Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

kin wrote

I was checking this same comment, and I kind went to think into my own journey.

At some point I held similar views, and I used to think (without reading or searching for other sources) that post-left and "lifestylism" was an attempt to deradicalize anarchism and recuperate it to a more cultural scene, and I particularly thought this was a US thing.

But this was just propaganda by some "anarchist" organizations that wanted to hold the "True anarchism" as their own, a platformist/especifista anarchism, Anarcho Communism blended with Marxism, an anarchism that is sectary in the name of purity (an accusation that they sometimes throw to the "other bad anarchists").

I can say that Raddle helped me to understand and appreciate various aspects in post left theory and helped me connect again with anarchism. And I think most of the reddit users, mostly young people, are just repeating propaganda. They don't want to acknowledge the other tendencies bc it will harm their own position, like the very insistent solarpunk user that bc upset when we said Desert was not a pessimist book like they said, just a realistic view.

Sometimes I forget that I used to think in the same way. Going in my own pace, and finding stuff that I could relate helped me regain joy in Anarchy.

7

ziq OP wrote

well this user is certainly being influenced by the same wildly successful entryist as you were (bookchin), even if you were influenced by him indirectly

here's another comment from the same user:

Bookchin didn't just criticise lifestyle anarchism he criticised anarchism per se and distanced himself from anarchism per se. It's just that his critique of lifestyle anarchism was particularly pointed.

the entire concept of 'lifestyle' anarchism is so ridiculous. most self-proclaimed anarchists in the world are useless, not just the ones that listen to punk music.

for instance, bookchin was entirely useless, unless selling social ecology certificates and books about how useless 'lifestyle anarchists' are and how everyone should instead be a democratic solar marxist somehow creates anarchy?

6

moonlune wrote

most self-proclaimed anarchists in the world are useless

Hey that's me! I'm a leeche! ☺️

7

kin wrote

I was never a big reader of theory (still not today), so the argument that was more significant for me was a classist critique, saying that post-left and any other tendency that was not Anarcho Communism was capitalist recuperation. Very few times they would argue about how social ecology is a better response than any other green AntiCiv analysis.

But for me was kind of period of "going down to the valley" because I first entered anarchism reading Zerzan, Hakim Bey and Feral Faun. I was a teen and the only place where I could find some people with the same desires and interests was the internet. But then irl the people I met were dogmatic especifistas, and rightfully so, thinking in the social and political context.

Maybe my reluctance in accepting the Anarchist moniker have something to do with the damage those folks did to my understanding of Anarchy. We were not suppose to say that Anarchy was Chaos, that Anarchy is NOT the same as Democracy, that Anarchy is Anarchism primal substance, that Anarchism is not a road map for the Utopia..

And other thing we took for granted os the access to texts and analysis outside the Anglosphere. It's astonishing how little access people have to texts that are circulating for decades and could disprove any of the weak assumptions usually used to disprove bookchin detractors. I don't want to be an anarchist missionary, but I am starting some translations, first Desert.

7