notes on activism, lifestylism and community-building for many people "activism" means summit hopping, mass protests, etc. however, while useful, these things only represent one third of the necessary work. the other two thirds are bringing one's lifestyle (gasp!) into accord with one's revolutionary principals and community-building. marx understood "communism" to be the conscious and unconscious struggle against alienation and for community. which, when drawn further, means that "communism" is not some utopia to be gained far into the future, but is embodied now in the conscious and unconscious struggles we make to de-alienate ourselves. and since capitalism (and class society in general) is intrinsically alienating (due to its inherent hierarchies, exchange-mediations, etc.), these struggles necessarily bring us into conflict with it and lay the basis for a possible, new post-capitalist society based in the community (of communities) of "free social individual[s]".* thus, for revolutionaries it is vitally important that we bring home the new things we've learned and links we've made at protests and use them to broaden revolutionary possibilities where we live everyday. the possibilities for this are endless: from simply finding ways to challenge how we interact in our workplaces, schools and homes (and challenge how they are run) to building autonomous community centers to participating in autonomous neighborhood councils. which brings me to that touchy subject: one's lifestyle. while the debate about "lifestylism vs. social activism" has been raging all around us, many people have missed the simple fact that there is no "unbridgable chasm" between the two ideas... that, in fact, they are meaningless without one another. engaging in social activism without changing your lifestyle to fit with your revolutionary principals makes one a hypocrite. similarly, to try to live in a revolutionary way, while not engaging in social activism leaves one only further alienated. another problem is that both of these by themselves run the risk of being commodified, and thus brought into the capitalist fold. that is: social activism, without the principals inherent to it being internalized, will end up being co-opted by capitalism thru institutionalization, crimilaization and / or spectacularization (that is: made into a spectacle to be watched, perhaps even while one is participating, and thus alienated from) depending on the forms of social activism. lifestylism, without the principals inherent to it being externalized, will end up being commodified into a new fad or fashion. in the rare occasion when this commodification might be more difficult (and criminalization is failing) -- such as the lifestylist and puritanical aspects of crimethinc-ism -- alienization of the lifestylists will always work. *marx, grundrisse