Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm

By Murray Bookchin

This book asks and tries to answer several basic questions that affect all Leftists today. Will anarchism remain a revolutionary social movement or become a chic boutique lifestyle subculture? Will its primary goals be the complete transformation of a hierarchical, class, and irrational society into a libertarian communist one? Or will it become an ideology focused on personal well-being, spiritual redemption, and self-realization within the existing society? In an era of privatism, kicks, introversion, and post-modernist nihilism, Murray Bookchin forcefully examines the growing nihilistic trends that threaten to undermine the revolutionary tradition of anarchism and co-opt its fragments into a harmless personalistic, yuppie ideology of social accommodation that presents no threat to the existing powers that be. Includes the essay, "The Left That Was."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 187317683X
• ISBN13: 9781873176832
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: AK Press
• Length: 86 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

The chasm has widened beyond view...

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...

All those who identify as Anarchists need to read and grapple with this book

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...

a grumpy man that should be heard

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...

Long on Polemics, Short (but sweet) on Positive Vision

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...

Great, much needed criticism

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.