Murray Bookchin once made a distinction between "social anarchism" and "lifestyle anarchism," and if we adopt his conceptual scheme this work definitely falls in the latter. It is, after all, catalogued in the self-help section rather than the social science section. This is a lively, wide-ranging and anarchic assault on modern Western lifestyles and a plea to adopt the author's personal philosophy of "anarchy, medievalism and existentialism" as our own.
One of the reasons why I enjoyed this book is that it is so peculiarly English. Hodgkinson makes his case largely through extensive references to the heavy hitters in the English canon: Johnson, Lawrence, Russell, Wilde, the Shelleys, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake and Godwin just to name a few. Late 1970s and early 1980s English punk rock, as exemplified by the Sex Pistols and CRASS, is a major influence on his argument and his brand of backward looking, almost conservative radicalism is in the vein of William Cobbett, William Morris and George Orwell (and he quotes all of these chaps extensively as well). While his use of his texts is not very deep and indeed rather superficial at times, it's a pleasure to come across so many great thinkers and writers in one book, especially when they are encouraging you to quit your job, drink, have guilt-free sex, start a vegetable garden and engage in work that actually interests you.
The book does possess some serious shortcomings, however. Hodgkinson's depiction of medieval times is rather idealized and almost completely overlooks its more nasty and brutish aspects. His advocacy of completely abandoning any attempt to intervene in the political system does not sit well with me because I think it is a mistake to hand the state over to the most conservative and reactionary elements of society. Unlike the author, I don't think that it is feasible for everyone to completely reject large-scale economic organization to become yeoman farmers. Political and economic struggle in order to secure the basics of life for all is still more necessary than ever, and in order to secure increased freedom and leisure for all such efforts need to be institutionalized in some sort. And there's no reason why the provision of social welfare by the state cannot be decentralized in some fashion. But then again that's why I think anarchism is far more effective as a personal ethic than a political program, and that's why the sections of the book that deal with ways in which to improve your everyday life are far better than his sections on government and class. It's also kind of strange to hear a man who is perhaps best known for running a magazine (the UK-based The Idler) telling his readers not to read magazines, while also telling the reader that they should check out magazines that friends of his have produced.
Still, read this book. It's stimulating and entertaining, and will send you scurrying to pick up obscure Situationist texts while you reference Jean-Paul Sartre to explain why you bought a ukulele.
2 comments:
He also said the north ruined the fun south in reference to the civil war.
Yeah, that line was really messed up. Slavery certainly wasn't "courteous" toward the slaves. When I read that I wondered whether or not he was saying that just for shock value or if he really thinks that the world would be better off if the Confederacy won the Civil War. If it's the latter, that's not very cool.
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