Social individualism or Nihilist Orgies?

Friday, April 30, 2010

I recently read "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgable Chasm" by Murray Bookchin. I have to say that I have mixed feelings about the position carved out in it. On one hand, Bookchin critisizes nihilistic and irrationalist elements that have popped up in contemporary anarchist thought that I think are definitely problematic. On the other hand, he seems to want to paint the entirety of individualist anarchism with this brush, even going so far as to attack Proudhon, while digging in to a sectarian position in favor of syndicalism and communism. He mocks the idea of personal autonomy as the subjective lashing out of blind rebellion, contrasting it with "social freedom".

To be sure, part of what Bookchin attacks is the sort of raw atomistic and nihilistic sense of individualism associated with Max Stirner, which is all about the individual ego in an asocial and amoral sense. I do think that this is not a particularly sensible view, especially if one wants to favor interpersonal goals and advance a workable strategy that requires people to meaningfully cooperate. But it seems as if Bookchin makes a non-sequitor and an overgeneralization by condemning individualist anarchism as such. He lambasts individualism in the most perjorative sense of the term without taking the social and moral elements that are at play at least within elements of individualist anarchism.

In essence, I think that Bookchin presents us with a false choice between being atomists and absolute communalists. The "unbridgable chasm" that he talks about, if anything, is precisely what most anarchists have attempted to do from the beginning, I.E. there is a conceptual balance between individualism and sociality or an attempt to make some sort of synthesis between personal freedom and society. I basically see no reason why one could not be a "social individualist" or an "individualist socialist". It also seems as if, in his zeal to oppose short-sighted whimsicality, Bookchin overlooks the particular dangers of the subordination of people to community pressures that is part of what may cause people to be attracted to individualism in the first place.

Part of what Bookchin is reacting against is the influence of existentialist and postmodern thought on contemporary anarchism. I can sympathize with this concern to a certain extent, insofar as it may function to negate any sense of unity or genuine solidary that goes along with social revolution, while celebrating contradiction or ambiguity in a way that at least appears to erode rational underpinnings of libertarian ideas. On the other hand, Bookchin may have been acting naively about the problems with enlightenment universalism. He seems to take some sort of rationalism for granted, without much of an explaination for it. While talking about philosophical positions, he mostly appears to be engaging in heated polemics.

Another target of Bookchin's criticism, which he associates with individualism, are the primitivists and the anti-civilization crowd. I must admit that I cannot particularly think of anything to say in defense of these ideas, since I essentially find them to be ridiculous. There is one perjorative sense of individualism that does accurately describe such views, which is the notion of pure individual (or extremely small-scale) "self-sufficiency" taken to the point of opposing any meaningful social structure that we could comprehend in a modern context. But it hardly seems as if primitivists particularly pose a significant threat to anyone. They are minority within a minority within a minority. Their voice within the anarchist movement is rather marginal.

It seems as if part of what Bookchin means by "lifestyle anarchism" is the fragmented proliferation of a multitude of personal causes, a cambrian explosition of identity politics inside of anarchism. This bothers him in that it rubs up against his notion of a large-scale cohesive or participatory movement that is unified towards certain universal goals. I suppose Bookchin's concern is understandable at a certain level, in terms of maintaining at least some ground norms that unify anarchism and provide a framework for something strategically significant. On the other hand, if this is taken too far it could be seen as the total elimination of pluralism or an overly narrow view that opposes the particular ways in which people want to express their freedom.

Ultimately, while I sympathize with some of the concerns that Bookchin brings up, it seems like he was being too much of a partisan in "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism". I feel like he frames the question in a way that is designed to force us to choose between blind individual self-expression and lockstep dedication to a particular universalist creed, with him trying to persuade us to "get with the program" through his polemics against certain groups. Still, some of the issues that he touches on resonate with me in terms of the problems that I see with too nihilistic of a philosophy being embraced by anarchists. The problem is that he doesn't do the best job of showing why this is a problem, and I don't fully buy into the alternative that he presents.

Posted by Brainpolice at 7:46 PM

Labels: Anarchism, Anarcho-collectivism, Egoism, Ideology, Individualism, Individualist Anarchism, Libertarianism, Max Stirner, Murray Bookchin,Nihilism, Post-left Anarchism, Postmodernism, Primitivism

Why the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is "Centrist"

Monday, May 31, 2010

I was recently cited as claiming that the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is a "centrist" organization. This can be portrayed as either a good or bad thing depending on the context. I don't recall any particular writing in which I explicitly said this, but I have made statements to this effect before. Well, I stand by such a statement and would like to explain what I mean by it. This requires me to unpack what the term "centrist" brings to mind for me.

The term "centrist" has the following possible connotations for me:

1. Fusionism. By fusionism I refer to eclectic philosophies that engage in a synthesis of a variety of elements, some of which may be commonly thought of as being in opposition to each other. Fusionism is ideological integration. Various people within the Alliance of the Libertarian Left definitely have certain fusionist tendencies, which involves attempts at reconciling advocacy for free markets with the concerns often associated with social anarchism. In short, the fusionism within the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is a matter of reconciliation between the ideas of "market anarchism" and "libertarian socialism". Relative to hardcore adherants of either side of that divide, such reconciliation is "somewhere in between".

2. Pluralism. By pluralism I refer to a certain sense of tolerance or inclusiveness towards a wide scope of different flavors and models. While fusionism is a deliberate mixing of different elements into one thing, pluralism is simply an open attitude towards the co-existence of different elements. Pluralism may be thought of as anti-monistic, I.E. opposed to the idea of a singular system. Certain people within the Alliance of the Libertarian Left seem to have pluralist tendencies. This may involve envisioning different libertarian ideologies on a spectrum of preferences that are all capable of co-existing in a broad framework of freedom.

3. Opportunism. Centrism also can have certain associations with opportunism. In the cliche context of electoral politics, this may be manifested as politicians who "blow in the wind" with no real consistency, changing positions whenever it benefits them the most or happens to be what is popular at the moment. It can also take the form of the exploitation of semantic ambiguity for the purpose of selling certain ideas in a more favorable way to people. While I definitely would not attack the Alliance of the Libertarian Left as being dishonest, there are certain people or at least some things that certain people have written that come off as oppurtunistic to me. This may involve trying to sell anarcho-capitalism with leftist rhetoric.

When the matter is put in these terms, I definitely think that the Alliance of the Libertarian Left tends to be "centrist", although this means that it is diverse precisely because of the more pluralist and fusionist tendencies. It cannot be pinned down to any particular libertarian or anarchist philosophy. It contains people who have positions that could be considered ambiguous or eclectic relative to the "partisan" options usually presented and people who are open to a fairly wide variety of views. Other than a website with a statement that lists off a variety of sub-categories and amounts to the advocacy of opposition to cultural authoritarianism, it really has no official platform.

Relative to the standards of your typical social anarchist, especially anarcho-communists, many of the people in the Alliance of the Libertarian Left are not likely to be viewed as "hard left", and this is probably because of its overlap with free market libertarian philosophy. And when it comes to contentions over things like property, it seems to be split or at least have a multitude of positions on the matter. There are some people in the Alliance of the Libertarian Left who, in my view, are largely still clinging to the ideas of the libertarian right or at least are still in what could be considered a transitory stage in which they are exploring the anarchist left. Hence, by certain standards, at least certain elements within the ALLiance could be considered kind of "soft" or lacking much leftist substance.

On the other hand, it could be said that many of the members of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left are heretics from the anarcho-capitalist movement, ex-anarcho-capitalists or post-anarcho-capitalists who have moved "leftward" in some way. Also, the emphasis on "thick libertarianism" with a left-wing flavor, particularly as introduced by Charles Johnson, definitely strengthens its leftist credentials. The Alliance of the Libertarian Left is not only reconciliationist in character, but also deviationist. Many of its members are deviants from standard American libertarianism, some of whom have substantive objections to anarcho-capitalism.

I hope that this justifies my claim that the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is "centrist", both in positive and negative terms. I think that synthesis views can be a good thing and consider myself to have one, and pluralism is something that I think is a good thing when in its proper context. At the same time, I reject the attempt to obfuscate fundamental irreconcilable differences through the use of rhetoric and I have some trouble with ideilogies that may be too eclectic in some ways. In either case, this is my honest accessment of the group as one who considers myself to be a member of it. Posted by Brainpolice at 11:17 PM