Submitted by Ennui in Anarchism

Raffle users are often described as lifestylists, but how can anarchism be anything other than a lifestyle? Does lifestylism just mean that you don’t support an anarcho-Communist scheme for world domination?

Sorry, my brain is huge. New here, but honestly I’ve been stalking Raddle for a while.

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ziq wrote (edited )

Check out the wikis, specifically these ones:

w/communalism_and_anarchy

w/Individualist_Anarchy

w/Nihilist_Anarchy

w/postleft

But also the text on the w/anarchy101 page that explains the difference between applied anarchy and theoretical anarchy.

"Lifestylism" is basically any anarchist tendency that doesn't purport to replace one industrial work system with another.

Red anarchist tendencies include anarcho-communism, collectivism, social ecology, post-scarcity anarchism and transhumanism.

All these red anarchists are pro-work, pro-industry, pro-civilization. While "lifestylist" or black anarchists (individualists / post leftists / nihilists / anticivs) are anti-work, anti-industry, anti-civilization.

A lifestylist is basically an anarchist that does anarchy in their everyday life instead of waiting for a far-flung revolution to happen before doing anarchy.

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GlangSnorrisson wrote

Is it weird to be kinda in between both? Because practicing anarchy here and now (insofar as that’s feasible) seems like the common sense thing to do. But part of me still likes the idea of being part of a larger movement? I dunno. Can anyone relate?

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OdiousOutlaw wrote (edited )

Not at all because the social/lifestylist split is a pointless binary that was created by a dead, cranky racist with an axe to grind against two living, but increasingly irrelevant figures in anarchism. It doesn't really need to exist and I've been using the word "lifestylist" ironically. Bookchin's dead, Bob Black is...Bob Black, and Zerzan hasn't been super relevant so the results of their feud shouldn't hold any sway over how you or anyone else chooses to conduct themselves and how they "do anarchism".

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Ganggang wrote (edited )

In practice it’s mainly used as an insult (often against individualist anarchists, which I am), implying the person being insulted is a larper or whatever. I guess really what they’re saying is that we’re more focused on our own lives rather than a commitment to “the movement”. They’d say this makes us “not real anarchists”, as a true anarchist would have a deep commitment to the movement.

I’d say “the movement” is just another form of social control. I want to liberate myself. My care for others, and my belief that empowering others will help me become more free, make me want to help but that’s still ultimately for the purpose of self liberation. Also usually helping out non ruling class people is good for me materially, or at least I believe it will be at some point. My “cause” is Not charity, and not a devotion to “the movement”.

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NeoAnabaptist wrote

The way I see it used nowadays, for the most part, is as a negative term to describe changing elements of one's individual behaviour instead of some kind of action in the (broadly-defined) political sphere. E.g. changing your consumer choices, dumpster diving, or even dropping out of society to form a commune, instead of unionizing your workplace, burning down a police precinct, or forming a local food security network.

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ziq wrote

burning down a police precinct

You lost me there. Every bookchinite alive today would consider that lifestylism.

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NeoAnabaptist wrote

Tbh I wasn't talking much about Bookchinites, because I don't see that many around (at least in my spaces). I see the term brandied about though so I was describing the way I see it used.

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rot wrote

I've been here for a year and I'm still not sure

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_caspar_ wrote

"but how can anarchism be anything other than a lifestyle?"

for most its nothing other than politics.

"Does lifestylism just mean that you don’t support an anarcho-Communist scheme for world domination?"

yes.

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M4AMAFIA wrote

So where do collectivists go? Raddish?

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ziq wrote

What's raddish?

There aren't really any anarcho-collectivists nowadays, most anarchists are ancoms.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

probably for the best, to my understanding the difference between the two was whether or not "non-workers" should be able to plug into social resources (ancoms saying yes). so ancols were more workerist. someone correct me if i am wrong though

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ziq wrote

collectivists believe in labor vouchers (so the more you work, the more goods you can receive from the market), while ancoms believe everyone should just take whatever they decide they need from the market.

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Ennui OP wrote

Aren’t labor vouchers another one of the semi-myths propagated by Kropotkin? I’m not saying that Collectivists didn’t use them, but there were theoretical and practical reasons that are rarely observed.

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ziq wrote

The collectivists favored the 'right to work', which is 'industrial penal servitude'. In Kropotkin's view, their pro-worker policy sought to 'harness to the same cart the wages system and collective ownership', in particular through their theory of labor vouchers. Kropotkin opposed labor vouchers on the grounds that they seek to measure the exact value of labor in an economy which, being socialized, tends to eliminate all distinctions as far as contribution of each worker considered in isolation is concerned. Furthermore, the existence of labor vouchers would continue to make society 'a commercial company based on debit and credit'. Hence he denounced labor vouchers in the following terms: 'The idea... is old. It dates from Robert Owen. Proudhon advocated it in 1848. Today, it has become "scientific socialism".

Kropotkin made equally stringent criticisms of the collectivists' attitudes towards the division of labor and the State. With regard to the division of labor, he wrote: 'Talk to them [the collectivist socialists] about the organization of work during the Revolution, and they answer that the division of labor must be maintained.' As for the State, it was significant that as soon as Kropotkin had come out in favor of 'direct, immediate communist anarchism at the moment of the social revolution', he criticized the Paris Commune as an example of a revolution where, in the absence of the communist perspective, the proletariat had become bogged down in problems of power and representation. Kropotkin believed that the Paris Commune illustrated well how the 'revolutionary state' acts as a substitute for communism and provides a new form of domination linked to the wages system. In contrast to this, 'it is by revolutionary socialist acts, by abolishing individual property, that the Communes of the coming revolution will affirm and establish their independence'. Further, communism would transform the nature of the Commune itself.

https://libcom.org/library/anarcho-communism

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Pop wrote

There was a certain moment in US where lots of anarchists and people who associated with anarchists were said to be living freely, train hopping, dumpster diving, couch surfing or whatever, instead of stonefaced traditional organising

Those people were called lifestylists by some poopface, inventing a new way to be sectarian and defend anarchist 'orthodoxy'

that label has been applied generally to the post-left, which now is more a critique than an actual position, a critique that any half decent anarchist has taken seriously

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