Fifth Estate (periodical)

Fifth Estate

Cover of issue 385, Fall 2011
Categories	Anti-authoritarianism, Post-left anarchism
Frequency	Three issues per year
First issue	1965
Country	United States
Website	fifthestate.org

Fifth Estate (FE) is a U.S. periodical, based in Detroit, Michigan, begun in 1965, but with staff members across North America who connect via the Internet. Its editorial collective sometimes has divergent views on the topics the magazine addresses but generally shares anarchist, anti-authoritarian outlook and a non-dogmatic, action-oriented approach to change. The title implies that the periodical is an alternative to the fourth estate (traditional print journalism).

Fifth Estate is frequently cited as the longest running English language anarchist publication in North America, although this is sometimes disputed since it became only explicitly anti-authoritarian in 1975 after ten years of publishing as part of the 1960s Underground Press movement. The archives for the Fifth Estate are held at the Labadie Collection in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Fifth Estate was started by Harvey Ovshinsky, a seventeen-year-old youth from Detroit. He was inspired by a 1965 summer trip to California where he worked on the Los Angeles Free Press, the first underground paper in the United States; Harvey's father, inventor Stan Ovshinsky, knew the editor of the Free Press, Art Kunkin, from their years as comrades in the Socialist Party. The name "Fifth Estate" was inspired by The Fifth Estate coffee house on the Sunset Strip, where the Free Press had its office in the basement.

The first issue was published on November 19, 1965—"That's what we really are—the voice of the liberal element in Detroit", it said. It was produced on a typewriter and then reproduced by offset lithograph, in an 8-page tabloid newspaper format with two pages left blank. It featured a critical review of a Bob Dylan concert, a borrowed Jules Feiffer cartoon, alternative events listing and an announcement of a forthcoming anti-Vietnam War march. None of these things would have been included in contemporary newspapers.