Baby, I'm an Anarchist, You're A Spineless Liberal
I have never felt very bourgeois. When I read about this class of people in history they seem to have a grasp upon reality. However, they always ultimately fall short of achieving social change because of their inability to cast off their own class privillages that stems from their fear of those uneducated masses below them usurping them from their own precarious political position. I would like to think of myself as being better than that. I know that my upbringing has allowed me to achieve things simply because of my family life. My dad a lawyer and my mother a librarian, have always provided a stable house, both financially and emotionally. Given this upbringing, I think most human beings would have turned out like I did. I do not mean to take anything away from myself with this comment, I simply am implying that I never have to worry about being shot going to school, or having to start working at 15 (though I did for myself) in order to help the family. This meant I could worry about school and social well being, simply because I never had to worry about basic survival. I always wanted to fight the fact though that I was some petty bourgeois kid.
How does this relate to anything? When discussing politics in a drunken stupor with a friend she talked about protesting the presidential inaguration in DC and marching with the infamous anarchist "Black Bloc". At the time I realized that I really don't like anarchy. I have formulated this opinion from what I have read about it, but it does seem to be a relatively lose term so I dunno if my interpretation speaks for all anarchists. I am more of a "change through the system" kind of guy. It then struck me that those people were always pussies. Those are the Socialists who sell-out and stop anything from really changing and actually end up enforcing the political machinery in place, by giving social change without revolution and thereby undermining their own political platform (look at Wiemar Germany after World War I). I am not saying I am pussy because while I am no anarchist, I think violent protest can be a good. Sometimes a brick does need to get thrown through a Starbucks window to prove a point. Sometimes you do need to take to the street and riot when your work conditions are terrible or you are left disenfranchised by the state. Sometimes violence is the only way to make a point standout. It is when this violence comsumes logic and centralized organization that you get problems, and thus where I think anarchy fails.
However how does one reconcile this obvious bourgeios part of me that has this fear of anarchy and instability, with my desire not to be the one who pusses out and cannot take things that extra step where radical change is made? When is anarchist so loud with actions that it covers up any words, and when is the social revolutionary all talk with no action? I guess that is the paradox of politics and of myself. How do I moderate the more radical side of myself, while not undermining myself with mindless intellectual babel that means something only to the intellectual bourgeois which actually prevents any REAL change from taking place? I am not sure if it is something that can be reconciled. They will be two forces that will pull at me for the rest of my life.
How does this relate to anything? When discussing politics in a drunken stupor with a friend she talked about protesting the presidential inaguration in DC and marching with the infamous anarchist "Black Bloc". At the time I realized that I really don't like anarchy. I have formulated this opinion from what I have read about it, but it does seem to be a relatively lose term so I dunno if my interpretation speaks for all anarchists. I am more of a "change through the system" kind of guy. It then struck me that those people were always pussies. Those are the Socialists who sell-out and stop anything from really changing and actually end up enforcing the political machinery in place, by giving social change without revolution and thereby undermining their own political platform (look at Wiemar Germany after World War I). I am not saying I am pussy because while I am no anarchist, I think violent protest can be a good. Sometimes a brick does need to get thrown through a Starbucks window to prove a point. Sometimes you do need to take to the street and riot when your work conditions are terrible or you are left disenfranchised by the state. Sometimes violence is the only way to make a point standout. It is when this violence comsumes logic and centralized organization that you get problems, and thus where I think anarchy fails.
However how does one reconcile this obvious bourgeios part of me that has this fear of anarchy and instability, with my desire not to be the one who pusses out and cannot take things that extra step where radical change is made? When is anarchist so loud with actions that it covers up any words, and when is the social revolutionary all talk with no action? I guess that is the paradox of politics and of myself. How do I moderate the more radical side of myself, while not undermining myself with mindless intellectual babel that means something only to the intellectual bourgeois which actually prevents any REAL change from taking place? I am not sure if it is something that can be reconciled. They will be two forces that will pull at me for the rest of my life.