A lesson from a Communist café

OAKVILLE, ONT.—I recently got an unexpected lesson in Communist ideology when I came across a report detailing the demise of an “anti-capitalist” café in Toronto called The Anarchist. It’s an interesting tale, which oddly enough, brings together the worlds of high-end specialty coffee and Marxist dogma, since apparently the goal of the café's founder, a guy named Gabriel Sims-Fewer, was to create a “subversive” alternative to the usual model of workers “producing wealth for their parasitic employers.” Sims-Fewer told the media his aim wasn’t to seek “short-term profits," but “to perform whatever function the workers decide, in whatever way the workers decide to do it.” Indeed, in good Marxist fashion, The Anarchist featured a system where patrons could pay whatever they could for coffee. Alas, after only a year in operation, Sims-Fewer announced his cafe would close its doors on May 30, saying “the lack of generational wealth/seed capital from ethically bankrupt sources left me unable to weather the quiet winter season, or to grow in the ways needed to be sustainable longer-term.” Of course, much of the media’s coverage of the Anarchist’s decline and fall had a mocking tone to it. And it’s easy to see why. First off, Sims-Fewer's archaic and pompous Marxist rhetoric (compared to him, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh sounds like Donald Trump) comes across as comical. Secondly, conservatives took satisfaction in adding The Anarchist’s downfall to their ever-growing list of examples which prove “communism just doesn’t work.” Thirdly, it’s funny to think of someone setting up a café to push a fringe political viewpoint that would alienate anybody to the right of Leon Trotsky or Joseph Stalin. But maybe Sims-Fewer will have the last laugh. In a surprise plot twist, Sims-Fewer announced on his café website a last week that “thanks to a huge influx of support, and a very generous donation of publicity and attention from the Christian Conservatives of Texas and Florida, the Anarchist will continue to operate after May 30.” So clearly, Sims-Fewer deserves a lot of credit. After all, he came up with a unique and imaginative way to promote his ideology. In other words, even though its business model might not be sustainable in the long run, in the short term, The Anarchist café was a propaganda success. In fact, it could be argued The Anarchist has turned out to be a better vehicle for promoting Marxism than Canada’s official Communist party. After all, in the last Canadian federal election, the Communist party garnered less than one percent of the vote. Few Canadians likely know it even exists. By contrast, the closing of The Anarchist café generated international media coverage, giving Sims-Fewer a massive platform to—if only briefly—espouse his left-wing creed. As a matter of fact, all that attention resulted in Sims-Fewer receiving enough support to keep his café alive, at least for a little bit longer. This is a lesson for all those out there who believe in certain political principles, but are disillusioned with traditional party politics. Unfortunately, too many of these people give in to apathy and simply drop out of the political process. But as The Anarchist example proves, there are ways to promote your values that don’t involve joining or supporting a political party. Now I’m not suggesting anyone set up their own ideologically themed cafes that are probably doomed to fail. But why not consider supporting non-political party actors that are pushing for values and ideals you believe in, i.e., advocacy groups, charitable organizations or even YouTube channels? As Sims-Fewer might put it, you have nothing to lose but your chains of apathy. Gerry Nicholls is a communications consultant. The Hill Times