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A philosophy fashioned from anarchism

25 Friday May 2018

Posted by winter oak in anarchism, Uncategorized

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Paul Cudenec

Winter Oak author Paul Cudenec sets out where he’s at

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https://network23.org/paulcudenec/2018/05/25/a-philosophy-fashioned-from-anarchism/

It’s now been five years since the publication of my first book, The Anarchist Revelation.

I have written a few more since then and have also used various articles, talks and interviews to explain my thinking. But I am still not sure that I have made myself completely clear, so this anniversary seems like a good time to try and put that right.

What is it that I am putting across in my writing? Why doesn’t it sound like what most other contemporary anarchists are saying? What political and philosophical position am I promoting, in a thousand-word nutshell?

The foundation of my personal philosophy is anarchism. That may seem obvious, but it’s worth spelling out. All the other elements that I am going to mention are contained within the context of my anarchism. While I certainly read non-anarchist authors, I only take on board their ideas if I find them compatible with my anarchist principles. There is no danger of my drifting away from anarchism, because my world view is fashioned from anarchism. The anarchist vision I present may not resemble other people’s personal versions of anarchism, but it remains anarchist.

These anarchist principles obviously include the rejection of all authority and control imposed from above, including the constructs of so-called law, so-called government, and so-called property, in favour of self-governing communities based on mutual aid. As an anarchist, I am necessarily internationalist and anti-racist, regarding every human being as of equal worth and with an equal right to share the earth and its fruits.

Coupled with my anarchism is an opposition to industrial capitalism. I know that many anarchists broadly accept industrial society and envisage a future where industry and its infrastructure remain intact but under popular control. I don’t share that position and regard industrialism as a facet of capitalism and therefore something that is necessarily anathema to anarchists. I wouldn’t term myself a “primitivist”, but I certainly hope for an end to the nightmare of industrial society and for a future where people can live in harmony with the natural world, growing and producing according to the needs of the community rather than for the profits of an exploitative few.

Thirdly, and in conjunction with my opposition to industrial capitalism and the mass consumer society that it spawns, I advocate a future society based not on money, economic “growth” and technological “progress”, but on values. These values would be anarchist, of course – co-operation, equality and non-domination – but also, more broadly, involve the respect and appreciation of nature, beauty, quality, authenticity, simplicity, honesty, integrity and dignity.

Fourthly, I am seeking to piece together a philosophy founded on nature and on our belonging to nature. This seems to frighten some urban-minded anarchists, but was in fact very much what Kropotkin was working on, particularly in Ethics. By a philosophy of nature, I don’t just mean environmentalist politics, but an understanding of the human mind, and the human culture it has created, founded on the fact that we are one small part of a greater organic whole, usually called “nature”. Our innermost mental structures and tendencies reflect that belonging: it is the canvas on which our human culture is painted.

Fifthly, there is the metaphysical dimension. I have always been an atheist and have the instinctive aversion to the word “God” which is typical of anarchists. Instead, I follow Plotinus in regarding the entire universe as a living organism, as one indivisible entity. This is an extension of the concept of a living planet, Gaia. It is also an extension of the anarchist idea of a living, self-ruling, community, as opposed to a dead pseudo-community ruled over by a state. This idea of an organic universe, of which we are an instrinsic part, is deeply heretical, religiously and politically. It rejects the model of authority, of a separate God, and celebrates instead the magical and vibrant quality in everything: in every single person, animal, plant, river, stone, meteorite, galaxy. This is anarchist metaphysics! What could be more empowering, philosophically or politically, than realising that you are a temporary manifestation of a great organic whole, with all the freedom and responsibility this involves?

The sixth aspect of my philosophy is connected to the first five in a vertical, rather than horizontal, way. It is my awareness of the interconnections and correspondences between all the aspects I have outlined here. More than that, it is also the willingness to seek out connections and to understand their significance. It is a consciously holistic approach and, indeed, embraces holism as a political and philosophical value in itself.

The seventh facet is an awareness of all the ways in which the ideas and values I hold dear have been suppressed or sidelined in contemporary society. There is a historical angle to this awareness, and a cultural and political one. It applies to the various ideas separately and when taken together in various combinations. It also pertains to the links between them, which are often denied or overlooked, following the contemporary preference for classification, separation and fragmentation.

Element number eight of my philosophy perhaps goes without saying, bearing in mind the above – it is the intellectual desire to challenge and overcome the way important ideas and values have disappeared from our society. There is a difference between putting forward certain arguments which are rejected by society as a whole, and putting forward those same arguments together with an awareness and critique of the way they have been rejected. An intellectual suit of armour has been added. Analysing and countering the rejection becomes an intrinsic part of the political position because of the hostile intellectual environment.

The ninth element is a general belief in the need for action, for agency, for a dynamic dimension which takes us beyond passive reflection or analysis and allows us to engage with the world. It is movement, fluidity, risk, change, élan, resistance, revolt. This is already inherent in anarchism, of course, but it has to be expanded to take in all the other aspects as well, otherwise the overall philosophy becomes static.

Number ten is what I have been doing here. It is the act of being aware of all the above and consciously framing the whole thing as a political position.

Do you agree with me? Disagree? Have something to add? Please feel free to comment here or contact me via cudenec(at)riseup.net

Sample chapter now available

20 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by winter oak in anarchism, Uncategorized

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Nautre Essence and Anarchy, Paul Cudenec

big_brother_1984

A sample chapter from Paul Cudenec’s book Nature, Essence and Anarchy, published by Winter Oak Press, is now available on the author’s blog.

“Denying reality” can be found at https://network23.org/paulcudenec/2017/02/20/denying-reality-a-dangerous-delusion/

 

Nature, Essence and Anarchy

21 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by winter oak in anarchism, capitalism, civilization

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nature, Nautre Essence and Anarchy, Paul Cudenec

nea-cover

A thought-provoking new book has just been published by Winter Oak Press in the UK.

The starting point of Nature, Essence and Anarchy by Paul Cudenec is that very future of our species and of planetary life is at threat from the unchecked growth of the industrial capitalist cancer and that there is a need for a powerful and coherent resistance.

He argues that there has been a general thought-paralysis which renders any authentic and holistic anti-capitalist philosophy difficult to conceive and communicate. Our intellectual immune system has been disabled.

As a result of this, anarchist and anti-capitalist thinking has to look deeper than the surface of what is usually regarded as the political realm and root itself in an intellectual soil completely outside of capitalism and all its assumptions.

Natural anarchy

Beginning with Guy Debord’s condemnation of the world of artifice in which we live, the author describes how, in order to hide its own falsity, capitalism denies that humanity belongs to a holistic natural world and also denies the very possibility of authenticity. He discusses the way that, despite Peter Kropotkin’s work in describing the evolutionary importance of mutual aid and solidarity for all species, including humanity, many anarchists remain strangely suspicious of the idea of “nature”. Widespread misuse of the word, and the effects on our thinking of the industrial society surrounding us, make it difficult to reclaim the term and overcome our separation. He looks at the nature-based philosophy of the 16th century physician Paracelsus and suggest that we might rediscover authenticity by feeling within ourselves what he termed the Spiritus Mundi, the vital energy of the universe.

Denying reality: from nominalism to newthink

This essay explores the way in which contemporary society has a problem with objective reality. George Orwell warned about this in his novel 1984, in which the Big Brother state insists that everything exists only in the human mind. Cudenec argues that this fallacy dates back to medieval nominalism, when traditional “universals” were redefined as merely words describing human-invented categories. Postmodernists and postanarchists today extend this approach to deny the validity of concepts like essence, he says. Everything is said to be a construct. Subjective language is confused with objective reality. Anything outside industrial capitalist reality is denied legitimacy, trapping us within the dominant mindset.

When negative is positive

The anarchist desire to destroy capitalist society cannot be regarded as negative. For one thing, it aims to clear the way for a better world. But it also arises from a belief, as voiced by Rudolf Rocker and Noam Chomsky amongst others, that an anarchist society is always possible and that humans have the capacity to live harmoniously as a social organism. This capacity, which is innately present in the human mind but not always activated, reflects the overall tendency of the universe to take on a coherent structure. Conflict arises when the innate structures of the human mind meet an external world which does not allow them to fulfil their potential. As Otto Gross explains, some individuals give way and adapt to circumstances, while others rebel. A hatred of corrupt and unnatural society is founded on a positive vision of how things are meant to be.

Essence and empowerment

Modern life maintains us in a state of metaphysical sensory deprivation. If we wish to discover our core reality we need to look deep within ourselves. “Know Thyself” is a maxim dating back to at least Ancient Greek times and still central to contemporary paganism. The descent into the unconscious to find the Self, as invoked by anarchist Gustav Landauer for instance, is a reconnection to the organic universe described by Plato and Plotinus and also by the Sufi tradition. Understanding the individual as an aspect of a greater collective entity does not deny individual freedom, insists the author, but rather removes the limits imposed upon it by our separation and reveals an empowering and anarchic truth, always regarded as a dangerous heresy by authority.

Naturaphobia and the industrial-capitalist death cult

Humankind’s belonging to the living flesh of our planet is an essential reality of our innermost nature and will always resurface in our spirit. The industrial system finds ingenious ways of blocking and diverting our awareness of this. It claims that the “progress” of its technologies equates to an upward path for humanity. Some on the left have fallen into the trap of equating individual freedom with the artificiality of industrial capitalism and of thus condemning “naturalism” and “essentialism” as reactionary. Transhumanism is an extreme example of this trend. Its nature-hating naturaphobia and life-denying vitaphobia are combined with a denial of the polluting and destructive realities behind its sanitised industrial-capitalist image of the future.

The eye of the heart

Escaping the capitalist mindset is like digging a tunnel out of a prison camp. We need to go far enough and deep enough to go beyond its perimeter fences. Anarchists often fall short of understanding that industrial society is inherently capitalist and swallow the lie of “progress”. Mahatma Gandhi understood the need to oppose industrialism and rediscover simple village life, the natural harmony of Sanatan Dharma. Traditional culture has always been an obstacle to capitalism and has been systematically eradicated across the world. Cudenec joins E.F. Schumacher and Ranchor Prime in calling for humankind to draw on our ancient spiritual wisdom so we can deepen our opposition to capitalism. We must access the “eye of the heart” to better understand multi-faceted reality. We need a metaphysical dimension to our revolt to allow us to pass completely outside the concrete confines of modern industrialist dogma.

Necessary subjectivity

The well-known phrase “think globally, act locally” translates on a philosophical level as “think objectively, act subjectively”. If, like Plato and Plotinus, we define The Universe as all-inclusive, it necessarily includes abstracts as well as objects – numbers, dimensions, capacities and possibilities. We can never know the objective reality of this Universe, but we can know that this objective reality must exist and that it includes abstracts. Each of us has an abstract essence, which is a potential rather than a limit: the butterfly essence, for instance, exists even within a caterpillar which is eaten by a bird before this physical stage is realised. The specific realities of our subjective existence must always provisionally limit our core essence as aspects of The Universe, of which we should be metaphysically aware. But this limiting is also the only way in which The Universe can manifest itself in physical form. The same applies to time. We can only experience time through the necessary subjectivity of our living, just as a needle must follow the groove of a vinyl record. But the whole piece of music is always contained in the record, in the same way as all time must be contained within a Universe which contains everything. Our subjective presence-in-the-present means we do not just observe events unfolding, but participate in the process. We are part of the self-shaping of The Universe, with all the responsibility that this implies.

Buy this book for £7.99

Winter Oak publish new novel

14 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by winter oak in anarchism, art, metaphysics

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Paul Cudenec, The Fakir of Florence

Fakcoversmall

A new book by anarchist writer Paul Cudenec has been published by Winter Oak Press.

The Fakir of Florence: A Novel in Three Layers explores, in fictional form, the connections between anarchism, metaphysics and artistic expression.

The three threads of narration centre on characters inhabiting different, yet interwoven, levels of reality.

Perantulo is a wandering sage, spreading his mystic pagan wisdom from Khaluvia to Mesqa-Murro, from the chestnut forests of Sevennola to the rain-lashed archipelago of Prydina.

He is the fictional creation of il fachiro, an Eastern philosopher who arrived in Renaissance Florence in 1459 and challenged Cosimo di Medici and Marsilio Ficino’s Neoplatonist revival with his own empowering and anarchic metaphysics.

Paul is a writer visiting 21st century Italy who, while laying himself open to inspiration from the energies and art of the Florentine past, comes across an historical account of il fachiro and his fables. But he, too, resides inside a book.

The novel is a first-time fictional publication for Cudenec, whose 2013 work The Anarchist Revelation: Being What We’re Meant to Be is described by John Zerzan in Why Hope? The Stand Against Civilization as “the least pessimistic book I can recall reading… It brings anarchist resistance and the spirit together in a very wide-ranging and powerful contribution”.

A review by anarchist writer Gabriel Kuhn adds: “The book attempts no less than equipping contemporary anarchism with a footing that is often neglected: the transformation not only of society’s structures but also of people’s souls”.

The Fakir of Florence: A novel in three layers

by Paul Cudenec

Winter Oak Press, Sussex, England, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-9576566-6-6

296 pages

£9.99

More information at http://www.winteroak.org.uk/thefakirofflorence

Quote for the day – February 12

12 Friday Feb 2016

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Chuang Tzu, taoism

taoism-anarchy

“The snow goose doesn’t need a daily bath to stay white, nor does the crow need to be stained every day to stay black”.

Chuang Tzu

[Read about Chunag Tzu on the orgrad website]

…………

Winter Oak books: www.winteroak.org.uk/books

The Acorn info-bulletin:  www.winteroak.org.uk/acorn

Quote for the day – February 10

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

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Peter Kropotkin

Peter_Kropotkin

“Life in societies is no exception in the animal world; it is the rule, the law of Nature, and it reaches its fullest development with the higher vertebrates”.

Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid

[Read about Peter Kropotkin on the orgrad website]

…………

Winter Oak books: www.winteroak.org.uk/books

The Acorn info-bulletin:  www.winteroak.org.uk/acorn

Quote for the day – January 31

31 Sunday Jan 2016

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Peter Kropotkin

solidarity2

“The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that it has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history”.

Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid

[Read about Peter Kropotkin on the orgrad website]

………

Winter Oak books: www.winteroak.org.uk/books

The Acorn info-bulletin:  www.winteroak.org.uk/acorn

Quote for the day – January 23

23 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by winter oak in anarchism, humanity

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Gustav Landauer

electric

“It is time for the insight that there is no individual, but only unities and communities. It is not true that collective names designate only a sum of individuals: on the contrary, individuals are only manifestations and points of reference, electric sparks of something grand and whole”.

Gustav Landauer, Skepsis und Mystik

[Read about Gustav Landauer on the orgrad website]

…………

Winter Oak books: www.winteroak.org.uk/books

The Acorn info-bulletin:  www.winteroak.org.uk/acorn

Quote for the day – January 18

18 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by winter oak in anarchism, land

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Gustav Landauer

slaves

“All ownership of things, all land-ownership is in reality ownership of men. Whoever withholds the earth from others, from the masses, forces these others to work for him. Private ownership is theft and slave-holding”.

Gustav Landauer, For Socialism

[Read about Gustav Landauer on the orgrad website]

…………

Winter Oak books: www.winteroak.org.uk/books

The Acorn info-bulletin:  www.winteroak.org.uk/acorn

Quote for the day – January 15

15 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by winter oak in anarchism, authority

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police

“Anarchism is about ordinary people standing up to the rich and powerful – exactly what the police are there to prevent”.

Tim, anarchist who stood up to plainclothes police at Stansted Airport

…………

Winter Oak books: www.winteroak.org.uk/books

The Acorn info-bulletin:  www.winteroak.org.uk/acorn

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Ramping up the global inquisition

by Paul Cudenec A few weeks back I wrote a piece about the way that anyone who challenges the dominant political agenda is liable to undergo a shaming, smearing, witch-hunting attack by what I called “the voice of the system”. The case in question concerned a left-environmental publication in France which had dared to state […]

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