Grew up in a very liberal area/family, had an instinctive revulsion against inequality and the wealthy from a young age. In high school I read Zinn, Chomsky, and a bunch of Crimethinc type stuff, lived through the reactionary hysteria of 9/11, and became an “anarchist.” Anarchist in quotes, because it was a very surface level, lifestylist understanding of anarchism (no shade to any comrades reading).
Without any real theoretical grounding, during college and after I drifted into a sort of standard issue succdem position, feeling like there was no viable alternative to capitalism, but also no path but slow reform. The brief excitement of getting Bush out and Obama in quickly turned to disillusionment when he failed to hold the previous administration accountable for any of its crimes and continued all its worst foreign policy. By the time 2008 rolled around, I was not surprised by the failures of the state.
After Trump was elected. I managed to avoid the worst of the liberal panic, but I also felt that any system that would elect Trump was not one that was salvageable. I knew something had to give. I had been identifying as a socialist for a few years at that point, but hadn’t been politically active and nor yet politically conscious. I joined DSA and started trying to learn what socialism was really all about, which led me to the chapotraphouse subreddit and eventually here.
Looking over this whole story, the thing that strikes me the most is that Marxist theory had been so completely excluded from the range of acceptable thought that it didn’t even occur to me to seek it out until quite late in my political journey. Even as an adult, cracking open a book by Lenin felt a bit dangerous and forbidden in a way that anarchism never did. I know “read theory” is a bit of meme on here and people whine and complain about it, but honestly I do think it’s the most important thing. Your life experience can help radicalize you (the shitty jobs I worked certainly did), getting out in the world and doing praxis is great and necessary, and so on. But without a framework to understand these things within and relate to a larger struggle, you are far more likely to fall into error or disillusionment or to lack solidarity with others.
Grew up in a very liberal area/family, had an instinctive revulsion against inequality and the wealthy from a young age. In high school I read Zinn, Chomsky, and a bunch of Crimethinc type stuff, lived through the reactionary hysteria of 9/11, and became an “anarchist.” Anarchist in quotes, because it was a very surface level, lifestylist understanding of anarchism (no shade to any comrades reading).
Without any real theoretical grounding, during college and after I drifted into a sort of standard issue succdem position, feeling like there was no viable alternative to capitalism, but also no path but slow reform. The brief excitement of getting Bush out and Obama in quickly turned to disillusionment when he failed to hold the previous administration accountable for any of its crimes and continued all its worst foreign policy. By the time 2008 rolled around, I was not surprised by the failures of the state.
After Trump was elected. I managed to avoid the worst of the liberal panic, but I also felt that any system that would elect Trump was not one that was salvageable. I knew something had to give. I had been identifying as a socialist for a few years at that point, but hadn’t been politically active and nor yet politically conscious. I joined DSA and started trying to learn what socialism was really all about, which led me to the chapotraphouse subreddit and eventually here.
Looking over this whole story, the thing that strikes me the most is that Marxist theory had been so completely excluded from the range of acceptable thought that it didn’t even occur to me to seek it out until quite late in my political journey. Even as an adult, cracking open a book by Lenin felt a bit dangerous and forbidden in a way that anarchism never did. I know “read theory” is a bit of meme on here and people whine and complain about it, but honestly I do think it’s the most important thing. Your life experience can help radicalize you (the shitty jobs I worked certainly did), getting out in the world and doing praxis is great and necessary, and so on. But without a framework to understand these things within and relate to a larger struggle, you are far more likely to fall into error or disillusionment or to lack solidarity with others.