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anarchist rejections of the state 79
have different sociological theories about the ways in which free
individuals enter into social relationships. Bookchin’s ‘social’ view is
strongly communitarian, Brown’s ‘lifestyle’ conception, libertarian. 73
The communitarian view, supported by Biehl and Bookchin,
is that individuals are legitimately shaped by the moral, social
and cultural mores of their communities. In Bookchin’s view
‘the making of that “whole” we call a rounded, creative, and richly
variegated human being crucially depends upon community
supports’. Individual socialization does not inhibit individuals from
leading autonomous lives. To the contrary, it provides them with the
wherewithal to exercise their freedom. Without community, ‘there
would be no real self to distort – only a fragmented, wriggling, frail,
and pathological thing’. His pithy conclusion is that ‘the making of a
human being … is a collective process’. 74 For libertarian or ‘lifestyle’
critics like Brown, Bookchin’s collective processes threaten to cut
down the individual’s realm of free decision-making and are sources
of potential oppression.
The sociological differences between anarchist communitarians
and libertarians do not necessarily inhibit political agreement. To
give an illustration, there is a long tradition in anarchist thought
which defines individuality in terms of sexuality. The general insight
is that ‘sex undermines Authority’. More precisely, as Alex Comfort
argued, ‘anti-sexualism of authoritarian societies’ springs from ‘the
vague perception that freedom here might lead to a liking for
freedom elsewhere’; and that ‘[p]eople who have eroticised their
experience of themselves … are … inconveniently unwarlike’. 75 This
tradition of anti-authoritarianism has a number of dimensions, but
is strongly associated with feminism. In this context, ‘lifestyle’ and
‘social’ anarchists have been able to develop a common politics. For
example, Emma Goldman’s view (which was founded on the
broadly existentialist idea that woman’s emancipation depended on
‘her inner regeneration’ and her ability ‘to cut loose from the weight
of prejudices, traditions, and customs’) was that anarchy would
liberate women from the subordinate social role associated with
marriage and enable them to find fulfilment in heterosexual, family
relationships. From a starting point that is closer to ‘social’
anarchism, the Anarcha-feminist International arrives at a similar
conclusion. Liberation requires that the ‘traditional patriarchal
nuclear family should be replaced by free associations between men
and women based on equal right to decide for both parts and with
respect for the individual person’s autonomy and integrity’. 76