maybe, but i personally wouldn’t be a communist without Kerouac and Ginsberg and the like
although yeah, looking back those people really aren’t anyone anybody should look up to
Yeah, Ginsberg really pushed me into being communist. She showed that liberal reformism is a dead horse and her death in 2020 was the funniest shit
Yeah, I’ve heard that from a handful of guys I know. What about Kerouac did it for you? Didn’t he wind up becoming an anti-communist who ratted people out to the feds?
Yeah probably, he was pretty conservative in his politics. I half-remember something from the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test where he got upset with the Merry Pranksters because they had fashioned the american flag into pants, and he thought it was a desecration of the flag. He was also pro-Vietnam war, voiced support for McCarthy and got mad at Ginsberg for his “pro-Castro bullshit.” He was raised very Catholic and very conservative, and that upbringing influenced him especially as he got older and older.
I think the messages I got from reading those guys laid down a good foundation for becoming a communist. These guys were writing in the late 40s and 50s, and a lot of the messages I picked up were about rejecting these sort of rigid traditional values of white America in the 50s. They obviously weren’t the only people who had this message, but they were privileged white dudes just sort of drifting around doing a ton of drugs, and I was also a privileged white dude, very aimless and doing a ton of drugs at the time, so I sort of related to their whole scene and was more receptive to them.
Also, I obviously had gotten this message of nonconformity and not being bound by rigid traditions, being open minded, etc. from other sources, movies, tv, etc. But with the Beats it seemed like they weren’t just rejection but were also concerned with creating new ways of living, new ways of relating to one another, etc. There was more creation that was beyond just a general “don’t conform to society!” message. So I think 1) they instilled this understanding of myself opposed to 1950s american values - which, when I began getting into politics, linked to terms like “white America” and “the West” and 2) I started concerning myself with the creation of new ways of living and organizing society, not just nonconformity and opposition
I have no idea what I’d think if I went back to that stuff now, and its been years since I’ve touched any of that stuff. But this is what I can remember getting out of it. I was not political in any sense at the time, but its I think what started me on the path that has led to Marxism
