Post-left anarchy
Encyclopedia
Post-left anarchy is a recent current in anarchist thought that promotes a critique of anarchism
's relationship to traditional leftism
. Some post-leftists seek to escape the confines of ideology
in general also presenting a critique of organizations and morality
. Influenced by the work of Max Stirner
and by the Marxist Situationist International, post-left anarchy is marked by a focus on social insurrection
and a rejection of leftist social organisation.
The magazines Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
, Green Anarchy
and Fifth Estate have been involved in developing post-left anarchy. Individual writers associated with the tendency are Hakim Bey, Bob Black
, John Zerzan
, Jason McQuinn
, Fredy Perlman
, Lawrence Jarach
and Wolfi Landstreicher
. The contemporary network of collectives CrimethInc.
is an exponent of post-left anarchist views.
, even the revolutionary left, is anachronistic and incapable of creating change. Post-left anarchy offers critiques of radical strategies and tactics which it considers antiquated: the demonstration, class-oriented struggle, focus on tradition, and the inability to escape the confines of history. The book Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs
, for example, criticizes traditional leftist ideas and classical anarchism while calling for a rejuvenated anarchist movement. The CrimethInc.
essay "Your Politics Are Boring as Fuck" is another critique of "leftist" movements:
Some post-anarchists
have come to similar conclusions, if for different reasons:
Jason McQuinn
describes the left wing organizational tendency of “transmission-belt” structure with an explicit division between leaders and led, along with provisions to discipline rank and file members while shielding leaders from responsibility to those being led, more than a few people wise up to the con game and reject it". For him there are 4 results out of such structure:
To counter these tendencies post-left anarchy advocates individual and group autonomy
with free initiative, free association
, refusal of political authority, and thus of ideology, small, simple, informal, transparent and temporary organization, and decentralized, federal organization with direct decision-making and respect for minorities.
". For Jason McQuinn
"All ideology in essence involves the substitution of alien (or incomplete) concepts or images for human subjectivity. Ideologies are systems of false consciousness in which people no longer see themselves directly as subjects in their relation to their world. Instead they conceive of themselves in some manner as subordinate to one type or another of abstract entity or entities which are mistaken as the real subjects or actors in their world." "Whether the abstraction is God, the State, the Party, the Organization, Technology, the Family, Humanity, Peace, Ecology, Nature, Work, Love, or even Freedom; if it is conceived and presented as if it is an active subject with a being of its own which makes demands of us, then it is the center of an ideology."
is also a target of post-left anarchy just as it was in Stirner and in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche
. For McQuinn "Morality is a system of reified values—abstract values which are taken out of any context, set in stone, and converted into unquestionable beliefs to be applied regardless of a person's actual desires, thoughts or goals, and regardless of the situation in which a person finds him- or herself. Moralism is the practice of not only reducing living values to reified morals, but of considering oneself better than others because one has subjected oneself to morality (self-righteousness), and of proselytizing for the adoption of morality as a tool of social change." Living up to morality means sacrificing certain desires and temptations (regardless of the actual situation you might find yourself in) in favor of the rewards of virtue.
So "Rejecting Morality involves constructing a critical theory of one's self and society (always self-critical, provisional and never totalistic) in which a clear goal of ending one's social alienation is never confused with reified partial goals. It involves emphasizing what people have to gain from radical critique and solidarity rather than what people must sacrifice or give up in order to live virtuous lives of politically correct morality."
. Feral Faun thus writes in "The ideology of victimization" that there's a "feminist version of the ideology of victimization- an ideology which promotes fear, individual weakness (and subsequently dependence on ideologically based support groups and paternalistic protection from the authorities)" But in the end "Like all ideologies, the varieties of the ideology of victimization are forms of fake consciousness. Accepting the social role of victim—in whatever one of its many forms—is choosing to not even create one's life for oneself or to explore one's real relationships to the social structures. All of the partial liberation movements--feminism
, gay liberation
, racial liberation, workers´ movements and so on—define individuals in terms of their social roles. Because of this, these movements not only do not include a reversal of perspectives which breaks down social roles and allows individuals to create a praxis built on their own passions and desires; they actually work against such a reversal of perspective. The 'liberation' of a social role to which the individual remains subject."
has been an important issue in post-left anarchy. Bob Black
in "The Abolition of Work" calls for the abolition of the producer-
and consumer-based
society, where, Black contends, all of life is devoted to the production
and consumption
of commodities
. Attacking Marxist state socialism
as much as market capitalism
, Black argues that the only way for humans to be free is to reclaim their time from jobs and employment, instead turning necessary subsistence tasks into free play done voluntarily - an approach referred to as "ludic
". The essay argues that "no-one should ever work", because work - defined as compulsory productive activity enforced by economic or political means - is the source of most of the misery in the world. Most workers, he states, are dissatisfied with work (as evidenced by petty deviance on the job), so that what he says should be uncontroversial; however, it is controversial only because people are too close to the work-system to see its flaws.
Play, in contrast, is not necessarily rule-governed, and is performed voluntarily, in complete freedom, as a gift economy
. He points out that hunter-gatherer
societies are typified by play, a view he backs up with the work of Marshall Sahlins
; he recounts the rise of hierarchal societies, through which work is cumulatively imposed, so that the compulsive work of today would seem incomprehensibly oppressive even to ancients and medieval peasants. He responds to the view that "work," if not simply effort or energy, is necessary to get important but unpleasant tasks done, by claiming that first of all, most important tasks can be rendered ludic, or "salvaged" by being turned into game-like and craft-like activities, and secondly that the vast majority of work does not need doing at all. The latter tasks are unnecessary because they only serve functions of commerce and social control that exist only to maintain the work-system as a whole. As for what is left, he advocates Charles Fourier
's approach of arranging activities so that people will want to do them. He is also skeptical but open-minded about the possibility of eliminating work through labour-saving technologies. He feels the left cannot go far enough in its critiques because of its attachment to building its power on the category of workers, which requires a valorization of work.
"The reappropriation of life on the social level, as well as its full reappropriation on the individual level, can only occur when we stop identifying ourselves essentially in terms of our social identities." So "The recognition that this trajectory must be brought to an end and new ways of living and relating developed if we are to achieve full autonomy and freedom." So relationships with others are not seen anymore as in activism in which the goal is "to seek followers who accept one’s position" but instead "comrades and accomplices with which to carry on one’s explorations".
So Hakim Bey advocates not having to "wait for the revolution" and immediately start "looking for "spaces" (geographic, social, cultural, imaginal) with potential to flower as autonomous zones
--and we are looking for times in which these spaces are relatively open, either through neglect on the part of the State or because they have somehow escaped notice by the mapmakers, or for whatever reason." Ultimately "face-to-face, a group of humans synergize their efforts to realize mutual desires, whether for good food and cheer, dance, conversation, the arts of life; perhaps even for erotic pleasure, or to create a communal artwork, or to attain the very transport of bliss-- in short, a "union of egoists
" (as Stirner
put it) in its simplest form—or else, in Kropotkin
's terms, a basic biological drive to "mutual aid."
and anarcho-syndicalism
. A certain close relationship exists between post-left anarchy and anarcho-primitivism
, individualist anarchism
and insurrectionary anarchism
. Nevertheless post-left anarchists Wolfi Landstreicher
and Jason McQuinn
have distanced themselves from and criticized anarcho-primitivism as "ideological".
Bob Black
has said that "It attests to the ideological bankruptcy of the organizational anarchists today that they should exhume (not resurrect) a manifesto which was already obsolete when promulgated in 1926. The Organizational Platform enjoys an imperishable permanence: untimely then, untimely now, untimely forever. Intended to persuade, it elicited attacks from almost every prominent anarchist of its time. Intended to organize, it provoked splits. Intended to restate the anarchist alternative to Marxism
, it restated the Leninist alternative to anarchism. Intended to make history, it barely made it into the history books." For Black "The result is yet another sect
."
became involved in a debate sparked by the work of anarchist and founder of the Institute for Social Ecology
Murray Bookchin
, an outspoken critic of the post-left anarchist tendency. Bookchin wrote and published Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, labeling post-left anarchists and others as "lifestyle anarchists" - thus following up a theme developed in his Philosophy of Social Ecology. Though he does not refer directly to Black's work (an omission which Black interprets as symptomatic), Bookchin clearly has Black's rejection of work as an implicit target when he criticises authors such as John Zerzan
and Dave Watson, whom he controversially labels part of the same tendency.
For Bookchin, "lifestyle anarchism" is individualistic and childish. "Lifestyle anarchists" demand "anarchy now", imagining they can create a new society through individual lifestyle changes. In his view this is a kind of fake-dissident consumerism which ultimately has no impact on the functioning of capitalism because it fails to recognise the realities of the present. He grounds this polemic in a social-realist critique of relativism, which he associates with lifestyle anarchism as well as postmodernism
(to which he claims it is related). Ludic approaches, he claims, lead to social indifference and egotism similar to that of capitalism. Against this approach, he advocates a variety of anarchism in which social struggles take precedence over individual actions, with the evolution of the struggle emerging dialectically as in classical Marxist theory. The unbridgeable chasm of the book's title is between individual "autonomy" - which for Bookchin is a bourgeois illusion - and social "freedom", which implies direct democracy
, municipalism, and leftist concerns with social opportunities. In practice his agenda takes the form of a combination of elements of anarchist communism
with a support for local-government and NGO initiatives which he refers to as Libertarian Municipalism
. He claims that "lifestyle anarchism" goes against the fundamental tenets of anarchism, accusing it of being "decadent" and "petit-bourgeois" and an outgrowth of American decadence and a period of declining struggle, and speaks in nostalgic terms of "the Left that was" as, for all its flaws, vastly superior to what has come since.
In response, Black published Anarchy After Leftism which later became a seminal post-left work. The text is a combination of point-by-point, almost legalistic dissection of Bookchin's argument, with bitter theoretical polemic, and even personal insult against Bookchin (whom he refers to as "the Dean" throughout). Black accuses Bookchin of moralism, which in post-left anarchism, refers to the imposition of abstract categories on reality in ways which twist and repress desires (as distinct from "ethics", which is an ethos of living similar to Friedrich Nietzsche
's call for an ethic "beyond good and evil"), and of "puritanism", a variant of this. He attacks Bookchin for his Stalinist
origins, and his failure to renounce his own past affiliations with what he himself had denounced as "lifestylist" themes (such as the slogans of May 1968). He claims that the categories of "lifestyle anarchism" and "individualist anarchism" are straw-men. He alleges that Bookchin adopts a "work ethic
", and that his favored themes, such as the denunciation of Yuppies, actually repeat themes in mass consumer culture, and that he fails to analyze the social basis of capitalist "selfishness"; instead, Black calls for an enlightened "selfishness" which is simultaneously social, as in Max Stirner
's work
.
Bookchin, Black claims, has misunderstood the critique of work as asocial, when in fact it proposes non-compulsive social relations. He argues that Bookchin believes labour to be essential to humans, and thus is opposed to the abolition of work. And he takes him to case for ignoring Black's own writings on work, for idealizing technology, and for misunderstanding the history of work.
He denounces Bookchin's alleged failure to form links with the leftist groups he now praises, and for denouncing others for failings (such as not having a mass audience, and receiving favourable reviews from "yuppie" magazines) of which he is himself guilty. He accuses Bookchin of self-contradiction, such as calling the same people "bourgeois" and "lumpen", or "individualist" and "fascist". He alleges that Bookchin's "social freedom" is "metaphorical" and has no real content of freedom. He criticizes Bookchin's appropriation of the anarchist tradition, arguing against his dismissal of authors such as Stirner and Paul Goodman
, rebuking Bookchin for implicitly identifying such authors with anarcho-capitalism
, and defending what he calls an "epistemic break" made by the likes of Stirner and Nietzsche. He alleges that the post-left "disdain for theory" is simply Bookchin's way of saying they ignore his own theories. He offers a detailed response to Bookchin's accusation of an association of eco-anarchism with fascism via a supposed common root in German romanticism, criticising both the derivation of the link (which he terms "McCarthyist
") and the portrayal of romanticism
itself, suggesting that Bookchin's sources such as Mikhail Bakunin
are no more politically correct than those he denounces, and accusing him of echoing fascist rhetoric and propaganda. He provides evidence to dispute Bookchin's association of "terrorism" with individualist
rather than social anarchism
. He points to carnivalesque aspects of the Spanish Revolution
to undermine Bookchin's dualism.
Black then rehearses the post-left critique of organization, drawing on his knowledge of anarchist history in an attempt to rebut
Bookchin's accusation that anti-organizationalism is based in ignorance. He claims among other things that direct democracy is impossible in urban settings, that it degenerates into bureaucracy, and that organizationalist anarchists such as the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
sold out to state power. He argues that Bookchin is not an anarchist at all, but rather, a "municipal statist" or "city-statist" committed to local government by a local state - smattering his discussion with further point-by-point objections (for instance, over whether New York
is an "organic community" given the alleged high crime-rate and whether confederated municipalities are compatible with direct democracy
). He also takes up Bookchin's opposition to relativism
, arguing that this is confirmed by science, especially anthropology - proceeding to produce evidence that Bookchin's work has received hostile reviews in social-science journals, thus attacking his scientific credentials, and to denounce dialectics as unscientific. He then argues point-by-point with Bookchin's criticisms of primitivism
, debating issues such as life-expectancy statistics and alleged ecological destruction by hunter-gatherers. And he concludes with a clarion-call for an anarchist paradigm-shift based on post-left themes, celebrating this as the "anarchy after leftism" of the title.
Bookchin never replied to Black's critiques, which he continued in such essays as "Withered Anarchism," "An American in Paris," and "Murray Bookchin and the Witch-Doctors." Bookchin later repudiated anarchism and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology which he called "Communalism
".
since anarcho-primitivists such as John Zerzan
and the magazine Green Anarchy
have adhered and contributed to the post-left anarchy perspective. Nevertheless post-left anarchists such as Jason McQuinn
and Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher have distanced themselves from and have criticized anarcho-primitivism.
Wolfi Landstreicher
has criticized the "ascetic morality of sacrifice or of a mystical disintegration into a supposedly unalienated oneness with Nature," which appears in anarcho-primitivism and deep ecology
. Jason McQuinn
has criticized what he sees an ideological tendency in anarcho-primitivism when he says that "for most primitivists an idealized, hypostatized vision of primal societies tends to irresistibly displace the essential centrality of critical self-theory, whatever their occasional protestations to the contrary. The locus of critique quickly moves from the critical self-understanding of the social and natural world to the adoption of a preconceived ideal against which that world (and one's own life) is measured, an archetypally ideological stance. This nearly irresistible susceptibility to idealization is primitivism's greatest weakness."
has identified post-left anarchy as a form of individualist anarchism
in Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
where he says he identifies "a shift among Euro-American anarchists away from social anarchism and toward individualist or lifestyle anarchism. Indeed, lifestyle anarchism
today is finding its principal expression in spray-can graffiti, post-modernist nihilism
, antirationalism, neoprimitivism, anti-technologism, neo-Situationist `cultural terrorism,' mysticism, and a `practice' of staging Foucauldian
`personal insurrections.'". Post-left anarchist Bob Black
in his long critique of Bookchin's philosophy called Anarchy after leftism said about post-left anarchy that "It is, unlike Bookchinism, “individualistic” in the sense that if the freedom and happiness of the individual — i.e., each and every really existing person, every Tom, Dick and Murray — is not the measure of the good society, what is?".
A strong relationship does exist with post-left anarchism and the work of individualist anarchist Max Stirner
. Jason McQuinn
says that "when I (and other anti-ideological anarchists) criticize ideology, it is always from a specifically critical, anarchist perspective rooted in both the skeptical, individualist-anarchist philosophy of Max Stirner...". Also Bob Black
and Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher
strongly adhere to stirnerist egoist anarchism
. Bob Black has humorously suggested the idea of "marxist stirnerism".
Hakim Bey has said "From Stirner's "Union of Self-Owning Ones" we proceed to Nietzsche's circle of "Free Spirits" and thence to Charles Fourier
's "Passional Series", doubling and redoubling ourselves even as the Other multiplies itself in the eros of the group." In another essay Hakim Bey said that "Deeply as we've been influenced by Stirner / Nietzsche (Benjamin) Tucker
/ (John Henry) Mackay
, we have never held to any rigid ideological or psychological form of Individualism / Egoism. Individualist anarchism is lovely dynamite, but not the only ingredient in our cocktail." Bey also wrote that "The Mackay Society, of which Mark & I are active members, is devoted to the anarchism of Max Stirner, Benj. Tucker
& John Henry Mackay
...The Mackay Society, incidentally, represents a little-known current of individualist thought which never cut its ties with revolutionary labor. Dyer Lum
, Ezra
& Angela Haywood represent this school of thought; Jo Labadie, who wrote for Tucker’s Liberty
, made himself a link between the american “plumb-line” anarchists, the “philosophical” individualists, & the syndicalist or communist branch of the movement; his influence reached the Mackay Society through his son, Laurance. Like the Italian Stirnerites (who influenced us through our late friend Enrico Arrigoni
) we support all anti-authoritarian currents, despite their apparent contradictions."
As far as posterior individualist anarchists Jason McQuinn for some time used the pseudonym Lev Chernyi
in honor of the Russian individualist anarchist of the same name while Feral Faun has quoted Italian individualist anarchist Renzo Novatore
and has translated both Novatore and the young Italian individualist anarchist Bruno Filippi
.
position on feminism saying "I feel that an anarchist critique of feminism may be valuable and illuminating. What I do not wish for is more of the same anti-intellectualism and non-thought that seems to be the lot of post-Leftist critiques of feminist theory." She along with other authors published BLOODLUST: a feminist journal against civilization.
) gained notoriety as he wrote articles that appeared in the post-left anarchy magazine Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
. Post-left anarchy has held similar critiques of organization as insurrectionary anarchism as can be seen in the work of Wolfi Landstreicher
and Alfredo Maria Bonanno. John Zerzan
has said when speaking of Italian insurrectionary anarchist Alfredo Maria Bonanno that "Maybe insurrectionalism is less an ideology than an undefined tendency, part left and part anti-left but generally anarchist."
on the one hand, and several of the most promising critiques and modes of intervention developed since the 60s. The most important critiques involved include those of everyday life and the spectacle
, of ideology and morality, of industrial technology, of work and of civilization. Modes of intervention focus on the concrete deployment of direct action in all facets of life." Thus the thought of the Situationist International is very important within post-left anarchist thought. Other thinkers outside anarchism that have taken relevance in post-left anarchy writings include Charles Fourier
, the Frankfurt School
, Friedrich Nietzsche
and anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins
.
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
's relationship to traditional leftism
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
. Some post-leftists seek to escape the confines of ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
in general also presenting a critique of organizations and morality
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
. Influenced by the work of Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
and by the Marxist Situationist International, post-left anarchy is marked by a focus on social insurrection
Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and...
and a rejection of leftist social organisation.
The magazines Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed is a North American anarchist magazine, and is one of the most popular anarchist publications in North America. It could be described as a general interest and critical, non-ideological anarchist journal...
, Green Anarchy
Green Anarchy
Green Anarchy was a magazine published by a collective located in Eugene, Oregon. The magazine's focus was primitivism, post-left anarchy, radical environmentalism, African American struggles, anarchist resistance, indigenous resistance, earth and animal liberation, anti-capitalism and supporting...
and Fifth Estate have been involved in developing post-left anarchy. Individual writers associated with the tendency are Hakim Bey, Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
, John Zerzan
John Zerzan
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
, Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
, Fredy Perlman
Fredy Perlman
Fredy Perlman was an author, publisher and activist. His most popular work, the book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, details the rise of state domination with a retelling of history through the Hobbesian metaphor of the Leviathan. The book remains a major source of inspiration for...
, Lawrence Jarach
Lawrence Jarach
- External links :* official website.Publications*"" by Lawrence Jarach at the Berkeley Daily Planet...
and Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
. The contemporary network of collectives CrimethInc.
CrimethInc.
CrimethInc., also known as CWC , is a decentralized anarchist collective of autonomous cells. CrimethInc. emerged in the mid-1990s, initially as the hardcore zine Inside Front, and began operating as a collective in 1996...
is an exponent of post-left anarchist views.
Overview
Post-leftists argue that The leftLeft-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
, even the revolutionary left, is anachronistic and incapable of creating change. Post-left anarchy offers critiques of radical strategies and tactics which it considers antiquated: the demonstration, class-oriented struggle, focus on tradition, and the inability to escape the confines of history. The book Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs
Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs
Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs is a book written by the Curious George Brigade, an anarchist collective in the CrimethInc. network. About their project the collective says "By dinosaurs, we mean Capitalism, The State, Hierarchy, and the countless other guises worn by Authority...
, for example, criticizes traditional leftist ideas and classical anarchism while calling for a rejuvenated anarchist movement. The CrimethInc.
CrimethInc.
CrimethInc., also known as CWC , is a decentralized anarchist collective of autonomous cells. CrimethInc. emerged in the mid-1990s, initially as the hardcore zine Inside Front, and began operating as a collective in 1996...
essay "Your Politics Are Boring as Fuck" is another critique of "leftist" movements:
Some post-anarchists
Post-anarchism
Post-anarchism or postanarchism is the term used to represent anarchist philosophies developed since the 1980s using post-structuralist and postmodernist approaches. Some prefer to use the term post-structuralist anarchism, so as not to suggest having moved "past" anarchism...
have come to similar conclusions, if for different reasons:
Theory and critique of organization
Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
describes the left wing organizational tendency of “transmission-belt” structure with an explicit division between leaders and led, along with provisions to discipline rank and file members while shielding leaders from responsibility to those being led, more than a few people wise up to the con game and reject it". For him there are 4 results out of such structure:
- Reductionism: Here "Only particular aspects of the social struggle are included in these organizations. Other aspects are ignored, invalidated or repressed, leading to further and further compartmentalization of the struggle. Which in turn facilitates manipulation by elites and their eventual transformation into purely reformist lobbying societies with all generalized, radical critique emptied out."
- Specialization or Professionalism: This calls to attention to the tendency where "Those most involved in the day-to-day operation of the organization are selected—or self-selected—to perform increasingly specialized roles within the organization, often leading to an official division between leaders and led, with gradations of power and influence introduced in the form of intermediary roles in the evolving organizational hierarchy."
- Substitutionism where "The formal organization increasingly becomes the focus of strategy and tactics rather than the people-in-revolt. In theory and practice, the organization tends to be progressively substituted for the people, the organization's leadership—especially if it has become formal—tends to substitute itself for the organization as a whole, and eventually a maximal leader often emerges who ends up embodying and controlling the organization."
- Ideology where "The organization becomes the primary subject of theory with individuals assigned roles to play, rather than people constructing their own self-theories. All but the most self-consciously anarchistic formal organizations tend to adapt some form of collectivist ideology, in which the social group at some level is acceded to have more political reality than the free individual. Wherever sovereignty lies, there lies political authority; if sovereignty is not dissolved into each and every person it always requires the subjugation of individuals to a group in some form.".
To counter these tendencies post-left anarchy advocates individual and group autonomy
Autonomy
Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision...
with free initiative, free association
Freedom of association
Freedom of association is the individual right to come together with other individuals and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests....
, refusal of political authority, and thus of ideology, small, simple, informal, transparent and temporary organization, and decentralized, federal organization with direct decision-making and respect for minorities.
The critique of ideology(ies)
Post left anarchy adheres to a critique of ideology that "dates from the work of Max StirnerMax Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
". For Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
"All ideology in essence involves the substitution of alien (or incomplete) concepts or images for human subjectivity. Ideologies are systems of false consciousness in which people no longer see themselves directly as subjects in their relation to their world. Instead they conceive of themselves in some manner as subordinate to one type or another of abstract entity or entities which are mistaken as the real subjects or actors in their world." "Whether the abstraction is God, the State, the Party, the Organization, Technology, the Family, Humanity, Peace, Ecology, Nature, Work, Love, or even Freedom; if it is conceived and presented as if it is an active subject with a being of its own which makes demands of us, then it is the center of an ideology."
The rejection of morality
MoralityMorality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
is also a target of post-left anarchy just as it was in Stirner and in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
. For McQuinn "Morality is a system of reified values—abstract values which are taken out of any context, set in stone, and converted into unquestionable beliefs to be applied regardless of a person's actual desires, thoughts or goals, and regardless of the situation in which a person finds him- or herself. Moralism is the practice of not only reducing living values to reified morals, but of considering oneself better than others because one has subjected oneself to morality (self-righteousness), and of proselytizing for the adoption of morality as a tool of social change." Living up to morality means sacrificing certain desires and temptations (regardless of the actual situation you might find yourself in) in favor of the rewards of virtue.
So "Rejecting Morality involves constructing a critical theory of one's self and society (always self-critical, provisional and never totalistic) in which a clear goal of ending one's social alienation is never confused with reified partial goals. It involves emphasizing what people have to gain from radical critique and solidarity rather than what people must sacrifice or give up in order to live virtuous lives of politically correct morality."
Critique of identity politics
Post-left anarchy tends to criticize what it sees as the partial victimizing views of identity politicsIdentity politics
Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance...
. Feral Faun thus writes in "The ideology of victimization" that there's a "feminist version of the ideology of victimization- an ideology which promotes fear, individual weakness (and subsequently dependence on ideologically based support groups and paternalistic protection from the authorities)" But in the end "Like all ideologies, the varieties of the ideology of victimization are forms of fake consciousness. Accepting the social role of victim—in whatever one of its many forms—is choosing to not even create one's life for oneself or to explore one's real relationships to the social structures. All of the partial liberation movements--feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, gay liberation
Gay Liberation
Gay liberation is the name used to describe the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement of the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s in North America, Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand...
, racial liberation, workers´ movements and so on—define individuals in terms of their social roles. Because of this, these movements not only do not include a reversal of perspectives which breaks down social roles and allows individuals to create a praxis built on their own passions and desires; they actually work against such a reversal of perspective. The 'liberation' of a social role to which the individual remains subject."
The refusal of work
The issues of work, the division of labor and the refusal of workRefusal of work
Refusal of work is behavior which refuses to adapt to regular employment.As actual behavior, with or without a political or philosophical program, it has been practiced by various subcultures and individuals. Radical political positions have openly advocated refusal of work. From within marxism it...
has been an important issue in post-left anarchy. Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
in "The Abolition of Work" calls for the abolition of the producer-
Productivism
Productivism is the belief that measurable economic productivity and growth is the purpose of human organization , and that "more production is necessarily good".-Arguments for productivism:...
and consumer-based
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...
society, where, Black contends, all of life is devoted to the production
Production, costs, and pricing
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to industrial organization:Industrial organization – describes the behavior of firms in the marketplace with regard to production, pricing, employment and other decisions...
and consumption
Consumption (economics)
Consumption is a common concept in economics, and gives rise to derived concepts such as consumer debt. Generally, consumption is defined in part by comparison to production. But the precise definition can vary because different schools of economists define production quite differently...
of commodities
Commodity
In economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services....
. Attacking Marxist state socialism
State socialism
State socialism is an economic system with limited socialist characteristics, such as public ownership of major industries, remedial measures to benefit the working class, and a gradual process of developing socialism through government policy...
as much as market capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, Black argues that the only way for humans to be free is to reclaim their time from jobs and employment, instead turning necessary subsistence tasks into free play done voluntarily - an approach referred to as "ludic
Ludic
Ludic derives from Latin ludus, "play," and is an adjective meaning "playful." The term is used in philosophy to describe play as an act of self-definition; in literary studies, the term may apply to works written in the spirit of festival.-Homo ludens:...
". The essay argues that "no-one should ever work", because work - defined as compulsory productive activity enforced by economic or political means - is the source of most of the misery in the world. Most workers, he states, are dissatisfied with work (as evidenced by petty deviance on the job), so that what he says should be uncontroversial; however, it is controversial only because people are too close to the work-system to see its flaws.
Play, in contrast, is not necessarily rule-governed, and is performed voluntarily, in complete freedom, as a gift economy
Gift economy
In the social sciences, a gift economy is a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards . Ideally, simultaneous or recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within the community...
. He points out that hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
societies are typified by play, a view he backs up with the work of Marshall Sahlins
Marshall Sahlins
Marshall David Sahlins is a prominent American anthropologist. He received both a Bachelors and Masters degree at the University of Michigan where he studied with Leslie White, and earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1954 where his main intellectual influences included Karl Polanyi and...
; he recounts the rise of hierarchal societies, through which work is cumulatively imposed, so that the compulsive work of today would seem incomprehensibly oppressive even to ancients and medieval peasants. He responds to the view that "work," if not simply effort or energy, is necessary to get important but unpleasant tasks done, by claiming that first of all, most important tasks can be rendered ludic, or "salvaged" by being turned into game-like and craft-like activities, and secondly that the vast majority of work does not need doing at all. The latter tasks are unnecessary because they only serve functions of commerce and social control that exist only to maintain the work-system as a whole. As for what is left, he advocates Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
's approach of arranging activities so that people will want to do them. He is also skeptical but open-minded about the possibility of eliminating work through labour-saving technologies. He feels the left cannot go far enough in its critiques because of its attachment to building its power on the category of workers, which requires a valorization of work.
Self-Theory
Post-left anarchists reject all ideologies in favor of the individual and communal construction of self-theory. Individual self-theory is theory in which the integral individual-in-context (in all her or his relationships, with all her or his history, desires, and projects, etc.) is always the subjective center of perception, understanding and action. Communal self-theory is similarly based on the group as subject, but always with an underlying awareness of the individuals (and their own self-theories) which make up the group or organization. For McQuinn "Non-ideological, anarchist organizations (or informal groups) are always explicitly based upon the autonomy of the individuals who construct them, quite unlike leftist organizations which require the surrender of personal autonomy as a prerequisite for membership".Daily life, creation of situations and immediatism
For Wolfi LandstreicherWolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
"The reappropriation of life on the social level, as well as its full reappropriation on the individual level, can only occur when we stop identifying ourselves essentially in terms of our social identities." So "The recognition that this trajectory must be brought to an end and new ways of living and relating developed if we are to achieve full autonomy and freedom." So relationships with others are not seen anymore as in activism in which the goal is "to seek followers who accept one’s position" but instead "comrades and accomplices with which to carry on one’s explorations".
Temporary Autonomous Zone
T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism is a book by anarchist writer Hakim Bey published in 1991 by Autonomedia...
--and we are looking for times in which these spaces are relatively open, either through neglect on the part of the State or because they have somehow escaped notice by the mapmakers, or for whatever reason." Ultimately "face-to-face, a group of humans synergize their efforts to realize mutual desires, whether for good food and cheer, dance, conversation, the arts of life; perhaps even for erotic pleasure, or to create a communal artwork, or to attain the very transport of bliss-- in short, a "union of egoists
Union of egoists
Max Stirner's idea of the "Union of Egoists" , was first expounded in The Ego and Its Own. The Union is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all...
" (as Stirner
Stirner
Stirner:* Max Stirner, pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt , German philosopher and journalist* Karl Stirner , painter, illustrator and poet...
put it) in its simplest form—or else, in Kropotkin
Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin was a Russian prince and anarchist.Kropotkin may also refer to:*Pyotr Nikolayevich Kropotkin , Soviet/Russian geologist, tectonician, and geophysicist*Mount Kropotkin, a peak in Antarctica...
's terms, a basic biological drive to "mutual aid."
Relationship with other tendencies within anarchism
Post-left anarchism has been critical of more classical schools of anarchism such as platformismPlatformism
Platformism is a tendency within the wider anarchist movement originally theorised by Nestor Makhno and is mainly based on his concept of anarchism and the organisational theories in the tradition of Dielo Truda's Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists ...
and anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
. A certain close relationship exists between post-left anarchy and anarcho-primitivism
Anarcho-primitivism
Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation...
, individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
and insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and...
. Nevertheless post-left anarchists Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
and Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
have distanced themselves from and criticized anarcho-primitivism as "ideological".
Platformism
On platformismPlatformism
Platformism is a tendency within the wider anarchist movement originally theorised by Nestor Makhno and is mainly based on his concept of anarchism and the organisational theories in the tradition of Dielo Truda's Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists ...
Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
has said that "It attests to the ideological bankruptcy of the organizational anarchists today that they should exhume (not resurrect) a manifesto which was already obsolete when promulgated in 1926. The Organizational Platform enjoys an imperishable permanence: untimely then, untimely now, untimely forever. Intended to persuade, it elicited attacks from almost every prominent anarchist of its time. Intended to organize, it provoked splits. Intended to restate the anarchist alternative to Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, it restated the Leninist alternative to anarchism. Intended to make history, it barely made it into the history books." For Black "The result is yet another sect
Sect
A sect is a group with distinctive religious, political or philosophical beliefs. Although in past it was mostly used to refer to religious groups, it has since expanded and in modern culture can refer to any organization that breaks away from a larger one to follow a different set of rules and...
."
Anarcho-syndicalism
Feral Faun has stated that "The anarcho-syndicalists may talk of abolishing the state, but they will have to reproduce every one of its functions to guarantee the smooth running of their society." So "Anarcho-syndicalism does not make a radical break with the present society. It merely seeks to extend this society's values so they dominate us more fully in our daily lives." Thus "the bourgeois liberal is content to get rid of priests and kings, and the anarcho-syndicalist throws in presidents and bosses. But the factories remain intact, the stores remain intact (though the syndicalists may call them distribution centers), the family remains intact — the entire social system remains intact. If our daily activity has not significantly changed — and the anarcho-syndicalists give no indication of wanting to change it beyond adding the burden of managing the factories to that of working in them — then what difference does it make if there are no bosses? — We're still slaves!"The issue of "lifestyle anarchism"
Beginning in 1997, Bob BlackBob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
became involved in a debate sparked by the work of anarchist and founder of the Institute for Social Ecology
Institute for Social Ecology
The Institute for Social Ecology is an educational institution in the United States offering courses related to social ecology, an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian strain of ecology that is a form of libertarian socialism. It was founded in 1974 by Murray Bookchin and Daniel Chodorkoff...
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...
, an outspoken critic of the post-left anarchist tendency. Bookchin wrote and published Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, labeling post-left anarchists and others as "lifestyle anarchists" - thus following up a theme developed in his Philosophy of Social Ecology. Though he does not refer directly to Black's work (an omission which Black interprets as symptomatic), Bookchin clearly has Black's rejection of work as an implicit target when he criticises authors such as John Zerzan
John Zerzan
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
and Dave Watson, whom he controversially labels part of the same tendency.
For Bookchin, "lifestyle anarchism" is individualistic and childish. "Lifestyle anarchists" demand "anarchy now", imagining they can create a new society through individual lifestyle changes. In his view this is a kind of fake-dissident consumerism which ultimately has no impact on the functioning of capitalism because it fails to recognise the realities of the present. He grounds this polemic in a social-realist critique of relativism, which he associates with lifestyle anarchism as well as postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
(to which he claims it is related). Ludic approaches, he claims, lead to social indifference and egotism similar to that of capitalism. Against this approach, he advocates a variety of anarchism in which social struggles take precedence over individual actions, with the evolution of the struggle emerging dialectically as in classical Marxist theory. The unbridgeable chasm of the book's title is between individual "autonomy" - which for Bookchin is a bourgeois illusion - and social "freedom", which implies direct democracy
Direct democracy
Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
, municipalism, and leftist concerns with social opportunities. In practice his agenda takes the form of a combination of elements of anarchist communism
Anarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...
with a support for local-government and NGO initiatives which he refers to as Libertarian Municipalism
Libertarian municipalism
Libertarian municipalism is a term first used by libertarian socialist theorist Murray Bookchin, and is used to describe a system in which libertarian institutions of directly democratic assemblies would oppose and replace the state with a confederation of free municipalities...
. He claims that "lifestyle anarchism" goes against the fundamental tenets of anarchism, accusing it of being "decadent" and "petit-bourgeois" and an outgrowth of American decadence and a period of declining struggle, and speaks in nostalgic terms of "the Left that was" as, for all its flaws, vastly superior to what has come since.
In response, Black published Anarchy After Leftism which later became a seminal post-left work. The text is a combination of point-by-point, almost legalistic dissection of Bookchin's argument, with bitter theoretical polemic, and even personal insult against Bookchin (whom he refers to as "the Dean" throughout). Black accuses Bookchin of moralism, which in post-left anarchism, refers to the imposition of abstract categories on reality in ways which twist and repress desires (as distinct from "ethics", which is an ethos of living similar to Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
's call for an ethic "beyond good and evil"), and of "puritanism", a variant of this. He attacks Bookchin for his Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
origins, and his failure to renounce his own past affiliations with what he himself had denounced as "lifestylist" themes (such as the slogans of May 1968). He claims that the categories of "lifestyle anarchism" and "individualist anarchism" are straw-men. He alleges that Bookchin adopts a "work ethic
Work ethic
Work ethic is a set of values based on hard work and diligence. It is also a belief in the moral benefit of work and its ability to enhance character. An example would be the Protestant work ethic...
", and that his favored themes, such as the denunciation of Yuppies, actually repeat themes in mass consumer culture, and that he fails to analyze the social basis of capitalist "selfishness"; instead, Black calls for an enlightened "selfishness" which is simultaneously social, as in Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
's work
Philosophy of Max Stirner
The philosophy of Max Stirner is credited as an influence on the development of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism, postanarchism and post-left anarchy...
.
Bookchin, Black claims, has misunderstood the critique of work as asocial, when in fact it proposes non-compulsive social relations. He argues that Bookchin believes labour to be essential to humans, and thus is opposed to the abolition of work. And he takes him to case for ignoring Black's own writings on work, for idealizing technology, and for misunderstanding the history of work.
He denounces Bookchin's alleged failure to form links with the leftist groups he now praises, and for denouncing others for failings (such as not having a mass audience, and receiving favourable reviews from "yuppie" magazines) of which he is himself guilty. He accuses Bookchin of self-contradiction, such as calling the same people "bourgeois" and "lumpen", or "individualist" and "fascist". He alleges that Bookchin's "social freedom" is "metaphorical" and has no real content of freedom. He criticizes Bookchin's appropriation of the anarchist tradition, arguing against his dismissal of authors such as Stirner and Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman (writer)
Paul Goodman was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd and an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement...
, rebuking Bookchin for implicitly identifying such authors with anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism is a libertarian and individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favour of individual sovereignty in a free market...
, and defending what he calls an "epistemic break" made by the likes of Stirner and Nietzsche. He alleges that the post-left "disdain for theory" is simply Bookchin's way of saying they ignore his own theories. He offers a detailed response to Bookchin's accusation of an association of eco-anarchism with fascism via a supposed common root in German romanticism, criticising both the derivation of the link (which he terms "McCarthyist
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
") and the portrayal of romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
itself, suggesting that Bookchin's sources such as Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
are no more politically correct than those he denounces, and accusing him of echoing fascist rhetoric and propaganda. He provides evidence to dispute Bookchin's association of "terrorism" with individualist
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
rather than social anarchism
Social anarchism
Social anarchism is a term originally used in 1971 by Giovanni Baldelli as the title of his book where he discusses the organization of an ethical society from an anarchist point of view...
. He points to carnivalesque aspects of the Spanish Revolution
Spanish Revolution
The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to...
to undermine Bookchin's dualism.
Black then rehearses the post-left critique of organization, drawing on his knowledge of anarchist history in an attempt to rebut
Rebuttal
In law, rebuttal is a form of evidence that is presented to contradict or nullify other evidence that has been presented by an adverse party. By analogy the same term is used in politics and public affairs to refer to the informal process by which statements, designed to refute or negate specific...
Bookchin's accusation that anti-organizationalism is based in ignorance. He claims among other things that direct democracy is impossible in urban settings, that it degenerates into bureaucracy, and that organizationalist anarchists such as the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
sold out to state power. He argues that Bookchin is not an anarchist at all, but rather, a "municipal statist" or "city-statist" committed to local government by a local state - smattering his discussion with further point-by-point objections (for instance, over whether New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
is an "organic community" given the alleged high crime-rate and whether confederated municipalities are compatible with direct democracy
Direct democracy
Direct democracy is a form of government in which people vote on policy initiatives directly, as opposed to a representative democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives. Direct democracy is classically termed "pure democracy"...
). He also takes up Bookchin's opposition to relativism
Relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....
, arguing that this is confirmed by science, especially anthropology - proceeding to produce evidence that Bookchin's work has received hostile reviews in social-science journals, thus attacking his scientific credentials, and to denounce dialectics as unscientific. He then argues point-by-point with Bookchin's criticisms of primitivism
Anarcho-primitivism
Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation...
, debating issues such as life-expectancy statistics and alleged ecological destruction by hunter-gatherers. And he concludes with a clarion-call for an anarchist paradigm-shift based on post-left themes, celebrating this as the "anarchy after leftism" of the title.
Bookchin never replied to Black's critiques, which he continued in such essays as "Withered Anarchism," "An American in Paris," and "Murray Bookchin and the Witch-Doctors." Bookchin later repudiated anarchism and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology which he called "Communalism
Communalism (Political Philosophy)
Communalism is a libertarian socialist political philosophy coined by author and activist Murray Bookchin as a political system to complement his environmental philosophy of social ecology....
".
Anarcho-primitivism
A certain close relationship exists between post-left anarchy and anarcho-primitivismAnarcho-primitivism
Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation...
since anarcho-primitivists such as John Zerzan
John Zerzan
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
and the magazine Green Anarchy
Green Anarchy
Green Anarchy was a magazine published by a collective located in Eugene, Oregon. The magazine's focus was primitivism, post-left anarchy, radical environmentalism, African American struggles, anarchist resistance, indigenous resistance, earth and animal liberation, anti-capitalism and supporting...
have adhered and contributed to the post-left anarchy perspective. Nevertheless post-left anarchists such as Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
and Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher have distanced themselves from and have criticized anarcho-primitivism.
Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
has criticized the "ascetic morality of sacrifice or of a mystical disintegration into a supposedly unalienated oneness with Nature," which appears in anarcho-primitivism and deep ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
. Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
has criticized what he sees an ideological tendency in anarcho-primitivism when he says that "for most primitivists an idealized, hypostatized vision of primal societies tends to irresistibly displace the essential centrality of critical self-theory, whatever their occasional protestations to the contrary. The locus of critique quickly moves from the critical self-understanding of the social and natural world to the adoption of a preconceived ideal against which that world (and one's own life) is measured, an archetypally ideological stance. This nearly irresistible susceptibility to idealization is primitivism's greatest weakness."
Individualist anarchism
Murray BookchinMurray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...
has identified post-left anarchy as a form of individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a...
in Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
Social Anarchism Or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm
Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm is a polemical essay written by Murray Bookchin and published as a book in 1995. It is a critique of deep ecology, bio-centrism and lifestyle anarchism...
where he says he identifies "a shift among Euro-American anarchists away from social anarchism and toward individualist or lifestyle anarchism. Indeed, lifestyle anarchism
Lifestyle anarchism
Lifestyle anarchism is a term derived from Murray Bookchin's polemical essay "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm." He used it to criticize those anarchists who dress the look or live in certain ways, but who don't really act on the basic tenets of anarchism at the...
today is finding its principal expression in spray-can graffiti, post-modernist nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
, antirationalism, neoprimitivism, anti-technologism, neo-Situationist `cultural terrorism,' mysticism, and a `practice' of staging Foucauldian
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
`personal insurrections.'". Post-left anarchist Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
in his long critique of Bookchin's philosophy called Anarchy after leftism said about post-left anarchy that "It is, unlike Bookchinism, “individualistic” in the sense that if the freedom and happiness of the individual — i.e., each and every really existing person, every Tom, Dick and Murray — is not the measure of the good society, what is?".
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn
Jason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
says that "when I (and other anti-ideological anarchists) criticize ideology, it is always from a specifically critical, anarchist perspective rooted in both the skeptical, individualist-anarchist philosophy of Max Stirner...". Also Bob Black
Bob Black
Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
and Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
strongly adhere to stirnerist egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism
Egoist anarchism is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a nineteenth century Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of...
. Bob Black has humorously suggested the idea of "marxist stirnerism".
Hakim Bey has said "From Stirner's "Union of Self-Owning Ones" we proceed to Nietzsche's circle of "Free Spirits" and thence to Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
's "Passional Series", doubling and redoubling ourselves even as the Other multiplies itself in the eros of the group." In another essay Hakim Bey said that "Deeply as we've been influenced by Stirner / Nietzsche (Benjamin) Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
/ (John Henry) Mackay
John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay was an individualist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of Die Anarchisten and Der Freiheitsucher . Mackay was published in the United States in his friend Benjamin Tucker's magazine, Liberty...
, we have never held to any rigid ideological or psychological form of Individualism / Egoism. Individualist anarchism is lovely dynamite, but not the only ingredient in our cocktail." Bey also wrote that "The Mackay Society, of which Mark & I are active members, is devoted to the anarchism of Max Stirner, Benj. Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
& John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay
John Henry Mackay was an individualist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of Die Anarchisten and Der Freiheitsucher . Mackay was published in the United States in his friend Benjamin Tucker's magazine, Liberty...
...The Mackay Society, incidentally, represents a little-known current of individualist thought which never cut its ties with revolutionary labor. Dyer Lum
Dyer Lum
Dyer Daniel Lum was a 19th-century American anarchist labor activist and poet. A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre.Lum was a prolific writer who wrote a number of...
, Ezra
Ezra Heywood
Ezra Heywood was a 19th century North American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and feminist.-Philosophy:Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to...
& Angela Haywood represent this school of thought; Jo Labadie, who wrote for Tucker’s Liberty
Liberty
Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
, made himself a link between the american “plumb-line” anarchists, the “philosophical” individualists, & the syndicalist or communist branch of the movement; his influence reached the Mackay Society through his son, Laurance. Like the Italian Stirnerites (who influenced us through our late friend Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni
Enrico Arrigoni was an Italian American individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner.- Life and activism :He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of...
) we support all anti-authoritarian currents, despite their apparent contradictions."
As far as posterior individualist anarchists Jason McQuinn for some time used the pseudonym Lev Chernyi
Lev Chernyi
Pável Dimítrievich Turchanínov , known by the pseudonym Lev Chernyi , was a Russian anarchist theorist, activist and poet, and a leading figure of the Third Russian Revolution. His early thought was individualist, rejecting anarcho-communism as a threat to individual liberty...
in honor of the Russian individualist anarchist of the same name while Feral Faun has quoted Italian individualist anarchist Renzo Novatore
Renzo Novatore
- Life :Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and...
and has translated both Novatore and the young Italian individualist anarchist Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi , was an Italian individualist anarchist writer and activist who collaborated in the Italian individualist anarchist magazine Iconoclasta! alongside Renzo Novatore....
.
Anarcha-feminism
Recently the anarcho-primitivist anarcha-feminist Lilith has published writings from a post-left anarchist perspective. In "Gender Disobedience: Antifeminism and Insurrectionist Non-dialogue" (2009) she has criticized Wolfi LandstreicherWolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
position on feminism saying "I feel that an anarchist critique of feminism may be valuable and illuminating. What I do not wish for is more of the same anti-intellectualism and non-thought that seems to be the lot of post-Leftist critiques of feminist theory." She along with other authors published BLOODLUST: a feminist journal against civilization.
Insurrectionary anarchism
Feral Faun (later writing as Wolfi LandstreicherWolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
) gained notoriety as he wrote articles that appeared in the post-left anarchy magazine Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed is a North American anarchist magazine, and is one of the most popular anarchist publications in North America. It could be described as a general interest and critical, non-ideological anarchist journal...
. Post-left anarchy has held similar critiques of organization as insurrectionary anarchism as can be seen in the work of Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
and Alfredo Maria Bonanno. John Zerzan
John Zerzan
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
has said when speaking of Italian insurrectionary anarchist Alfredo Maria Bonanno that "Maybe insurrectionalism is less an ideology than an undefined tendency, part left and part anti-left but generally anarchist."
Relationships with schools of thought outside anarchism
McQuinn has said that "Those seeking to promote the synthesis have been primarily influenced by both the classical anarchist movement up to the Spanish RevolutionSpanish Revolution
The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to...
on the one hand, and several of the most promising critiques and modes of intervention developed since the 60s. The most important critiques involved include those of everyday life and the spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle is a work of philosophy and critical theory by Guy Debord. It was first published in 1967 in France.-Book structure:...
, of ideology and morality, of industrial technology, of work and of civilization. Modes of intervention focus on the concrete deployment of direct action in all facets of life." Thus the thought of the Situationist International is very important within post-left anarchist thought. Other thinkers outside anarchism that have taken relevance in post-left anarchy writings include Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
, the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
and anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins
Marshall Sahlins
Marshall David Sahlins is a prominent American anthropologist. He received both a Bachelors and Masters degree at the University of Michigan where he studied with Leslie White, and earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1954 where his main intellectual influences included Karl Polanyi and...
.
See also
- Green syndicalismGreen syndicalismGreen syndicalism or eco-syndicalism has been used as a name for the philosophy of the green guild or sustainable trades movement.- Background :...
- IllegalismIllegalismIllegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
- Insurrectionary anarchismInsurrectionary anarchismInsurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and...
- Left anarchismLeft anarchismLeft anarchism or left-wing anarchism refer to left-wing forms of anarchism. It posits a future society in which private property is replaced by reciprocity and non-hierarchical society...
- Post-structuralismPost-structuralismPost-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
- Situationist International
General archives and links
- "Anarchy After Leftism" a comprehensive primer and portal from Infoshop.orgInfoshop.org- History :Infoshop was founded in January 1995 as the Mid-Atlantic Infoshop by Chuck Munson. Having previously co-founded an online archive of anarchist texts, the Spunk Library, in 1992, Munson established Infoshop as a general resource on anarchism, moving to the domain name Infoshop.org in 1998...
- Insurgent Desire:The Online Green Anarchy Archive
- Anarchy: A Journal of Desire ArmedAnarchy: A Journal of Desire ArmedAnarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed is a North American anarchist magazine, and is one of the most popular anarchist publications in North America. It could be described as a general interest and critical, non-ideological anarchist journal...
– archive at The Anarchist Library - CrimethInc.CrimethInc.CrimethInc., also known as CWC , is a decentralized anarchist collective of autonomous cells. CrimethInc. emerged in the mid-1990s, initially as the hardcore zine Inside Front, and began operating as a collective in 1996...
ex workers collective - "Primitivist and post-left 'anarchism'" from Anarchism.ws
- "Post-left writings archive at The Anarchist Library
- "Letter to "Anarchy" magazine criticizing Post-Left Anarchism
Magazines
- Anarchy: A Journal of Desire ArmedAnarchy: A Journal of Desire ArmedAnarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed is a North American anarchist magazine, and is one of the most popular anarchist publications in North America. It could be described as a general interest and critical, non-ideological anarchist journal...
(website) - Fifth Estate magazine website
- Green Anarchy magazine
Individual writers archive
- Hakim Bey Archive
- Bob BlackBob BlackBob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...
Archive - Feral Faun Archive
- Wolfi LandstreicherWolfi LandstreicherWolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
archive - John ZerzanJohn ZerzanJohn Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
archive - Jason McQuinnJason McQuinnJason McQuinn is an American anarchist, founder and co-editor of Alternative Press Review, and founder and former co-editor of the journal Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from 1980 to 1995, when Tad Kepley took it over, and again from 1997 to 2006...
archive - Lawrence JarachLawrence Jarach- External links :* official website.Publications*"" by Lawrence Jarach at the Berkeley Daily Planet...
archive - Lilith archive