Fifth Estate #412, Fall, 2022
Fifth Estate Collective
Joseph Dejacque Bicentennial Conference
</strong> Sunday, December 11, 2022
The Joseph Déjacque Bicentennial Conference is being held in recognition of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of this major nineteenth-century communist anarchist political theorist and visionary utopian writer. It is sponsored by La Terre Institute for Community and Ecology and Yes We Cannibal, with the support of the Anarchist Political Ecology Group and the Dialectical Social Ecology Group.
Nov 22, 2022 Read the whole text...
Jack Bratich
Fascism is not an Information problem
Gender and Microfascism
When U.S. President Joe Biden called MAGA Republicans “like semi-fascism” in late August, then gave a speech in Philadelphia a few days later on a set decked out in martial aesthetics (including actual Marines), he embodied a contemporary troubling paradox.
We are in a curious historical moment in which it is easy to name the enemy as fascist, even while enacting fascist tendencies. Associating Trump with fascism has been in play for years before Biden’s half-hearted accusation. Meanwhile, QAnon Christian white supremacists call Biden a Nazi. And all of them are troubled by antifa. Anarchist antifascists find ourselves caught in the cross-hairs of these other so-called antifascists.
Dec 14, 2022 Read the whole text...
Rui Preti
The Return of the irrepressible
Anarchist inspired resistance in Ukraine Then and Now
“The question is always how to move from a social insurgency to an anarchistic society?”
—Voline, The Unknown Revolution
In early October, as the Russian military assault on Ukraine enters its eighth month, radical publications have been reporting on anarchists participating in the popular struggle against the invasion. Surprisingly, several mainstream journalists have also published articles presenting anarchists in a positive light.
Dec 15, 2022 Read the whole text...
Marieke Bivar
Resistance is an Intimate Art
Stories from the Middle of a Sexual Revolution
a review of
Sexual Revolution: Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback Laurie Penny. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022
“This [book] is an exercise in pointing out the obvious. There is a slow-moving sea change happening in gendered power relations. It’s been building for decades now. And it has to do with economics; it has to do with imbalances and rebalances in structural violence and how power is organized and operates. And the reaction to that sexual revolution explains a great deal of modern politics.”
Nov 30, 2022 Read the whole text...
David Tighe
Remembering Peter Lamborn Wilson
Anarchist, author, Poet, scholar, & visual artist 1945- 2022
Peter Lamborn Wilson is best known for the book TAZ.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchism, Poetic Terrorism, and rightfully so. Written as Hakim Bey and first published by Autonomedia in 1991, many of the texts in TAZ had circulated for years in the ‘80s zine underground.
Drawing inspiration from the Situationists, classical anarchism, continental philosophy (Lyotard’s Driftwork, Deleuze & Guattari’s Nomadology), pirate utopias, the American communitarian tradition, and dropouts of every sort, Wilson did not invent the TAZ—he just gave it a name.
Dec 22, 2022 Read the whole text...
Peter Lamborn Wilson
An Army of Jacks
to fight the power
Reprinted from Fifth Estate, #378, Summer 2008.
In fairy tales, humans can possess exterior souls, things magically containing or embodying individual life force—stone, egg, ring, bird or animal, c. If the thing is destroyed, the human dies. But while the thing persists, the human enjoys a kind of immortality or at least invulnerability. Money could be seen as such an exteriorized soul. Humans created it, in some sense, in order to hide their souls in things that could be locked away (in tower or cave) and hidden so their bodies would acquire magical invulnerability—wealth, health, the victoriousness of enjoyment, power over enemies—even over fate.
Jan 6, 2023 Read the whole text...
Paul Buhle
The Rojava Revolution is a Women’s Story
a review of
Their Blood Got Mixed: Revolutionary Rojava and the War on ISIS by Janet Biehl, PM Press, 2021
This is a remarkable graphic novel that could be described as part of an emerging genre of comics journalism. Joe Sacco famously showed the way with his on-the-scene descriptions of conflict in the Balkans and the West Bank, graphic novels that reached all the way across the world in many languages.
Nov 30, 2022 Read the whole text...
Çîrok Ecnebî
Revolution in the Syrian Desert
I went to see the fountain of hope in the desert of death.
Rojava is still in my eyes. A fountain in the middle of desert. By desert, I mean authoritarian regimes, imperialist and colonialist forces, and Islamist warmongers. But it seems now that while at a societal level, Rojava is flourishing with ways to fight patriarchy, the environment is turning into an actual desert.
Jan 6, 2023 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Lost Anarchism & Surrealism of the 1960s
Two Radical Threads Combine
The next project of Abigail Susik, author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work, investigates the radical connections between anarchism and surrealism through the little-known figure of Jonathan Leake and his work in the 1960s with the magazine, Resurgence.
It is devoted to the extremely rare surrealist, anarchist, IWW, and anti-racist underground zine which had twelve mimeographed issues printed in New York, Chicago, San Francisco; between 1964 and 1967. It contains reprints of all twelve issue covers, as well as page selections from each issue, including the recently discovered, formerly lost issue #4.
Jan 9, 2023 Read the whole text...
Jim Feast
Watching the Clock
Waiting to get back to living
a review of
The Lady Anarchist Café: Poems and Stories by Lorraine Schein. Autonomedia, 2022
Lorraine Schein, a friend of long-standing, has just published her latest book, The Lady Anarchist Café: Poems and Stories.
This writer has toiled for years within stultifying bureaucratic confines of the workaday world while maintaining sharp anarchist perspectives in her creative endeavors.
Dec 9, 2022 Read the whole text...
Bill Brown
On the Poverty of Student Life
The Little Pamphlet that Started a Revolution
a review of
On the Poverty of Student Life, Considered in its Economic, Political, Psychological, Sexual, and Particularly Intellectual Aspects, And a Modest Proposal for its Remedy: Members of the Situationist International and Students from Strasbourg. Edited by Mehdi El Hajoui and Anna O’Meara. Common Notions, 2022
Dec 9, 2022 Read the whole text...
Robert Knox
Life in the Margins
Man eating mermaids, demons, ghouls & thieves
a review of
We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow (and Other Stories) Margaret Killjoy. AK Press, 2022
We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow (and Other Stories) is a promising work by Margaret Killjoy, who has written novels in the steampunk and folk horror genres and whose stories have appeared regularly in science fiction and fantasy magazines. She is described on the book’s back cover as a transfeminine author with no fixed adult home.
Dec 24, 2022 Read the whole text...
J. M. White
William Blake’s Fourfold Vision
In his early 19th century book Jerusalem, English poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake writes: “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” Blake was an anti-authoritarian revolutionary. Although largely unrecognized during his lifetime, his liberatory influence has been felt in the spheres of politics, poetry, religion, economics, art, and sexuality.
Jan 10, 2023 Read the whole text...
John Clark
Joseph Déjacque
The Anarchist Almost No One Knows
Joseph Déjacque was a major 19th-century communist anarchist political theorist and visionary utopian writer, born in Besancon, France on December 27, 1821. To celebrate the bicentennial year of his birth, two New Orleans-based groups, are convening a Déjacque Bicentennial Conference on December 10 and 11.
Jan 17, 2023 Read the whole text...
Sascha Engel
Burning Money
Ridding the world of capital’s representation
Freeing ourselves from the state, capital, and civilization requires radical action. Radical means going for the jugular. The blood pumping through the jugular is money.
Without money, labor power can no longer be commanded. Nor can wealth be hoarded, which means labor power cannot be commanded further down the line. Without taxes, the state’s war machine can not reinforce capital, nor police our bodies.
Jan 22, 2023 Read the whole text...
Martin Comack
Revolution from below
confounds those who desire to lead it from above
a review of
El Socialism Salvaje: Autoorganizacion y democracia directa desde 1789 hasta nuestros dias (Wild Socialism: Self-organization and direct democracy from 1789 to the Present) Charles Reeve. Virus Editorial, 2020
What Paris-based author Charles Reeve calls socialismo salvaje, “wild socialism,” is the demand for direct democracy and popular control of social institutions by workers, peasants, and citizens in periods of social and political upheaval appearing throughout modern history.
Dec 30, 2022 Read the whole text...
William D. Buckingham
Anthropologists & the People They Study
a review of
The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity by Marshall Sahlins. Princeton University Press, 2022
The late anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1930–2021) is best known for his claim, first published in 1968, that people living in traditional economies based on hunting and gathering enjoyed lives of relative security, abundance, and leisure.
Jan 5, 2023 Read the whole text...
John Thackary
The Northman
Today, Reflected in the Gore of Yore
a review of
“The Northman”
Dir: Robert Eggers, 2022
There was an unavoidable discomfort in my bones upon deciding to view “The Northman.” It felt difficult to ignore how, from advertisements, the film’s early Norse historical setting seemed like unfortunate—if unintentional—catnip for fascists with a tendency for perverting Paganism to justify ideologies of volkisch nationalism. And yet, I was happily surprised.
Jan 6, 2023 Read the whole text...
Rui Preti
The Life of Anarchist Octavio Alberola
From the Spanish Revolution to today
a review of
The Weight of The Stars: The Life of Anarchist Octavio Alberola. Written and illustrated by Agustin Comotto. Translated from Spanish by Paul Sharkey, AK Press 2022
“These notions of Marxism and anarchism have shown themselves not to be serviceable enough, as circumstances have changed and so they need re-elaborating, amplification, or amendment.”
Jan 9, 2023 Read the whole text...
Jason Rodgers
The beasts of the Southwest desert have a message for us
a review of
A Desert Pilgrim’s Bestiary by Anthony Walent, author; Maurice Spira, Illustrator. Eberhardt Press, 2019
A Desert Pilgrim’s Bestiary is both archaic and modern. Anthony Walent has been employing this very tension in his zine, Communicating Vessels, for many years, that is assembled and designed using functioning, but antique typesetting equipment.
Jan 14, 2023 Read the whole text...