I’ve been having an ongoing discussion about the the distinction between ‘political’ action, and ‘personal’ or ‘lifestyle’ action with a friend of mine. Lifestylism is considered a political slur amongst anarchist circles, and is almost as bad as petit-bourgeois is considered in Marxist circles. However, I feel the debate around it is really quite ill-thought out.
To be a lifestylist is to, apparently, falsely believe that personal decisions can be political… or something like that. The usage of the word came about in Bookchin’s vitriolic polemic Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An unbridgeable chasm from around 1995, by which point he was well past his prime of writing. From his conclusion (note the insulting use of ‘petit-bourgeois’ – you just know he has Marxist roots!):
Minimally, social anarchism is radically at odds with anarchism focused on lifestyle, neo-Situationist paeans to ecstasy, and the sovereignty of the ever-shriveling petty-bourgeois ego. The two diverge completely in their defining principles – socialism or individualism. Between a committed revolutionary body of ideas and practice, on the one hand, and a vagrant yearning for privatistic ecstasy and self-realization on the other, there can be no commonality. Mere opposition to the state may well unite fascistic lumpens with Stirnerite lumpens, a phenomenon that is not without its historical precedents.
My contention, firstly, is that there should not be an opposition between the ‘personal’ and the ‘political’, and rather that political, indeed all macro social structures, are actually constituted through practices of everyday life. My second contention is that the aim of anarchism shouldn’t be either socialism or individualism, but rather what a number of authors have called communal individualism.
The collapsing of the macro and the micro into a single field of relations and practices has been attempted by a number of theorists: this is Delueze and Guattari’s ‘plane of immanence’ and the ‘abstract machine’; it is Bruno Latour’s ‘flat social’ (a quite conservative social theorist otherwise however); and it is the turn to everyday life of the Situationists, of Lefebvre, and of much of post-structuralism. Put simply, it is the idea that when we talk of ‘the State,’ for example, we are not talking about a concrete thing but rather a conglomeration of social relations that, through their repeated performances of certain key practices and their collective orientation that is, on the whole, the same, they create the notion of the State. The State is therefore not the reified conception that some are prone to, but rather a mass of social practices in which certain key practices (ie. obedience to agents of the State, obedience to the Father) are critical in maintaining the overall illusion. The State is constituted through practices of repression and violence, but similarly through obedience and consent.
What this means is that there is no secondary sphere of political action, nor a sphere that is simply personal, but that relations of everyday life are already political. The distinction between lifestylism and politics ceases to make sense, except for the Statists who consider only those actions within the sphere of the State as political (a claim which makes no sense for those seeking the abolition of the State).
It is obvious what those who make the attack of ‘lifestylism’ are getting at. It is usually a charge of a lack of collective action, or a charge of consumer-oriented change. That it is always up to individuals to change their behaviour is always going to be the reality, but it is also a reality that freeing ourselves from oppressive social relations comes through a mass refusal to perpetuate those relations. This is not a charge against ‘lifestylism’ per se, but rather a distinction of effective action, and one which could easily be levelled against the mass marches that are so fetishised as being political, and which so often fail to count as “mass” at all. Secondly, the critique of consumer-oriented change is similarly valid but not against lifestylism, instead against naive liberal notions that we can buy buy buy our way to a better world.
Secondly, Bookchin sets up a fantastic division between egotistical individualists and social revolutionaries, and of course this is nothing but the classical distinction between individualists and socialist anarchists. The former puts the self above everything else, while the latter instead prioritises the collective. As for me, anarchism only makes sense when it is concerned with the freedom of the individual (what sense does it make to talk of the freedom of collective?), but it is both a negative freedom-from and a positive freedom-to. Certainly, the latter can only be generated through communal action. This is the notion of communal individuality, where the measure of freedom is based on the freedom of the individual, but that this freedom is extended and fostered through communal action. The development of the ego (in the Stirnerite conception of ‘the unique one’, NOT the popular conception) should therefore be of primary concern; that is, the development of selves both willing to defend their freedom, and to extend it further, à la Stirner’s ‘union of egos.’ Any ego freed from the ’spooks’ in their heads will immediately realise the paralysing and repressive social order with which they are met and that any desire that they may have for ‘privatistic ecstasy’ immediately becomes a social desire aimed at abolishing the conditions that make that desire impossible.
The charge of lifestylism maintains the division between the public and the private spheres, between the personal and the political. I believe instead that the terrain of political action is the terrain of everyday life; there is no secondary or tertiary spheres of politics or ideology. Moreover, the development of selves radically desiring of freedom is essential to any revolutionary project aimed at communal individuality, one that is opposed to the subjugation of the individual to yet another collective spook.
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June 17, 2007 at 4:30 am
Gavin
This reminds me of the popular expression washed out revolutionaries like my parents like to use:
“If you just work on yourself, and make yourself perfect, it will affect everyone around you.” Or generally something along those lines.
It just sounds like old excuses for a lack of social-political action. We all know that no one person, no matter how ‘perfect’ is going to change the way this world operates. Just try and imagine the ruling class handing over all the private property then control based on an individuals ability to be completely content with themselves. Give me a break.
Lifestylism (just make everything an ‘ism’ these days, haha) is a way to placate your ego while minimizing your personal risk, all in all, it’s counter-revolutionary in my opinion. It’s like asking everyone to just try and figure all this stuff out by themselves, without raising awareness through societal involvement. We can barely get them to turn off their tv’s, let alone imagine the infinite possibilities of Anarchism at this point.
Great post!
June 17, 2007 at 4:48 am
Adam
I know what you’re getting at, but I tend to agree with Bookchin on this one. I have no problem with the kind of people that might be called ‘lifestylists’ on a personal level, but at the same time I don’t see the revolution as lying in their hands.
I don’t know the situation in your neck of the woods, but it’s probably a lot like in the UK. Here we have had ‘drop-outs’ since the sixties, and it hasn’t furthered the cause of the revolution one iota. Fine, they are people who want to opt out of the day to day grind. But where exactly do they interact with the 99% of the working class who get on with it? Precisely nowhere. Instead, they retreat to their squats and communes and whatever. Eventually, the state moves in and evicts them, and the evictees issue some kind of plea to the working class, who have never seen these people in their lives.
June 17, 2007 at 7:44 am
Gavin
Yep, sounds just like our side of the pond.
The fact of the matter is, anyone who takes the time and exerts the effort necessary to really question ones belief system and national identity deserves a kudos, not a slap on the wrist. We can all certainly benefit each other, Randian isolationists be damned!
June 17, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Tim
‘The collapsing of the macro and the micro into a single field of relations and practices has been attempted by a number of theorists: this is Delueze and Guattari’s ‘plane of immanence’ and the ‘abstract machine’’
Sorry to nitpick but you got the terms a bit wrong. ‘Plane of Immanence’ in D and G’s workd refers to the structure genterating processes found anywhere in nature where a liquid undefined mass is transformed into a solid structure. Same with ‘abstract machine’ but their terminology is so vague and flexible you might as well attribute it to a flat social ontology. Good post though, just wanted to point out their work is concerned with things larger than human society. If you want a good book on that macro-micro thing you should read Manuel De Landa’s ‘New Philosophy of Society’, they might have it at Unity?
June 17, 2007 at 4:37 pm
anarchafairy
“…but their terminology is so vague and flexible you might as well attribute it to a flat social ontology”
Yeah, well precisely. I’ve been reading Simon Tormey as well as Saul Newman who are writing about D+G and talk about ie. the State as an abstract machine which is simply an assemblage of practices overcoded by the state form. And this to me seems transferable to macro structures generally.
(Anyway, Deleuze was happy to engage in “philosophical buggery,” and so can I, and claimed the role of philosophy was to create concepts… and so can I… haha)
You’re probably right about the plane of immanence. My memory of that is from the Todd May book on Deleuze, but it just seemed to be an adequate description to me of the notion of a flat social. Could you explain how you understand this a bit more?
“just wanted to point out their work is concerned with things larger than human society.”
Sure. It’s very similar, however, to what Bruno Latour talks about, where “the social” comes to refer simply to processes of assembling and reassembling… and in which case ceases to refer simply to social relations between humans, but also between animals, between atoms, between star systems… etc. This is also where the notion of distributed consciousness comes from, and the radical critiques the ‘body’ as separate from ‘nature’ arise.
June 19, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Scott
This is an intelligent, careful, and obviously sincere post, but again I have a problem with the lack of any empirical argument here (cf the unions posts).
You’ve flown from a concrete problem – what to do about Happy Valley and the perceived shortcomings of the campaign to save it – into an abstract, ahistorical theoretical discussion. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that never return to earth and tell us what concrete consequences your deductions have for the problem you began with.
I doubt whether Deleuze knew much about New Zealand culture and history, yet a consideration of these things is unavoidable if one wants to understand the sort of lifestyle politics that Sam was talking about. We have a very strong tradition here of radical individualist revolt – it flows from the earliest days of the Wakefield settlements, when plebians fled transplanted class societies to live with Maori or carve their own little farms out of the bush, through the yeomen farmers who fled poverty in England, to radical nonconformists like Archibald Baxter who decided to become ‘healthy cells in a sick society’ by taking courageous but individual stands against military conscription and other forms of injustice, into the hippy and punk countercultures that began in the ’60s and ’70s and continue today on the margins of society.
It is a tradition which has more mainstream offshoots in phenomena like the Steinder schools movement and ethical consumerism. It is a tradition that was perhaps on display in Auckland the other day, when 10,000 people heard the Dalai Lama deliver a sermon of world transformation via individual transformation that might have come from the tongue of Archibald or James Baxter.
We need to sort out the positive from the negative parts of this tradition of radical individualism. But what is positive and what is negative will vary depending on historical and social context. In World War Two, when the state had dampened all non-religious dissent and forced through conscription against the wishes of a hge part of the population, the Quakers were revolutionaries; in 2001-2003, during the mass movement against the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, they were wet blankets.
You can’t understand this sort of historical complexity with a method which takes you out of the realms of time into the land of eternal philosophical abstractions.
The problem with social theory, which is what you’re really doing in these posts, is that it’s trapped halfway between philosophy and sociology, and has neither the rigour or real philosophy nor the empirical inputs and constraints of the social sciences. And as far as I can tell, your reading of Deleuze and simialr pomos is not actually correct, because you seem to be essentialising the concept of ‘indidividual’, eg treating it as something essentially ‘out there’, that exists before thought, in a way that they would never do.
Or am I wrong?
June 19, 2007 at 1:10 pm
anarchafairy
You can’t understand this sort of historical complexity with a method which takes you out of the realms of time into the land of eternal philosophical abstractions.
I think then perhaps I haven’t made myself clear enough. I was trying to show that accusations of lifestylism rely and are predicated on separate (and hierarchical) social domains, such as the personal, the political, the economic, the ideological, etc. While accusations of “lifestylism” are sometimes concrete, they are based on this metaphysical assertion of the structure of the social. I am trying to argue for a radically flat conception of the social, one which I think should force such accusations to be better articulated. That is, if all action is immediately social and political the question should become one of effectiveness and choice of action, not lazy recourse to political slurs of ‘lifestylism,’ ‘personal politics,’ or ‘individualism.’
I am certainly not arguing for 10,000 people to follow the Dalai Lama and engage in “individual transformation,” however I would argue this is immediately social AND political. The question then becomes *why* doesn’t this change the social relations we believe should be changed, and this then encourages us to look at immanently concrete explanations, and not abstractions of lifestylism/individualism.
And as far as I can tell, your reading of Deleuze and simialr pomos is not actually correct, because you seem to be essentialising the concept of ‘indidividual’, eg treating it as something essentially ‘out there’, that exists before thought, in a way that they would never do.
Yep, you are correct, and this is something I struggle with in my own mind. I don’t want an analysis the necessarily posits the individual as the foundation (just as much as I don’t want one that posits “society”, “class”, etc.) as these are all constituted through social processes. But then I do keep coming back to the problem of ethics. How are we to judge a particular social order? Without recourse to a crude positivism, I would say revolutionary movements are ultimately ethical in character, and motivations for ethics seems to me to be based strongly in how people feel (sad, happy, stunted, oppressed, alienated, etc.). It seems only from the individual psyche can we get such a reading, and on this basis there does seem to me to be reason to somewhat privilege the individual. Then, of course, there is the problem of where those feeling come from? Do I feel alienated/stunted/oppressed simply because I have an image of an alternative social order in my head? Where did that image come from? Disney? Or why do some people feel quite contented? I don’t know where to go from here, but I am reluctant to disband with the notion of the individual entirely just yet.
FYI, IMO Deleuze is no po/mo. I like to keep in my head a separation between American po/modernism and continental po/structuralism, with the latter guided by both a rejection of classical Marxism but also very strong emancipatory ethics
The problem with social theory, which is what you’re really doing in these posts, is that it’s trapped halfway between philosophy and sociology, and has neither the rigour or real philosophy nor the empirical inputs and constraints of the social sciences.
Yes, it is social theory, but please keep in mind this is a blog post, and one written in 10 minutes at that!
June 19, 2007 at 1:17 pm
anarchafairy
We need to sort out the positive from the negative parts of this tradition of radical individualism. But what is positive and what is negative will vary depending on historical and social context.
And so I think we may be more in agreement than I first thought. This post simply wasn’t aiming to address any concrete examples, but rather the broad category of lifestylism and its hidden metaphysical conception of the social.
June 19, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Scott
Interesting points which I’m sure I’ll ponder in the ad breaks of ‘House’ tonight! Do you think, though, that many of your interlocutors would actually disagree with this:
‘That is, if all action is immediately social and political the question should become one of effectiveness and choice of action, not lazy recourse to political slurs of ‘lifestylism,’ ‘personal politics,’ or ‘individualism.’’
I can’t read the minds of Sam and Gavin, but I would guess that they would say that they reject lifestyle politics on the grounds that they simply aren’t very effective, in most circumstances.
June 19, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Omar
Most of the your post is garbage due to the erroneous assumption you draw at the start. You charachterise
“a lifestylist …[as someone who] falsely believe[s] that personal decisions can be political… or something like that.”
whereas Bookchin charachterised a lifestylists as someone who undertakes “a personalistic commitment to individual autonomy”.
In fact I would recommed that you re-read and reflect upon Bookchin’s essay and his definitions of a lifestylist anarchist before commenting on it and his intellect. http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bookchin/soclife.html
Particularly as it is you rather than Bookchin that attaches the unpolitical label to the lifestylist anarchist and the unpersonal label to social anarchism. This error in your method sets your whole argument up to failure. Bookchin never made the distinction between “lifestylism and politics”. In fact he argued that lifestylism is a form of politics, however one that is egotistical, reactionary and unable to provide a truly emanciapatory ideology for the anarchist movement.
Bookchin was arguing against anarchists choosing only to take part in the practive and theory of lifestyle anarchism. Social anarchism has radically different theory, and practice from lifestyle anarchism namely because the terrain of the social anarchists everyday life (as you would call it) is so different to those of the lifestylist anarchist. Remember what Bookchin says,
“I would be the last to contend that anarchists should not live their anarchism as much as possible on a day-to-day basis — personally as well as socially, aesthetically as well as pragmatically. But they should not live an anarchism that diminishes, indeed effaces the most important features that have distinguished anarchism, as a movement, practice, and program, from statist socialism. Anarchism today must resolutely retain its character as a social movement — a programmatic as well as activist social movement — a movement that melds its embattled vision of a libertarian communist society with its forthright critique of capitalism, unobscured by names like ‘industrial society.’”
June 19, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Omar
Sorry, I think I am confused. Your post is actually on the division between individual action and collective action rather than on the difference between lifestyle anarchism and social anarchism. These divisions are not synonomous, as you attempt to make out! (The reason I was confused.) Lifestyle anarchists undertake collective action to the same degree social anarchists undertake individual action, See Bookchins essay for examples.
June 19, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Si-bobo
To be honest I found it difficult to read your article. I’m sure if I wasn’t so tired I’d pay for attension. One thing did pop out in my mind, and I’m sure I’ve taken this out of context:
“As for me, anarchism only makes sense when it is concerned with the freedom of the individual (what sense does it make to talk of the freedom of collective?), but it is both a negative freedom-from and a positive freedom-to.”
My reponse is this:
An individual can only be truely be free if the collective (workplace/community/gender/ethnicity + class) is free.
As disempowered individuals, we can still have power as a collective and increase our individual power through the collective (a workplace organisation for example). This process can give help up survice (better wages and conditions) be empowering (realising we have power together) as well as politicising (maybe we can have power as a community just like power as a union/workplace).
It is important for us to be free as individuals and make personal decisions – but this doesn’t have the power to make actual change like a collective does ( i.e. change the power structures/relations of society.) That’s not to say some individuals haven’t affected society positively as individuals – but have they change the power relations for the majority?
June 19, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Darren
I spent ten years arguing with a group of so-called ‘academic marxists’ whose concentration on perfecting ’socialism’ was merely an excuse for their complete lack of radical action. Lifestylism is a bunch of pretentious wank argued by upper middle-class liberals who like to pretend that they hold a revolutionary thought. Either you or Bookchin got it wrong, as Marx’s main term of abuse was ‘Lumpen-Proletariat’, first used in his 1845 work “The German Ideology”. It has strong reactionary connotations, as Marx’s L-Ps were selfish individualists and criminals who preyed on other working class people. A modern translation of Lumpen-Proletariat is ‘White Trash’, although Marx’s term included journalists, such as any of his peers he didn’t like.
June 19, 2007 at 9:59 pm
anarchafairy
Omar,
This discussion actually came out of the question: Is a boy walking down the street dressed as a girl or deliberately androgynous a political act? Most anarchists I know would claim this is merely a change of lifestyle, merely a form of personal politics that has nothing to do with the real fight of patriarchy and sexual oppression. I maintain it is, for all the reasons elaborated in this post so far: that sexual oppression is constituted and maintained through the active participation of most people both obeying and enforcing the norms associated with the gender/sex/desire matrix, and that in this act one is refusing to enforce, reinforce or obey those norms. It’s success is another matter, but I believe mainly one of scale.
These same charges are levelled against those who form communes or other egalitarian organisations: “mere lifestylism” (or retreatism, or any other sort of anarchist slur you can imagine). And at the same time unions are glorified, even in some of their hideously reactionary forms, simply because this engages in the “political” sphere. I think this distinction is untenable, but it is very popular amongst the anarchist movement.
Turning to Bookchin, I believe he does indeed maintain a conception of a personal sphere and a political sphere. Even in the quote you gave, he talks about “living anarchism on a day-to-day basis” as separate and inferior to “distinguished anarchism, as a movement, a practice, and program.”
In any case, however you wish to interpret Bookchin, my point is that I think we need to reevaluate what counts as political action rather than repeating the tired formulations of individualism, lifestylism or whatever, which doesn’t engage with the concrete aspects to whether or not certain actions are effective (and having said that, such a perspective also is cause to reevaluate the criteria of effective action).
And please, get rid of the arrogance from your comments.
June 19, 2007 at 10:14 pm
anarchafairy
Bobo,
An individual can only be truely be free if the collective (workplace/community/gender/ethnicity + class) is free.
What does this actually mean, though? How can a class be free? Indeed, how could classes exist at all if they were free? (or gender?) Are we talking about a group that, when treated as a unitary object, can freely choose its course? Does this mean its internal organisation is not an issue? Or are you saying something else?
It is important for us to be free as individuals and make personal decisions – but this doesn’t have the power to make actual change like a collective does
Are you suggesting a collective exists separately to the individuals that make it up? That their “personal decisions” and actions are divorced or somehow separated from the collective? This would be a worrying situation from a perspective that maintains a commitment to horizontalism: shouldn’t any ‘collective’ be an expression the individuals who make it up? Would, for example, a large number of people maintaining a commitment to “neither ruling nor allowing themselves to be ruled” act in the same way as to effect social change? If so, is the issue here one of “collectives”, or simply one of scale?
(sorry for the questions)
June 20, 2007 at 10:35 pm
omar
anarchafairy,
what made me angry/arrogant was that your whole post is constructed in academic poststructuralist jargon, that hides or denies the fact that you are really discussing something quite simple. Your academic posturing confuses the debate and serves only to mystify social theory-making ununderstandable to those not versed in academic postmarxism.
re: bookchin. what example do you have that he sees day to day anarchism as inferior to anarchist action concerned with the political movement?
i also think bookchins essay comes to grips to what constitutes effective action especially in his critique of what he calls, “primitivist lifestyle anarchism”. his critique is that the political action of the lifestylists is wrong rather than their “personal action.”
anarchism (and anti-authoritarian marxism) is for everyone, not just academic careerists like the pomos and poststructuralists. I wish you’d just posted your thoughts on your original discussion rather than confusing it with a misunderstanding of bookchins thesis.
: )
June 20, 2007 at 10:42 pm
omar
note before: i’m not alledging you are a academic carrerist!
…yet
June 29, 2007 at 10:45 am
A Proper Political Ontology? « anarchafairy
[...] Political Ontology? I can’t seem to decide what I think here. Maps raised the point in response to my last post that: And as far as I can tell, your reading of Deleuze and similar pomos is not actually correct, [...]
June 30, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Metin
Interesting discussion. I agree with Omar and I would only like to make a comment on effectiveness.
There are many ways of social change. Social change occurs through individual consumer choices, lyfestyle choices or reforms as well. However, as you said we have a desire of creating a different society with no hierarchy, no coercion, exploitation etc. The question is whether radical changes to reach such a society can be achieved by lyfestyle anarchism/individualist anarchism or not. To me the answer is a definite no. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that people should suppress their identities (sexual, ethnic, lifestyle choice or whatever). But, also it means that they cannot be really free without changing the power structure in the whole society. So organizing around individual choices or lifestyle choices (like as tribes against civilisation) may be somehow effective against oppresion of a lifestyle group (or they may be somehow liberating). However, they are not effective for a revolutionary change, because we need to create broad political agreements for this purpose.
July 27, 2007 at 7:20 pm
roger nome
Bookchin’s on the money here – why do you think it is that no NZ Anarchists are ever willing to put their money/time/energy where their mouth is and start up a collectivist work place, run along the lines of anarchist principles? Well because they’re all middle-class boho’s whose real motivation lies in wanting to feel superior through being intellectualist social outsiders. Bloody frustrating/depressing when you finally figure this out.
August 2, 2007 at 12:21 pm
ben gibson
well sumone else can do that then – why wait for the middle class to do something?
be about it, dont talk about it!
January 7, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Peter
Anarchafairy, your post is pretty spot-on. Its been some time since I’ve read either of these, but as I remember the vision of society given in Bookchin’s Post-Scarcity Anarchism and Bob Black’s Abolition of Work is really not that far apart, in spite of the two being polemically hugely opposed in the “lifestyle” vs social anarchist debates.
January 18, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Tara
i don’t see why these things have to be opposed. or that people have to fit in these pleasant academic boxes of either lazy lifestylers or ….what…miserable workers doing a boring job for little pay…….with this sort of view, no wonder you stay in academia. sorry, bit of a slur there, but i really do think it is important to see us all as multi dimensional beings. yes, i think this means taking care of yourself. it means to have empathy with others. i think it means to make a positive contribution to society.
imho, those who immerse themselves in politics just get fucked up. just as those who immerse themselves in the personal without an understanding of the political get fucked up.
January 21, 2008 at 12:34 pm
anarchafairy
Hi Tara,
Please read my post before commenting.
Thanks.