Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism

Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism is a 1995 book by the American ecologist and social theorist Murray Bookchin, published by AK Press in San Francisco and Edinburgh. It is a critique aimed at what the author regards as a drift within anarchism toward individualism, deep ecology, biocentrism and so-called lifestyle or aesthetic anarchism, which is built on cultural and personal practices. For Bookchin, these currents rest on a romantic mystification that makes them superficial and irrelevant to social transformation and that, in their more extreme forms, produce sectarian dynamics.

The book arose from the decline of anarchism within the great mass movements after 1960. From then on a division deepened between an orthodox or modern anarchism, communitarian in outlook and heir to classical socialism and Enlightenment reason, and a postmodern or heterodox anarchism of individualist leanings, which champions personal development, a new consciousness sometimes tinged with mysticism, and aestheticism. Bookchin, who had moved from Marxism toward a libertarian socialism, opposed this second current firmly just as it was beginning to spread among young libertarian groups.

His central argument holds that, while the exploitation and poverty produced by capitalism grow, the anti-authoritarian movement has largely lost interest in social revolution and political organization. In response, he calls for the preparation and organization of a practical and coherent anarchism, together with a radical, libertarian ecologism that is rational and humanist, centred on human well-being and on an ecological science and technology.

The work surveys the history of anarchism, distinguishing an individualist strand represented by Proudhon and Godwin from a collectivist one represented by Bakunin and Kropotkin, and then criticises primitivist, mystical and anti-technological currents, paying particular attention to writers such as John Zerzan, David Watson and Hakim Bey. Its reception was controversial: it provoked replies from other anarchists, among them Bob Black, who judged Bookchin's position mistaken.