By Cake Boy

Is Cake Boy an anarchist?

The problem is that the word anarchism can mean a lot of things.

To most people, it means the kind of woke/leftist anarchist/idealist, or it means the libertarians who dream of a “really just and free market.”

But my perception of anarchism always came from Stirner. My perception of anarchism was/is very radical, to the core of what authority and subjectivity are.

If I had to call myself an anarchist, I would be an individualist anarchist, a Stirnerite.

The problem is that Stirner never called himself an anarchist. I think it’s a bit strange that people put him in the range of anarchists without ever asking him.

In a way, Stirner’s work is apolitical. His work is not about some ‘ism’ that wants to conquer the world.

We see that Stirner is a philosopher who thinks about certain topics, such as existence, control, power, desire, materialism/idealism, free will, the psyche, interpersonal interactions, etc.

Later thinkers like Sartre and Foucault also worked on these topics. We started to call these thinkers existentialists or postmodernists, but we didn’t call them anarchists.

We also come to the domain of language. What does a word mean? How do people read a word? What is a word’s value?

Everyone uses words differently, especially in politics. People use the word ‘woke’ differently. Some people mean by woke ‘identity politics’. Other people mean by ‘woke’ every critique on capitalism. People use the word ‘left’ differently. Some people mean by ‘left’ all the Marxist parties in your country. Other people mean by ‘left’ everything that’s culturally progressive.

When I meet civil servants who tell me I’m ‘part of the state’ and have ‘duties,’ I like to call myself an anarchist to shock them and reclaim myself. They irritate me, and I have to make a political statement.

But when I see all the Antifa fools online, who also use the word ‘anarchist,’ it’s less tempting to use this label.

Language is used, some philosophers said. The problem with the word ‘anarchism’ is that it’s useless. It’s like a tool, and it is not clear what you can use it for. It’s a tool with different shapes, and people use it for all kinds of reasons in all sorts of situations.

People use the word anarchism to fight certain conservative tendencies in society. They also use it to propagate Austrian economics, use it in the context of the class struggle, refer to 19th-century French socialism, and make clear that they have an existentialist worldview.

A lot of the infighting in the anarchist scenes has to do with the confusion around these core concepts.

The only thing I can say is that my ontological views are existentialist. And when it comes to political theories, I think in the direction of classical liberalism, European social democracy, Georgism, and radical decentralism/federalism. I have always been interested in both Marx and Mises—the socialists and liberals- and the proposals and arguments for these visions.

I can also say that (political) anarchism formed my philosophical development. The first complicated book I read was God and the State by Bakunin. After this, I started to read more philosophy and even started to study it.

If I’m an anarchist, it depends on the people you ask. Woke people will call me a “fascist.” Libertarians call me a “Marxist’.” Neoliberals who don’t understand politics, or anything, call me an “extremist.”

A word is just a word. How you use it depends on your situation and what it means in that context. But in the end, it has no ultimate value in itself. We think we can unravel the world by using language. But the more political niche words we create, the more confused we get.

On the other hand, we also need these words to talk about the world. So, this is a problem.

In Zen Buddhism, they say it’s not about what you say; it’s about what you do not say. They think that language blocks the path to spiritual knowledge.

When you study the 19th century, you see that all kinds of interesting ideas, in a way, were diffuse. Syndicalism came out of Marxism and was an inspiration for fascism (strangely enough). Proudhon was a nationalist and the first anarchist (back then, anarchism and nationalism were closer together than is now the case. Anarchists often glorified specific tribal/cultural elements inherent within nations). Many of these movements were based on classical liberal economy or Hegelian philosophy. Some of these movements blended a sort of Nietzschean ‘struggle for survival/social Darwinism’ within their theory. An Italian Marxist union leader could easily become a fascist. Fascism drew from avant-garde art movements, which we now associate with ‘the left’. Social democrats were conservative, while Italian fascists were, in a way, hyper-progressive. Both anarchists and fascists glorified the body, strength, and youth. And a lot of these movements drew inspiration from the emerging theosophy (anarchists had contact with Steiner).

This cacophony of theory, ideas, and sentiments later formed our modern political landscape. A lot of our thinking and culture are an inheritance from these traditions that developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

For example, in Woke, we see the progressivism we saw in Italian fascism/futurism. The cancel culture we see today is something we saw in the authoritarian communist political culture. The supposed individualism in neoliberalism might be a vague echo of Nietzsche’s work. The current European socialist parties have their roots in German Marxism. The modern libertarian populism has its roots in Bastiat’s work, etc.

If anarchism were a living movement, I could say, ‘I’m part of the anarchist movement.’ But where I live, this isn’t really the case. There is no anarchist movement here. There are only some cults that claim the word anarchism.

So, in the end, I’m just me—a pretty egocentric person who studies philosophy.

This will be the last article I write.