structural problem that leaves too many people vulnerable to abandonment or abuse.

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Earlier this year, I created a fifteen-minute presentation on the ethical implications of the program Midjourney and other A.I. art generators for the Northeast Modern Language Conference, then released it online through the University of New Hampshire.

A week later, a computer science PhD student emailed me asking to meet up. As a literature PhD, I wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted. Perhaps it was to gossip about the plethora of A.I. software spreading like a digital kudzu, or maybe he would pitch me a business idea.

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a review of

Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort, Author of ‘The Joy Of Sex’ by Eric Laursen. AK Press 2023

“We are the enemies of society and we must learn disobedience. Then we shall probably inherit the earth by default when the maniacs have burnt each other to a cinder. We shall be alive; they won’t.”

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a review of

Pets DC: Rise of the Pets by Ramon Dines and Kit Brixton. A.B.O. Comix, 2022

A.B.O. Comix describes themselves as “a collective of creators and activists who work to amplify the voices of LGBTQ prisoners through art. By working closely with prison abolitionist and queer advocacy organizations, we aim to keep queer prisoners connected to outside community and help them fight towards liberation.”

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Oakland, Calif. police made an arrest in June of a 19-year-old man they say is responsible for the death of Jen Angel, the social justice activist, anarchist and baker, during a bungled robbery in February.

Ishmael Burch of San Francisco was identified as the person driving the car in which Jen became entangled as she tried to retrieve her purse grabbed from her as she exited a bank. Angel was the owner of Angel Cakes Bakery in Oakland.

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a review of

Resurgence: Jonathan Leake, Radical Surrealism and the Resurgence Youth Movement 1964–1967 edited by Abigail Susik. Eberhardt Press, 2023

Who would have suspected that the humble mimeograph duplicator, invented for office work and used by organizations of every imaginable kind, would also have a political-cultural role across generations?

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a review of

Letterpress Revolution: The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture by Kathy E. Ferguson. Duke University Press, 2023

In his search for truth, William Blake might take an idea of the dominant culture and invert it as he did in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793). There, he calls the printing house “Hell.” He sees dragon men preparing the space, vipers adorning it, eagle-like men building palaces, lions casting the sorts or types, and unnam’d forms casting them so that books were printed and bound. Kathy Ferguson does not write this kind of magical bestiary, instead her writing is scholarly to a high and sophisticated degree. It is useful, clear, and thorough, every bit as ready as Blake to turn the world upside down.

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a review of

This Rancid Mill: An Alex Damage Novel by Kyle Decker. PM Press 2023

Foul deeds will rise

Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

—Hamlet

When C. Auguste Dupin solves the case in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders on the Rue Morgue, the chilling elements comprising the grizzly killings and the shocking conclusion contain the model for much of subsequent murder mystery and detective fiction. The genre’s popularity, almost 200 years later, remains undiminished in literature and film. Ones with depth, raise not only the question of who-dunnit, but along the way, pose larger, wide-ranging considerations of greed, revenge, power, politics, trust, friendship, sex, family, or combinations.

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a review of

Karl Marx, Private Eye by Jim Feast. PM Press, 2023

Karl Marx Private Eye is a fascinating chimera: it is simultaneously a cozy mystery, a Conan Doyle parody, and a philosophical meditation on Karl Marx’s reaction to the failed 1871 Paris Commune.

Author Jim Feast weaves a compelling narrative that can capture the imagination of anyone who slept through most of their European Civilization 101 course. The plot rivals the twisty whodunits of Agatha Christie, while the prose feels authentically Victorian, in the line of Charles Dickens or even Charlotte Bronte, but with the pacing on fast-forward.

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a review of

Me, Mikko, and Annikki: A Community Love Story in a Finnish City by Tiitu Takal. North Atlantic Books, 2019

The continuing interest at the Fifth Estate in anarchist/community struggles as seen in comic art, inadvertently passed over an extremely remarkable example in Tiitu Takal’s Me, Mikko, and Annikki: A Community Love Story in a Finnish City, to which I wrote the Afterword.

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a review of

Red Squared Montreal: A Fictional Chronicle by Norman Nawrocki. Black Rose Books, 2023

One thing we know about capitalism: it can’t have a past (or at least acknowledge one), for the past is filled with resistance.

That’s why it’s so important to keep this history alive, as Norman Nawrocki does so well in his novel Red Squared Montreal. It tells the story of the Quebec 2012 seven month long massive student strike involving 300,000 participants throughout the province. The revolt, ignited by a proposed hike in tuition, didn’t consist of just a few protests, but first, daily marches and then daily and nightly demonstrations with actions involving tens of thousands.

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Abuelo, like a history professor, extrapolated on The Zone’s relationship, or lack thereof, with Chicago, the USA, the rest of the world...and, the unlikely events that created a place found on no maps.

Abuelo pulled down a screen with a map of Chicago. “This is where I lived in the 1990s,” he said, pointing with a broom handle. “By the end of the century, there was a bike collective here, an organic bakery here and a puppet troupe in a warehouse here.”

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2023 has officially been designated as the worst fire season on record in so-called Canada, with almost 20 million acres burned by summer’s end. While these wildfires deeply ravaged many communities, they have most severely impacted Indigenous communities, many of whose territories are northern, rural, or wilderness.

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a review of

Present Continuous by David Grundy. Pamenar, 2022

As David Grundy notes in “Catalogue,” the first of fifteen essays that comprise his new book, the ongoing Covid pandemic has served as yet another mode of “normalization” under the grindstone of late capital: “We’ll face the constant injunction to adjust to the ‘new normal’: normality in abnormality, an extension of the fucked-up methods that already exist; the retreat to the virtual for those waiting for Deliveroo, Uber, and Amazon drop-offs, while the deaths pile up in the warehouses, or the skyscraper shadows below.”

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a review of

Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic by David Lester and Marcus Rediker; Illustrated by David Lester; Edited by Paul Buhle. Beacon Press 2023

When you encounter the English-speaking world’s fascination with the golden age of Atlantic pirating, it’s better understood to think of it less about the act of pirating itself, and more about the relationship of pirates to the state. As Marcus Rediker’s 2004 book’s title indicated, they were the Villains of All Nations, separate from state sanctioned pirating like privateering, seemingly dead to the people of other nations.

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a review of

“Carmen” (2022) Dir: Benjamin Millepied

Benjamin Millepied’s retelling of the classic opera “Carmen” feels like the kind of movie that you need some time to process...and then some more after that...and then even more later on. It’s hard for someone to make up their mind about a film and safely tuck it away, never to be examined again, when the density of the film in question insists on coming back to haunt the viewer.

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In this cafeteria flies swarm the recruiter’s cropped hair.

“One thing I hate—” he spits out—“flies!”

His dominant hand swipes the air. Pure reflex.

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In this same room girls carry plastic babies, lifeless until

internal mechanisms inspire crying when

they haven’t been fed, haven’t slept, are jarred in some way.

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A review of

SDS: Students For A Democratic Society: 50^th Anniversary Edition by Kirkpatrick Sale. Autonomedia, 2023

The 50^th anniversary edition of Kirkpatrick Sale’s history of SDS, the 1960s radical student organization, is more than a time-capsule. It is a breathing, encyclopedic compendium of hope and outrage, a chronicle of chaos and courage. The book connects contemporary readers with a radical lineage filled with inspiring stories of the contagious movement among rebellious youth during that tumultuous decade.

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Longtime French anarchist scholar and activist Ronald Creagh died on September 8 at age 94.

He was in touch with anarchists and anti-authoritarians on several continents. Those who knew him personally appreciated his broad-minded openness and supportive spirit.

Some Fifth Estate staffers were among those who found him engaging and attentive in conversations on many subjects. In recent years he was a regular reader of our online current and past articles and enjoyed discussing them.

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a review of

Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action by Nadja Millner-Larsen. The University of Chicago Press, 2023

When I met Ben Morea some years ago, I assumed that our correspondence would further my historical research on the interrelation between experimental and ultra-leftist radicalism in the United States in the 1960s and ‘70s.

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A new book of oral histories edited by political prisoner Eric King and abolitionist Josh Davidson is now available for preorder through AK Press and Burning Books. Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners with a foreword by Angela Davis and an introduction by Sara Falconer is a fundraiser for, and a way to raise awareness of those imprisoned for politically motivated actions.

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a review of

On Community: Field Notes #8 by Casey Plett. Biblioasis, 2023

Casey Plett’s new book, On Community, weaves a nexus of themes and concepts, including compassion, needs, the pleasure of sharing coffee, the mutual support queers and transsexuals provide, the power of the group, and an ongoing space of encounter.

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a review of

Eat the Rich & Other Interesting Ideas: Selected Essays by Peter Werbe. Black & Red-Detroit, 2023

“To live outside the law, you must be honest.” B. Dylan, “Absolutely Sweet Marie”

Eat the Rich, a compilation of Peter Werbe’s journalism from the Fifth Estate, demonstrates in formidable detail how he has been getting our attention for the last five decades.

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Imprisoned Italian insurrectionist anarchist Alfredo Cospito’s six-month hunger strike ended in April with a partial victory of a reduced sentence.

Over the past year, Cospito has waged a struggle against the brutality and dehumanization of prison life in Italy. (See “Alfredo Cospito’s Struggle,” FE #413, Spring 2023). He and his comrade Anna Beniamino were convicted of kneecapping the CEO of Italy’s main nuclear power company, and later of planting bombs at a school for Carabinieri, the national police.

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a review of

Isabelle Walks With Angels: A Montreal Urban legend by Norman Nawrocki, Illustrated by Ivan R. Les Pages Noires, 2023

Norman Nawrocki’s novella is a beautifully illustrated story, allegory, or fable about a woman who had a home, but lost it. All her adult life there have been abusive men: lovers, landlords bosses, restaurant clients. She loses what little she has and is now living on the street, defending herself from predators the best she can. All the avenues have been closed, there’s only one left...jumping into the freezing waters of the Saint-Laurence Seaway from a high bridge.

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a review of

Ohio by Sean Swain. Ardent Books

Ohio is the story of Sean Swain, a man wrongfully convicted and turned into an anarchist political prisoner in the state that bears the title of the book’s name.

He has been in prison in Ohio since 1991 on a murder charge, the self-defense killing of an abusive ex- of his then-girlfriend who had broken into his house and threatened his life.

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a review of

Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction by Alex Prichard. Oxford University Press, 2023

Anarchists have been devising short guides for the anarcho-curious practically since anarchism existed as a coherent ideological thread. They date back at least to Kropotkin’s contribution to the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911) and including Alexander Berkman’s ABC of Communist Anarchism (1929), Colin Ward’s Anarchy in Action (1973), and Cindy Milstein’s Anarchism and its Aspirations (2010).

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a review of

Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfemi Táíwò. Haymarket Books, 2022

Although most readers may not think of ourselves as elites, one of the great gifts of the Black feminists who developed the concept of identity politics was to demonstrate how status and power are relative, and move simultaneously in different directions across multiple aspects of a person’s identity.

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Three collectives belonging to the history of Portuguese anarchism, Zentro de Cultura Libertaria, BOESG (library) and A Batalha (newspaper), have purchased an Anarchist Center in the Lisbon region: a common space, open to old and new collectives, that will rid them of the pressure brought about by gentrification and real estate. The new Center will also host the archives and libraries of the three collectives. They are asking for contributions of solidarity.

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