The Paris Commune, the Left, and the ultraleft: in the weeds #1: “What’s Left?” March 2020 (MRR #442)

“The name’s Joey Homicides,” Bob McGlynn said, shaking my hand.

That was in the fall of 1988, when I first visited New York. I have vivid memories of the city’s vibrant anarchist/ultraleft milieu, with folks from WBAI (many from the old Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade), the Libertarian Book Club (LBC), Anarchist Black Cross, THRUSH, and McGlynn’s group Neither East Nor West. I was Bob’s friend and a long-distance part of that community, returning to visit almost annually for the next 15 years. We believed capitalism was on its way out and what would replace it was up for grabs. The drab “real existing socialism” of the day—the Soviet bloc and Third World national liberation axis—versus our vital libertarian socialism of collectives and communes, workers’ councils and popular assemblies, spontaneous uprisings and international solidarity.

Libertarian activities were happening all over. The influence of Poland’s Solidarity labor movement pervaded Eastern Europe with similar actions and movements. We were mere months away from the Revolutions of 1989 that would see the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and bring the old Soviet Union to the verge of its historic collapse. Two months before, a violent NYC police riot against 700 squatters, punks, homeless and protesters—Bob included—carrying banners proclaiming “Gentrification is Class War” turned Tompkins Square Park into a “bloody war zone” with nine arrested and 38 injured. The LBC—before Objectivists and Rothbardians took it over—had put on a forum grandiosely comparing the Tompkins Square Riots to the 1871 Paris Commune the weekend I arrived for my 10-day vacation. The refusal of radical National Guard soldiers in Paris to disarm after the armistice with Prussia that transformed an insignificant French Republic administrative division equivalent to civil townships—the commune—into the Paris Commune much lauded by the Left will be discussed below.

The Arc of History: “What’s Left?” December 2016, MRR #403

It’s the gift that keeps on giving. This election season has been so proclaimed by wannabe comedians and professional pundits alike. Me, I just want it to be over.

I’m finishing this at the beginning of October while the electoral fur continues to fly for the December issue, and I have no idea what will happen. I think Clinton might win by the barest of margins, but I’m not really sure. For all I know I’ll be goose stepping into the new year under President Trump. I’m a lame duck columnist.

Until I have something solid to talk about with regard to the political shitstorm that is the 2016 elections, I would like to note a couple of things as this year draws to a close. First, Maximum Rocknroll is alive and well and, fuck yeah, kicking. The magazine is not flush with cash, but it’s doing more than scraping by. The Archives Project is going full steam as are several other projects. The physical magazine is stunning with the clean new design. About the only problem MRR chronically has is keeping a full complement of coordinators running the show. Second, I’ve published my second novel, 1% Free, through IngramSpark and Barnes & Noble in POD and ebook form.

The novel is set 25 years into the future, at the beginning of 2042. I plan to do a little introduction at my November 3 book launch laying out the implications of my near-future science fiction speculations, which will be history by the time you read this in December. Take a decent historical atlas, like the two-volume Penguin Atlas of World History with lots of date-specific maps and single out three particular years 25 years apart: 1910, 1935, and 1960. Now examine the maps related to those years for distinct geographies. Europe in 1910 still had feudal relics like Czarist Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Balkans were a mess, and Ireland was a colonial part of England. By 1935, the first World War had completely transformed Europe, introducing both independent Irish and Polish states, the Soviet Union, and a unified Yugoslavia across the Balkans. The second World War again radically rearranged the map of Europe by 1960, dividing Germany generally and Berlin specifically between the Western powers and a greatly expanded Warsaw Pact/Soviet Bloc.

A similar temporal survey (1910/1935/1960) can be applied to other regions of the world. The colonial empires that carved up the African continent were shuffled by the first World War before yielding to anti-colonial struggles and independent post-colonial regimes. The British Crown Colony of India shared the subcontinent with native Indian states until they were subsumed into the British Empire and then violently torn apart into an independent Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The feudal countries of East Asia (Siam, China, Japan) were imperialized and colonized by British, French, Dutch, and American powers, provoking national liberation struggles (China, Vietnam) and counter imperialisms (Japan), and resulting in a Communist China and a hypercapitalist, demilitarized Japan.

A quarter century is actually a surprisingly long period of time, long enough for governments and borders and economies and sovereignties to dramatically change. By 2042 in my near-future science fiction novel, Europe has unified around a softcore muslim-rein fascism, the West has nuked a troublesome Middle East to rid the world of Islamic terrorism, Pakistan and India have fought their own nuclear war, and China has descended into red warlordism. And, the southwest of the United States has seceded, joining with the northern states of Mexico into an independent country. I’ve always been partial to the chiliastic sentiment in Yeats’s “Second Coming:” “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere.”

Next column, I’ll review my election-related political predictions, do some speculating on the upcoming year, and maybe pioneer a new philosophical movement.