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Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm

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1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book contains "a short note to the reader" and two essays. At 86 pages, it looks to be a short, fast read. It isn't. (I started reading in Anchorage, continued reading during an hour layover in Seattle, and finished about 20 minutes before arriving in LA!) Bookchin stakes out his reasons for writing the first essay in a "note to the reader" that begins with:

"Anarchists have formed neither a coherent program nor a revolutionary organization to provide a direction for the mass discontent that contemporary society is creating. Instead, this discontent is being abosrbed by political reactionaries and channeled into hostility toward ethnic minorities, immigrants, and the poor and marinal, such as single mothers, the homeless, the elderly, and even environmentalists, who are being depicted as the principal sources of contemporary social problems ... Thousands of self-styled anarchists have slowly surrendered the social core of anarchist ideas to the all-pervasive Yuppie and New Age personalism that marks this decadent, bourgeosified era." (p. 1)

He goes on to point out that:

"The various oppressions that [capitalism] inflicts upon society have been grossly imputed to the impact of 'technology,' not the underlying social relationships between capital and labor, structured around an all-pervasive marketplace economy that has penetrated into every sphere of life, from culture to friendships and family." (p. 2)

Looking back to the roots of anarchism (Emma Goldman, the Wobblies), he decries:

"They demanded a revolution -- a _social_ revolution -- without which these aesthetic and psychological goals could not be achieved for humanity as a whole ... regrettably, this revolutionary endeavor, indeed the high-minded idealism and class consciousness on which it rests, is central to fewer and fewer of the self-styled anarchists I encounter today." (p 3)

Bookchin then launches into his first essay, dedicating 52 pages to attacking what he calls Lifestyle Anarchism and then five pages to Social Anarchism. This annoys me more than anything else. I would much rather have seen a balanced treatment, spending another 50 some pages to outline his vision of Social Anarchism. The heart of his polemics seems to be attacking the substitution of an egoistic, undisciplined, do-your-own-thing mentality for solidarity and revolutionary commitment. He takes issue with those who promote an "individualism" unconnected with community, noting that the individual arises out of, is nurtured by, and co-creates with community. He assails those who promote anarchism as mere chaos. Similarly, he goes after those who would take refuge in mysticism at the expense of social analysis and concrete revolutionary commitment. He refutes those who see "technology" as THE problem, demonstrating that neo-ludditism is no substitute for a rational anarchy. (Had he read Rianne Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade, he might have picked up some even more powerful arguments here.)
He concludes that:

"A bourgeois reality whose economic harshness grows starker and crasser with every passing day is shrewdly mutated by lifestyle anarchism into constellations of self-indulgence, inchoateness, indiscipline, and incoherence." (p. 51)

"To malign civilization without due recognition of its enormous potentialities for _self-conscious_ freedom -- a freedom conferred by reason as well as emotion, by insight as well as desire, by prose as well as poetry -- is to retreat back into the shadowy world of brutishness, when thought was dim and intellecuation was only an evolutionary promise." (p. 56)

In the next five pages he briefly sketches out his ideas of a Democratic Communalism. He yearns for a sharing of power in face-to-face collective meetings, for an anarchism that stays connected to its Enlightenment roots. He wants an anarchism that: "is committed to rationality, while opposing the rationalization of experience; to technology, while opposing the 'megamachine;' to social institutionalization, while opposing class rule and hierarchy; to a genuine politics based on the confederal coordination of municipalities or communes" (p. 57) and warns that "if a left-libertarian vision is not to disappear ... it must offer a resolution to social problems, not flit arrogantly from slogan to slogan, shielding itself from rationality with bad poetry and vulgar graphics." (p. 57)

His second essay (about 20 pages), The Left that Was, offers a nice primer on the "traditional" Left from an anarchist perspective. This essay alone was worth the price of the book. He makes a final appeal: "What this society usually does should not deter leftists from probing the logic of events from a rational standpoint or from calling for what society _should_ do. Any attempt to adapt the rational 'should' to the irrational 'is' vacates that space on the political spectrum that should be occupied by a Left premised on reason, freedom, and ecological humanism." (p. 86)

(If you'd like to further discuss this review or book, please click on the "about me" link above and drop me an email. Thanks!)

Written some ten years ago, Bookchin's devasating and concise critique is even more relevant today then when it was written. Anarchism today in the English speaking world especially is in a state of total disarray, having its socialistic core washed away and its previous concern for genuine change and an actual social revolution destroyed. In 1999 Bookchin, as a result of what was happening to Anarchism in the West, broke with Anarchism while remaining a revolutionary libertarian socialist -- a specific form of lbertarian socialism he has termed Communalism.

One cannot blame Bookchin at all for his action. For he had seen a movement he had participated in for some 40 years collapsing around him into a bourgeoisized mystical, New Age, misanthropic, anti-civilizational, cult for middle class kids who want to simply "do there own thing" but not actually do anything that might genuinely challenge the establishment. Bookchin may very well be vindicated in the end as the movement he left behind dissolves into irrelevancy, his leaving it and moving to a genuinely revolutionary democratic and libertarian philosophy, program, and ideal may help someday bring the Left back its ethical vision of a free and just world.

Hopefully some person interested in Anarchism will read this and learn that if Anarchism is to have any relevance in the struggle for human liberation, it must ask itself some very difficult questions, hopefully Bookchin's book will provoke them to do just that and create a movement that might actually change the world for the better.

Bookchin does an excellent job in critiquing the "lifestyle anarchism" that permeates much of the left. Instead of working for social justice activism, lifestylists would rather retreat into mysticism and petty-bourgeois subcultures. Analyzes many of the key theorists of this genre. Good resource for serious left activists.

Murray Bookchin's honest eye-opening piece, "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm," rightfully and finally asks the question that had been festering in the anarchist movement since the days of Proudhon; either anarchism will be social or it will be lifestyle. Ultimatley Bookchin would break with anarchism, "I'm tired of defending anarchism against the anarchists":

"I do not fault myself for trying to expand the horizon of anarchism in the sixties along cultural lines. I regret only that I failed, not that I saw the wrong possibilities for profoundly changing our society. Tragically, many self-professed American anarchists didn't even try to do much back then and have since abandoned their convictions for private life and academic careers. Surely failure doesn't mean that one shouldn't try?"

I cannot summarize anymore about what this piece is about other than what its title states; George Woodcock turned out to be right--anarchists had no taste for democracy. At least Murray had the satisfaction of knowing he had tried. In the end, his loyalty to democracy as a concept and a praxis was stronger than his loyalty to anarchism. So when he had to choose between them, he chose democracy.

In continuance with his wirings on libertarian municipalism, Murray in his later years of life settled on democratic communalism as his vision for a future non-hierarchical, free and egalitarian society based upon a confederation of municipalities based on community control.

For further references see:

"Bookchin Breaks With Anarchism", an article written by his longtime companion Janet Biehl in order to clarify why Murray split with anarchism:

[...]

Most of the reviews I've read here that give on star to "Social Anarchism of Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm" by Murray Bookchin want to qualify Bookchin's argument until it dies the death of a thousand qualifications.

Instead, I think it's helpful to recognize the necessary corrective that Bookchin has put forth. Sure, he disagrees with much outside his own view of anarcho-communism/social ecology - but why wouldn't he? You give reasons for why you disagree with a political programme.

Of course, he does take the tone of a "grumpy old man", and perhaps his condemnation of anarchist tendencies outside of his own are treated with "Stalinist" disdain - but, I think Bookchin's argument is a refreshing, logical, and necessarily divisive argument for why these two approaches to anarchism need to be recognized for what they are and for what they stand for.

I would have, however, liked to see Bookchin treat the other side a little more fairly. This doesn't undermine his argument, but, I think he sometimes uses sources that aren't the best representations of the other side: Hakim Bey, Susan Brown, and Mumford. I think you find in these folks the prototype of the currently-nauseating Crimethinc ex-worker's collective that is leading many kids who listen to hardcore and eat vegan to think they are taking part in revolution.

His treatment of Emma Goldman is sparse, calling her not the "ablest" thinker on the individualistic anarchist side of the argument. I would have liked to see more thought out response to her tendency.

Overall, I would recommend this book to folks who are viewing their anarchism as an individual "escape" from capitalism rather than an opportunity to organize the discontent of masses caught in the social relations of capitalism. And, if the eyes of some that makes me a Marxist, then a Marxist I shall be!

"Social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism" is a polemical tract by Murray Bookchin, the founder of Social Ecology and Libertarian Municipalism. At the time, Bookchin still called himself a social anarchist.

The tract is an attack on other forms of anarchism, dubbed "lifestyle anarchism" by the author. This includes Max Stirner's extreme individualism, the Situationistic and new agey poetry of one Hakim Bey, and the neo-primitivism of John Zerzan, George Bradford (David Watson) and the Fifth Estate magazine.

Bookchin fears that this kind of anarchism is really a middle class fad and ultimately harmless to the establishment. He spends considerable time criticizing the primitivists in particular.

While Bookchin does score some points here and there, the polemic nevertheless feels very in-house, even personal. But above all, it feels meaningless. Why did Bookchin bother? Marxists groups couldn't care less about Max Stirner, Black Elk or TAZ. More orthodox-sounding anarchists might, but I don't think it's their main activity. Bookchin, however, seems to have been obsessed by constantly attacking hippies, yuppies, yippes or the New Age. But surely solid political activists aren't interested in Hakim Bey's poetry or Semiotext(e)/Autonomedia in Brooklyn?

I have a lingering suspicion that Bookchin cared because, at bottom, he belonged to the same social milieu. After all, he did seem to have lengthy phone conversations with George Bradford at Fifth Estate!

How ironic.

As you get older, the saying goes, you care less about what other people think. You don't question yourself anymore. You've earned the right to be wrong sometimes. Such is the case with Murray Bookchin. And given Bookchin's life and experience I guess he had the right to be wrong, because he is indeed wrong about what he said in this his final book.

The thesis statement for Bookchin's final major work is found on page 47. To wit: "...[t]he regression to primitivism among lifestyle anarchists denies the most salient attributes of humanity as a species and the potentially emancipatory aspects of of Euro-American civilization".

This is to say that dreaming and or scheming for a better existence saps the will to make it so; or so says Bookchin anyhow [28]. Idleness, dreaming, leisure time, the quest for ecstasy, self-fulfillment and such-like is a waste of time and effort say Bookchin and is not a worthwhile use of the days of our lives [34]. And ideas and speculation to the contrary are just plain wrong, whatever the anthropological scholarship may say, too [46-47].

And so resorting to "lifestyle Anarchism"[sic], Stirnerism, egoism, individualism and such are simply laziness and folly Bookchin concludes [48-54].

And so to conclude, any Anarchist/anarchist theory, philosophy, or project that rejects the underlying assumptions of 19th century Marxism is intellectual laziness and an excuse for inaction says Bookchins' analysis [75-85].

No wonder Bookchin's final work was so badly received by so many. I still recommend that you read it though, if only for the intellectual work it takes to debunk it all. At least we can learn from Bookchins' errors and not go down same path.

I'll concede that Bookchin comes across like a grumpy old man. On the other hand, he has a deep insight that close attention should be paid to. He makes a distinction between freedom and autonomy, and points out that freedom is a social condition which precedes autonomy. Autonomy has become sacrosanct in our American culture. Bookchin gives scathing critiques of a few anarchist books with ideas that overemphasize autonomy at the expense of social freedom.

I've been thinking lately about the practical ramifications for the insight of the anarchist principle. Do we vote? The idea of an anarchist system sounds contradictory. But I think you will find in this book, a new way of thinking about these kinds of problems. I highly recommend it.

This may be the worst book about anarchists any of them has ever written. Contemporary anarchists, many of whom had been influenced by Bookchin, were shocked by this diatribe, which assailed basically everything different from (not even always opposed to) Bookchin's ideology in its current Marxized version. Murray had been away for so long trying to take over the Greens movement that most anarchists perforce elaborated their various tendencies without his guidance (he's an ex-Dean). Bookchin's deliberately divisive innovation is to distinguish Social Anarchists (good anarchists who agree with the four tenets he lays down) from Lifestyle Anarchists, who are an unsavory lot of mystics, lumpenproletarians, post-modernists, primitivists, spontaneists, New Agers, Stirnerites, irrationalists, bourgeois and petit bourgeous,liberals -- and fascists (!). No attempt is made to explain the apparent irrationalities in Bookchin himself, for example, how people can be bourgeois and lumpen, or liberal and fascist at the same time. Part of this rhetoric Bookchin seems to have brought back from his controversies with deep ecologists without noticing that none of his targeted enemies are deep ecologists. He had all this rhetoric, why waste it? No one, not Bookchin even (he has a second book out on this theme, even more Marxist and authoritarian) has ever identified even one attribute shared by all these tendencies. There is only one such attribute: Murray Bookchin dislikes them. It would be no trouble (but very time-consuming) to refute most of what Bookchin now says out of his earlier writings, and two books and a number of reviews have done so. The consensus is that he was right the first time. Additionally, although the book parades its footnotes, most of them distort or entirely fail to represent the propositions they are attached to. Critics argued that Bookchin had returned to his original Stalinism (in the 1930s) or at the very least, that he was not an anarchist (he favors sovereign municipalities or neighborhoods and voting in local elections). It is sad that it is this book, and its even more execrable sequel, for which Bookchin will be remembered. -- According to an item in the magazine "Anarchy," Bookchin no longer considers himself an anarchist.

To me, this book is the work of a bitter old man. He seems to be making a pointless argument -- his vision of class struggle anarchism is outdated. Further, it reads more like an extended diatribe that latte-chugging cafe radicals could snap their fingers to, rather than something for outsiders. The strident tone of the book doesn't help, either. I give it two stars because it does help you realize why anarchists devote so much time to in-fighting. But Bookchin's age, this may be the last book he churns out, and it's an unfortunate note to go out on.