Top Dog
Well-Known Member
... bit of a rant here folks ... 
Sometimes I cringe at the deep rooted conservatism and downright reactionary nature of some anarchists in their responses to, lets call them broadly, ‘alternative ways of living’. You get this often in the kneejerk and blanket labelling of various other people’s activity as ‘hippy’ or (the real bogey man) ‘middle class’. Uttering these terrible terms has the immediate effect of closing down the debate – the lines are drawn, the prejudices cast.
Now there assuredly will be activities that are just daft, irrelevant or have no connection whatsoever to anyone else around them – and no desire to connect them. But often the dismissal of some events is amplified at such a volume to be completely out of proportion that which is being criticised. What’s more, it's often a dismissal that doesn’t even bother with any scrutiny of the content itself. All that is required is to take a look at the state of the people on the event to decide whether to give it their political 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down'.
Does it need to be said that this is a very sorry state of affairs? By all means let’s criticise an activity if there are political problems associated with it, but those criticisms need to be explained for what they are, and what it is that makes them that way.
Perhaps it’s because the activity does not fit some pre-conceived notion of what it is that working class people do. It may not be activity related to ‘work’ for instance, and so the logic goes, it cannot be anything other than alien to working class activity. Further still, the people involved in the activity may not even look like working class people
, what they do (or don’t do) for a living might not be ‘working class’, what they wear, what they’re supposed to think might all be judged incorrect (read: middle class). In short, they don’t possess all the sociological attributes required by the anarchist, to judge whether it’s an activity worth participating in. While I find these preconceptions in themselves, insulting and patronising; more importantly they are completely wide of the mark in many respects. Both in their overall approach and in their dismissal of the idea that the object of a future revolutionary working class will be to abolish itself – and by extension to abolish its bourgeois identity, culture etc.
Lets take for instance, the whole critique of ‘lifestylism’. This debate re-emerges every so often (as it has on u75 recently) and essentially argues against those that believe they can opt out of capitalist society simply by their activism or self-ghettoisation – ie. they imagine it’s somehow revolutionary to live in some kind of utopian idyll, meanwhile wars, famine, state repressions and the daily class struggle rages around them. It’s the ‘I’m alright Jack’ mentality and it sucks.
So let’s be very clear on this because it’s important: it is not anti-capitalist simply to live on the margins of society and try to ignore capital’s existence. Something more than that is required.
The problem here is that the stick is then bent far too far in the other direction. And so the panacea to hippy ‘lifestylism’ is often to adopt a kind of working class ‘lifestylism’ in the expectation that proles will better identify with you and your politics, if you look like them, talk like them, target your propaganda in the same way the tabloids might, for example.
I’ve said it many times before, but its a little funny to me how many of the most vehemently anti-hippy types ive met, the ones that are charmed by a certain kind of urban prole (or lifestyle) actually come from backgrounds about as far removed from those social subjects that they fetishise. I don’t think that’s a great surprise to many, but it is important to acknowledge it, if it means a muddle-headed approach to understanding what revolutionary politics are about. Is it because they imagine it’s the sociological attributes that are the essence of what it means to be working class?
Isn’t there on the other hand, something to be said for the idea of creating and, if possible living, alternative realities in the here and the now?
The difference of emphasis on this question between the trots and the libertarians at last year’s European Social Forum was unambiguous and vast…
The trot’s showcased one of their events as ‘life after capitalism’ while the libertarians presented the alternative event as ‘life despite capitalism’. The difference between these two conceptions is crucial. Trots will always argue that the future society is constructed after the military dimension has reached its conclusion, after the transition from socialism to communism, and that essentially we must continue to reproduce capitalism in all our daily exchanges, in all our social relationships until that point is reached. Because to do otherwise is idealistic or not based in the day to day material reality.
This is a bullshit argument and for the anarchist or communist, one that is counter-revolutionary. Moving from one society to another requires the active participation of all involved in shaping their new world, hence the privileging of self-activity and direct action of the working class as the tools necessary to achieve our goal of a communist society. The means shape the ends.
So my question is this: what is it that is so bad about attempting to create the future within the present?
Sometimes I cringe at the deep rooted conservatism and downright reactionary nature of some anarchists in their responses to, lets call them broadly, ‘alternative ways of living’. You get this often in the kneejerk and blanket labelling of various other people’s activity as ‘hippy’ or (the real bogey man) ‘middle class’. Uttering these terrible terms has the immediate effect of closing down the debate – the lines are drawn, the prejudices cast.
Now there assuredly will be activities that are just daft, irrelevant or have no connection whatsoever to anyone else around them – and no desire to connect them. But often the dismissal of some events is amplified at such a volume to be completely out of proportion that which is being criticised. What’s more, it's often a dismissal that doesn’t even bother with any scrutiny of the content itself. All that is required is to take a look at the state of the people on the event to decide whether to give it their political 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down'.
Does it need to be said that this is a very sorry state of affairs? By all means let’s criticise an activity if there are political problems associated with it, but those criticisms need to be explained for what they are, and what it is that makes them that way.
Perhaps it’s because the activity does not fit some pre-conceived notion of what it is that working class people do. It may not be activity related to ‘work’ for instance, and so the logic goes, it cannot be anything other than alien to working class activity. Further still, the people involved in the activity may not even look like working class people
, what they do (or don’t do) for a living might not be ‘working class’, what they wear, what they’re supposed to think might all be judged incorrect (read: middle class). In short, they don’t possess all the sociological attributes required by the anarchist, to judge whether it’s an activity worth participating in. While I find these preconceptions in themselves, insulting and patronising; more importantly they are completely wide of the mark in many respects. Both in their overall approach and in their dismissal of the idea that the object of a future revolutionary working class will be to abolish itself – and by extension to abolish its bourgeois identity, culture etc. Lets take for instance, the whole critique of ‘lifestylism’. This debate re-emerges every so often (as it has on u75 recently) and essentially argues against those that believe they can opt out of capitalist society simply by their activism or self-ghettoisation – ie. they imagine it’s somehow revolutionary to live in some kind of utopian idyll, meanwhile wars, famine, state repressions and the daily class struggle rages around them. It’s the ‘I’m alright Jack’ mentality and it sucks.
So let’s be very clear on this because it’s important: it is not anti-capitalist simply to live on the margins of society and try to ignore capital’s existence. Something more than that is required.
The problem here is that the stick is then bent far too far in the other direction. And so the panacea to hippy ‘lifestylism’ is often to adopt a kind of working class ‘lifestylism’ in the expectation that proles will better identify with you and your politics, if you look like them, talk like them, target your propaganda in the same way the tabloids might, for example.
I’ve said it many times before, but its a little funny to me how many of the most vehemently anti-hippy types ive met, the ones that are charmed by a certain kind of urban prole (or lifestyle) actually come from backgrounds about as far removed from those social subjects that they fetishise. I don’t think that’s a great surprise to many, but it is important to acknowledge it, if it means a muddle-headed approach to understanding what revolutionary politics are about. Is it because they imagine it’s the sociological attributes that are the essence of what it means to be working class?
Isn’t there on the other hand, something to be said for the idea of creating and, if possible living, alternative realities in the here and the now?
The difference of emphasis on this question between the trots and the libertarians at last year’s European Social Forum was unambiguous and vast…
The trot’s showcased one of their events as ‘life after capitalism’ while the libertarians presented the alternative event as ‘life despite capitalism’. The difference between these two conceptions is crucial. Trots will always argue that the future society is constructed after the military dimension has reached its conclusion, after the transition from socialism to communism, and that essentially we must continue to reproduce capitalism in all our daily exchanges, in all our social relationships until that point is reached. Because to do otherwise is idealistic or not based in the day to day material reality.
This is a bullshit argument and for the anarchist or communist, one that is counter-revolutionary. Moving from one society to another requires the active participation of all involved in shaping their new world, hence the privileging of self-activity and direct action of the working class as the tools necessary to achieve our goal of a communist society. The means shape the ends.
So my question is this: what is it that is so bad about attempting to create the future within the present?
