Leftist writers that incorporate/flirt with mysticism and occultism?

[FieldHound]

Before I became interested in politics I mostly read spiritual texts and am still prone to pantheistic and occult thought. I understand that some anarchist writers have a sort of mystic/occult edge (like Hakim Bey apparently) and am interested in reading some stuff in this vein. I know enough right-wing/nationalist stuff that works that way, neo-volkisch sort of stuff, but am looking for writers that incorporate that sort of stuff into the politics that I'm actually into. Any left-wing writers from the "moderate" to communist and anarchists, including "post-left" anarchist writers. Thanks!

[FieldHound]

So to start things off, I understand that Edward Carpenter refers to his ideology as "Mystical Socialism" (I haven't read 'Civilisation...' yet), or at least it's been referred to that way by others.

[FieldHound]

No one really? :unsure: A little disappointed, ah well.

[BIXX]

I mean, the bædan folks discuss it a bit, but I suspect you're looking for something else.

[Lord Testicles]

Look up Simone Weil. I haven't read anything by her but I hear that she fought with the anarchists in the Spanish civil war and is described as a Christian mystic.

[Os Cangaceiros]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Landauer

[consuming negativity]

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/

It is a very moving, honest text. Every time I read it I like it more.


Oscar Wilde 1891
The Soul of Man under Socialism

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.

Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand ‘under the shelter of the wall,’ as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life – educated men who live in the East End – coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

[Hrafn]

August Strindberg, one of Sweden's most prominent authors, was left-wing/socialist (if very sexist and anti-Semitic among other things), and also an mysticist. He studied alchemy, occultism, Swedenborgianism, etc. closely, and in one of his books he claims to have carried out alchemical experiments - and to have cast black magic.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Look up Simone Weil. I haven't read anything by her but I hear that she fought with the anarchists in the Spanish civil war and is described as a Christian mystic.

She can't really be called a "leftist" writer - much less so than the equally Catholic Peguy, who at least made some noises about socialism (Weil explicitly defended private property). See "The Need for Roots" for example - it is not a leftist work, but a little compendium of semi-fascism and authoritarian Catholicism that was too much even for de Gaulle.

[RedMaterialist]

Well, I would have thought that Marxism and socialism are so rooted in reality and materialism that it would be practically impossible to find a metaphysicial socialist. now i know a few ex-marxists who have degenerated into an intellectual cesspool of subjectivism and even religion. May god have mercy on their souls.