Most Recent Additions

There has been a lot of activity during the past seven months in Zurich, Switzerland. It began last May when the young people of the city began demanding a free space where they could have an independent, self-governing or autonomous youth center. There were a number of general assembly meetings, followed by street demonstrations with anywhere between two and four thousand participants.

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A lone figure stood before a door. Townsfolk had ridiculed her for years because she walked daily to this same spot.

No one else saw any reason to do so. And when they asked her what drew her, she could only shake her head. An answer reverberated deep in her brain but she could never quite grasp what it was.

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This issue is in your hands for two reasons: 1) your generous and numerous response to our plea for financial assistance and 2) the feeling of support we got from the accompanying letters you sent in. Our problem was really two-fold, but we only told you about the money side of the difficulties we faced. The other, a feeling of demoralization and a questioning of the purpose of our project, was really a more serious matter, but your desire for the Fifth Estate to continue infused a similar determination in us as well. We did discriminate, though, in a manner we should apologize for; we sent direct letters of thanks to large contributors and left our small donors to receive our appreciation in this space. We know that often it is as hard for some of you (and us) to find a spare five dollars where others are fortunate enough to have larger sums to contribute. We meant no slight but just couldn’t possibly thank everyone personally. We were exceptionally fortunate to have gotten the money we did as we had several large expenses relating to our office plus sent off several hundred dollars to book publishers such as Partisan Press, Cienfuegos, Black & Red, and Bratach Dubh. These important projects are experiencing much of the same difficulties as we are and we thought the least we could do was to pass along your donations to us for the debts we owed them. We don’t know what the future looks like financially, but we feel that if we can publish fairly regularly and offer an interesting selection of books, we can continue our projects. Still, we were just informed by our printer that his price is going to rise by 50%, our postage costs are already up, and we may have to switch mailing companies, all of which will entail a goodly sum. Ugh! So, any of you who feel the spirit to pledge a certain sum per month to the maintainance of the paper, you can join the small group of sustainers who receive the paper first class mail each issue and are a vital part of keeping us afloat...

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Related: see FE Staff introduction, “Against Civilization,” in this issue.

The only possible opening for a statement of this kind is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of “legitimate” thinking; what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world’s ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.

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There she is, looking vaguely pornographic on the glossy covers of the weekly magazines, the planet Saturn. What have we discovered? I don’t know, I haven’t read them, feeling squashed as I do to the Earth by the giddying inertia of this century which plummets like a flaming satellite towards the nothingness. Grey skies, the weather turning cold, sirens in the distance. Some citizens walk by whispering reverently of the wonders of Saturn, disputing the number of rings and moons according to the latest counts, as the corroding universe about them threatens to be annihilated. They drool over photographs of a planet most of them couldn’t spot in a clear night sky—that is, if the night sky hadn’t already been colonized and obliterated by the city light and the lethal dust of the very civilization which made it possible to send gadgets and technicians to the stars. But everything is so groovy on Saturn, so colorful and tempestuous. They know because they watched it all on television.

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The letters on this page are responses to John Zerzan’s “The Refusal of Technology” which appeared in the October 20, 1980 edition [#303] of the Fifth Estate; below are our comments on the question. In the article, Zerzan accuses those whose vision of revolution contains a dependence upon “‘advanced’ technology” as not significantly breaking with the world as it is. We have edited each of the contributions for purposes of space and we can only hope that we have left intact the authors’ intent.

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Tomoga Therion

Primitivo Solis

Angela Di Sante

Larry Talbert

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Coquilles St. Jacques

E.B. Maple

Wanda Lust

Dora Kaplan

David Watson

Bill Watson

T. Fulano

Linda Wiens.

Mr. Venom

Don Kirkland

Ralph Rinaldi

The Fifth Estate Newspaper (ISSN 0015–0800) is published bi-monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 USA; phone (313) 8316800. 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.

a review of

Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson. PM Press, 2009

Forget Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Lincoln was wrong or disingenuous when he told Harriet Beecher Stowe that her novel brought on the Civil War. The Slavocracy was not frightened by mawkish sentiment.

No, it was rifle-toting abolitionist zealots willing to die that caused Southern panic.

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Comrades:

At the recent cena (dinner) held by the Italian comrades $1,061 was raised. It was decided to divide it among the following publications: Black Flag, Fifth Estate, Freedom, Internationale, Open Road, Revista A, SRAF, North American Anarchist, Work and Pay, and Voluntà.

Best Wishes

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Members of Feral Crust, a small DIY ecologically-minded anarchist collective in the mountains of Marilog Davao (Southern Mindanao), Philippines are developing a rural community based on balance with the surrounding environment and social solidarity. Their community is located in a forest home to wildlife and indigenous people.

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In 1917, unable to break the unity of the miners, armed vigilante gangs organized by the copper corporations, rounded up 2,000 strikers at gun point in Bisbee, Az. They were forced onto crammed cattle cars and dumped in the desert.

A hundred years ago, in September 1918, more than a hundred leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were convicted of conspiracy to obstruct World War I. The trial marked a critical turning point for the union and the Left. In marking this centenary, we remember the Industrial Workers of the World as the most successful organization holding to a radical vision in U.S. history.

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On June 17, Father’s Day, a march and vigil was planned outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Southwest Portland, Ore., to protest the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. It quickly developed into something that the organizers hadn’t planned for: a six week occupation of the building that effectively shut it down for an extended period of time and brought ICE activities into sharp public attention.

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In Raoul Vaneigem’s 1967 Situationist treatise, The Revolution of Everyday Life, he recounts what resulted from the flooding of the basement of Ivan Pavlov’s laboratory where the Russian physiologist kept his famous salivating dogs as experiments in classical conditioning.

It was a traumatic event for the dogs that had to struggle to live in the rising water. The ones who survived completely shed the conditioning Pavlov had worked so diligently to place in them.

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This article is being written just as the pressure of a Soviet invasion of Poland is being eased and under the assumption that such an attack is not about to occur. Amid an atmosphere of continuing political crisis, growing worker militancy, continuing economic problems, and constant reshuffling of the Polish government personnel, Solidarity, the recently formed “independent” labor organization, looks like it is about to become a permanent part of Polish society.

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Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal ruled in August against the government, effectively suspending the TransMountain expansion (TMEX) project, a proposed twining of a bitumen pipeline, parallel to the first, from the Alberta tar sands to an oil refinery in Burnaby, Metro Vancouver.

The TMEX has long been opposed by a diversity of Indigenous communities, environmentalists, and anarchist activists. Recently, the Canadian government nationalized the Trans Mountain pipeline to assure the expansion would be built, putting up 4.5 billion Canadian dollars ($3.5 billion) to purchase the project from Texas oil giant, Kinder Morgan.

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Who the hell needs bad news? Well, we all do. At least if it’s bad news for the state, capital, and patriarchy.

B(A)D News is a monthly English language info show founded at the 2013 Anarchist Balkan Bookfair in Slovenia as the International Network of Anarchist and Anti-authoritarian Radio Projects, known as A-Radio Network (A-RN). Participants were Anarchist Radio Berlin, Radio Libertaire from Paris and Crna Luknja (“Black Hole”) from Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, as well as by individual radio activists from Eastern Europe.

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Daily life has a new rhythm: routine disruptions. DPacing an accelerated news cycle and affective bursts from smart phone notifications, our subjective autonomous systems are increasingly synced up with crisis-state and techno security tempos.

We don’t know what the next surprise is going to be, but we know it’s coming.

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Although the Fifth Estate does not accept commercial advertising, we do provide this space free for our readers’ use. We do not accept ads over the telephone, so please mail them to us at our office: 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201. We only ask that the content of the ads be kept consistent with the general outlook of this publication.

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a review of

GI Guinea Pigs: How the Pentagon Exposed Our Troops to Dangers More Deadly Than War by Michael Uhl and Tod Ensign. Playboy Press, 1980, 256 pp., $6.95

This account of the exposure of GIs to the atomic tests of the 1950s and the toxic herbicides in Vietnam is a teeth gritter of a story—both from horror and from anger.

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Once in the Jurassic, about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a great Discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings—even grasses, to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a seed, were assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

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a review of

The Nirvana Blues by John Nichols. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981, 527 pp., $14.95 hardcover.

The Nirvana Blues completes the New Mexico trilogy of John Nichols which began with his The Milagro Beanfield War in 1972, includes The Magic Journey in 1978 and which maps the destruction of the indigenous Chicano culture of fictional Chamisa County by development-crazed Anglos.

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The FE Bookstore is located in the same place as the Fifth Estate Newspaper, both of which are located at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201—telephone (313) 831–6800. The hours we are open vary considerably, so it’s always best to give us a call before coming down.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

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

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In politics nothing can be taken at face value; many times what passes for an elaborately drawn political point of view is little more than a posture which conceals psychopathology. Trotskyism, a stillborn variety of marxism notable for the bizarre historical ironies embodied in it, is a particularly appropriate example.

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Within the past several months the FE has received many publications and letters from Greece trying to make contact with radicals and libertarian revolutionaries in the U.S.

At a first glance the literature of the Greek anarchists looks like a collection of American ‘60s radical chic nostalgia, intellectually pureed for an ‘80s Mediterranean audience. Imagine for a moment the anthologies of the hip, the pseudo-hip, and the never-hip, but the always-trying of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s of American radicalism thrown together in a juxtaposition of grainy photos, poetry and prose—a hodgepodge of Buddy Holly, Jerry Rubin, the Who, Detroit’s own MC5, Abbie Hoffman and Zap comics, serving as a model for revolution.

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FE Note: The following article was sent to us anonymously several months ago and has generated an enormous amount of discussion among us by its charges that prisoners who are “thugs, murderers, pimps, rapists, conmen of every sort” have been “elevated to the level of anarchist heroes” and that the prison support movement showers “slavish devotion” on them.

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Things have a real roll on here at the Fifth Estate and believe it or not we may have the next issue to you in about six weeks. We had several articles left over from this issue and already have an anti-nuke special in mind for the next. Also, look for an announcement of an anti-nuke conference to be held at the Grinning Duck. Final note: Did Canadian subscribers receive our last issue dated July? If not, write us and we’ll send it out.

Norman Nawrocki’s “No way! No way! Trees that Talk” was presented at the 2018 Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival, the theme of which was Anti-Fascism. The play is based on the lives of six anarchist, anti-fascist women—four from 20^th century opposition in Italy, Spain, Germany and Poland, and two recent ones from Greece and Syria.

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A Tsunami/Fifth Estate Project

Mountain Center & Detroit

1. Description: machine parts in the foreground, nude man in the background facing away from the viewer; balloon above him says:

Well, everything gets done so quickly and easily, but... Somehow, I never quite feel at home here...

2. Description: a man in a business suit next to a large piece of equipment; balloon above him says:

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“If they didn’t physically slash him and tie the cord around his neck, the years of sensory deprivation, beatings, setups, transfers, hole time, mind and law games, and the psycho-torture which this place is famous for had the same effect. I know that anyone can be gotten to, regardless of how strong they are.”

— A Walla Walla Prisoner

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October marks the 16^th anniversary of the Fifth Estate and a little over five years since we’ve been publishing this paper as an explicitly libertarian project (see the Oct. 1979 FE for a brief history), and we are pleased to report that the ship of anti-state remains healthy. We say this even though the Post Office has reduced our status to that of a quarterly. This has served as a reminder of how we’ve let our publishing frequency precipitously slip from that of a monthly to, in this case, once every four months. Readers write to us all too often complaining that they have missed an issue, when it’s just been our sloth. Please be assured, all of you will get the six issues you subscribed to no matter if they don’t fall into a given calendar year. Financially we’re holding our own (contrary to a year ago when we were dead broke), but please, don’t let this declaration act to forestall the generous donations that many of you have been sending to the paper, because it is exactly those extra dollars or two or $20! with a book order or subscription renewal that have carried us in the direction of solvency. We can rarely do so individually, so let us thank all of you collectively who continue to have faith, not so much in this paper, but in the ideas it embodies, Who have helped us so much over the last year. And as usual, a special debt of gratitude must go out to our Italian comrades on both coasts and in Florida who continue their lifelong commitment to anarchist ideals by support of the world libertarian press including this one.

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With the endorsement of the Polish Communist Party’s Politburo, on November 10, of a plan that would include the Solidarity union in a new coalition government, it appears that the seemingly endless period of crisis and confrontation in Poland will soon have a conclusion of classic dimensions: A militant working class, as it presses ahead with its demands, will face the combined opposition of both the state and union.

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In response to “A Challenge to the Prison Movement,” FE #307, November 19, 1981.

Sylvie Kashdan, Seattle

In its mirror image negation of some positions of the prisoner support movement, the anonymous article highlights weaknesses of such single-issue politics. In focusing so completely on this one institution (the prisons), it becomes impossible for people to imagine its elimination.

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A couple of us went downtown to Cobo Hall on a cold Friday night to check out the rally to “overturn the Reagan program” and to pass out a few copies of the last issue to the curious. The rally was being staged by the “All Peoples Congress” all-weekend convention, a left-liberal amalgam; everyone from Dykes Against Racism Everywhere to trade unionists, feminists, Democratic Party hacks looking for a constituency, and leninists looking for cannon fodder. The posters had been all over the city since summer, free bus rides were being offered every fifteen minutes or so from various welfare and unemployment offices, Gil Scott Heron was supposed to perform on Saturday night for a benefit—it had all the makings of a slick, combination carnival and revival meeting. The revival, that is, of the Popular Front to Fight “Reaganism,” led by liberal politicians and trade union bureaucrats and staffed by the minions of the leninist parties looking for a piece of the action. But we had a lot of extra papers lying around turning yellow, and we were starting work on another issue, so we decided to potlatch them out of here and hand them out to the folks who might have taken the free bus ride to go somewhere where it was warm, and to perhaps shake up the true believers with some blasts against civilization.

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from Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth, pp. 251–252

One peculiarity of Spanish Anarchism...was the inclusion within its ranks of professional criminals-thieves and gunmen who certainly would not have been accepted by any other working-class party-together with idealists of the purest and most selfless kind. Occasionally, as we have already pointed out, the two elements were combined in the same person, but more often they were separate. One may explain this historically. The bandit has always been a popular figure in Spain because he preys on the rich and defends the poor. Then during the Napoleonic Wars the guerrilla leader and the bandit fused in the same person. This tradition was continued by the Carlists. Their famous guerrilla leaders, Cabrera, Father Merino, Father Santa Cruz and Cucala, belonged to the same type of men as Durruti and Ascaso. But the Anarchists were also lax in allowing ordinary thieves and murderers to join their organization. The first sign of this was seen during the Cantonalist rising of 1873, when the convict prison of Cartagena, containing 1500 of the most desperate criminals in Spain, was opened on the insistence of the Internationalists and the inmates were invited to join in the defence of the city. Then, during the troubles of 1919 through 1923 at Barcelona, dozens of pure pistoleros entered their ranks. No doubt most of them took care to put a certain ideological colour on their actions, but this would not have been sufficient if the Anarchists had not had a sentimental feeling for all those people who have taken to criminal ways because they have been thwarted or injured by society. A typically Spanish inability to distinguish between those who have enriched themselves by “lawful” means and those who attempt to do so by pure robbery and violence lies at the bottom of this.

The letters which appear in this issue of the Fifth Estate do not represent the entire correspondence which has grown out of the discussion on technology. Some of our exchanges with readers of the paper became too broad, too lengthy, and too diffuse to make their publication possible, and so many of those debates will have to be deferred until they can be treated in a more organized manner. We also received many one- and two-line letters of support, some accompanied by donations and requests for more copies. We want to thank everyone who has shown support; we hope to do everything we can to strengthen our ties with them and aid them in the struggle against the sector of the machine in which they find themselves. To them we can only say: there is so much to do; let’s get moving.

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The Machine and Its Discontents, a collection of writings by Fredy Perlman (1934–1985) has recently been jointly published in the U.K. by Theory and Practice and Active Distribution (theoryandpractice.org.uk and activedistribution.org). Perlman, a prolific writer of radical texts, was a ten-year participant in the Fifth Estate.

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In late August, a sizable crowd gathered in a downtown Detroit park well past its glory days to eat chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream...and learn about Sacco and Vanzetti.

The event, known as the Sacco and Vanzetti Ice Cream Social, honored the memory of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born anarchists framed for allegedly robbing and killing a paymaster and security guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts in April 1920.

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Bikes have no power until bodily given

and given, give back at higher gear.

Being mounted, being ridden

without armor plating, they’re

light in their taking

and being taken where.

Not that bikes can’t be taken, and take

to war: the U.S. in Havana, the British

against Boers, the Japanese in Shanghai,

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Quick call the police;

The Negroes are barbecuing at the lake.

Quick call the police;

The Negroes are drumming too loud

Quick call the cops

The colored choir is singing too loud.

Quick call the cops

That pregnant Negro’s belly is swollen;

Search that shoplifter’s belly!

Quick call the cops;

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What first greeted me

upon entering that room

were the sad, quiet faces

as we all sat around the table.

.

Thinking of her,

wondering why

and what happened

and some of it came out later.

.

But what was also on my thoughts

was finding out how management

had known about it all day long

as they readily pursued their disturbing calculation

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It is where the old man who said nothing Becomes the hero of the day

Where the time I choose to leave

Becomes the time I am willing to stay

It is where the cockroaches do not fly Scaring the shit out of me and my wards Where avocados are always in season And everyone will fight for a worthy cause

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The massive and still-growing anti-nuclear movement in Europe has become a serious threat to the avatars of destruction who, through the auspices of NATO, are attempting to turn Europe into a nuclear battlefield by deploying Pershing II and cruise missiles on European soil. An American diplomat in Bonn recently warned the readers of the international edition of Newsweek (8/24/81): “If the peace movement isn’t defused soon, we might see the same kind of threat to cruise and Pershing installations after 1983 that you see directed against nuclear energy plants today.” The implications of this shocking development were clearly spelled out by the worried diplomat: “We’re talking about a serious threat to NATO planning as a whole.”

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FE Note: The letters which appear on these two pages are mostly responses to our July 1981 edition which was devoted mainly to a discussion and critique of technology and the modern world it has spawned. Single copies of that issue are still available from our office for 50 cents a copy. (See our index of available back issues on page 19 of this issue.) T. Fulano, author of last issue’s “Against the Mega-machine,” responds to supporters of technology elsewhere in this issue.

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Chairman of the Board, Publisher, Assistant to the Publisher, Senior Editor, Editor, Managing Editor, Executive Editor, Assistant Managing Editor, Chief of Correspondents, Operations, Senior Writers, General Editors, Art Editor, Circulation Manager, Associate Editors, Assistant Editors, Senior Editorial Assistants, Editorial Assistants, Chief of Photography, Editorial Controller, Key Grip, Best Boy, Choreography, and Ms. St. Jacques’ Wardrobe by the Paleolithic Liberation Organization (PLO).

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We are seeking analytical articles, news reports, essays, poetry, and fiction on acts of refusal and resistance, either individually or collectively; also graphic illustrations and photographs. Before submitting essays or articles, please read our writer’s guidelines at www.FifthEstate.org.

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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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