Most Recent Additions

Reprinted from Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the 20^th Century by Harry Braverman, Monthly Review, July-August 1974 edition; pages 55–58.

The function of the capitalist is to represent capital and to enlarge it. This is done either by controlling the production of surplus value [profit] in the productive industries and activities, or by appropriating it from outside those industries and activities. The industrial capitalist, the manufacturer, is an example of the first; the banker of the second. These management functions of control and appropriation have in themselves become labor processes. Here the productive processes of society disappear into a stream of paper—a stream of paper, moreover, which is processed in a continuous flow like that of the cannery, the meat-packing line, the car assembly conveyor, by workers organized in much the same way.

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You were mad about Iran, mad about Afghanistan, mad about that and a whole lot more. You want to fight communism and the foreign scurvy who undermine our American way of life? Well, are you ready to go toe-to-toe with the Ruskies, no holds barred, for an all-out fight? Be prepared, America! Don’t lag behind your leaders! We’re doing it all for you—Presidential Directive Number 59 has given us the go-ahead to prepare for a prolonged but limited nuclear war, with cruise missiles, neutron bombs and first-strike capability!

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Demonstrators on the steps of the “Defense” Dept. during the March 22, 1980 Washington DC rally against the draft and war.

When bullet-headed Selective Service Director Bernard D. Rostker looked sternly into the TV cameras last July and predicted that all but 2% of the nation’s 19- and 20-year-old men would comply with the scheduled draft registration his self-confidence was chilling. It was easy to believe that a generation of youth untouched by the protests of the ’60’s and ’70’s and raised on the Fonz and skateboards would march dutifully off to their local Post Office to become willing parts of the state military machine.

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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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Unlike the computer failures mentioned in the article above, they couldn’t hide this one on the back page of the newspapers. When a fuel explosion rocked the underground Titan II nuclear missile silo sending flaming debris 500 feet in the air, everyone for a hundred miles around knew something had blown. The accident that occurred September 19 near Damascus, Arkansas destroyed the missile and left one dead and 21 injured (all Air Force officers) and was only one of hundreds of mishaps involving the missiles since the 54 ICBMs were first deployed in 1963. Since that time 55 persons have died and scores have been injured in the numerous incidents.

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To the left is a reproduction of a one-page broadsheet published as a Convention Extra and distributed to the delegates who it managed to shock and enrage and to Detroit residents who took it a bit better. Reprinted below is the lead story to give a flavor of the paper.

We mean it; pack your bags and leave Detroit! Take your vile political party, your cadaverous candidate, your stinking love for the state, your vicious racism, your blatant sexism, your hatred for the poor, your insane war plans, your nauseating patriotism, your putrid Christianity, your antiquated sexual morality, your contempt for the rest of the world, your millionaire officials, your middle-class sensibilities and your pathetic lack of vision and get out of our city!

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“As long as the oppressive relations of capitalist production prevail, the character of work will continue to assume all of the features of a bad acid trip.”

—Karl Marx, The Communist Dreambook

Work engenders the progressive unemployment of the mind by encouraging the formation of bituminous warts hanging like dead fingernails from the brain. In severe work situations these growths may feel like entire fingers curling inward.

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FE Introduction: Members of the Fifth Estate staff and our friends (as well as some not so friendly) have been debating the role of technology and its function within the larger system of domination almost since the inception of our tenure with this paper. At that time we were greatly influenced by the writings of the French Situationists and giddily shared their utopian dreams of cities on tracks that could be wheeled to the seashore each day and similar exotic visions of what a “liberated” technology could bring.

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SHOCK! HORROR! It’s the basis for most of the non-events that fill the pages of so many British newspapers. Used the most often to spice up the trivial affairs of a newlyweds’ honeymoon of horror (“Dad made off with my wife” confesses a distraught groom) or a mother’s feeling of hopelessness over her teenager’s actions (“Susan shocked me with staying out late”), this SHOCK! HORROR! syndrome of British journalism was recently unleashed when Cienfuegos Press released their latest publication: Towards A Citizens’ Militia: Anarchist Alternatives to NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

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The message relayed by the U.S. Strategic Air Command headquarters’ computer was unmistakable—Soviet missile attack! SAC B-52 bomber engines roared to life, their bomb bays laden with 20-megaton thermonuclear weapons; intercontinental ballistic systems were switched to command function—all that was necessary was the order from the President and the Armageddon of World War Three would commence.

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We should have realized that the anti-convention efforts in Detroit were going to be a flop when only two people responded to the FE article about planned activity which invited others to “join us in a game with no rules” (See FE #301, Feb. 26, 1980). And a flop it was. Only about 200 people turned up here to greet the Republicans July 13–16 coming mostly from cult/sect/political groups like the Communist Workers Party but also including a few valiant Yippies who refused to believe it wasn’t 1968. A sponsoring coalition of leftists and liberals (the FE declined to participate) planned a series of protests aimed at the delegates and the media but each event proved to be more disastrous than the one preceding it.

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When we start receiving letters asking if we are still publishing, we know it’s time to get an issue out. One reason that the gap between our last issue and this one must appear so large to those who receive the FE by mail is that the edition published at the time of the Republican Convention was not mailed to subscribers. Because of a shortage of staff and funds at the time, we distributed it in Detroit only. Unfortunately, none remain available for distribution but a reproduction of it is on the opposite page as well as a selection from the text.

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Buster Brown

Bob Brubaker

Angela Di Sante

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Jim Gilman

Blue Jesus

E.B. Maple

Richard Rollins

Primitivo Solis

Larry Talbert

Mr. Venom

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

John Zerzan

Suzie

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN 0015–0800) is published bi-monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA; phone (313) 831–6800. 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.

Dear FE:

“Carter’s Phony War Crisis” (FE #301, Feb. 26, 1980) was excellent. I’d only fault it in one respect—I feel that ‘you’re unduly optimistic in stating that, “Third World countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia...(will become) the super consumers of tomorrow.” My reasons are:

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The 1980 census has come and gone without much ado. On the face of it, it appears as though most Americans dutifully mailed back their forms and provided the government with its constitutionally mandated information needed to apportion each state’s Congressional representation. Although there was a massive propaganda effort on the part of the Census Bureau to count every resident of the U.S., it is still believed that millions of illegal aliens, poor and minority group members went uncounted.

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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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The following is reprinted from a section of “Mass Strikes in Capitalist Poland,” which appeared in the August/September, 1980 issue of World Revolution magazine available from BM Box 869, London WC1V 6XX, Great Britain. It is authored by C D Ward.

As the whole eastern bloc, under Russian hegemony, gears up its war economy in response to increasing inter-imperialist tensions, workers will be asked to make even greater sacrifices. More capital will be invested in heavy industry and arms production, less in the consumer sector. Production norms will be increased, wage levels held down. Thus for the workers of the eastern bloc, the rallying cry of Stalinism and Trotskyism—“defend the USSR against imperialism”—has a very concrete meaning: work harder, eat less, prepare to die for the fatherland.

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On September 1, Lech Walesa, the worker who negotiated the end of the recent Polish strike wave, climbed two flights of wooden stairs to the temporary offices of the new Independent Trade Union which he heads. Walesa carried a two-foot crucifix, a bunch of gladiolas and a pennant from a bicycle club, all to adorn the headquarters of what he and the Western press have hailed as a “triumph” for the strikers—the right to organize a labor organization independent of the government-controlled official union federations.

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Whatever happens, don’t do anything until you hear from the authorities; your safety cannot be guaranteed if you take it upon yourself to act.

Stay in your homes, cars or shopping centers. If you stay at home, watch television or listen to loud music. During the day, remember that there is no safer place for you than on the job. If you are too young to work, go to school. For your own good, do as you are told.

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Last issue we reported that the local Freezer Theater had been torched and that the people who performed there were looking for a new place. Well, all you ardent Freezer fans will be glad to know that they’ve opened up shop in a storefront on Cass, between Selden & Alexandrine in the Cass Corridor. They’re back to performing the “beyond the fridge” plays that only they can do, and have started poetry readings on Sundays. It’s well worth checking out...

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Last March 23 to 25, the Italian police made a nation-wide raid on the homes and offices of anarchists and arrested 19 people and charged them with armed rebellion, subversive association with the clandestine group Azione Rivoluzionaria (Revolutionary Action) and the robberies of six banks in Bologna. Since that time, seven of the people have been released, but the other twelve remain behind bars—they are: Alfredo Bonnano, Carmelina Di Marco, Salvo Marietta, Paolo Ruberto, Patrizia Casamenti, Masstmo Gaspari, France Lombardi, Roccard Fabbricat, Sandre Vandini and two Scots, Jean Weir and Kenneth Burgone (both associated with the publishing group Bratach Dubh).

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We perhaps owe John Zerzan a debt of gratitude for the research that has gone into his essay The Promise of the ‘80s, for it graphically demonstrates to us what we have suspected all along—that all is not well with the rule of capital. In fact, the litany of decomposition presented both among the institutions of rule and its subjects is shown to be so widespread and systemic that one can conclude little else than that the rulers will no longer be able to govern as they have, due to the massive erosion of loyalty to the reigning mode of domination.

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Dear Fifth Estate,

I believe Harvey Ovshinsky (talkshow host of WRIF) is doing the FE a lot of harm by claiming he has “founded that paper.” If indeed he did, someone must have done a frontal lobotomy on him since.

Have you listened to him on WRIF ever? Treat yourself! He’s an establishment sell-out, a mealy-mouthed corporate echo.

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On Feb. 4, 1980 in Los Gatos, California, the life of Lino Molin (a long-time supporter of the Fifth Estate) ended. He was the victim of a tragic automobile accident while he was crossing a street with heavy traffic. His remains were cremated without religious service.

A native of Cadore, Italy, Lino emigrated quite young and came to the United States almost 60 years ago. He lived for almost ten years in Detroit where he made contact with the anarchist movement and participated in the activities of the groups there. He moved to California where he lived most of his adult life.

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Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

E.B. Maple

Angela Di Sante

Mr Venom

Primitivo Solis

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

Richard Rollins

Larry Talbert

Michael Monster

Stephen Goodfellow

John Zerzen

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN 0015–0800) is published bi-monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA; phone (313) 831–6800. 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.

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For many, the 1970s were—and the 1980s bid fair to continue—a kind of “midnight of the century,” an arrival at the point of complete demoralization and unrelieved sadness. What follows is one attempt to gauge the obviously unhappy landscape of capital’s American rule and see whether there indeed exists no prospect for the ending of our captivity.

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“If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.”

—Anarchist anti-electoral slogan

It’s difficult to imagine that there isn’t at least some joy, even among the most ardent electoral abstentionists, about the losses Donald Trump and the Republicans suffered in the November mid-term elections.

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If you or your loved ones don’t have citizenship, are Native American, aren’t white, aren’t Christian, are women, queer, or trans, live near environmental sacrifice zones, depend on the natural environment for your health or subsistence, work a non-white-collar job, or participate in a radical movement, you are at risk under the Trump presidency. Fighting back against the government is a question of self-defense.

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On Saturday night, May 3, a gathering of about 250 to 400 women and perhaps 100 men held a rally in Palmer Park on Detroit’s North End and then marched through the surrounding neighborhood chanting, “Women, Take Back The Night.” The assembly was one of a series of actions initiated by women which have been held nationwide to protest the pervasive rape culture of this society.

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“Sous les paves, la plage!” [Under the paving stones, the beach!]

—Revolutionary slogan; Paris 1968

1968 was an “Anything Can Happen” kind of year.

It was the year of the Prague Spring, the Tet Offensive, President LBJ’s abdication, massive student protests, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the police riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention. The most historically momentous occurrence of that year was the May June uprising and general strike by students and workers in France.

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Has an unintended alliance of Silicon Valley censorship, alternative news rebuttals, mainstream journalistic scrutiny, and especially antifa street-fighters, discouraged what passes as the intellectual wing of the most reviled political movement of the last half-century?

Although fascist street attacks continue, the alt-right has been undergoing something of a brain drain in North America recently.

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Although Bell Telephone’s security around its long distance telephone codes rival that of the state’s nuclear secrets, its usually only a matter of days after they are devised each January before they are in the hands of phone phreaks.

The publication of these secret codes is an annual event in this newspaper as our continued retribution against the profit-swollen Bell monopoly for prosecuting the Fifth Estate several years ago on trumped up charges relating to the publication of mechanical phone devices.

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AK Press is a worker-run anarchist collective that publishes and distributes radical books as well as visual and audio media. The collective was established in 1990 and is now run by seven people in five cities and two countries. They currently publish around twenty books each year.

Four collective members, who have been involved from 12 to 28 years, posed questions to themselves about anarchist publishing to take a look at their project.

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The trial lasted 61 days, but in December a hand-picked jury pulled off a major surprise by finding four anarchist defendants in the British “Persons Unknown” trial not guilty!

The case started in 1978 when the British government’s elite Special Branch and Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) arrested Iris Mills, Dafydd Ladd, Ronan Bennet, Stewart Carr Vincent Stevenson and Trevor Dawton charged with being “terrorists” planning to take “positive steps” to overthrow society.

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Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, a fugitive animal-rights activist, was intercepted by Cuban authorities in early August and turned over to the FBI.

Popped by Cuban cops on an INTERPOL Red Notice, Dibee was flown to Portland, Ore., where he pleaded not guilty to taking part in a 1997 arson attack on a meatpacking plant—the first of several charges he faces.

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Just when everything starts to look gloomy on a cold Detroit winter’s day, along comes one of those rays of hope that helps keep up everyone’s morale—a bank closing! This time it’s those sleazes at the Feminist Federal Credit Union.

Writing in their newsletter, Financing Feminism, these bankers expressed a sense of loss over having to withdraw their Detroit offices from the balance sheet because of waning interest. They’ve decided to throw all their capital behind an Ann Arbor office. Too bad, bankers, but as they say in the world of high finance: “your loss is our gain.” We only hope that your brothers in the money business will soon cash in their chips...

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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;

...

Though we do not accept commercial advertising, this Unclassified ad space is free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please send your ads in writing to our office at: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201.

THE DAILY BARBARIAN. Although this is still a great publication, you’ll have to write to an all new address if you’d like to see a copy. (The Barbarian is free, but it would help us if you could send us stamps and a LARGE envelope to help with the mailing costs). We’re also planning to publish some pamphlets in the near future and possibly another Barbarian—whether you like it or not. URBANE GORILLA, P.O. Box 02455, Destroyit, Michigan 48202.

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1980 is an election year and we here in the Detroit area have the honor of housing the Republican convention.

This meeting of thieves and con-men will be held at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit and promises to be one of the more creepy sideshows of this new decade. To ensure this, these political traveling salesmen are bringing with them an army of FBI, CIA, Secret Service, State and County police; Detroit is already considered the “largest armed camp in the world.”

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Your growing conviction that people are unable (or have lost the ability) to learn from and develop conclusions about their experience, and to act to change the conditions of their lives finds its latest confirmation in Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism (See review, FE #299, Oct 22, 1979). Lasch’s central idea is that a given state of capitalist development contains a corresponding individual personality structure (the “narcissistic” personality type corresponding to the bureaucratic “consumer society” of “late capitalism”) and that the analysis of this personality structure is the key to understanding human behavior and activity. Despite lip service to revolutionary possibilities, Lasch’s thesis is a determinist one which vitiates the likelihood of the emergence of an autonomous politics in the present period.

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Above: 1,000 demonstrators at an anti-war, anti-draft rally in front of the White House. Other demonstrations included 5,000 in Los Angeles at a Carter fund-raiser Feb. 8; 2,500 Feb. 2 at Boston’s City Hall; 1,000 at Berkeley Feb. 11; 300 to 400 in Columbia, Mo., Feb. 1; 2,500 at the University of Arizona on Feb. 12 and endless smaller demonstrations and rallies. A March 22 national anti-draft rally is scheduled with actions planned for around the country. Photo / Phantasm Photography

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Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

E.B. Maple

Mr. Venom

Primitivo Solis

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

Richard Rollins

Larry Talbert

Michael Monster

Bob Brubaker

Stuart Christie

Angela Di Sante

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN-0015-0800) is published bimonthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201; phone (313) 831–6800. Office hours are sporadic, so call before coming down. Subscriptions are $4.00 for 12 issues; $6.00 for foreign. Call 259–1888 for retail sales outlets. Second-class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No copyright., No paid advertising accepted.

For the last several months I have been inundated with press releases and other propaganda disseminated by the United States government concerning the census which is to begin, appropriately, on April Fool’s Day, 1980. The census presents itself as an innocuous gathering of facts which will make it possible for “us Americans” to know how our society is changing and, as President Carter wrote in a White House release last November, “to make intelligent decisions for the future.”

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In response to “Lasch: Theory of Passivity Stumbles” by Bob Brubaker, in this issue, page 6.

Despite many excellent observations on fallacies in Lasch’s work, I think it necessary to clear up some questions of methodology raised in your article. In particular, I must dispute your claim that by focusing as we did on the motion toward social passivity and recuperated, (i.e. pseudo-) individualism, we are embracing a theoretical notion of humanity as passive object determined mechanistically by social conditions or that we are putting forth the idea that no other motion exists in society. This is the old conundrum of human beings making/being made by history, and hardly needs reiteration.

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On November 13, 1979 I was snatched out of San Quentin in California and flown back to the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla, for the Court case around the May 9^th take-over of this prison (Wash. State) behind human rights and justice. So far all is well and I’m doing fine. I won’t be here long they say, and will be taken back to San Quentin, but I’ve got no idea when. Logical to assume I will be here for a while for we are making moves to hold me here up to and through our trial.

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“I don’t want to startle you, but they mean to kill us all.”

—e.e. cummings

War—the word on everyone’s lips—the deadly end of the capitalist cycle of prosperity and economic collapse, appears close at hand as the major world empires and their vassals play out the world-wide “Great Game” of inter-capitalist rivalries. In this country, President Carter has posed the situation in the Persian Gulf region as a new period of confrontation with the Soviet Union and a return to the Cold War, complete with renewed fears of nuclear conflict.

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Dear People,

The cena at Negri’s on Saturday, January 12, 1980 raised money for anarchist propaganda, as well as $75 for the defense of Kamalla Miller.

Those present at the dinner choose to send you $50.00 to help with your valuable work.

Yours for the works,

Jim Bumpas

FE Note: Fund raising picnics and dinners have a long tradition in the anarchist movement as means of supporting libertarian groups and publications. A group has met in Florida twice since the appearance of our last issue and sent us $30 and $25 from each of the picnics. Below is listed the other recipients of the contributions as sent to us by a participant:

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Since the 19^th century, anarchists have made opposition to representative democracy and electoral politics central to our critique of the state and all forms of hierarchy. As radicals who envision a world without government, we don’t want to lend legitimacy to the system of politicians and parties. The theme of this Fifth Estate issue is Anything Can Happen. This is not an empty slogan!

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The angel that lives so well is brother to the king of hell.

And like the shore of ravaged sea is beaten,

caressed, endlessly.

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Poisoned feathers of stainless-steel

create the illusion if not the feel

of paradise that always seems

just one more stop

beyond your dreams.

—T.F. Rodinsky

Summertime—Picnic Time

It’s silly to cook much when the weather is warm. Picnics don’t have to be big, planned things. If you keep a few basic picnic foods around the house, you can grab them and go to Palmer Park or Belle Isle anytime.

I think that food in warm weather should be kept whole and simple. Summer fruits and vegetables don’t need much preparation. It is easy to keep green onions, radishes, tomatoes and cucumbers cleaned and in a plastic bag. Throw a few ice cubes in the bag and everything will stay crisp and cold, even in a picnic basket.

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