I went through the communist children's movement at the age of nine, in 1930, and into the Young Communist League in 1936. The Spanish civil war brought me back. I'd already broken with the communists - or the Stalinists, more precisely - in 1935. But the civil war in Spain and the desire to aid the remarkable people struggling against Fascism brought me back to the Young Communist League, so that I could effectively participate, however far removed from Spain, in their struggle. By 1938 I was ready to be expelled. By 1939 I was expelled.

I'm a Bookchinite, and nobody has a right to claim that but me.

I will never compromise - I can now say with assurance at the age of 57 - with my libertarian and my revolutionary commitments; they'll have to kill me first. They can't buy me out. I'm just not interested in what they have to offer. I've managed to stick it out, and the thing that has been the most rescuing, the most redeeming, feature of my life that has kept me alive, that has kept me more or less single-minded about my commitment to libertarian ideals once I escaped the trap of Marxist-Leninism - a childhood trap, to be sure - has been consciousness.

My main interests right now are to publish, to write, to explicate various views which I hope have an impact on thinking people.

I don't feel the individualist anarchists, particularly in the American tradition, including the Transcendental tradition of New England, in any way deserve the derogatory comments that are often made about them by the left. When one gets down to it ultimately, my anarcho-communism stems from a commitment to true individuality. My attempt to recover the power and the right of the individual to control his or her life and destiny is the basis to my anarcho-communism.

I would say that today the real support for State power and totalitarianism comes from the Communist parties and the Socialist parties and, where they are sizable, the Trotskyist groups. They are the ones that really frighten me.

I'm not sitting in judgment on whether or not libertarians can participate in a political process whose very nature they oppose.