Fifth Estate

From Fifth Estate # 418, Summer 2026 by Stephen Duplantier

Russian revolutionary and geographer Peter Kropotkin was a pioneer in understanding how forests and steppes were a living archive of anarchist practice. Every bioregional regime has its own variations, but the commonalities shine through. His major stance was that species practicing mutual aid survive and attain their “highest development.” He saw the forest’s mingled life, stories of plants being successful by cooperation, and not as a result of Social Darwinist struggles and endless war. There are struggles, but these are against circumstances and not internecine. Cooperation, not warfare, is a natural law, and understanding nature’s patterns is a way to know and practice more.

From Fifth Estate

Announcing Fifth Estate #418, Summer 2026

From Fifth Estate # 417, Winter 2025

Forty years after his untimely death in 1985, Fredy Perlman’s last work has been published, a second volume of his novel, The Strait, which he left in handwritten form.

In 1986, the anarchist activist/historian (and FE contributor) David Porter commented in the journal Kairos... “Fredy’s special talent was to demonstrate the variety of its political forms,” a dialectic he described in his essays and books, in which “accumulation of unequal power leads to the privilege of a few and the degradation of the others.” Moreover, resisting tended to produce its own feedback “Every major step toward apparent liberation produces further domination…”

From Fifth Estate #417, Winter 2025

A review of “All Will Be Equalized”: Georgia’s Freedom Seekers of the Swamps, Backwoods, and Sea Islands 1526-1890 by Andrew Zonneveld. On Our Own Authority Publishing, 2024

“All Will Be Equalized” (AWBE) is in many ways the right book for the current moment. It is a book of popular history, a synthesis of academic sources for non-academics, written from an explicitly anarchist perspective. It is broad enough to be a great introduction, is relatively short, but well written and full of inspiring stories and historical detail.

From Fifth Estate #417, Winter 2025

It’s an hour before sunset and I am sitting between two spindly coffee trees with a larger tree stump in front for a blind to partially hide behind. The brim of my grass hat is pulled low to block a pin hole of sunlight that beams through the canopy of a tall mango tree. Leaves rustle in the breeze blowing up the hill from the ocean a thousand feet below.

From Fifth Estate #417, Winter 2025

A review of Down By Law: Criminalization, Solidarity and Survival in Europe Edited by the CrimScapes Research Group. PM Press/Kairos, 2025

Graphic novels (GNs) and anthologies very often effect personal experiences, and for that matter, the non-fiction shelf is comparatively thin. The GN treatment of homeless and semi-homeless people, even amidst the world-wide explosion of that hard-hit slice of humanity, remains almost invisible.

From Fifth Estate # 417, Winter 2025

This wild account of a plan to decapitate the Chicago ruling class in 1916 first appeared on the website of the Hoosier State Chronicles: Indiana’s Digital Newspaper Program. The Fifth Estate rarely publishes reprints, particularly if they have first appeared online. However, this story of extreme class warfare seems unknown to most of those interested in the history of the anarchist movement, so an exception is being made.

From Fifth Estate # 417, Winter 2025

Wooden Shoe, as a publicly facing anarchist infoshop, was established in 1976 and, using capitalist projections, shouldn’t exist. Amazingly, it still does. Many visitors share stories about their parents as youthful hippies or punks hanging out on South Street in Philadelphia and coming to the Shoe to learn about the system.

From Fifth Estate # 417, Winter 2025

Daniel de Roulet’s novella, Ten Little Anarchists, is a masterful weave of fantasy and fact, history and histrionics, ideology and imagination. It is a blend of feminist thought, pragmatic practice, and an open dialogue about strategy and priorities for the anarchist movement. It is told through the dynamic conversations and lives of ten anarchist women who strike out on their own and leave the old world behind in their effort to create a truly anarchist community in a foreign land.

From Fifth Estate # 417, Winter 2025

A review of Beyond the Final Whistle, Soccer for a Better World by Vasilis Kostakis. Pluto Press, 2025

On a hot night in Houston Texas, two teams played during a social and political moment that carried more meaning than just the end result of the match. The significance was shown by supporters’ shirts depicting half split Mexican and American flags worn by those in attendance.