Anarchy 54

Contents of No. 54

August 1965

Martin Buber	John Ellerby	225
Society and the state	Martin Buber	232
Gustav Landauer	C.W.	244
Thoughts on revolution	Gustav Landauer	252
Erich Mühsam	J.T.	255
Observations on anarchy 52	231 and 243
Observations on anarchy 51	inside back cover
Cover by	Rufus Segar

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BUBER, LANDAUER, MÜHSAM

THIS issue of ANARCHY discusses the philosopher Martin Buber, and two German anarchists Gustav Landauer and Erich Mühsam, and their part in the ill-fated Munich Council-Republic of 1919. Why did this revolution fail? Was the Munich Council a government?

Martin Buber has left this recollection of those days: “About two weeks after Landauer’s memorial address on Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, I was with him, and several other revolutionary leaders in a hall of the Diet Building in Munich. Landauer had proposed the subject of discussion—it was the terror. But he himself hardly joined in; he appeared dispirited and nearly exhausted—a year before his wife had succumbed to a fatal illness, and now he relived her death in his heart. The discussion was conducted for the most part between me and a Spartacus leader, who later became well-known in the second communist revolutionary government in Munich that replaced the first, socialist government of Landauer and his comrades. The man walked with clanking spurs through the room; he had been a German officer in the war. I declined to do what many apparently had expected of me—to talk of the moral problem; but I set fort what I thought about the relation between ends and means. I documented my view from historical and contemporary experience. The Spartacus leader did not go into that matter. He, too, sought to document his apology for the terror by examples.

“‘Dzertshinsky’, he said, ‘the head of the Cheka, could sign a hundred death sentences a day, but with an entirely clean soul.’ ‘That is, in fact, just the worst of all,’ I answered. ‘This “clean” soul you do not allow any splashes of blood to fall on! It is not a question of “souls” but of responsibility.’ My opponent regarded me with unperturbed superiority. Landauer, who sat next to me, laid his hand on mine. His whole arm trembled. …”

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Other issues of ANARCHY

VOLUME 1, 1961: 1. Sex-and-Violence, Galbraith*; 2. Workers’ control†; 3. What does anarchism mean today?; 4. Deinstitutionalisation; 5. Spain 1936†; 6. Cinema†; 7. Adventure playgrounds†; 8. Anthropology; 9. Prison; 10. MacInnes, Industrial decentralisation.

VOLUME 2, 1962: 11. Paul Goodman, A. S. Neill; 12. Who are the anarchists?; 13. Direct action*; 14. Disobedience*; 15. The work of David Wills; 16. Ethics of anarchism, Africa; 17. Towards a lumpenproletariat; 18. Comprehensive schools; 19. Theatre: anger and anarchy; 20. Non-violence, Freud; 21. Secondary modern; 22. Cranston’s dialogue on anarchy.

VOLUME 3, 1963: 23. Housing, squatters, do-it-yourself; 24. Community of Scholars; 25. Technology, cybernetics; 26. CND, Salesmanship, Thoreau; 27. Youth; 28. The future of anarchism; 29. The Spies for Peace Story; 30. The community workshop; 31. Self-organising systems, Beatniks, the State; 32. Crime; 33. Alex Comfort’s anarchism†; 34. Science fiction, Workless teens.

VOLUME 4, 1964: 35. House and home; 36. Arms of the law; 37. Why I won’t vote; 38. Nottingham; 39. Homer Lane; 40. Unions and workers’ control; 41. The land; 42. Indian anarchism; 43. Parents and teachers; 44. Transport; 45. Anarchism and Greek thought; 46. Anarchism and the historians.

VOLUME 5, 1965: 47. Towards freedom in work; 48. Lord of the flies; 49. Automation; 50. The anarchist outlook; 51. Blues, R’n’b, Pop, Folk; 52. Limits of pacifism; 53. After school.

PLEASE NOTE: Issues 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, and 33 are out of print.

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