This post is inspired by an email exchange I had with the one of my regular readers regarding my background as an anarchist and why I'm now a communist who identifies with the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist tradition. [Note that this regular reader is part of community that produces excellent blogs that can be found here, here, and here.] Since I still have comrades/friends who identify as anarchist, I figured why not write a post about my anarchist past...





When I was intitially politicized, and became involved in student activism, I was an anarchist. Or maybe, at first, a quasi-anarchist who was sympathetic to, because of my parents and uncle, liberation theology. A strange combination perhaps, but one that somehow made sense to me at the time. Of course, the more involved with undergraduate activism I became, an involvement that culminated in the 2001 FTAA protests in Quebec City at the end of my BA, the more theoretically anarchist I made myself. When I began my MA I was a confirmed anarchist familiar with Goldman, Bakunin, Bookchin, etc.

Generally speaking, and like most radical activists of my generation, I saw communism as an authoritarian dead end. Believing I was more radical than the old marxist left, and unaware that many of my critiques of communist movements were actually rightwing critiques veiled as left, I was a typical self-righteous activist: outside history, confident that my individualistic understanding was beyond reproach. Sometimes I cringe when I think of my younger self, especially when I contemplate my partner’s more critical perspective (and patience with me), along with many of the vacuous positions I argued. [Here I really need to credit my partner for my politicization, for many of the theoretical paths I took––this was the prime influence behind what I chose to read and investigate, described below.]And yet anarchism has been the default radicalism at the centres of capitalism for decades. The Soviet project failed, the Chinese Revolution followed, and it is much easier to ascribe these failings to a failure of ideology––to complain of Party authoritarianism, naive to the fact that we are echoing liberal complaints about collectivism––than investigate the complex and historical reasons for this failure. Convenient narratives were available: Stalin the moster, Mao the even worse monster (a claim once again promoted by the right). We could believe we were questioning everything, while we were also refusing to question ideas and history that we assumed were common sense.Even so, there are still things about anarchism that make sense: the rejection of heirarchy and authority is wise in the face of cults of personality; the utopian belief in the creative potential of masses to reject tyranny protects us against resignation; the suspicion of those people and organizations that claimed to speak for heterogeneous movements.In my MA, however, I began to discover that anarchist theory was generally far less sophisticated, far less developed, and far more myopic than the marxist tradition. My first slog through(only the first volume at that time––I read the second and third in the summer between my MA and PhD), along with readings from other marxists, was very enlightening. Not that I was prepared, during the first year of my MA, to abandon anarchism. I was also reading a lot of post-colonial and contemporary anti-racist literature that in my mind complimented anarchism because it rejected marxism as. Then, at the end of my first year, I read Frantz Fanon’sand discovered that the historical materialist tradition was not, as I had initially and naively assumed, simply eurocentric.It was during the second year of my MA, when I was working on my Masters thesis, that my allegiance to anarchism began to disintegrate. I encountered the Autonomist Marxist tradition, along with the Situationists and Deleuze and Guattari, which was my "gateway drug" to marxism. Nick Dyer-Witheford, Harry Cleaver, early Antonio Negri and other Italian workerists proved that I could keep the spirit of anarchism while shedding its theoretical shell. Autonomism, after all, rejects vanguardist praxis, the party form, the need to sieze state power, and all of the "authoritarian" aspects of marxism my anarchist self found abhorrent.My reasons for eventually abandoning autonomism, however, were caused by reading Hart and Negri's. Excited that Negri had co-authored a new book on contemporary struggles, I was excited to read his thoughts in this regard. Unfortunately, since I was at that time generally ignorant of contemporary anti-imperialist political economy, I could not properly understand whatwas critiquing. Even still, the jargon-laced theorization of a centre-less capitalism just struck me as wrong––especially in the post-9/11 universe where it seemed clear, or at least I thought it seemed clear, that imperialismpossess centres.And so began, through an investigation of political economy, my descent into what may or may not be an "orthodox" marxism. Soon I was reading Samir Amin, probably the greatest living anti-imperialist political economist, and becoming equipped to understand just whywas wrong. Two years into my PhD, because of Amin and other radical political economists, I was reading Lenin and Mao and critical histories of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions. The activist and academic community I found myself engaged with at that time (and am still engaged with) allowed for many theoretical and practical encounters. The steep (yet also privileged) reading/studying/cognizing requirements of my doctoral dissertation, along with the activist work I was doing at the time (both in and outside my labour union), contributed to my changing political views. In any case, rather than continue boring anyone who has bothered to read this far in an onerous post, I won't waste time describing an inventory of my route to where I am now.Suffice to say, the 20 year old version of me would probably not like the 32 year old version of me very much; the 25 year old version of me, though a little closer, would probably think he was smarter and more philosophically sophisticated––as does everyone who begins their PhD in philosophy until they (hopefully) realize that grad school is filled with similar minded 25 year olds, or until (even more hopefully) they are corrected and humbled through their engagement with a healthy political community. These previous selves (that, in many ways, prove Hume's point about the fiction of continuous consciousness), would probably be quite horrified that their future self ended up defining as a Maoist, or at least a Maoist-influenced, communist. But it was my anarchist self that was also drawn to aspects of Maoism, such as the mass-line and the whole "bombard the headquarters" furor in the GPCR. Just as it was my autonomist self who was drawn to the notion of revolutionary theoretical innovation through world historical revolution.Communists, especially very ortho-communists, sometimes like to call anarchists "infantile" and anarchism an "infantile disorder", referencing Lenin of course (and more in a polemical than a theoretical manner it should be pointed out). For me, in some ways, it was more of an infantile developmental stage than a "disorder." Nor do I think it's wrong, at least in my context, to think of anarchism as infantile––not that I think any of my anarchist comrades/friends are, I just want to examine how the analogy applies to my experience. No analogies are perfect, but what the hell...Children engage with the world with wonder, as if everything is new, and their minds are not yet set in ruts and patterns that may limit their consciousness. Certainly children are uncritical, but they are also undogmatic. (Again, no analogy is perfect: I realize that a lot of anarchists, who claim they are anti-authoritarian, are also prone to a very uncritical dogmatism and sublimated authoritarianism.) Another commenter on this site once asked me to consider the problem of psychological investment in my theoretical position: do I want certain struggles to fail because I am invested in a particular view of history and must defend it at any cost? The point is well taken, and I want to write a post on this in the future, and speaks to this analogy. Children are not psychologically invested in specific positions; they are still largely open to the future.If anarchism is "infantile" then maybe ortho-communism is the equivalent of a grumpy old man who shakes his cane at the young'uns. We can also speak of communisms that are the equivalent of arrogant students who think they know everything. Or communist theoretical positions that are also "senile." And maybe the spirit of anarchism is good for marxists, even us marxists who believe in concepts of the party, to retain.