Gustav Landauer - Revolution and Other Writings

About the Authors:

G ABRIEL KUHN (BORN IN INNSBRUCK, AUSTRIA, 1972) LIVES AS AN independent author and translator in Stockholm, Sweden. He received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Innsbruck in 1996. His publications in German include the award-winning Neuer Anarchismus in den USA: Seattle und die Folgen (2008). His publications with PM Press include Life Under the Jolly Roger: Reflections on Golden Age Piracy (2010), Sober Living for the Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge, and Radical Politics (editor, 2010), Soccer vs. The State: Tackling Football And Radical Politics (2011) and Erich Mhsam: Liberating Society from the State and Other Writings (editor/translator, 2011)

R ICHARD J.F. DAY IS AN AUTONOMY-ORIENTED THEORIST AND PRACTITIOner, whose work focuses on creating non-statist, non-capitalist, post-colonial, sustainable alternatives to the dominant global order. He works and teaches at Queens University, and is a founding member of the AKA Autonomous Social Centre, both in Kingston Ontario.

S IEGBERT WOLF IS A GERMAN HISTORIAN BASED IN FRANKFURT AM MAIN. He has published extensively on Gustav Landauer and is the editor of a six-volume edition of Landauers works.

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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

Richard J.F. Day

T HERE'S A CLICH ABOUT WATCHING OUT WHAT YOU ASK FOR, since you may get it in a way that doesnt quite please you. A few years ago, I asked for more of Gustav Landauers work to be translated into English, and Gabriel Kuhn responded by doing just that. Unlike the clich scenario, however, Im 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. Its 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 Landauers 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.