Gustav Landauer

People do not live in the state. The state lives in the people.

Gustav Landauer (7 April 1870 – 2 May 1919) was one of the leading theorists of anarchism in Germany at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

Quotes

• Anarchy is not a matter of the future; it is a matter of the present. It is not a matter of making demands; it is a matter of how one lives.
  • "Anarchic Thoughts on Anarchism," in Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, p. 87

• There is no "state" on the one hand, and people who live in it on the other. The "state" much rather belongs to what people do and understand. People do not live in the state. The state lives in the people.
  • "Tucker's Revelation," in Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, p. 249

• A goal can only be reached if the means are in consonance with its essential nature. One will never attain non-violence through violence.
  • Letter from Landauer to Martin Buber 1901, quoted in Martin Buber's Life and Work, vol. I by M. Friedman 1981, p. 251

• Now it can become clear to man that freedom and peace of the nations can only come when as Jesus and his followers, and in our time above all Tolstoi advised, they choose to fully abstain from any violence.
  • Letter from Landauer to Martin Buber 1914, quoted in Martin Buber's Life and Work, vol. I by M. Friedman 1981, pp. 251-252

• Now comes death, now one must hold one's head high!
  • Words spoken - according to an eyewitness - by Landauer when he was beaten and kicked to death (2 May 1919). (According to another eyewitness he cried to his assassins: "Kill me then! Since you are men!") Martin Buber's Life and Work, vol. I by M. Friedman 1981, p. 254

Quotes about Gustav Landauer

• Gustav Landauer wrote: “Uprising as basic law, change and overthrow as a rule for all times… that was the greatness and the holiness of the mosaic social order. We need that again: new rules and a spirit of change that does not fix things and laws definitively but declares itself permanent. The revolution should become part of our social order, the basic rule of our basic law”.
  • Furio Bagnini "On Jewish Anarchism" (2009)