What About Gangs? To the Fifth Estate: The FE is usually a delight to read. Only a couple of small things have detracted from that: Using “man” to mean “people”(in the article on a Michigan landfill) is sexist and a …
Search results for: workers councils
Self-management and the Spanish Revolution
by Pointblank
Fifth Estate # 274, July 1976
On the morning of July 18, 1936 General Francisco Franco began the fascist rebellion against the Spanish Republican liberal bourgeois regime in Madrid. This move was immediately met by armed resistance of the urban proletariat who, after defeating the fascists …
Wobblies & Music
by John Pietaro
Fifth Estate # 370, Fall 2005
Is there ought we have in common with the greedy parasite, Who would lash us into serfdom and crush us with his might? Is there anything left for us but to organize and fight? The Union makes us strong! —”Solidarity …
What is Capital?
by Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 395, Winter 2016 - 50th Anniversary
Let us give a brief definition of the way in which Capital or capitalism is used in articles in the Fifth Estate: Capital is based on wage-labor, the production and exchange of commodities, with an agency above the working class …
Subversions of the Body
by Ruth Oppenheim-Rothschild
Fifth Estate # 358, Fall, 2002
Miserabilist society wants our bodies. It wants docile bodies, controlled by fear, by class, and by silence. As surrealists, we desire absolute control of what we do with our bodies, what we want from our bodies, and how we see …
Socialist Runs for Council
by Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 75, March 20-April 2, 1969
Paul Lodico is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for Common Council. But he is not that interested in getting votes. In fact, he is not running to win the election.
Anti-War March
by Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 101, March 19-April 1, 1970
The mass anti-war march set for April 15 down Woodward Ave. may have wider support than all previous such demonstrations. Plans call for the march to begin at the Wayne State University campus at 2:00 pm and march to Kennedy …
Letters
by Various Authors
Fifth Estate # 268, January, 1976
Nature of Work Dear Friends: Barbara and I were glad to receive the most recent issue of the Fifth Estate. The critique of the Boggs pamphlet was especially good. I think Durruti and I part company, however, in his assertion …
Black and Red Press keeps Gutenberg and Lenin in their Graves
by Halley's Comet
Fifth Estate # 368-369, Spring-Summer, 2005
Though little known locally, Black and Red prints some of the most inflammatory and socially relevant material that has ever fanned the flames of discontent.
Do Unions Raise Wages?
by John Zerzan
Fifth Estate # 273, June 1976
Although unions have long been identified by left revolutionaries as auxiliary organs of capital whose function is to regulate the sale of their members’ labor power, the myth still persists that they are “defense organs of the working class.” Even …
More Bombs in Ann Arbor
by Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 81, June 12-25, 1969
ANN ARBOR—Bombs are exploding in Michigan again. On June 1 unknown persons destroyed an Army officer’s car, blew a hole in the University of Michigan ROTC building and shattered 40 windows in the structure. No one was injured. This was …
IWW Free Speech Fights
by Julie Herrada
Fifth Estate # 370, Fall 2005
Because of the IWW’s mission to organize all workers into One Big Union, immigrants, migrants, blacklisted, unskilled, itinerant, and other hard-to-reach workers were sought by Wobbly organizers as potential members. Organizers weren’t allowed into the shops, factories, or lumber camps, …
Labor Unrest Spreads
by anon.
Fifth Estate # 102, April 2-15, 1970
America moves closer to a labor crisis as other unions enter or poise for strikes throughout the country. Air travel has been seriously crippled by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) walk-out in many major U.S. cities, and they …
History of Women’s Day
by Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 126, March 4-17, 1971
On March 8 in 1857 hundreds of women textile workers marched from a poor, working-class district on the Lower East Side of New York City to a wealthy area nearby. They were demonstrating against poor working conditions, low wages, and …
On Organization
by E.B. Maple (Peter Werbe), Ed Clark
Fifth Estate # 279, December, 1976
Within the small circles that constitute the libertarian movement in the United States, the question of whether to combine in organizations, associations, federations, etc., has become a subject of some debate and much interest Many feel that the only obstacle …
Countering the Mystique of the Proletariat
by Gerard
Fifth Estate # 332, Summer, 1989
The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848, asserts that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” that social transformations grow out of the contradiction between productive forces and the …
Sabotage
by Julie Herrada
Fifth Estate # 370, Fall 2005
Direct action (legal and illegal) and sabotage had been used by the U.S. and European labor movements as a method of class combat since the rise of industrialism.
View from the Top
by Thorstein Smith
Fifth Estate # 92, November 13-26, 1969
A wave of strikes has been hitting Italy, France, and West Germany, in many cases over the opposition of official union leaderships. A recent strike in Italy was conceded by Fiat to have involved 1.3 million men and to have …
U.S. in recess
by Lee Webb
Fifth Estate # 105, May 14-27, 1970
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Nixon’s public relations men are calling it an “economic readjustment,” but in English it’s a full blown economic recession. U.S. Labor Dept. unemployment figures show joblessness for April at 4.8%, the highest since 1965, when U.S. “escalation” of the …
The Struggle to Get Back to Zero
by Peter Werbe
Fifth Estate # 398, Summer, 2017
There have been long standing political and theoretical debates about whether a particular political movement or leader is fascist. In the article before this one, as Bill Weinberg attests in the previous pages, it can come down to hairsplitting. Is …