Most Recent Additions

a review of

The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams (with the original text of “Lesbian Love”) by Jonathan Ned Katz. Chicago Review Press 2021

Eve Adams died in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp, because the U.S. government could not countenance the writer of a lesbian love story (among her other transgressions) to reside in the U.S.

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a review of

Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis Edited by Marina Sitrin and the Colectiva Sembrar. Pluto Press, London, 2020

Every nation state has failed miserably in preventing, controlling and managing the still raging COVID 19 pandemic. While military, police, and prison systems continue unabated in their coercive functions, hospitals, public health and social welfare systems in many parts of the world are overwhelmed and in disarray.

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a review of

Underground Asia: Global Revolutionaries and the Assault on Empire by Tim Harper. Harvard University Press 2021

This dauntingly detailed book on the roots of Asia’s anti-colonial movements documents the early influence of anarchism, and how it was ultimately displaced by nationalisms of different stripes.

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a review of

Now Let’s See What You’re Gonna Do: Poems 1978–2002 by Katerina Gogou; translation by A.S., forward by Jack Hirschman. fmsbw press 2021

A biographer of Katerina Gogou terms her “the anarchist poetess of Exarcheia,” the so-called “edgy alternative” Athenian neighborhood with its political murals and anarchist bookshops. I have been to Athens, once, but the tour guides never pointed us that way. So, I will take on faith a biographer’s description of Gogou, who died in 1993 by her own hand, as “Greece’s greatest anarchist poetess.”

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a review of

Free Speech & the Suppression of Dissent During World War I by Eric T. Chester. Monthly Review Press 2021

The focus of Eric Chester’s incisive study is the clash between the state and its dissenting citizens during the time of war. While based on a fundamental belief in the absolute right of free speech, Chester’s book navigates the ways that the government of President Woodrow Wilson imperiled and suppressed free speech during World War I.

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a review of

Five Wives: A Novel by Joan Thomas. HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd. 2019

Five Wives is a compelling novel about Operation Auca, a missionary project undertaken by evangelical Protestants in Ecuador in the mid-1950s. It seamlessly mixes the story of those events with the imagined thoughts and responses of both the original participants and their children and grandchildren.

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a review of

We’re Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and The Real Culture War of 1980s America by Kevin Mattson. Oxford University Press 2020

This book reminds us that the 1980s—in addition to being a period of reactionary politics (Reagan’s efforts to “make America great again”) and reactionary music (synthesizer-dominated pop and MTV videos)—was also the decade of hardcore punk.

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a review of

Secolo Nuovo or The Times of Promise by Fulvia Ferrari. Detritus Books 2021

“There are people in this world committed to spreading rebellion as far as possible. They appear amid the disaster and guide people away from the [wreckage]. They carry a secret flame that can infect entire cities with its brightness. Fulvia carried this flame along with many others, living and dead, and they passed the sacred flame to us. It’s possible Fulvia never had children. Maybe those children are us.”

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a review of

Big Girl by Meg Elison. PM Press 2020

While there are several excellent reprints in the newest volume on Meg Elison in the PM Press Outspoken Authors series, let’s focus on the two originals. An all-too-real dystopian short story titled “Such People in It,” and the Nebula-nominated novelette, “The Pill.”

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a review of

Dreams of Anarchy and the Anarchy of Dreams by Ron Sakolsky; Illustrations by Rikki Ducornet. Autonomedia 2021

In Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, the Mad-Hatter poses the famous riddle, “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” It is not a question that has a predefined answer, but which projects itself, through a lightning-bolt of poetic analogy, into some future resolution—one that we feel pulsing like magic just outside our current field of perception.

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Recently, the Anarchist Political Ecology Group (the APE Group) read and discussed Ursula Le Guin’s book Always Coming Home. Though it’s a work I often go back to, this was the first time I had read it cover to cover in about thirty-five years.

I first discovered Le Guin’s work when I read The Dispossessed in the mid-1970s. The book had a huge effect on the members of the anarchist group I was in at the time, the Black Pearl Mutual Aid and Pleasure Club in New Orleans.

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Food Not Bombs is one of the fastest growing revolutionary movements in North America today and is gaining momentum all over the world. There are over 120 autonomous chapters sharing vegetarian food with hungry people and protesting war and poverty throughout the Americas, Europe and Australia. The first group was formed in Cambridge, Mass. in 1980 by anti-nuclear activists. Food Not Bombs is an all volunteer organization dedicated to nonviolence. Food Not Bombs has no formal leaders and strives to include everyone in its decision making process. Each group recovers food that would otherwise be discarded and makes fresh hot vegetarian meals that are served in city parks to anyone without restriction. The groups also serve free vegetarian meals at protests and other events. San Francisco chapter members have been arrested over 1,000 times in the city’s effort to silence protests against the Mayor’s anti-homeless policies. The Arcata, Calif. group faces civil contempt charges for sharing food and the Whittier, Calif. group has been issued tickets for feeding people. Seattle and Burlington, Vt. Food Not Bombs are being threatened by the cops. Amnesty International says it may adopt imprisoned Food Not Bombs volunteers as “Prisoners of Conscience.”

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The black flag is a symbol of anarchism. Unfortunately, the exact origin of this association is very elusive. This may be frustrating to those fascinated by historical trivia but it is by no means surprising.

Anarchism has always deliberately stood for a broad, and at times, vague political platform. The reasoning is sound; blueprints create rigid dogma and stifle the creative spirit of revolt. Along the same lines and resulting in the same problems, anarchists have rejected the “disciplined” leadership found in many political groupings. The reasoning for this is also sound; leadership based on authority is inherently hierarchical. It seems to follow logically that since anarchists have shied away from anything static, they would also shy away from the importance of symbols and icons.

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Fifth Estate Letters Policy

The Fifth Estate always welcomes letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in local areas. We don’t guarantee we will print everything we receive, but all letters are read by our staff and considered.

Typed letters or ones on disk are appreciated, but not required. Length should not exceed two double-spaced pages. If you are interested in writing a longer response, please contact us.

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a review of

Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, Ellen Chesler, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1992, 639 pp.

Chesler obviously admires and empathizes with early twentieth century feminist and birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, but portrays Sanger honestly, showing how her personal faults and foibles affected what she was trying to accomplish, and how her strengths allowed her to accomplish so much.

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Friends who attended the second annual Anarchist Book Fair held March 29 in San Francisco say it was a tremendous success. It was sponsored by Bound Together Book Store, 1369 Haight, SF CA 94117 and hundreds showed up for the all-day affair. Our gratitude to Lawrence for setting up a table this year and last to distribute Fifth Estates.

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Detroit Anti-Racist Action (ARA) formed over a year ago. Since its formation, it has been involved in campaigns against the gentrification of downtown Detroit with all the money going to rich folks (Illich, Ford, etc.) who don’t live in the city or really care about the welfare of people who live here. We have been involved in supporting groups like UPSET, which is fighting for a decent education for Detroit’s children. We have done support work for the Dineh people in the Southwest who are facing forced relocation to benefit big business so they can strip mine the land for coal. We have been involved in fighting the upsurge of right wing groups in the U.S. and the Midwest by working to shut down Nazi and Klan rallies. A recent campaign succeeded in getting Nazis out of an Eastside clubhouse in Detroit.

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Fifth Estate Books is located at 4632 Second Avenue, just south of W. Forest, in Detroit, in the same space as the Fifth Estate Newspaper. Hours vary, so please call before coming by.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL

1) List the title of the book, quantity, and the price of each;

2) add 10% for mailing costs—not less than $1.24 U.S. or $1.60 foreign (minimum for 4^th class book rate postage);

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Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, was arrested in the Netherlands April 3 by Dutch police acting on a Norwegian warrant.

The president of Sea Shepherd is being held in Lelystad Penitentiary awaiting an extradition hearing. Norway wants Watson to serve a prison sentence handed down in absentia for the 1992 scuttling of an illegal whaling vessel. They also want to charge him with ramming a Norwegian coast guard vessel in July 1994.

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Three artists spent the night in the mansion, since outside the museum a studio was set aside for making art. As the artists told it, that memorial morning We were awakened by shouts of “We’ll shoot! Hands up!” Armed soldiers ordered them to get dressed, took them out to the courtyard and together with anarchists sent them off to the Kremlin.” [1] This is Alexandr Rodchenko’s description of the Cheka’s raid on the anarchist-held Morozov Museum in Moscow in the early morning of April 12, 1918 published in Anarkhiya (Anarchy). The report survives as an undated fragment in the New York Public Library, where North America’s only copy of the short-lived revolutionary newspaper was allowed to disintegrate, neglected and forgotten, until the remains were microfilmed some years ago.

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a review of

Murray Bookchin, Re-enchanting Humanity: A defense of the human spirit against anti-humanism, misanthropy, mysticism and Primitivism (London: Cassell, 1995) 284 pp

In this book Murray Bookchin is out to clobber the competition. He’s been in training for this one for decades. In his previous works, he explained the crucial importance of developing a “muscularity of thought,” and revealed that his “ecological project” is a “social gymnasium for shedding the sense of powerlessness.” After much working out in that gym, he’s developed some enormous intellectual muscles, and is a powerful guy indeed. He’s often told us of his contempt for those sissified Eastern philosophers and their weak, “passive receptive” outlooks. This philosophical Marlboro Man is firmly in the Western tradition, which is, he explains, “sturdier in its thrust than the Eastern.” There will be no questions about the “sturdiness” of Murray Bookchin’s “thrust”! He has passed through the steeling school of politics, which, he tells us, is concerned with “forging a self.” Once out of the forge, the safely armored self will always be on its guard. For “the guarded mind,” he says, is the only Guarantee that we will be “guided by the thin line of truth.” This “guarded mind,” rigidly following the correct “line” is, he concludes, nothing less than “a fortress,” Eine fest Burg is unser Geist. When Murray Bookchin writes a book defending “the spirit,” it’s the spirit that comes out swinging.

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a review of

Dead Meat, drawings by Sue Coe, with an essay by Alexander Cockburn, Four Walls Eight Windows Press, New York-London, 1996, $22.

“As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right...for the animals, life is always Treblinka.”

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Everyone knows the origin of meat, but few want to face the facts. Sue Coe’s art and Alon Raab’s review [this issue, FE #349, Summer 1997] invite the reader to a “naked lunch,” Burrough’s pungent phrase for that moment when everyone sees what’s on the end of everyone else’s fork. But at this meal, it’s a bloody carcass of a being that lived a miserable life and suffered a horrendous death before ending up as a burger on your plate.

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Behind the male facade of business and politics Russia is a country run by women. Their labor keeps the population from starving. Yet post-1991 economic changes have led some women to reason that if they have to be beasts of burden they are not willing to take men along for the ride.

If this process gathers momentum, it will bring about the most radical transformation ever seen in Russian society. I saw glimmering signs of change when I lived in Russia in 1993. I went to satisfy my curiosity about the reality of Russian life, behind both Eastern and Western propaganda.

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Henri Simon and his daughter Claire spent three months in Russia during 1996. Simon is the author of numerous books and articles including the Black & Red title, Poland 1980–82: Class Struggle and the Crisis of Capital (see our book page), and contributes to Echanges, bulletin of the network Echanges et Mouvement, £7 for 4 issues, from BP 241, 75866 Paris Cedex 18, France.

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LYON, FRANCE—La Plume Noir bookstore was destroyed by arson the night of February 17, with strong suspicion falling on local right-wingers. The day before, the Lyon Federation Anarchiste Francophone (FAF) demonstrated against the right-wing National Front (FN), the fascist party headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen, because of the court action the latter is taking against the Paris-based anarchist newspaper, Le Monde Libertaire. Stickers from the FN youth movement were discovered on the bookstore’s window following the protest.

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OAKLAND, CA—Amid revelations that the FBI crime lab routinely manipulated scientific evidence for political ends, the FBI and Oakland, Calif. Police have been charged with deliberately falsifying evidence in their investigation of the 1990 car bombing of Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in a brief filed March 18 by their lawyers.

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A 1990 Earth First! Redwood Summer blockade. Judi Bari’s key role led to the attempt on her life. The annual EF! Round River Rendezvous will be June 27-July 6 in Wisconsin’s Nicolet National Forest. Contact the RRR committee at 731 State St., Madison WI 53711; (608) 250–8378 or see the next EF! Journal for information.

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Welcome to our Summer 1997 edition; the last one published was Fall 1996. This issue has been the result of numerous fruitful collaborations. Our visually stunning cover is the work of renowned artist Richard Mock. We used his work for the first time last issue and hope to have more in the future.

Pages 10–13, containing Allan Antliff’s fascinating study of Russian anarchist artists of the revolution, was designed by Alexis Buss, a member of the Wooden Shoe collective in Philadelphia. See page 5 for details On the fire that destroyed their bookstore.

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“My ideals will live long after I am dead.”

—Emma Goldman

In a moving memorial to his dear friend and comrade Judi Bari (in the March 1997 Earth First! Journal), Darryl Cherney writes that he was plagued by a number of unsettling signs before her death, including the crash of an enormous old-growth redwood to the forest floor on a windless night near the Earth First! base camp in Myers Flat, California. That redwood turned out to be Judi Bari, whose death meant not only a terrible loss to her children and her family, to her community and the movement, but to the earth.

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The recent mass suicide by 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate group created a fabulous media feeding frenzy of apocalyptic proportions. An occurrence as certifiably weird as this could not be confined to the check-out-counter tabloids: it was top-of-the-hour evening news wacky, cover of Time and Newsweek creepy. At the height of our virtual age, not even the scribes of comic books, pulp fiction and B-movies could cook up a scenario this fantastic.

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The almost two-year-old labor battle against the Motor City’s two corporate daily papers is almost at its conclusion (see the first page of The Rumble insert for latest details). Belatedly, the national AFL-CIO has called for a mass mobilization in Detroit June 20 and 21 to demand an equitable settlement of the strike. Attendance is expected to be over a hundred thousand.

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The Fifth Estate is a cooperative, nonprofit project, publishing since 1965. The people who produce it are a group of friends who do so neither to secure wages nor as an investment in the newspaper industry, but to encourage resistance to an unjust and destructive society.

The Fifth Estate (ISSN No. 0015–0800) is published quarterly at 4632 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA;

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In 1942, the Canadian Department of National Defense invoked the War Measures Act to seize the land of the Potawatomi people of Stoney Point Reserve and established an “advanced infantry training center.” Many of the displaced native people were crowded onto the neighboring Kettle Point Reserve. The rest scattered throughout Ontario in search of homes and jobs, often in unfamiliar and hostile urban areas.

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The Saigon Times reports work will begin next year on a north-south expressway along the route of the old Ho Chi Minh Trail. Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet has called for a mass labor program to build the 1,125-mile road This was a retreat from his original plan to build a trunk road down the west side of the Truong Son Mountains, which would have cost $6 billion, half the country’s annual national income.

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Friends:

Remember the 1–800 numbers game? It costs lots of money. It costs them lots of money and it’s free! Col. Oliver North Defense Fund now has a 1–800 number.

Just dial 1–800—521–0200 and pledge lots of money at whatever name and address you want and the North Defense trust will send out some mail to collect.

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Amidst ecstatic visions, Anarchy appears. She says:

Whenever you need anything, once a month at the full moon, assemble in the wilderness—in the forest, on the heath, by the seashore—for the state of nature is a community of freedoms. Recognize the imminence of total liberation and as a sign of your freedom, be naked in your rites.

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FE NOTE: This exchange continues an ongoing discussion in our pages that started with a report on the 1987 Minneapolis anarchist gathering (FE #326, Summer 1987). A letter exchange followed in FE #328, Spring 1988. Back issues can be ordered through our book service for 75 cents plus postage.

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Signs are that the government has begun an assault on radical environmental groups with the arrest of four people associated with the Earth First! movement and the order that 12 others appear before a federal grand jury. As we go to press, all we have are sketchy reports from the daily media and a quick call to the EF! Tucson headquarters, but it appears as though a class set-up is at work.

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The Work Resister’s Handbook is presently being assembled by John Zerzan and Morgan Feralchilde. The authors want true stories of work resistance, how to do scams, and practical hints for curing consumption blues, e.g. shoplifting, etc. Write: Box 11331, Eugene OR 97440.

Counter-Information is a dynamic bimonthly street sheet from Edinburgh, Scotland with a circulation of 10,000. It’s in the forefront of the struggle against the newly imposed Poll Tax by urging total non-cooperation. They stress “the importance of people directly controlling their struggles, outside the control of political parties, trade unions or leaders.” Depending as they do upon reader support since their paper is free, the production collective has sent out a plea for funds so they can maintain a regular publishing schedule. We have copies we can supply upon request or write them directly: Counter Information, p/h CI, 11 Forth St., Edinburgh, Scotland EH1

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Ten days before Abbie Hoffman was discovered resting eternal, I joined a few hundred spectators in an eerie celebration of ‘60s nostalgia at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. The world premiere of the film Ten For Two featured rare footage of the 1971 concert to free the once radical and once imprisoned (ten years for two joints) White Panther, John Sinclair.

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from Cultural Democracy, Spring 1989, P.O.B. 7591, Minneapolis, MN 55407

Anchored in the oily swamp

Near the crumbling dockyard

Lurks an old ship

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Stumbling past

The foggy glass portholes

I glance at the stowaways:

The Black men and women

Are herded and counted

The aisles sway

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“I want my plastic.” All bright colors and boppy hairstyles, it looks more like a music video than a television commercial. She’s a free young woman of the late ‘eighties, she wants it all, and she wants it NOW. These days, a little square of plastic can get it for her—instant cash or commodities, instant gratification, instant recognition. No wonder she wants her plastic. And you, the viewer, are hypnotized by desire, yet redeemed by the message. You too can be as cool and confident as the new-wave chick with her polyvinyl petroleum product. On the TV, the clean and sexy mannequin flashes her smile along with her new status symbol...after decades of manufacturing cardboard applicators for their “feminine hygiene” products, in order to compete with the other companies. Tampax has finally switched to plastic. And the cool chick, knowing this will get her everything and everyone she ever wanted out of life, sparkles and exclaims, “I want my plastic!”

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The FE Bookstore is located at 4632 Second Ave., just south of W. Forest, in Detroit. We share space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper and may be reached at the same phone number: (313) 831–6800. Visitors are welcome, but our hours vary so please call before dropping in.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

1) List the title of the book, quantity wanted, and the price of each;

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Members of the anarchist group The Quijotes of the Ideal, Barcelona, 1937

On July 17, 1936, Spanish nationalist forces, led by right-wing General Francisco Franco attempted a coup d’etat against the newly-elected popular front Republic. In the context of the social and political upheaval following the mass based resistance to the fascist uprising, the anarchist movement in Spain organized the strongest and most radical opposition to fascism as well as a far-reaching social revolution.

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July 1989 marks the bicentennial of the French Revolution. Self-organized Parisians liberated the hated Bastille prison on July 14, 1789; it was their first major victory. Unlike the American revolution which was mounted by racist land speculators and greedy commercial entrepreneurs, the French revolution resulted from a vast groundswell of people determined to rid themselves of their oppressors. In the French countryside as well as in cities, determined individuals lashed out against the clergy, aristocrats, and tax collectors. Peasants seized land from absentee nobility; throughout the country, property of the Catholic Church and the aristocracy was confiscated, desecrated, destroyed.

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George Armstrong Custer, whose “last stand” has been depicted by more than 200 artists since it occurred during the summer of 1876, has been made into a prime symbol of this country’s “winning of the West” from American Indians.

Glamorized in scores of books, and depicted as a gallant cavalier by Errol Flynn in films such as They Died With Their Boots On, Custer might even be seen as the centerpiece of a whole genre of American imperial mythology.

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FE Introduction

During the massive European anti-nuke demonstrations of the ‘70s, at squatter defenses and other actions across the Continent, shadowy groups of angry militants, often dressed in black, masked and armed with slingshots and stones became a common sight.

They were labeled “autonomes” and exhibited a discontent with tired leftist “protest” movements as well as a marked readiness to confront the police with violence in an attempt to go beyond the limits of bourgeois civility. They spoke of a desire not only to be autonomous of the dictates of capitalist society, but of all previous political movements including those in the anarchist tradition.

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Final planning is in high gear for the 1989 Anarchist Conference/Festival to be held in San Francisco on July 20–25. Its theme and name are “Without Borders.” Over 3,000 anti-authoritarians and anarchists from around the world are expected to attend, which would exceed the total participants for the last three previous gatherings in Toronto, Minneapolis and Chicago.

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The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848, asserts that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” that social transformations grow out of the contradiction between productive forces and the relations of production when the latter become too constricting for the development of the former. In every epoch a revolutionary class incarnates these productive forces. [For Marxists, the classic historic example of a class struggle which is followed by a radical social transformation is the transition from feudalism to capitalism. In this example the bourgeoisie incarnated the new productive forces: the feudal relations of production (the way society was organized), were too inflexible to accommodate the increasing commodity production.

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