The following is reprinted from a section of “Mass Strikes in Capitalist Poland,” which appeared in the August/September, 1980 issue of World Revolution magazine available from BM Box 869, London WC1V 6XX, Great Britain. It is authored by C D …
Search results for: workers councils
May Day
by Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 345, Winter, 1995
Beltane is the high festival of Spring. Its origins are ancient Celt. In the old times, people celebrated the end of Winter and the turning of the Wheel to the greening of the land with dancing, feasting and lovemaking. They …
Letters to the Fifth Estate
by Various Authors
Fifth Estate # 279, December, 1976
Solitary for T-Shirt Greetings Comrades: I thought I’d forward some news about authority inside prison….
Stone Pig Offed in Chicago
by Liberation News Service
Fifth Estate # 90, October 16-29, 1969
CHICAGO, Oct. 7 (LNS)—A day before the SDS national action was scheduled to begin here, headlines all over the city announced that the “historic” Haymarket Square Police Monument had been blown sky high. The eight foot high bronze statue of …
Poland: Triumphs and Defeats
by Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 303, October 20, 1980
On September 1, Lech Walesa, the worker who negotiated the end of the recent Polish strike wave, climbed two flights of wooden stairs to the temporary offices of the new Independent Trade Union which he heads. Walesa carried a two-foot …
What is Capital
by Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 266, September, 1975
To avoid any confusion over the usage of terms, let us give a brief definition of the way in which Capital or capitalism is used in articles in the Fifth Estate
Women Unite and Fight
by Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 126, March 4-17, 1971
Four Michigan women have filed a suit in U.S. District Court charging that the Automatic Retailers of America, Great Lakes Steel Division, discriminate against women by stabilizing them into job categories; in other words, freezing them into dead-end jobs. They …
Anarchism & The Critique of Technology
by Bob Brubaker
Fifth Estate # 320, Spring, 1985
Much of contemporary anarchist thought is completely reconciled with industrial society and technological social organization. This common anarchist viewpoint is summed up by Daniel Guerin thusly: “[Anarchism] rests upon large-scale modern industry, up-to-date techniques, the modern proletariat, and internationalism on …
Class War World-Wide
by MHB
Fifth Estate # 410, Fall, 2021
a review of Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives, Robert Ovetz, Editor. Pluto Press 2020
Blacks Confront UAW
by J.R. Kennedy
Fifth Estate # 100, March 5-18, 1970
The League of Revolutionary Black Workers, founded in Detroit, is a militant union movement. It is fighting against the giant automotive corporations and against the United Auto Workers. It is fighting for black liberation and self-determination. The League of Revolutionary …
Socialists Prepare Campaign
by Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 38, September 15-30, 1967
NEW YORK—The national Committee of the Socialist Workers party has announced here that it has nominated Fred Halstead and Paul Boutelle as the party’s candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States in the 1968 elections.
Pushing The Line
by anon.
Fifth Estate # 279, December, 1976
NEW YORK—The 200 garment industry executives listened attentively as the seminar speaker, with evangelical fervor, told them how their industry can be brought “kicking and screaming into the 20th Century.”
Limitations of Leftism
by David Watson
Fifth Estate # 395, Winter 2016 - 50th Anniversary
The article from which this excerpt is taken, “Stopping the Industrial Hydra: Revolution Against the Megamachine,” appeared in our Winter 1990 issue. It provides analyses of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 1989 from the standpoint of a global …
Chavez Supports Philippine Dictatorship
by Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 286, September, 1977
Cesar Chavez, president of the United Farm Workers union, and perennial darling of the liberal-Catholic-Stalinist milieu, has recently been making his followers uncomfortable by behaving like a George Meany-style labor hack. At the end of July, Chavez, touring the Philippines …
The Rojava Revolution is a Women’s Story
by Paul Buhle
Fifth Estate # 412, Fall, 2022
a review of Their Blood Got Mixed: Revolutionary Rojava and the War on ISIS by Janet Biehl, PM Press, 2021
Challenging the Nation State in Syria
by Leila Al Shami
Fifth Estate # 396, Summer, 2016
Syria’s current borders were drawn up by imperial map makers a hundred years ago in the midst of World War I as part of a secret accord between France and Britain to divide the Mideast spoils of the Turkish Ottoman …
An Open Letter from Ken Cockrel
by anon.
Fifth Estate # 287, October 28, 1977
I want to thank the Fifth Estate for permitting me to purchase this ad in order to put forth a position they oppose. It’s not that I don’t agree with them that politics is the process of rulers and ruled …
On Poland and Power
by E.B. Maple (Peter Werbe), Rudy Perkins
Fifth Estate # 310, Fall 1982
Thanks again for running my article on Poland, and for E.B. Maple’s reply. (See FE #309, June 19, 1982, “The Collapse in Poland”) Maple seems a little over-anxious for a dispute on the questions raised, in some cases going out …
Eyewitness report on Delano strike
by Anne Draper
Fifth Estate # 1, November 19-December 2, 1965
Delano is a five hour drive from Berkeley, but the farm workers who live and work in the grapes are five light-years away from the Great Society.
Anti-War Conference
by anon.
Fifth Estate # 126, March 4-17, 1971
On March 27 a conference—learn-in sponsored by the May Day Coalition will be held to educate people concerning the war in Indochina and its effects on the United States. The conference will also give people a more complete idea of …
Letters to the Fifth Estate
by Various Authors
Fifth Estate # 278, November, 1976
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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
A Red Country (poem)
by Ngu Thi Yen
Fifth Estate # 409, Summer, 2021
My country’s red, long so I was told Victories, a star glows Flag crimson, glorious so Vanguard leads, the people follow. . Red in sight, we have traded lives Beat armies, lay siege to empires. Red in mind, we …