S’appuyant sur les archives du Vorwärts des années 1890 et 1900, cet article analyse la fréquence symptomatique des références de l’organe du Parti social-démocrate allemand à Gustav Landauer, critique cinglant du socialisme marxiste qui entendait « donner au socialisme une nouvelle direction ». Il s’attache à déceler, dans ses dits et ses non-dits, la stratégie mise en œuvre par le Vorwärts de délégitimation de l’anarchisme et de monopolisation de la définition même du socialisme. Mais derrière l’entreprise de caricature (...) et de dénigrement, il montre aussi combien la controverse entre le Vorwärts et « l’inévitable Landauer » est révélatrice d’une série de désaccords structurels et fondamentaux sur la conception de l’histoire, de la société, de l’expérimentation et du changement social. (shrink)

el presente artículo quiere investigar el papel de la mística en la teoría política de Gustav Landauer. La tesis que se defenderá es que la “conservación revolucionaria” que caracteriza la propuesta política landaueriana tiene que enmarcarse en una concepción mística del tiempo histórico, basada en una recuperación del pasado como instrumento de emancipación política. Para esta finalidad se analizará, en un primer párrafo, el contenido utópico a la vez que restaurador de la noción landauerianana de revolución, y, en (...) un segundo apartado, la propuesta acerca de una nueva comunidad socialista. Finalmente, se concluirá que el “romanticismo revolucionario” que entraña la teoría política del autor, y sus continuas referencias a la vida social y política de la Edad Media, puede ser entendido sólo a la luz de un anarquismo mesiánico donde una forma sui generis de espiritualidad y la recuperación del pasado juegan un rol determinante para un auténtico proyecto revolucionario. (shrink)

At the end of the 19th century, violent attacks by so-called anarchists gave the anarchist movement an increased amount of publicity. In the meantime, the success of “scientific socialism” promoted rationality to the rank of a new political doctrine. This article analyses the joint criticism of violence and materialism in the discourse of Gustav Landauer (1870-1919). The German philosopher and revolutionary made an original contribution to anarchism in theorising its incompatibility with violent means of action. He also made (...) a crucial move for the theory of ideas in affirming that reason was not the solution, but often the cause of violence. (shrink)

The violent death of Landauer in May 1919 at the end of the Räterepublik of Munich left several of his best friends with a terrible feeling: a sense of tension between the unique hopes incarnated by Landauer and the spiritual and political void his passing left behind. This article is an attempt to capture the tragic shift from a living revolutionary who projected his unique anarchist views onto the failed Munich Revolution to the efforts of a group of (...) close friends who searched to save their dear Landauer from the infamy of failure, making of his months in Munich and his death an important amendment to his spiritual and political legacy. (shrink)

Recently, indigenous struggles against ongoing colonial violence have become prominent in the context of growing environmental destruction and the ascendancy of the far right in the United States and parts of South America. This article suggests that European radical theory is not always equipped to provide normative frameworks of allyship with such struggles. Exploring the ‘messianic tone’ in European radical theory, and in particular the works of Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben, the article argues that the analytical tendency to render (...) the subject entirely dissolute acts against indigenous demands for justice built around the latter’s sovereignty. In an effort to excavate a ‘European’ tradition that might enable relations of allyship between those in relatively privileged positions and indigenous peoples, the article foregrounds the life and thought of Gustav Landauer, a German, Jewish, anarchist revolutionary who lost his life during the 1919 German revolution. Landauer’s anarchism was suffused with his reading of his Jewishness, and as such, although he prefigures Derrida and Agamben in many ways, he ultimately refused to completely reject the sovereignty of the subject, providing a means by which to engage European political theory with indigenous struggles in the world today. (shrink)

Then UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s attendance at a Passover Seder organised by the radical leftist group, Jewdas, in April 2018, led to a brief but vitriolic controversy involving Anglo-Jewish umbrella organisations concerning who qualifies to speak as a Jew. This article uses this controversy to engage with Judith Butler’s attempt to address this question, suggesting that in decentring Zionist claims to Jewish subjectivity she fails to take account of how different Jewish subjectivities are formed, and thus ends up (...) proposing a ‘good Jew/bad Jew’ binary that dissolves Jewishness into universal humanism. Drawing on the work of the German-Jewish mystical anarchist Gustav Landauer (1870–1919), the article proposes a different way of understanding subjectivity that retains ontological inherency as a plausible precondition for ethical solidarity. As such, the article’s argument has implications not merely for a reworked understanding of Jewish subjectivity but for the politics of subject formation more broadly. (shrink)

Buber ricorda l’amico Gustav Landauer, il rivoluzionario tedesco di origini ebree assassinato a Monaco nel 1919. Landauer incitava alla lotta contro lo Stato, i partiti e il capitalismo perché sosteneva un’idea di trasformazione radicale della società, fondata su uno spirito nuovo, comunitario, che non avrebbe modificato solo le forme esteriori di dominio, ma gli stessi rapporti tra gli uomini. I suoi discorsi non riuscirono tuttavia a catturare le masse. Landauer decise di partecipare alla rivoluzione tedesca non (...) per realizzare la propria idea ma per tentare di contenere i rischi, propri di ogni rivoluzione, di venire fagocitata dal meccanismo dei partiti e di autodistruggersi attraverso l’uso della violenza. Buber giudica inoltre un errore la sua scelta politica di prender parte al governo dei Consigli, perché lo costrinse ad accettare compromessi e a mettere da parte la sua idea di trasformazione. E tuttavia Buber lo celebra come un martire che accettò consapevolmente di sacrificarsi.Buber remembers his friend Gustav Landauer, the german revolutionar of hebrew origins, who was murdered in 1919 in Munich. Landauer incited to rebellion against State, party and capitalism because he supported an idea of radical transformation of the society, founded on a new, communitary spirit able to change not only extern dominations form, but human relations too. But Landauer’s speeches were not able to convince the masses. According to Buber, Landauer decided to take part to the german revolution not for realizing his own ideas, but only to reduce the inner risks of every revolution of being absorbed by partitic mechanism and collapse under his own violence. Secondly, Buber means that Landauer’s politic choice to take part to the government of the Councils was a failure, because he had to come to compromises and give up his idea of transformation. Neverthless Buber celebrates him as a martyr who consciously accepted his sacrifice. (shrink)

Benjamin's fragment 'Capitalism as Religion', written in 1921, was only published several decades after his death. Its aim is to show that capitalism is a cultic religion, without mercy or truce, leading humanity to the 'house of despair'. It is an astonishing document, directly based on Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, but – in ways akin to Ernst Bloch or Erich Fromm – transforming Weber's 'value-free' analysis into a ferocious anticapitalist argument, probably inspired by Gustav (...) Landauer's romantic and libertarian socialism. This article analyses Benjamin's fragment and explores its relationship to Weber's thesis, as well as to the tradition of romantic anticapitalism. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche war kein Anarchist. Trotzdem weckten seine Ideen ein starkes Interesse bei Schlusselfiguren der anarchistischen Bewegung ab den 1890er-Jahren. Gustav Landauer, Emma Goldman und andere reflektierten uber die Chancen und die Gefahren, die jene Ideen fur ihre Politik enthalten. Hitzige Deutungskampfe, etwa uber den Willen zur Macht oder den Status von Frauen in Nietzsches Werken, entlockten selbst den vehementesten Kritikern wie Peter Kropotkin noch produktive Impulse zur Weiterentwicklung der eigenen Theorien. In jungerer Zeit hat sich eine neuere (...) Stromung, der "Postanarchismus", auf Nietzsche berufen, ohne allerdings die historischen Varianten des "nietzscheanischen Anarchismus" zu berucksichtigen. Dies stellt das Innovationspotenzial des Postanarchismus infrage. Das Buch nimmt eine transnationale Perspektive ein und dokumentiert erstmalig die anarchistische Rezeption Nietzsches in Deutschland, Grossbritannien und den USA innerhalb ihrer jeweiligen historischen Kontexte. (shrink)

"The choice we have is not between reasonable proposals and an unreasonable utopianism. Utopian thinking does not undermine or discount real reforms. Indeed, it is almost the opposite: practical reforms depend on utopian dreaming."--Russell Jacoby, _Picture Imperfect_ Utopianism suffers from an image problem: A recent exhibition on utopias in Paris and New York included photographs of Hitler's _Mein Kampf_ and a Nazi concentration camp. Many observers judge utopians and their sympathizers as foolhardy dreamers at best and murderous totalitarians at worst. (...) However, as noted social critic and historian Russell Jacoby argues in this salient, polemical, and innovative work, not only has utopianism been unfairly characterized, a return to an iconoclastic utopian spirit is vital for today's society. Shaped by the works of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Gustav Landauer, and other predominantly Jewish thinkers, iconoclastic utopianism revives society's dormant political imagination and offers hope for a better future. Writing against the grain of history, Jacoby reexamines the anti-utopian mindset and identifies how utopian thought came to be regarded with such suspicion. He challenges standard readings of such anti-utopian classics as _1984_ and _Brave New World_ and offers stinging critiques of the influential liberal and anti-utopian theorists Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Karl Popper. He argues that these thinkers mistakenly equate utopianism with totalitarianism. The reputation of utopian thought has also suffered from the failures of, what Jacoby terms, the blueprint utopian tradition and its oppressive emphasis on detailing all aspects of society and providing fantastic images of the future. In contrast, the iconoclastic utopians, like those who follow God's prohibition against graven images, resist both the blueprinters' obsession with detail and the modern seduction of images. Jacoby suggests that by learning from the hopeful spirit of iconoclastic utopians and their willingness to accept new possibilities for society, we open ourselves to new and more imaginative ideas of the future. (shrink)

"The choice we have is not between reasonable proposals and an unreasonable utopianism. Utopian thinking does not undermine or discount real reforms. Indeed, it is almost the opposite: practical reforms depend on utopian dreaming."--Russell Jacoby, _Picture Imperfect_ Utopianism suffers from an image problem: A recent exhibition on utopias in Paris and New York included photographs of Hitler's _Mein Kampf_ and a Nazi concentration camp. Many observers judge utopians and their sympathizers as foolhardy dreamers at best and murderous totalitarians at worst. (...) However, as noted social critic and historian Russell Jacoby argues in this salient, polemical, and innovative work, not only has utopianism been unfairly characterized, a return to an iconoclastic utopian spirit is vital for today's society. Shaped by the works of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Gustav Landauer, and other predominantly Jewish thinkers, iconoclastic utopianism revives society's dormant political imagination and offers hope for a better future. Writing against the grain of history, Jacoby reexamines the anti-utopian mindset and identifies how utopian thought came to be regarded with such suspicion. He challenges standard readings of such anti-utopian classics as _1984_ and _Brave New World_ and offers stinging critiques of the influential liberal and anti-utopian theorists Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Karl Popper. He argues that these thinkers mistakenly equate utopianism with totalitarianism. The reputation of utopian thought has also suffered from the failures of, what Jacoby terms, the blueprint utopian tradition and its oppressive emphasis on detailing all aspects of society and providing fantastic images of the future. In contrast, the iconoclastic utopians, like those who follow God's prohibition against graven images, resist both the blueprinters' obsession with detail and the modern seduction of images. Jacoby suggests that by learning from the hopeful spirit of iconoclastic utopians and their willingness to accept new possibilities for society, we open ourselves to new and more imaginative ideas of the future. (shrink)

The paper provides an analysis of Martin Buber’s intellectual conversion and shows how it facilitates a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of nationalism. Buber, who is today known mainly as a key representative of dialogical philosophy, was in the 1910s part of the double wave of German and Jewish nationalism which strongly affected the German-speaking Jewish public. Buber provided intellectual support for this wave of nationalism and interpreted World War I as a unique chance for the spiritual unification of European (...) Jewry. Consequent to his conflict with Gustav Landauer Buber underwent a complex intellectual and existential transformation. He abandoned key concepts of his pre-dialogical thought and laid the foundations of his dialogical thought. He rejected his endorsement of Geman nationalism and substantially reevaluated his political positions. The analysis of Buber’s intellectual development sheds light on some important aspects of the dynamics of nationalism. (shrink)

The paper charts both the interpersonal connections between historical anarchist figures and the beat poets as well as the philosophical similarities between them. Almost all the beat poets were anarchists, though their politics was secondary to their attempts to transform consciousness. Among the anarchists, the romantic socialist Gustav Landauer, who was especially popular in post-war American anarchist circles, came closest to the political perspective of the beat poets. Like the beats, Landauer was a poet, a pacifist, an (...) anarchist, a communitarian, a romantic, and a mystic. In northern California, the circle of anarchists surrounding Kenneth Rexroth provided support and inspiration to the early beat movement. In New York, the beats had an affinity with anarchists such as David Thoreau Wieck and the publication "Why?" (later "Resistance"), as well as Dwight Macdonald's "politics" and Holley Cantine's "Retort". (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of the classroom as an exilic space of subversion in which we can pursue anarchist notions of personal transformation, relationships and society. Classroom environments in higher education institutions in Britain, particularly following the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework in September 2016, are premised upon relationships shaped by specific external standards: Employability, the instrumental pursuit of degrees, provider/consumer exchange, among others. Any notions of personal transformation are economic, and the broader goal is the pursuit of (...) economic gain for individual, company and country. In an act of subversion of these external standards, I propose theorising the classroom as an exilic space: a temporally and spatially bracketed space in which participants and their relationships are not beholden to these various external referents. Instead, I put forward the exilic classroom as an anarchic space in which the interactions of the participants are not pre-defined but are formed in the process of the interactions themselves. In theorising the exilic classroom I draw on the work of Obika Gray, and push his notion of exilic space further by integrating the works of Michel de Certeau, Jamie Heckert and Gustav Landauer to help propose a classroom defined as a positive subversive everyday space that is not bound by its opposition to wider structures. The creation of such an exilic classroom assists the participants in stepping out of their expected roles as ‘provider’ and ‘consumer’, or ‘teacher’ and ‘student’, and allows the creation of a space of possibilities for our relationships. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 25, Issue 1, pp 72 - 94 Politics has never been considered Martin Buber’s forte. This paper considers the range of Buber’s reception as a political thinker by considering it in the form of three “moments,” each from a different point in his career, and each through the eyes of a different figure who either read or worked with Buber politically: Theodor Herzl, Gustav Landauer, and Hans Kohn. The three moments are structured around a discussion (...) of the classic criticism that Buber’s politics are naïve or utopian; the paper seeks to respond, as Buber did, in a way that raises questions about the borders of politics itself. (shrink)

It is popularly believed that British anarchism underwent a ‘renaissance’ in the 1960s, as conventional revolutionary tactics were replaced by an ethos of permanent protest. Often associated with Colin Ward and his journal Anarchy, this tactical shift is said to have occurred due to growing awareness of Gustav Landauer's work. This article challenges these readings by focusing on Herbert Read's book Education through Art, a work motivated by Read's dissatisfaction with anarchism's association with political violence. Arguing that aesthetic (...) education could remodel social relationships in a non-hierarchical fashion, Read pioneered the reassessment of revolutionary tactics in the 1940s that is associated with the 1960s generation. His role in these debates has been ignored, but the broader political context of Read's contribution to anarchist theory has also been neglected. The reading of Read's work advanced here recovers his importance to these debates, and highlights the presence of an indigenous strand of radical thought that sought novel solutions for the problems of the age. (shrink)

In his early years, before his dialogical turn, Martin Buber studied the mystical traditions of Europe and Asia and even considered himself a mystic of sorts. The present paper examines Buber's attitude towards mysticism in the course of his intellectual and personal development, particularly before and during his transitional phase to the philosophy of dialogue. The first section details the formative impact intellectual currents around 1900 had on Buber, focussing on the Neue Gemeinschaft of the Hart brothers in Berlin and (...) Gustav Landauer. In a second step, Buber's concept of mysticism is subject to scrutiny. This is essential for understanding why he dissociated so vehemently from mysticism in his dialogical phase. The critique of mysticism in I and Thou is, therefore, the subject matter of the third and last section. (shrink)

This article aims to expose the links between the aesthetic ideas of German Romanticism and the political discourse of the Bavarian Revolution of November 1918. By examining the process of politicization of the expressionist movement, we will see how concepts originated from Nietzschean philosophy or romantic mysticism were incorporated into the philoanarchist thought of the Räterepublik, in order to paradoxically overcome utopian strata and bring to praxis their alternative left wing social project. Thus, we will try to insert the discourses (...) of Kurt Eisner, Erich Müsahm or Gustav Landauer in the debate on the modern dialectic and the critic to enlightened reason. (shrink)

The decisive moment of human development is continually at hand. This is why those movements of revolutionary thought that declare everything preceding to be an irrelevance are correct – because at yet nothing has happened.In his Meridian speech Paul Celan pays homage to a dissident tradition, speaking of himself as one “who grew up with Peter Kropotkin’s and Gustav Landauers’ writings” .1 In his biography John Felstiner briefly mentions Celan’s affiliation, noting that the poet soon relinquished his communist sympathies (...) but stood loyal to the ethoi of socialism and anarchism . This holds true as a point of departure, but a detailed analysis of Celan’s anarchistic impulse is lacking .. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 25, Issue 1, pp 5 - 35 In this essay, I place Buber’s thought in dialogue with Eckhart. Each understood that the theopoetic propensity to imagine the transcendent in images is no more than a projection of our will to impute form to the formless. The presence of God is made present through imaging the real, but imaging the real implies that the nonrepresentable presence can only be made present through the absence of representation. The goal of (...) the journey is to venture beyond the Godhead in light of which all personalistic depictions of the divine person are rendered idolatrous. Perhaps this is the most important implication of Eckhart’s impact on Buber, an insight that may still have theopolitical implications in a world where too often personifications of the God beyond personification are worshipped at the expense of losing contact with an absolute person that cannot be personified absolutely. (shrink)