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Anders Maybeck is a political philosopher, writer, musician, and politician that currently resides in Rochester, NY. He originally ran two write-in campaigns as a perennial candidate for Sheriff of Ontario County in 2014 and for Rochester City Council East district in 2023. He also ran a campaign for House of Representatives NY-25 in the 2024 Democratic primary election against incumbent Joe Morelle, but dropped out of the race in late February. He is the author of three books - Cannabis Communism: The Politics of Consciousness, Cannabis Communism: The Revolution of Everyday Life, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (which is being re-released as Fear and Loathing in Rochester, NY).

He has also recorded and produced six albums and three EPs as a singer/songwriter and guitarist. His most recent releases are The Jam-Punk International Tape Vol. 2 and Zapatista under the new band name The Sons of Babylon.

Philosophically, he has endorsed and advanced a worldview known as "transcendental historicism" (defined as "not a rarefied version of comparative politics, but a typology of ideological regimes"), identifying his political philosophy as libertarian socialism/Marxism with the characteristics of "libertarian Leninism", "libertarian possibilism", and the materialist and orthodox Marxist notions of economic determinism and dialectical materialism, falling short of class reductionism and understanding the need for an intersectional interpretation of the sociopolitical forces at work in the existing system of capitalist domination.

In terms of religion, Maybeck is a follower of both Rastafari movement and Mahayana Buddhism, considering himself the reincarnation of the Maitreya Buddha and the second coming of Jesus Christ, with the titles Bodhisattva of Monroe Ave., Jam-Punk, and Transcendental Historicism, or known as the Buddha of Transcendental Historicism, and also being given the title by Rochester locals of 'the Haile Selassie of the Rochester Commune'. He presides over the Pure Land of the Inner Court of Tushita, which he also calls the Pure Land of the Buddhist Groundation, a reference to Rastafari movement. He is the founder of the Transcendental Historicist School of Mahayana Buddhism - The 5th Mansion of Rastafari.

Works

Cannabis Communism: The Politics of Consciousness

In the first part of 'Cannabis Communism: The Politics of Consciousness' he explores invented concepts in post-structuralism which are relevant to Cannabis Communism, a philosophical motif based on Mark Fisher's "Acid Communism" including actionism and the great refusal, transcendental historicism, the Funk Punk, avant-punk, peace punk, and jam-punk, the Youth International Party and the Situationist International, unitary urbanism, the critique of and revolution of everyday life, the utopian impulse and the utopian gesture, speculative utopianism, ethico-aesthetics, psychiatric hegemony, acid casualties and schizo-culture, the politics of consciousness, etc.

In the second part of 'Cannabis Communism: The Politics of Consciousness' entitled "Political Subjectivity and New Materialism", he apprehends the horizon of the existence of a post-capitalist desire, as formulated by Mark Fisher, elucidating his viewpoint on political theory and philosophy with Lacanian psycholanalysis, anti-psychiatry, Western Marxism, critical theory, critical psychology, post-Marxism, post-phenomenology, structural Marxism, and the works of Slavoj Zizek. He provides the terrain for a structural and post-phenomenological account of political subjectivity as it regulates subjects and interpellates subjects as the "primal scene of ideology" in Althusser's view as a policeman hailing a man on the street, shouting "Hey You!". The works of Slavoj Zizek provide an account of the constitutive naivité and cynicism that leads to the veiling of social, political, and class consciousness, with a false consciousness that keeps subjects at a distance from the hegemonic ideology, but at the same time keeps them controlled, including by Althusser's structure of the repressive State apparatus, whereas political freedom in today's contemporary society depends on the freedom of discourse, or freedom of speech. If political actors influence public opinion on a certain level, where radical democratic political participation in the form of people's assemblies, the expansion of democracy, and an end to income inequality, the rising of class consciousness depends on speech acts and direct action that have an affect on the other subject. The horizon of class consciousness, which he calls the Unding and the Endziel, attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre, and Laclau and Mouffe, respectively, acts as a threshold for the active transformation of society into the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

In the third part of 'Cannabis Communism: The Politics of Consciousness' entitled "It's Not My Fault If Reality Is Marxist", he presents what he sees as the fundamentals of Marxist political theory, citing authors and political figures such as Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Antonio Gramsci, and Rosa Luxemburg, among others. In formulating his concept of "the Marxist problematic", or "the idea of Communism", he explains various concepts in Marxism, including ideology as a false consciousness, class consciousness, the emergence of a 'proletarian ideology' (referencing Alain Badiou), Marx's notions of class-in-itself and class-for-itself, Gramsci's cultural hegemony, Marxism as "the philosophy of praxis" or "the science of class struggle", base and superstructure, Marxian class analysis (proletariat and bourgeoisie, the lumpenproletariat, petty-bourgeoisie, peasants, and landlords), the Marxist theory of alienation, feudalism and historical materialism, the history of factionalism in Soviet Russia, the terminology of socialism versus communism defined (lower-sage communism and upper-stage communism), the Marxist formula of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need", criticism of this Stalinist reversion "to each according to his work" with an argument for voluntary labor relations and the "refusal-of-work" right under socialism, the workers' council, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the free association of producers, the deformed workers' state and the degenerated workers' state, democratic centralism ("freedom of discussion, unity of action") and vanguardism, the history of War Communism and the New Economic Policy, and more.

The fourth part of 'Cannabis Communism: The Politics of Consciousness' entitled "The Revenge of Freud - On the Liberation of Mental Illness" is basically a long polemic against the contemporary mental health system. He argues that the economic conditions of neoliberalism have forced society into a state of being where our suffering, the definition of mental health itself, is posed as a behavioral problem in need of modification with this erroneous monicker "behavioral health". He argues that one's autonomy is completely invalidated by cognitive-behaviorist obscurantism, whereas the mental health system must undergo "the revenge of Freud" to "return to Freud" (i.e. the theoretical basis of Lacanian psychoanalysis) and enact a communist program as a way forward for the liberation of the mentally ill population. He notes that while Freud and Lacan were conservative figures generally, their works can rather be used to support revolutionary Marxist political theory as has been proven by many psychoanalysts and philosophers in postmodernity. Along the lines of anti-psychiatry, he states that in the psychiatric setting "every act, statement, and experience of the person is ruled invalid according to the "rules of the game" established by his family, and later by the psychiatrist, nurse, therapist, etc."

Thought

On Dialectical Materialism

Maybeck writes, "Then Marx's and Engels' [as in the correction] interpretation of dialectics can be interpellated from the subjective character of contradiction in thought, driving forward history through these disagreements, with antagonisms emerging and decaying in the face of capitalist contradictions, whereas every thought is always reflective of the material reality, not in the sense of some false empiricism, but dialectically as a form of rationalism, where reality has a “logically intrinsic character and structure”."

Unding and Endziel

Maybeck's theory of the Unding and the Endziel also goes against all aims of analytical Marxism, but attempts to bring to a close the "end of history" and the "ultimate aim" of political parties as communism, with power centers such as revolutionary intercommunalism and reactionary intercommunalism, and that the "state of nature" from primitive societies of primitive communism is the same "ultimate aim" as the state of nature resolving the dialectical contradictions and antagonisms under capitalist realism, as well as progressing forward to socialism, but he takes a very orthodox Marxist stance on the need to pass through the stage of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat before arriving at pure communism. He generally adheres to orthodox Marxist interpretations of dialectical materialism and historical materialism.

There are two quotes cited as where the pair of concepts of Unding and Endziel originate from:

The first quote is by Jean-Paul Sartre where he says Marx's materialist metaphysics is “unthinkable in the sense of an Unding, a thought which cannot stand the test of mere thought, since it is a naturalistic, pre-critical, pre-Kantian, pre-Hegelian metaphysic...the function of a Platonic ‘myth’ which helps proletarians to be revolutionaries.”

The second quote is by Laclau and Mouffe where in referencing the Endziel they say that "these [immediate material interests] can be consolidated only if the immediate material interests of the working class are subordinated to the Endziel, the final socialist objective, and this presupposes the subordination of economic struggle to political struggle, and thus of the trade unions to the party”.


Cannabis Communism

This “philosophical motif” of Cannabis Communism, inspired by Mark Fisher’s essay “Acid Communism”, is based on three foundational definitions of Cannabis Communism: (1) the fusion of revolutionary libertarian socialist politics with the 1960s counterculture; and (2) the transitory and autonomous communities created by live music; and (3) the micropolitics of smoking cannabis. In the beginning of Cannabis Communism: The Politics of Consciousness, he starts with “The Genealogy of Acid Communism” where he traces back the idea of Mark Fisher’s Acid Communism.

The Revolution of Everyday Life

The Revolution of Everyday life is meant to be “a peaceful and non-violent revolution of everyday life”.

Maybeck states, “The liberation of everyday life must be fought with direct action, and the liberation of everyday life can be brought about only with a Marxist program, informing a form of platformism, and enact actionism through libertarian possibilism, with libertarian socialists and Marxists effectively enacting an entry into electoral politics, where the Déclassé Intellectual finds himself at home.”

Transcendental Historicism

Transcendental Historicism is "not a rarefied version of comparative politics but a typology of ideological regimes".

Actionism

Actionism is generally associated with the concept of the great refusal.

As a serious theory of political praxis, with various previous definitions for the term including “an emphasis on social action over theory”, “a form of left-wing anti-intellectualism”, and a macabre avant-garde art movement, Actionism is any practico-inert and material embodiment of political praxis through class struggle. Actionism is the study of social action as it exists to perpetuate class struggle, circuited and informed by class consciousness. Actionism “leads towards new forms of social, political, and economic rationalities, subjectivities, and organizations of power. As societies of control are constantly accelerating in complexity, according to Maybeck, we must resist this acceleration, overcoding, and stratification of flows by following the nomadic intensities to create situations of political action that in all their force resist segregation in the process of destratification.” Later in “The Actionist Manifesto” (CCTPOC) Maybeck writes, “Actionism must proceed by means of the promotion of political literacy and the contemporary reevaluation of Marxist texts, a form of psycho-education that links networks of power to the individual’s experiences and allows them to overcome the oppressive and scarce conditions of existence under capitalism, including class-based or intersectional discrimination. Actionism aims at a historical and political form of psycho-education.”

In 'Cannabis Communism: The Politics of Consciousness' in "The Actionist Manifesto", he writes:

"A specter is haunting the counterculture - the specter of Cannabis Communism. Every revolution must resurrect the ghosts of all past failed revolutions. Just as there is no such thing as Situationism, there is no such thing as Actionism. Actionism is not a political philosophy, nor a metaphysics. It is an ethico-aesthetics - a politics of consciousness. Actionism is the ethico-aesthetics of equality and dehierarchization. But as Hardt and Negri proclaim, “We are not anarchists, but communists”."

The Revolutionary Proletarian Multitude

Maybeck argues that in contemporary society, the sole revolutionary agent is that which he terms the revolutionary proletarian multitude, consisting of the tripartite division of the working class, the unemployed, and lumpenproletariat.

Shortly after the early 2024 release of Cannabis Communism: Understanding Postmodern Society, Maybeck in an X/Twitter post described a new outline for class conflict based on Mao Zedong's Five Red Categories and Five Black Categories:

Five Red Categories

1. Working Class
2. Unemployed
3. Lumpenproletariat
4. Students and intellectuals
5. Small business owners

Five Black Categories

1. Landlords
2. Capitalist business owners
3. Psychiatrists
4. Police officers
5. Right-wingers

Bibliography

• Cannabis Communism: The Politics of Consciousness (2021)
• Cannabis Communism: The Revolution of Everyday Life (2023)
• Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '22-'23 (2023)
• Cannabis Communism: Understanding Postmodern Society (2024)

Discography

• Demo (2013) [EP]
• Chaos (2014)
• Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (2020)
• Chaos, Part II (2020)
• The Diplomat (2020)
• DC EP (2021) [EP]
• Ever Since Darwin (2021)
• The ESD EP (2021) [EP]
• Then I Too Am a Cannabis Communist! (2022)
• The Jam-Punk International Tape Vol. 1 (2024)
• The Jam-Punk International Tape Vol. 2 (2024) - w/ The Sons of Babylon
• Zapatista (2024) - w/ The Sons of Babylon

Filmography

• Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail for House of Representatives '23-'24 - The Documentary (2024)