About Paul
I was born in Thunder Bay, ON, but for the past 6 years I have lived in Ottawa/Gatineau (currently the latter).
I recently finished my masters degree in political science at Carleton University where much of my research focussed on media studies, political theory and international politics. My undergraduate degree was in political science with a minor in philosophy and a concentration in Canadian politics.
I get a lot of comments on this blog from people who are unsure of where I stand on issues since I attack both liberalism and conservatism with relatively equal fervour on this blog. To answer these comments, I would have to say that my political beliefs can be more or less summed up in four parts.
#1) By far the three largest academic influences on my life and political thinking are: George Orwell, Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky. Other figures who have a significant impact on my world outlook include:
Plato
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Antonio Gramsci
Randal Marlin
Dwayne Winseck
Peter Emberley (perhaps one of the biggest influences on this list despite the fact that now I strongly disagree with many aspects of his work)
Aldous Huxley
Mel Hurtig (despite the fact that I’m a staunch anti-nationalist)
Henry David Thoreau
Carl Sagan
Ellen Meiksins Wood
Eleanor Burke Leacock
Cornell West
#2) It you plot political philosophies on a two-dimensional grid with the vertical (y) axis representing the authoritarian/libertarian continuum and the horizontal (x) axis representing the economic left/right continuum, I would stand on the far edge of the libertarian-left quadrant of this political spectrum. Thus I am ardently opposed to authoritarianism in all its forms as well as the rightist and liberal economic schools of thought. In relation to other ideologies and peoples (academics are in green, politicians are in blue), I can be placed here:
(The sourcing for this graph is based on raw data from the politicalcompass.org website with which I superimposed several graphs together to generate this graph.)
#3) My political positions can be summarized as follows:
-I am an anti-Leninist Marxist.
-I alternate between sometimes calling myself a Marxist-Anarchist or a Libertarian Marxist. I believe the differences between Marxism and Anarchism are far too often over-blown beyond recognition. Thus, my reading of Marx is anti-statist and anti-authoritarian.
-I believe that Anarchism without Marxism is useless; and Marxism without the ideals of Anarchism, is dangerous.
-I believe that the Anarchist notion of anti-hegemony is vacuous and empty and thus I am more sympathetic toward the neo-Marxian notion of counter-hegemony.
-I believe that the Soviet Union had already drifted a long ways from its putatively Marxist democratic ideals by the time Stalin took over following Lenin’s death. Thus, while I agree with Trotskyists on most issues, I do not identify as a Trotskyist because I do not believe they are critical enough of Lenin.
-I believe that Marx was correct when he said, in a September 8th, 1872 speech he gave in Amsterdam that:
“[W]e have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal [revolution] are everywhere the same. You know that the institutions, morals, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries… where workers can attain their goal by peaceful means.”
#4) Given how extremely dangerous it is politically to base any social organization scheme on a putatively inerrant or infallible text be it secular or not, I believe there’s great reason why we shouldn’t treat Marx as anything more than a particularly insightful and ingenious 19th Century dead white guy. It is on this basis that I call myself a Marxist. It isn’t because there aren’t any errors or problems with his work (because there certainly are). It’s quite simply because I believe his work to be brilliant and to have greater explanatory and heuristic value than anybody else’s that I’ve read.
Recent Comments