Most Recent Additions
L.M. Bogad
Monumental Dialectics
Staging Haymarket Confrontation... Anarchists brawl with Teamsters, statues walk & talk, and the incident 120 years ago that gave us May Day is contested for meaning
On May 4, 1886, several hundred workers assembled in Chicago’s Haymarket Square to protest the shooting of their comrades on a picket line at the McCormick Reaper Works the day before. The violence happened in the context of a largely successful general strike in support of the eight-hour workday. Anarchist labor organizers and journalists played a key role in the strikes.
Apr 22, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
About This Issue
Venezuela, Spain, & Haymarket
Welcome to the first issue in our 41st year of radical publishing. This edition, no different than the preceding 371, takes up our desire for revolution, one that ends the monstrous systems of capitalism and the state. It begins with a critical look at what is billed by the Left as the Bolivarian Revolution. Michael Staudenmaier, with Anne Carlson, describing their month long visit through Venezuela and relates anarchist perspectives on Chavismo. The FE’s Walker Lane writes about the 2006 Caracas World Social Forum (WSF) he attended, and offers critiques of the gathering and the direction the country is taking.
Apr 15, 2015 Read the whole text...
Michael Staudenmaier
Anne Carlson
Venezuela
Of Chavistas and Anarquistas
Note: This is a shortened version of an essay that can be found in several locations on the Internet. Some material is likely dated at this point, given the rapidly changing situation in Venezuela. Since the essay primarily has value as a first-hand account, and since we have not returned to Venezuela since it was written, we have not attempted to update this version in any way.
Apr 15, 2015 Read the whole text...
Walker Lane (Peter Werbe)
Venezuela—An Anarchist at the World Social Forum
100,000 gather in Caracas to celebrate Chavismo. But, is it another world, or, just a different version of this one?
Barrel-assing around hair-pin turns at 6am in a crowded bus on a road with no barriers between us and a two thousand foot drop was not the manner in which I anticipated arriving in Venezuela for the Sixth World Social Forum (WSF).
This anus-clenching adventure was made necessary by the fact that a key viaduct on the highway from the airport into Caracas was recently determined to be on the verge of collapse. All traffic was forced to take an old mountain road, so what was normally a 40 minute ride had turned into a gridlocked six-hour nightmare journey.
Apr 15, 2015 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters
Send letters to Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale Ml 48220
Congrats on changing anarchist to anti-authoritarian on your front page description. Too much baggage on the word anarchist. It’s glamorous for those with that identity; fear and mistrust for those outside the milieu.
There was that period from about 1880 to 1920 when anarchists were killing people. Like monotheists, they thought they were in touch with the higher moral values of the Universe and thus were free of morals in this world.
Apr 12, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Anarchy in Books
A sampling of the fine books we receive
Who’s Afraid of The Black Blocs?: Anarchy in Action Around the World, Francis Dupuis-Deri, 2013, PM Press pmpress.org
The Watcher, Nicholas P. Oakley, 2014, See Sharp Press, SeeSharpPress.com (Sci-fi)
The End of the World As We Know it?: Crisis, Resistance, & the Age of Austerity, edited by Deric Shannon, 2014, AK press, akpress.org
Apr 10, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Contents of print edition
Fifth Estate, #393, Spring 2015, Vol. 50, No. 1
2 Letters
4 Anarchy in Kurdistan
Bill Weinberg
7 Eric McDavid Freed!
FE Staff
8 Armed Madhouse
Bryan Tucker
9 Justice for Franco Fascists?
David Porter
11 Sam Mbah Dies
Kelly Rose Pflug-Back
12 Florida’s Burnpile Press
Matt Keene
13 An Anarchist in Berlin
Apr 10, 2015 Read the whole text...
James Koehnline
Back cover
Don’t say you can’t turn back the clock—you do it every year, dupe of daylight savings time—as if you could add or subtract one hour from light by bureaucratic fiat. The really progressive position is reversion.
—Peter Lamborn Wilson “The Alchemy of Luddism”
Graphic: James Koehnline http://www.koehnline.com/
Apr 8, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Books
Our friends at Black and Red Books--another radical publishing project from Detroit--have finally put their catalog online at http://blackandred.org. It’s now easier than ever to find titles like Society of the Spectacle; Against His-story, Against Leviathan; The Strait; The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism; Love and Politics; The Wandering of Humanity, and more.
Apr 8, 2015 Read the whole text...
Walker Lane (Peter Werbe)
Anne R. Key
Reviews
The Wedding and Other Stories and Oystercatcher #3
The Wedding and Other Stories, Cara Hoffman, Factory School Southpaw Culture, 2006, 114 pp., factoryschool.org. Available from the Barn
Cara Hoffman’s seven tautly written, alternately ominous and humorous short stories are driven by her elegant use of language. She’s a writer in the now unfashionable old school where words and the images they create shape story and characters rather than breathless action scenarios waiting to be transferred from page to film. There’s great craft here where one can almost feel the work put into each sinuous sentence; sometimes each word.
Apr 8, 2015 Read the whole text...
Walker Lane (Peter Werbe)
The State and Longing for Arcadia
Review
reviewed here:
The State, Harold Barclay, Freedom Press, London, 2003, 109 pp.
Longing for Arcadia: Memoirs of an AnarchoCynicalist Anthropologist, Harold B. Barclay, Trafford, 2005, Victoria, BC, 362 pp.
Harold Barclay’s thin volume on the political state packs into its pages everything we need to know to realize that there is nothing eternal about this inherently oppressive institution. A relatively recent phenomenon in human affairs, Barclay traces its origins to a few thousand years ago based on the desire of a few men to control others by establishing hierarchical societies in place of the egalitarian ones that preceded them.
Apr 4, 2015 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
The Amish, “Obnoxious Machinery” & Community
an exchange
In response to “Secular Antinomian Anabaptist Neo-Luddism,” FE #372, Spring, 2006]
Dear Fifth Estate,
When I saw the cover of FE which promised an article on the Amish and Anarchists, it piqued my interest. I live in Amish country, Pennsylvania. An Old Order Amish family are my next door neighbors.
Apr 4, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Anarcho-shorts
& other Tales of the Planet
A valuable anarchist history resource, The Emma Goldman Papers archive, is being defunded by University of California, Berkeley, and will have to close if alternative funding can’t be found soon. The 34-year-old archive is currently the most comprehensive, organized collection of Goldman-related materials in the world.
Apr 3, 2015 Read the whole text...
Andrew William Smith
Live TV or Die
Primitivism on TV!
a review of
Live Free or Die. National Geographic Cable Channel
While I love the peace and challenges of backwoods camping, I admit that I don’t engage with them that often, and when I have, the thin lines between adventure and annoyance, between serenity and boredom, barely exist.
If you want to see a person with an intellectual critique of civilization get infatuated with civilization’s creature comforts, watch their most intimate reactions to home-cooked meals and hot showers after a few days or even weeks roughing it in the woods.
Apr 3, 2015 Read the whole text...
Ruhe
Riots, Revolt & the Black Bloc
Book review
a review of
I Saw Fire: Reflections on Riots, Revolt and the Black Bloc by Doug Gilbert. Institute for Experimental Freedom, 2014, $10. 204 pp. littleblackcart.com
I’ve often found myself frustrated by the lack of worthwhile media projects that accurately capture how anarchists struggle. Doug Gilbert’s I Saw Fire: Reflections on Riots, Revolt and the Black Bloc is the kind of book that you can hand to people encountering anarchist resistance for the first time.
Apr 3, 2015 Read the whole text...
Anu Bonobo
A Revolution without Enemies
Allen Ginsberg & the Poetics of Psychedelic Anarchism
An experimental rant titled “Radical Poetry, Heretical Religion, and the Psychedelic Revolution” provided the germ and genesis for this rambling, review-essay.
I delivered that sermon in my over-the-top Reverend Bonobo mode for a gathering in western North Carolina called “Croatan.” Held in late April 2006, the event featured lectures by the likes of scientist and scholar of mind-altering substances Dennis McKenna (brother of the late Terence McKenna), late nights of electronic dance music, and thunderous spring rains that sprayed us all with epic torrents.
Apr 1, 2015 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Books that changed our lives
When we put out the calls for this issue, we sought lists and commentaries on books that changed people’s lives. Apparently, many were too busy with summer reading to respond. Others may be too busy with life to read--or to write about what they might be reading if they’re reading. For me, I’ve decided to name writers more than books, and the shortlist is rather long, heavily populated by poets. Allen Ginsberg’s influence on me might always overshadow other writers, and to learn more about that, please see my article on him in a few pages. My world view has been so widely shaped by all of these visionaries that I would feel remiss not giving them their due in this issue.
Apr 1, 2015 Read the whole text...
Cara Hoffman
Here Comes Success
Fiction
Just before 1998, he started taking advice from the talking crow.
It started like you might have imagined. The crow was perched on a spindly branch near the hospital parking lot. It quietly assessed him.
He was getting his car keys out of his pocket, and the crow was drawn in by his smooth knuckles as they slid into the denim of his jeans and then slid out barely concealing something shiny.
Apr 1, 2015 Read the whole text...
Sandor Ellix Katz
The End of Sexuality and Other Apocalyptic Scenarios
From The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, Chelsea Green, 2006
Can any action avert humanity’s technological downfall? I try to remain hopeful and cast my lot with the possibility of change, but our situation and prospects both appear rather bleak. So many nightmare scenarios have been imagined for us. Science fiction anticipated genetic tinkering generations before the technology existed to actually do it. The dangers I have just briefly described are very real. Yet I find that every new revelation seems strangely familiar, as if we had been expecting it. Each sensational news report seems like it must have come from science fiction.
Apr 1, 2015 Read the whole text...
Bill Blank
A Brief Story of The Clash, Radio & the Fifth Estate
Book review
a review of
Stealing All Transmissions: The Secret History of The Clash by Randal Doane, Foreword by Barry “The Baker” Auguste, 2014, PM Press, 192 pp. $15.95 pmpress.org
In December 1979, after stumbling through my first trimester at Michigan State University, I took the allotted three weeks off in suburban Detroit. While the media began priming the struggling city as host of the upcoming Republican National Convention (and a probable Ronald Reagan presidency), a vague desperation overtook me, to search for alternatives, first on the radio and then in the press.
Mar 31, 2015 Read the whole text...
Roger Farr
Anarchist Poetics
“[The poet never] voices received opinions, or gives clear expression to the confused feelings of ‘the masses’: that is the function of the politician, the journalist, the demagogue.”
-- Herbert Read, “Art and Alienation”
“Poetry is the end(s) of politics.”
--L. Mirari, “The Politics of Refusal vs. the Refusal of Politics”
Mar 29, 2015 Read the whole text...
William Manson
Civilization as Dis-ease
“The friendly and flowing savage, who is he? Is he waiting for civilization, or is he past it and mastering it?”
-- Walt Whitman
Early in 1905, Leo Tolstoy wrote to a close friend in England: “Yesterday and today I have been reading Edward Carpenter’s book, Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure, and am enraptured by it.... Please inform me of what you know about Carpenter himself. I consider him a worthy successor to Carlyle and Ruskin.” The query as to Carpenter’s identity may well be repeated a hundred years later; his striking originality, which at one time inspired poets and anarchists alike, has since been virtually forgotten.
Mar 29, 2015 Read the whole text...
Ursula K. Le Guin
Notes from the Inner City
Daughter of itinerants,
ungrateful refusers of benefits and charity,
in terror of the all-embracing arms
I turned from the tabernacles of turkey
and progeny of toothpaste, I ran and hid
from the love that damns and pardons,
I dodged the draft from the golden doors
and let the wild west wind carry me
with torn newspapers, cigarette butts, condoms,
up against the chainlink fence at the world’s ends
in a red November evening.
Mar 28, 2015 Read the whole text...
Benjamin Carson
Planting the Seeds of Anarchy
Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower
In America, the last vestiges of the liberal social contract and public safety net have been virtually erased. Under George W. Bush, the gap between the rich and poor increases at an alarming rate while privatization pushes forward. While Social Security is being slowly eviscerated and replaced by Individual Retirement Accounts, wealthy people can survive growing old while leaving those who cannot to fend for themselves. At the same time, the “richest 1% of Americans,” who, according to Peter Singer, “hold more than 38 percent of the nation’s wealth,” are forming what David Harvey calls “ghettoes of affluence (their ‘bourgeois utopias’),” which undermine “concepts of citizenship, social belonging, and mutual support,” while the poor, who are being “pushed off welfare into a stagnant labor market,” are left to make their way in what, for so many, looks like a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Mar 28, 2015 Read the whole text...
Peter Lamborn Wilson
The Alchemy of Luddism
for Diane di Prima
St. John’s Eve (Midsummer) 2006
It’s the idea
of code that’s cool not the actual
bother of decipherment: the utopia
of not having been in a state of
anticipation or regret. The Dowager Empress
took fresh honeysuckle petals in her green tea — yes even Civilization had its finer moments
Mar 28, 2015 Read the whole text...
Elliott Liu
The Radical Roots of Gary Snyder
Looking at Gary Snyder’s writing is a geological experience. Picking up a copy of The Gary Snyder Reader or checking out his shelf at a library will reveal layers of poems, journals, and essays dating from the late fifties to the turn of the millennium--all written by a would-be Wobbly turned Zen poster child of the San Francisco Renaissance. Considered foundational texts for everything from the hippies and New Left to bioregionalism and Deep Ecology, Snyder’s work reads like a countercultural cross section of the last fifty years.
Mar 28, 2015 Read the whole text...
Diane DiPrima
Writings of Diane DiPrima
archangel of fire
enwraps now melts glaciers
turf unexposed
angelic aeons trembles
naked
under a vengeful sun
--Diane DiPrima
August 3, 2002
green shack in Richmond
tag on the door sez “Merlin’s”
just that
--Diane DiPrima
March 23, 2003
Train to Sacramento
true poppies:
Mar 28, 2015 Read the whole text...
Margaret Killjoy
The Fall of Ekset City
Fiction
Ekset City was on fire. Flares and napalm and hammers and bullets and the angry minds of angry men were tearing through three hundred years of architecture and three thousand years of culture. At the center of the city, a bonfire engulfed the seven pillars of Ekset. A frightful horde of humans paraded through, warming their hands on the pyre of victory and sacrificing every trace of goblin culture to the consuming flames. Black smoke rose up so thick and high it fought against the glory of the sun.
Mar 27, 2015 Read the whole text...
Lily So-too
Under the wall
Take me to
where my heart is sunken
deep into the land
stepped on, kicked, trampled, thought
nothing of,
to the place where people don’t know that
it is even there,
supporting their weight.
Let me love them anyway.
i am not divided from myself
let me feel the ache of the person
struggling to keep alive at the hands of another person
and under a mechanized system
designed to grind her back into stardust
mine is the same body and breath
that give her
material right to be, to exist.
Mar 27, 2015 Read the whole text...
David Adams
Women: Marx’s Forgotten Proletariat
Silvia Federici’s Critique of Marx
While Marx developed some important tools for building a critique of capitalism from the perspective of the worker, he did not devote much thought to capital’s exploitation of women.
In Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici critically revisits the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the historical analysis of which plays a significant role in Capital.
Mar 26, 2015 Read the whole text...
Merril Mushroom
Darcee’s Temptation
Fiction
Darcee began to realize she was in serious trouble, that notions of rebellion were growing beyond her control, during the President’s speech. She and her co-workers were crowded together in the workplace auditorium for mandatory daily socialization, all eyes on the huge teevee screen, watching the image of Our Benevolent Leader, the President of GovCentral. He was flinging words to his public like great faux pearls that promised nothing beneath their shiny surfaces; yet the people were scooping them up through their ears and stringing them in memory to recall when they needed something to believe in.
Mar 22, 2015 Read the whole text...
Anu Bonobo
Octavia Estelle Butler
(June 22, 1947 — February 24, 2006)
When I learned of Octavia Butler’s death in late February 2006, I fought the feelings of loss. A longtime fan and student of her science fiction and fantasy, I never stopped sensing synchronicity and strangeness when I found that other radicals were reading her work. On the occasion of her passing, London’s Independent described her as “the central figure in the relatively close-knit community of black writers of the fantastic in America.”
Mar 22, 2015 Read the whole text...
Unleash
There are ills the only cure for which is literature
Excerpt
I have hidden and covied poetic mead within the thickets of prose bramble-rambles, come and gather in the weeds. There is sweet berry-nectar to gather, a treasure hunt in the hedgelands for random bottles of elderberry wine. Feel free to stumble. Who knows what you might stumble upon? The poet’s job is to woo world, with words that are hymns. Rosebushes, stones, mountains need hymns. Deer and rats and ravens need hymns. Trees, beautiful dresses, beer need hymns. Little children and old grandmothers need hymns. God is in all this Godding; God is tickled at praise and glows in gentle pride. Wandering through world, the poet rambles and rants, like Whitman meandering through rhapsodic New York City. Whitman had Leaves of Grass. I think I might have Brambles of Berries. These are the brambles Brueghelian peasants ramble through on their way to the lusty groves where they commune with wind-gods, satyrs, fairies, and beer-gods! You may ask, are these prose-poems, rants, short dissertative vignettes? And I will love your question, but I will not answer.
Mar 22, 2015 Read the whole text...
MaxZine Weinstein
Rafael Mutis
Walls have never worked
Anarchist People of Color & the immigrant rights movement; an interview with Rafael Mutis
Rafael Mutis was part of the Brooklyn 7 arrested at an APOC (Anarchist People of Color) party raided by the police in 2003. They won and exposed the arrogant racist NYPD detectives. He currently works as an organizer against the Rockefeller drug laws, which are New York state’s version of the war on drugs. He is also active with the Escuela Popular Nortena. Rafael was interviewed by MaxZine Weinstein in May.
Mar 21, 2015 Read the whole text...
Joseph Winogrond
How Slick-City-Boy-Karly Got the Country-Folk Killed
Marx praised the emerging bourgeoisie for developing capitalist production.
Nature played a big part in the 1960s Revolution, more than just flower-power and communes. Many of us left the city for natural living, for our physical and mental well-being. We sought freedom from a mercantile world of wage-slavery. We read Mother Earth News. Gardens were planted; fields were cultivated. New ideas of untainted healthy food flourished together with a new-born environmentalism and deep ecology. The chauvinism of the 1950s was confronted by movements of peace, civil rights, women’s rights, environmental rights, consumer rights and so on.
Mar 20, 2015 Read the whole text...
Sherry Hendrick
Mick Vranich
Richard Mock’s Epic Vision
Richard Mock, political cartoonist, painter, sculptor, educator, anarchist, died in Brooklyn July 28 from complications due to diabetes at 61. Richard had an epic vision that he gave to us piece by piece in his creative linocuts. He freely contributed use of his political cartoons to anarchist and worker publications such as the Fifth Estate, Anarchy and UNITE. Many, such as the one on this page, graced our front covers.
Mar 20, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fredy Perlman
The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism
Industrialized nations have procured their preliminary capital by expropriating, deporting, persecuting and segregating, if not always by exterminating, people designated as legitimate prey. Kinships were broken, environments were destroyed, cultural orientations and ways were extirpated.
Descendants of survivors of such onslaughts are lucky if they preserve the merest relics, the most fleeting shadows of their ancestors’ cultures. Many of the descendants do not retain even shadows; they are totally depleted; they go to work; they further enlarge the apparatus that destroyed their ancestors’ culture. And in the world of work they are relegated to the margins, to the most unpleasant and least highly paid jobs. This makes them mad. A supermarket packer, for example, may know more about the stocks and the ordering than the manager, may know that racism is the only reason he is not manager and the manager not a packer. A security guard may know racism is the only reason he’s not chief of police. It is among people who have lost all their roots, who dream themselves supermarket managers and chiefs of police, that the national liberation front takes root; this is where the leader and general staff are formed.
Mar 20, 2015 Read the whole text...
John Zerzan
The Practical Marx
Marx as opportunist & reformist politician
Karl Marx is always approached as so many thoughts, so many words. What connection is there between lived choices--one’s willful lifetime--and the presentation of one’s ideas? By 1846 Marx and Engels had written The German Ideology, which contains the full and mature ideas of the materialist concept of the progress of history. Along with this tome were the practical activities in politics. In terms of his Communist Correspondence Committee and its propaganda work, Marx (also in 1846) stated: “There can be no talk at present of achieving communism; the bourgeoisie must first come to the helm.”
Mar 20, 2015 Read the whole text...
Emile Capouya
The Red Flag & the Black
FE staff note: Mike Ochs, a reader from Pennsylvania, sent us an obituary from The Nation for one of its former editors (1970–1976) Emile Capouya--saying “I thought of your efforts when I read it.” Remembering Capouya’s radical prose, Ted Solotaroff writes, “My favorite essay was ‘The Red Flag and the Black,’ a beautiful exposition of anarchism.... For all his dialectical agility and nuance, his black flag flew two simple principles that he had learned with his hands: People long to do better than they do, and they are naturally creative and cooperative. The categorical imperative of his politics was to act always in the spirit of the society we wish to bring about.”
Mar 20, 2015 Read the whole text...
Kevin O’Toole
Throwing Marx Out with the Bathwater?
a review of
The Tyranny of Theory: A Contribution to the Anarchist Critique of Marxism by Ronald D. Tabor. Black Cat Press, 2013, 349 pages, $30.00
In The Tyranny of Theory, Ronald Tabor is adamant that anarchists need to hold Marxists accountable for the historical record of Marxist regimes. He writes, “these regimes represent the underlying logic of Marxism, and the efforts of Marxists and Marxist organizations to create revolutionary societies in the future (should they get a chance) will, in all likelihood, lead to similar systems.”
Mar 20, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions
Deadline: May 1
Publication date: June 1
The war in Vietnam, the first great defeat of American imperialism, came to an ignominious conclusion 40 years ago, at the end of April 1975.
The United States Congress has authorized the Secretary of Defense “to conduct a program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War.” This obscene commemoration of a shameful war should not go unanswered. We need to remind the world of its true heroes and victims--the Vietnamese people, the anti-war movement, and the draft resisters--and say No! to the celebration of the imperial war machine.
Mar 15, 2015 Read the whole text...
Peter Werbe
Marxism: Obscuring more than it reveals
Criticism & Critique of a Failed System
“... [I]n my view, anarchism has no significant contribution to socialist theory to make.”
—Eric Hobsbawm, “Reflections on Anarchism,” 1969
Hobsbawm, the late British Marxist historian, in his snobbery, unintentionally poses the question as to the function of theory of any sort in revolutionary challenges to the present system. Marxists believe it is important to come to the confrontation armed with memorized critiques of capitalism and history, believing this provides them with the organizational and critical tools for overthrowing the system.
Mar 15, 2015 Read the whole text...
Murray Bookchin
The Myth of The Party
Murray Bookchin’s classic exposure of the authoritarian and counter-revolutionary nature of the Leninist party
This is an excerpt of Murray Bookchin’s 1969 pamphlet Listen, Marxist! A longer version appeared in the May 1976 Fifth Estate, which is available in our archives at FifthEstate.org.
“[The essay that follows] is not a series of hypothetical inferences; it is a composite sketch of all the mass Marxian parties of the past century--the Social Democrats, the communists, and the Trotskyists.
Mar 15, 2015 Read the whole text...
Alexander (for Retort)
Autarchy in Scotland
Is the only choice “YES” or “NO” for a new nation?
In September 2014, the people of Scotland voted on an independence referendum question, “Should Scotland be an independent country?” Following an intense campaign, the “No” side won with 55 percent voting against independence with a turnout of 85 percent.
Alexander writes from Glasgow with an assessment.
Mar 13, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions, Winter 2006–2007
The winter issue of FE will critically reflect upon contemporary anarchist and radical anti-authoritarian political movements. What directions should radicals--who wish to both create a revolution in our everyday lives, as well as to destroy the various and overlapping systems of oppression--take in our current political situation? We welcome theoretical, historical and practical pieces on political and cultural issues.
Mar 13, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Introduction to Anti-Marx Section
Inside the walled compound of a Buddhist monastery on the outskirts of Kyoto, Japan, the monks who reside there have created a meditation garden consisting of raked sand and about a dozen large stones. The stones are adroitly arranged so that no matter where one stands on the perimeter of the garden, at least one of the rocks is blocked from sight of the viewer. The Zen wisdom behind this arrangement suggests that the world in all of its aspects is never completely knowable; that something always remains hidden.
Mar 13, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
More Reasons to Visit New Orleans
This issue of FE was finished on the first anniversary of Katrina. A year later, our friends in New Orleans still need our help. At the beginning of June, our comrade, regular contributor, friend, and Louisiana native John Clark wrote:
“It’s now exactly nine months since Hurricane Katrina. The past months have only reinforced the lessons that were learned in the first weeks after Katrina. The abject failure and utter irrationality of the dominant system of state and corporate power have only become more obvious with the passage of time. On the other hand, we have seen growing evidence of the extraordinary and inspiring achievements possible through mutual aid and solidarity.”
Mar 13, 2015 Read the whole text...
anon.
Rogue Statism
Ragged Statelessness
“The man without a country is a free man. ‘Country’ is a tenfold chain forged around our necks and feet by our forefathers, a prison and a pit.”
--Herman Bang, Denied a Homeland (1906)
There is a traditional Arabic curse that translates into something like, “May their homes be demolished.” But, as a friend in Beirut said recently, one look at what happened in Israel’s war of destruction against Lebanon this summer is enough to make any decent human refrain from wishing that upon their worst enemy.
Mar 13, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
About this issue
When we set out to produce an issue on and of literature, we had wide eyes and wild ideas. Ideas like Thoreau suggested, “In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness.” Guided by these instructions, we set out searching for the same sense of “uncivilized free and wild thinking” that Thoreau found “in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the schools.” Rather than see books as stuffy culture, we would endorse Thoreau’s claim: “As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild-mallard-thought, which ‘mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself ...”
Mar 12, 2015 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Contents, fund appeal
Every edition of Fifth Estate could be our last. This issue, originally scheduled for summer, did not hit the press until early September, thus making it our Fall 2006 edition; subscribers and distributors, please take note. Back in June, when this issue was due, our bank account was depleted, and our volunteers needed a break. But thanks to all the writers and artists who gave us material and to all the readers who answered our perennial plea for funds, we can publish another time. Without the contributions of art, prose, and cash, we would not exist.
Mar 12, 2015 Read the whole text...