Bookchin's willingness to pit autonomy v. freedom against each other is the big weakness of this essay. What is autonomy without freedom? What is freedom without autonomy? The reality is that these necessitate one another, not that they contradict one another. Same deal with his characterization of the individual v. society: contrary to what he asserts, society is the product of individuals just as much as individuals are the product of society. To suppress any individual is to suppress society, and to suppress society is to suppress every other individual.
At the end of the day, there is no "individualist anarchy" or "collectivist anarchy" because both individualism and collectivism, when taken to their logical conclusions, produce the very unjust hierarchies to which anarchism is fundamentally and definitionally opposed. A stateless - i.e. anarchist - society by definition is unable to elevate the individual over the collective or vice versa, nor should it attempt to do so - because, again, doing so would only serve to suppress both.
Either Bookchin doesn't realize this (I seriously doubt that) or he does but decided to throw the entirety of non-collectivist anarchism under the bus to dunk on hippies - which I mean, sure, go for it, but one can dunk on hippies without spending a third of the essay on what boils down to "Kropotkin rules and Stirner drools" and another third on "collectivism is more anarchist than individualism because reasons".
At the end of the day, there is no "individualist anarchy" or "collectivist anarchy" because both individualism and collectivism, when taken to their logical conclusions, produce the very unjust hierarchies to which anarchism is fundamentally and definitionally opposed. A stateless - i.e. anarchist - society by definition is unable to elevate the individual over the collective or vice versa, nor should it attempt to do so - because, again, doing so would only serve to suppress both.
Either Bookchin doesn't realize this (I seriously doubt that) or he does but decided to throw the entirety of non-collectivist anarchism under the bus to dunk on hippies - which I mean, sure, go for it, but one can dunk on hippies without spending a third of the essay on what boils down to "Kropotkin rules and Stirner drools" and another third on "collectivism is more anarchist than individualism because reasons".