Anarcho-naturism

Anarcho-naturism (also anarchist naturism and naturist anarchism) appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies.[1][2][3][4] Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles[5][6][7][8] in Spain,[2][3][9][10] France,[9][11] Portugal,[12] and Cuba.[10][13]

Anarcho-naturism advocates vegetarianism, free love, nudism, hiking and an ecological world view within anarchist groups and outside them.[2][8] Anarcho-naturism also promotes an ecological worldview, small ecovillages, and most prominently nudism as a way to avoid the artificiality of the industrial mass society of modernity.[2] Naturist individualist anarchists see the individual in their biological, physical and psychological aspects and tried to eliminate social determinations.[14]

History

Early influences

An important early influence on anarchist naturism was the thought of Henry David Thoreau,[9] Leo Tolstoy[2] and Elisee Reclus.[15]

Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Influential early eco-anarchist work

Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. His thought is an early influence on green anarchism, but with an emphasis on the individual experience of the natural world, influencing later naturist currents.[9] Simple living as a rejection of a materialist lifestyle[9] and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy. "Many have seen in Thoreau one of the precursors of ecologism and anarcho-primitivism represented today in John Zerzan. For George Woodcock this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of American society in the mid-19th century."[14] John Zerzan himself included the text "Excursions" (1863) by Thoreau in his edited compilation of anti-civilization writings called Against civilization: Readings and reflections from 1999.

France

For the influential French anarchist Élisée Reclus, naturism "was at the same time a physical means of revitalization, a rapport with the body completely different from the hypocrisy and taboos which prevailed at the time, a more convivial way to see life in society, and an incentive to respect the planet. Thus naturism develops in France, in particular under the influence of Élizée Reclus, at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century among anarchistic communities resulting from utopian socialism."[15]

In France, later important propagandists of anarcho-naturism include Henri Zisly[16] and Émile Gravelle who collaborated in La Nouvelle Humanité, Le Naturien, Le Sauvage, L'Ordre Naturel, and La Vie Naturelle.[17] Their ideas were important in individualist anarchist circles in France as well as Spain, where Federico Urales (pseudonym of Joan Montseny) promoted the ideas of Gravelle and Zisly in La Revista Blanca (1898–1905).[18] Zisly's political activity, "primarily aimed at supporting a return to 'natural life' through writing and practical involvement, stimulated lively confrontations within and outside the anarchist environment. Zisly vividly criticized progress and civilization, which he regarded as 'absurd, ignoble, and filthy.' He openly opposed industrialization, arguing that machines were inherently authoritarian, defended nudism, advocated a non-dogmatic and non-religious adherence to the 'laws of nature,' recommended a lifestyle based on limited needs and self-sufficiency, and disagreed with vegetarianism, which he considered 'anti-scientific.'"[16]

Richard D. Sonn comments on the influence of naturist views in the wider French anarchist movement:

“ In her memoir of her anarchist years that was serialized in Le Matin in 1913, Rirette Maîtrejean made much of the strange food regimens of some of the compagnons. [...] She described the "tragic bandits" of the Bonnot gang as refusing to eat meat or drink wine, preferring plain water. Her humorous comments reflected the practices of the "naturist" wing of individualist anarchists who favored a simpler, more "natural" lifestyle centered on a vegetarian diet. In the 1920s, this wing was expressed by the journal Le Néo-Naturien, Revue des Idées Philosophiques et Naturiennes. Contributors condemned the fashion of smoking cigarettes, especially by young women; a long article of 1927 actually connected cigarette smoking with cancer! Others distinguished between vegetarians, who foreswore the eating of meat, from the stricter "vegetalians," who ate nothing but vegetables. An anarchist named G. Butaud, who made this distinction, opened a restaurant called the Foyer Végétalien in the nineteenth arrondissement in 1923. Other issues of the journal included vegetarian recipes. In 1925, when the young anarchist and future detective novelist Léo Malet arrived in Paris from Montpellier, he initially lodged with anarchists who operated another vegetarian restaurant that served only vegetables, with neither fish nor eggs. Nutritional concerns coincided with other means of encouraging health bodies, such as nudism and gymnastics. For a while in the 1920s, after they were released from jail for antiwar and birth-control activities, Jeanne and Eugène Humbert retreated to the relative safety of the "integral living" movement that promoted nude sunbathing and physical fitness, which were seen as integral aspects of health in the Greek sense of gymnos, meaning nude. This back-to-nature, primitivist current was not a monopoly of the left; the same interests were echoed by right-wing Germans in the interwar era. In France, however, these proclivities were mostly associated with anarchists, insofar as they suggested an ideal of self-control and the rejection of social taboos and prejudices.[19] ”

Henri Zisly

Main article: Henri Zisly

Henri Zisly (born in Paris, November 2, 1872; died in 1945)[20] was a French individualist anarchist and naturist.[21] He participated alongside Henri Beylie and Émile Gravelle in many journals such as La Nouvelle Humanité and La Vie Naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism. In 1902, he was one of the main initiators, alongside Georges Butaud and Sophie Zaïkowska, of the cooperative Colonie de Vaux established in Essômes-sur-Marne, in l'Aisne.

Zisly's political activity, "primarily aimed at supporting a return to 'natural life' through writing and practical involvement, stimulated lively confrontations within and outside the anarchist environment. Zisly vividly criticized progress and civilization, which he regarded as 'absurd, ignoble, and filthy.' He openly opposed industrialization, arguing that machines were inherently authoritarian, defended nudism, advocated a non-dogmatic and non-religious adherence to the 'laws of nature,' recommended a lifestyle based on limited needs and self-sufficiency, and disagreed with vegetarianism, which he considered 'anti-scientific.'"[22]

Spain

This relationship between anarchism and naturism was quite important at the end of the 1920s in Spain:[23]

“ The linking role played by the Sol y Vida group was very important. The goal of this group was to take trips and enjoy the open air. The Naturist athenaeum, Ecléctico, in Barcelona, was the base from which the activities of the group were launched. First Etica and then Iniciales, which began in 1929, were the publications of the group, which lasted until the Spanish Civil War. We must be aware that the naturist ideas expressed in them matched the desires that the libertarian youth had of breaking up with the conventions of the bourgeoisie of the time. That is what a young worker explained in a letter to Iniciales. He writes it under the odd pseudonym of silvestre del campo (wild man in the country). "I find great pleasure in being naked in the woods, bathed in light and air, two natural elements we cannot do without. By shunning the humble garment of an exploited person, (garments which, in my opinion, are the result of all the laws devised to make our lives bitter), we feel there no others left but just the natural laws. Clothes mean slavery for some and tyranny for others. Only the naked man who rebels against all norms, stands for anarchism, devoid of the prejudices of outfit imposed by our money-oriented society."[23] ”

Isaac Puente, an influential Spanish anarchist during the 1920s and 1930s and an important propagandist of anarcho-naturism,[24][25] was a militant of both the CNT anarcho-syndicalist trade union and Iberian Anarchist Federation. He published the book El Comunismo Libertario y otras proclamas insurreccionales y naturistas (en:Libertarian Communism and other insurrectionary and naturist proclaims) in 1933, which sold around 100,000 copies,[26] and wrote the final document for the Extraordinary Confederal Congress of Zaragoza of 1936 which established the main political line for the CNT for that year.[27] Puente was a doctor who approached his medical practice from a naturist point of view.[24] He saw naturism as an integral solution for the working classes, alongside Neo-Malthusianism, and believed it concerned the living being while anarchism addressed the social being.[28] He believed capitalist societies endangered the well-being of humans from both a socioeconomic and sanitary viewpoint, and promoted anarcho-communism alongside naturism as a solution.[24]

This ecological tendency in Spanish anarchism was strong enough as to call the attention of the CNT–FAI in Spain. Daniel Guérin in Anarchism: From Theory to Practice reports:

“ Spanish anarcho-syndicalism had long been concerned to safeguard the autonomy of what it called "affinity groups." There were many adepts of naturism and vegetarianism among its members, especially among the poor peasants of the south. Both these ways of living were considered suitable for the transformation of the human being in preparation for a libertarian society. At the Saragossa congress the members did not forget to consider the fate of groups of naturists and nudists, "unsuited to industrialization." As these groups would be unable to supply all their own needs, the congress anticipated that their delegates to the meetings of the confederation of communes would be able to negotiate special economic agreements with the other agricultural and industrial communes. On the eve of a vast, bloody, social transformation, the CNT did not think it foolish to try to meet the infinitely varied aspirations of individual human beings.[29] ”

Cuba

The historian Kirwin R. Schaffer in his study of Cuban anarchism reports anarcho-naturism as "[a] third strand within the island's anarchist movement" alongside anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism.[13] Naturism offered a global alternative health and lifestyle movement. Naturists focused on redefining one's life to live simply, to eat cheap but nutritious vegetarian diets, and to raise one's own food if possible. The countryside was posited as a romantic alternative to urban living, and some naturists even promoted what they saw as the healthful benefits of nudism. Globally, the naturist movement counted anarchists, liberals, and socialists as its followers. However, in Cuba a particular "anarchist" dimension evolved led by people like Adrián del Valle, who spearheaded the Cuban effort to shift naturism's focus away from only individual health to naturism having a "social emancipatory" function."[13]

Schaffer reports the influence that anarcho-naturism had outside naturist circles. So "[f]or instance, nothing inherently prevented an anarcho-syndicalist in the Havana restaurant workers' union from supporting the alternative health care programs of the anarcho-naturists and seeing those alternative practices as 'revolutionary.'".[13] "Anarcho-naturists promoted a rural ideal, simple living, and being in harmony with Nature as ways to save the laborers from the increasingly industrialized character of Cuba. Besides promoting an early twentieth-century "back-to-the-land" movement, they used these romantic images of Nature to illustrate how far removed a capitalist industrialized Cuba had departed from an anarchist view of natural harmony."[13] The main propagandizer in Cuba of anarcho-naturism was the Catalonia born "Adrián del Valle (aka Palmiro de Lidia)...Over the following decades, Del Valle became a constant presence in not only the anarchist press that proliferated in Cuba but also mainstream literary publications...From 1912 to 1913 he edited the freethinking journal El Audaz. Then he began his largest publishing job by helping to found and edit the monthly alternative health magazine that followed the anarcho-naturist line Pro-Vida.[13]

Other countries

Naturism also met anarchism in the United Kingdom. "In many of the alternative communities established in Britain in the early 1900s nudism, anarchism, vegetarianism and free love were accepted as part of a politically radical way of life. In the 1920s the inhabitants of the anarchist community at Whiteway, near Stroud in Gloucestershire, shocked the conservative residents of the area with their shameless nudity."[30]

In Italy, during the IX Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation in Carrara in 1965, a group decided to split off from this organization and created the Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica. In the seventies it mostly comprised "veteran individualist anarchists with an pacifism orientation, naturism, etc,...".[6]

Criticisms

American anarcho-syndicalist Sam Dolgoff shows some of the criticism that some people on the other anarchist currents at the time had for anarcho-naturist tendencies. "Speaking of life at the Stelton Colony of New York in the 1930s, noted with disdain that it, "like other colonies, was infested by vegetarians, naturists, nudists, and other cultists, who sidetracked true anarchist goals." One resident "always went barefoot, ate raw food, mostly nuts and raisins, and refused to use a tractor, being opposed to machinery, and he didn't want to abuse horses, so he dug the earth himself." Such self-proclaimed anarchists were in reality "ox-cart anarchists," Dolgoff said, "who opposed organization and wanted to return to a simpler life." In an interview with Paul Avrich before his death, Dolgoff also grumbled, "I am sick and tired of these half-assed artists and poets who object to organization and want only to play with their belly buttons."".[31]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Anarchism and the different Naturist views have always been related.""Anarchism - Nudism, Naturism" by Carlos Ortega at Asociacion para el Desarrollo Naturista de la Comunidad de Madrid. Published on Revista ADN. Winter 2003
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 EL NATURISMO LIBERTARIO EN LA PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA (1890–1939) by Jose Maria Rosello
  3. 1 2 "Anarchism - Nudism, Naturism" by Carlos Ortega at Asociacion para el Desarrollo Naturista de la Comunidad de Madrid. Published on Revista ADN. Winter 2003
  4. ↑ "In many of the alternative communities established in Britain in the early 1900s nudism, anarchism, vegetarianism and free love were accepted as part of a politically radical way of life. In the 1920s the inhabitants of the anarchist community at Whiteway, near Stroud in Gloucestershire, shocked the conservative residents of the area with their shameless nudity.""Nudism the radical tradition" by Terry Phillips
  5. ↑ "From the 1880s, anarcho-individualist publications and teachings promoted the social emancipatory function of naturism and denounced deforestation, mechanization, civilization, and urbanization as corrupting effects of the consolidating industrial-capitalist order." "Naturism" by Stefano Boni in The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest Edited by Immanuel Ness. Wiley-Blackwell. 2009
  6. 1 2 "Los anarco-individualistas, G.I.A...Una escisión de la FAI producida en el IX Congreso (Carrara, 1965) se pr odujo cuando un sector de anarquistas de tendencia humanista rechazan la interpretación que ellos juzgan disciplinaria del pacto asociativo" clásico, y crean los GIA (Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica) . Esta pequeña federación de grupos, hoy nutrida sobre todo de veteranos anarco-individualistas de orientación pacifista, naturista, etcétera defiende la autonomía personal y rechaza a rajatabla toda forma de intervención en los procesos del sistema, como sería por ejemplo el sindicalismo. Su portavoz es L'Internazionale con sede en Ancona. La escisión de los GIA prefiguraba, en sentido contrario, el gran debate que pronto había de comenzar en el seno del movimiento""El movimiento libertario en Italia" by Bicicleta. REVISTA DE COMUNICACIONES LIBERTARIAS Year 1 No. Noviembre, 1 1977
  7. ↑ "Proliferarán así diversos grupos que practicarán el excursionismo, el naturismo, el nudismo, la emancipación sexual o el esperantismo, alrededor de asociaciones informales vinculadas de una manera o de otra al anarquismo. Precisamente las limitaciones a las asociaciones obreras impuestas desde la legislación especial de la Dictadura potenciarán indirectamente esta especie de asociacionismo informal en que confluirá el movimiento anarquista con esta heterogeneidad de prácticas y tendencias. Uno de los grupos más destacados, que será el impulsor de la revista individualista Ética será el Ateneo Naturista Ecléctico, con sede en Barcelona, con sus diferentes secciones la más destacada de las cuales será el grupo excursionista Sol y Vida.""La insumisión voluntaria: El anarquismo individualista español durante la Dictadura y la Segunda República (1923–1938)" by Xavier Díez
  8. 1 2 "Les anarchistes individualistes du début du siècle l'avaient bien compris, et intégraient le naturisme dans leurs préoccupations. Il est vraiment dommage que ce discours se soit peu à peu effacé, d'antan plus que nous assistons, en ce moment, à un retour en force du puritanisme (conservateur par essence).""Anarchisme et naturisme, aujourd'hui." by Cathy Ytak
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 "La insumisión voluntaria: El anarquismo individualista español durante la Dictadura y la Segunda República (1923–1938)" by Xavier Díez
  10. 1 2 "La Cultura de la naturaleza en el anarquismo ibérico y cubano" by Eduard Masjuan Bracons
  11. ↑ Recension des articles de l'En-Dehors consacrés au naturisme et au nudisme
  12. ↑ ["Anarchisme et naturisme au Portugal, dans les années 1920" in Les anarchistes du Portugal by João Freire]
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Introduction to Anarchism and countercultural politics in early twentieth-century Cuba by Kirwin R. Shaffer
  14. 1 2 "el individuo es visto en su dimensión biológica -física y psíquica- dejándose la social."EL NATURISMO LIBERTARIO EN LA PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA (1890–1939) by Jose Maria Rosello
  15. 1 2 "The pioneers"
  16. 1 2 "Zisly, Henri (1872–1945)" by Stefano Boni
  17. ↑ The daily bleed
  18. ↑ "Los origenes del naturismo libertario" por Agustín Morán
  19. ↑ Sonn, Richard D. (2010). Sex, Violence, and the Avant-Garde. Penn State University. ISBN 978-0-271-03663-2.
  20. ↑ Henri Zisly page; from the Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia
  21. ↑ "Henri Zisly, self-labeled individualist anarchist, is considered one of the forerunners and principal organizers of the naturist movement in France and one of its most able and outspoken defenders worldwide.""Zisly, Henri (1872–1945)" by Stefano Boni
  22. ↑ "Zisly, Henri (1872–1945)" by Stefano Boni
  23. 1 2 "Anarchism - Nudism, Naturism" by Carlos Ortega at Asociacion para el Desarrollo Naturista de la Comunidad de Madrid. Published on Revista ADN. Winter 2003
  24. 1 2 3 Isaac Puente. El Comunismo Libertario y otras proclamas insurreccionales y naturistas.
  25. ↑ Miguel Iñiguez. Anarquismo y naturismo: El caso de Isaac Puente. Asociación Isaac Puente.
  26. ↑ Isaac Puente. El Comunismo Libertario y otras proclamas insurreccionales y naturistas. pg. 4
  27. ↑ "De hecho, el documento de Isaac Puente se convirtió en dictamen oficial aprobado en el Congreso Extraordinario Confederal de Zaragoza de 1936 que servía de base para fijar la línea política de la CNT respecto a la organización social y política futura. Existe una versión resumida en Íñiguez (1996), pp. 31-35. La versión completa se puede encontrar en las actas oficiales del congreso, publicadas en CNT: El Congreso Confederal de Zaragoza, Zeta, Madrid, 1978, pp. 226-242."Xavier Diez. El anarquismo individualista en España (1923–1938). Virus editorial. 2007
  28. ↑ "Y complementarlos puesto que se ocupan de aspectos distintos, –el uno redime al ser vivo, el otro al ser social"Isaac Puente. El Comunismo Libertario y otras proclamas insurreccionales y naturistas.
  29. ↑ http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Daniel_Guerin__Anarchism__From_Theory_to_Practice.html Anarchism: From theory to practice by Daniel Guérin
  30. ↑ "Nudism the radical tradition" by Terry Phillips
  31. ↑ Brian Oliver Sheppard. Anarchism vs. Primitivism

Further reading

External links

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