Bookchin's unbridgeable Chasm, CrimeThunk, arguing...

You should start by dropping bookchin.

It says a lot about him that a police collaborator like bob black can demolish his politics.

eta: For starters black points out that Bookchin was a pretty outright lifestylist for a long time before he wrote that book.

This is a critique of Bookchin by "Contradiction", a pro-situ group in the 70s, i.e. before he had degenerated to being a "city-statist".

Er yeah... Bob Black really gave him a good walloping with his pathetic (and devoid of any real substance) rebuttal polemic.

I got plenty of criticisms of Bookchin. But I also happen to think he made a lot of really important contributions to anarchist theory. Either way, coming to politics towards the tail-end of the period he's criticizing in that book ('80s-early '90s) I'd say he was dead-on in his critcisms. SA vs. LA should be required reading for any serious anarchist.

To be honest that book had a pretty big impact on me in my early twenties and was kind of the last nail in the coffin for silly lifestylist crap. Not too fond of a lot of his other stuff but I still recommend that pamphlet to comrades.

Bob Black vs. Murray Bookchin

The best decision Bookchin ever made was to drop the word 'anarchist'.

Agreed. In fact, I said this verbatim on another site.

Everyone needs to go through a lifesylist phase when they're young. It seperates the weekend revolutionaries from the true believers. The weekenders go home when they get sick of squatting with 50 other people and smelling like garbage and the dedicated anarchists move on to more mature anarchist organizations.....or become full on primitivists, but that never works out well.

Just because you may agree with Bookchin's conclusions in SA or LA (it's not "versus" although from the tone throughout it probably should have been so titled) doesn't make his analysis any more coherent or intellectually honest. His main point comes down to this: "Anyone who doesn't agree with me is a Lifestylist." Forget that he repudiated class struggle, forget that he was a devoted electoralist, forget that he supported the Sandinistas--all that's important to the fans of SA or LA is that he disliked the same kind of dilettantes you dislike, so you can overlook his outlandish antics from the 60s through his eventual disavowal of anarchism altogether. Posers and wankers, whether they deck themselves out in black hoodies or carhartts, whether they're crusty freeloaders or shop stewards, are still posers and wankers, and they'll still be dilettantes regardless of which kind of rhetoric they spew.

I think membership to a political organization is definitely a lifestyle choice and defining oneself by that choice is as lifestylist as it gets.

You're just trying to invert the intended demeaning dismissal of Bookchin's neologism to fit those who agree with his usage, which is neither honest nor convincing. Rather than using the ridiculous non-category "lifestylist" as a conversation-ender, why not use actual descriptive language to convey criticism?

To be more descriptive:

Membership in pro-revolutionary organizations and participation in 'campaigns' is a lifestyle choice and the constant obsession and debate over this or that lifestyle (for example, to "build a syndicalist union" or "agitate within the mainstream union") speak a fetish of lifestyle choice and belief that it is lifestyle choice that will change conditions. One could use the word "lifestylist" to describe this fetish and belief. "Building a revolutionary union" or "strengthening the movement" are basically role-playing games that in an embarassing case of inflated self-importance get confused with class struggle.

Crimethinc lifestyles (whatever that means) and such, while equally unrelated to class struggle, are attacked because they are more fun than the lifestyle advocated and participated in by the left.

There is a significant strain in anarchism that looks to substitute personal choices and informal social circles with formal organizations and directly democratic processes. Frankly I think that's irresponsible, bad politics. It's not about being counter culture its whether or not you see identification with counter culture ideals as radical at all and its pretty clear a lot of the anarchist movement does think this way.

Exactly. Informal social circles versus formal organizations is a clash of lifestyles; a difference in style and social skills.

Eh sorry, I think you lost all credibility when you advocated racketeering.

Heavy dude. You must be one of those philosopher types.

mwa ha ha ha!

Oliver, what do you mean you lose credibility by advocating racketeering? Are you advocating a legal workers movement? Do you have a link to this discussion to expose what you allege yoshomon being for?

SALA was boring. Individual and social autonomy are not a true dichotomy, they are not at odds. Ultimately this is where the beef is in SALA. What I see coming from the critique of "lifestylists" outside of Bookchin is a moral condemnation of a small group of people. I'd like to see more about why this book should be used by anarchists to condemn these so called lifestylists.

Why don't you use actual descriptive language to convey your criticisms of Bookchin's arguments? I'd like to hear them.

Anonymous people on the internet don't have credibility, and who I am does not qualify or disqualify what I wrote. Does your political lifestylism get in the way of honest debate?

By request, a summary of my main quibbles with "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism" (and by extension, Murray Bookchin Thought):

1. Bookchin uses deliberately provocative/emotional--undefined and non-descriptive--language. Examples: "lumpen" and "petty bourgeois"; as if every reader knows exactly what/who he means.

2. Bookchin promotes deliberately narrow binary oppositions. Examples: mysticism/superstition versus rationality; progress versus primitivism; individualism versus "serious organizations, radical politics, a committed social movement, theoretical coherence, and programmatic relevance." As if these things didn't exist on a continuum, as if they were automatic polar opposites, as if his last list were automatically understandable without illustrative examples. As if there were no possibility of transcending these simplistic binaries.

3. Bookchin deliberately ignores the possibility that what he derisively labels "lifestylism" could be a more or less natural reaction to the self-important pontificating of so-called experts and published writers like himself, whose blueprints for an anarchist future (in this case "Libertarian Municipalism") posit nothing so much as a new set of loudmouth know-it-alls who revel in giving orders--oops, I mean "suggestions."

4. Bookchin subscribes to the quaint 19th century Liberal assumption that individual liberty is the opposite of social freedom. You either believe that or you don't; most anarchists don't.

5. Bookchin, like all other socialist planners, asserts that the main reason to oppose capitalism is its irrationality, completely ignoring the history of actual capitalists adapting--quite rationally--to changing economic circumstances. This is the same logic that Marxists use to decry the "anarchy of the market" and long for the administration of an industrial economy through the full development of the productive forces. Sorry, but that economic positivism is another throwback to the 19th century.

5.1. Following up on the previous point, Bookchin believes that since Libertarian Municipalism is the most rational system of--dare I say it?--GOVERNMENT, that the reason people interested in social justice aren't naturally drawn to it is because those horrible irrational "lifestylists" are ruining the good name of anarchism.

6. Bookchin is wedded to other kinds of positivism. Example: "History...[is] the gradual unfolding of humanity's rational component--its developing potentiality for freedom, self-consciousness, and cooperation..." Talk about irrationality.

7. Bookchin dishonestly clumps all his "lifestylist" enemies into one group, despite the lack of coherence. Example: "lifestylists" are influenced by "existentialism, recycled Situationism, Buddhism, Taoism, anti-rationalism, and primitivism" which all share a desire for a "prelapsarian return to an original, often diffuse, and even petulantly infantile, ego..." which "have nurtured more than one reactionary political ideology over the last century." Naturally he never mentions what those might have been. Regardless, the list is internally contradictory.

8. Like any good authoritarian, Bookchin can't imagine that the tensions and contradictions within anarchist theory and practice might make non-anarchists wary of us. No; what's really going on is that Bookchin's brand of anarchism--the only authentic anarchism--is being ruined by others. The Leninists never considered the possibility that their own policies were generating resentment from others, and the Stalinists never considered that their policies might be disastrous--all discontent was attributed to "wreckers" and "saboteurs" and "traitors." Bookchin learned the lessons of his youthful Stalinism well.

Black Badger, what exactly do you mean by this:

I thought most of those who call themselves anarchists did believe that and regard majority decision-making by voting as an infringement of the rights of the supposedly sovereign individual and so denounce democracy and democratic decision-making (the only basis, I suggest, for "social freedom" as well as of working class organisation within and to end capitalism) as "the tyranny of the majority". Surely Bookchin was in the opposite camp (along with the Marxists!) of saying that the individual only exists in and through society and that there is (or will be when there's a genuinely communist society) such a thing as the common social interest?
Anyway, how do you reconcile individual liberty and social freedom? Why do you think an individual should accept the majority decision of the collectivity of which he or she is part (if you do think that, that is)?

What else do you suggest this "individual" does? Should the majority be subject to the whims of a stubborn minority?

Everything you fucking twat!!
I am a punk, i wear boots not sandals, tight jeans not fucking hemp, I'm an angry cunt not a fucking mellowed out stoner, I disagree with the hippy ideal of everyone working together to create an equal society, I do not embrace the fucking nrm's and nam's of the hippy movement and finaly i want fucking anarchy not communism. Punk is not Hippy, they are two different subcultures, saying they are the same is like saying red is brown you complete arsehole!!

Christ. Even normal topics turn out to be insane discussions lately.

does your mother know what you get up to on the internet?

Of course not. I'm a democrat. I just wanted to see if Black Badger was too and also whether others calling themselves anarchists are or, more to the point, are not. In my experience most anarchists argue that an individual cannot be bound by a majority decision.

Speaking for myself, I am going to do what I want to do, even if that is at odds with the majority.

The principles of federalism include the ability of a minority to secede from the federation in the case of irreconcilable differences. It isn't a question of being "bound" by majority decisions (and how much of a majority are you talking about anyway? A majority of one? Two? Out of how many decision makers?), but of maintaining one's principles. If my principles are at odds with yours, why would I insist on maintaining a federative relationship with you (or you with me)? At some point, wouldn't it make sense for us to separate? Part of the problem with you democrats and majority-rule fanatics is that you presume that there's some kind of "unity" involved in any given social sphere. Why is that?

Personally, I favor a federative model of organization above that of affinity groups, created for specific tasks. Once those tasks are accomplished, there's no longer any need for that particular federation, and it should be disbanded. My preferred method of decision making is consensus-minus-two (or three or four, depending on the size of the federation) in order to avoid the ridiculous excesses of the tyranny of one (by blocking consensus). I also support delaying a decision if it's contentious, rather than forcing the federation to stay locked in an interminable meeting so that people's wills erode due to exhaustion. I am not in favor of a delegate or spokesperson system of decision making; I prefer plenums, where everyone interested in the decision participates (something like teleconferencing could be used for people unable to attend for various reasons). I am opposed to representative-based politics. And I am opposed to majority-rule politics.

How would you bind a minority to a majority decision? How would it be imposed democratically?

Yeah, but in my experience, most anarchists are mentally retarded. Where did this fashion for consensus decision making come from, anyway? I've never heard of it being used by anarchists historically.