I’ve moved from conservative capitalist when I was young, through liberal capitalist just after college, to liberal centralized socialist, and have now stopped at the libertarian socialist mile marker. I’m finding that anarchy is a pretty good philosophy, especially when it includes the social justice seeds that I bring with me from my socialist background. I was introduced to anarchist philosophy by my friends Devin and Val. I was intrigued but never ventured too far down that pathway of investigation.

However, I’m almost finished reading The Grape of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. It was only a book I’d always heard about (“hey, I saw the movie, it was good”) or referenced in the Rage Against the Machine cover song: The Ghost of Tom Joad. Having finally read it, I’ve moved it from unknown to one of the top three books I’ve read in my 37 years of life. I’m amazed at how something penned in the 1930s could still resonate so strongly in 2004. Change the names and places, or don’t, and it reads like contemporary America. It says in fiction what my anthropology course on Urban Poverty said through ethnographies and policy studies.

If you take every other chapter of this novel, it is a scathing inditement of big capitalism gone wrong. The story of the Joad family’s trek from Oklahoma to California adds the depth and human feeling that the other chapters talk about in a more generalized tone.

What has this got to do with my political transformation? Well, the government camps in the book appear to be a realization of a libertarian socialist point of view. Self-governed, self-policed, community-based living. Structures and organization pop up when needed and disappear when no longer of use. While this book certainly is fiction, the depth of community is drawn not from Steinbeck’s mind but from the American experience, especially during the Depression. For a well-written piece on poverty in America and the strength of these so-called homeless people, see the book by Kenneth L. Kusmer (2002) called Down & out, on the Road: The Homeless in American History.

While this is an unfinished entry, I wanted to get my thoughts down while they were fresh. More later!