I know that this post is going to provoke much more castigation than sympathy, but I'm really at my wits` end, and I don't personally know people who can help me outside of this website.
I have a personal, and yet, political question to pose: how can I, personally, contribute to the overthrow of capitalism?
My limited experience with what could be called work has been abysmal. For a short period of time (about two or three months, tops) out of the two years or so in which I was receiving an M. Sc. fellowship, I could be said to have actually been working, in the sense that I put in the nine to five (rather, ten to six) in the lab and in the office, was doing my advisor's bidding, etc. Eventually my work tapered off, and then I changed advisers, and then I dropped out. After being depressed for a while, I got a job in construction. I quit that after about a month, because I hated being bossed around and made to feel like an idiot. Note that my boss was one of the nicer ones in the contracted renovation business. I'm still applying for work since then. Just yesterday I botched a job prospect by accidentally presenting my charge sheet (two charges dropped on the day they were brought up, stupid demo arrest) along with a police “honesty certificate”. Stupid. On the other hand, I'm not sure that I wasn't subconsciously sabotaging myself, because I really got a bad vibe off of the recruiter the day before.
Other things I've done have involved freelance translation, which I liked, volunteering for an info-shop, which I'm okay with, and doing some amateur theater productions, which were fun but very emotionally draining. No serious income prospects there.
Currently, I'm back to depending on my parents, especially on the one who is definitely on the capital side of class interest. I doubt that I'll be able to get on the local equivalent of the dole, as recent legislation has made that impossible until I'm a few years older.
Thing is, it's not that I like loitering around. I really enjoy co-operating with and helping people, and I do take my commitments seriously. Hell, sitting at home doing nothing is driving me crazy, and is definitely not helping my clinical depression. But I just hate bosses. I just can't stand having someone around who can tell me what to do.
Bearing all this in mind, it seems to me, that if I ever do get myself settled occupationally, I'll probably be a kind of freelancer, or highly isolated professional wage-slave, so that my ability to take part in organized class struggle in my own workplace will be close to nil. (Indeed, if I become too successful as a freelancer, it may well become tempting to take the final step from petit-bourgeois island to bourgeois mainland, though that's not likely in my case: the only thing I hate more than being bossed around is doing it to other people.)
This poses a problem: as a communist anarchist, what other legitimate prospects of struggle against capitalism and oppression are there in which I could participate? I sure as hell don't see myself becoming some Leninist ideologue, running other people's struggles for them, while clinging to my party position like a mite. I also don't intend to become an “academic radical”, since another of the reasons I dropped out to begin with was my growing realization that academic institutions by their very nature sap the radicalism right out of whoever seeks to find a career in them.
Now, I have recently started and intend to continue publishing opinion pieces, in order to prod others towards self-managed struggle, as well as to critique the fallacies of certain mainstream leftist shibboleths such as national liberation struggles, trade unionism, and so forth; I intervene in Leninist meetings; I was involved in an aborted attempt to set up an anti-military zine for soldiers; in short, I've been acting as a propagandist par excellence, and I could just leave it at that. But it will be intellectually disingenuous of me to do so while I am not personally able to take part in those endeavors I deem worthy to begin with. Moreover, I don't find enough moral satisfaction in it.
I am in the very awkward position where I know that I would never be happy unless capitalism is overthrown, because as long as there is capitalism, there will be bosses, but this very fact makes it impossible for me to do my share in overthrowing it.
I could really use some advice, if any of you could spare it.
my advice is not worry about it, or think about it too much. Sort your life out in terms of incolme and survival first and do what you can meanwhile.
there is the saying "do radical, talk radical" no matter what you do you can implement your class politics and radical opinions and there is no formula or roles which we would need to try to fit in.
trust me, workplace organising is such painstaking and often futile that it is not worth it to organise your lifge around that. Rather live your life as you see fit and organise around that.
one more thing: you might need to fix that attitude issue of working for a boss, well, i guess you dont have to if you have your safety nets, but it might not get you very far. As an independent freelancer you will still be working for a boss or a client who holds the economic strings, its not much different from working for a hands off manager.