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THE RUSSIAN TRAGEDY Alexander Berkman

The Russian Tragedy first appeared in 1922 as three separate pamphlets (The Russian Tragedy, The Russian Revolution and the Communist Party & The Kronstadt Rebellion), and is compiled here under one cover for the first time. In it, Berkman lays bare the true facts of the Leninist ‘workers state.’

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Is it possible or desirable to build large-scale anarchist organizations? Maybe the question is premature. Re-building a human order is not a matter of a group of theoreticians or activists imposing its program on intractable people. Reclaiming a human existence depends, first of all, on people fashioning cooperative forms of life.

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Dear Fifth Estate:

I refuse to renew my subscription to your radical rag for the simple reason I have some absurdist evidence you’ve been running a bogus journalistic revolution in the Motor City. That’s right! I talked to Mr. Green jeans yesterday and he said you guys are being FUNDED BY THE CIA! It does make sense, you know. After all, how can you freaks continue to run a radical rag with NO advertising, continually asking your subscribers to put up bucks here and there and go to benefit parties. Come on. I’ve got a degree from Wayne State and I’ve been out of work since November 1975 (actually I’m bragging but the point is where the hell are you guys getting your money?) I actually don’t give a shit since I don’t give a shit about money any more than you guys do. The thing is, if you guys are being funded by the CIA that means you can continue perpetually with your anarchist ideals and absurdist philosophies. Something fishy in Detroit, and it ain’t Mother Waddles.

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On February 19, thousands of heavily armed riot police were massed on the Elbe River just outside of Brokdorf, W. Germany to prevent 10,000 demonstrators from occupying the site of a new nuclear power station as had been done on a previous occasion (see last issue).

Protest at Brokdorf, W. Germany, 1977

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In attempts to find new markets in which to extract more profit, drug companies are trying to find new ways to keep workers feeling well and on the job.

Their latest interest in industrial health was prompted by the alarming number of workers who are becoming ill from exposure to solvents, excess heat, mercury poisoning, etc.

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When “The Best of Second City” comes to Detroit, May 8, feature sketches will include those originally written and performed by Second City alumni: Alan Arkin, Barbara Harris, and Joel Grey.

The troupe, which specialized in satirical and topical humor, is being brought to Detroit by the Grosse Pointe Unitarian Church. The performance will be held at the Detroit Institute of Arts Auditorium, 5200 Woodward on May 8, and will begin at 8:30 p.m.

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FE Note. The December 1976 Fifth Estate carried a critique by Charles Reeve (see “The Revolt Against Work or Fight for the Right to Be Lazy,” p. 9) of the contentions of John and Paula Zerzan that the crisis point in capitalism today revolves around worker alienation, job refusal, sabotage, absenteeism, etc. Reeve asserted that on one hand, the significance of this phenomenon is overplayed by the Zerzans and on the other, that to the extent that it does exist, it represents nothing new in workers’ struggles.

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Ed. Note: Wilbert McClendon is one of the most talented and important “grassroots” leaders in Detroit’s Negro community. He is a past Chairman of the Adult Community Movement for Equality (ACME).

We print, with pleasure, his comments on the student peace movement and invite readers to comment.

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Aaron Mitchell was an American black man who killed a cop. In retribution the state of California asphyxiated Mitchell with cyanide poison gas fumes in San Quentin prison on April 12.

California’s first execution in four years took just 30 seconds after Mitchell’s limp body was dragged by guards into the green death chamber and strapped to the same chair in which Caryl Chessman died seven years before. The execution was witnessed by 58 persons, while over 350 members of Californians Against State Execution picketed outside.

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During the last few months an increasing number of FIFTH ESTATE subscribers have complained to us that they receive their mailed issues either very late or not at all. Others complain that they receive their copy in a mutilated condition.

This is particularly disturbing since our office staff makes every effort to get the paper out to subscribers as soon as we get it back from our printer. We publish a paper for people to read not to lay in a back room of the post office.

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A benefit for the Be-In was one of the most beautiful events I’ve ever participated in in my life. The Grande was just full of loving people all dancing together in circles, under the strobe, individually, or in all kinds of freaky numbers, showing that in the end when someone asked how many people came it was obvious that everyone was one. The Family Medicine Chest, Billy C and the Sunshine and the Back and Back Boo Funny Music Band supplied sounds that I couldn’t believe. Energy just pulsating all over, people hanging on to each other, falling together, laughing, screaming, what can I say. It was just beautiful.

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THE FIFTH ESTATE and Translove Energies will sponsor a day-long Mid-West Underground Press Conference in Detroit on Saturday, May 20.

The purpose of the conference is to bring together the already established underground papers and discuss each paper’s techniques and experiences. Hopefully the conference will be the impetus for underground papers to begin in other cities, primarily Cleveland, Windsor, Ann Arbor, and Toledo.

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Nancy Sinatra is Wall Street’s answer to the hippie. She’s a facially beautiful broad that plays the almost fetish sex role to shake up her record sales and overall public appeal; and yet she never seems to really overdo it.

She borders on the absurd in her prolific poses, yet she doesn’t really try as hard as she could to ‘sell’ herself. You know, that Mansfield coax that is so exaggerated it’s comical. But that’s because Papa’s got coin. It’s because of this that she can skyrocket to the top of almost any music survey any time she’s in a mood to bellow out.

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April 28 marked the opening of a new theatre in Detroit. The Tropic Theatre in the Wolverine Hotel began its first season with Harold Pinter’s “The Lover,” directed by John Kinney, and on the same bill, “The Man Upstairs” directed by Edith Carrol Canter.

The new theatre, located at 55 East Elizabeth was organized by three Detroit theatre veterans, John Kinney, Robert Heiple and Robert Jones. Kinney and Heiple have performed at the Un-Stabled and other Detroit theatres. Both are in the art supply business in Royal Oak and Jones is an assistant professor of Philosophy at Wayne State and has appeared with the Irish Hills Playhouse and Greenfield Village players.

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On Saturday, April 15 between 400,000 and 500,000 people marched in New York City and in a single voice demanded the end to mass murder in Vietnam.

The Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam described the demonstration as “the largest of any kind ever held in the history of the U.S. for any reason.” In San Francisco another 40,000 marched the same day.

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Paul Krassner, editor of the Realist and Society Editor of Ramparts magazine, will speak on Friday, May 12 at Wayne State University.

Krassner describes himself as the “court jester of the new left.” His talks usually range from soft core humor to hard core reality. His latest Realist features excerpts from the Manchester book on Kennedy, relating how, during the flight from Dallas, Johnson humped the wound in Kennedy’s neck.

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Detroit High School students are being sought for a special summer seminar on Racism in America being sponsored by People Against Racism (PAR).

Dubbed “Freedom Schools in White America,” the seminars will attempt to supplement and in some cases counteract the effect of regular school teaching about Negro and white history.

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An incident involving a Wayne State student and the University’s Security Police touched off a controversy when the student, MacArthur Binion, described his treatment as “outrageous.”

On April 6 Binion was approached, in the Wayne library, by a uniformed Security officer who demanded identification from him. Binion said he refused to do so since the officer gave no reason for his request. The officer attempted to forcibly remove Binion from the building, but the student pulled away and went to a reading area and began studying.

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Joseph Strick’s film adaptation of Ulysses is rather like a high-minded comic-strip version of Stephen Hero or Dubliners.

On the few occasions when a bit of genuine Joycean complexity is allowed to survive in the midst of all that jolly, naturalistic Irishry, it strikes one as self-conscious and out of place. To make the film less expensive to produce, it has been updated, so that all the Celtic Twilight and Irish revolutionism had to be dropped, and much that is left (like the references to England being taken over by a Jew) is out of keeping.

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Ammunition Books shares space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper and can be found at 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit, Mich. 48201 (telephone-313-831-6800). Our hours vary, but we are generally open on Monday and Thursday afternoons (from 1pm to 5pm) and at scattered hours other times. It’s always a good idea to telephone us before you start the trek down, just to be safe.

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Don Lobsinger, leader of the right-wing Breakthrough group, was sentenced April 3 to 15 days in jail for disrupting a church forum on black power last December 3.

He was accused of trying to break up a meeting at St. Lucy’s Catholic Church in St. Clair Shores where Frank Ditto of the East Side Voice of Independent Detroit was telling the all white audience about black power.

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from Special and AP Dispatches

WASHINGTON—Gen. David M. Shoup, former commandant of the Marine corps, charges that an ambitious elite of high ranking officers, preferring war to peace, is turning the United States into “a militaristic and aggressive nation.”

Writing in the April issue of the magazine Atlantic, Shoup says that the search for promotion, interservice rivalry and an eagerness to test military doctrines lies behind the deep American involvement in Vietnam and the heavy invasion of the Dominican Republic.

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

DONNA & CARL—We all received your letters. Glad to hear that you’re both having a great time. Miss you both, Love “the gang.”

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Angela DeSante

Alan Franklin

Ralph Franklin

Bill Griffith

Pat Halley

Jay Kinney

E.B. Maple

Tina Nachalo

Rudy Perkins

Duke Skywatcher

Sonny Tufts

Bratach Dubh

Peter Werbe

Marilyn Werbe

Brenda Sabbagh

Norm Thomas

The Fifth Estate Newspaper, a non-profit Michigan corporation, is published monthly at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201; phone: (313) 831–6800. Office hours are sporadic, so call before coming down. Subscriptions are $4.00 for 12 issues; $6 for foreign. Call 259–1888 for retail sales outlets. Second Class postage paid at Detroit, Michigan. No -copyright, No paid advertising accepted.

Radical troops demonstrate in Lisbon

The rule of Capital continues to erode in Portugal as the increased activity of rank-and-file soldiers, workers and peasants comes into increasing conflict with the Sixth Provisional military government.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of the growing instability is the rebelliousness of the army troops and lower ranking officers. As has been well reported in the capitalist press, example after example of troops leading and taking part in mass demonstrations, giving arms to workers and “left” parties, and their refusal to obey government orders has precipitated the latest crisis for the moderate government of Premier Pinheiro Azevedo.

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(Page 3 of The South End insert)

Classified deadline is noon of the day before publication. Rates are $2 a day (non-student) and $1 a day (students with ID), for the first 15 words or less. Classified ads must be pre-paid by check, money Order, or receipt from the WSU Cashier Office. No cash accepted at the South End Office.

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Corridor Lording

Ten years ago, the number of residents in the Cass Corridor, bounded by Adams, Cass, Penn Central RR, and the John Lodge X-Way, numbered well over two hundred thousand. Today that number has dwindled to under ninety thousand. Most of the people have relocated in other parts of Detroit, buying up property abandoned by the flight of middle and low income whites to the suburbs. This relocation, usually accounted for along the lines of racial prejudice, stems as much from the nature of real estate values as simple racial realignment.

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The Fifth Estate has published information exposing the Torch Drive hustle for the past several years. In keeping with this tradition, the following article presents an up-to-date account of what the Torch Drive is really about; how they initially get their money, who they eventually give it to and why.

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(page 1 of The South End insert)

The South End Political Affairs advisor has thrown his hat into the ring. No, he’s not running, but has gone out on a limb to predict the 1976 Republican candidate for president. Nelson Rockefeller is his name, ruling class, go-getting is his game. SEPA’s theory is that Rocky just ain’t acting like a submissive VP for nothing and that just as Ford arranged to pardon Nixon in advance, he also only planned to be Pres for the duration of Nixon’s term. Betty’s health, among other things, will give Jerry an out. What will Jerry do after his time is up? Return to Michigan and act as official target for the Michigan Police Pistol Team, a source has told the South End.

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Ammunition Books, 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit, MI 48201

Bookstore Hours: Mon. thru Fri. 1 pm-5 p.m.

LUCY PARSONS, AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY written by Carolyn Ashbaugh

Lucy Parsons is a central figure in the Haymarket Affair—“Dark Lucy” was a woman so feared by the Chicago Police that they broke up her meetings for 30 years. Historian Carolyn Ashbaugh interprets the radical response to industrialization, the robber barons, and monopoly in the post civil war era through Lucy Parsons’ career—adding a new dimension to the historiography of the period by showing us an important role played by this woman.

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Cass City Cinema—First Unitarian Church (Cass and Forest), $1.50 admission, 7:30 & 10:00 p.m. Nov. 19 & 20: “The Twelve Chairs,” (Mel Brooks). Nov. 26 & 27: “Emitai” (1971 from Senegal). Dec. 3 & 4: “This Man Must Die” (Chabrol, France).

Detroit Film Theatre—Detroit Art Institute Auditorium, $2.00 admission ($1.50 students), 7:00 & 9:30 p.m. Nov. 19: “Emitai” (Senegal). Nov. 20: “Breathless”, (1959 Goddard). Nov. 21: “Uncle Vanya” (USSR 1972). Nov. 26: “The Round Up” (1965, Miklos Jansco). Nov. 27: “L’Avventura “ (Antonioni). Nov. 28: “Jamilya” (USSR). Dec. 3: “Funnyman” (1967 John Korty). Dec. 4: “Millhouse—A White Comedy” (1971, Nixon). Dec. 5: “The Twelve Chairs” .

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This article is the third in an originally-planned two-part series on the perils of radioactive waste materials and highly toxic chemicals.

Part One of the series (Capitalism’s Industrial Plagues, # 276, September 1976) dealt with the devastating results of nuclear and chemical dumps, leakages and accidents in the United States and around the world. Part Two (Is Michigan Slated For Nuclear Landfill? #277, October 1976) then followed with a look at the Federal Government’s intention to test land in Michigan as a possible construction site for a nuclear waste disposal system.

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Ammunition Books shares space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper(?) [question mark in original] and can be found at 4403 Second Ave, (telephone (313) 831–6800. Our hours vary quite a bit, so it’s always best to give us a telephone call before coming down.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

1) List the title of the book(s), amount wanted and price of each;

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Tay-lor-ism n. 1. The scientific management of industrial operations. 2. The systematic reduction of work within a given industrial operation to separate, distinct, routinized tasks devoid of policy decisions. Each aspect is measured and timed for its highest efficiency. 3. The system of such developed by Frederick Taylor in the late 1880s.

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The standard rationalization for the existence of the State is that supposedly without an external restraining element, such as a heavily armed police force, the nature of humans is such-that all of us would prey so wickedly upon one another that life would become intolerable. Forgetting that the State is a somewhat recent development in human affairs and permanent police forces an even newer innovation, many people believe that at least under capitalism the police are a necessary evil as long as this society creates such a potential for disorder.

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SUNDAY

FILMS: The Bank, The Tramp, A Woman and Police, with Charlie Chaplin (1915). Henry Ford Museum Theater. 2 and 4 p.m Adm. chg. 3/20

MUSIC AND READING: The Detroit Contemporary 4 and reading by David Sinclair. Artists’ Workshop. 7 p.m. 3/20

THURSDAY

CONCERT: Det. Symphony Orchestra. Van Cliburn soloist, Ford Aud. 8 p.m. Adm, chg. 3/24, 26

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a review of

“Beggars Banquet”

The Rolling Stones

(London)

The Rolling Stones are in the same class as many other groups whose albums are beyond comment. There are people who like the Stones and those who don’t and I very much doubt if anyone ever changes sides.

The first cut on “Beggars Banquet” is set to what most glossy mags would call a “driving beat”—you know, the kind of rhythm you can make love to.

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

THE Prisoner Literature Project aims to supply Canadian prisoners with radical literature, preferbly from an anti-authoritarian stance. If you have any new or used, and feel like exposing prisoners to its worth, please send it along to us care of Alternative Bookshop, 2033 St Laurent, Montreal PQ H2X 2T3 Canada. This type of function already exists for American prisoners, whereas Canadian prisoners have little or no civil rights while incarcerated.

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Inside sources have reported that Betty Ford, formerly of state furniture capital Grand Rapids, Michigan, has fallen into a deep depression since her celebrated plastic surgery at a laetrile clinic in Tijuana, Mexico. Unknown to most people, her surgery was a complete failure! She had intended to resemble the late Elvis Presley, and had planned a career as an Elvis impersonator! “I’m tired of Jerry being the only breadwinner in this family,” she said shortly before entering Dr. Ramon Cabron’s Clinica Veterinaria. “I too have talents and ambitions. I want to make something of myself.”

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To The Fifth Estate:

There you go again: the $pliterates attacking TV! (See FE #292, June 19, 1978).

1. Literacy produced modern technology, including capitalism and industrialism. 1, 2, 3 = a, b, c; that’s why men invented it.

2. What about the “dehumanized aspects of the centralized $pliteracy source: left brained publishers—depressed, repressed presses?

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In the text which follows, May-June 1968 is considered as a moment of fundamental rupture: the emergence of the revolution but not the revolution itself. This approach involves defining, demarcating and predicting what the communist revolution would be in the phase of the real domination of capital [1] over society—the earlier proletarian revolutions having taken place in the phase of the formal domination of capital. May-June 1968 is considered as a prologue to a vast historic drama which now, several years later, ought to be aware of its characteristic acts. The principal actors are no longer the same.

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Ammunition Books, 4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201

ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY

by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson

Part I The Eye in the Pyramid 304 pp.

Part II The Golden Apple 272 pp.

Part III Leviathan 253 pp.

Incredible political fantasy tale of a world-wide, eons-old conspiracy to impose an authoritarian rule on the planet. Scenes range from SDS conventions to underwater battles at Atlantis to giant rock festivals in Germany. Sex, LSD, revolution, right and left wing anarchism all compete in one of the most bizarre pieces of fiction (or is it?).

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Opposition to the construction of potentially dangerous nuclear power plants escalated August 22 in Seabrook, New Hampshire as 176 people were arrested for conducting an “occupation” of a nuclear power plant construction site.

The action was organized by the Clamshell Alliance, a coalition of a dozen environmental and political groups in the New England area, and was preceded by a large rally of 1,500 persons in the Atlantic seaboard town. The rally organizers charge that the nuclear installation will be harmful to the environment and that an accidental release of radioactive material could kill nearly a million people.

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Don’t Vote—Piss in the Voting Booth

(back cover)

Another election, another opportunity to let someone else determine our lives. In modern capitalist society, the election of representatives has become an integral part of the general process of self-denial and self-repression standing at the center of modern life. It has become a prohibition to the real possibilities for self-realization. At root in bourgeois society—occurring fundamentally in creative human activity, in labor—is the phenomenon of alienation, an active process whereby human life and energy become crystallized in objects and institutions divorced from their creators and the creators become mere objects alien to themselves and available to be manipulated, dominated, controlled. This process is reproduced in the general life of bourgeois society and finds its political expression in electoral politics, in so-called “representative democracy”. Through the practice of voting we alienate the possibility for defining and administering our own lives by delivering this function to someone else. Electoral politics is an obstacle to both. And so we conclude that voting will get us nowhere. Don’t vote for reactionaries, don’t vote for liberals. They are all committed to the present state of affairs. Don’t vote for members of so-called Socialist or Communist Parties. They are charlatans incapable of a liberated vision of life. Don’t vote for fools, don’t vote for wisemen. Don’t vote for anyone. We can do it ourselves.

This article is the second of a two-part series on the effects that the indiscriminate care and usage of radioactive waste materials and dangerous chemicals are having, and will continue to have in the future, on man and his environment.

Part One of the series, Capitalism’s Industrial Plagues, #276, September 1976, dealt with the devastating results of nuclear and chemical dumps, leakages and accidents in the United States and around the world. Part Two now looks into the Federal Government’s intention of testing land here in Michigan for the possible construction of a nuclear waste disposal system.

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U.S. Getting Radiation From China A-Blast

WASHINGTON — (AP) — Light radiation from a Chinese atomic test is sprinkling parts of the eastern United States, leading health officials in one state to warn residents to wash garden vegetables carefully before eating them.

Pennsylvania officials were first to report detection of the fallout from a Sept. 26 blast at Lop Nor in western China. Other areas reporting some radiation include New Jersey, southern Connecticut, Long Island, Delaware and South Carolina.

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While the main contribution of Marxism-Leninism remains its establishment of state capitalism in areas of the world where private capital could not develop, its project has also debased language to a point suggested in George Orwell’s 1984—where words are distorted so as to take on their opposite meaning. A case in point is the Aug. 11, 1976 front-page of The Guardian, a New York City based Mao-oid weekly newspaper, which announced proudly “The Liberation of Africa.” No matter that what is pictured is a civilian politician (President Samora Machel of Mozambique, who rules without even the pretense of an election) reviewing the troops—faceless cannon fodder, dressed identically, responding automatically to commands, ready to die for the State and the Leader.

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AMMUNITION BOOKS shares space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper and can be found at 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit, Mich. 48201 (telephone-313-831-6800). Our hours vary, but we are generally open on Monday and Thursday afternoons (from 1 pm to 5 pm) and at scattered hours other times. It’s always a good idea to telephone us before you start the trek down, just to be safe.

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“If you support this motion, you will not assist the government. You will paralyze it and indeed stand in danger of destroying it”

—Jack Jones, veteran trade union leader, pleading with delegates to the convention of the Transport and General Workers’ Union not to refuse the extended wage restraint of England’s celebrated “Social Contract” between the unions and the Labor government. The motion was supported.

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Dear F.E.:

It would be very interesting to know more about the character of the N.Y. looting but it is not clear to me that we can tell anything from the figures which the Zerzans passed on to us from the San Francisco Chronicle in your August issue [see “New York, New York: The blackout of 1977” by John Zerzan, Paula Zerzan, Fifth Estate # 285, August, 1977].

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