FE Bookstore

by

Fifth Estate # 306, July, 1981

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;

2) add 10% for mailing—not less than $.63 (which is the minimum charge for 4th Class book rate postage;

3) total;

4) write all checks or money orders to: The Fifth Estate and mail to FE Books, 4403 Second Ave., Detroit MI 48201

INDUSTRIALISM AND DOMESTICATION Paula and John Zerzan

Reprinted from the Fifth Estate.
A brief account of the bitter resistance to the primitive accumulation of capital.

Black Eye Press 18 pages $.85

ANARCHIST REVIEW 5

Includes Cienfuegos Press News, Some Thoughts on Organization, Anarchists in the Mexican Revolution, Occult Authoritarians, Anarchists in Fiction, and more. More than 120 pages of articles, reviews, photos, cartoons.

Cienfuegos Press $5.50

ANARCHIST REVIEW 2

64 pages of articles and reviews, including What Ever Happened to the Universe?, History of the Anarchist Movement in Poland, B. Traven: Master of the Revolutionary Novel, and more,

Cienfuegos Press. $2.00

ANARCHISTS IN THE SPANISH REVOLUTION Jose Peirats

After many years of hard work and the collective efforts of several groups, this first English translation of Peirats is a fine history of the origins of the CNT and the anarchist movement in Spain from 1869 to 1939. 400 pp., $3.50

1984 by George Orwell

You probably read this for a high school class and have decided that there is no reason to reread it. Think again. This book remains as pertinent as ever, and its descriptions of life in a future totalitarian society read increasingly like life today, not only in the state capitalist leviathans in the east but the decaying, miserabilist ambience here in the west.

Signet $1.50

ARMED STRUGGLE IN ITALY: A Chronology by Bratach Dubh

Translated from the Italian journal Anarchismo, this covers the period 1976-78, and evaluates the armed actions which typified much of the political activity of the ultra-left.

Bratach Dubh 96 pp. $2.95

THE ANGRY BRIGADE by Bratach Dubh

Traces the armed actions of England’s Angry Brigade through a collection of communiques and documents during the late ’60s & early ’70s.

Bratach Dubh 28 pp. $1.00

CRITIQUE OF SYNDICALIST METHODS: Trade Unionism to Anarcho-Syndicalism by Alfredo M. Bonanno

A contribution to the debate regarding unions, syndicalism and what road leads to revolution.

Bratach Dubh 48 pp. $1.50

WORKERS’ AUTONOMY by Alfredo Bonnano and others

Essays on what restricts the workers from revolutionary activity and the need to go beyond unions. New Edition.

Bratach Dubh 40 pp. $2.00

THE LAST SLA STATEMENT by Joe Remiro, Russ Little, Bill and Emily Harris.

Although this was written in 1976 and the authors’ views have changed since then, it still gives insight into their ideas at the time, such as their interest in anarchism, their views on armed struggle and other issues.

BARC 40 pp., $.50

REVOLUTION IN SEATTLE: A Memoir by Harvey O’Connor

The first book to be published by Left Bank Books. The time is 1900-1920. Postmaster General proposed “A toast to the American union—47 states and the Soviet of Washington. Here in the northwest were anarchist and socialist colonies, the uproar of the country’s first Free Speech Fights, massacres in Centralia and Everett, vigilante mobs, beatings, deportations, and Red News Wagons selling tons of radical papers—”so red they sizzled.” No one had ever seen a general strike before, but it was coming—”leading no one knows where.” The Seattle General Strike, 1919. For the first time in America, labor ruled a city.

Left Bank Books 300 pp. $7.50

RONALD RAYGUN POSTER: See Bonzo Bilhelm in his most convincing role, as a nazi, in America’s Desperate Journey, presented by the GOP, produced by Corporate America, and directed by the Moral Majority.

21″ x 16″ $2.50

Enclose an extra $1 for mailing tube.

TELOS: A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF RADICAL THOUGHT No. 47 Spring ’81.

Besides its regular fare of critical theory, this issue contains a special 150-page section on “Poland and the Future of Socialism” featuring essays by several Eastern European writers and analyzes events and all aspects of the Polish situation. Also, “Against Androgyny,” and an interesting short review of Komorov’s The Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union.

240 pp. $5.00

THE LIMITS OF-THE CITY by Murray Bookchin

A new larger edition of Bookchin’s criticism of the modern megalopolis as compared to ancient and medieval villages. Also posits a vision of a harmonized urban and rural life in a future society.

Harper Torchbooks 148 pp. Published at $4.50; now $3.50.

THE ANARCHIST BEAST: The Anti-Anarchist Crusade in Periodical Literature (18841906) by Nhat Hong

Over a hundred articles depicting the popular media and literature of the period are reviewed to demonstrate the prejudices fostered against the anarchist movement.

Soil of Liberty 70 pp. $2.00

WITCHES MIDWIVES AND NURSES Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English

A history of women healers. Historical account of women in medicine from the middle ages to the present and the efforts of the male-dominated medical profession to repress them.

Feminist Press, 48 pp. $2.00

COMPLAINTS AND DISORDERS The Sexual Politics of Sickness by Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English

An indepth contribution to the history of ‘female disorders’ and their manipulation by a male dominated medical society.

Glass Mountain, 94 pp., $2.00

CULTURE OF NARCISSISM by Christopher Lasch

Warner, $2.95

THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka

Vintage, 340 pp., $1.95

FUCK AUTHORITY POSTER

Don’t be satisfied with the tepid “Question Authority” when the real thing is available. This Left Bank Books poster is a 29″X22″ version of the Fifth Estate 1976 original printed on red-stock. Left Bank says these are “seconds” hence the low-price, but we-can’t see the flaws.

$1.50 folded, Sent in mailing tube $2.50

FOUR ARGUMENTS FOR THE ELIMINATION OF TELEVISION by Jerry Mander

Blasts television as unreformable due to the inherently totalitarian nature of the technology, the dangers to personal health and sanity and the way in which it mediates and trivializes human experience. Television “walls up” awareness, expropriates knowledge, causes insanity, creates false needs, dims the mind, causes hyperactivity, suppresses the imagination, destroys subtlety, thingifies the human, destroys the sense of place and creates a false sense of time, is addictive and hypnotic. The book’s discussion of television also has obvious implications for modern industrial technology as a whole.

Morrow 371 pages $4.95

THE CHRISTIE FILE by Stuart Christie

Against the backdrop of the ’60’s and ’70’s, Stuart Christie’s autobiography mirrors the turbulent period and includes his account of his imprisonment for his plot to assassinate Franco, his involvement with the Angry Brigade, and a broad sketch of the English anarchist movement.

Partisan Press/Cienfuegos Press, 370 pages $9.95

GUATEMALA! by Green Revolution

The folks at Green Revolution should be applauded for compiling this material. It is a compendium of horror—massacres, torture, kidnappings, a continual bloodbath to maintain a small group of powerful, wealthy interests in command of a country in which 75% of the people are poor subsistence farmers who are forced to work for slave wages on large coffee, cotton and sugar plantations; in which 389 families own 75% of all fertile lands while the per capita income of the-Mayan Indian campesinos—more than 60% of the population—is $30 annually.

Green Revolution 72 pp. $1.50

CHINESE SHADOWS by Simon Leys

The observations of Leys, based on his personal experiences in China as well as his broad understanding of its cultural heritage, are a chilling demystification of the shadow play which obscures the true nature of events in that country.

Viking hardcover, 220 pp. $4.50

THE KRONSTADT UPRISING OF 1921 by Lynne Thorndycraft

An introduction to the revolt of the Russian sailors and workers of Kronstadt and Petrograd against the Bolshevik government in 1921.

Left Bank Books 21 pp. Incorrectly priced last issue at $4.50 CORRECT PRICE IS $.50

LOVE & RAGE: ENTRIES IN A PRISON DIARY by Carl Harp

The title of the book is appropriate—Carl oscillates throughout it between feelings of inspiration and solidarity on the one hand, and near despair and outrage on the other. Not surprising: you come away from this slim volume wondering how anyone could maintain any spirit at all in the face of such absolute degradation and injustice, let alone reflect upon it and write it down.

Pulp Press 73 pp. $3.95
Profits from the sale of this book will go to the Carl Harp Defense.

ORIGIN & FUNCTION OF THE PARTY FORM: Essays by Jacques Camatte & Gianni Collu.

A recent translation from early ’70s articles.

Charlatan Stew 42 pp. $1.25

THE ATOMIC STATE AND THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO LIVE IN IT Campaign Against the Model West Germany No. 7

This interesting but troubling pamphlet discusses the qualitatively new form of totalitarian technological state power which is emerging as modern police techniques and nuclearism converge.

“With the use of new technology, especially the computer to collect data about every individual living in this country, the state has developed methods to register and control the entire population, both technically and politically…” West Germany, say the authors, is becoming the model for the nuclear totalitarian state everywhere in the West. Special security zones, huge fines against opponents of state policies, banning of anti-nuclear demonstrations, the designation of anti-nuclear activists as “potential terrorists,” job blacklists, mail tampering and widespread surveillance, the merging of different police sectors, all represent this new and frightening set of affairs.

“The movement against atomic energy—as well as the social and political movements in West Germany as a whole—should draw conclusions from this situation. The atomic state is not a temporary or reversible development. It is a symbiosis between development of military strategy in all Western countries, which are increasingly treating their own populations as the enemy, and development of a destructive technology (atomic energy) that is to be put to use by the electricity concerns and energy fetishists regardless of the consequences….Atomic energy has developed out of a social system which has often proven it will risk genocide for the sake of economic progress. Criticizing atomic energy thus becomes a basic criticism of the way of production in this society:…”

The existence of a secret nuclear police unit in the U.S. government makes it clear that this perspective is far from paranoid. The NEST (Nuclear Emergency Search Team) has been set up in order to stop “nuclear terrorism” (except, that is, for the nuclear terrorism that the U.S. government practices on the world’s population every minute of the day with its mind-boggling arsenal of death-dealing weapons). Larry Collins, in the 14 December 1980 New York Times magazine section, writing in an article “Combating Nuclear Terrorism,” states, “Indeed, so discreet is NEST, that the organization was in operation for three years before its existence was revealed to Congress in March 1977 during closed testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.” A Rand Corporation study prepared for the government in 1980, according to the article, stated that the potential nuclear terrorists could include opponents of nuclear power, who “might try to steal or hijack a weapon or penetrate a reactor’s control room to show these things can be done and utilize the media to win converts or extract concessions from the Government on upgrading security measures.”

The pamphlet shows that such arguments have already been used extensively in West Germany to harass and monitor the anti-nuclear movement. “The movement against atomic energy will not be able to avoid the confrontation with the atomic state. This confrontation will either continue to be initiated by the side of the state and will end in the pacification, the splintering, and the downfall of the movement; or the movement against atomic energy will begin to recognize the interdependence between state politics, capitalist production and atomic energy, and attack the entire state and social system that has made such a technology possible.”

This pamphlet is further proof that the question of nuclearism is identical to the question of the modern state. To paraphrase Nietzsche, to believe in the necessity of nuclearism is to believe in the necessity of the police state.

44 pp. $.35

NASKAPI INDEPENDENCE & THE CARIBOU by Alan Cooke

This is a case study in technological invasion which took place over a hundred years ago in northern Canada. This short pamphlet shows clearly how a once fiercely independent people was subjugated and eventually destroyed by choosing to become dependent on the technology of western civilization—specifically, the supplies of the Hudson Bay Company—to maintain its existence. At first the Naskapis traded little with the white men, but gradually they came to desire guns, ammunition, kettles and knives.

The whites on the other hand wanted marten pelts, and when the Naskapi agreed to begin hunting animals valuable to the trading company in exchange for the goods they wanted, great periods of starvation followed. “Once they abandoned their traditional techniques of hunting for the new technology of guns and ammunition, they gave themselves into the traders’ hands. There was no return.” (from the text)

Centre for Northern Studies & Research, 12 pages $.20

Groups or individuals interested in bulk orders of The Atomic State and the People Who Have to Live in It and Naskapi Independence and the Caribou, should contact Box 282, Station “E”, Montreal, P.Q. H2T 3A7 Canada.

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