Prophet of Community: The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer

by Eugene Lunn

Gustav Landauer--literary critic, mystical philosopher, and left-wing activists--was Germany's major anarchist thinker at the beginning of the twentieth century. In this full-scale intellectual biography, Lunn depicts the evolution of Landauer's social thought, a rich terrain within which to examine afresh some intellectual crosscurrents of the Wilhelmian era. Landauer's work in the various circles and movements of his social milieu after 1900, including anarchist, youth movement, expressionist, and Zionist groups, reveal a convergence of volkisch and communitarian ideas with libertarian forms of socialist democracy. The study of this kind of "romantic socialism," in revolt against both industrial modernity and authoritarian government, highlights the inadequacy of viewing volkisch themes exclusively in terms of Nazi "roots." What emerges from this study is the appeal of antiauthoritarian and communitarian ideas for middle-class Left intellectuals dissatisfied with the official Social Democratic Party. In the light of the tragic failures of democratic and socialist forces to gain middle-class support during the Weimar Republic, and of the Nazis' antidemocratic uses of Gemeinschaft, this earlier search for a communitarian democracy gains in importance. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Biography

444 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1973

Reviews

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray]

I first got interested in Landauer after reading an English translation of "Aufruf zum Sozialismus" and discovering him in the Michael Löwy book about a constellation of Jewish libertarian socialists, Redemption And Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought In Central Europe: A Study In Elective Affinity. This is the first real biography I've read about him, and the author is mainly interested in how 'völkisch' ideas can also be socialist and even anarchist, which is certainly a new thing for me. The minute I hear "Volk" it's all hands on deck for an argument with a nazi. But that's not the way Landauer used the term. One interesting aspect of it is how to have a Jewish identity outside of all forms of nationalism (cough, Zionism, cough). I also learned that despite his fame as a "leader" of the Räte revolution in Bavaria, Landauer was a lonely bohemian philosophy and literature nerd with few friends and few followers. But the reasons why I like him were mostly reinforced: his commitment to nonviolence at a time when other anarchists were responsible for assassinations and bombings, and his insistence that there needs to be a kind of spiritual connection between the people in a socialist community, or really any kind of community, but for Landauer only a socialist community is a true community. He's one of these people who say that the oppressed's consciousness has to change before we can build socialism; as opposed to the more impatient, practical types who want to get the revolution going and insist the consciousness will immediately follow... like Bakunin for example. A lot of the story of Landauer's life made me sad. I am living in a sad time. I am writing this review on day 2 of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Landauer was beaten to death shortly after World War I, a war he hoped to end by getting everyone to stop believing in the state and to just go off into the countryside and be a carpenter or a farmer or whatever. Cute. But sad. His comments about German obedience, political parties, Marxism, are all painfully correct. Somehow he doesn't see the beam in his own eye, but his vision of the SPD and other frenemies is 20/20 and for me has a real echo in the present.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

the best secondary work on landauer. lunn was a uc davis professor who also wrote a book about adorno, benjamin, et al.