"Landauer is the most important agitator of the radical and
revolutionary movement in the entire country." This is how Gustav
Landauer is described in a German police file from 1893. Twenty-six
years later, Landauer would die at the hands of reactionary soldiers who
overthrew the Bavarian Council Republic, a three-week attempt to realize
libertarian socialism amidst the turmoil of post-World War I Germany. It
was the last chapter in the life of an activist, writer, and mystic who
Paul Avrich calls "the most influential German anarchist intellectual of
the twentieth century."
This is the first comprehensive collection of Landauer writings in
English. It includes one of his major works, Revolution, thirty
additional essays and articles, and a selection of correspondence. The
texts cover Landauer's entire political biography, from his early
anarchism of the 1890s to his philosophical reflections at the turn of
the century, the subsequent establishment of the Socialist Bund, his
tireless agitation against the war, and the final days among the
revolutionaries in Munich. Additional chapters collect Landauer's
articles on radical politics in the US and Mexico, and illustrate the
scope of his writing with texts on corporate capital, language,
education, and Judaism. The book includes an extensive introduction,
commentary, and bibliographical information, compiled by the editor and
translator Gabriel Kuhn as well as a preface by Richard Day.
