Anarcho-naturism
Encyclopedia
Anarcho-naturism appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist
philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles
in Spain, France, Portugal. and Cuba.
Anarcho-naturism advocated vegetarianism
, free love
, nudism, hiking
and an ecological world view within anarchist groups and outside them. Anarcho-naturism promoted an ecological worldview, small ecovillage
s, and most prominently nudism as a way to avoid the artificiality of the industrial
mass society
of modernity. Naturist individualist anarchists saw the individual in his biological, physical and psychological aspects and tried to eliminate social determinations.
, Leo Tolstoy
and Elisee Reclus
.
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, simple living
as a rejection of a materialist
lifestyle 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." 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.
naturism "was at the same time a physical means of revitalization, a report with the body completely different from hypocrisy and taboos which prevailed at the time, a more convivial way to see life in society, and an incentive to a respect of the planet. Thus naturism develops in France, in particular under the influence of Elized Reclus, end XIX century and beginning XX century, among anarchistic communities resulting from utopian socialism
."
In France
later important propagandists of anarcho-naturism Henri Zisly
and Emile Gravelle
who collaborated in La Nouvelle Humanité followed by Le Naturien, Le Sauvage, L'Ordre Naturel, & La Vie Naturelle Their ideas were important in individualist anarchist circles in France but also in Spain where Federico Urales (pseudonym
of Joan Montseny), promotes the ideas of Gravelle and Zisly in La Revista Blanca
(1898–1905). Zisly 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.”"
The influence of naturist views in the wider french anarchist movement could be seen in this way. "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 taboo
s and prejudices."
. "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.”"
An influential spanish anarchist during the 1920s and 1930s who was also an important propagandist of anarcho-naturism was Isaac Puente
. Puente was a militant of both the CNT
anarcho-syndicalist trade union and Iberian Anarchist Federation; 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. In 1933 he published the book El Comunismo Libertario y otras proclamas insurreccionales y naturistas. (en:Libertarian Communism and other insurrectionary and naturist proclaims) which sold around 100.000 copies. Isaac Puente was a doctor who approached his medical practice from a naturist point of view. He approached naturism as an integral solution for the working classes alongside neomalthusianism. He saw that naturism seeked to approach the living being while anarchism seeked to address the social being. He saw that capitalist societies endangered the well being of humans from both a socio-economic point of view as well as a sanitary one and promoted anarcho-communism alongside naturism as a solution.
This ecological tendency in spanish anarchism was strong enough as to call the attention of the CNT
–FAI
in Spain. So Daniel Guérin
in Anarchism: From Theory to Practice reports how "Spanish anarcho-syndicalism
had long been concerned to safeguard the autonomy of what it called "affinity group
s." There were many adepts of naturism and vegetarianism
among its members, especially among the poor peasant
s 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."
. Naturism was a global alternative health and lifestyle movement. Naturists focused on redefining one’s life to live simply, eat cheap but nutritious vegetarian diets, and 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."
Schaffer reports the influence that anarcho-naturism had outside naturists circles. So "For 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.”". "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." 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.
in 1965, a group decided to split off from this organization and created the Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica. In the seventies, it was mostly composed of "veteran individualist anarchists with an pacifism
orientation, naturism, etc,...".
shows some of the criticism that some people on the other anarchist currents 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.”".
Naturism
Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practising, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public. It may also refer to a lifestyle based on personal, family and/or social nudism....
philosophies. Mainly it had importance within individualist anarchist circles
in Spain, France, Portugal. and Cuba.
Anarcho-naturism advocated vegetarianism
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets , with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat...
, free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
, nudism, hiking
Hiking
Hiking is an outdoor activity which consists of walking in natural environments, often in mountainous or other scenic terrain. People often hike on hiking trails. It is such a popular activity that there are numerous hiking organizations worldwide. The health benefits of different types of hiking...
and an ecological world view within anarchist groups and outside them. Anarcho-naturism promoted an ecological worldview, small ecovillage
Ecovillage
Ecovillages are intentional communities with the goal of becoming more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Some aim for a population of 50–150 individuals. Larger ecovillages of up to 2,000 individuals exist as networks of smaller subcommunities to create an ecovillage model that...
s, and most prominently nudism as a way to avoid the artificiality of the industrial
Industrialisation
Industrialization is the process of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial one...
mass society
Mass society
Mass society is a description associated with society in the modern, industrial era. "Guided by the structural-functional approach and drawing on the ideas of Tönnies, Durkheim, and Weber, understands modernity as the emergence of a mass society...
of modernity. Naturist individualist anarchists saw the individual in his biological, physical and psychological aspects and tried to eliminate social determinations.
Early influences
An important early influence on anarchist naturism was the thought of Henry David ThoreauHenry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
, Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
and Elisee Reclus
Élisée Reclus
Élisée Reclus , also known as Jacques Élisée Reclus, was a renowned French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes , over a period of nearly 20 years...
.
Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic
Development criticism
Development criticism refers to criticisms of technological development.-Notable development critics:*Edward Abbey*John Africa*Stafford Beer *Charles A...
, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden
Walden
Walden is an American book written by noted Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau...
, a reflection upon simple living
Simple living
Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience
Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)
Civil Disobedience is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849...
, 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, simple living
Simple living
Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
as a rejection of a materialist
Economic materialism
Materialism is a mindset that views the consumption and acquisition of material goods as positive and desirable. It is often bound up with a value system which regards social status as being intrinsically linked to affluence as well as the perception that happiness can be increased through...
lifestyle and self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy...
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
Anarcho-primitivism
Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation...
represented today in John Zerzan
John Zerzan
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
. For George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
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." John Zerzan
John Zerzan
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
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 ReclusÉlisée Reclus
Élisée Reclus , also known as Jacques Élisée Reclus, was a renowned French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes , over a period of nearly 20 years...
naturism "was at the same time a physical means of revitalization, a report with the body completely different from hypocrisy and taboos which prevailed at the time, a more convivial way to see life in society, and an incentive to a respect of the planet. Thus naturism develops in France, in particular under the influence of Elized Reclus, end XIX century and beginning XX century, among anarchistic communities resulting from utopian socialism
Utopian socialism
Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists and were looked on favorably...
."
In France
Anarchism in France
Thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who grew up during the Restoration was the first self-described anarchist. French anarchists fought in the Spanish Civil War as volunteers in the International Brigades. French anarchism reached its height in the late 19th century...
later important propagandists of anarcho-naturism Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly
Henri Zisly was a french individualist anarchist and naturist. He participated alongside Henry Beylie and Emile Gravelle in many journals such as La nouvelle humanité and La Vie naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism.In 1902 he is one of the main initiators along Georges Butaud and Sophie...
and Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle
Emile Gravelle was a French individualist anarchist and naturist activist, writer and painter. He published the review "L'Etat Naturel." Collaborated with Henri Zisly & Henri Beylie on "La Nouvelle Humanité," followed by "Le Naturien," "Le Sauvage," "L'Ordre Naturel," & "La Vie Naturelle." His...
who collaborated in La Nouvelle Humanité followed by Le Naturien, Le Sauvage, L'Ordre Naturel, & La Vie Naturelle Their ideas were important in individualist anarchist circles in France but also in Spain where Federico Urales (pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of Joan Montseny), promotes the ideas of Gravelle and Zisly in La Revista Blanca
La Revista Blanca
La Revista Blanca was a Spanish individualist anarchist magazine of sociology and arts published in Madrid by Joan Montseny y Teresa Mañé from 1898 to 1905 and in Barcelona from June 1, 1923 till August 15, 1936....
(1898–1905). Zisly 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.”"
The influence of naturist views in the wider french anarchist movement could be seen in this way. "In her memoir of her anarchist years that was serialized in Le Matin in 1913, Rirette Maîtrejean
Rirette Maitrejean
Rirette Maitrejean was the pseudonym of Anna Estorges. She was a French individualist anarchist born in 1887 in Tulle who collaborated in the French individualist anarchist magazine L´anarchie along with Emile Armand and Albert Libertad. She had romantic relationships with Maurice Vandamme and...
made much of the strange food regimens of some of the compagnons...She described the “tragic bandits” of the Bonnot gang
Bonnot gang
The Bonnot Gang was a French criminal anarchist group that operated in France and Belgium during the Belle Époque, from 1911 to 1912...
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 taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
s and prejudices."
Spain
This relationship between anarchism and naturism was quite important at the end of the 1920s in SpainAnarchism in Spain
Anarchism has historically gained more support and influence in Spain than anywhere else, especially before Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939....
. "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
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
, which began in 1929, were the publications of the group, which lasted until the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. 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
Iniciales
Iniciales was a Spanish individualist anarchist and naturist eclectic magazine which ran between 1929 and 1937. The first number appeared in Barcelona in February, 1929. Its predecessor was Barcelona's Ética...
. 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.”"
An influential spanish anarchist during the 1920s and 1930s who was also an important propagandist of anarcho-naturism was Isaac Puente
Isaac Puente
Isaac Puente Amestoy was a Basque physician and Spanish anarchist who adhered to anarcho-naturism, active in the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo...
. Puente was a militant of both the CNT
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
anarcho-syndicalist trade union and Iberian Anarchist Federation; 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. In 1933 he published the book El Comunismo Libertario y otras proclamas insurreccionales y naturistas. (en:Libertarian Communism and other insurrectionary and naturist proclaims) which sold around 100.000 copies. Isaac Puente was a doctor who approached his medical practice from a naturist point of view. He approached naturism as an integral solution for the working classes alongside neomalthusianism. He saw that naturism seeked to approach the living being while anarchism seeked to address the social being. He saw that capitalist societies endangered the well being of humans from both a socio-economic point of view as well as a sanitary one and promoted anarcho-communism alongside naturism as a solution.
This ecological tendency in spanish anarchism was strong enough as to call the attention of the CNT
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
–FAI
Federación Anarquista Ibérica
The Federación Anarquista Ibérica is a Spanish organization of anarchist militants active within affinity groups inside the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo trade union. It is often abbreviated as CNT-FAI because of the close relationship between the two organizations...
in Spain. So Daniel Guérin
Daniel Guérin
Daniel Guérin was a French libertarian and author, best known for his work Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, as well as his collection No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism in which he collected writings on the idea and movement it inspired, from the first writings of Max Stirner in the...
in Anarchism: From Theory to Practice reports how "Spanish anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
had long been concerned to safeguard the autonomy of what it called "affinity group
Affinity group
An Affinity group is usually a small group of activists who work together on direct action.Affinity groups are organized in a non-hierarchical manner, usually using consensus decision making, and are often made up of trusted friends...
s." There were many adepts of naturism and vegetarianism
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets , with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat...
among its members, especially among the poor peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
s 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."
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-syndicalismAnarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
. Naturism was a global alternative health and lifestyle movement. Naturists focused on redefining one’s life to live simply, eat cheap but nutritious vegetarian diets, and 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."
Schaffer reports the influence that anarcho-naturism had outside naturists circles. So "For 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.”". "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." The main propagandizer in Cuba of anarcho-naturism was the Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
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
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
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.
Other countries
Naturism also met anarchism in the United Kingdom. "In many of the alternative communities established in Britain in the early 1900's nudism, anarchism, vegetarianism and free love were accepted as part of a politically radical way of life. In the 1920's the inhabitants of the anarchist community at Whiteway, near Stroud in Gloucestershire, shocked the conservative residents of the area with their shameless nudity." In Italy, during the IX Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation in CarraraCarrara
Carrara is a city and comune in the province of Massa-Carrara , notable for the white or blue-grey marble quarried there. It is on the Carrione River, some west-northwest of Florence....
in 1965, a group decided to split off from this organization and created the Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica. In the seventies, it was mostly composed of "veteran individualist anarchists with an pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency within the anarchist movement which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. The main early influences were the thought of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy while later the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi gained importance...
orientation, naturism, etc,...".
Criticism
American anarcho-syndicalist Sam DolgoffSam Dolgoff
Sam Dolgoff was an American anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist.Dolgoff was born in the shtetl of Ostrovno in Vitebsk, Russia, moving as a child to New York City in 1905 or 1906, where he lived in the Bronx and in Manhattan's Lower East Side where he died...
shows some of the criticism that some people on the other anarchist currents 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.”".
See also
- LebensreformLebensreformLebensreform was a social movement in late 19th-century and early 20th-century Germany and Switzerland that propagated a back-to-nature lifestyle, emphasizing among others health food/raw food/organic food, nudism, sexual liberation, alternative medicine, and religious reform and at the same time...
- Green anarchismGreen anarchismGreen anarchism, or ecoanarchism, is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden...
- Anarcho-primitivismAnarcho-primitivismAnarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation...
- Individualist anarchism in EuropeIndividualist anarchism in EuropeIndividualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.European individualist anarchism proceeded from the roots laid by...
- Lifestyle anarchismLifestyle anarchismLifestyle anarchism is a term derived from Murray Bookchin's polemical essay "Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm." He used it to criticize those anarchists who dress the look or live in certain ways, but who don't really act on the basic tenets of anarchism at the...
- FreedomitesFreedomitesFreedomites, also called Svobodniki or Sons of Freedom, first appeared in 1902 in Saskatchewan, Canada, and later in the Kootenay and Boundary districts of British Columbia, as a Doukhobor extremist group...
- AdamitesAdamitesThe Adamites, or Adamians, were adherents of an Early Christian sect that flourished in North Africa in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries, but knew later revivals.-Ancient Adamites:...
Further reading
- Richard Cleminson. "Making sense of the body: anarchism, nudism and subjective experience" at Bulletin of Spanish Studies: Hispanic Studies and Research on Spain, Portugal and Latin America. ISSN 1475-3820. Vol. 81, Nº 6, 2004 , págs. 697-716
- Josep Maria Rosello (ed). !Viva la Naturaleza! Escritos libertarios contra la civilización, el progreso y la ciencia. Virus editorial. 2008. ISBN 978-84-96044-94-4 A look at the evolution of anarcho-naturism and early green anarchism followed by a selection of texts by anarcho-naturist and green anarchist authors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries such as Emile GravelleEmile GravelleEmile Gravelle was a French individualist anarchist and naturist activist, writer and painter. He published the review "L'Etat Naturel." Collaborated with Henri Zisly & Henri Beylie on "La Nouvelle Humanité," followed by "Le Naturien," "Le Sauvage," "L'Ordre Naturel," & "La Vie Naturelle." His...
, "Les Naturien", Henri ZislyHenri ZislyHenri Zisly was a french individualist anarchist and naturist. He participated alongside Henry Beylie and Emile Gravelle in many journals such as La nouvelle humanité and La Vie naturelle, which promoted anarchist-naturism.In 1902 he is one of the main initiators along Georges Butaud and Sophie...
, Georges Butaud and others (in Spanish)
External links
- Naturisme et Anarchisme website in French about anarcho-naturism and with writings from anarcho-naturists
- La Iconoclasta (the Iconoclast). Contemporary spanish anarcho-naturist magazine