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Title: What are the global effects of anarchist lifestyle choices?
Author: J Levy
Date: unknown
Language: en
Topics: lifestyle anarchism, individualist, organization
Source: unknown

J Levy

What are the global effects of anarchist lifestyle choices?

The idea that ‘Another World is Possible’[1] is a vital motivational

force behind most anarchist lifestyles. Despite some claims of

individualism, some anarchist lifestyle choices embody a communal

approach that seeks to instantiate this ‘other world’ in direct

opposition to the individualistic lifestyles that embody the spirit of

capitalism. Grassroots activisms, in the form of “small communities of

liberation” (Clark 2004:70), are a case in point. In this essay I will

briefly revisit the meaning of lifestyle anarchism and argue that some

intentional communities with an ecological ideology prefigure an

alternative. I will then flip the notion of what is global on its head

and argue that examples of anarchist prefiguration have real potential

to transform the structural nature of capitalism as any local action is

itself linked to, and enacted upon, the global stage.

Lifestyle Anarchism Revisited

Bookchin (1995) argued that merely living an anarchist lifestyle does

little to address the structural oppression of capitalism. Bookchin

constructed a dichotomy between the social and personal and saw personal

or lifestyle choices as an indulgence afforded to the privileged whose

focus was purely on “personal improvement, personal achievement, and

personal enlightenment” (1995:7). When an anarchist lifestyle

constitutes these emphases then it is easy to sympathize with Bookchin’s

disdain. Whilst I am in agreement with Bookchin that there is little

potential for political change through self-realization alone[2], his

narrow, binary evaluation of lifestyle / social anarchism has been

sufficiently challenged with rational arguments elsewhere (Clark 2008;

Davis 2010; Wilson 2014a). Suffice to say that the personal must also be

political to be anarchistic, a theme I will return to later.

Anarchism is a code of ethics, reaching toward a multispecies,

biocentric ontology. It is a verb, a relational way of being in the

world based on egalitarian values of mutual aid, co-operation,

community, equality, equity, collective stewardship of resources, and

the respect for diversity[3]. Furthermore, what constitutes a lifestyle,

is a complex system of relationships that include consumption habits,

language, ideologies and the general behavior and habits of individuals

and sub-cultures (Clark 2008; Portwood-Stacer 2013; Wilson 2014a).

Invoking Foucault’s (1991; 1998; Rabinow 1991) concept of power and

discipline (power is not just exercised from the top down but also

throughout society by individuals and groups within that society) infers

that lifestyle choices contain agency. If this agency is exercised using

disciplinary techniques embodied in anarchism then this could, in time,

begin to break down global capitalist structures through the creation of

“new logics, habits, spaces”. (Wilson 2014b: 4). A multitude of

resistant and innovative cultures enacted on a local, grassroots level,

a hollowing out of the system from within (ibid). Whilst Bookchin’s own

philosophy makes immeasurable contributions to potential alternative

ways to organize the world politically, it still fails to provide an

answer to the question of ‘where does one begin’?

If capitalism relies upon growth, fuelled by competition for its

survival then surely one legitimate way to resist capitalism is to

engage in a lifestyle that limits its contribution to capitalism. One

way to instantiate this kind of lifestyle is to transform our social

relationships so that they become reliant upon co-operation as opposed

to competition through monetary economics. For this transformation to be

as close to egalitarian principles as possible it has to begin at the

smallest unit of agency and its equal relationships to all other units

of the same size i.e. the individual and its relationship to other

individuals. As these relationships are never fixed the concept of

prefiguration becomes central. Prefiguration focuses upon processes as

opposed to results; embodying the desired world today through the

performance of the desired values, actions and social relationships of

an individual and any given community. As Portwood-Stacer clearly

highlights (2013:98), a man cannot be an advocate for gender equality

whilst also perpetuating male privilege, as he would be replicating the

very behavior he seeks to invalidate. Citing various definitions

Maeckelbergh (2009:66-67) also offers her own insightful definition,

“[p]refiguration is a practice through which movement actors create

conflation of their ends with their means”. Boggs (1977:101) stated that

this could be achieved by the creation of “local, collective small-scale

organs of social democracy”. Whilst the concept of prefiguration is

arbitrary in itself, when paired with anarchism it instantiates a very

real potential for change. I will now look at examples of anarchist

prefiguration and how they embody and perform ‘another world’.

Small Communities of Liberation

When John Clark highlights the need for a dialectical approach to

societal transformation he identifies a diverse range of activities that

“must take place at many levels simultaneously.” (2008:18). These

activities include, “worker co-operatives, consumer co-operatives, land

trusts, co-operative housing […] other non-capitalist initiatives – in

short, an emerging solidarity economy”. Clark also cites various forms

of “cultural expression” such as “liberatory art, music, poetry,

theater” as important transformative activities. (ibid.18-19). One form

that I want to focus in on in more detail is the “small intentional

community” (Clark 2008:19), which in many ways can be understood as a

small community of liberation (Clark 2004:70). Whilst humans have formed

communities for time immemorial there is something unique in the way the

intentional community is situated within the nation state. As

anthropologist Susan Love Brown states,

"[t]he intentional community is a phenomenon of the nation-states and an

important object of study, because it allows us to observe how human

beings living in large heterogeneous societies use community to cope

with the exigencies of life". (2002:6).

Since the rise of modern environmentalism many of these communities have

formed around an ecological ideology. Often examples of these kinds of

communities are not explicit in their anarchist leanings; however they

do display anarchist prefigurative practices and behaviours. These

practices and behaviours include co-operative ownership of land and

horizontal decision-making processes. In the UK many fall into the ‘Low

Impact Development’[4] category implying off-grid lifestyles, severing

the reliance on corporate energy suppliers for their energy needs. Other

examples of implicitly anarchist behaviors include communal food

production and consumption, communal car ownership, taboos around

unethical consumption (the kind of which contributes to the profits of

large corporations). These communities often,

"embody a highly articulated set of values, ideas, beliefs, images,

symbols, ritual and practices. We might say that any microcommunity that

possesses such qualities exemplifies a process of social condensation".

(Clark 2004:70)

Yorkley Court Community Farm (YCCF) merits a special mention due to the

way it was acquired. Yorkley Court farm is a large estate that had no

registered owner and had fallen into disrepair (YCCF no date: online).

Since 2012 it has been inhabited by a group of individuals who

transformed it into a community farm. There ‘aims’ include

sustainability in all its manifestations, co-operation, renewable energy

and an emphasis on health and well-being. The ethos of the community is

both explicitly ecologically and environmentally orientated and

implicitly anarchist. Their ‘Agreement of Respect’, published on their

website (YCCF no date: online), states, “[t]he basic tenet of the

agreement is respect – respect each other (our backgrounds, identities,

ideas and bodies) – and respect the space we’ve created together”. It

also includes tenents like “[a]ny behaviour – physical or verbal – that

demeans, marginalises or dominates others, or perpetuates hierarchies,

is not welcome.”

It is also worth noting that YCCF are members of the Landworkers

Alliance who are directly challenging capitalist modes of food

production by advocating and supporting “small-scale producers and

family farms” in the pursuit of sustainable agricultural systems

(Landworkers Alliance 2015:online). This pursuit plays into global

concerns around food security and seed sovereignty. The Landworkers

Alliance is a UK based group who are part of the wider ‘International

Peasant Movement’, La Vie Campesina. This movement is a demonstration of

the connectivity and global nature of grassroots, local action seeking

to address a pressing global issue. Unfortunately a “Forest of Dean

entrepreneur” (Qaiser 2015:online) recently filed for the eviction of

YCCF, which he won and now the residents are fighting to keep their

community. This eviction demonstrates the obstacles involved in

realising these kind of projects. It is also a serious blow to the study

of these kind of projects as much more time is required to assess how

effective they are at sustaining themselves and whether there are wider,

global implications involved in their lifestyle choices.

Research into ‘low impact intentional communities’ and their anarchist

credentials is still quite limited. Ethnographic evidence is vital in

this area of research as it offers invaluable insights into the

sustainability and resilience of lifestyles that seek to limit their

contribution to, and involvement with capitalism. It also answers

Graeber’s call (2004:12), “to look at those who are creating viable

alternatives…”. Rhiannon Firth (2012) uses ethnographic methods to

examine a number of intentional communities. Whilst the examples Firth

examines are not specifically low impact they do represent a variety of

communal living experiments. From her observations she notes that,

“[w]ays of organizing and using space that differ from dominant models

were clearly observable […]. All the communities had a shared kitchen

and shared social space…” (ibid.68). Interestingly, members of these

communities thought of themselves less as members of a nation state and

more as part of a “global citizenship” (ibid.66). Furthermore, they

define their needs “not as being provided by the system” but rather

through collectively realised, “egalitarian and participatory social

relationships” (ibid.64). Through their local activity as global

citizens they are enacting the global on a local level. I will now

examine what is inferred by the complex relationship between the

‘global’ and the ‘local’ in more detail.

The Global and Local Dichotomy

When asking ourselves what are the global effects of anarchist lifestyle

choices it is important to first unpick what is meant by the global and

the local. Viewing them as binary opposites does little to represent the

reality of the many lifestyles and relationships of the global

citizenship. Deconstructing these ‘concept metaphors’ (Moore 2004)

results in the need for a revision in the ontology of identity and

space. It is true that every single human is living in a geographically

defined ‘local’ space but it is also true that each human is a global

citizen and so to define actions as purely local implies that the global

is an abstract isolated object that exists ‘out there’. As Moore

(2004:71) points out, it is widely agreed that whatever the global is it

is not a homogenized unit. The global is everywhere and exists in the

relationships that all 7 billion humans are engaged in all the time.

Just by taking a cursory glance at where our clothes are made, or where

our bananas are grown supports this hypothesis. Furthermore, the line

between nation-state and global corporation has become increasingly

difficult to define (Ferguson & Gupta 2002) adding to the ambiguity of

national identities and the exact location of hegemony.

By applying I.R. theory through the lens of a feminist epistemology may

help in our ontological understanding of the global and the local.

Reflecting the feminist slogan ‘the personal is the political’ Hutchings

(1994:160) identifies a “complex dialectical interrelation” between the

local and the global. Or as Hutchings terms it, “The Personal Is

International”. Hutchings challenges the traditional masculine

epistemology of ‘international relations’ with its monopoly on

rationality and its claim to be objective and empirical when dividing

the ‘subject’ and the ‘object’. Further, Hutchings claims that knowledge

is only possible through the dissolution of this constructed binary and

that international relationships are substantiated by all the subjective

relationships that exist and are continually enacted on a personal

level. There is no ‘external’ out there; the knower and the known, the

subject and the object are engaged in a continual feedback loop where

the boundaries are never clear or fixed.

This feedback loop is evident when examining the plight of some

indigenous peoples and how they have cleverly positioned themselves in

relation to global issues. As Kearney (1995) highlights, “[n]umerous

indigenous groups have been able to reframe their disadvantageous

relationships with the nation-states that encompass them by redefining

their projects in the global space of environmentalism and human

rights”. This has led to the support of many indigenous groups by the

international human rights movement that in turn puts pressure on the

nation state in question to change its policies (ibid). Furthermore,

local cultures are capable of being responsive and reflexive to global

processes and “resist them and shape them for their own purposes.”

(Moore 2004:71). The global and the local as specified ‘objects’ are

never fixed, never achieved and never arrived at. Instead the world

consists of “a complex set of interconnections and processes through

which meanings, goods and people flow, coalesce and diverge” (Moore

2004:78).

Conclusion

Whilst the anarchist lifestyle choices I have highlighted in this essay

exemplify their potential it is very difficult to assess their actual

global effects. The difficulties lie in the fact that the passing of an

extended period of time is necessary to properly determine the success

of prefigurative anarchism and the longevity and influence of these

‘small communities of liberation’. I have shown that lifestyle anarchism

can instantiate far more than the merely superficial, personal lifestyle

choices that are based on purely individual motives. When lifestyle

choices are embodied in anarchist prefiguration they have the very real

potential to challenge the structural nature of capitalism. By

challenging our fixed understanding of what the local and the global is

I have suggested that the global citizenship is enacted at the local

level through a multitude of interconnected relationships and that this

is where we might begin to realize ‘another world’.

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Workers' Control’. In: Radical America, 11, November. Accessed on 25th

January 2015 from http://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1125404123276662.pdf

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Dichotomy'. In: Anarchist Studies 18, no. 1

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[1] This slogan originated in the 1990s out of the World Social Forum

(Harvey 2009:online). See Maeckelbergh’s (2009) ethnography for further

insights into the World Social Forum.

[2] Bookchin himself went through a series of “personal enlightenments”

in his lifelong development of social ecology.

[3] Anarchism has its roots in anti-statism discourse. This is,

essentially, against the centralization of power and decision making.

There is too much complexity in any discourse around decentralization

for me to attend to here. Suffice to say that whilst I concur with a

move toward decentralization and the dissolution of central government

it is crucial that it goes hand in hand with the criteria I have stated

for it to be anarchistic. I think it is also important to quote

Kropotkin (1939:233) with regards to ethics who stated “It is especially

in the domain of ethics that the dominating importance of the mutual-aid

principle appears in full. That mutual aid is the real foundation of our

ethical conceptions seems evident enough.”

[4] “LID is development which, by virtue of its low or benign

environmental impact, may be allowed in locations where conventional

development is not permitted.” (Fairlie 2009:online). There are many

examples of these communities across the UK. However, for this

publication I have chosen to protect their identity due to the

instability of their continued planning decisions and the negative

association the label anarchism could bring to their cause.