The Almost Anarchist

I met NH4 at the "disorganizing" meeting of the Anarchist Party of Canada - Colorado Chapter of the Groucho Marxists. Invitation came by a scribbled magic-marker note posted in the lobby of Denver Free University, which was neither free nor a university. Such a tongue-in-cheek chuckle proved simply irresistible. This is what my life, the life of an almost anarchist, had come to - attending a non-university's non-courses in a big city's slums.

An inner city row-house tenement hosted the meeting. A long, lightless hallway led into the dingy apartment, the sort where every color is off hue. Thin brown stains circumnavigated the musty lampshades. A worn bar stool elevated above dilapidated folding chairs tripartite the battered coffee table. An irregularly puffy davenport, guaranteed to swallow any sitter, squared the discussion area.

Ripped out cartoons and torn posters competed with thumb tacked print pictures of famous political personages, some scarred with dart holes and others adorned with drawn-in horns and beards. Entitled the "Dynamic Duo" showed Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey dressed as a pot-bellied Batman and a flat-footed Robin. Nixon and Agnew, in biker attire, rode a mini-bike over a character labeled, "the silent majority." An Elmer Fudd-clad Jimmy Carter swinging an oar saying, "Dat darn wabbit."  A sombrero-wearing, cigar-smoking Ron "Ray-Gun," replete with ammo belts crisscrossing his chest, balanced M-16s in both hands. The weathered mural of Che made famous by rolling papers. Quotes from Russian anarchists, such as, Emma Goldman, Kropotkin, and Bachunin penciled over irregular rectangles on the walls. The off-white fridge was plastered with small yellow personal not political Post-it notes.

Roach carcasses rot on the whitish tile adjacent the fridge. A noxious insecticide smell ensnarls the room. Work is, to most people, preferable to such a standard of living.

Five anarchists met. A raggedy, aging white-pony tailed, white-bearded yippie, sat expressionless on the wooden stool positioned against the wall. Attired in Brooks Brothers comfies, a middle-age psychiatrist, Shrink, sank deep into the couch. A garrulous man in jeans and blue sweater, NH4, sat on a fluff pillow, having discarded the chair. The meeting's Disorganizer was tall and thin with long stringy blond hair and beady blue eyes. He sat on the couch's left arm. And myself, casually attired, sat on the folding chair.

Yippie was an unreconstructed Abbie Hoffmanite, self-cast a deconstructionist. Shrink described himself as a materially comfortable, but intellectually lonely philosopher and humanist. NH4 was a repentant new leftie turned libertarian. Disorganizer was a former Republican turned science fiction junkie metamorphosis anarchist-rex. I was a former McGovernite, an ex-bureaucrat reduced to making an honest, if illegal, living operating an unlicensed, uninsured household goods moving service.

Funk & Wagnall's defines anarchism as "(t)he theory that all forms of government are incompatible with individual and social liberty and should be abolished." "There is no government like no government," goes a libertarian lapel button.

Each anarchist bore witness to his long and lonely march into anarchy as ideology. The path to extremism differs in adulthood, where it is symptomatic of a profound personal alienation, than in youth, where idealism blazes the trail. Each fringie shared a personalized tale of woe and injustice leading to questioning, research, and revelation into the commitment.

Disorganizer said it best as to what characterizes the anarchist, "Anarchists are the only people, I've met, not out to get their hands on the cops and the guns." Amen!

It was agreed to not participate in the process because to do so would endorse the state. We would not endorse the system by running Nobody For Mayor. Nobody Will Reduce Your Taxes, Nobody Will Cut Regulations, Nobody Will Help, Nobody Cares, Vote For Nobody. The campaign would be a handbill and graffiti affair of the kind intended to demoralize the League of Woman Voter types.

From there two factions emerged:  the anarcho-communalist "Property is Theft" syndicalism wing and the anarcho-capitalist "Taxation is Theft" libertarian wing. This rift pits the Truth versus Heresy. Intersecting these ideological incompatibles is a circular spectrum of opinion where the left and right merge into their respective corollary. Opposite our position is where fascism and communism converge.

NH4 and I took the free market, radical individualist line. Yippie and Disorganizer took the communitarian, tribalism line. Shrink positioned himself as mediator.

"Anarchy is communal not atomistic," decreed Yippie.

"Tribalism is not indigenous to the American melting pot. Society developed from the amalgamation and assimilation of migrating masses. We are subculturalizing and deinstitutionalizing. America can only be communalistic in a volition manner and only in a networking framework," I argued.

"Right deviationism," Yippie growled.

"Anarchism is not about ivory tower debating societies. Anarchism is about personal and class empowerment. Anarchy uplifts the powerless; it emboldens the exploited; it enfranchises the workers," retorted Disorganizer.