Allen Shull reviewed Paths in Utopia by Martin Buber
Perceptive toward the past
4 stars
…yet haunted by the future. Buber’s perception of the anarchist and coöperative movements through the advent of Marx and Lenin, are invaluable. However, having just read his epilogue which trumpets the success of kibbutzim, I am sad to see what Buber couldn’t: the dismantling of these collective agrarian movements by urban, individualistic, liberal capitalism of the 1970s.
Still, in a world divided between secular collectivism and religious individualism, Buber offers a clear alternative to both. Even for those who aren’t religious, Buber’s religiosity is conceptual and motivational rather than repressive. We need, though, a Buber for Buber.