#I AM.. MAKING MY WAY THROUGH ICONS AGAIN my school life balance is nonexistent

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Theory, Or: Interclass Activism and a Punk Development

This post serves mostly as any other post on any other website; I wanna write stuff and feel special I guess. That said, allow me to give my background as to why I consider my stance on this to be one of any more-than-minor experience regarding anything.

In my childhood, with an obscene absence of parental or adult authority of any kind, I turned (more often than not) to local punks because that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up. As a result my path through politics has been one of increasingly weird twists and turns that really don’t make a lot of sense. From a small period of christian conservatism in the late 00s, to a nihilist in the early 2010s, an almost groomed-to-be neo nazi as a stepping stone between the two. I had a lot of voices going in and out of my ear and a lot of influences in my path that ultimately led me to where I am today; I smell like shit and I’ve thrown a lot of shit at cops. If I had to choose how to summarise my politics it would be that.

A short disclaimer before going further: Growing up I was a “white, working class” child with no family. The “white working class” myth in America is not only a disgusting, pandering myth. It’s an outright erasure of every non-white citizen within the working class and an attempt to arrange a hierarchy of importance based on outmoded racial demographics. That said I’m not entirely sure on how to approach my birthright identity in any a way more constructive than that, so bear with me while I stumble through that phrase with an increasing reaction of stomach bile every time.

As mentioned; I was ‘white working class’ as a child, this is in the 2000s so that’s hardly of any significance or importance, but when I say working class that is a stretch. My mother was a crackhead, in and out of rehab and only around to be abusive and steal. My father was also a crackhead, albeit the kind that can hold a job. My uncles were drug dealers, my grandma had a weird fucking life and I don’t want to get into that but she was a worker, and the only grandparent alive at the same time as me. This structure in my home life left a large gap of leadership, guidance or comfort and my childhood was divided evenly between time spent outdoors trying to be anywhere but home, and time spent locked in my room hiding from the world. I was diagnosed with ADHD in early childhood, major depressive disorder at 8, generalised anxiety at 11, PTSD at 13 and BPD at 17. Suffice to say balancing all of these things in different intervals, being bounced between different facilities and (as a result) not receiving a continued treatment for anymore than one concurrent issue led to a lot of issues with conventional learning.

This did not stop me from learning, early into my adolescence I established myself as a well-spoken and stalwart voice in my communities (both online and irl) for what I considered to be moral and practical political guidelines. But the formation of the politics that served as the soapbox for those guidelines was something of an event itself that can be traced back to a Ramones CD I received as a birthday gift when I was 5. The case was cracked, the CD was scratched, but I could make out enough of the songs to love it and listen to it everyday until I turned 7 and received a Rancid CD from an uncle who was tired of hearing the Ramones. Shortly after, when I turned 8, a local gave me a Crass CD burnt (very poorly) onto what was a Mariah Carey CD at some point or another. This CD was defaced very horribly and was quickly thrown out within 4 months of coming home with me, but such is life. 

The Crass CD contained a few songs. Banned from the Roxy, General Bacardi, Do They Owe Us A Living, but most importantly for my impressionable young self; Big A Little A. An iconic and time-tested anthem of independent thought and self-sufficiency, a song that rails simultaneously against the systems of oppression so prevalent in the 70s and 80s in the UK, and a song that promotes free expression. It absolutely devastated me in a way I can never put into words, it was transformative like very few things ever have been since and very few things ever will be again. But most importantly it began my path towards anarchism as a school of thought and general principle.

Let’s derail to more relevant information; as a child I struggled to read. Not because I couldn’t or didn’t know how to, I read very well in fact. But I was terminally bored. No matter what it was or what was on the line or what I had to do. I was bored. I would start a book, get 5 pages in, close it and go back to my computer. Go back to the music or the game or whatever, as long as it wasn’t that. As I’ve gotten older I’ve just accepted that I really...don’t like reading. I enjoy writing, I love it, but the act of reading as a way to pass time is one of the most intensely draining and soulsucking experiences in my life, valid as it may be. Most of my political upbringing was based around a mixture of things. Music, conversations, speeches and most importantly a system of failure that is uniquely experienced by every person in the lower classes regardless of identity and race. The system of having your infrastructure devastated, your schools packed, your teachers dismissive of you based on your financial ability to retaliate, and the saving grace of free lunches. Lunches which would be your only food everyday for weeks, sometimes. And in my formative years I spent many weeks and months homeless, not quite “fighting” for survival and in a situation comparatively far less severe than what my nonwhite counterparts have endured, but a difficult one nonetheless.

In many ways around this time I was extremely lucky to grow up in an area as diverse as can be. In a lot of classes I was one of maybe 4 white kids, where most children were latinx or black. I owe this time period a great deal as it allowed me the freedom to learn early how to hold other cultures in a good amount of respect, while also understanding my place at a maintainable but appreciative distance from them. I would later undo this through several years of drug fueled abuse of being given the oh-so-fabled n-word pass by a few black friends, though I can graciously say I moved past that and physically shudder every time I think about that time. But being homeless in this situation, in this region of America and with the great deal of privilege I was handed at birth, offered me an equally great deal of autonomy and my ability to learn where I wanted to learn and how I wanted to learn. If it meant staying up until 5 AM to go on scene trips to the local campus after hours then so be it, but if I wanted to hear what someone had to say I heard what someone had to say. This learning process, while informal and atypical, was the deciding factor in who I became to this day. But there are interclass repercussions for how I’ve learned.

As a young anarchist I attended every event I could. If it was a black bloc I was there. A protest, I was there. Vandalising, squatting and stealing were my favourite pasttimes and I regret absolutely none of it. I can say I’ve punched a cop or two in my time and that’s a pretty fun thing to say albeit entirely alienating when talking to people who aren’t anarchists. Most importantly though; I didn’t show my face. I learned security culture, I learned how to load a gun, I learned how to hide. I did all of it without books and I can say that most of my personal friends have a decent theoretical idea of practise and absolutely no idea how to sustain the execution of it. This, unsurprisingly, has not stopped those people from looking down on me at some point or another. Most still to this day with varying levels of severity. Usually when the topic of anarchy is prevalent I’m asked to give very diplomatic answers or partake in very diplomatic discussions

“What would happen to me in this situation?”

“How would this situation be handled?”

“Who’s your favourite writer?”

“Are you a syndicalist or a mutualist or an egoist?”

At the end of the day most of these discussions generally serve an entirely hypocritical and self-defeatingly toxic pecking order in anarchist circles. Who can theory the other person to death first? so to speak. At its best this behaviour is pedantic and childish. At its worst it just serves to divide current groups and prevent them from further cooperation, the very same cooperation which every single anarchist community inherently relies on for the most minor accomplishment of basic survival. In the last couple of years I’ve adopted a way of dealing with this which is simply in saying; I don’t have time for theory. This isn’t a lie, it isn’t a deflection, it’s the truth. My own time on a day-to-day basis is preoccupied with self-preservation in any capacity that that happens. If self-preservation is a complete distraction from my problems then so be it, no one will ever enforce a schedule on how I deal with my problems unless it’s me or my biological clock. If self-preservation is getting drunk when I wake up, that’s that. If it’s disappearing to go work on something for a few days, that’s that. If it’s networking with other anarchist to establish a network of ideas that’s that. But self-preservation is self-preservation, it is at its core just the act of survival in a capitalist society, one which is built to ensure anything but that survival.

I have noticed that my approach to this is not entirely uncommon in working class circles of anarchist praxis, it’s actually the overriding majority. The anarchists filling potholes are not the same as the anarchists lecturing one another. Debates on the internet for sport do nothing to help communities that are hopelessly marginalised into nonexistence on an hourly basis around the world, so we have to ask ourselves; Where did that mentality come from?

Where is that needless competitive edge in anarchist circles emerging from? My honest input on the matter is muddied, incomplete and unproductive but if I had to place my bet on where it comes from I would place it on a combination of two things. Both of equal performance and importance in their role to this toxicity; the inane publicity of debates, writings and lectures. And the role of competition in capitalist society--the ‘drive to win’ that is drilled from birth. It seems to me most anarchist circles in America and the UK are plagued by self-serving ideologues. People who look at the reputation of Marx, Paine and Chomsky and think to themselves that those people have contributed even a fraction an amount of the importance that unions have in leftist and post-leftist thought and praxis. People have conflated the “teachings” of these men (dogmatic as they are) with the tangible benefits and visibly positive effects that organisations like the IWW have had.

Obviously the teachings of Marx can inextricably be tied to the rise and solidification of union labour in the west, and I will never shortsell that fact no matter how much spite or disdain I hold for marxism. That said the execution, the maintenance and the daily operation of those organisations are independent of their foundational teachings. A framework is not praxis. A foundation is principle, it is logic, but it is not maintenance. To sustain an organisation like the IWW for as long as it has existed is an act not only of spite for a damaging system, it is done out of a sheer perseverance. The ability to transcend the fundamentalist teachings of labour thought and dogma. More importantly it demonstrates the ability to adapt across eras. People familiar with the radical changes, shifts and constant ebb/flow war on unionisation in America can truly appreciate how well the IWW has withstood the test of time.

While the IWW is a far-from-perfect organisation and still presents me with the constant hang-up of withholding total freedom from the working class, it still also presents me a security and benefit that will not happen anywhere else, anytime else. It’s an organisation whose legacy lives on through song as much as any other medium, yet people who are influenced by music and speech are looked down on in so many circles. Obviously this post has to end somewhere so it should end productively.

The total deconstruction of the snide self-serving ideologue status of white anarchists (ironic as it is to pin as a culprit given this post’s existence) is this; It is inherently ableist on its best day and it is gatekeeping classism on its worst. It is both counterproductive to cooperative efforts and a complete betrayal of the concept of solidarity by way of competition.

If you find yourself in this position or confronted after having taken that position, ask yourself the following;

Does the child of the average working class family have the time for theory? Will theory tangibly help them survive? Has theory protected them from homelessness, hunger or sickness? Will theory provide for their family?

The answer to these questions, historically and demonstrably is ‘No’. It will continue to be ‘No’ for as long as the working class is trapped in a system that enslaves us all. Theory can help structure direct action, but theory on its own is a waste of time that will not benefit anyone who truly needs the benefits they can receive, in a system that will happily kill them.