Murray Bookchin - Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism - An Unbridgeable Chasm
Murray Bookchin - Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism - An Unbridgeable Chasm
Murray Bookchin - Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism - An Unbridgeable Chasm
ANARCHISM
OR
LIFESTYLE
ANARCHISM
AN UNB.RIDGEABLE CHASM
Murray
'Bookchin
A
PRESS
Copyright: 1995 Murray Bookchin
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bookchin,Murray, 1921-
Social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism : the
unbridgeable chasm / by Murray Bookchin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-873176-83-X (pbk. )
1. Anarchism. 2. Social problems. 3. Individualism. 4.
Personalism.
HX833.B635 1995
320.5' 7-dc20 95-41903
CIP
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this title is available fom the British Librar.
First published in 1995 by
AK Press
22 Lutton Place
Edinburgh, Scotland
EH8 9PE
AK Press
P. O. Box 40682
San Francisco, CA
94140-0682
The publication of this volume was in part made possible by
the generosity of Stefan Andreas Store, Chris Atton, Andy
Hibbs, Stephen Joh Adams, and the Friends of AK Press.
Typeset and design donated by Freddie Baer.
CONTENTS
A Short Note to the Reader .......................................................... I
Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism ................................. 4
The Left That Was:
A Personal Refection .................................................................. 66
A NOTE TO THE READER
This short work was written to deal wit te fact that
anarchism stands at a turng point in its long and turbulent
history.
At a time when popular distrust of the state has reached
extraordinary proportions in many countries; when te division
of society among a handful of opulently wealthy individuals
and corporations contrasts sharply with the growing impover
ishment of millions of people on a scale uprecedented since the
Great Depression decade; when the intensity of exploitation has
forced people in growing numbers to accept a work week of a
length typical of the last century - anarchists have formed
neither a coherent program nor a revolutionary organzation to
provide a direction for the mass discontent that contemporary
society is creatng.
Instead, tis discontent u being absorbed by politcal reac
tionaries and chaneled into hostility toward etnic minorities,
immigrants, and the poor and marginal, such as single mothers,
the homeless, the elderly, and even environmentalists, who are
being depicted as the principal sources of contemporary social
problems.
The failure of anarchists -or, at least, of many self-styled
anarchists - to reach a potentially huge body of supporters
stems not only fom the sense of powerlessness that permeates
millions of people today. It is due in no small measure to the
changes that have occurred among many anarchists over te
past two decades. Like it or not, tousands of sel-stled anar
chists have slowly surrendered the social core of anarchist ideas
to the all-pervasive Yuppie and New Age personalism that
marks this decadent, bourgeoisifed era. m a very real sense,
INmODUcON 1
they are no longer socialists -the advocates of a communally
oriented libertarian society - and they eschew any serious
commitment to an organized, programmatically coherent social
confrontation with the existing order. I growing numbers, they
have followed the largely middle-class trend of the time into a
decadent personalism in the name of their sovereign" au tonomy,"
a queasy mysticism in the name of "intuitionism, " and a
prelapsarian vision of history in the :ame of "primitivism. "
Indeed, capitalism itself has been mystifed by many self-styled
anarchists into an abstractly conceived "industrial society," and
the various oppressions that it inflicts upon society have been
grossly imputed to the impact of "technology," not the underly
ing social relationships between capital and labor, structured
around an all-pervasive marketplace economy that has pen
etra ted into every sphere of life, from culture to friendships and
family. The tendency of many anarchists to root the ills of society
in "civilization" rather than in capital and hierarchy, in the
"megamachine" rather than in the commodification of life, and
in shadowy "simulations" rather than in the very tangible
tyranny of material want and exploitation is not unlike bour
geois apologias for "downsizing" in modern corporations today
as the product of "technological advances" rather than of the
bourgeoisie' s insatiable appetite for profit.
My emphasis in the pages that follow concerns the steady
withdrawal of self-styled anarchists these days fom the social
domain that formed the principal arena of earlier anarchists,
such as anarchosyndicalists and revolutionary libertarian com
munists, into episodic adventures that eschew any organiza
tional commitment and intellectual coherence - and, more
disturbingly, into a crude egotism that feeds on the larger
cultural decadence of present-day bourgeois society.
Anarchists, to be sure, can justly celebrate the fact that they
have long sought complete sexual feedom, the aestheticization
of everyday life, and the liberation of humanty fom the oppres
sive psychic constraints that have denied humanity its full
sensual as well as intellectual freedom. For my own part, as the
author of "Desire and Need" some thirty years ago, I can only
applaud Emma Goldman's demand that she does not want a
revolution unless she can dance to it - and, as my Wobbly
2 SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTLE ANARcmSM
parents once added early in this century, one in which they
can ot sig.
But at the very least, they demanded a revolution -a social
revolution -without which these aesthetic and psychological
goals could not be acheved for humaty as a whole. And they
made thi basic revolutionary endeavor central to all their hopes
and ideals. Regrettably, tis revolutionary endeavor, indeed the
high-minded idealism and class consciousness on whch it rests,
is central to fewer and fewer of the self-styled anarchists I
encounter today. It is precisely the revolutionary social outlook,
so basic to the definition of a social aarchism, with all its
theoretical and organization underpinnings, that I wish to re
cover i the critical examination of lie-style anarchism that
occupies the pages that follow. Unless I am gravely mistaken
as I hope I am "-the revolutionary and social goals of anarchsm
are suffering far-reaching erosion to a point where the word
anarc
h
y will become part of the chic bourgeois vocabulary of the
comig century - naughty, rebellious, insouciant, but deli
ciously safe.
-July I2, I995
INTRODUCON 3
S
OCIAL
A
ARCHISM OR
L
IESTE
A
ARCHISM
FOR SOME TO CENTRIES, anarchism -a very ecumenical body of
anti-authoritarian ideas-developed in the tension beteen to
basically contradictory tendencies: a personalistic commitent
to individual autonomy and a collectivist commitment to social
feedom. These tendencies have by no means been reconciled in
the history of libertarian thought. Indeed, for much of the last
century, they simply coexisted within anarchism as a minimalist
credo of opposition to the State rather than as a maximalist credo
that articulated the kid of new society that had to be created in
its place.
Wch u not to say tat varou school of aarchm did not
advocate very specifc forms of social organaton, albeit ofen
markedly at varace wit one aoter. Essentally, however,
anarchsm as a whole advaced what Ia Berli ha called "nga
tive feedom," that is to say, a formal "feedom fom," rater tan
a substantive "feedom to." Indeed, anarchism often celebrated its
commtent to negative feedom as evidence of its own pluralism,
ideological tolerance, or creativity -or even, as more than one
recent postmodernist celebrant has argued, its incoherence.
Anarchism's failure to resolve this tension, to articulate the
relationship of the individual to the collective, and to enunciate
the historical circumstances that would make possible a stateless
anarchic society produced problems in anarchist thought that
remain unresolved to this day. Pierre Joseph Proudhon, more
than many anarchists of his day, attempted to formulate a fairly
concrete image of a libertarian society. Based on contracts, essen
tially beteen small producers, cooperatives, and communes,
Proudhon's vision was redolent of the provincial craft world into
which he was born. But his attempt to meld a patroniste, often
4 ScIAL ANARcmSM OR LIESTLE ANARCm5M
patriarchal notion of liberty with contractual social arrange
ments was lacking in depth. The craftsman, cooperative, and
commune, relating to one another on bourgeois contractual
terms of equity or justice rather than on the communist terms of
ability and needs, refected the artisan's bias for personal au
tonomy, leaving any moral commitment to a collective unde
fned beyond the good intentions of its members.
Indeed, Proudhon's famous declaration that "whoever puts
his hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare
him my enemy" strongly tilts toward a personalistic, negative
feedom that overshadows his opposition to oppressive social
institutions and the vision of an anarchist society tat he pro
jected. His statement easily blends into William Godwin's dis
tinctly fndividualistic declaration: "There is but one power to
whch I can yield a heartfelt obedience, the decision of my own
understanding, te dictates of my own conscience." Godwin's
appeal to the "authority" of his own understanding and con
science, like Proudhon's condemnation of the "hand" tat teat
ens to restrict his liberty, gave anarchism an immensely indi
vidualistic thrust.
Compelling as such declaration may be - and in the
United States they have won considerable admiration fom te
so-called libertarian (more accurately, proprietarian) right, wit
its avowals of "fee" enterprise -they reveal an anarchism very
much at odds with itself. By contrast, Michael Bakunin and Peter
Kropotkin held essentially collectivist views -in Kropotkin's
case, explicitly communist ones. Bakunin emphatically priori
tized the social over the individual. Society, he writes,
antedates and at the same time surives every human
individual, being in t respect like Nature itself. It is
eternal like Nature, or rather, having been born upon
our earth, it will last as long as the earth. A radical revolt
agait society would therefore be just as impossible for
man as a revolt against Nature, human society being
nothing else but the last great manifestation or creation
of Nature upon this earth. And an individual who
would want to rebel against society . . . would place
himself beyond the pale of real existence.1
SOCAL ANARCM OR LIESE ANARCM 5
Bakunin often expressed his opposition to the individualistic
trend in liberalism and anarchism with considerable polemical
emphasis. Although society is "indebted to individuals," he
wrote in a relatively mild statement, the formation of the indi
vidual is social:
even the most wretched individual of our present soci
ety could not exist and develop without the cumulative
social efforts of countless generation. Thus the indi
vidual, hs freedom and reason, are the products of
society, and not vice versa: society is not the product of
individuals comprising it; and the hgher, the more fully
the individual is developed, the greater hs feedom -
and the more he is the prod uct of society, the more does
he receive from society and the greater hs debt to it.2
Kopotkin, for his part, retained this collectivistic emphasis
with remarkable consistency. In what was probably his most
widely read work, his Encclopaedia Britannica essay on "Anar
chism," Kopotkin distinctly located the economic conceptions
of anarchism on the "left-wing" of "all socialisms," calling for
the radical abolition of private property and the State in "the
spirit of local and personal intiative, and of free federation from
the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy fom
the center to the periphery." Kropotkin'sworks on ethics, in fact ,
include a sustained cri tique of liberalistic attempts to counterpose
the individual to society, indeed to subordinate society to the
individual or ego. He placed himself squarely in the socialist
tradition. His anarchocommunism, predicated on advances in
technology and increased productivity, became a prevailing
libertarian ideology in the 1890s, steadily elbowing out collec
tivist notions of distribution based on equity. Anarchists, "in
common with most socialists," Kropotkin emphasized, recog
nized the need for "periods of accelerated evolution whch are
called revolutions," ultimately yielding a society based on fed
erations of "every township or commune of the local groups of
producers and consumers."3
With the emergence of anarchosyndicalism and anarcho
communism in the late nineteenth and early tentieth centry,
6 SAL ANARCISM OR LILE ANARCHSM
the need to resolve the tension between the individualist and the
collectivist tendencies essentially became moot." Anarcho-indi
vidualism was largely marginalized by mass socialistic work
ers' movements, of which most anarchists considered them
selves the left wing. m an era of stormy social upheaval, marked
by the rise of a mass working-class movement that culminated
in the 1930s and the Spanish Revolution, anarchosyndicalists
and anarchocommunists, no less than Marxists, considered
anarcho-individualism to be petty-bourgeois exotica. They of
ten attacked it quite directly as a middle-class indulgence,
rooted far more in liberalism than i anarchsm.
The period hardly allowed individualists, in the name of
their "uni
For the appalg statistics, see Corinne Shear Wood, Human Sick
ness and Helth: A Biocultural Vie (Palo Alto, Calif. : Mayfield
Publishing Co. , 1979), pp. 17-23. Neandertals - who far from
being "maliged," as Zerzan would have it, are receiving a marvel
ous press these days -are very generously treated in Christopher
Stringer and Clive Gamble's In Search of the Neanderthls (New York:
Thames and Hudson, 1993) . Yet these authors conclude: "The high
incidence of degenerative joint disease in Neanderthals is perhaps
not surprising given what we know of the hard lives they led and
the wear and tear this would have produced on their bodies. But the
prevalance of serious injuries is more surprising, and indicates just
how dangerous life was, even for those who did not manage to
reach 'old age' in Neanderthal societies" (pp. 94-95).
Some prehistoric individuals no doubt lived into their seven
ties, suc as the foragers who occupied the Florida marshes some
eight thousand years ago, but these are very rare exceptions. But
ony a diehard primitivist would grasp at such exceptions and make
them the rule. Oh, yes -conditions are terrible for most people
under civilization. But who tries to claim that civilization is notable
for unqualified joy, feasting, and love?
46 SOCIAL ANARCHM OR LIFESTE ANARCHM
has been suggested that many individuals i China and Java
were killed by volcanic eruptions, but the latter explanations
loses a good deal of plausibilit in the light of the remains offorty
indivi
ssive. "
Anarchists were even more hostile than many Marxist so
cialists i their opposition to nationalism. Anarchist theorists
and' activists opposed the formation of nation-states every
where in te world, a view that placed them politically far in
advance of the Marxists. Any approval of te nation-state, much
les a centralized entity of any kind, ran contrary to anarchist
antistatism and its commitment to a universalized conception of
humanity.
Bakunin's views on the subject of nationalism were very
forthright. Without denying the right of every cultural group,
indeed the "smallestfolk-unit," to enjoy the freedom to exercise
its own rights as a community, he warned:
We should place human, universal justice above all
national interests. And we should abandon the false
principle of nationality, invented of late by the despots
of France, Russia, and Prussia for the purpose of crush
ing the sovereign principle of libert . . . . Everyone who
Sincerely wishes peace and international j ustice, should
once and for all renounce the glory, the might, and the
greatess of the Fatherland, should renounce all egoistic
and vain interests of patriotism.
In sharp opposition to the state's preemption of societal
functions of coordination, anarchist theorists advanced the fun
damental notion of conederation, in which communes or mu
nicipalities in various regions could freely unite by means of
recallable delegates. The functions of these confederal delegates
were strictly adminstrative. Policy-making was to be left to the
THE LE THAT WA: A PERONAL REFLEClON 71
communes or municipalities themselves (although there was no
clear agreement among anarchists on how the decision-making
process was to function) .
Nor was confederalism -as an alternative to nationalism and
statm -a purely teoretcal contuct. Historicaly, confederalsm
and statism had been i conict wit each oter for centuries. This
conict reached back to the distant past, but it erupted very
sharply throughout the era of the democratic and proletarian
revolutions, notably in the new United States during the 1780s,
in France in 1793 and 1871, in Russia in 1921, and in the Mediter
ranean countries, notably Italy and Spain, in the nineteenth
century -and again in Spain during the revolution of 1936.
In fact, Spanish anarchism, the largest of the anarchist
movements in Europe, flatly opposed Catalan nationalism de
spite the fact that its largest following by the 1930s was recruited
from the Catalan proletariat. So uncompromising were anar
chist attempts to foster internationalism that clubs were formed
everywhere among the Spanish anarchists to promote the use of
Esperanto as a worldwide means of communication. Far more
ethical than even Luxemburg, anarchists generally raised so
called "abstract rights" that were anchored in humanity' s uni
versality and solidarity, a vision that stood opposed to the
institutional and ideological particularism that divided human
from human.
THE COMMITMENT TO DEMOCRCY
THE LEF THAT WAS viewed any abridgement of free expression as
abhorrent and reactionary. With few exceptions (Lenin's views
are a case in point), the entire Left of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries was nourished by the ideals of "popular
rule" and the radicalization of democracy, often in sharp reac
tion to the authoritarian rule that had marked the Jacobin phase
of the French Revolution. (The word democracy, I should note,
varied greatly in its meaning, ranging from free expression and
assembly under republican institutions -the common socialist
view - to face-to-face democracy - the common anarchist
view. ) Even Marx and Engels, who were by no means democrats
in the sense of being committed to face-to-face democracy,
72 SOIAL ANARCIM OR Lute ANARCHM
wrote in The Communist Maniesto mat to raise the proIetariat to
the position ot ruling class isj to win the battle tor democracy
a clear avowal that bourgeois democracy was awed m its
scope and ideals. !ndeed, the elimination ot classes and class
rule by the proletariat was expected to yield an association, in
whch the hee development ot each is the hee development ot
all an avowal that literally became a slogan comparable to
Working Men ot All Countries, Unite| and that persisted well
into the Lett ot the I9JOs.
As a Marxist, Luxemburg never strayed hom ths IB4B
_
sion. !n tact, her vision ot revolution was integally bound up
with a proletariat that i her eyes was not only prepared to take
power but was acutely knowledgeable ot its humamstic task
through experience and the give-and-take ot tree discussion.
Hence her tirm belIet that revolution would be the work not of
a party but ot the proletariat itselt. The role ot the party
.
i ettect
.
was to educate
.
not to command. !n her critigue ot the olshevik
Revolution, written only six months betore she was murdered in
the attermath ot the tailed Spartacist uprising ot january I9I9,
Luxemburg declared.
Freedom only tor the supporters ot the olshevik]
government
.
only tor the members ot one party
however numerous they may be -is no treedom at all.
Freedom is always and exclusively heedom tor me one
who thinks ditterently. Not because ot any tanatical
conception ot ustice but because all that is instructive,
wholesome, and puriqing in political heedom depends
on this essential characteristic and its ettectiveness van-
ishes when treedom becomes a special privilege.
Oespite her support ot me Russian Kvolution, Luxemburg lhed
out at Lenin over this issue as early as I9IB in the harshest terms.
Lenin is completely mistaken m the means he employs.
Oecree, dictatorial torce ot me tactory overseer, dracomc
penalties, rule by terror, alI these things are but
palliatives. The only way to rebirth is the school of
public lite itselt, the most unlimited, the broadest de-
THE LEF THAT WAS: A PERONAL REFLECON 7J
mocracy and public opinion. It is rule by terror which
demoralizes.
And with very rare prescience for that time in the revolu
tionary movement, she warned that the proletarian dictatorship
red uced to a mere elite would result in a "brutalization of public
life," such as ultimately did occur under Stalinist rule.
With the repression of political life in the land as a whole,
life in the Soviets must also become crippled . . . . life dies
out in every public institution, becomes a mere sem
blance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as
the active element.
For the anarchists, democracy had a less formal and more
substantive meaning. Bakunin, who was presumably contrast
ing hs views with Rousseau's abstract conception of the citizen,
declared:
No, I have in mid only liberty worthy of that name,
liberty consisting in the full development of all the mate
rial, intellectual, and moral powers latent in every man;
a liberty which does not recognize any other restrictions
but those which are traced by the laws of our own nature,
which, properly speaking, is tantamount to saying that
there are no restrictions at all, since tese laws are not
imposed upon us by some outside legislator standing
above us or alongside us. Those laws are immanent,
inerent in us; they constitute te very basis of our being,
material as well as intellectual and moral; and istead of
finding in them a limt to our liberty we should regard
them as its real conditions and as its effective reason.
Bakunin's "liberty, " in effect, is the flfllment of humanity's
potentiality and immanent tendency to achiev
realization in an
anarchst society. Accordingly, this "liberty . . . far from finding
itself checked by the freedom of others, is, on the contrary
confirmed by it. " Still further: "We understand by freedom from
the positive point of view, the development, as complete as
74 SOCIAL ANARCHSM OR LIFESTLE ANARCHISM
possible, ot all taculties whch man has within hmselt, and,
trom the negative point ot view, the independence ot the will ot
everyone trom the will ot others. "
ANTIMILITARISM AND REVOLUTION
THE LEFTHAT Wts contained many pacihsts, but its most radical
tendencies eschewed nonviolence and committed themselves to
antimilitarism rather than pacihsm as a social as well as a combat-
ive issue. !n their view, militarism implied a regimented society,
a subordination ot democratic rights in crisis situations such as
war or, tor that matter, revolution. Militarism inculcated obedi-
ence in the masses and conditioned them to the imperatives ot
a command society.
ut what the Lett That Was demanded was not the symbolic
image ot the broken ritle" -so very much in vogue these days
in pacihst boutigues but the trainng and armmg ot the people
tor revolutionary ends, solely in the torm ot democratic militias.
A resolution coauthored by Luxemburg and Lenn [a rare event)
and adopted by the Second !nternatonal in l9O6 decIared that it
sees in the democratic organization ot the army, in the popular
militia instead ot the standing army, an essential guarantee tor
the prevention ot aggressive wars, and tor tactating the re-
moval ot di!terences between nations. "
Ths was not simply an antwar resolution, although oppo-
sition to the war that was tast approachng was the prmcipal
tocus ot the statement. The arming ot the people was a basc
tenet ot the Lett That Was, and pious demands tor gu control
among todays lettists woud have been totally alien to the
mnkng ot the Lett That Was. As recently as the I9JOs, the
concept ot the people in arms" remained a basic tenet ot
mdependent socialist, not to speak ot anarcmst, moVements
throughout the world, including those ot the Umted States, as I
myselt so well remember. The notion ot schooling the masses in
reliance on the police and army tor public satety, much less ot
turning the omer cheek in the tace ot violence, would have been
regarded as heinous.
Not surprisingly, revolutionary anarchsts were even Iess
ambiguous tha socialists. m contrast to the state-controlled
THE LEF Tnf WAs: A PERNAL REFLEC0N 75
militia that the Second International was prepared to accept in
the 1906 resolution cited above, the anarchists sought the direct
arming of the masses. In Spain, weapons were supplied to
anarchist militants from the very inception of the movement.
The workers and peasants relied on themselves, not on the
largess of statist institutions, to obtain the mean for inurrec
tion. Just as their notion of democracy meant direct democracy,
so their notion of antimilitarism meant that they had to
countervail the states monopoly of violence with an armed
popular movement -not merely a state-subsidized militia.
SECULARISM AND RATIONALISM
IT REMAINS T ADD that anarchists and to a great extent the revolu
tionary socialists of the Left That Was not only tried to speak in
the general interests of humanity but abjured any body of ideas
and prejudices that denied humanity its naturalistic place in the
scheme of things. They regarded the worship of deities as a form
of subj ugation to creations of human making, as the masking of
reality by illusion, and as the manipulation of human fears,
alienation, and anomie by calculated elites in behalf of an
oppressive social order. Generally, the Left That Was boldly laid
claim to the rationalist heritage of the Enlightenent ad the
French Revolution, however much this saddled the Marxists
with mechanistic ideas. But also, organic forms of reason, bor
rowed from Hegel, competed with mechanism and conven
tional empiricism. Where intitional notions competed with
materialist ones among anarchists, they attracted a sizable body
of artists to the anarchist movements of the past, or to anarchist
ideas. Additionally, rationalism did not crowd out emotive
approaches that fostered a highly moral socialism that was often
indistinguishable from libertarian outlooks. But almost every
attempt apart from certain individual exceptions was made to
place mechanistic, organic, and emotive approaches to reality i
a rational framework -notably, to achieve a coherent approach
to social analysis and change.
That this endeavor led to disparate tendencies in the Left
That Was should not surprise us. But the notion of a rational
society achieved by rational as well as moral means and ideal-
76 SOCIAL ANARCHM OR LIESTLE ANARCHM
istic sentiments tormed a untying outlook tor the Lett That Was.
Few Iettists wouId have accepted WiIIiam Iake's nohon ot
reason as meddlesome" or current postmodern views ot coher-
ence as totalitarian. "
The Lett That Was was divided over the guestion ot whether
there couId be a peacetuI, indeed retormistic, evoIution ot
capitalism into socialism or whether an insurrectionary break
with the capitaIist system was unavoidabIe. The wariness ot the
Lett That Was toward retorms can perhaps best be seen in the
tact that years ago, serious debates occurred among Western
1ettists ot all kinds on whether they shouId tight tor the eight-
hour day, which many thought would make capitalism more
paIatable to the working class. !n Tsarist Russia, the Lett ser-
ously debated whether their organizations should try to allevi-
ate tamine conditions among the peasantry lest their Uartable
ettorts detlect the anger ot the peasantry away hom Tsarism.
ut however serious those dittercnces were, attempts at
retorm tor its own sake were never part ot letust ideolog. The
revolutionar Lett which truly detined socialist and anarchst
movements as a Lett certainly did not want to improve the
captaIst system, much Iess give t a human tace. " CaptaIsm
with a human tace" was an expression they wouId have re-
garded as a contradichon in terms. The Lett That Was hoped to
overthrow capitalism and intiate a radically new social system,
not to ra uonalize the existing order and make it acceptabIe to the
masses.
To parhcipate in struggles tor retorms was seen as a means
to educate the masses, not a way to dole out charty or improve
their materal lot. Oemands tor retorms were always permeated
by the broader message that tundamental social reconstruction
was needed. The tight tor the eight-hour day, years ago, and
strikes tor better living conditions, not to speak ot legislahve
improvements tor working people, were seen as means tor
mobilizing the oppressed, tor engaging them in struggles, and
tor disclosing the limits and basic irrationaIsm ot captaI-
sm, not simply or even signtcantly as a mean tor bettermg hte
under capitalism. !t was not until a later day that retorms were
advocated by so-caIled lettist parties, candidates, depuhes, and
humane devotees ot the working class, the poor, and the elderIy
Tnr Lrr Tntf Wm. A PERONAL REFLECON 77
as techniques for "humanizing" capitalism or rendering leftist
candidates more popular -and electable for public office.
To ask for improved working and living conditions was
seen as a way of directly challenging the "wage system" and the
sovereignty of capital. Even so-called "evolutionary" or "re
formist" socialists who hoped to ease from capitalism into
socialism were revolutionary in the sense that they believed
capitalism had to be replaced by a radically new social order.
Their conficts with the revolutionary socialists and anarchists
in the Left That Was centered on whether capitalism could be
replaced by piecemeal changes, not on whether it could be given
a "human face. " The First World War and particularly te
revolutions that folowed it left reformist socialism in debris
but it also produced a Left that radically departed in many of its
basic tenets from the Left That Was.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND BOLSHEVISM
THE OUREAK OF TE FI WORLD WA, the Bolshevik revolution of
I9I7, and the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebkecht
in the Spartacus League uprising of January I9I9 (a drawing of
socialist blood that occurred with the indirect assent of the
official German Social Democrats) opened a maj or breach in the
history of the Left generally.
At the outbreak of the war, nearly all the socialist parties of
warring Europe succumbed to nationalism, and their parlia
mentary factions voted to give war credits to their respective
capitalist states. Nor did the attitudes of certain leading anar
chists, including Kropotkin, prove to be more honorable than
those of the "social patriots, " to use Lenin's epithet for the
German and French socialist leaders who supported one or
another camp in the war.
To analyze the reasons why this breach was opened in the
Left That Was would require a study in itself. But the Bolshevik
seizure of power in November I9I7 did not close the breach.
Quite to the contrary -it widened it, not only because of the
unavoidable polarization of Bolshevism against Social Democ
racy but because of the authoritarian elements that had always
formed a part of the highly conspiratorial Russian revol utionary
7B SOOAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTLE ANARCHISM
movement. The oIshevik party had IittIe commitment to popu-
Iar democracy. Lenin had never viewed bourgeois democracy"
as anything more than an instrument that couId be used or
discarded as expediency reguired. Many demands were pIaced
on the IargeIy oIshevik regime that was tormed in November
[it initially included Lett Social RevoIutIonaries as weIl) . the
advancing German army on the eastern hont
.
the ncredibly
savage civiI war that tollowed the RevoIution. the isolation ot
the olsheviks trom the workers and peasants in the early I92Os
.
and the attempt by the Kontadt sailors to recover a soviet
democracy that had been ettaced by the bureaucratc oIshevik
party. These demands combined to bring out the worst teatures
ot Lenins centralist views and his opportunstic views ot de-
mocracy. eginnng in the early twenties, all athIiates ot the
Communist !nternauonal were olshevized" by Znovev and
his Stalinist successors, untl the commitment ot socialism to
democracy was margnalized and largeIy taded in me Comu-
nist parties ot the world.
No less important n udermmng the Lett 1hat Was were
the various myths popu!arzed by Lenm, that capitaIism had
entered a unigue, ndeed hnaI" stage ot its deveIopment, a
stage marked by imperialism" and worIdwide struggles tor
national liberation. " Here, again, Lemns position is too com-
plex to be dealt with cursorily, but what is important is mat the
traditional internationalism that had marked the Lett 1hat Was
increasingly gave way to an emphasis on nauonaI liberation"
struggles
.
partly tor the purpose ot weakenng Western imperi-
alism
.
and partly to toster economic development in colonzed
countries
.
thereby bringing the domestic class contlict within
these countries to the top ot their national agendas.
The olsheviks did not abandon the rhetoric ot internation-
alism
.
to be sure
.
any more than the Social Oemocrats did. ut
nationaI liberation" struggles [which the olsheviks largely
honored in the breach at home
.
atter they took power in the
newly tormed Sovet Lnion) uncritically tostered a commit-
ment by the Lett to the tormauon ot new nation-states. Nation-
alism increasngIy came 1o the toreground ot socalist theory
and practice. !t is not surprisng that the tirst leoples Comms-
sar ot Nationalities" n the new Soviet Lmon was joseph Stalm,
1ne Ler 1nf W Al A PERONAL REFLECON 79
who Iater tostered this nationaIistic trend in Marxism-Leninism
and who during and atter the Second WorId War gave it a
distinctIy patriotic" guality in the LSSR. Expressions cIaiming
that the Soviet Lnion was the tatherIand ot the working cIass"
were ubiguitous among Communists ot the intenar period,
and their parties were modeIed on the centraIized oIshevik
larty to aIIow tor StaIin's bIatant interterence in their attairs.
y I9J6, the poIitics ot the Communist mternationaI [or
what remained ot it) had veered sharpIy away trom the ideaIs
that had once guided the Lett That Was. Luxemburg, honored
more as a martyr than as a theorist, was discredited by the
StaIinist cabaI or totaIIy ignored. The Second mternationaI was
essentiaIIy moribund. !deaIism began to give way to a crudeIy
amoraI opportunism and to an antimiIitarism that was vari-
ousIy emphasized, reected, or moditied to suit the toreign
poIicy ot the StaIinist regime.
Yet opposition there was as Iate as I9J9 -to this degen-
eration ot the ideas that had detined the Lett That Was -
opposition trom Iett-wing tendencies in certain sociaIist parties,
trom anarchists, and trom dissident Communist groups. The
Lett That Was did not disappear without turious debates over
these ideaIs or without attempts to retain its historic premises.
!ts ideaIs remained at the top ot the revoIutionary agenda
during the entire interwar period, not onIy as a source ot
poIemics but as part ot an armed controntation n the Spanish
RevoIution ot I9J6. Lettist parties and groups stiII agonized
over issues Iike internationaIism, democracy, antimiIitarism,
revoIution, and their reIationship to the state agomes that Ied
to turious intramuraI and interparty conicts. These ssues were
branded on the entire era betore they began to tade and their
tading aItered the very detintion ot Iettism itseIt.
THE LEF AND THE "COLD WAR"
Tne Cotb Wtr" invtbrb the humansuc agenda ot the Lett That
Was by turning most Iettist organization into partisans ot the
West or the East and by introducing a dubious anti-imperiaI-
ism" into what became CoId War poIitics. National Iiberation"
became the virtuaI centerpiece ot the New Lett" and ot the
80 Socitt Antrcnism or Lirrntr Antrcmm
aging ld Lett," at least their various Stalinist, Maoist, and
Castroist versions.
!t should be understood as this Lett did not that
imperialism is not unigue to capitalism. As a means ot exploita-
tion and cultural homogenization, and as a source ot tribute, it
existed throughout the ancient, medieval, and early modern
eras. !n ancient times the imperial hegemony ot abylon was
tollowed by that ot Rome and the medieval Holy Roman Em-
pire. !ndeed, thoughout history there have been Atrican, !n-
dian, Asian, and in modern times, expansionist and exploitative
subimperialist" states that were more precapitalst than capi-
talist in character. !t war is the health ot the state, " war has
usually meant expanionism [read. imperialism) among the
more commanding states ot the world and even among their
client states.
!n the early part ot the twentieth century, the various writ-
ings on imperialism by J. A. Hobson, Rudolt Hlterdmg, and
Lenin, among omers, did not disover me concept ot imperial-
ism. They simply added new, uniguely capitalist teatures to
earlier characterizations ot imperialism, such as the export ot
capital" and the impact ot capitalism on the economic develop-
ment ot colonized countries. ut what capitalism has also ex-
ported with a vengeance, in addition to capital itselt, has been
nationalism [not only demands tor cultural autonomy) and
nationalism in the torm ot centralized nation-states. !ndeed, me
centraIized nation-state has been exported to peoples who might
more reasonably have turned to contederal torms ot struggle
and social reconstruction in asserting their cultural unigueness
and right to selt-management. Let me emphasize that my criti-
cisms ot nationaIism and statism are not meant to reect the
genuine aspirations ot cultural groups tor tull expression and
selt-governance. This is particularly the case where attempts are
made to subvert their cultural umgueness and their rights to
heedom. The issue with which ! am concemed is how their
cultural autonomy is expressed and the institutional structures
they establish to manage themselves as unigue cultural entities.
The cultural integrty ot a people does not have to be embodied
in the torm ot a nation-sta te. It should, m my view, be expressed
in torms that retain valuable cultural traditions and practices in
THE LEF THAT WAS: A PERNAL REFLEcON BI
confederal institutions of self-management. It was goals such as
these in particular that were raised and prized by the great
majority of anarchists and libertarian socialists, even certain
Marxists, in the Left That Was.
What has happened instead is . that the export of the
nation-state has poisoned not only the modern Left but the
human condition itself. In recent years, "Balkanization" and
parochialism have become vicious phenomena of disastous
proportions. The recent and much-described breakup of the
Russian empire has resulted in bloody natonal stuggles and
aspirations for state-formation that are pitting culturally dispar
ate communities against each other in ways that threaten to
regress to barbarism. The internationalist ideals that the Left
That Was advanced, particularly in the former "socialist bloc,"
have been replaced by an ugly parochialism -directed against
Jews generally and in much of Europe against "foreign work
ers" from all parts of the world. I the Near East, Africa, Asia,
and Latin America, colonized or formerly colonized peoples
have developed imperial appetites of their own, so that many of
what now pass for former colonies that have been liberated from
Euro-American imperialist powers are now pursuing brutally
imperialist aspirations of their own.
For the emergence of an authentic Left what is disastrous
here is that leftists in the United States and Europe often con
done appalling behavior on the part of former colonies, in the
name of "socialism, " "anti-imperialism, " and of course "na
tional libera tion. " The present-day Left is no less a victim of the
"Cold War" than colonized peoples who were pawns in it.
Leftists have all but jettisoned the ideals of the Left That Was,
and in so doing, they have come to accept a kind of client status
of their own -first, in the 1930s, as supporters of the "workers'
fatherland" in the East, and more recently as supporters of
former colonies bent on their own imperialist adventures.
What matters is not whether such leftists in Europe or the
United States do or do not support "liberated" nation-states that
are either newly emerging, subimperialist, or imperialist.
Whether Western leftists "support" these nation-states and
their endeavors means as much to those states as seagull
droppings on an ocean shore. Rather, what really matters
,
-and
82 SOCIAL ANARCHSM OR LIFESTLE ANARCHISM
what is the more serious tragedy -is tat these leftists rarely
ask whether peoples they support accept statist regimes or
confederal associations, whether they oppress other cultres, or
whether they oppress their own or other populations - let
alone whether they themselves should be supporting a nation
state at al.
Ideed, many lefists fel into the habit of opposing the
imperialism of the superpowers in a mete reaction to the sides
that were lined up in the "Cold War." This "Cold War" mentality
prsists even after the "Cold War" has come to an end. More than
ever, leftists today are obliged to ask if their "anti-imperialist"
and "national liberation" concers help to foster the emergence
of more nation-states and more ethc and "subimperialist" rival
ries. They must ask, what character is anti-imperialism taking
today? I it validating ethnic rivalries, the emergence of domestic
tyrannies, subimperialist ambition, and a rapacious collection
of militaristic regimes?
Clearly, parochialism is one product of the new "anti
imperialist" nationalism and statism that has been nourished by
the "Cold War" and the reduction of specious leftists to miions
of old Stalinist and Maoist-type conficts dressed in the garb of
"national liberation. " Parochialism can also function internally,
partly as an extenion of the "Cold War" into domestic spheres
of life. Self-styled spokespeople for ethnic groups who literally
pit one racial group against another, dehumanizig (for what
ever reason) one to enance the other; spokespeople for gender
groups that parallel such exclusionary ethnic groups in opposi
tion to their sexual counterparts; spokespeople for religious
groups that do the same with respect to other religious groups
- all reflect atavistic developments that would have had no
place in the Left That Was. That the rights of ethnic, gender, and
like strata of a given population must be cherished and that
cultural distinctions must be prized is not in question here. But
apart from the justifed claims of all these groups, their aims
should be sought within a human-oriented framework, not
within an exclusionary or parochial folk-oriented one. If an
authentic Left is once again to emerge, the myth of a "hegemonic"
group of oppressed people, which seeks to rearrange human
relations in a new hierarchical pyramid, must be replaced by the
THE LEF THAT WAS: A PERONAL REFECON 83
goal of achieving an ethics of complementarity in which differ
ences enrich the whole. I ancient times, the slaves of Sicily who
revolted and forced all free men to fight as gladiators in the
island's amphitheaters behaved no differently from their mas
ters. They reproduced what was still a slave culture, replacing
one kind of slave with another.
Moreover, if there is to be a Left that in any sense resembles
the Left That Was, it cannot be merely "left of center. " Liberalism
-with its menu of small reforms that obscure the irrationality
of the prevailing society and make it more socially acceptable
is an arena in its own right. Liberalism has no "left" that can be
regarded as its kin or its critical neighbor. The Left must stake
out its own arena, one that stands in revolu tionary opposi tion to
the prevailing society, not one that participates as a "leftist"
partner in its workings.
WILL THERE BE A LEF TODAY?
CERTAINLY lHE LEF THAT WAS FOUGHT against innumerable irratio
nalities in the existing social order, such as long debilitating
working hours, desperate hunger, and abject poverty. It did so
because the perpetuation of these irrationalities would have
completely demoralized the forces fighting for basic social
change. It often raised seemingly "reformist" demands, but it
did so to reveal the failure of the existing social order to meet the
most elementary needs of denied people. I fighting for these
"reforms, " however, the concern of the Left That Was was
explicitly and unwaveringly focused on the need to change the
whole social order, not on making it less irrational and more
palatable. Today, the Left That Was would have also fought
with desperation against the forces that are depleting the ozone
layer, destroying forests, and proliferating nuclear power plants
in order to preserve lie itsel on this planet.
By the same token, however, the Left That Was recognized
that there are many problems that cannot be solved within the
framework of capitalism. It held, however "unrealistically" it may
seem, to its revolutionary position rather than curry public favor
or surrender its identity to opportunistic programs. At any given
moment, history does not always present the Left with clear-cut
84 SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM
alternatives or im ediately "effective" courses of action. In Au
gst 1914, for example, no forces existed that could have pre
vented the outbreak of World War I, not even the Social Democ
racy that had committed itself to opposition to te war. Te Left
had to live an inefectual, often hidden, fstrating life amidst te
effluvium of popuar jigoism that englfed so much of Europe,
including most of the workers in te socialst movement itself.
Similarly, in 1938, there was no longer any possibility that te
Spanish Revolution could be rescued from fascist militar attacks
.nd isidious Stalinist counterrevolution, despite the valiant
struggles that contiued for the greater part of a year thereafter.
Regrettably, there are some impossible situations in whch a
authentic Lef can only take a moral stance, wit no hope of
intervening successfully. I such cases, te Left can only patiently
try to educte tose who are willig to listen, to advance its ideas
to rational idividuals, however small their numbers may be, and
to act as a ethical force in opposition to the "art of the possible,"
to use a famous liberal defnition of politics. A recent case i point
was an admirable slogan that was raised at the iception of te
Gulf War, namely "Neither Side Is Rght" -a slogan that obvi
ously did not resonate with the nationalstic attitde of the great
majority of American people, nor one that was lkely to be politi
cally effective. Indeed, to choose sides in the GufW arwould have
been to confse American national chauvinism with democracy,
on the one hand, or to confuse a idifference to Saddam Hussein' s
totalitarianism with "anti-imperialism," on te other.
To pretend tat a authentic Left can always ofer a practical
solution to every problem in society is chimerical. Offering
"lesser evils" as a solution to every evil that this society gener
ates will lead to the worst of all possible evils -the dissolution
of the Left into a liberal morass of endless compromises and
humiliations. Amid all its fghts in support of concrete issues, an
authentic Left advances the message that the present society
must be demolished and replaced by one that is rationaL Such
was the case with socialists like Eugene V. Debs and anarchists
like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in the Left That
Was. Put bluntly: 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
THE LEF THAT WAS: A PERONAL REFLECON 85
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. The need to steadfastly maintain the principal com
mitments that minimally define a Left may not always be
popular, but the alternative to the monstrous irrationalities that
permeate present-day society must always be kept open, fos
tered, and developed if we are ever to achieve a free society.
It may well be that in the fores,eeable future an authentic Left
has little, if any, prospects of gaining a large following. But if it
surrenders the most basic principles that defne it -internation
alism, democracy, antimilitarism, revolution, secuarism, and
rationalism -as well as others, like confederalism, the word Lef
will no longer have any meaning in our political vocabulary. Ore
may call oneself a liberal, a social democrat, a "realo" Green, or
a reformist. That is a choice that each individual is fee to make,
according to his or her social and political convictions. But for
those who call themselves leftists, there should be a clear under
standing that the use of the term Left involves the acceptance of
the fundamental principles that literally define and justif the
use of the word. This mean that certain ideas like nationalism,
parochialism, authoritarianism--and certainly, for anarchists of
all kinds, any commitment to a nation-state -and symbols like
the broken rifle of pacifsm are totally alien to the principles that
define the Left. Such ideas, introduced into politics, have no
place in any politics that can authentically be characterized as
leftist. If no such politics exists, the term Left should be permitted
to perish with honor.
But if the Left were to finally disappear because of the
melding of reformist, liberal, nationalist, and parochial views,
not ony would modem society lose the "principle of hope, " to
use Ernt Bloch's expression, an abiding principle that has
guided all revolutionary movements of the past; the Left would
cease to be the conscience of society. Nor could it advance the
belief that the present society is totally irrational and must be
replaced by one that is guided by reason, an ecological ethics,
and a genuine concern for human welfare. For my part, that is
not a world in which I would want to live.
-May 1991
86 SOCIAL ANARCHM OR LIESTLE ANARCHM