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Gustav Landauer, Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader Edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2010 (ISBN: 978-1-60486-054-2) and London: Merlin Press, 2010 (ISBN: 9780850366712)
'The state is a social relationship; a certain way of people relating to one another ...'. You know that one, don't you? Yet until now, these commonly quoted lines were pretty much the only contact many people have had with the man who wrote them - Gustav Landauer. The simple reason for this is that before the publication of this excellent book, very little of Landauer s work had been translated into English. Whatever the reasons for this (and it is certainly a question worth asking, though not one I am qualified to answer), Gabriel Kuhn has done all English-speaking radicals a tremendous service by translating a fine collection of Landauers lengthier essays, opinion pieces and letters, and it is a compliment, rather than a criticism, to say that, extensive though it is, this book already feels limited, and left me hoping that more translations will soon follow.
And Kühn has done much more than translate these works: the book is prefaced with a lengthy introduction (co-written with Siegbert Wolf) and is packed with extensive endnotes that help contextualise the chosen texts, both in broader historical and cultural terms, and in relation to the seemingly vast amount of Landauer s writing that is not included. This not only helps the reader to understand Landauer's thought all the better. It also, importantly, reassures us that...