Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

164/ ANARCHISM
49. Gustav Landauer: Destroying the State by Creating Socialism (1910/15)
n,e first passage sel forlh below is taken from Gustav Landauer's article, "Weak Statesmen,
Weaker People. " first published in Landauer's paper, Oer Sozialist (fhe Socialist), in 1910.
Landauer argues tlwt tile State is an ensemble of social relations. and that we destroy it by entering
into new social relationships, not by one swift revolutionary blow. This partiCIIlar passage
from Landauer's writings was made famous by his friend and literary executor, the
plli1osopher Martin Buber (1878-1965), who republished the entire article in his posthumous
collection of Landauer 's writings, Beginnen: Aufsatze tiber Sozialismus (Cologne: Verlag,
1924). and commented upon it in his chapter on Landauer in Paths In Utopia (Boston: Beacon
Press. 1958). The second passage is from a later article, "Stand Up. Socialist, " originally
published in the inaugural issue ofErnstjoiWs pacijistjournal, Oer Autbruch (fhe Awakening,
Vol. I, No. 1. January 1915). The translations are by Robert Ludlow.
Weak Statesmen, Weaker People (1910)
WE SOCIALISTS, WHO ARE AWARE OF HOW, after more than a hundred years, socialism-that
is to say, the direct affinity of real interests-fights against politics-the
rule of the privileged with the help of fictions-we who, to the best of our abilities,
by awakening the spirit and building social realities, want to support this powerful
trend of history, which is destined to lead our peoples to freedom and the great levelling;
we have under no circumstances anything to do with politics [Wnntspofi!ikj. But
if we were to see that the power of the demonic [Ungeistl and the politics of brute
force still had so much strength that great personalities, powerful politicians were