Gustav Landauer vs / kontraŭ Esperanto

Mi trovis unu verkon de Gustav Landauer en Esperanto, ĉe retejo por Interlingue/Occidental! (I have found one translation of Gustav Landauer in Esperanto, on a site otherwise dedicated to the artificial language Interlingue/Occidental):

Alvoko por la socialismo! [Call to socialism]

Tamen, Landauer mem forte kontraŭstaris ian uzadon de Esperanto. Rigardu lian eseon “Lernt nicht Esperanto!”, jen en angla traduko.

 Landauer himself vehemently opposed any use of Esperanto. See his essay “Lernt nicht esperanto!” in Die Freie Generation, November 1907, translated and published in an anthology of Landauer's writings:

"Do Not Learn Esperanto!" in Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn pp. 276-279.

This essay is a rejoinder to Pierre Ramus, who advocated Esperanto in the October 1907 issue. Ramus responded to Landauer. Landauer never altered his view. In April 1917 he lauded Martin Buber for "opposing a Dutch initiative demanding the establishment of an International Academy to develop a common global language."

In this essay, Landauer makes two main points, one characteristic of his reactionary mystical philosophy, another far less ridiculous. Landauer counterposes the natural and the artificial, the latter being equated with the state, an artificial monstrosity that obstructs the voluntary union of humanity. Esperanto is thus by analogy a repressive instrument akin to the state. Landauer condemns uniformity in favor of diversity. Apparently, he  would not be convinced by the advocacy of Esperanto as an auxiliary, second common language.

Landauer also argues that artificial creations lack the capacity to generate novelty, that they can only regurgitate old thoughts. Furthermore, artificial languages lack nuance, and lack a relationship to the tacit and unspoken that accompanies all communication.

This leads in to this more interesting objection: that Esperanto would be dangerous for practical communication because the commonality of linguistic form disguises the lack of commonality of intended meaning. Landauer argues that a French Esperantist really thinks in French, a German Esperantist in German, etc. Better people should be consciously aware of their inability to communicate than to suppose they do when they don't. The only communication that is possible is shallow and banal, nothing beneath the surface could ever be communicated. And again, Landauer stresses the importance of nonverbal communication.

This does raise a genuine question, but with the dogmatic assumption that the potential obstacles are insurmountable, that no social stabilization of meaning has ever come about or nuance expressed. In 1907 the language was still in its infancy, or perhaps its adolescence, but clearly there was real communication, and already a body of translated and even original literature. The first international conference had taken place in 1905. Esperanto had already penetrated into China and Japan. I suspect there is a lack of sustantive documentation on the extent to which cultural differences and linguistic interference may have caused problems, but it is wrong to assume that such problems are insurmountable.

The anarchist movement has always been all over the place philosophically and ideologically. I regard it as incurably backward and childish, but I do credit it for giving much more serious attention and support to Esperanto than any other tendency within the socialist camp. Anarchists have generally been supportive of Esperanto, so Landauer may have been an anomaly, and his attitude may have been connected to irrationalist or organicist tendencies one finds elsewhere as well. This may be true of the communist Antonio Gramsci, who opposed Esperanto when it became popular in the Italian working class movement following the first world war.