The True Front | 33Our Revolution, 1907–1914
Buber wrote to Landauer on July 26, 1906, to solicit his involvement in Die Ge-
sellschaft: “The publisher is understandably interested in a volume on the current
and interesting theme ‘revolution,’ and I cannot think of anyone better than you.
Do you think I am wrong in this, and can you with a clear conscience mention
even one other name to me?”^87 Buber expressed confidence that Landauer had
the experience and the “absolute honesty” necessary for the proper treatment of
the subject. Landauer responded favorably, and a year later Die Revolution ap-
peared.^88
Revolution is an idiosyncratic work, but this is probably what makes it the
book that Buber wanted. It scrupulously avoids discussing revolutionary strat-
egy, arguing for the anarchist rather than the Marxist method of revolution, de-
bating whether revolution is preferable to reform, or carrying out comparative
analysis of specific historical revolutions. In fact, it begins with a mockery of such
a project, on the assumption that “the best way to prove that something cannot be
treated in a certain form is to do this with honesty and sincerity until we cannot
carry on any longer.”^89 It does not even make clear, for much of the book, what
revolution is or whether Landauer thinks it is a good thing. He can seem very
ambivalent:
The era from the year 1500 until now (and beyond) is an era without a common
spirit. It is an era where spirit is present only in certain individuals; an era of
individualism, and hence of atomized individuals as well as uprooted and dis-
solved masses; an era of personalism, and hence individual melancholic and
ingenious spirits; an era without truth (like any era without spirit)... an era of
human beings without any heart, without integrity, without courage, without
tolerance. However, because of all this, it is also an era of experimentation,
audacity, boldness, bravery, and rebellion. This is the complexity in which we
find ourselves, this is our transition, our disorientation, our search—our revo-
lution.^90This attitude toward the period commonly labeled “modernity” (although Lan-
dauer critiques labels like “antiquity” and “the Middle Ages” as biased terminol-
ogy reflecting Renaissance prejudices), especially compared to his praise of the
communal life of the preceding thousand years, has led many to consider Revo-
lution a work of romanticism. Landauer, however, reports that he takes much
of his information and many of his quotations concerning “the Christian era”
directly from Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid.^91 The two men make similar use of the
medieval period. What they prize in the years 500–1500 is not the church and
the monarchy playing their “proper” roles in society but instead what Landauer
calls the “principle of ordered multiplicity”: “multiple mutually exclusive social
institutions existed side by side, were permeated by a unifying spirit, and con-
stituted a union of many sovereign elements that came together in liberty.”^92 No