Avraham Yassour: Topos and Utopia in Landauer's and Buber's Social Philosophy

Gustav Landauer saw himself as “the bearer of an anarchistic weltanschaung.” His central concept was that anarchism would be realized by the force of the good-will of men, through small co-operative settlements which would change the existing conditions of society.1 His plan postulated group-living based on a “confederation arising from freedom and communal spirit.” Such a society would represent an alliance of communal settlements which had self-managed co-operative economics, and which would establish fair trade among themselves. The form of socialism which is realized in this way is an individualistic socialism. The actualization of this type of socialism would be voluntary. There would be no separation between means and ends. Independent self-realization would be the main aim, with its sources in humanitarianism, spirit and culture, and not through class-struggle or anysortof revolutionarycoercion. The new co-operative community would be based upon the individual, and it would gradually take the place of the state, resulting in a “withering-away” of its apparatus of control and suppression. After the “Topia” comes the transition to “Utopia” (with religious implications that are particularly relevant to the mystical elements of the Jewish faith). This transition may be regarded as the re-birth of a new type of man, with a new style of living out of repentance. The pioneers in spirit would be those who begin with the independent realization of collective life within community groups (Gemeinden) which will join the federated alliance and which will maintain the new socialist way of life within the old world. The revolution occurs not through parties or labor unions, or through politics or coercive power, but rather through the force of personal example. The revolution awakens all that is superior in man and grants good to all; it is not an isolated rebellion, not a deed of successful establishment, but rather a continuing renewal, a changing of the daily way of life as an infinitely perpetual process.