32 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
However, Buber also argues that although Landauer had fully developed as
an activist and a thinker, he had yet to form fully as an artist.^78 The final lines of
his essay read, “Only when this will have happened, will we, when we single out
the representative men of this time, be able to stamp the superscription: Gus-
tav Landauer, or, the anarchist.”^79 This conclusion implies that one becomes an
anarchist by becoming free, by developing one’s individuality and deepest self.
Thus, says Buber, by Landauer’s own definition, he will not truly be an anar-
chist until he perfects his art, since this is what will make him a man in full.
Once again, as with the 1901 lecture, there is great similarity between Buber and
Landauer but also a significant difference. Buber seems to agree with Landauer
that nonstate socialism is the only politics for free people, and he also takes with
him the further step that one must criticize anarchism as a dogma in order to
become truly anarchistic. The Buber of 1904, however, emphasizes the necessity
of aesthetic creation to the process of liberation to a much greater degree than
does Landauer.
The year 1905 was quiet for both men, but plans were set in motion that
would lead to both of them “emerging from seclusion.”^80 While working as a con-
sulting editor for the publishing firm Rütten & Loening, Buber conceived of the
idea of a series of monographs that would increase the presence of the fledgling
discipline of sociology in German public intellectual life: Die Gesellschaft (Soci-
ety). He first approached Georg Simmel, who had been his teacher at the Univer-
sity of Berlin and sparked his interest in sociology, with the proposal to edit the
series, but he took on the job himself when Simmel declined.^81 Each monograph
would be devoted to a particular topic, for which Buber sought out the writer he
considered most appropriate; these titles ranged widely, from Sport to Dilettan-
tism to The Erotic to The Department Store. There were also a number of entries
addressing clearly “political” topics. The first seven volumes of the forty-volume
series were published in 1906, the same year that Buber’s studies of Hasidism bore
their first fruit with the release of Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman (Tales of
Rabbi Nachman). This first crop included Das Proletariat, by Werner Sombart;
Die Religion, by Georg Simmel; Die Politik, by Alexander Ular; and Der Streik,
by Eduard Bernstein.^82 The series, aimed at the educated but nonspecialist upper
middle class, was well received.^83
The political orientation of Die Gesellschaft was carefully curated to appeal
to its core audience, which meant that the views represented began at liberalism
and moved left from there, excluding conservative nationalists as well as ortho-
dox Marxists.^84 The 1906 group of titles set the tone: non-Marxist socialism was
well represented in depth and variety through the presence of Sombart and Ber-
nstein (the latter already famous as a critic of historical materialism).^85 The group
of 1907 titles followed suit, including such works as Das Parlament, by Hellmut
von Gerlach; Der Staat, by Franz Oppenheimer; and Die Revolution, by Gustav
Landauer.^86