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Leaving the Left Behind 115 Post-Left Anarchy? Anarchy after Leftism 5 Preface . 7 Introduction . 11 Chapter 1: Murray Bookchin, Grumpy Old Man . 15 Chapter 2: What is Individualist Anarchism? . 25 Chapter 3: Lifestyle Anarchism . 37 Chapter 4: On Organization . 43 Chapter 5: Murray Bookchin, Municipal Statist . 53 Chapter 6: Reason and Revolution . 61 Chapter 7: In Search of the Primitivists Part I: Pristine Angles . 71 Chapter 8: In Search of the Primitivists Part II: Primitive Affluence . 83 Chapter 9: From Primitive Affluence to Labor-Enslaving Technology . 89 Chapter 10: Shut Up, Marxist! . 95 Chapter 11: Anarchy after Leftism . 97 References . 105 Post-Left Anarchy: Leaving the Left Behind 115 Prologue to Post-Left Anarchy . 117 Introduction . 118 Leftists in the Anarchist Milieu . 120 Recuperation and the Left-Wing of Capital . 121 Anarchy as a Theory & Critique of Organization . 122 Anarchy as a Theory & Critique of Ideology . 125 Neither God, nor Master, nor Moral Order: Anarchy as Critique of Morality and Moralism . 126 Post-Left Anarchy: Neither Left, nor Right, but Autonomous . 128 Post-Left Anarchy? 131 Leftism 101 137 What is Leftism? . 139 Moderate, Radical, and Extreme Leftism . 140 Tactics and strategies . 140 Relationship to capitalists . 140 The role of the State . 141 The role of the individual . 142 A Generic Leftism? . 142 Are All Forms of Anarchism Leftism . 143 1 Anarchists, Don’t let the Left(overs) Ruin your Appetite 147 Introduction . 149 Anarchists and the International Labor Movement, Part I . 149 Interlude: Anarchists in the Mexican and Russian Revolutions . 151 Anarchists in the International Labor Movement, Part II . 154 Spain . 154 The Left . 155 The ’60s and ’70s . 156 Characteristics Vs. Definitions . 157 Conclusions . 158 The Incredible Lameness of Left-Anarchism 161 An Evasion of Discussion . 163 Vague Accusations with No Documentation . 164 Muddling the Dispute . 165 The Internet Makes People Crazy . 167 Nebulous Leftism . 169 Staudenmaier’s Leftist Fantasies . 171 Individualist Delusions and Myopic Autonomy . 173 Abstract and Indeterminate Evasions . 176 The Obligatory Fascist Smear . 178 For a Rational Discussion of Anarchism and the Left . 179 Post-Script: Response from Peter Staudenmaier . 181 Challenge Accepted: Post-Leftism’s Rejection of the Left as a Whole . 181 Against Organizationalism: Anarchism as both Theory and Critique of Organization 185 Anarchists in Wonderland: The Topsy-Turvy World 191 On the radical virtues of being left alone; deconstructing Staudenmaier 203 The Unoriginality Argument . 205 The Bad Faith Argument . 205 The Straw Man Argument . 206 Getting Personal with a Straw Man . 209 Rejecting Subjectivity or, The Straw Man Disappears in a Puff of Smoke 210 Guilt by (False) Association . 212 On Spots, Both Tight and Blind . 213 This Is What Cooperation Looks Like . 214 From Politics to Life: Ridding anarchy of the leftist millstone 217 2 Against the Corpse Machine: Defining A Post-Leftist Anarchist Critique of Violence 229 What’s the Problem? . 231 Our Violent Anarchist History . 239 “The People” are Alienated by Violence and Other Myths . 241 The Case of Mumia . 256 Mean Ends . 260 3 4 Bob Black Anarchy after Leftism 1997 Preface Leaving the twentieth century, leftism of every stripe is in disarray and defeat — anarcho-leftism included. And Murray Bookchin’s Social Ecology is certainly no exception to this trend. Bookchin, one of the best known of contemporary North American anarchists, has spent much of his life staking out his own personal eco-anarchist ideological territory under the banners of Social Ecology and Libertarian Municipalism. He is the author of a steady stream of books from the sixties to the present, including his classic collection of essays titled Post-Scarcity Anarchism published in 1971, his excellent volume on the history of the Spanish anarchist movement written in the seventies, and his failed attempt in the eighties at constructing a philosophical magnum opus in The Ecology of Freedom. Bookchin has never been content with merely constructing one more radical ideology in competition with all the others. His dream has always been to lead a coherent left-wing ecological radical grouping into a serious contest with the powers that be. However, his attempts at constructing such a grouping (from the Anarchos journal group in the New York of the sixties to the recent Left Green Network within the Greens milieu) have never met with much success. In his latest book, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism, Bookchin aims to pin the blame for his lifetime of frustration (despite his decades of valiant effort!) on an evil anti-socialist conspiracy which has subverted his dreams at every turn: the dreaded specter of “Lifestyle Anarchism.” For Bookchin, lifestyle anarchism is a contemporary manifestation of the individualist anarchist currents which have always bedeviled the world anarchist movement proper. The fact that the anar- chist “movement” itself has always been more of a polymorphous insurrectionary milieu encompassing everything from anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-communists and anarcho-futurists to anarchist feminists, anarchist primitivists and anarcho- situationists doesn’t really matter to him. The important thing is that he has finally been able to name the anti-organizational cabal which opposes him and to explain the esoteric links between its often seemingly unrelated or even mutually contradictory efforts! Enter Bob Black. Now a lot of people don’t like Bob Black. Many anarchists would be alarmed if he moved in next door. Anyone with good sense would probably be upset if he started dating her younger sister. Most everyone is loathe to provoke his anger or face it head on. 7 And not without reason. Bob may be a brilliant critic and hilarious wit, but he’s not a nice guy. His infamous reputation isn’t built on fair play or good sportsmanship. Maybe this is why Murray Bookchin’s latest rant, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, never criticizes Bob Black directly. In fact it never so much as mentions Bob’s name. Even though it’s obvious from the book’s contents that by all rights Bob should have received the same type of attempted (though ultimately feeble) thrashing Bookchin reserved for George Bradford,John Zerzan, Hakim Bey, et al. Obviously, Murray knows better than to challenge Bob to a duel, even a rhetor- ical one. But that hasn’t stopped Bob, in an uncharacteristically generous spirit, from giving Bookchin his due anyway. Bob’s defense of anarchy in Anarchy after Leftism isn’t meant to express solidar- ity with those targeted in the latest attacks framed by Bookchin’s pidgin dialectics. Nor is Bob really interested in rescuing anarchist ideology from itself. He just wants to set the record straight by clearing away worse than useless polemics. Defending the potential for anarchy is merely an unpleasant task of menial anti- ideological labor that Bob has performed because no one else volunteered to wash these particular dirty dishes,1 while he wants to get on with cooking another meal. But that’s by no means all that’s going on here. Disposing of Murray Bookchin’s ideological and rhetorical rubbish gives Bob the chance to develop the grounds for a more general attack on the remaining vestiges of leftism while he’s at it. Cleaning house of leftism is a much bigger task than dealing with one man’s leftist career. So in one sense, by drawing attention to his ineffectual polemic, Bookchin has made himself an excuse for the beginning of a much larger process of critique, a process that will undoubtedly continue to unfold with increasing militance into the coming century. It will require awareness and effort from all of us to finish this task, but it will be done. Bob’s double critique in Anarchy after Leftism only gains incisiveness from the attitude of lumpen noblesse oblige he has adopted for his task. Rather than letting his own sordid past (and present) get in the way, the lack of any revenge motive (seemingly Bob’s favorite muse) allows him to unleash his pen with just 1 The Fifth Estate’s David Watson (aka George Bradford) has just written a valuable critique of major themes in Bookchin’s work titled Beyond Bookchin: Preface for a Future Social Ecology, published by Autonomedia (Brooklyn, NY) and Black & Red (Detroit, MI). It was also stimulated by Bookchin’s abysmal Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism. However, Watson’s work is aimed more towards defending anarcho-primitivism and rehabilitating a non-Bookchinist Social Ecology than towards the critique Bob takes on in this volume of Bookchin’s leftover leftism served in biodegradable ecological and municipalist wrappings. 8 as much wit, but with fewer red herrings, obscure put-downs and tortured self- justifications than ever. The result is a modest feast made up of consistently entertaining prose, an immanent critique of a would-be eminent social critic, and one more nail in the coffin of obsolete leftism, anarchist-style. You might not want to invite Bob into your house.I certainly wouldn’t. But at least thank him for doing the dishes. And let’s get on with the next feast! Jason McQuinn Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed Alternative Press Review 9 10 Introduction This small book is nothing more than a critique of another small book, Murray Bookchin’s Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm.1 His consists of the title essay plus “The Left That Was: A Personal Reflection.” Pub- lished in 1995, it was an unexpected intervention in an intramural debate which had been going on for at least twenty years between traditionalistic anarchists — leftist, workerist, organizational, and moralist — and an ever more diverse (and an ever more numerous) contingent of anarchists who have in one way or another departed from orthodoxy, at least in Bookchin’s eyes.
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