Kelley, I do not in any way deny that there is no lifestyle left. There absolutely is. Lifestyle lefties have annoyed me to death in local organizing here in Dallas. And, here, the class division was very obvious and very much at work. I criticized it locally in very clear terms, which is one reason I'm not involved locally to the extent I once was. (This local group even read Bookchin's critique of lifestyle anarchism, and it didn't sink in.)
However, my point in the LBO conversation was that while there *is* this problem of class prerogative and power getting expressed as a kind of secular, consumptive purity, that does not itself, in my view, extinguish the political and moral considerations.
To take vegetarianism as one example, I have a hard time refuting Singer's argument that the species boundary is morally irrelevant; now, that some on the Left use food consumption issues as a way of expressing or displaying their class prerogative is *not* itself a way for me to, in good faith, ignore the coherence of Singer's argument, and whatever implications it has for how I live my life.
So, as I said, the stereotypical stories about Berkeley -- stereotypical if only because they are *not* limited to either, snooty coast, as my experience in Dallas and Houston bears out -- are fine and good, and everyone has fun laughing about the excesses. *But*, that these are not empty, are rooted in class inequity, doesn't exhaust the content of, say, the politics of food.
You're right: denying there is a lifestyle left is problematic; so, too, is claiming (which I'm not suggest you do) that the existence of a lifestyle left means that there are no moral or political considerations surrounding, say, personal consumption
Best, Kendall Clark
> kelley
-- When you're following an angel Does it mean you have to throw your body off a building?