Anarchist solidarity can take many forms, including collecting books, pamphlets, and letters. Through such activity, comrades active in the world’s anarchist archives are part of anchoring an important segment of the struggle for a libertarian and egalitarian world.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the …
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 …
Bread and Puppet Theater’s Elka Schumann died this past August, at the age of 85. She and her partner, Peter Schumann, co-founded the Bread and Puppet Theater, the innovative and radical theater group, in New York City in 1963.
Liberation News Service — The thousands of left-wing German students clashing with police on the streets of Berlin, Frankfort, Hanover, Munich and other German cities rallied for reasons beyond the original motivation of the shooting of Rudi Dutsche.
In the old days, when the state hung somebody and the braided rope broke or the gallows came crashing to the ground it was taken by God-fearing men as a sign that a mistake had been made and the condemned …
“Sous les paves, la plage!” [Under the paving stones, the beach!] —Revolutionary slogan; Paris 1968 1968 was an “Anything Can Happen” kind of year.
All the city mourns, and the crumpled masses languish at the gates, and the cry of all the freeways has gone up. The politicians have sent their runners to the waters, but they have come with all their vessels empty. …
Big Girl by Meg Elison. PM Press 2020 The body is the locus of authoritarian control in Meg Elison’s Big Girl (number twenty-five in PM Press’s Outspoken Authors series.) Gorgeously surreal, the collection includes speculative short stories, essays and an …
When you order books from the Barn, you support a collective and help keep the Fifth Estate physical space solvent. With your help, we’re trying to sustain an alternative to the commercialism of retail or web-based booksellers.
On Gogol Boulevard In Exile “On Gogol Boulevard” is the bulletin of the New York City Neither East Nor West Group which gives support and aids in communication between Eastern European anarchists and dissidents and similar movements in the West. …
Mystique of Capital Before people began to understand their natural environment, the forces of nature presented real, awesome and bewildering problems in the struggle for survival. Today the problems remain awesome and bewildering, not because of our failure to understand …
a review of Eat the Rich & Other Interesting Ideas: Selected Essays by Peter Werbe. Black & Red-Detroit, 2023
“No war but the class war” was the expressed motto of many radicals who refused to enlist or otherwise contribute to any national war effort. At their tenth convention in 1914, the IWW passed a resolution stating, “We as members …
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 …
At the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York on September 6, 1901 Leon Czolgosz became America’s third presidential assassin when he shot William McKinley with a.32-caliber revolver hidden in his handkerchief-wrapped hand. The president died eight days later. Apprehended at …
Fifth Estate Letters Policy The Fifth Estate always welcomes letters commenting on our articles, stating opinions, or giving reports of events in local areas. We don’t guarantee we will print everything we receive, but all letters are read by our …
Detroit Anti-Racist Action (ARA) formed over a year ago. Since its formation, it has been involved in campaigns against the gentrification of downtown Detroit with all the money going to rich folks (Illich, Ford, etc.) who don’t live in the …
I. The Egocrat—Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Kim Il Sung—is not an accident or an aberration or an irruption of irrationality; he is a personification of the relations of the existing social order.
a review of Secolo Nuovo or The Times of Promise by Fulvia Ferrari. Detritus Books 2021
FE note: Although we generally dislike back and forths in our letters column, we thought the issues raised by our two comrades below are worthy of continuing the discussion raised about combating fascism begun in our Summer 2003 edition (see …
In the early hours of July 13, Will Van Spronsen was shot to death by police outside of an ICE-contracted private detention facility holding migrants in Tacoma, Wash. He was confronted by police in a parking lot full of buses; …
1. Saigon, 1967 The wind in a room. Often, though the club would be a hive of activity, with waiters, sunners, diners by the food counter, and children bounding through the wading area, the main indoor pool would be empty. …
The FE Bookstore is located at 4632 Second Ave., just south of W. Forest, in Detroit. We share space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper and may be reached at the same phone number: (313) 831-6800. Visitors are welcome, but our …
a review of Seizure of State Power, Part 3 of Manual for Revolutionary Leaders by Michael Velli. Sources of Velli’s thought annotated by Fredy Perlman. Black & Red (2019) BlackandRed.org
The FE Bookstore is located at 4632 Second Ave., just south of W. Forest, in Detroit. We share space with the Fifth Estate Newspaper and may be reached at the same phone number: (313) 831-6800. Visitors are welcome, but our …
Since 1954, when a U.S.-backed coup toppled the democratically elected reformist government of Jacobo Árbenz, there has been a succession of military regimes aided by the U.S. The Guatemalan people, 60% of whom are Mayan Indians, have fought through both …
In 1970, Chileans elected a social-democratic government headed by Salvador Allende. On September 11, 1973 it was overthrown by a CIA-sponsored military coup, ushering in the brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. The new regime instituted draconian free market policies …
a review of Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism, by Richard Drinnon, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987, 340 pp. $24.95.
Where’s OGB been? For several issues of the Fifth Estate, On Gogol Boulevard (OGB) produced a two-page spread on former Eastern Bloc and Third World anti-authoritarian struggles. However, due to numerous glitches, we’re missing from the FE again except for …
Multi- vs. Universe Dear T. Fulano (and the FE) I read your response to the defenders of technology with great trepidation [“Uncovering a Corpse: A Reply to the Defenders of Technology,” FE #307, November 19, 1981]. At every turn I …
a review of Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, Ellen Chesler, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1992, 639 pp.
The resistance to the Draft Resistance Committee office at 12820 Hamilton in Highland Park has been stepped up into a Mississippi-style harassment campaign.
Anarchism…stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. — Emma Goldman, Anarchism, 1910
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 …
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4403 Second Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48201 Telephone No. (313) 831-8600 Bookstore hours vary, but we are generally open on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and at scattered other times. Please call before coming down to be sure we are here.
Over the past year, there has been a discussion within the pages of the Fifth Estate as to what constitutes revolutionary violence, and what the uses and relevance of such violence might be.
White middle-class America now has a President it can call its own. This is the middle-class America of people who have “pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.” It is the middle-class America of the Puritan virtues of all work …
Mutual Aid Dear People, The cena at Negri’s on Saturday, January 12, 1980 raised money for anarchist propaganda, as well as $75 for the defense of Kamalla Miller. Those present at the dinner choose to send you $50.00 to help …
Reprinted from FE #278, November 1976.