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Call to Revolution: The Mystical Anarchism of Gustav Landauer
Book by Maurer, Charles B
218 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1971
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October 20, 2017
Gustav Landauer was a thinker and critic of middling importance during the fin de siecle who met his death as so many thinkers and critics do being beaten death in prison. That was the bloody heyday of the post-war Bavarian "revolution", so prison beatings were par for the course, keeping the bench warm for those Nazi guys right around the corner.
Landauer is mostly known for his role in those events, but he was actually a thinker and philosopher of some depth and represents a major figurehead in that strand of political thought that actually IS anarchism, anti-state, pro-community, anti-institution, pro-people. Landauer's thought is 'mystical' in the sense that he found all institutional accretions to humanity to be false and falsely serving the interests of the masses (he included the socialists, Marxists, and all those guys in his critiques, too). His view was of a revived Geist, in the sense of a common, universal human spirit in which the common good was the driving force of small communities, not greed or competitive individualism. He also put a lot of stock in artists, which is debatable.
The book, unfortunately, maybe, doesn't go into that a whole lot. A lot of this work focuses on his political activities with lengthy sections on Landauer's views on Shakespeare, of all people, but whatever. The gap is a nice one to have filled, even if it lacks a clearer elucidation of Landy's ideas.
Landauer is mostly known for his role in those events, but he was actually a thinker and philosopher of some depth and represents a major figurehead in that strand of political thought that actually IS anarchism, anti-state, pro-community, anti-institution, pro-people. Landauer's thought is 'mystical' in the sense that he found all institutional accretions to humanity to be false and falsely serving the interests of the masses (he included the socialists, Marxists, and all those guys in his critiques, too). His view was of a revived Geist, in the sense of a common, universal human spirit in which the common good was the driving force of small communities, not greed or competitive individualism. He also put a lot of stock in artists, which is debatable.
The book, unfortunately, maybe, doesn't go into that a whole lot. A lot of this work focuses on his political activities with lengthy sections on Landauer's views on Shakespeare, of all people, but whatever. The gap is a nice one to have filled, even if it lacks a clearer elucidation of Landy's ideas.
Displaying 1 of 1 review