Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 111
Irish-born U.S. student called Leo who was staying at the
boardinghouse where Mukerji worked befriended him, having
noticed him in classes. By the way, inquired Leo casually,
"Do you know anything about anarchism?" Mukerji replied
that he did, and was a believer in Kropotkin's communism.
To which his new friend sneered, "That's not anarchism.
That's mush." Leo then launched into a diatribe on the "difference
between ... Kropotkin's mush and To lstoi's mush.
And he ended with a tremendous defense of [Pierre-Joseph]
Proudhon's Anarchism which was anti-mush." Mukerji COI11-
mented, "Of course 1 had heard of these gentlemen, though
I had not read them all. Tolstoi I knew by heart, Proudhon
only by name:' Leo then showed Mukerji the pictures on
his wall: Adam Smith, Tolstoy, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Marx,
Victor Hugo, and Jesus Christ. Leo was a disenchanted ex­
Jesuit-in-trainingwhom socialists had lured to the creed
of Charles Darwin and Spencer. But socialism too had
disappointed him. "To make a long story short; he said,
I began to speak from soap boxes for the Socialists
on different street corners, but as I associated with
them I began to see that the majority of them had
perfectly ragged minds . ... [IJn order to overcome
the system of the church, the Socialists gave me the
system of social order, and that seemed even more
gruesome . .. so 1 threw over the whole Socialist
regime and took to individualistic anarchism.
He continued, "I read To lstoi, Kropotkin and a lot of others.
This suited my temperament. It substituted 'no system'