An incendiary rant against Bookchin

Dare one write a positive review of anything written by Bob Black? Or a review at all? After all, Bob Black is the enfant terrible and bête noire of the North American anarchist scene. Countless are the accusations against this man. They are probably all true. Lev Chernyi has a point, warning the reader to stay away from this shadowy character...in a foreword to Black's own pamphlet. Those who want the other side of the story can access the new edition of Chaz Bufe's "Listen, Anarchist!" on the web.

WHAM! Was that an axe being gently rammed through my front door?

"Anarchy after leftism" speaks for itself. It's Black's response to Murray Bookchin's "Social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism". Black accuses Bookchin (whom he likes to call The Dean) of being a closeted authoritarian, city-statist and Marxist with a penchant for high tech and the Athenian polis. Black defends what he calls heterodox or post-leftist anarchism, apparently a kind of anti-work, individualist, and moderately primitivist form of anarchism. He also claims that Bookchin was once a real anarchist, who later backslided into moralistic, crypto-authoritarian, anti-hippie positions, which occasionally resemble those of the Neo-Cons.

As an outsider to the conflict, I find it to be richly and fecundly entertaining. But no, I would probably not go along well with Black. I'm no anarchist. But then, why are the social anarchists so incensed at the lifestyle anarchists in the first place? Why not simply avoid them and go on with whatever it is social anarchists are doing? The only explanation I have for the obsession with "lifestyle anarchism" is that social and lifestyle anarchists belong to the same social milieu. What's keeping these people together? Lifestyle, perhaps?

But I'm digressing. Black's incendiary rant might be of some interest to those wanting to find out how other anarchists reacted to Murray Bookchin. Another critical pamphlet of Bookchin is David Watson's "Beyond Bookchin". To the general public, of course, this entire conflict is like seagull droppings on the ocean shore. And now, I'm off to my private little opium factory!