Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The ongoing debate (slanging match) about life-style versus class struggle anarchism seems set to run and run. It's been going for the last forty years to my certain knowledge, and if recent posts on the anarchobloggesphere are anything to go by, seems set to see me out. Of course the roots of the problem lay deep in the history of the European socialist movement, Marx and Prouhdon both having had a bit to say on the matter. By the 1940's George Orwell was having fits about sandal wearing beardy-wierdy vegetarians getting us all a bad name. In such august company it seems unlikely that I will be able to add much of value but for what it's worth here are my thoughts on the matter.
For a long time now there has been a connection (and at times a confusion) between radical left politics and the bohemian life style. This connection is hardly surprising, as someone challenging the bourgeois mode of production may well also reject what is perceived as a bourgeois life style, even see this rejection as an integral part of their politics. So the two things, bohemian and lefty, are certainly not mutually exclusive BUT neither can we assume that a person who is the one will also be the other. We are all familiar with the hip capitalist, or the eco-facist for that matter.
A lot of the problem comes down to what I call "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". What I mean by this is that very often, in the quite legitimate attempt to call everything into question, comrades can reject a great deal that is useful and authentic and even adopt a spurious alternative. Our project is to supersede capitalism not to reject out of hand all the product of capitalist art and science. We don't need to develop an anarcho/communist alternative to the law of gravity. Don't need to confuse rebellion with the uncritical acceptance of every kind of mumbo-jumbo.  My generation, in throwing out the attitudes of our parents with their demob suits and uncool "make do and mend" approach to life, also threw out their collectivist/distributive world that they had fought so hard for. In the sixties and early seventies we struggled to make our politics relevant to every facet of our lives. We were right to make the personal political, to take up the struggle for sexual liberation but in doing so many of us ended up with an austere, miserableist politics. Punk was in many ways a rejection of this no fun approach to life and politics. "Revolution is a carnival or it is nothing" but as usual much that was of value was thrown out along with the dross and soon we were left with nothing but the cult of celebrity fashion. What I am saying is that in all the above cases the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
So where to with this class struggle/ life style split? To start with I have always felt that I had a bit of a foot in both camps, certainly when I was younger, and have been happy to have pretty straight industrial militants and extreme space cadets as my comrades. I certainly don't have any solutions but would just like to propose the following. Maybe we could even talk about it without referring to each other as wankers.
For a start "it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that class analysis" and by class analysis I don't mean anything more intellectually demanding then simply knowing who's side you are on. As we judge each others politics let's use the criterion, "who's side are they on".
The libertarian strand of socialism is not just about the redistribution of wealth and the abolition of privilege, it is about the discovery of a new and authentic life and while it is wrong to think that it is possible to build that life alongside (as an alternative to) capitalism, it is equally absurd to demand that every effort to live a different life is wrong, that we must wait until "after the revolution". To know that capitalism is able to recoup everything and sell it back to us does not mean that we sit frozen, like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
Part of the reason why the anarchist/libertarian socialist movement has been dogged by disagreements is that the very nature of our politics has allowed the development of a huge diversity of emphasis and opinion. It's a diversity that we should cherish, that we should be proud of. I'll try and remember that next time some vegetarian eco-mental gets up my nose!