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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, Is There A Future For Anarchism? - Review﻿</title>﻿
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﻿<b﻿>﻿Is There A Future For Anarchism? 
﻿<br﻿>﻿</b>﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

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by David Camfield﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, September 1996﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿</center>﻿

﻿<font﻿ ﻿size="1"﻿>﻿In ﻿<i﻿>﻿Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm﻿</i>﻿, (AK Press 1995, $12), longtime revolutionary Murray Bookchin makes a scathing critique of modern-day anarchism and pleads for a return to a classical anarchist anti-capitalist perspective. DAVID CAMFIELD assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Bookchins latest work.﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
"Today, what passes for anarchism in America and increasingly in Europe is little more than an introspective personalism that denigrates responsible social commitment; an encounter group variously renamed a 'collective' or an 'affinity group'; a state of mind that arrogantly derides structure, organization, and public involvement; and a playground for juvenile antics." So thinks Murray Bookchin, a well-known veteran anarchist militant who has written extensively on environmental issues from his perspective of social ecology. 
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
In "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism," the first of the two essays in this short book, the 75-year-old revolutionary takes aim at the varieties of lifestyle anarchism that he sees as part of the tradition of individualist anarchism, in opposition to social anarchism that organizes democratically for social revolution and libertarian communism. 
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
This is no academic argument. Bookchin unleashes a slashing polemic against anarchists who blame reason and civilization itself rather than capitalism for environmental destruction and social ills. Rejecting technology (except when they use computers to produce publications like Fifth Estate and Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed), such anarchists propose nothing better than an idealized mythical version of humanity's primitive past as an alternative to the present order. Hakim Bey's trendy T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchism, Poetic Terrorism (now available on CD!) merely celebrates fleeting moments of personal exhilaration. 
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Anarchism "must offer a resolution to social problems, not flit arrogantly from slogan to slogan, shielding itself from rationality with bad poetry and vulgar graphics," Bookchin declares. To his credit, he does more than criticize the ideas of lifestyle anarchism. He also places them in the context of this period in history when many intellectuals do not believe that humans can rationally reorganize society. They offer nothing to working people who suffer under an increasingly mean and vicious capitalism but can see little alternative to it. 
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In the second essay, "The Left That Was: A Personal Reflection," Bookchin looks back to the classical socialist and anarchist left that barely survived extermination by Stalinism and fascism and marginalization by reformism. He praises its revolutionary, anti-militarist, internationalist politics and its commitment to reason and universal human emancipation. "The Left must stake out its own arena, one that stands in revolutionary opposition to the prevailing society, not one that participates as a 'leftist' partner in its workings" is his laudable conclusion. 
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Bookchin writes in the style of the Left That Was, using his knowledge of the history of ideas to support his sharply-worded but not unfair criticism of an elitist political outlook that not only fails to understand the world but also channels discontent away from a challenge to capitalism. Supporters of socialism from below will agree with much of what this sincere revolutionary has to say in these essays. 
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Most of the weaknesses in what Bookchin writes are not his personal failings but those of social anarchism: its failure to see how a democratic mass revolutionary party is a vital element in social revolution, and its rejection of the need for a post-revolutionary "semi-state" based on workplace and community councils to consolidate and defend revolutionary democracy. 
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
Bookchin should also be faulted for misrepresenting the views of Marx, Engels and Lenin on nationalism and democracy. And he rejects the idea that the working class is the potentially revolutionary force, even though capitalism depends on workers' labour for its survival. 
﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
While genuine socialists and social anarchists have much in common and need to work together in today's struggles, it is by renewing socialism from below rather than the even weaker forces of social anarchism that revolutionaries today can best work towards a stateless and classless society of freedom. 
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