Customer Reviews

Anarchy After Leftism

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Dare one write a positive review of anything written by Bob Black? Or a review at all? After all, Bob Black is the enfant terrible and bęte noire of the North American anarchist scene. Countless are the accusations against this man. They are probably all true. Lev Chernyi has a point, warning the reader to stay away from this shadowy character...in a foreword to Black's own pamphlet. Those who want the other side of the story can access the new edition of Chaz Bufe's "Listen, Anarchist!" on the web.

WHAM! Was that an axe being gently rammed through my front door?

"Anarchy after leftism" speaks for itself. It's Black's response to Murray Bookchin's "Social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism". Black accuses Bookchin (whom he likes to call The Dean) of being a closeted authoritarian, city-statist and Marxist with a penchant for high tech and the Athenian polis. Black defends what he calls heterodox or post-leftist anarchism, apparently a kind of anti-work, individualist, and moderately primitivist form of anarchism. He also claims that Bookchin was once a real anarchist, who later backslided into moralistic, crypto-authoritarian, anti-hippie positions, which occasionally resemble those of the Neo-Cons.

As an outsider to the conflict, I find it to be richly and fecundly entertaining. But no, I would probably not go along well with Black. I'm no anarchist. But then, why are the social anarchists so incensed at the lifestyle anarchists in the first place? Why not simply avoid them and go on with whatever it is social anarchists are doing? The only explanation I have for the obsession with "lifestyle anarchism" is that social and lifestyle anarchists belong to the same social milieu. What's keeping these people together? Lifestyle, perhaps?

But I'm digressing. Black's incendiary rant might be of some interest to those wanting to find out how other anarchists reacted to Murray Bookchin. Another critical pamphlet of Bookchin is David Watson's "Beyond Bookchin". To the general public, of course, this entire conflict is like seagull droppings on the ocean shore. And now, I'm off to my private little opium factory!

Having read several Bob Black's books, I must say that this is one of his finest. He is the most intelligent of the anarchist writers out there. He makes an incredible argument against social ecology and Murray Bookchin as the "Left that Was". In order for Anarchy to have a decent shot-we (anarchists) need to leave the left behind. I also highly recommend his "Abolition of Work" as the definitive word on no-work philosophy. Highly recommended.

To be brief, Black utterly obliterates Bookchin.

If you are interested in anarchism as an actual political philosophy, and not just as the booga-booga-fnord code word for nihilism that the nightly news have turned it into, I consider this a must read. I'd also heartily recommend "The Abolition of Work and other Essays", "Friendly Fire", and whatever else you can get your hands on.

If Anarchist writing was jazz, then Bob Black would be Miles Davis and everyone else would be various forms of muzak.

Bob Black's Anarchy After Leftism is a mean-spirited, but scrupulously fair, rebuttal to Murray Bookchin's final work, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm published in 1995. And after a fascinating if long winded wind-up Black states his purpose in writing Anarchy After Leftism.

"My present purpose", says Black, " is not to take full measure of Bookchinism, only to characterize it as what it manifestly is, as an ideology of government--democracy-- not a theory of anarchy. Bookchin's 'minimal agenda' - this hoary Marxist word 'minimal' is his, not mine (1987:287) - is unambiguously statist, not anarchist. " [p.82].

So in Black's view Bookchin's anarchism is more like Marxist statism disguised as something else.

And with that said, Black proceeds to parse and deconstruct Bookchin's Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph and footnote by footnote in a very snarky, obnoxious, and often hilarious fashion. And all the while maintaining his scholarly tone too.

I'm not sure how many people will really be interested in the "inside politics" of anarchist theory, but if you are, this a work you will enjoy immensely.

I was taken with the ideas of Murray Bookchin until I read this book. So I had to ask myself, "How could I have missed these obvious points?" As Mr. Black so aptly says, "Mr. Bookchin is no anarchist." This book takes Bookchin's philosophy apart piece-by-piece in easy to understand language. But more than that, this book lays out some of the more obvious and important philosophy of anarchy. Bob Black is an important voice and one that should be listened to if we are to leave the left behind, as the previous reviewer so aptly states, and finally change our world.

This book is the essential reading for those who desire to leave "Leftism" behind and make the most fatal mistake that would leave Guy Debord shaking his head at Black, who apparently has transcended all historical context to form a new vision for anarchism leaving behind hundreds of years of revolution, rebellion, abolition, and insurrection behind. Fool Bob Black is a fool

This book would be more aptly titled "Why Murray Bookchin Isn't Really An Anarchist, and Why You Probably Aren't Either." The first half of the book consists of Black's scorn-filled polemics against Bookchin, reproaching him for how bourgeoisie he is for being a professor, how contemptible he is for mingling with the establishment, etc. It seems to serve the express purpose of detailing all the anarcho-points our villainous "Dean" deserves to lose. Not very valuable stuff here.

Black then proceeds to launch his vitriolic diatribe against all anarchists with any kind of skeleton of a social program or positive belief about the world period. And if that doesn't seem like a bad route to take to begin with, its development is not very impressive. It sounds like a particularly obnoxious CRIMETH(INC) pamphlet mixed with a poorly articulated fear of Enlightenment thought borrowed from the Clif notes of deconstruction and postmodern skepticism. If it wasn't for his mildly entertaining harsh and spiteful attitude, this would be terribly boring. With said attitude permeating the book, it's elevated to being silly and slightly frustrating.

It seems like what Bob Black has in mind is a revolution bereft of the content; a constant insurrection against any attempt at social organization for the sake of insurrection itself. It's naive, bitter, childish, and extremely counter-intuitional (unless you've already been afflicted with the intellectual disease that's formed at the intersections of nihilism and anti-civilizational thought). Don't think this book will leave you with any idea about what to do about today's most pressing and deeply-rooted social problems. The unmentioned advice would probably be something along the lines of steal stuff and break windows. Revolutionary thought at its most sophisticated.

That said, Bookchin's work is actually worth reading. It tears apart the noble savage mythology that lurks behind this kind of thought (even though Black weakly distances himself from primitivism) without ignoring the present ecological catastrophe, it offers a social and moralistic framework for an anti-authoritarian society (sorry, but we are social and moral creatures), and it provides some grassroots mechanisms for change. I'm not saying it's not without its flaws, and I'm not here to declare that it's an unambiguously "anarchist" system of thought. Look past all the semantic gymnastics of defining anarchism/anarchy/whatever, and just appreciate Bookchin's work as detailing an anti-authoritarian and leftist social order. You may not agree with it, but it's a lot more thoughtful than Bob Black here wants to make it appear.