Petit Bourgeois Anarchist: Enemy or Ally?

Right now, I have received a bachelors of science in Business Administration from a small liberal arts college and am currently working in small restaurant owned by my family. I started out with that major because I ultimately plan on taking over the family business. And strangely enough I became a libertarian socialist, which rejects the capitalist values I was taught. Now my major doesn’t seem like much of a fit with who I am. Maybe I would have been happier learning something else, but what’s done is done. I am not sure that I will be continuing my education any time soon, but I never let school get in the way of my education anyways. As far as plans go, I am already getting more involved in the family-owned restaurant. Since I have been born, my family has been very well off, but they had to work up from having next to nothing. So I’ve been part of the upper middle class for my entire life. I know that there are quite a few libertarian socialists out there who are part of the petite bourgeois and can probably relate to some of the feelings of guilt I am experiencing. On the flipside, I definitely believe that my family’s financial success gave me the time, resources, and opportunity to develop my own thoughts. Their success may actually be partially responsible for my ever reaching my beliefs in libertarian socialism. Unfortunately, the nature of state capitalism seems to do a really good job at preventing many people from having the time, resources, and energy to thoughtfully consider things like anarchism.

I am currently working at our family restaurant, and I am doing my own research to better organize and improve upon our restaurant’s success. In keeping with my libertarian socialist beliefs, I am trying to implement better pay while dealing with my parents who are blocking my suggested changes. I am trying to come to a compromise with them by actually developing a pay scheme that would somehow fall between a co-operative form of profit sharing and a normal hierarchical small capitalist business. I just can’t convince the rest of my family to bring in others to share in the ownership of the business. They understandably want to keep the business solely within the family, and I do want to respect their wishes. At the same time, I can’t help but feeling like I am being part of the problem. A small part no doubt, but a part nonetheless. I’m certainly wealthy, but I am not disgustingly super rich. The consolidation of global big business interests is certainly doing no favors for small business.

I know that many anarchists could consider my being a small business owner and therefore a boss fairly hypocritical. To some extent I agree, although I look at anarchism as trying to make everyone his or her own boss. We want everyone to essentially be business owners, and that naturally sounds very petit bourgeois. Although I could probably be called a “petit bourgeois anarchist”, which is a dirty word for some libertarian socialists, I believe that because I live in a State Capitalist society, where money unfortunately buys freedom, I don't have much of a choice other than to use the system to thrive and survive. It would just be a lot to risk giving up. I cannot give up what my grandparents and parents have painstakingly built from the ground up throughout the years. They themselves had to struggle through financial hardship, and I want to make sure that my children and grandchildren don’t have to go through that. I simply do not have the confidence to radically restructure an already very successful business and believe that it would be immensely foolish to give up what I have. Furthermore, I can use the resources gained from our business to hopefully promote some good. We can see that as anarchists we face a never-ending inward and outward struggle for freedom and equality.

Most of us want more money and thus more freedom and power within the current state capitalist system. For the most part, we have no choice but to play their corrupt game. If we don’t, our lives can become quite uncomfortable. Trying to destroy an inequitable system that saturates our society can be very risky to ones own security, health, comfort, and life. Once you move up the socioeconomic ladder it becomes very hard to destroy the very ladder you had to climb to get where you are. It’s understandable that my parents and grandparents, who had to scrape by and work extremely hard to create a successful small business, would be very leery of my desire to share the wealth, comfort, and control with others. Fighting the system can be very risky business. It is for that reason that I believe the anarchist movement needs to do a better job at giving those who don’t want to directly confront the state-government a better outlet for exercising their beliefs. I have no qualms about those who engage in illegal acts such as vandalism, squatting, and violent protest, but unfortunately such activities seem to alienate many people who would like to be doing something for the anarchist movement. While some of us are directly confronting the state-government power head-on, we need others to more actively circumventing the system through the anarchistic organization of their daily lives. As we can see, we certainly have an incredibly uphill battle.

It is clear why a movement that desires such radical change needs the widespread support of the working class (they are the ones who have the least to lose) but I am unsure that the petit bourgeoisie has no role to play. The petit bourgeois has things to gain from libertarian socialism as well. When oppressor an oppressed interact it is not only the oppressed who suffers although they arguable suffer the most. The oppressor also suffers from alienation, dehumanization, guilt, and inner turmoil that result when still being an oppressor with a human conscience. Unfortunately, a large part of the problem is that many in the working class desperately want only to move up the socioeconomic ladder. Many can only see the option of becoming the oppressor to alleviate being oppressed. They see that as the only realistic option to get out of their desperate situation. Many can’t see the alternative of destroying the oppressive ladder altogether. That is a huge part of the problem with our fight against the state capitalist system. The truth is that those within the working class need to step up and assume the roles of management and capital ownership. As anarchists have always said, the revolution needs to come from below and not from above. The working class needs to start becoming small business owners and self-managers of their own communities.

I might not seek to change my current family-owned business into something more compatible with my libertarian socialist ideals, but I personally dream of eventually opening up a separate worker-owned store of some kind. It is certainly possible that this might become a reality thanks to my current access to property and resources. It would ultimately depend upon my technical understanding, financial situation, human resources, level of interest, and will power. Maybe then the rest of the anarchist community won't consider me too much of a hypocrite. It would definitely be a risky venture, so I will be keeping our current restaurant as financial backup instead of trying to radically restructure it. Hopefully, my access to capital will help me further put my principles into action. This control over resources is what the working class desperately needs to really progress the libertarian socialist movement. I also plan on supporting counter-economic activities by promoting things such as the use of alternate forms of currency. While trying to bring down the system, the anarchist movement must also be about finding peace and freedom within our own personal relationships. Even if we can’t completely bring down the state-government and capitalism, there are things all of us could probably do to make ourselves freer. At least we have our freedom of thought. It’s about seeking out and enjoying our own little slice of freedom. So is a petit bourgeois anarchist an enemy or ally? What’s the verdict? We must all fight the enemies outside and within ourselves.

Who am I? (The Journey the Shaped Me)

I am a 22 year-old straight Caucasian male who happens to be a mutualist anarchist and atheist living in a small town within the state of Alabama. I know, it definitely doesn’t sound like a place you would expect to find an anarchist. For the most part I am still in the closet concerning my atheism and anarchism. I sometimes feel surrounded by way too many religious conservatives who would probably maul me if they ever knew what I really think. Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but living in the Bible Belt definitely makes you tread lightly so that the wrong people don’t catch wind of your unorthodox beliefs. There isn’t much of an outlet around here for me to express my anarchist beliefs, and I would probably move away if I didn’t have a loving family and friends keeping me here. I would say that my road to anarchy began when I started becoming an atheist towards the end of high school. I went to a private high school in Alabama and was a really quiet loner. I don't know for sure, but it is possible that my detachment from society allowed me to more readily turn a critical eye towards things. Being largely an outsider may have helped me become more observant and inquisitive. Since I wasn’t looking to impress others or become accepted by anyone, I did not have to worry as much about coming to unpopular conclusions.

Anyways, I was never really religious. I had never really questioned the things around me that everyone else just seemed to accept. I would just nod and say that I believe in God without really taking the time to understand what that meant. My curiosity was eventually peaked by religious imagery in movies, music, and on TV. I set out to become a religious person of some kind, but I quickly found myself becoming an atheist. After rejecting the Christian God I almost became a Gnostisc and then later I almost became a Buddhist. However, the more I looked, the more illogical all religions seemed. Ultimately, I ended up the atheist that I am today. The Internet was definitely an invaluable tool in helping me investigate and discover who I am.

After becoming a atheist and a skeptic, I began turning my eyes towards politics. The whole World Trade Center incident probably contributed to my increasing interest in the political realm. I had always considered myself a Republican because of parental influence. Like religion, I hadn't really taken the time to give politics much critical thought. I had just assumed that figures of authority, like my parents, knew what they were talking about. I even started out supporting the War in Iraq and rigorously defending it against people I talked to. Luckily my support didn't last too long. I shudder to think about who I was and who I could have become. However, I was never much of a Republican, so after some research I found that my own ideas lined up closely with US Libertarianism. College economics classes and a particular professor helped further cement my right-libertarian ideas. I was always pretty liberal socially and conservative economically.

Essentially, what happened was that through my atheism I happened upon a site called Hell Bound Alleee. It was one of the many of websites I would frequent for atheist views. Francois Tremblay and Alison Randall hosted this amateur radio show, and I would listen on occasion. The both of them were minarchist Libertarians at the time I started listening, but they eventually moved towards anarcho-capitalist market anarchism. I believe that it was through their website that I first noticed a website containing articles and podcasts from an anarcho-capitalist perspective. It was a site called Freedomain Radio, which is hosted by Stefan Molyneux. Curious about learning about an even more radical libertarian perspective than my own, I began listening to Stefan's shows. I was never expecting to agree with anarchism, and went in with the attitude that I would easily be able to find glaring flaws. I went in with a very skeptical attitude, but I eventually found myself agreeing more and more until I concluded that I had become an anarcho-capitalist. In my opinion it does become evident that anarchism is the logical conclusion when one consistently applies libertarian principles.

Through Stefan Molyneux's message board and podcasts, I was guided to a social networking site called Essembly. I joined the site along with an infamous influx of anarcho-capitalists. We were all curious about what we would discover about other people and what kind of impact we could have through such a social networking site. Our views are certainly not aired anywhere in the mainstream media, so we were searching for a way to reach out to people. Anyways, I started having conversations with an anarcho-syndicalist on essembly. Thus, I began more vigorously researching the left side of the anarchist spectrum. I looked at things such as An Anarchist FAQ. I began slowly drifting leftward until I eventually became very confused about which anarchist label I could use to best describe myself. Today I consider myself a mutualist anarchist, which could probably be considered somewhere between left and right, but it is definitely left of center. Kevin Carson’s great blog has had a huge influence on my current beliefs. I am no longer a fan of anarcho-capitalism and am very shaky about their classification as anarchists. However, to remain a consistent anarchist I don’t deny people the ability to organize along capitalist lines as long as they don’t interfere with those of us who desire libertarian socialism. The ideas of Agorist anarchists also fascinate me and overlap with some of my own beliefs. Agorism can interestingly be considered a form of leftist anarcho-capitalism or Left-Rothbardsim. I definitely still have plenty more to learn about anarchism. Ultimately, I support the idea of anarchism without adjectives. I believe that anarchists with passionate disagreements can find common ground, work together, and co-exist peacefully while creating a more free and equal world.