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.
NEW ARRIVALS
AGAINST DOMESTICATION by Jacques Camatte
Camatte has emerged from the “Hegelian thickets” many have accused him of dwelling in and written a fairly intelligible essay containing many of his basic themes: the domestication of humans by capital, repressive consciousness, the superfluousness of the proletariat, establishment of a human community and others. Several of us who have read it recommend it to those interested in what constitutes at least a portion of the theoretical underpinnings of the Fifth Estate.
Black Thumb 24 pages $1.50
TELOS: A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF RADICAL THOUGHT
No. 51 Spring 1982
No. 52 Summer 1982
These people are as behind schedule as the FE! Both issues have appeared since we last published with the Summer number having arrived in late September. No. 51 is an excellent issue on the European peace movement and the Polish crisis. Also “Black Market Technology in the USSR” and “Facing the War Psychosis,” more comments on the controversial Castoriadis article. Plus many reviews, notes and other comments. No. 52 is a “Special Issue on Social Movements” with a special section on “Ecology and the Welfare State,” plus other reviews, notes and commentaries.
240 pp. each $5.00 each
BROKEN IMAGES: ESSAYS ON CHINESE CULTURE AND POLITICS by Simon Leys
Essays on China’s leading writers as well as portraits of Mao, Chaing Ch’ing and Chiang Kai-shek with first-hand accounts of everyday life in China. All reflect Leys’ Orwellian ability to see events from the worm’s eye view of common humanity (or so says the book jacket).
St. Martins 156 pp. Hardcover reduced $4
THE CHAIRMAN’S NEW CLOTHES: MAO & THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION by Simon Leys
A diary of the Cultural Revolution by a firsthand observer whose essays from the period stand above the slavish adulation which typified most writing about the events. Leys notes the emergence of the bureaucratic state as being solidified in a movement ostensibly against bureaucracy. By the author of CHINESE SHADOWS.
St. Martins 260 pp. Hardcover reduced $4
WE WANT TO RIOT, NOT TO WORK: THE 1981 BRIXTON UPRISINGS by the WWTRNTW Collective
Personal accounts of the riots that swept England last summer, along with suggestions of their social implications.
48 pp. $1.50
THE GERMAN GUERRILLA: TERROR, REACTION, AND RESISTANCE by Jean Marcel Bougereau
Beginning with an interview with a German urban guerrilla, life underground is explored. The question of the legitimacy of violence, the authoritarianism of armed groups and what the need for constant secrecy produces among those involved in guerrilla activity.
Cienfuegos/Soil of Liberty 106 pp. $3.50.
ANARCHISM AND THE NATIONAL LIBERATION STRUGGLE Alfredo M. Bonanno; revised edition
A rejection of national liberation movements whose goal is the establishment of new nation states, but recognizes the uniqueness of different people and cultures. Additional notes from Bakunin and Rudolph Rocker.
Bratach Dubh 24 pages $1.25
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCISM BEGINS WITH THE STRUGGLE AGAINST BOLSHEVISM by Otto Ruhle
Written in 1939, Ruhle observes the Soviet Union and the communist movement after 20 years of counter-revolution. He states “[the] essential characteristics of fascism were and are existing in bolshevism. Fascism is merely a copy of bolshevism.”
Bratach Dubh Editions 20 pages $1.25
BOOKS ON THE RUSSIAN & HUNGARIAN REVOLUTIONS
November is the 65th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and of the Bolshevik counter-revolution. The same month is the 26th anniversary of the Hungarian rebellion of 1956.
BOLSHEVIKS & WORKERS CONTROL by Maurice Brinton
An excellent chronology and analysis of the Bolshevik betrayal of the revolution from the seizure of the factories to the crushing of the Kronstadt Commune.
Black & Red 100 pp. $1.95
HISTORY OF THE MAKHNOVIST MOVEMENT by Peter Arshinov
Exciting account of the anarchist/communist peasant revolution in the Ukraine, with telling revelations about the Nature of Bolshevik military and social policy.
Black & Red 284 pp. $2.95
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
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
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 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
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
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
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 rivaling each other in what they peddle but identical in their essence.”
Anonymous 40 pp. 50 cents
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 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
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
THE WILHELMSHAVEN REVOLT by Icarus
The story of the revolutionary movement in the German Navy in 1918-1919.
Cienfuegos Press 32 pp. $1.25
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
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
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 the Fifth Estate.
Telos Press $5.00
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 nuclearism converge.
44 pp. 25 cents
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 the “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 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
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
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
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
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
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
OUR ROOTS ARE STILL ALIVE: THE STORY OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE by The Peoples Press Palestine Book Project
Although flawed politically by its leftist fawning before Arab nationalism and the PLO, the book’s solid data regarding the sordid history of Zionism and its effects on the Palestinians far outweighs the defects. Even left and labor Zionism appears as reactionary when presented here.
The Guardian 180 pp. $5.95
BACK IN STOCK!
LOVE & RAGE: ENTRIES IN A PRISON DIARY by Carl Harp
Since his death at the hands of the prison officials, these writings take on an even more Powerful meaning. The title of the book is appropriate—Carl oscillated between feelings of inspiration and solidarity on the one hand, and near despair and outrage on the other. Not surprising: you come away from this slim volume wondering how anyone could maintain any spirit all in the face of such absolute degradation and injustice, let alone reflect upon it and write it down.
Pulp Press 73 pp. $3.95
GOD & THE STATE by Michael Bakunin
Bakunin’s classic work with a new introduction and index of persons by Paul Avrich.
Dover 89 pp. $2.50
THE PEOPLE ARMED: DURRUTI by Abel Paz
An exciting biography of a worker who becomes a pistolero for the anarchist movement, robbing banks and assassinating politicians. When the Spanish revolution commences Durruti serves as a militia leader until his untimely death.
Free Life Editions 323 pp. Hardback $5.00
ALSO NEW
THE ESSENTIAL WORKS OF ANARCHISM edited by Marshall S. Shatz
A rather standard, but valuable collection of basic anarchist works from the classics of Bakunin and Kropotkin to anarchism in practice in Russia and Spain through to anarchist themes in the modern world articulated by Guerin, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Paul Goodman.
Bantam 600 pp. $1.95
BULLDOZER (THE ONLY VEHICLE FOR PRISON REFORM)—Number 4 Spring
Articles on “rehabilitation,” the hole, sexual harassment in prison. Free to prisoners from The Fifth Estate or direct from P.O. Box 5052, Sta. A, Toronto, Ont. M5W 1W4.
46 pages $1.00
(Issues 1 and 2 are available for 50 cents each and no. 3 for $1)
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 following books are being sold at reduced prices:
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
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
FREE PUBLICATIONS
Still available free upon request with book orders or by sending postage to cover: “The origins of the Anarchist Movement in China” by Internationalist, “To Serve the Rich” (a cookbook printed in 1974 by the Eat the Rich Gang; available in any quantity with postage), “Shays’ Rebellion” (story of early American armed rebellion; available in any quantity with postage), “under the Polish Volcano”—critique of Polish events published in London, “To Libertarians” (poster explaining the plight of Spanish political prisoners). If you ask for all of the poster and pamphlets, please enclose an extra 25 cents to cover additional postage; 63 cents will cover it for requests without book orders.