Unlike mos,t anarchists, 1 began my political journey on the far right rather than the far left. 1 have since become disillusioned with the politics of both right and left, and with the more extreme forms of feminism. Thus 1 consider myself an anarchist by way of disappointment. a refugee from objectivism, libertarianism, socialism, and lesbian separatism. If 1 have learned anything, it is that political dogma can wield a terrible, if unrecognized, power over otherwise intelligent, reasonable people.
My father, who has subscribed to National Review continuously since its inception, gave me Atlas Shrugged to read when 1 was eighteen. 1 became a devotee of Ayn Rands philosophy of objectivism, attracted by her atheism, her apparent feminism, and her belief in a rational morality. 1 attended taped lectures by Leonard Piekoff of CCNY, anobjectivist philosopher, on the history of philosophy, along with my fellow objectivists. ! went to meetings of the Harvard-Radcliff Ayn Rand Society and the MIT Radicals for Capitalism. 1 socialized exclusively with objectivists, hungry for that abstract pinnacle of happiness which was the ultimate expression of the union of reason and emotion, as described in Rand's novels. My lovers wereobjectivist men who seldom danced. So while others of my generation were protesting the Vietnam War, I was in love with a member of the John Birch Society and helping to distribute pamphlets "exposing" the student movement at Columbia as irrational and barbarous.
My disillusionment with objectivism happened slowly. The first problem was that objectivism didn't seem to make people happy, as i had innocently expected on the basis of my interpretation of Rand's novels; in fact, I met many rather severely miserable objectivists. Evenobjectivists of many years' standing seemed lonely and alienated. 1 began to read much more psychology, especially Erich Fromm and some of the phenomenological psychologists, and 1 liked their view of people as "becoming." I began to question my commitment to a philosophy that couldn't produce the personal happiness I so desperately needed.
The second problem was that objectivism seemed limited to white, middle-class students who were headed for business or technical careers. 1 never met a gay or biackobjectivist, and only a fewobjectivists
over thirty-five. It seemed odd to me that a philosophy which claimed to be true for alt people would only attract a certain segment of the population. I later decided that objectivism had its greatest appeal to young Protestants who had had enough training in science to question their religious beliefs, but who wanted to maintain their allegiance to the conservative politics of their parents. Rand's atheism, her respect for science, and her defense of the free market and capitalist values made her quite attractive to people like myself, who had taken their standard American education seriously, and who wanted to find a belief system which integrated the values of political conservatism with atheism instead of religion.
As I became more critical of the failure of objectivism to produce happiness for everyone, I noticed that the objectivists' favorite slogan, "A is A," was never really questioned. The heroes and heroines in Rand's novels derived moral courage from contemplating this tautological principle, in some mysterious way.. Rand deduced substantive principles from this abstract equivalence, and I gradually fought my way to the realization that this must be fallacious on logical grounds. I knew I was moving away from objectivism for good when I visited the home of anobjectivist couple. As I entered the living room, I saw "A is A" mounted above the fireplace in huge red wooden letters! I was dismayed and embarrassed at this level of relocation. 1 was intellectually ashamed to be part of a group which could so hypostatize the very principles it should be questioning.
My last shreds of confidence in the objectivist movement dissipated when I discovered the true extent of Ayn Rand's personal dogmatism. My image of her changed from the passionate champion of reason evidenced in her novels to a paranoid defender of her own intellectual turf. She contacted the Harvard-Raddiff Ayn Rand Society to inform them that they ought to change their name, since they had never asked her permission to use her name in the title of their student club! She defended an extreme version of the doctrine of "intellectual property," and refused to discuss her ideas with anyone. After the split between Nathaniel Branden, Rand's protege, and Rand herself, charges and countercharges filled The Objectivist Rand's journal. Any illusions of open, rational dialogue evaporated
After freeing myself from objectivism, I was curious about the left. Were leftists really as sinister as Ayn Rand had portrayed them? It was
by now 1971, and the anti- war movement was still going strong, i joined the student anti-war group at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where I was an undergraduate. At the frequent and emotional meetings, I observed some disturbing events. I watched as "outsiders," such as members of the Progressive Labor Party, the Socialist Workers' Party, and Revolutionary Communist Party, came to our student meetings to influence our decisions. Nobody mentioned that they were not students. I raised the issue by pushing for a rule that anyone who voted on a policy had to work to implement it. 1 think we passed the rule, but these people kept coming anyway. Nobody saw these visits as infiltration, but everyone was paranoid about right-wing informants and inciters. This was only the first of many inconsistencies which I attribute to the insidiousness of dogmatic thinking. Whoever agrees with "us" can do no wrong; whoever disagrees with "us" can do no right
As a participant in the meetings, I got swept up in the wild humanness of the leftists. They danced, they laughed, they cried! I thought of theobjectivist dances where nobody danced I experimented with drugs. I participated in the takeover of the college Admissions Office. Demonstrations were my first experience of the thrilfing feeling of solidarity and power. I helped to plan a citywide demonstration which included students from many area colleges. I remember the excitement of marching, thousands strong, down a narrow, cavernous street in the financial district chanting "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win," and hearing the echoes thundering off the buildings into the sky.
As I began to come down from this Dionysian ecstasy, I noticed that extreme leftists had no better grip on any ultimate truth than extreme right wingers. As I studied marxist economics and theory, 1 realized that the marxism of many leftists was as much a habitual system of unquestioned beliefs as objectivism had been for many objectivists. "Isms" seemed to be rationalizations of prior commitments, rather than intellectually honest explorations of possible social arrangements, leftist people were, on the whole, more fun, and their ideas were more fertile, but in the end, the practice was as deeply flawed as on the right. Despite extravagant rhetoric about the working class, most of the leftists I met were middle and upper class intellectuals. Their meetings were often more absurd than those of more conservative people, and the SWP, RCP, PLP, and Spartacists made the objectivists look positively open-minded 1 was homfied when 1 met a member of the SWP who absolutely and
unconditionally refused to tell me his own political views, and insisted on merely repeating over and over "the party line." Extremists on both the right and the left seemed to confuse clarity with insight, simplistic thinking with profound analysis. Driven by the need for certainty, they sacrificed their awareness of the real complexity of the human condition. I still don't know if this knee-jerk dogmatism is necessary in politics, but! deplore its effect on dialogue, consensus, and the search for social truths.
Thus disillusioned, I was quite wary of feminism's more extravagant claims, but I was eager to find what it did have to offer. While the rhetoric was often just as bad as any other movement's, the practice was much better. Women in the movement treated each other for the most part with respect and nurtured each other's growth. But lesbian separatism, as the most extreme form of feminist theory and practice, gave rise to some of the same absurdities 1 had noticed in other extreme belief systems. 1 once saw an advertisement in a local newspaper for a women's picnic, to be sponsored by the Women's Center in Cambridge, which invited all women, but only their female children! And because of the political importance of the concept of sisterhood, the existence of older dykes who wore wing tip men's shoes and men's suits, or who wore leather jackets and carried knives, was definitely played down. Lesbianism became a political fad, and one never really knew whether one was desired as a political validation or as a person. Although I still consider myself a feminist, I have great respect for the distorting power of any political belief system.
Anarchism, as I now understand it, is an ethic rather than a fixed set of beliefs. The starting point of anarchist practice is decency toward real people, rather than abstract constructs. Freedom is the freedom to develop one's humanity and to act for justice, not the freedom to form an irresponsible corporation in the name of the free market, or the freedom to form a dictatorship in the name of the future freedom of a classless society, or the freedom to banish all males from positions of power in society.
Anarchism is more advanced than a system of fixed beliefs in its respect for the fragility, complexity, and ultimate strength of human community. Anarchism builds people and builds community; economic and political solutions grow out of the primary social nexus of community. The current decline in the sense of community.
which many observers attribute to the technological advances of this century, has thus dealt a severe blow to the main resource of anarchism in industrialized countries. We are faced with the prospect of human survival without human community, a tragic loss of the intangible products of socialization such as a general culture, public courtesy, and respect for one another. How can anarchists hope to overcome this overwhelming decline?
The question is one which fills me personally with a sense of tragedy. We have lost something which fewer and fewer people can recognize, much less restore. My own answer is to involve myself with the people around me on the level of survival and intimacy. The shift toward narcissistic pleasures, in my view, is only one indication of what we have lost. To build community means to keep alive the network of obligation, trust, and social identity which has protected people throughout the long history of the human race. The very word obligation fills the rampant single with fear. Trust is something one learns at the therapist's office, and uses only sparingly in everyday life. One's identity is forged through a long process of value analysis and existentialist agony, if one is part of academic culture. The rest of us make do with bravado and anomie. If community is the womb of culture, we are facing the chilting prospect of generations of children indoctrinated with the pseudo-myths of advertising, cartoons, situation comedies, and popular music, growing up into cynical, lonely adults with strong images of violent conflict as the mainstay of their fantasy lives. It makes sense that drug use is on the rise, that senseless violence and barbarous human relationships are replacing what used to be common decency. Those who have never been truly initiated into the social universe cannot be expected to participate in their inherited culture. How can any political way of life, as opposed to a dogma, survive the breakdown of culture itself?
-Jean Chambers