Revolution and Other Writings

323 Pages·2010·2.89 MB·English

by  Gustav Landauer & Gabriel Kuhn & Richard Day

COPYRIGHT
Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader
Edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn
ISBN: 978-1-60486-054-2
LCCN: 2009901371
This edition copyright ©2010 PM Press
All Rights Reserved
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Published in the EU by The Merlin Press Ltd.
6 Crane Street Chambers,
Crane Street,
Pontypool
NP4 6ND,
Wales
www.merlinpress.co.uk
ISBN: 9780850366716
Layout by Daniel Meltzer
Cover art by John Yates
Printed in the USA, on recycled paper
“T
HE STATE IS A SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP; A CERTAIN way of
people relating to one another. It can be destroyed by
creating new social relationships; i.e., by people relating to one
another differently.”
– Gustav Landauer
PREFACE: LANDAUER TODAY
Richard J.F. Day
T
HERE'S A CLICHÉ ABOUT WATCHING OUT WHAT YOU ASK FOR, since you may get it
in a way that doesn’t quite please you. A few years ago, I asked for more of Gustav Landauer’s
work to be translated into English, and Gabriel Kuhn responded by doing just that. Unlike the
cliché scenario, however, I’m very happy with the result. That is, the book you hold in your hand. Since
many people will read no further than the first paragraph of this preface, if they read it at all, I want to say
right now: buy this book. It’s genuinely worth the price.
For those who need a little more convincing, allow me to provide some backup for my opinion. The
introduction by Kuhn and Siegbert Wolf does an excellent job of reminding us of the relevance of the life
and work of Gustav Landauer in his own time. But what about our time? Why should those of us standing
on the ledge between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries be concerned about someone who died so long
ago?
It would be too easy, and obviously incorrect, to say that nothing has changed in the last century. Yet, some
very important elements of Landauer’s context do remain with us today. He was an anarchist living,
working, and writing on the margins of an authoritarian state. He was an anti-capitalist activist, a
revolutionary who was killed because of who he was, what he believed, and what he did. The state form
still seeks total control over our lives, and with new technologies has arguably gone much further in
reaching its goal. Corporations still seek the greatest profit over the shortest term for the smallest number of
people, while ruining the lives of everyone else and destroying the planet. They, too, seem to be doing
better than ever, penetrating deeper, wider, meeting the challenges they face – as always – by mutating and
forging ahead.
And us? Well, we are trying, as always, to find places and ways of doing something other, something
different, from what the system of states and corporations allows us to do, requires us to do. We protest, we
urge reform, we foment revolution. We get occasional good results, here and there, but no one with their
eyes open, their ear to the ground, their heart and mind engaged, will deny that we are losing ground, every
day, week, month, year… from our vantage point, from that ledge, we see below us what Nietzsche called
an abyss. Peak oil, economic meltdown, species decline, including homo sapiens sapiens, which despite
continuing to increase its population in absolute numbers, is facing an ongoing decline in fertility rates. It’s
only a matter of time … the squeamish anti-civilizationists among us, within us, need never overcome our
fear of blowing dams. The beast is dying of its own accord, quite simply killing itself.
What, then, as Comrade Lenin and many before him asked, is to be done? I think this is where the work of
Gustav Landauer becomes indispensable. The kinds of answers he provided to this question were very
much ahead of their time, and have yet to be adequately explored, discussed, and implemented – in any
language, as far as I know, but most certainly in English. Unwilling to wait for history to catch up with
itself, Landauer called for ‘socialism here and now,’ for the creation of positive radical alternatives to the
dominant order – within, and on the margins of this order. He felt that this was the only way to make the
kind of lasting difference that was necessary if things were really going to change, and I agree with him.
The sense of urgency that drove Landauer and his work has only increased since his time, of course, rising
now to obsessive-compulsive heights, as can be seen from the kinds of books flying along the conveyor
lines of the virtual bookshops these days. Suddenly, it’s not only crazy anarchists and indigenous people
and Gaian feminists who are talking about the coming destruction of the earth – it’s ex-Vice President of
the United States Al Gore. It’s respectable, mainstream journalists. Everyone is cashing in. The question
I’m interested in, is how do we cash out? Or, better yet, how do we leave behind the whole nexus of ideas
and practices that give cash its value?
In his answer to this question Landauer was one of the first postanarchists, inasmuch as he read Nietzsche
anarchistically, and through his development of a discursive understanding of the state and capitalism as
states of relations, rather than ‘things.’ This is an absolutely crucial insight for, as Karl Marx and Judith
Butler have very clearly shown, once we become aware of the fact that we are (re)producing the dominant
order through our daily activity, we become able to change our behaviour, and thereby the dominant order
itself. Hence the privilege given, by Landauer, to working ‘alongside’ rather than against the state form,
diverting our energies. Here he prefigures the currently hot autonomist marxist concept of prefiguration,
although it must be noted that this idea has long been a staple of anarchist theory and practice.
This is the most important answer to the question, Why Landauer, now? Because he provides exactly what
we need in order to have some small chance of peering into the abyss and coming up with something to do
other than just follow everyone else as they semi-consciously leap into it.
There’s another question I want to address, though, which is, Why should we be paying attention to this
particular collection of translations? Here I have an abundance of answers, so fecund a proliferation that I
will simply list them. For me, perhaps, the greatest strength of this text is the detailed discussion of links
between Landauer’s life and his writing. When I teach theory, anarchist or otherwise, I always highlight the
fact that Gramsci went to prison, got sick, and died, for his ideas. Emma Goldman got ‘sent back to Russia’
for hers, Walter Benjamin shot himself because he was certain he had missed his last chance to escape the
Nazis, people die every day in Oaxaca and Chiapas and Tibet and, yes, even on the lands claimed by the
Canadian state, the ‘peaceful country’ I inhabit – or rather, that inhabits me. The introduction also addresses
differing interpretations of Landauer’s work in various languages, and its reception and influence around
the world. Finally, the extensive bibliography will be of great aid to seasoned Landauer scholars and new
explorers alike.
In the texts themselves, the tiny, difficult, often insoluble, problems of translation are treated in a subtle yet
straightforward way. The result is a very readable rendering of the German original, a rendering that is
perhaps superior to the original, according to some accounts. At the same time, Landauer’s delicacy,
ferocity, confusion, concision – all of the multiple and contradictory elements that make him who he is, his
texts what they are – are preserved. Words, people, and events, that may not be common knowledge in the
English-speaking world are accurately identified as such, and footnoted. Overall, this collection is well
researched and very tight, in the sense that musicians give to this term. I found myself thinking “Ah, the
real thing,” that is, activist-oriented theory of the sort that was so common a few generations ago, and is
now becoming more common again.
I would like my final words to be some first words from Landauer himself, who is surprisingly good at
giving us a laugh, and a timeless, pointed, anarchist laugh, at that.
“I will not hesitate to say the following in all clarity (knowing that I will not receive much appreciation
from either side): to some degree, the anarchist politics of assassination only stems from the intentions
of a small group amongst them that wants to follow the example of the big political parties. What
drives them is vanity – a craving for recognition. What they are trying to say is: ‘We are also doing
politics. We aren’t doing nothing. We are a force to be reckoned with!’ These anarchists are not
anarchic enough for me.” (“Anarchic Thoughts on Anarchism”)
Every time I see a twenty-something-year-old male dressed in combat fatigues strutting away from a protest
with blood streaming from his head and swearing at the cops, I think of this quote from Gustav Landauer.
And I think to myself: All well and good, but who’s going to do the dishes, drywall your bedroom, take out
the recycling, cook your meals, clean the house, look after the kids and elders, and change your bandages,
while you try to get yourself out of jail and then field that short-lived but highly ego-gratifying spate of
inquiries from the global media? Here and now, boys, here and now!
EDITOR'S NOTE
Gabriel Kuhn
P
AUL AVRICH HAS CALLED GUSTAV LANDAUER "THE MOST influential German
1
anarchist intellectual of the twentieth century." In the English-speaking world, however, Gustav
Landauer has only received limited attention. For decades, almost all of his writings – about a dozen books
and pamphlets, as well as hundreds of essays, articles, and letters – remained untranslated. In the 1970s,
over fifty years after his death at the hands of reactionary soldiers, a number of scholarly studies about his
life and work appeared and his main text, Aufruf zum Sozialismus, was published as For Socialism.
However, few studies or translations of Landauer followed.
Even during his lifetime, Landauer himself bemoaned the lack of foreign translations of his work. In 1910,
2
he addressed the issue in a letter to the famed anarchist historian Max Nettlau. Nettlau, who had elsewhere
3
remarked that Landauer’s texts were “not easy to understand, even for German-speakers,” responded by
4
pointing out “the difficulties for translators and foreign readers.” Subsequent scholars have shared these
5
sentiments.
The volume presented here attempts to provide a comprehensive collection of Landauer texts covering his
th
political development from its beginnings among radical students, artists, and socialists in late 19 -century
Berlin to his death in Munich in 1919.
Roughly, Landauer’s writings can be divided into three major categories: “political,” “philosophical,” and
“literary/cultural.” This volume focuses on the political. To begin with, this reflects the main interest of
both the editor and the publisher. Additionally, many of the English-speakers who have requested Landauer
translations in recent years are found in the anarchist community. Furthermore, there seems to be no reason
to support the “de-politization” of Landauer’s work, which was noted as early as 1920 by Erich Mühsam
6
and as recently as 2008 by Germany’s most renowned contemporary Landauer scholar, Siegbert Wolf.
Needless to say, there is no reason why this Political Reader cannot be followed by a Philosophical and/or
Literary/Cultural Reader should the interest in Landauer persist, or even increase.
The texts collected here intend to a) provide a balanced and complete picture of Landauer’s political
thought, b) gather Landauer’s best known, most influential, and most characteristic texts, c) illustrate
Landauer’s wide range of interests through a number of unique and original essays and articles, d) assemble
pieces of particular interest to English-speaking readers, and e) allow an insight into Landauer’s rich
correspondence.
The volume’s central text is Revolution, a translation of Landauer’s 1907 monograph Die Revolution, one of
his three major works next to Skepsis und Mystik. Versuche im Anschluss an Mauthners Sprachkritik
[Skepticism and Mysticism: Essays Inspired by Mauthner’s Critique of Language] (1903) and Aufruf zum
Sozialismus [For Socialism] (1911). Die Revolution is a political and philosophical study of history that
serves as a bridge from the highly philosophical Skepsis und Mystik to the fairly practical Aufruf zum
Sozialismus. Apart from Die Revolution, the volume contains twenty-nine Landauer essays and articles, as
well as twelve letters, postcards, and telegrams.