Much of primitivist theorist John Zerzan’s early work appeared in the Fifth Estate. His Cassandra-like predictions of imminent collapse of modern society began in 1976 with his FE article, “The Decline and Fall of Everything” [FE # 268, January, 1976]—a …
FE Author: John Zerzan
Examining Zerzan
by Bob Brubaker, E.B. Maple (Peter Werbe), Fifth Estate Collective, John Zerzan, Paula Zerzan
Fifth Estate # 368-369, Spring-Summer, 2005
The Decline and Fall of Everything
by John Zerzan, Paula Zerzan
Fifth Estate # 268, January, 1976
The landscape of capitalism is a global one, existing everywhere with only minor variations. But this universal reign of the paycheck and the price-tag is approaching a state of crisis, becoming noticeable to all but those whose idea of politics …
Numb and Number
by John Zerzan
Fifth Estate # 390, Fall, 2013
Number surpasses all other ideas for its combination of impact and implication. Counting means imposing a definition and a control, assigning a number value.
Vagaries of the Left
by John Zerzan
Fifth Estate # 387, Summer, 2012
On February 6, progressive columnist Chris Hedges wrote a fairly predictable attack on Black Bloc militancy, “The Cancer in Occupy,” in Truthdig, the on-line news site.
Industrialism and its discontents
by John Zerzan
Fifth Estate # 389, Summer, 2013
Download PDF [174 KB] fe-389-19-industrialism-and-its-discontents Nearly two hundred years ago, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley gave us a classic warning about the hubris of technology’s combat against nature. Her late Gothic novel, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818), depicts the revenge nature …
The Sea
by John Zerzan
Fifth Estate # 388, Winter, 2013
The whole world is being objectified, but Melville reminds us of all that remains. “There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea.” What could be more tangible, more of a contrast with being lost in the digital …
London Calling
by John Zerzan
Fifth Estate # 388, Winter, 2013
The first half of August 2012 found my wife Alice and I in London, but not for the Olympic Games. The nonprofit contemporary art gallery Raven Row invited me to participate in a series of talks and displays titled “The …