The FE BOOKSERVICE is located in the same place as the Fifth Estate Newspaper, both of which are located at 4403 Second Avenue, 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. Mail to Fifth Estate Books, 4403 Second Avenue, Detroit MI 48201.
SEX-POL: ESSAYS 1929-34 by Wilhelm Reich, ed. by Lee Baxandall
This volume contains the first complete translations of Reich’s writings from his marxist period, which ended with his expulsion from the German Communist Party. Although they are flawed by the attempt to enforce a stiff ideology onto Reich’s desire for sexual and ultimately total human liberation, they still remain valuable. Actually, several of Reich’s most important writings such as The Mass Psychology of Fascism and The Sexual Revolution were also published during this same period and used marxist terminology as Well. However, with his rejection of both stalinism and marxism, he subsequently revised his later editions to provide a much more readable text, excised of the original sterile marxist language. Even with its drawbacks, texts like “The Imposition of Sexual Morality” and the other essays make the collection well worth reading.
Random House hardcover, originally $10.00, Now $4.00
A CRITIQUE OF STATE SOCIALISM by Richard Warren and Michael Bakunin
A large format comic which intersperses classic Bakunin quotes with a fast-paced history of socialism from Babeuf’s Conspiracy through the Bolshevik counter-revolution up until the current day crop of leftist and would-be rulers. As a little cartoon figure says on the cover, “What a boring title,” but it masks a thoughtful, informative, and utterly devastating critique of state socialism, much of it out of the mouths of socialist politicians themselves.
Cienfuegos Press 44 pages $2.95
TELOS: A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF RADICAL THOUGHT—NUMBER 46 (Winter 1980-81)
We missed bringing you this issue when it originally appeared, but thought it contained enough interesting material to offer it at this time. Contains a “Special Symposium on the Crisis of the Left” as well as a controversial article by Cornelius Castoriadis, “Facing the War,” in which he sounds (according to some) more like Kissinger than a radical theorist. Castoriadis’ book by the same name, interestingly enough, has achieved widespread notoriety in France. This issue also contains Carlo’s “The Crisis of the State in the Thirties” as well as other articles and reviews.
Telos Press $5.00
BULLDOZER (THE ONLY VEHICLE FOR PRISON REFORM) Number 3
Contains poetry and articles, graphics, info on solidarity campaigns, much more. (All issues of Bulldozer are free to prisoners either from the FE or direct from P.O. Box 5052, Station A, Toronto, Canada M5W 1W4.)
38 pages $1.00 (Issues number 1 and 2 are also available for 50 cents each.)
CIENFUEGOS PRESS ANARCHIST REVIEW NUMBER 5
Large-format (8.5 x 11) 120 page anthology of articles, reviews, photos, cartoons, news. includes the Cienfuegos Press News, “Some Thoughts on Organization,” “Anarchists in the Mexican Revolution,” “Occult Authoritarians,” “Anarchists in Fiction,” “The Libertarian Movement in the Netherlands,” “Do-It-Yourself Radio Station,” several articles by Errico Malatesta, and much more.
Cienfuegos Press $5.50
THE REPRODUCTION OF DAILY LIFE by Fredy Perlman
Discusses the mechanism by which human beings continue to reproduce the conditions of our own immiseration. “Men who were much but had little now have much but are little.”
Black & Red 24 pp. $.25
BOLSHEVIKS & WORKERS CONTROL by Maurice Brinton
An excellent chronology and analysis of Bolshevik betrayal of the revolution from the seizures of the factories to the crushing of the Kronstadt Commune.
Black & Red $1.00
HISTORY OF THE MAKHNOVIST MOVEMENT by P. Arshinov
History of the anarchist peasant revolution in the Ukraine with telling revelations about the nature of “revolutionary” Bolshevik military and social policy. Written by a participant in the Makhnovist movement.
Black & Red $2.50
NOTICE: We will include with all book orders free upon request or for 63 cents postage The Origins of the Anarchist Movement in China, by “Internationalist” and with a foreword by Stuart Christie.
SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL ANTHOLOGY Edited and translated by Ken Knabb
Contains over eighty texts—leaflets, articles, internal documents, film scripts, etc. With notes, bibliography and index. “The situationist destruction of present conditioning is already at the same time the construction of situations. It is the liberation of the inexhaustible energies trapped in a petrified daily life. With the advent of unitary urbanism, present city planning (that geology of lies) will be replaced by a technique for defending the permanently threatened conditions of freedom, and individuals—who do not yet exist as such—will begin freely constructing their own history.”—S.I., 1961
Bureau of Public Secrets 406 pp. $10.00
FOR A CRITIQUE OF THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE SIGN by Jean Baudrillard
Attempts an analysis of the sign form in the same way that Marx’s critique of political economy sought an analysis of the commodity form: as the commodity is at the same time both exchange value and use value, the sign is both signifier and signified. Thus, it necessitates an analysis on two levels, with the author confronting all of the conceptual obstacles of semiology in order to provide the same radical critique that Marx developed of classical political economy.
Telos Press 214 pp. $4.50
THE MIRROR OF PRODUCTION by Jean Baudrillard
Examines the lessons of Marxism which has created a productivist model and a fetishism of labor. Asserts that Marxism reflects “all of Western metaphysics” and that it remains within the restrictive context of political economy whence it was born.
Telos Press $3.95
VACATION OF HEGEL: LATEST CAMPAIGNS OF CRITICO-PRACTICAL THEORY by the Subrealistic Movement
This text, published in English, French and Russian, is an extract of “JETZT!” which was a sub-realistic manifesto published in October 1979 in West Germany. “Today courage is all that is missing…Everyone faces misery, but the point is to end it.”
Subrealistic Movement, 10 cents
MANUAL FOR REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS by Michael Velli
Advice to would-be leaders of the proletariat from the mouths of experts on how to have the workers put your gang in power. Somehow, though, it all falls apart.
Black & Red 288 pp. $2.50
THE WANDERING OF HUMANITY by Jacques Camatte
Shatters the old commonplaces: “Communism is not a new mode of production; it is the affirmation of a new community…[Women and men] will not gain mastery over production, but will create new relations among themselves which will determine an entirely different activity.” “Revolution does not emerge from one or another part of our being…Our revolution as a project to reestablish community was necessary from the moment when ancient communities were destroyed…”
Black & Red 64 pp. $1.00
REVOLUTION IN SEATTLE by Harvey O’Connor
A memoir by a participant in the Seattle General Strike of 1919.
Left Bank Books, Orig. $7.50, now $5.00
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF HUMAN RIGHTS: Vol. I—The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism; Vol. II—After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman
A devastating critique of U.S. foreign policy in the Third World and “free world” media propaganda system which obscures the U.S. support for Third World dictatorships. “The basic fact is that the United States has organized under its sponsorship and protection a neo-colonial system of client states ruled mainly by terror and serving the interests of a small local and foreign business and military elite. The fundamental belief or ideological pretense, is that the United States is dedicated to furthering the cause of democracy and human rights throughout the world, though it may occasionally err in the pursuit of this objective.”
South End Press $7.50 each sold separately, $15.00 as a set
FOUR ARGUMENTS FOR THE ELIMINATION OF TELEVISION by Jerry Mander
“Television freewayizes, suburbanizes, and commoditizes human beings, who are then easier to control. Meanwhile, those who control television consolidate their power…Television aids the creation of societal conditions which produce autocracy; it also creates the appropriate mental patterns for it and simultaneously dulls all awareness that this is happening.” Argues that television is not reformable, that its problems are inherent in technology itself and are so dangerous—to health and sanity, to autonomous and democratic forms of life, that it must be eliminated entirely.
Morrow 371 pages $5.95
THE ATOMIC STATE AND THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO LIVE IN IT: Campaign Against the Model West Germany Number 7
Discusses the qualitatively new form of totalitarian technological state power which is emerging as modern police techniques and nuclear-ism converge.
44 pp. 25 cents
ON ORGANIZATION by Camatte and Collu
Argues that the establishment of capital within material existence “and therefore within the social community” is accompanied by the disappearance of the traditional personal capitalist, the proletariat, and the theory of the proletariat. “This is only another way of saying that capital has succeeded in establishing its real domination. To accomplish this, capital had to absorb the movement which negates it, the proletariat, and establish a unity in which the proletariat is merely an object of capital. This unity can be destroyed only by a crisis, such as those described by Marx. It follows that all forms of working class political organization have disappeared. In their place, gangs confront one another in an obscene competition, veritable rackets rivalling each other in what they peddle but identical in their essence.”
Anonymous 40 pp. 50 cents
UNIONS AGAINST REVOLUTION by G. Munis and J. Zerzan
Contains articles on unionism, the title article by the left communist theoretician Grandizio Munis, and John Zerzan’s “Organized Labor Versus ‘The Revolt Against Work.'” “To attribute a useful function to unions in the revolutionary process is as unthinkable as seeing revolutionary potential in the stock market…”—from the text by Munis
Black & Red 96 pp. $1.00
THE STRIKE IN GDANSK, AUGUST 14-31 1980 Edited and translated by Andrzej Tymowski
This short history chronicles the strike which marked the beginning of the Polish explosion. Contains accounts of the event taken from strike bulletins, Solidarity newspapers and interviews. Also, a critical Afterword on Solidarity since the strike.
Don’t Hold Back, 50 pp. $2.75
TELOS NUMBER 50 (Winter 1981-82)
Contains another “Special Symposium,” this one on “The Role of Intellectuals in the 1980s,” as well as “The Roots of Re-Armament” which contains a brief rebuttal of Castoriadis and an interesting discussion of the European disarmament movement, “Empire vs. Civil Society: Poland 1980-81” by Andrew Arato and John Zerzan’s “Anti-Work and the Struggle for Control” and Tim Luke’s rebuttal which also appear in this issue of the Fifth Estate.
Telos Press $5.00
ANARCHY COMICS NUMBER 1
International comics by Kinney, Mavrides, Spain and others. How to destroy civilization and build a new cooperative one with tinkertoys.
Last Gasp $1.25
ANARCHY COMICS NUMBER 2
International comics and better than ever. Starring America’s sweethearts, the Picto Family, the Political Bizarros, and Anarchie, Ludehead and Moronica. See Moronica’s rich father get knee-capped by the Red Brigades.
Last Gasp $1.25
ANARCHY COMICS NUMBER 3
Seventeen cartoonists from Europe and North America. Contains the Decaying Meat/Capitalism Diagram, a punk anarchist’s journey to the future, Anarchy in the Alsace, Wildcat, Roman Spring, and more.
Last Gasp $2.00
THE POVERTY OF STATISM: A DEBATE by Fabbri, Rocker, Bukharin
Contains Nikolai Bukharin’s officially-sponsored attack on anarchism published in the Soviet Union in 1922, and Luigi Fabbri’s reply published in Italy the same year. Also, two articles by Rudolf Rocker, “Anarchism and Sovietism,” and “Marx and Anarchism.”
Cienfuegos Press $3.50
THE RUSSIAN TRAGEDY by Alexander Berkman
Two years in his native Russia provided both the background material for this analysis of the revolution and its betrayal by the communists. Contains three articles, originally published separately as pamphlets in 1922, “The Russian Tragedy,” “The Russian Revolution and the Communist Party,” and “The Kronstadt Rebellion.”
Cienfuegos Press 112 pp. $4.50
MILLY WITKOP ROCKER by Rudolf Rocker
A tribute to anarchist fighter Milly Witkop, wife of Rudolf Rocker, on her death in 1955.
Cienfuegos Press 20 pp. $1.25
HUNGARY ’56 by Andy Anderson
“All workers, socialists, even communists, must at last understand that a bureaucratic state has nothing to do with Socialism.” (Nemsetor, 15 January 1957)
Black & Red 137 pp. $1.25
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 original done in 1976, printed on red stock. Left Bank tells us that these are “seconds” hence the low price, but we can’t see the flaws.
$1.50 folded, $2.50 sent in mailing tube.
PROTEST WITHOUT ILLUSIONS by Vernon Richards
This excellent collection contains many articles written for the anarchist journal Freedom by a participant in the sit-downs and marches against the Bomb in England during the late ’50s and early ’60s. This is anything but dry history, since while the author commented on the events of the day he raised important criticisms and discussions on the nature of the activity taking place, discussions which have a direct relationship to the questions facing those of us who oppose the nuclear state today: the problem of the media, the notion of pressure groups which attempt to influence the activities of the state, the problem of organizing around fear of war rather than a vision of a new society, the political illusion, etc. This book should be read by all who are interested in this question. “There are no short cuts to peace. There are no compromise solutions between the rulers and the ruled. The day when we will be in a position to influence government we shall also have the strength to dispense with governments. Until we can put short term prospects in their proper perspective we shall continue to overlook the long term aims which alone can ensure a world at peace.” (1959)
Freedom Press 168 pp. $4.25
THE GUILLOTINE AT WORK by Gregory Petrovich Maximoff
Develops the theme that the stalinist terror of the 1930s, the bureaucratisation of Russian society, the imperialist escapades, through to today’s lack of human rights in Russia and other East European countries are not aberrations in the development of socialist society, but rather a logical development in marxist philosophy and action. It serves one main purpose: “to dispel the aura which Lenin’s disciples have bestowed on him by showing that Lenin was primarily concerned with attaining power and holding on to it as a dictator by means of terror.”
Black Thorn Books 337 pp. $9.20
ANARCHISM AND MARXISM by Daniel Guerin
“…Anarchism and marxism, at the start, drank at the same proletarian spring…” “As the libertarian historian A.E. Kaminski wrote in his excellent book on Bakunin, a synthesis of anarchism and marxism is not only necessary but inevitable. ‘History,’ he adds, ‘makes her compromises herself.'”
Cienfuegos Press $1.25
The following books are being sold at reduced prices:
1984 by George Orwell
This book remains as pertinent as ever, and its descriptions of life in an allegedly future totalitarian society sound increasingly like life today, not only in the state capitalist leviathans in the East, but also in the decaying, miserabilist ambience here in the West.
Signet, originally $1.50, now $.75
CHINESE SHADOWS by Simon Leys
A chilling demystification of the shadow play which obscures the true nature of events in China. Leys writes, “We must acknowledge the considerable material improvements in many areas of Chinese life since 1948, but at the same time it is a fantastic imposture to present the regime as socialist and revolutionary when in fact it is essentially totalitarian and feudal-bureaucratic.” This is one of the very best books anywhere on contemporary China.
Viking hardcover 220 pp. Originally $10.00, now $3.00
LIMITS OF THE CITY by Murray Bookchin
A new 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, 148 pp. Originally $4.50, now $2.00
LAND & LIBERTY: ANARCHIST INFLUENCES IN THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION by Ricardo Flores Magon (compiled and introduced by David Poole)
“Ricardo Flores Magon cannot be ignored either in the context of the Mexican Revolution or the world anarchist movement.”
Cienfuegos Press 156 pp. Originally $4.70, reduced to $2.00
THE CHRISTIE FILE by Stuart Christie
Stuart’s autobiography mirrors the turbulent period of the ’60s and ’70s, 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.
Cienfuegos Press/Partisan Press Originally $9.95, now $7.95
LONDON SOLIDARITY PAMPHLETS AVAILABLE:
The following pamphlets by Paul Cardan (Cornelius Castoriadis) and others are available in limited quantities.
THE FATE OF MARXISM Paul Cardan $.25
THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM Paul Carden $.25
HISTORY AND REVOLUTION: A REVOLUTIONARY CRITIQUE OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM Paul Cardan $.50
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF MARX John Crump $.25
THE NEW MOVEMENT Henri Simon $.25