I ran into Stephen, a mate/comrade yesterday. We asked how each other was going, and what we’re up to. He said something funny: "I’ve always considered myself a sophisitcaed feral". And that brought up a conversation about how much we’ve changed (or not) in the last year. I said that I’d moved into a female house-hold, got a cat, started collecting greaywater and gardening… a year ago I would’ve been cynical about how "hippy" that is.

Yeah, what a problem that cynicism can be. Stephen said how ridiculous it is that some anarchists will dismiss anyone who showers, or isn’t queer, or actually buys clothes, while others get dangerous saying "oh worm farming is lifestylist, we just chuck our waste in the garbage".

I am a bit sick of this pandering to staid stereotypical mages of anarchy… the workerists can’t talk to the lifestylists - but why, exactly? What we need most is unity, but we also want to preserve individuality.

Its the old anarchist connundrum. We are strongest in community, but we are divisible because the individual is the basic unit.

Someone recently called on my tolerance for a comrade "not like us" who was supposedly "more workerist" than "us". Well, leaving aside my doubt that said comrade was at all workerist, I can only answer that I have aklways been workerist. But I am also a lifestylist too.

You see, I won’t wait. Yet I won’t live in denial either. Its dialectical - in striving for an ideal, we must admit its ideality and therefore inability to be fully realised in materiality. But we don’t stop striving! 

I once wrote: "we are the people who will fight for revolution even though the benefits will not be seen until after we are dead". Those words return now as I think about the failures of my life. But the possibility of death brings such a joy to the thought of living! Living fully, living as free as possible, living for myself and for a future that is not mine.

Plurality, an understanding and handling of complexity, is what makes the anarchist brain strong. So let’s drop these bad labels - they weren’t made with union labour anyway.