Michael Gurnow
“The Folly of Beginning a Work Before We Count the Cost” Anarcho-Primitivism in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

“You don’t own property; property owns you.”

--B. Traven (Treasure of Sierra Madre)

Anarcho-primitivism states that humanity’s problems began once we abandoned our hunter-gatherer lifestyle in favor of an agrarian one. By contrast, our new sedentary way of life leads to social stratification and overpopulation due to a division of labor and food commodities being produced to the point of surplus.

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Peter Lamborn Wilson
“Anarchist religion?”

It’s often said that we anarchists “believe humans are basically good” (as did the Chinese sage Mencius). Some of us, however, doubt the notion of inherent goodness and reject the power of other people over us precisely because we don’t trust the bastards. It seems unwise to generalize about anarchist “beliefs” since some of us are atheists or agnostics, while others might even be Catholics. Of course, a few anarchists love to indulge in the spurious disagreeable and pointless exercise of ex-communicating the differently-faithed amongst their comrades.

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Andrew Dobbs
Conspiracy or Anarchy If you think space aliens killed JFK and brought down the twin towers, and no one realizes it because of government chemtrails, you may think this article is part of the conspiracy.

Like God before her, Reason is dying. Her fast life has taken its toll: God took a millennium or two to live out His days, Reason has had a mere three centuries of gallivanting to the moon and back.

People now find her insufficient to explain their experience of nature just as they once found God unnecessary.

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Dan LaPonsie
God: Unplugged

“No, I think He looks better on the right,” Bejewel said.

Lisp slid god back over to a right-of-center place on the mantel. The electric god was plugged into a wall outlet, casting a shimmering white light on either the right or left of Lisp’s face--depending on where Lisp’s older sisters directed.

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J. M. White
O (poem)

“A way that is laid out, is not the way.”

--Tao Te Ching

O

life is a journey

fraught with peril

the way is never clear

naive faith

and sarcastic doubt

circle aimlessly

resolving nothing

pay attention

your time is short

the way long

there are people watching television

while the house is on fire

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David Solnit
Tenth Anniversary of Bolivia’s Water War Report from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change in Bolivia

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Commemorative march on the tenth anniversary of Bolivia’s Water War, Cochabamba, April, 2010.
--photo Mona Caron

In spring 2000, the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia rose up against the privatization of their water, forcing out the US based corporation, Bechtel, and Bolivia’s neo-liberal government to back down. The rebellion opened up new political space in Bolivia, catalyzing the most powerful, radical, visionary mass movements and mobilizations on the planet. My friend and collaborator, Mona Caron, a public muralist from San Francisco, and I spent six weeks in Cochabamba, a city in central Bolivia, during March and April co-creating art and visuals with local communities and organizations. We came at the invitation of the organizing committee for the International Feria del Agua (Water Fair) commemorating the ten year anniversary of what has come to be known as the Water War. We also participated with 30,000 others in the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, organized by the Bolivian government of President Evo Morales.

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Octavio Alberola
Venezuelan anarchists see Noam Chomsky as Chavez’s Clown

FE Note: The comrades of Venezuela’s El Libertario magazine are unrelenting in their criticism of what they call the myth of Hugo Chavez’s “Eco-socialism of the XXI Century.”

They often write about the general unwillingness to see the authoritarian side of Chavez as an echo of how almost the entire Left, including many anarchists, refused to criticize the Cuban revolution.

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Patrick Dunn
A Radicalization of Reich Sexual Repression & The Roots of Authoritarianism

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-- Stephen Goodfellow

Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism (MPF) was written in 1933, at the peak of Hitler’s rise to power. The book is, most immediately, an attempt to explain the victory of the Nazis, at a time when economic hardship in Germany should have provoked a turn to the Left.

More fundamentally, as Reich writes in MPF, it is an effort to diagnose the fascist phenomenon, not as a trend of national politics, but, as “the basic emotional attitude of man in authoritarian society, with its machine civilization and its mechanistic-mystical view of life.”

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Fifth Estate Collective
Contents, intro to print edition

Welcome to our Summer edition with its theme of Belief/Disbelief/Unbelief.

Our essays don’t so much investigate beliefs themselves as much as belief systems, our cognitive constructions which determine our perception of reality. Beliefs can either chain us to repressive ideas or free us with visions that go beyond dominant paradigms. The entire modern era has been one of contestation as to which belief systems will rule in societies--ones that link us to submission and acquiescence to hierarchal authority, or those which rebel against them and eliminate the categories of rulers and ruled. Comments are welcome on the essays which follow.

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T.P.T.G. (The Children of The Gallery)
In Critical and Suffocating Times The anti-austerity popular explosions in Greece may contain the future of struggles against capital.

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Kanellos, the ubiquitous Greek Riot Dog present at numerous actions (or is it PhotoShop?)

As a publication appearing only three times a year, it’s difficult to report on the outrages of capital and the empire in a timely fashion. Usually, we cover only issues not available elsewhere. However, the Greek events of this Spring seem worthy of reporting and analysis as Capital’s crisis becomes generalized and rulers’ call for austerity enforced on workers becomes more shrill.

...

Various Authors
Letters Our readers respond

Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 204016, Ferndale MI 48220.

All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.

Greetings Comrades,

I just want to say thanks for keeping FE going. Yes indeed, the longest running radical mag in the US. I just ordered another year’s subscription.

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anon.
Who Is Wilhelm Reich?

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Reich being led to federal prison in 1957, where he died two years later.

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) was an Austrian-born physician, psychoanalyst, and revolutionary. He worked with Sigmund Freud in the 1920s before breaking with him. His sex-political activities in Germany led to his denunciation by the Communist Party in the early 1930s and expulsion from the International Psychoanalytic Association at the insistence of his former mentor.

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Walker Lane (Peter Werbe)
Wilhelm Reich The Emotional Plague & the Authoritarian Family

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INTRODUCTION (2010)

In 1976, much of what had constituted the New Left of the previous years was in a state of terminal collapse.

As an example, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the quintessential white radical youth organization, whose numbers at its height were in the hundreds of thousands, was reduced to several dozen activists in the Weather Underground.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Birmingham-Bloomfield Area

The first public meeting of The Birmingham-Bloomfield Committee on Open Occupancy was held at the Birmingham Unitarian Church on Sunday, November 14. An unexpectedly large turnout of 250 people responded to the speakers’ demands for an end to the organized exclusion of Negroes by the realtors in the area.

...

Stan Ovshinsky
Danton’s Death Theater

We attended the preview of DANTON’S DEATH, the first play by the Repertory Theatre of the Lincoln Center in their new, attractive Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

The directors, Herbert Blau and Jules Irving, were previously co-producers of the San Francisco Actors’ Workshop where they had earned acclaim for the imaginative and excellence of their productions.

...

anon.
F.B.I... from The Michigan Daily

Officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Michigan State Police are investigating the Committee to Aid the Vietnamese, a group of about 25 University of Michigan students who are raising money to aid Vietnamese civilians living in Viet Cong-controlled areas.

Stanely Nadel, ’66, chairman of the committee, said his group is sympathetic to the aims of the Viet Cong but that the purpose of the money the group is raising is to help supply medical aid for civilians wounded in Viet Nam fighting.

...

anon.
March on Washington Committee

March on Washington Committee, 23 East Adams, Detroit 48226

The March on Washington will take place by bus, planes, car pools, and possibly railroad. It is imperative that we know as soon as possible if you are coming and which means of transport you Would prefer.

The trip by railroad (if there are enough interested people) will be organized as a traveling workshop. On the way to Washington we will have workshops and discussions on Vietnam and other foreign policy issues. We will have written materials and discussion leaders.

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Fifth Estate Collective
What’s On

FRIDAY

LECTURE: An Evening With Clifford West. Bloomfield Art Association. 6 p.m. Admission charge. 11/19

“A SECOND NIGHT WITH THE WOBBLIES, with Ellen Stekert, folk singer. Sponsored by WSU Labor History Archives at WSU McGregor Mem. Conf. Center. 7:30 p.m. 11/19

COURT THEATER: “archy and mehitabel”--modern musical classic from an original story by Don Marquis; “Children on their Birthdays by Truman Capote, and a cutting from “Death of Bessie Smith” by Edward Albee. Detroit Institute of Arts, Kresge Court,8:30 p.m. Admission charge. 11/19

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anon.
Albany Freedom Singers

“The songs they sing come from their own experiences. They are not entertainers but are leaders who want everyone in the audience to join in singing songs that serve to inspire us to go on further to hold on ‘til we’re all free...”

The description above belongs to the Albany Freedom Singers who will be coming to Detroit on Sunday, November 21, 1965 at 7:00 pm at the Mayflower Baptist Church, 5858 Fourth at Holden. The program, called Gospel Sing For Freedom will also feature the New Cosmopolitan Baptist Church Choir, the East Side Community Choir, and the Mayflower Baptist Church Choir.

Steve Cherkoss
A soldier in Vietnam Interview

Bruce Whitten, age 26, held the rank of Staff Sergeant in the Air Force until he received a general discharge on May 23, 1965. Whitten was assigned to the first Air Commando group spending two years in Vietnam. Whitten gave the interview despite his awareness that he might be endangering his future. He felt however, that the experiences which he had during his two years in Viet Nam were of unquestionable importance to the American people--especially to men of draft age.

...

anon.
DCEWV Convention Advertisement

Today the Vietnamese people are fighting for the right to choose their own society. Their demands are human; food, a decent place to live and work, political and private self determination, and a life of dignity and self respect. They are engaged in a struggle for human rights, a struggle which affects us all. Their demands reach into Chicago, Mississippi, Selma, Detroit, Los Angeles, South Africa, the Congo. America is waging an actual military war which prevents them from achieving these aims.

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Harvey Ovshinsky
Editorial

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There are four estates, the fourth of which is journalism. We are the fifth because we are something different than Detroit’s other newspapers. We hope to fill a void in that fourth estate a void created by party-controlled newspapers and the cutting of those articles which might express the more liberal viewpoint. That’s what we really are--the voice (I hate that word) of the liberal element of Detroit. This does not mean that everything in the paper will be slanted or written with the so-called “far left” creeping through every space. We want to be a truly free press. If it’s good, if it has a name, and if it’s sincere, it will be in the Fifth Estate. If not, you can probably find it in the News.

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Anne Draper
Eyewitness report on Delano strike

Delano is a five hour drive from Berkeley, but the farm workers who live and work in the grapes are five light-years away from the Great Society.

You drive down Highway 99 through the great San Joaquin Valley, where much of California’s agricultural abundance is raised. This is the heartland of the state’s agribusiness complex.

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anon.
Joe Hill: A Tribute

Labor History Archives of Wayne State University is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the execution of Joe Hill, America’s most famous Wobbly and the “Man Who Never Died.” The program will be held at 8 p.m. Friday, November 19, in the WSU McGregor Memorial Conference Center, Second at Ferry, and will highlight Hill’s life in “living newspaper style.” Further details about the event can be obtained by calling the University Archives office at TE 3–1400.

Various Authors
Letters

NOTE: The following Letter to the Editor of the Detroit News was written by Alvin Harrison, NSM [Northern Student Movement] field secretary in Detroit, in response to a number of letters published regarding his participation in a Teach-in on Viet Nam at Wayne University. Mr. Harrison was quoted as saying “That’s your flag, baby, not mine.”

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anon.
New Left

A group has formed calling itself the Detroit Circle. Its purpose is to fill the void that exists among those who consider themselves part of the independent left. One of its spokesmen said this about the organization:

“There is a need for new ideas, re-evaluating the old ones, and fresh discussion among us who reject totalitarianism in any form. There is a need for the youth and the adults of this city not only to discuss in depth new concepts, but to re-evaluate old ones. There is a need to have a forum for the community as a whole so that others who are contributing to creative thinking can be heard--people like Hal Draper, Erich Fromm, etc. We ought to set up a dialogue with the Detroit liberal and radical community with the purpose of helping, and even, when necessary, initiating actions concerning the burning issues of peace and civil rights.”

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anon.
Northern Student Movement

In announcing the creation of an organization called the “Friends of N.S.M.,” a group of Detroit area citizens have recently stated: “We propose to form a nucleus of a movement of whites and Negroes which is in communication with the ghetto based black freedom movement, can support and interpret its efforts and take initiative action in our own communities in confronting others on the issues of racism.”

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anon.
Prison Notes

NATCHEZ, MISS.--Within the last month, more than 500 people have been arrested in the city of Natchez, Mississippi. Although news of the arrests received wide circulation, the brutality and the indignities which the prisoners were forced to endure during their stay in Parchman State Penitentiary has until now been kept secret. However, with the release of some of the arrested, the story is finally getting out. What follows is the report by two of those recently released:

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Tad Zatlyn
The 400 Blows Film Review

In THE 400 BLOWS, recent feature at the Varsity Theater, Francois Truffaut telescopes in on one small but very human subject, picking up the story almost at the height of its conflict, rather than methodically building up to it, which might very well have been the “soundest” way to attack the story. Free of the conventional straight jacket of getting in the proper exposition at the proper time, and also acting this exposition out, he is able to give us a greater human close-up. It is as if he were applying a zoom lens to the entire script. And at the final scene, which is the height of the close up, he frames on the face of the boy. Nothing is really resolved--as in life things seldom are.

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anon.
VOICE Seeks New Programs The Michigan Daily

ANN ARBOR — The Voice Political Party is shifting emphasis from demonstrations and sit-ins to an in creased educational effort on the question of U.S. policy in Viet Nam. In a meeting last week, it was decided to attempt to bring the Viet Nam issue to both the student body at U of M and the community at large on a more personal basis.

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anon.
ACLU Blasts Draft as Punishment

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan (ACLU) has condemned the announced intent of Colonel Arthur A. Holmes, state Selective Service Director, to use the Selective Service Act “as a device to punish dissent”.

Colonel Holmes was reported earlier as calling for “the immediate induction” of Vietnam war protesters who had violated Selective Service regulations or had caused any interruption of procedures.

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Steve Simons
Bob Dylan; In Memoriam

Detroit took its first glimpse at the “new” Bob Dylan in his concert at the Masonic Temple on Oct. 24. The first half of the spectacle was the traditional Dylan. Following the intermission, the audience was confronted by Dylan wielding an electric guitar, surrounded by his rock & roll combo.

His first song, “Tombstone Blues”, resulted in cries of “We want Dylan!”

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Jules Feiffer
Cartoon

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This cartoon strip consists of seven interchanges between two people.

Person 1: Tell me the reason for The Bay of Pigs.

Person 2: Kennedy believed that after an invasion there’d be a popular uprising.

Person 1: And who else believed that? Anybody you know?

Person 2: Nobody...

Person 1: Now tell me the reason for Santo Domingo.

...

Associated Press
Discredit Who?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 (AP) — Senator Stephen M. Young, Democrat from Ohio, said Thursday that he had learned that the Central Intelligence Agency hired persons to disguise as Vietcong and discredit Communists in Vietnam by committing atrocities.

The C.I.A. and Representative Cornelius E, Gallagher, Democrat of New Jersey, said it was not so.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Ammunition Books

Anarchism...stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man.

-- Emma Goldman, Anarchism, 1910

Ammunition Books, 4403 Second, Detroit, Michigan 48201 — Telephone: (313) 831–6800

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Bob Nirkind
Cuba: Dawning of American Imperialism The Spanish-American War

1976, being America’s 200th anniversary--with all the commercial pomp and whitewashed historical hoopla that’s riding along with it--would be the ideal year to miss entirely and go abroad.

Between television’s “‘Buy-Centennial’ Minutes” and the countless newspaper and magazine articles extolling our so-called grand and glorious history, it’s going to be kind of hard to keep our food down and our spirits up.

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anon.
Death of a Cow

SALINA, Kan.--UPI--A 1,400 pound cow rampaged for an hour through downtown business districts before being gunned down by an armed pig of the Salina Police Force.

Officer John Soukup said that he was forced to shoot the cow after it knocked him down twice and began ramming the rear door of a building where he had sought refuge. The cow, valued at $365, had escaped from a nearby livestock pen.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Free Readers’ Ads

THIS PAGE IS YOUR PAGE. All ads are FREE for the asking. We hope this page becomes a place where we can communicate and take care of our basic needs outside of the capitalist, consumption market. Send to THE FIFTH ESTATE, 4403 Second Detroit, MI. 48201. No ads accepted by phone.

WANTED--We are a young couple on General Assistance looking for a house or flat unfurnished with 2 bedrooms or more, east of Chalmers. We will pay $115 and all utilities or $125 with utilities included. Must move before March 1st. We have no children. Call anytime at: 822–1860.

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A. Shady Character
How to Cheat Ma Bell Telephone Credit Card Codes

As the profit-swollen Michigan Bell Telephone monopoly tries to gouge its captive customers more each year with unnecessary rate hikes, requests for charges for information services and 20-cent pay-phone calls, the Fifth Estate presents a small way to even the score: free long-distance calls.

The 1976 telephone credit card codes are presented here as both a public service, as we have done for the past several years, and as our way of saying “Fuck Michigan Bell” for its recent (and unsuccessful) attempt to prosecute this paper for printing telephone company information.

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Murray Bookchin
Notes on the Death of Franco (Part II)

In Part I of Notes on the Death of Franco, the historic rise of fascism under Franco was outlined. Part II analyzes modern Spain and the state of the revolutionary movement today.

Spain alone carried the classical tradition well into our own century. Here, every classical working class Movement, indeed, almost every revolutionary sect, played out its programmatic role with guns in hand. Each exhibited its possibilities and limitations within the traditional framework that had been created by the 1840s. With the collapse of the Spanish revolution a full history of proletarian socialism--whether syndicalist or Marxist, libertarian or authoritarian--came to an end.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Prisoners

Prisoners wanting to read anarchist literature: Black Market will send you a general packet of anarchist literature. If you have requests for specific literature, we will try to get it for you (and probably succeed). All free. To all persons who can help, Black Market has been sending anarchist literature free to prisoners for over 6 months. The costs are getting too much for us alone. We need help in the form of used books & pamphlets & leaflets having to do with anarchism (-ists), or a little cash to buy literature specifically requested. Write or send help to: Black Market, box 306, Cambridge, Mass 02139.

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Pat Halley
Protect our Insane Heritage Review: “Cuckoo’s Nest”

“Madness cometh sometime of the passions of the soul.”

-- Bartholomew of England

“Zounds! Bethumped by words!”

-- Richard II

The critics are raving about it. Sold out shows and long lines testify to a growing public obsession with it; indeed, everything having to do with the film version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is having mind-boggling repercussions.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Staff & Contributors

FIFTH ESTATE #269, February, 1976, Vol. 11, No. 5, page 5

Millard Berry

Murray Bookchin

Red Evans

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Pat Halley

Colleen Jensen

E.B. Maple

J.J. Markin

Nick Medvecky

Monrós

Bob Nirkind

Pat O’Bryan

Algirdas Ratnikas

Mr. Venom

Marilyn Werbe

Peter Werbe

Dennis Rosenblum

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A. R.
The Family Institutions of Repression, Part 1

She meant well, most all do. And she did a fine job, under the circumstances. And that’s exactly what it was, a job, like any other. Underpaid, understaffed, boring. She put off all compensation for her later years. “A child saved is a child earned.” Like insurance, but with no guaranteed premium. And she wonders now, that most of her children have departed, what she has to show for it all.

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Liberation News Service
Zionism Past & Present Anti-Zionism Confused with Anti-Semitism

This short account by Liberation News Service of Zionism’s sordid history as a white settler, colonialist movement barely scratches the surface in terms of the magnitude of the injustices committed in the name of the Jewish people, but should not in any way imply support for any of the Palestinian Nationalist groups who claim to speak for the refugees.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Ann Landers

Dear Ann Landers:

Please tell me how certain people can appear to be perfectly OK when they are clearly insane?

Our sweet, innocent daughter was married last week to a Mortician 12 years her senior. He courted her for more than a year. One of the things that Impressed her so favorably was this man’s restraint and good manners. He never embraced her intimately nor did be try to talk her into sex, even after they were engaged.

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anon.
Death of a Salesman Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish

Time Magazine wrote in its eulogy of Chou En-lai that he never forgave John Foster Dulles for refusing to shake hands with him at the 1954 Geneva Conference. That was where he engineered the famous “compromise” in which he convinced the Vietnamese Stalinists to accept a divided Vietnam and thus paved the way for the genocidal U.S. intervention to come.

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Fifth Estate Collective
Detroit Seen

Bad news for the Ann Arbor Sun. “Detroit’s Hottest Paper” (as they call it) was hit in January with a coordinated wave of vandalism which left 40 of their newspaper coinboxes disabled after a liquid solder was poured in the coinslots. Since the gang from Ann Arbor has offered a $100 reward to bring in the culprits to justice, we thought we could narrow down the list of suspects for them. (1) Any of the 650,000 members of Detroit’s black community who have been insulted by the blatantly racist attempt of a group of white college-town liberals to publish a paper for blacks without the slightest understanding of the dynamics of the situation; (2) Any of the 250,000 members of the UAW who have seen chief union bureaucrat Leonard Woodcock portrayed on the Sun pages as a friend of labor, rather than as the stooge of the auto companies which he is; and (3) Any of the thousands of radicals in Detroit who have seen the Sun try to divert criticism of the political system by uncritically praising every elected hack in the state. Hope that helps you out, fellas...

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A. F.
Education Institutions of Repression, Part 2

Today’s Lesson

Schools are the training ground which provides compliant, disciplined, work-orientated, patriotic model citizens who are necessary to staff the compulsive relationships of everyday life. Just as the Catholic Church sanctified the social relationships and obligations of feudalism during the Middle Ages and made them appear “objective,” so now does “modern” education do the same for capitalism.

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Various Authors
Letters

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Dreary Marx

Dear FE:

Our high at your printing of our article on the decomposition of capitalist society waned appreciably when we noted that about 30% of the original had been deleted. We had, of course, performed our own editing job before submitting, on the wealth of available data.

Neither were we heartened to see so much space devoted to A.R.‘s dreary Marxist determinism entitled “The Big Picture.” “Never before in the history of human society,” we are informed, “has the whole social order been confronted with the possibility and necessity for consciously evolving into a whole new social form...”

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