Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm is a polemic

Polemic

A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...

al essay written by 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,...

 and published as a book in 1995. It is a critique of 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...

, bio-centrism

Biocentrism (ethics)

Biocentrism , in a political and ecological sense, is an ethical point of view which extends inherent value to non-human species, ecosystems, and processes in nature - regardless of their sentience...

 and 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...

. Bookchin sets his 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...

 in opposition to 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...

, primitivist

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...

 and post-modern forms of anarchism (represented, he maintains, by such anarchist philosophers 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 Hakim Bey

Peter Lamborn Wilson

Peter Lamborn Wilson , is an American political writer, essayist, and poet, known for first proposing the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone , based, in part, on a historical review of pirate utopias...

). It has provoked criticism from other anarchists, including 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...

, who view Bookchin's polemic as misguided.

Publication history

• Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism (1995). AK Press
  AK Press
  AK Press is a worker-managed independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical left and anarchist literature. It is collectively owned and operated.-History:...
  
  : Stirling
  Stirling
  Stirling is a city and former ancient burgh in Scotland, and is at the heart of the wider Stirling council area. The city is clustered around a large fortress and medieval old-town beside the River Forth...
  
  . ISBN 9781873176832.

External links

• Full text at Libcom.org