Gustav Landauer: Die Revolution (1907). S. 84-91.

 

[The point is: tyranny is not a fire that has to be or can be extinguished. It is not an external evil. It is an internal flaw. The fire of tyranny cannot be fought from the outside with water. It is the source that has to be eliminated. The people who feed it must stop doing so. What they sacrifice for it, they must keep for themselves.

“It is not necessary to fight the tyrant. Neither is it necessary to defend oneself against him. The tyrant will eventually defeat himself. People only need to stop accepting servitude. They do not need to take anything away from the tyrant, they must only stop giving to him. Nor need they change themselves, they need only stop hindering their own development. … When the tyrant does not receive and is no longer obeyed, he ends up naked, without force and without power. He ends up being nothing. He shares the fate of a root that is left without water and nourishment: it turns into a dry, dead piece of wood.”

La Boétie’s book remains almost entirely unknown in Germany. In France, it was revived by Lamennais. I have summarized its contents here rather extensively for two reasons: one, because I think that when discussing the social psychology and the preconditions of revolution it is best to cite those who first formulated what is essential; two, because this allows us to forego presentations of many later revolutionaries and revolutionary movements, since they have either remained far behind La Boétie or, at best, merely repeated his thoughts; even if some of them are much better known.

The fight against tyrants remained revolution’s focus for a long time. Yet the relevance of La Boétie’s words does not end here. Even if future revolutionary struggles will focus less on certain individuals and more on the institution of the absolute state, only few of La Boétie’s words will need to be altered in order to thoroughly understand this new revolutionary phase. If individual revolutions are recurring microcosms that summarize and precede revolution’s general ideals, then La Boétie’s essay is the most perfect of all of revolution’s microcosms. It represents a spirit that first appears to be solely negative, but soon draws enough power from this negativity to proclaim the positive that has to come even if it cannot be described yet. La Boétie’s essay already said what others would later say in various languages: Godwin, Stirner, Proudhon, Bakunin, Tolstoy... The message is: It is in you! It is not on the outside. It is you.

Humans shall not be united by domination, but as brothers without domination: an-archy. Today, however, we still lack the consciousness for such a positive motto, so for now the motto must remain: without domination: – .]

Source:
Gustav Landauer (2010): Revolution and other Writings. A Political Reader. Edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn. PM Press. pp. 155-160.