Withered Anarchism: A Surrebuttal to Murray Bookchin
Bob Black
“The general level of insight now is more educated, curiosity is wide awake, and judgments are made more quickly than formerly; so the feet of them which shall carry thee out are already at the door” - Hegel
The tale is told of the American tourist abroad who, encountering some natives who didn’t speak his language, assisted their understanding by repeating himself in a louder voice. That is Murray Bookchin’s way with wayward anarchists. In Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm (1995) the ex-Dean laid down for all time what anarchists are to believe and what they are not to believe, but many perversely persist in error. Its very title announces its divisive intent. Two books and a slew of reviews suggest an overwhelmingly adverse anarchist reaction to the ex-Dean’s encyclical (although Marxists like Frank Girard and Kevin Keating/“Max Anger” are of course approving). For Bookchin, there is only one possible explanation for anarchist intransigence: they didn’t hear him the first time. For who – having heard – could fail to believe? And so it came to pass – like wind – that the ex-Dean is repeating himself, louder than ever, in Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the Left, especially in the article “Whither Anarchism? A Reply to Recent Anarchist Critics.” But it’s not a reply, just a replay. “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him” (Proverbs 18:13).
For those unfamiliar with the ex-Dean’s dialectical mode of reasoning – shame on you! – the distinction between appearance and essence must be made incorrigibly clear. Thus, when the ex-Dean writes that “it is not my intention to repeat my exposition of the differences between social and lifestyle anarchism,” in appearance, he is saying that it is not his intention to repeat his exposition of the differences between Social Anarchism and Lifestyle Anarchism. But understood dialectically, in essence, he is saying that it is his intention to repeat his exposition of the differences between Social Anarchism and Lifestyle Anarchism. And that is exactly what, and all that, he proceeds to do, which validates the method.