Fifth Estate 417, Winter 2025 Add to the Bookbuilder

Marius Mason, an anarchist, environmental/animal rights activist, vegan, and trans advocate was denied his scheduled Gender Affirming Surgery by the Trump administration and transferred to a women’s prison. The Republican candidate’s campaign spent $27 million on ads condemning gender surgery for prisoners and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) quickly remanded those detained back to prisons corresponding to their birth gender.

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Fifth Estate

Radical Publishing since 1965

Vol. 60, No. 2, #417 Winter 2025

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

Prisoners, please note: You are an important part of our subscribers, but our small staff usually cannot answer personal letters asking for resources, legal advice, addresses, or pen pals, and cannot accept emails. We are pleased to be able to provide free subscriptions to the incarcerated through our Prisoner Fund, but this is all we can manage.

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The Fifth Estate is in its 60^th year of continuous publication and for the last 40, our front-page usually bears artist Stephen Goodfellow’s graphic assault on power accompanied by the Latin phrase, Non Serviam. Its translation is “I will not serve.” This statement of rebellion is taken from John Milton’s 1667 poem, Paradise Lost. It is the ultimate statement of the refusal to serve authority as it is Lucifer’s rejection of obedience to the Christian god for which he is expelled from Heaven.

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a review of

Anarchy in the Big Easy: A History of Revolt, Rebellion, & Resurgence by Max Cafard. Illustrated by Vulpes. PM Press 2025

The Big Easy is the Isle of Orleans, an archipelago of a long and narrow, always unsure island in a surregional stream. The Isle is a meandering Möbius half-twist in a topologically peculiar place connecting the inside and outside. If you start on one side and move along the strip, you will eventually reach the other side, which is supposed to be land but may not be, without crossing an edge. It goes by “Big Easy.”

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We mourn the loss of David Chichkan, 39 years old, a renowned Ukrainian anarchist, artist and comrade who died on August 10 from wounds inflicted by fascist Russian forces the day before. He died defending the Zaporizhzhia front in southeast Ukraine on land which Nestor Makhno’s anarchist army once controlled from 1918 to 1921. Always on the side of justice, David fought for solidarity without borders, for a world with no masters, where everyone could live free.

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They are fighting for the sovereignty of capital. Warlike adamance, pressurized plunder. Capitalism has always been war, but this sadism is evangelism in the name of their only belief. Fully activated and pushed to its furthest limits, this version ends in pure nihilism: everything is value, therefore, nothing has value. This time, we are inside the machine. The weapon is technological enclosure. Inside this nightless regime, language is code.

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a review of

Ten Little Anarchists by Daniel de Roulet. Autonomedia, 2023

Daniel de Roulet’s novella, Ten Little Anarchists, is a masterful weave of fantasy and fact, history and histrionics, ideology and imagination.

It is a blend of feminist thought, pragmatic practice, and an open dialogue about strategy and priorities for the anarchist movement.

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a review of

Beyond the Final Whistle, Soccer for a Better World by Vasilis Kostakis. Pluto Press, 2025

On a hot night in Houston Texas, two teams played during a social and political moment that carried more meaning than just the end result of the match. The significance was shown by supporters’ shirts depicting half split Mexican and American flags worn by those in attendance.

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a review of

The Popular Wobbly: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim, T-Bone Slim, Edited by Owen Clayton and Iain McIntyre, Foreword by David R. Roediger. University of Minnesota Press, 2025

There’s a new book out which should be of interest to all fans of poignant and witty anecdotes, whether or not they’re interested in history or in union organizing, and whether or not they’ve ever experienced police brutality, prison, or poverty. But for those who appreciate the written word, who have an interest in history or in union organizing, and especially for those among us who have ever gone to bed hungry and broke, this book will provide you with sustenance of all kinds.

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a review of

Hurt, Baby, Hurt by William Walter Scott III. University of Michigan Press, 2025

First self-published in 1970, Hurt, Baby, Hurt is a fast-paced and brief yet intimate look into the life of William Walter Scott III, the man credited with inciting the so-called Detroit riots of July 1967. Known to city residents as The Rebellion, the five days of fires and police and National Guard repression resulted in 43 deaths, 1,200 injuries, over 7,000 arrests, and hundreds of buildings and homes destroyed.

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a review of

Jobs, Jive, & Joy: An Argument for the Utopian Spirit by Bernard Marszalek (Ztangi Press and Charles H. Kerr, 2024)

“Certainly, contending with climate catastrophe and civilization collapse requires a cultural revolution to match the devastation before us.” —Bernard Marszalek

The environmental, health, social, economic and political stresses of the last few decades have spurred the formation of increasing numbers of mutual aid groups for sharing resources and solidarity. Especially since the emergence of the Covid pandemic, people are reflecting on how to move their lives beyond working in the current world’s humiliating, boring, and unhealthy jobs.

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