Bob Black (born Robert Charles Black, Jr. on January 4th, 1951) is an American anarchist and lawyer. Events 46 BC - Titus Labienus defeats Julius Caesar in the Battle of Ruspina. Year 1951 ( MCMLI) was a Common year starting on Monday. Events of 1951 January The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Anarchism is a Political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which support the elimination of all compulsory Government, i A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law as an attorney, Counsel or Solicitor; a person He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays. The Abolition of Work is an essay written by Bob Black in 1985.
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Literary work
Beginning in the late 1970s, Bob Black was one of the earliest people to advocate what is now called post-left anarchy. This article is about the Decade 1970-1979 For the Year 1970 see 1970. Post-left anarchy is a recent current in Anarchist thought that promotes a critique of anarchism's relationship to traditional leftism. In his vociferously confrontational writing style he has criticized many of the perceived sacred cows of leftist, anarchist, and activist thought. The term sacred cow has passed into the English language to mean an object or practice which is considered immune from criticism especially unreasonably so Anarchism is a Political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which support the elimination of all compulsory Government, i Activism, in a general sense can be described as intentional action to bring about social or political change An unaffiliated New Leftist in his college years, Black became dissatisfied with authoritarian socialist ideology and after discovering anarchism spent much of his energy analyzing authoritarian tendencies within ostensibly "anti-authoritarian" groups. The New Left were the Left-wing movements in different countries in the 1960s and 1970s that unlike the earlier leftist focus on union activism instead adopted a Anarchism is a Political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which support the elimination of all compulsory Government, i In his essay "My Anarchism Problem" he writes: "To call yourself an anarchist is to invite identification with an unpredictable array of associations, an ensemble which is unlikely to mean the same thing to any two people, including any two anarchists. " Though not an anarcho-primitivist, he sometimes writes for and has strongly influenced anarcho-primitivist publications. Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of Civilization.
Some of his work from the early 1980s (anthologized in The Abolition of Work and Other Essays) highlights his critiques of the nuclear freeze movement ("Anti-Nuclear Terror"), the editors of Processed World ("Circle A Deceit: A Review of Processed World"), "radical feminists" ("Feminism as Fascism"), and Libertarians ("The Libertarian As Conservative"). The nuclear freeze was a proposed agreement between the world's nuclear powers primarily the United States and the then- Soviet Union, to freeze all production The Libertarian Party is a United States political party founded on December 11 1971
The Abolition of Work
The Abolition of Work, Black's most widely read essay, draws upon the ideas of Charles Fourier, William Morris, Paul Goodman, and Marshall Sahlins. The Abolition of Work is an essay written by Bob Black in 1985. François Marie Charles Fourier ( April 7, 1772 - October 10, 1837) was a French Utopian William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896 was an English Architect, Furniture and Textile designer artist writer and socialist associated Paul Goodman ( 9 September 1911 New York City – 2 August 1972) was an American Sociologist Marshall David Sahlins (born December 27, 1930, Chicago, Illinois is a prominent American Anthropologist. In it he argues for the abolition of the producer- and consumer-based society, where, as Black contends, all of life is devoted to the production and consumption of commodities. Consumerism is the equation of personal Happiness with the purchase of material possessions and consumption. In economics consumption is the primary motivating force in the wealth or utility maximizing paradigm A commodity is anything for which there is demand but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market Attacking Marxist state socialism as much as market capitalism, Black argues that the only way for humans to be free is to reclaim their time from jobs and employment, instead turning necessary subsistence tasks into free play done voluntarily - an approach referred to as "ludic". Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. State Socialism is a term introduced to describe the type of government in countries ruled by communist parties such as the former USSR, which are generally known as Communist Capitalism is the Economic system in which the Means of production are owned by private Persons and operated for Profit and where The essay argues that "no-one should ever work", because work - defined as compulsory productive activity enforced by economic or political means - is the source of most of the misery in the world. Black denounces work for its compulsion, and for the forms it takes - as subordination to a boss, as a "job" which turns a potentially enjoyable task into a meaningless chore, for the degradation imposed by systems of work-discipline, and for the large number of work-related deaths and injuries - which Black typifies as "homicide". List of countries by homicide rate Homicide ( Latin homicidium, homo human being + caedere to cut kill refers to the act of killing another He views the subordination enacted in workplaces as "a mockery of freedom", and denounces as hypocrites the various theorists who support freedom while supporting work. Subordination in work, Black alleges, makes people stupid and creates fear of freedom. Because of work, people become accustomed to rigidity and regularity, and do not have the time for friendship or meaningful activity. Most workers, he states, are dissatisfied with work (as evidenced by petty deviance on the job), so that what he says should be uncontroversial; however, it is controversial only because people are too close to the work-system to see its flaws.
Play, in contrast, is not necessarily rule-governed, and is performed voluntarily, in complete freedom, as a gift economy. A gift economy is a Social theory in which goods and services are given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future Quid pro quo. He points out that hunter-gatherer societies are typified by play, a view he backs up with the work of Marshall Sahlins; he recounts the rise of hierarchal societies, through which work is cumulatively imposed, so that the compulsive work of today would seem incomprehensibly oppressive even to ancients and medieval peasants. A hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild Foraging and Hunting Marshall David Sahlins (born December 27, 1930, Chicago, Illinois is a prominent American Anthropologist. He responds to the view that "work," if not simply effort or energy, is necessary to get important but unpleasant tasks done, by claiming that first of all, most important tasks can be rendered ludic, or "salvaged" by being turned into game-like and craft-like activities, and secondly that the vast majority of work does not need doing at all. The latter tasks are unnecessary because they only serve functions of commerce and social control that exist only to maintain the work-system as a whole. As for what is left, he advocates Charles Fourier's approach of arranging activities so that people will want to do them. He is also skeptical but open-minded about the possibility of eliminating work through labour-saving technologies. He feels the left cannot go far enough in its critiques because of its attachment to building its power on the category of workers, which requires a valorization of work.
Anarchy After Leftism, and the Bookchin controversy
Beginning in 1997, Black became involved in a debate sparked by the work of anarchist and founder of the Institute for Social Ecology Murray Bookchin, an outspoken critic of the post-left anarchist tendency. The Institute for Social Ecology is an educational institution in the United States offering courses related to Social ecology, an Anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian Murray Bookchin ( January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American libertarian socialist, political and social Bookchin wrote and published Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, labeling post-left anarchists and others as "lifestyle anarchists" - thus following up a theme developed in Philosophy of Social Ecology. Though he does not refer directly to Black's work (an omission which Black interprets as symptomatic), Bookchin clearly has Black's rejection of work as an implicit target when he criticises authors such as John Zerzan and Dave Watson, whom he controversially labels part of the same tendency. John Zerzan (born 1943) is an American anarchist and primitivist Philosopher and author
For Bookchin, "lifestyle anarchism" is individualistic and childish. "Lifestyle anarchists" demand "anarchy now", imagining they can create a new society through individual lifestyle changes. In his view this is a kind of fake-dissident consumerism which ultimately has no impact on the functioning of capitalism because it fails to recognise the realities of the present. He grounds this polemic in a social-realist critique of relativism, which he associates with lifestyle anarchism as well as postmodernism (to which he claims it is related). Postmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement' While " Modern " itself refers to something "related to the present" the movement of modernism Ludic approaches, he claims, lead to social indifference and egotism similar to that of capitalism. Against this approach, he advocates a variety of anarchism in which social struggles take precedence over individual actions, with the evolution of the struggle emerging dialectically as in classical Marxist theory. The unbridgeable chasm of the book's title is between individual "autonomy" - which for Bookchin is a bourgeois illusion - and social "freedom", which implies direct democracy, municipalism, and leftist concerns with social opportunities. Direct Democracy is a movement within the British Conservative Party dedicated to localism and Constitutional reform as a means of reviving public In practice his agenda takes the form of a combination of elements of anarchist communism with a support for local-government and NGO initiatives which he refers to as Libertarian Municipalism. Libertarian municipalism is a term first used by the well-known Libertarian socialist theorist Murray Bookchin, and is used to describe a system in which libertarian He claims that "lifestyle anarchism" goes against the fundamental tenets of anarchism, accusing it of being "decadent" and "petty-bourgeois" and an outgrowth of American decadence and a period of declining struggle, and speaks in nostalgic terms of "the Left that was" as, for all its flaws, vastly superior to what has come since.
In response, Black published Anarchy After Leftism which later became an important post-left work. The text is a combination of point-by-point, almost legalistic dissection of Bookchin's argument, with bitter theoretical polemic, and even personal insult against Bookchin (whom he refers to as "the Dean" throughout). Black accuses Bookchin of moralism, which in post-left anarchism, refers to the imposition of abstract categories on reality in ways which twist and repress desires (as distinct from "ethics", which is an ethos of living similar to Friedrich Nietzsche's call for an ethic "beyond good and evil"), and of "puritanism", a variant of this. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist He attacks Bookchin for his Stalinist origins, and his failure to renounce his own past affiliations with what he himself had denounced as "lifestylist" themes (such as the slogans of May 1968). Stalinism is the political regime named after Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1929–1953 For other events in May 1968 see 1968. He claims that the categories of "lifestyle anarchism" and "individualist anarchism" are straw-men. A straw man argument is an Informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position He alleges that Bookchin adopts a "work ethic", and that his favored themes, such as the denunciation of Yuppies, actually repeat themes in mass consumer culture, and that he fails to analyze the social basis of capitalist "selfishness"; instead, Black calls for an enlightened "selfishness" which is simultaneously social, as in Max Stirner's work. Work ethic is a set of values based on the moral virtues of hard work and diligence The term yuppie (short for " young urban professional Johann Kaspar Schmidt ( October 25, 1806 – June 26, 1856) better known as Max Stirner (the Nom de plume The Philosophy of Max Stirner is credited as an influence on the development of Nihilism, Existentialism, Post-modernism
Bookchin, Black claims, has misunderstood the critique of work as asocial, when in fact it proposes non-compulsive social relations. He argues that Bookchin believes labour to be essential to humans, and thus is opposed to the abolition of work. And he takes him to case for ignoring Black's own writings on work, for idealizing technology, and for misunderstanding the history of work.
He denounces Bookchin's alleged failure to form links with the leftist groups he now praises, and for denouncing others for failings (such as not having a mass audience, and receiving favourable reviews from "yuppie" magazines) of which he is himself guilty. He accuses Bookchin of self-contradiction, such as calling the same people "bourgeois" and "lumpen", or "individualist" and "fascist". He alleges that Bookchin's "social freedom" is "metaphorical" and has no real content of freedom. He criticizes Bookchin's appropriation of the anarchist tradition, arguing against his dismissal of authors such as Stirner and Paul Goodman, rebuking Bookchin for implicitly identifying such authors with anarcho-capitalism, and defending what he calls an "epistemic break" made by the likes of Stirner and Nietzsche. There have been multiple well-known individuals named Paul Goodman: Paul Alexander Cyril Goodman (born 1959 UK Conservative Politician He alleges that the post-left "disdain for theory" is simply Bookchin's way of saying they ignore his own theories. He offers a detailed response to Bookchin's accusation of an association of eco-anarchism with fascism via a supposed common root in German romanticism, critizising both the derivation of the link (which he terms "McCarthyist") and the portrayal of romanticism itself, suggesting that Bookchin's sources such as Mikhail Bakunin are no more politically correct than those he denounces, and accusing him of echoing fascist rhetoric and propaganda. McCarthyism is a term describing the intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States in a period that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s Romanticism is a complex artistic literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin ( - July 1 1876) was a well-known Russian Revolutionary and theorist of Collectivist anarchism. He provides evidence to dispute Bookchin's association of "terrorism" with individualist rather than social anarchism. He points to carnivalesque aspects of the Spanish Revolution to undermine Bookchin's dualism. The Spanish Revolution of 1936 began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Black then rehearses the post-left critique of organization, drawing on his knowledge of anarchist history in an attempt to rebut Bookchin's accusation that anti-organizationalism is based in ignorance. This article is about the legal concept for a rebuttal used in informal logic see Counterargument. He claims among other things that direct democracy is impossible in urban settings, that it degenerates into bureaucracy, and that organizationalist anarchists such as the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo sold out to state power. Template talkInfobox Union for usage --> The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo ( CNT; English He argues that Bookchin is not an anarchist at all, but rather, a "municipal statist" or "city-statist" committed to local government by a local state - smattering his discussion with further point-by-point objections (for instance, over whether New York is an "organic community" given the alleged high crime-rate and whether confederated municipalities are compatible with direct democracy). New York ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous Direct Democracy is a movement within the British Conservative Party dedicated to localism and Constitutional reform as a means of reviving public He also takes up Bookchin's opposition to relativism, arguing that this is confirmed by science, especially anthropology - proceeding to produce evidence that Bookchin's work has received hostile reviews in social-science journals, thus attacking his scientific credentials, and to denounce dialectics as unscientific. Compare Moral relativism, Aesthetic relativism, Social constructionism, Cultural relativism, and Cognitive relativism. He then argues point-by-point with Bookchin's criticisms of primitivism, debating issues such as life-expectancy statistics and alleged ecological destruction by hunter-gatherers. And he concludes with a clarion-call for an anarchist paradigm-shift based on post-left themes, celebrating this as the "anarchy after leftism" of the title.
Bookchin never replied to Black's critiques, which he continued in such essays as "Withered Anarchism," "An American in Paris," and "Murray Bookchin and the Witch-Doctors. " Bookchin later repudiated anarchism in favor of a form of direct democracy he calls "communalism"
Controversy concerning the Church of the SubGenius
On one occasion, a member of the Church of the SubGenius, John Hagen-Brenner, sent Black an "improvised explosive device consisting of an audio cassette holder wired with four cadium-type batteries, four flashbulbs, and five firecrackers" [1], as described in the charging document filed in Federal District Court. The Church of the SubGenius is a religious group that satirizes Religion, Conspiracy theory, UFOs and Popular culture. According to Black, he thought the package looked suspicious, then on impulse "threw it against the wall. There was a flash (the flashcubes) and a puff of smoke, but the firecrackers did not go off. " [2] Black turned the device in to the police. Black believes that the device was sent to him because of criticism he had made of the Church, and he has repeatedly brought up the incident in his writings concerning the Church. Ivan Stang and other members of the Church have denied any involvement in this incident, and no one else was charged. Rev Ivan Stang (born Douglass St Clair Smith August 21, 1953 in Washington D
External links
- Collection of essays by Bob Black
- The entire text of Bob Black’s 1986 collection The Abolition of Work and Other Essays at Inspiracy
- The Abolition of Work
- Gerry Reith archive at Inspiracy
- Future Nexus
- Listen Anarchist! a critique by Chaz Bufe
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