VALTER BENJAMIN

Istorijsko-filozofske teze (prevod 1974)

Über den Begriff der Geschichte (original, 1940)

On the Concept of History (prevod 2005)

Theses on the Philosophy of History (prevod 1968)

Valter Benjamin

ISTORIJSKO-FILOZOFSKE TEZE

Prevod: Milan Tabaković

Redakcija prevoda: Branimir Živojinović

Walter Benjamin, Eseji, Nolit, Beograd 1974, str. 79–90.

I

Kao što je poznato, tvrdi se da je postojao automat koji je na svaki potez šahiste odgovarao protivpotezom što mu je osiguravao pobedu u partiji. Lutka u turskoj nošnji, sa nargilama u ustima, sedela je pred tablom na prostranom stolu. Sistem ogledala stvarao je iluziju da je taj sto (sa svih strana) providan. U stvari, u njemu je sedeo grbavi patuljak, koji je bio majstor u šahu, i pomoću uzica upravljao rukom lutke. Možemo zamisliti šta bi u filozofiji bio pandan toj aparaturi. Uvek treba da pobedi lutka koja se naziva „istorijski materijalizam“. Ona se bez po muke može uhvatiti u koštac sa bilo kime, ukoliko najmi teologiju, koja je danas, kao što znamo, mala i ružna, pa se ionako ne sme pokazivati pred svetom.

II

„U najzanimljivije specifičnosti ljudske duše“, kaže Lotze, „spada, pored tolike samoživosti u pojedinačnom, opšta nezavidljivost sadašnjice prema budućnosti.“ Misao se svodi na to da je slika sreće kakvu gajimo potpuno obojena vremenom u koje nas je bacio tok našeg života. Sreća koju bi u nama mogla probuditi zavist, postoji samo u vazduhu što smo ga udisali zajedno sa ljudima s kojima bismo mogli razgovarati, sa ženama koje bi nam se mogle predati. Drugim recima, u predstavi sreće neodvojivo provejava i predstava o iskupljenju. Sa predstavom prošlosti, koju istorija pretvara u svoj predmet, isti je slučaj. Prošlost sa sobom nosi vremenski indeks kojim se upućuje na iskupljenje. Postoji tajni dogovor bivših pokolenja sa našim. Nas su očekivali na zemlji. Nama je, kao i svakom prethodnom pokolenju, data u nasleđe izvesna slaba mesijanska snaga, na koju prošlost polaže pravo. Ne možemo lako iskupiti tu obavezu. Istorijski materijalista to zna.

III

Hroničar koji nabraja događaje, ne razlikujući velike od malih, vodi time računa o istini da ništa što se nekada desilo ne treba da bude izgubljeno za istoriju. Doduše, tek iskupljenom čovečanstvu potpuno pripada njegova prošlost. To znači: tek iskupljeno čovečanstvo može citirati svoju prošlost u svakom trenutku. Svaki njegov proživljeni trenutak postaje citation à l’ordre du jour* — a taj dan je upravo dan poslednjeg suda.

* Citiranje na dnevnom redu. — Prim. prev.

2

IV

Težite prvo za hranom i odećom, a onda će vam carstvo božje samo pripasti.

— Hegel,1807.

Klasna borba, koju istoričar školovan na Marxu uvek ima u vidu, borba je za sirove i materijalne stvari, bez kojih nema tananih i spiritualnih. Uprkos tome. ove poslednje su u klasnoj borbi drukčije prisutne od predstave o plenu što pripada pobediocu. One su u toj borbi žive kao pouzdanje, kao hrabrost, kao humor, kao lukavstvo, kao nepokolebljivost, i deluju na budućnost. One će stalno svaku pobedu vlastodržaca staviti pod znak pitanja. Kao što cveće okreće krunice suncu, tako prošlost teži, zahvaljujući nekom skrivenom heliotropizmu, da se okrene onom suncu koje se rađa na nebu istorije. Tu najneupadljiviju od svih promena mora razumevati istorijski materijalista.

V

Istinska slika prošlosti hitro promiče. Prošlost se može zadržati samo kao slika što nepovratno i zakratko prosine u trenutku kad se može spoznati. „Istina nam neće uteći“ – te reči Gottfrieda Kellera označavaju u istorijskoj slici istorizma upravo ono mesto na kome je probija istorijski materijalizam. Jer posredi je nepovratna slika prošlosti, slika što preti da nestane sa svakom sadašnjošću koja sebe nije shvatila kao ono što je u toj slici intendirano. Radosno poslanje, koje sa grozničavim bilom objavljuje istoričar prošlosti, dolazi iz usta koja, možda, već u trenutku u kome se otvaraju govore u prazninu.

VI

Istorijski artikulisati prošlost ne znači spoznati je „kakva je, u stvari, bila“. To znači ovladati sećanjem onako kako blesne u trenutku opasnosti. Istorijskom materijalizmu je stalo do toga da zadrži sliku prošlosti kakva se u trenutku opasnosti iznenada javlja istorijskom subjektu. Opasnost podjednako preti i postojanju tradicije i njenim primaocima. Za oboje ta je opasnost istovetna: postati oruđe vladajuće klase. U svakoj epohi moramo pokušati da nasleđe ponovo preotmemo od konformizma, koji namerava da njime ovlada. Tâ, Mesija ne dolazi samo kao spasitelj već i kao pobednik Antihrista. Sposobnošću da iz prošlosti raspiri iskru nade obdaren je samo onaj istoričar koji je prožet svešću da ni mrtvi neće biti sigurni pred neprijateljem, ako pobedi. A taj neprijatelj nije prestao da pobeđuje.

VII

Setite se mraka i velike zime u ovoj dolini leleka.

— Brecht, Prosjačka opera

Fustel de Coulanges preporučuje istoričaru da sebi izbije iz glave sve što zna o daljem toku istorije ako hoće ponovo da doživi neku epohu. Ne može se bolje obeležiti postupak sa kojim je prekinuo istorijski materijalizam. To je postupak uživljavanja. Njegovo je poreklo lenjost srca, acedia, koja nema hrabrosti da ovlada pravom

3

istorijskom slikom što namah zablesne. Srednjovekovni teolozi smatrali su je praosnovom tuge. Flaubert, koji ju je upoznao, piše: „Peu de gens devineront combien il a fallu etre triste pour ressusciter Carthage.“* Priroda te tuge biće jasnija ako postavimo pitanje u koga se to, u stvari, uživljava istoričar koji pripada školi istorizma. Odgovor bez ustezanja glasi: u pobednika. Ali oni koji vladaju naslednici su svih nekadašnjih pobednika. Zato uživljavanje u pobednika uvek ide na ruku vlastodršcima. Time je istorijskom materijalisti dosta rečeno. Onaj koji je stalno pobeđivao, sve do dana današnjeg, korača u trijumfalnom pohodu što današnje vlastodršce vodi preko danas pobeđenih. Kao što je oduvek bilo uobičajeno, u trijumfalnom pohodu se nosi i plen. Taj plen se naziva kulturnim dobrima. Ona će u istorijskom materi jalisti naići na distanciranog posmatrača. Jer ono što on vidi u kulturnim dobrima, to je za njega, bez izuzetka, takvog porekla da ne može o tome razmišljati bez užasavanja. Ona ne zahvaljuju za svoje postojanje samo naporu genija koji su ih stvorili već i bezimenom kuluku njihovih suvremenika. Nema dokumenta kulture koji istovremeno ne bi bio dokument varvarstva. I kao što on sam nije slobodan od varvarstva, to nije ni proces tradicije u kojem su ta dobra prelazila sa jednog na drugog. Istorijski se materijalista zato, koliko god mu je to mogućno, distancira od tradicije. On smatra svojim zadatkom da ide uz dlaku istoriji.

* Malo njih će shvatiti koliko je trebalo biti tužan da bi se oživela Kartagina. — Prim. prev.

VIII

Tradicija ugnjetenih poučava nas da je „izuzetno stanje“ u kome živimo – pravilo. Mi moramo doći do shvatanja istorije koje tome odgovara. Tada ćemo se suočiti sa zadatkom koji se sastoji u uvođenju stvarnog izuzetnog stanja; i time će se poboljšati naš položaj u borbi protivu fašizma, šansa fašizma je – ne na poslednjem mestu – u tome što ga protivnici dočekuju u ime napretka kao istorijske norme. Čuđenje zbog toga što su stvari koje doživljavamo „još“ moguće u dvadesetom veku nije filozofsko. Ono se ne nalazi na početku saznanja, sem ukoliko to nije saznanje da je neodrživo shvatanje istorije iz kojeg to čuđenje potiče.

IX

Krilo mi je spremno da zaleprša, vratio bih se rado, jer ako bih i ostao sve vreme, ne bih baš imao sreće.

— Gerhard Scholem, Pozdrav od Angelusa

Klee ima sliku koja se zove Angelus Novus. Na njoj je prikazan anđeo koji izgleda tako kao da namerava da se udalji od nečega čime je fasciniran. Oči su mu razrogačene, usta otvorena, a krila raširena. Tako. mora izgledati anđeo istorije. Lice je okrenuo prošlosti. Ono što mi vidimo kao lanac događaja, on vidi kao jednu jedinu katastrofu što neprekidno gomila ruševine na ruševinama i baca mu ih pred noge. Rado bi se zaustavio, budio mrtve i sastavljao ono što je razbijeno. Ali iz raja duva tako snažna oluja da mu je razapela krila i anđeo više ne može da ih sklopi. Ta oluja ga nezadrživo goni u budućnost, kojoj okreće leđa dok gomila ruševina pred njim raste do neba. Ono što nazivamo napretkom jeste ta oluja.

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X

Predmeti koje su manastirska pravila određivala bratiji za meditaciju trebalo je da u njima izazovu mržnju na svet i svetsko zbivanje. Tok misli koji ovde pratimo proizašao je iz slične namene. On namerava da – u trenutku kad političari u koje su se nadali protivnici fašizma leže na zemlji i svoj poraz potvrđuju izdajom vlastite stvari – oslobodi političko dete sveta iz mreža kojima su ga oni upleli. Razmatranje polazi od toga da su ograničena vera u napredak tih političara, njihovo poverenje u svoju „masovnu bazu“ i, konačno, njihovo servilno uključivanje u aparat koji se ne može kontrolisati – bile tri strane iste stvari. Ono želi da predoči koliko naše uobičajeno mišljenje skupo staje predstava o istoriji koja izbegava svako druženje sa onom koje se ti političari i dalje čvrsto drže.

XI

Konformizam, koji je od početka bio odomaćen u socijaldemokratiji, čvrsto je prisutan ne samo u njenoj političkoj taktici već i u njenim ekonomskim predstavama. On je uzrok kasnijeg sloma. Ništa nije nemačko radništvo toliko korumpiralo koliko mišljenje da ono pliva sa strujom. Tehnički razvoj bio je za njega pad reke po kojoj je smatralo da pliva. Odatle je bio samo korak do iluzije da fabrički rad, kome je tehnički napredak išao na ruku, predstavlja politički čin. Stari protestantski radni moral slavio je u isekularizovanom vidu kod nemačkih radnika svoje vaskrsenje. Gotski program već nosi u sebi tragove te zbrke. On definiše rad kao „izvor svega bogatstva i sve kulture“. Sluteći zlo, Marx je na to odgovorio da čovek nema nikakve druge sopstvenosti osim svoje radne snage, „da mora biti rob drugih ljudi koji su zagospodarili predmetnim uslovima rada.“* Bez obzira na to, konfuzija se dalje širi i uskoro zatim Josef Dietzgen izjavljuje: „Rad se naziva spasiteljem novog vremena. U... poboljšanju... rada... sastoji se bogatstvo koje sada može da izvrši ono što dosada nijedan spasitelj nije izvršio.“ To vulgarnomarksističko shvatanje o tome šta je rad ne zadržava se dugo na pitanju kakvo je dejistvo proizvoda rada na radnike dok ne mogu njime raspolagati. Ono hoće da vidi samo napretke u osvajanju prirode, ne i nazadovanja društva. Ispoljava već tehnokratske crte, koje ćemo docnje sresti u fašizmu. U te crte spada shvatanje prirode koje se zloslutno razlikuje od predmartovskih socijalističkih utopija. Rad, kako se odsada razumeva, svodi se na iskorišćavanje prirode, koje se sa naivnim zadovoljstvom suprotstavlja izrabljivanju proletarijata. U poređenju sa tom pozitivističkom koncepcijom, maštarije koje su dale toliko materijala da se ismeva Fourier ispoljavaju svoj iznenađujuće zdrav smisao. Prema Fourieru, trebalo je da valjan društveni rad ima sledeće posledice: da četiri meseca osvetljavaju zemaljsku noć, da se led povuče sa polova, da morska voda ne bude više slana i da zveri stupe u službu čoveka. Sve to razjašnjava rad koji, veoma udaljen od iskorišćavanja prirode, jeste u stanju da iz prirode izvuče tvorevine koje kao potencijalne dremaju u njenom okrilju. Uz korumpirano shvatanje o radu stoji kao njegova dopuna priroda, koja je, kao što se Dietzgen izražava, „tu besplatno“.

* Karl Marks i Fridrih Engels, Izabrana dela. Kultura I–II, Beograd 1950, str. 9.

XII

Potrebna nam je istorija, ali potrebna nam je drukčija od one što je potrebna razmaženom dokoličaru u vrtu znanja.

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— Nietzsche, O korisnosti i štetnosti istorije

Subjekt istorijskog saznanja jeste sama borbena, podjarmljena klasa. Kod Maraa se ona pojavljuje kao poslednja porobljena, kao osvetnička klasa, koja delo oslobođenja privodi kraju u ime generacija potučenih. Ta svest, koja je na kratko vreme u „Spartakusu“ još jednom došla do izraza, bila je odvajkada odbojna socijaldemokratiji. U toku tri decenije pošlo joj je za rukom da skoro izbriše ime Blanquija, čiji je tučani zvuk potresao prethodno stoleće. Zadovoljila se time da radničkoj klasi dodeli ulogu oslobodioca budućih generacija. Time joj je presekla žilu najbolje snage. Klasa se u toj školi brzo odučila kako od mržnje tako i od požrtvovanosti. Jer i jedno i drugo hrani se slikom porobljenih predaka, ne idealom oslobođenih unuka.

XIII

Naša stvar biće svakim danom jasnija, a narod svakim danom pametniji.

— Josef Dietzgen, Religija socijaldemokratije

Socijaldemokratsku teoriju, a još više praksu, određivala je predstava o napretku koja se nije držala stvarnosti, već je imala dogmatske pretenzije. Napredak, kakav se ocrtavao u glavama socijaldemokrata, bio je, prvo, napredak samog čovečanstva (ne samo njegove sposobnosti i znanja). Bio je, drugo, beskonačan (odgovarajući beskrajnoj perfektibilnosti čovečanstva). Smatran je bio, treće, u suštini nezadrživim (kao napredak koji automatski ide pravom ili spiralnom stazom). Svaki od tih predikata je kontroverzan, i svaki može biti povod za kritiku. Ali ona mora, ako dođe do žestoke borbe, zaći u pozadinu svih tih predikata i upraviti se na nešto što im je zajedničko. Predstava o napretku ljudskog roda u istoriji ne može se odvojiti od predstave o njenom toku koji prolazi homogenim i praznim vremenom. Kritika predstave toga toka mora uopšte biti temelj kritike predstave o napretku.

XIV

Poreklo je cilj.

— Karl Kraus, Reči u stihovima I

Istorija je predmet konstrukcije čije mesto ne čini homogeno i prazno vreme, već vreme ispunjeno „sadašnjošću“. Tako je za Robespierrea antički Rim bio sadašnjošću ispunjena prošlost, koju je on istrgao iz kontinuiteta istorije. Francuska revolucija je smatrala sebe novim Rimom. Citirala je stari Rim isto onako kao što moda citira nekadašnji način odevanja. Moda ima njuh za aktuelnost, ma gde se ova kretala u cestaru prošlosti. Ona je tigrov skok u prošlost. Samo što se on zbiva u areni u kojoj komanduje vladajuća klasa. Isti skok pod slobodnim nebom istorije jeste dijalektički skok kakvim je Marx shvatio revoluciju.

XV

Svest o razbijanju istorijskog kontinuiteta svojstvena je revolucionarnim klasama u trenutku njihovih akcija. Velika revolucija uvela je nov kalendar. Dan kojim kalendar počinje fungira kao istorijski sažimač vremena. I u osnovi uzevši isti se dan uvek vraća u vidu praznika, to znači dana sećanja. Kalendari, dakle, ne računaju vreme kao

6

časovnici. Oni su spomenici jedne određene istorijske svesti od koje u Evropi već sto godina izgleda da nema ni najbleđih tragova. Još u julskoj revoluciji (1830) odigrao se jedan događaj u kome se ta svest ispoljila. Kad se spustilo veče prvog dana borbe, na nekoliko mesta u Parizu, nezavisno ali istovremeno, pucalo se u časovnike na tornjevima. Jedan svedok, koji za svoju pronicljivost, možda, treba da zahvali rimi, zapisao je tada:

Qui le croirait! on dit qu’irrités contrel'heure.De nouveaux Josues au pied de chaque tour,Tiraient sur les cadrans pour arriter lejour.

(Ko bi verovao? Priča se da su, ljuti načasove,Novi Isusi Navini* u podnožju svakog tornjaPucali na brojčanike da zaustave dan.)

* Isus Navin, prema Bibliji jevrejski vođa posle Mojsija, koji je u jednoj bici naredio suncu da se zaustavi, kako bi do kraja izvojevao pobedu. — Prim. prev.

XVI

Istorijski materijalista ne može se odreći shvatanja sadašnjice koja nije prelaz, već zastaje u vremenu i miruje. Jer to shvatanje upravo definiše sadašnjost u kojoj on za sebe piše istoriju. Istorizam izlaže „večnu“ sliku prošlosti, istorijski materijalista iskustvo sa prošlošću, koje je jedinstveno u svojoj vrsti. Prepušta drugima da se istroše kod drolje „beše jednom“ u bordelu istorizma. Ostaje gospodar svojih snaga: dovoljno muževan da razori kontinuitet istorije.

XVII

Istorizam, potpuno zakonito, postiže vrhunac u opštoj istoriji. Od nje se materijalistička istoriografija metodski odvaja možda jasnije nego i od jedne druge. Ona prva nema teorijsku armaturu. Njen postupak je aditivan; prikuplja masu činjenica da bi ispunila homogeno i prazno vreme. U temelju marksističke istoriografije, međutim, nalazi se jedan konstruktivan princip. U mišljenje ne spada samo kretanje misli, već, isto tako, njihovo mirovanje. Tamo gde se mišljenje u konstelaciji zasićenoj napetostima iznenada zaustavlja, zadaje konstelaciji šok, usled kojeg se ono kristališe kao monada. Istorijski materijalista prilazi istorijskom predmetu jedino tamo gde se on pred njim pojavljuje kao monada. U toj strukturi Vidi znamenje mesijanskog mirovanja zbivanja, drukčije rečeno, revolucionarne šanse u borbi za podjarmljenu prošlost. Posmatra je da bi, razarajući, izbacio određenu epohu iz homogenog toka istorije, te tako izbacuje određeni život iz epohe, tako određeno delo iz životnog dela. Rezultat njegovog postupka sastoji se u tome što je sačuvano i ukinuto u delu životno delo, u životnome delu epoha, i u epohi celokupan istorijski tok. Hranljivi plod istorijski shvaćenog ima u svojoj jezgri vreme kao dragoceno ali neukusno seme.

XVIII

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„Ubogih pet milenija homo sapiensa“, kaže jedan noviji biolog, „predstavljaju, u odnosu na istoriju organskog života na zemlji, otprilike dve sekunde na kraju dana od dvadeset četiri časa. A istorija civilizovanog čovečanstva bi po tom merilu ispunila petinu poslednje sekunde poslednjeg časa.“ Sadašnjica, koja kao mesijanski model u ogromnoj abrevijaturi obuhvata istoriju celog čovečanstva, u dlaku se poklapa sa figurom koja čini istoriju čovečanstva u univerzumu.

A

Istorizam se zadovoljava uspostavljanjem kauzalnog neksusa različitih momenata istorije. Ali nijedno stanje stvari nije kao uzrok samim tim već i istorijsko. Postalo je to docnije, zahvaljujući događajima koji od njega mogu biti udaljeni milenijumima. Istoričar koji odatle polazi prestaje da sled zbivanja propušta kroz prste kao brojanice. On uočava konstelaciju u koju je stupila njegova epoha sa nekom sasvim određenom ranijom. Zasniva tako shvatanje sada prisutnog vremena kao „sadašnjosti“ u kojoj se nalaze delići mesijanske sadašnjosti.

B

Sigurno je da proroci koji su ispitivali šta vreme krije u sebi nisu vreme doživljavali ni kao homogeno ni kao prazno. Ko to ima u vidu možda će shvatiti kako je u sećanju doživljena prošlost: naime, isto tako. Kao što je poznato, Jevrejima je bilo zabranjeno da istražuju budućnost. Tora i molitva poučavali su ih, naprotiv, da se sećaju. To im je lišilo čari budućnost, kojoj su podlegli oni što traže obaveštenje od proroka. Ali zato za Jevreje budućnost ipak nije postala homogeno i prazno vreme. Jer je u njoj svaka sekunda bila mala kapija kroz koju je mogao ući Mesija.

TEOLOŠKO-POLITIČKI FRAGMENT

Tek sam Mesija završava sve istorijsko zbivanje i to u tom smislu što odnos istorijskog zbivanja prema samom mesijanstvu tek oslobađa, završava, stvara. Zato ništa što je istorijsko ne može samo od sebe hteti da se odnosi na mesijansko. Zato carstvo božije nije svrha istorijske dinamike; ono ne može biti postavljeno kao cilj. Istorijski gledano, ono nije cilj već kraj. Zato se poredak profanog ne može izgraditi na ideji carstva božjeg, zato teokratija nema politički, već samo religiozan smisao. (Najveća je zasluga Blochovog Duha utopije što je najodlučnije negirao politički značaj teokratije.)

Poredak profanog treba da se izgradi na ideji sreće. Odnos toga poretka prema mesijanstvu jedna je od bitnih poučnih stvari filozofije istorije. Ona uslovljava mističko shvatanje istorije, čiji se problem da izložiti jednom slikom. Ako jedan pravac strelice obeležava cilj ka kome deluje dinamika profanog, a drugi mesijanski intenzitet, onda, doduše, traženje sreće slobodnog čovečanstva teži da se udalji od tog mesijanskog pravca, ali kao što neka sila svojom putanjom može potpomoći drugu na suprotnoj putanji, tako i profani poredak profanog može potpomoći dolazak mesijanskog carstva. Dakle, profanost, doduše, nije kategorija carstva, ali je kategorija, i to jedna od najpreciznijih, njegovog najtišeg približavanja. Jer u sreći sve zemaljsko teži svome nestanku, ali samo u sreći mu je suđeno da nađe svoj nestanak. — Dok neposredni mesijanski intenzitet srca, duše pojedinca, prolazi kroz nesreću, kao patnja. Duhovnoj restitutio in integrum, koja vodi besmrtnosti, odgovara

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svetovna, koja vodi u večnost nestanka, i ritam te večno prolazne, u svom totalitetu prolazne, u svom prostornom, ali i vremenskom totalitetu prolazne svetovne restitucije, taj ritam mesijanske prirode, jeste sreća. Jer priroda je mesijanska po svojoj večnoj i totalnoj prolaznosti. Težiti njoj, čak i za one stupnjeve čoveka koji su priroda, zadatak je svetske politike, čiji metod treba da se zove nihilizam.

1940.

Scan & OCR: AG, 2011.

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Walter Benjamin

ÜBER DEN BEGRIFF DER GESCHICHTE

I

Bekanntlich soll es einen Automaten gegeben haben, der so konstruiert gewesen sei, daß er jeden Zug eines Schachspielers mit einem Gegenzuge erwidert habe, der ihm den Gewinn der Partie sicherte. Eine Puppe in türkischer Tracht, eine Wasserpfeife im Munde, saß vor dem Brett, das auf einem geräumigen Tisch aufruhte. Durch ein System von Spiegeln wurde die Illusion erweckt, dieser Tisch sei von allen Seiten durchsichtig. In Wahrheit saß ein buckliger Zwerg darin, der ein Meister im Schachspiel war und die Hand der Puppe an Schnüren lenkte. Zu dieser Apparatur kann man sich ein Gegenstück in der Philosophie vorstellen. Gewinnen soll immer die Puppe, die man ´historischen Materialismus´ nennt. Sie kann es ohne weiteres mit jedem aufnehmen, wenn sie die Theologie in ihren Dienst nimmt, die heute bekanntlich klein und häßlich ist und sich ohnehin nicht darf blicken lassen.

II

»Zu den bemerkenswerthesten Eigenthümlichkeiten des menschlichen Gemüths«, sagt Lotze, »gehört - neben so vieler Selbstsucht im Einzelnen die allgemeine Neidlosigkeit jeder Gegenwart gegen ihre Zukunft.« Diese Reflexion führt darauf, daß das Bild von Glück, das wir hegen, durch und durch von der Zeit tingiert ist, in welche der Verlauf unseres eigenen Daseins uns nun einmal verwiesen hat. Glück, das Neid in uns erwecken könnte, gibt es nur in der Luft, die wir geatmet haben, mit Menschen, zu denen wir hätten reden, mit Frauen, die sich uns hätten geben können. Es schwingt, mit andern Worten, in der Vorstellung des Glücks unveräußerlich die der Erlösung mit. Mit der Vorstellung von Vergangenheit, welche die Geschichte zu ihrer Sache macht, verhält es sich ebenso. Die Vergangenheit führt einen heimlichen Index mit, durch den sie auf die Erlösung verwiesen wird. Streift denn nicht uns selber ein Hauch der Luft, die um die Früheren gewesen ist? ist nicht in Stimmen, denen wir unser Ohr schenken, ein Echo von nun verstummten? haben die Frauen, die wir umwerben, nicht Schwestern, die sie nicht mehr gekannt haben? Ist dem so, dann besteht eine geheime Verabredung zwischen den gewesenen Geschlechtern und unserem. Dann sind wir auf der Erde erwartet worden. Dann ist uns wie jedem Geschlecht, das vor uns war, eine schwache messianische Kraft mitgegeben, an welche die Vergangenheit Anspruch hat. Billig ist dieser Anspruch nicht abzufertigen. Der historische Materialist weiß darum.

III

Der Chronist, welcher die Ereignisse hererzählt, ohne große und kleine zu unterscheiden, trägt damit der Wahrheit Rechnung, daß nichts was sich jemals ereignet hat, für die Geschichte verloren zu geben ist. Freilich fällt erst der erlösten Menschheit ihre Vergangenheit vollauf zu. Das will sagen: erst der erlösten Menschheit ist ihre

10

Vergangenheit in jedem ihrer Momente zitierbar geworden. Jeder ihrer gelebten Augenblicke wird zu einer citation à l‘ordre du jour - welcher Tag eben der jüngste ist.

IV

Trachtet am ersten nach Nahrung und Kleidung, so wird euch das Reich Gottes von selbst zufallen. — Hegel, 1807

Der Klassenkampf, der einem Historiker, der an Marx geschult ist, immer vor Augen steht, ist ein Kampf um die rohen und materiellen Dinge, ohne die es keine feinen und spirituellen gibt. Trotzdem sind diese letztern im Klassenkampf anders zugegen denn als die Vorstellung einer Beute, die an den Sieger fällt. Sie sind als Zuversicht, als Mut, als Humor, als List, als Unentwegtheit in diesem Kampf lebendig und sie wirken in die Ferne der Zeit zurück. Sie werden immer von neuem jeden Sieg, der den Herrschenden jemals zugefallen ist, in Frage stellen. Wie Blumen ihr Haupt nach der Sonne wenden, so strebt kraft eines Heliotropismus geheimer Art, das Gewesene der Sonne sich zuzuwenden, die am Himmel der Geschichte im Aufgehen ist. Auf diese unscheinbarste von allen Veränderungen muß sich der historische Materialist verstehen.

V

Das wahre Bild der Vergangenheit huscht vorbei. Nur als Bild, das auf Nimmerwiedersehen im Augenblick seiner Erkennbarkeit eben aufblitzt, ist die Vergangenheit festzuhalten. ´Die Wahrheit wird uns nicht davonlaufen´ - dieses Wort, das von Gottfried Keller stammt, bezeichnet im Geschichtsbild des Historismus genau die Stelle, an der es vom historischen Materialismus durchschlagen wird. Denn es ist ein unwiederbringliches Bild der Vergangenheit, das mit jeder Gegenwart zu verschwinden droht, die sich nicht als in ihm gemeint erkannte.

VI

Vergangenes historisch artikulieren heißt nicht, es erkennen ´wie es denn eigentlich gewesen ist´. Es heißt, sich einer Erinnerung bemächtigen, wie sie im Augenblick einer Gefahr aufblitzt. Dem historischen Materialismus geht es darum, ein Bild der Vergangenheit festzuhalten, wie es sich im Augenblick der Gefahr dem historischen Subjekt unversehens einstellt. Die Gefahr droht sowohl dem Bestand der Tradition wie ihren Empfängern. Für beide ist sie ein und dieselbe: sich zum Werkzeug der herrschenden Klasse herzugeben. In jeder Epoche muß versucht werden, die Überlieferung von neuem dem Konformismus abzugewinnen, der im Begriff steht, sie zu überwältigen. Der Messias kommt ja nicht nur als der Erlöser; er kommt als der Überwinder des Antichrist. Nur dem Geschichtsschreiber wohnt die Gabe bei, im Vergangenen den Funken der Hoffnung anzufachen, der davon durchdrungen ist: auch die Toten werden vor dem Feind, wenn er siegt, nicht sicher sein. Und dieser Feind hat zu siegen nicht aufgehört.

VII

Bedenkt das Dunkel und die große Kälte In diesem Tale, das von Jammer schallt.

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— Brecht, Die Dreigroschenoper

Fustel de Coulanges empfiehlt dem Historiker, wolle er eine Epoche nacherleben, so solle er alles, was er vom spätern Verlauf der Geschichte wisse, sich aus dem Kopf schlagen. Besser ist das Verfahren nicht zu kennzeichnen, mit dem der historische Materialismus gebrochen hat. Es ist ein Verfahren der Einfühlung. Sein Ursprung ist die Trägheit des Herzens, die acedia, welche daran verzagt, des echten historischen Bildes sich zu bemächtigen, das flüchtig aufblitzt. Sie galt bei den Theologen des Mittelalters als der Urgrund der Traurigkeit. Flaubert, der Bekanntschaft mit ihr gemacht hatte, schreibt: »Peu de gens devineront combien il a fallu être triste pour ressusciter Carthage.« Die Natur dieser Traurigkeit wird deutlicher, wenn man die Frage aufwirft, in wen sich denn der Geschichtsschreiber des Historismus eigentlich einfühlt. Die Antwort lautet unweigerlich in den Sieger. Die jeweils Herrschenden sind aber die Erben aller, die je gesiegt haben. Die Einfühlung in den Sieger kommt demnach den jeweils Herrschenden allemal zugut. Damit ist dem historischen Materialisten genug gesagt. Wer immer bis zu diesem Tage den Sieg davontrug, der marschiert mit in dem Triumphzug, der die heute Herrschenden über die dahinführt, die heute am Boden liegen. Die Beute wird, wie das immer so üblich war, im Triumphzug mitgeführt. Man bezeichnet sie als die Kulturgüter. Sie werden im historischen Materialisten mit einem distanzierten Betrachter zu rechnen haben. Denn was er an Kulturgütern überblickt, das ist ihm samt und sonders von einer Abkunft, die er nicht ohne Grauen bedenken kann. Es dankt sein Dasein nicht nur der Mühe der großen Genien, die es geschaffen haben, sondern auch der namenlosen Fron ihrer Zeitgenossen. Es ist niemals ein Dokument der Kultur, ohne zugleich ein solches der Barbarei zu sein. Und wie es selbst nicht frei ist von Barbarei, so ist es auch der Prozeß der Überlieferung nicht, in der es von dem einen an den andern gefallen ist. Der historische Materialist rückt daher nach Maßgabe des Möglichen von ihr ab. Er betrachtet es als seine Aufgabe, die Geschichte gegen den Strich zu bürsten.

VIII

Die Tradition der Unterdrückten belehrt uns darüber, daß der ´Ausnahmezustand´, in dem wir leben, die Regel ist. Wir müssen zu einem Begriff der Geschichte kommen, der dem entspricht. Dann wird uns als unsere Aufgabe die Herbeiführung des wirklichen Ausnahmezustands vor Augen stehen; und dadurch wird unsere Position im Kampf gegen den Faschismus sich verbessern. Dessen Chance besteht nicht zuletzt darin, daß die Gegner ihm im Namen des Fortschritts als einer historischen Norm begegnen. - Das Staunen darüber, daß die Dinge, die wir erleben, im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert ´noch´ möglich sind, ist kein philosophisches. Es steht nicht am Anfang einer Erkenntnis, es sei denn der, daß die Vorstellung von Geschichte, aus der es stammt, nicht zu halten ist.

IX

Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung bereit ich kehrte gern zurück denn blieb‘ ich auch lebendige Zeit ich hätte wenig Glück. — Gerhard Scholem, Gruß vom Angelus

Es gibt ein Bild von Klee, das Angelus Novus heißt. Ein Engel ist darauf dargestellt, der aussieht, als wäre er im Begriff, sich von etwas zu entfernen, worauf er starrt. Seine Augen sind aufgerissen, sein Mund steht offen und seine Flügel sind ausgespannt. Der Engel der Geschichte muß so aussehen. Er hat das Antlitz der

12

Vergangenheit zugewendet. Wo eine Kette von Begebenheiten vor uns erscheint, da sieht er eine einzige Katastrophe, die unablässig Trümmer auf Trümmer häuft und sie ihm vor die Füße schleudert. Er möchte wohl verweilen, die Toten wecken und das Zerschlagene zusammenfügen. Aber ein Sturm weht vom Paradiese her, der sich in seinen Flügeln verfangen hat und so stark ist, daß der Engel sie nicht mehr schließen kann. Dieser Sturm treibt ihn unaufhaltsam in die Zukunft, der er den Rücken kehrt, während der Trümmerhaufen vor ihm zum Himmel wächst. Das, was wir den Fortschritt nennen, ist dieser Sturm.

X

Die Gegenstände, die die Klosterregel den Brüdern zur Meditation anwies, hatten die Aufgabe, sie der Welt und ihrem Treiben abhold zu machen. Dem Gedankengang, den wir hier verfolgen, ist aus einer ähnlichen Bestimmung hervorgegangen. Er beabsichtigt in einem Augenblick, da die Politiker, auf die die Gegner des Faschismus gehofft hatten, am Boden liegen und ihre Niederlage mit dem Verrat an der eigenen Sache bekräftigen, das politische Weltkind aus den Netzen zu lösen, mit denen sie es umgarnt hatten. Die Betrachtung geht davon aus, daß der sture Fortschrittsglaube dieser Politiker, ihr Vertrauen in ihre ´Massenbasis´ und schließlich ihre servile Einordnung in einen unkontrollierbaren Apparat drei Seiten derselben Sache gewesen sind. Sie sucht einen Begriff davon zu geben, wie teuer unser gewohntes Denken eine Vorstellung von Geschichte zu stehen kommt, die jede Komplizität mit der vermeidet, an der diese Politiker weiter festhalten.

XI

Der Konformismus, dem von Anfang an in der Sozialdemokratie heimisch gewesen ist, haftet nicht nur an ihrer politischen Taktik, sondern auch an ihren ökonomischen Vorstellungen. Er ist eine Ursache des späteren Zusammenbruchs. Es gibt nichts, was die deutsche Arbeiterschaft in dem Grade korrumpiert hat wie die Meinung, sie schwimme mit dem Strom. Die technische Entwicklung galt ihr als das Gefälle des Stromes, mit dem sie zu schwimmen meinte. Von da war es nur ein Schritt zu der Illusion, die Fabrikarbeit, die im Zuge des technischen Fortschritts gelegen sei, stelle eine politische Leistung dar. Die alte protestantische Werkmoral feierte in säkularisierter Gestalt bei den deutschen Arbeitern ihre Auferstehung. Das Gothaer Programm trägt bereits Spuren dieser Verwirrung an sich. Es definiert die Arbeit als »die Quelle alles Reichtums und aller Kultur«. Böses ahnend, entgegnete Marx darauf, daß der Mensch, der kein anderes Eigentum besitze als seine Arbeitskraft, »der Sklave der andern Menschen sein muß, die sich zu Eigentümern ... gemacht haben«. Unbeschadet dessen greift die Konfusion weiter um sich, und bald darauf verkündet Josef Dietzgen: »Arbeit heißt der Heiland der neueren Zeit . . . In der . . . Verbesserung ... der Arbeit ... besteht der Reichtum, der jetzt vollbringen kann, was bisher kein Erlöser vollbracht hat.« Dieser vulgär-marxistische Begriff von dem, was die Arbeit ist, hält sich bei der Frage nicht lange auf, wie ihr Produkt den Arbeitern selber anschlägt, solange sie nicht darüber verfügen können. Er will nur die Fortschritte der Naturbeherrschung, nicht die Rückschritte der Gesellschaft wahr haben. Er weist schon die technokratischen Züge auf, die später im Faschismus begegnen werden. Zu diesen gehört ein Begriff der Natur, der sich auf unheilverkündende Art von dem in den sozialistischen Utopien des Vormärz abhebt. Die Arbeit, wie sie nunmehr verstanden

13

wird, läuft auf die Ausbeutung der Natur hinaus, welche man mit naiver Genugtuung der Ausbeutung des Proletariats gegenüber stellt. Mit dieser positivistischen Konzeption verglichen erweisen die Phantastereien, die so viel Stoff zur Verspottung eines Fourier gegeben haben, ihren überraschend gesunden Sinn. Nach Fourier sollte die wohlbeschaffene gesellschaftliche Arbeit zur Folge haben, daß vier Monde die irdische Nacht erleuchteten, daß das Eis sich von den Polen zurückziehen, daß das Meerwasser nicht mehr salzig schmecke und die Raubtiere in den Dienst des Menschen träten. Das alles illustriert eine Arbeit, die, weit entfernt die Natur auszubeuten, von den Schöpfungen sie zu entbinden imstande ist, die als mögliche in ihrem Schoße schlummern. Zu dem korrumpierten Begriff von Arbeit gehört als sein Komplement die Natur, welche, wie Dietzgen sich ausgedrückt hat, »gratis da ist«.

XII

Wir brauchen Historie, aber wir brauchen sie anders, als sie der verwöhnte Müßiggänger im Garten des Wissens braucht. — Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben

Das Subjekt historischer Erkenntnis ist die kämpfende, unterdrückte Klasse selbst. Bei Marx tritt sie als die letzte geknechtete, als die rächende Klasse auf, die das Werk der Befreiung im Namen von Generationen Geschlagener zu Ende führt. Dieses Bewußtsein, das für kurze Zeit im ´Spartacus´ noch einmal zur Geltung gekommen ist, war der Sozialdemokratie von jeher anstößig. Im Lauf von drei Jahrzehnten gelang es ihr, den Namen eines Blanqui fast auszulöschen, dessen Erzklang das vorige Jahrhundert erschüttert hat. Sie gefiel sich darin, der Arbeiterklasse die Rolle einer Erlöserin künftiger Generationen zuzuspielen. Sie durchschnitt ihr damit die Sehne der besten Kraft. Die Klasse verlernte in dieser Schule gleich sehr den Haß wie den Opferwillen. Denn beide nähren sich an dem Bild der geknechteten Vorfahren, nicht am Ideal der befreiten Enkel.

XIII

Wird doch unsere Sache alle Tage klarer und das Volk alle Tage klüger. — Josef Dietzgen, Sozialdemokratische Philosophie

Die sozialdemokratische Theorie, und noch mehr die Praxis, wurde von einem Fortschrittsbegriff bestimmt, der sich nicht an die Wirklichkeit hielt, sondern einen dogmatischen Anspruch hatte. Der Fortschritt, wie er sich in den Köpfen der Sozialdemokraten malte, war, einmal, ein Fortschritt der Menschheit selbst (nicht nur ihrer Fertigkeiten und Kenntnisse). Er war, zweitens, ein unabschließbarer (einer unendlichen Perfektibilität der Menschheit entsprechender). Er galt, drittens, als ein wesentlich unaufhaltsamer (als ein selbsttätig eine grade oder spiralförmige Bahn durchlaufender). Jedes dieser Prädikate ist kontrovers, und an jedem könnte die Kritik ansetzen. Sie muß aber, wenn es hart auf hart kommt, hinter all diese Prädikate zurückgehen und sich auf etwas richten, was ihnen gemeinsam ist. Die Vorstellung eines Fortschritts des Menschengeschlechts in der Geschichte ist von der Vorstellung ihres eine homogene und leere Zeit durchlaufenden Fortgangs nicht abzulösen. Die Kritik an der Vorstellung dieses Fortgangs muß die Grundlage der Kritik an der Vorstellung des Fortschritts überhaupt bilden.

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XIV

Ursprung ist das Ziel. — Karl Kraus, Worte in Versen 1

Die Geschichte ist Gegenstand einer Konstruktion, deren Ort nicht die homogene und leere Zeit sondern die von Jetztzeit erfüllte bildet. So war für Robespierre das antike Rom eine mit Jetztzeit geladene Vergangenheit, die er aus dem Kontinuum der Geschichte heraussprengte. Die französische Revolution verstand sich als ein wiedergekehrtes Rom. Sie zitierte das alte Rom genau so wie die Mode eine vergangene Tracht zitiert. Die Mode hat die Witterung für das Aktuelle, wo immer es sich im Dickicht des Einst bewegt. Sie ist der Tigersprung ins Vergangene. Nur findet er in einer Arena statt, in der die herrschende Klasse kommandiert. Derselbe Sprung unter dem freien Himmel der Geschichte ist der dialektische als den Marx die Revolution begriffen hat.

XV

Das Bewusstsein, das Kontinuum der Geschichte aufzusprengen, ist den revolutionären Klassen im Augenblick ihrer Aktion eigentümlich. Die Große Revolution führte einen neuen Kalender ein. Der Tag, mit dem ein Kalender einsetzt, fungiert als ein historischer Zeitraffer. Und es ist im Grunde genommen derselbe Tag, der in Gestalt der Feiertage, die Tage des Eingedenkens sind, immer wiederkehrt. Die Kalender zählen die Zeit also nicht wie Uhren. Sie sind Monumente eines Geschichtsbewusstseins, von dem es in Europa seit hundert Jahren nicht mehr die leisesten Spuren zu geben scheint. Noch in der Juli-Revolution hatte sich ein Zwischenfall zugetragen, in dem dieses Bewusstsein zu seinem Recht gelangte. Als der Abend des ersten Kampftages gekommen war, ergab es sich, dass an mehreren Stellen von Paris unabhängig von einander und gleichzeitig nach den Turmuhren geschossen wurde. Ein Augenzeuge, der seine Divination vielleicht dem Reim zu verdanken hat, schrieb damals:

Qui le croirait! on dit qu’irrités contre l‘heure De nouveaux Josués, au pied de chaque tour, Tiraient sur les cadrans pour arrêter le jour.

XVI

Auf den Begriff einer Gegenwart, die nicht Übergang ist sondern in der die Zeit einsteht und zum Stillstand gekommen ist, kann der historische Materialist nicht verzichten. Denn dieser Begriff definiert eben die Gegenwart, in der er für seine Person Geschichte schreibt. Der Historismus stellt das ´ewige´ Bild der Vergangenheit, der historische Materialist eine Erfahrung mit ihr, die einzig dasteht. Er überläßt es andern, bei der Hure ´Es war einmal´ im Bordell des Historismus sich auszugeben. Er bleibt seiner Kräfte Herr: Manns genug, das Kontinuum der Geschichte aufzusprengen.

XVII

Der Historismus gipfelt von rechtswegen in der Universalgeschichte. Von ihr hebt die materialistische Geschichtsschreibung sich methodisch vielleicht deutlicher als von jeder andern ab. Die erstere hat keine theoretische Armatur. Ihr Verfahren ist additiv:

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sie bietet die Masse der Fakten auf, um die homogene und leere Zeit auszufüllen. Der materialistischen Geschichtsschreibung ihrerseits liegt ein konstruktives Prinzip zugrunde. Zum Denken gehört nicht nur die Bewegung der Gedanken sondern ebenso ihre Stillstellung. Wo das Denken in einer von Spannungen gesättigten Konstellation plötzlich einhält, da erteilt es derselben einen Chock, durch den es sich als Monade kristallisiert. Der historische Materialist geht an einen geschichtlichen Gegenstand einzig und allein da heran, wo er ihm als Monade entgegentritt. In dieser Struktur erkennt er das Zeichen einer messianischen Stillstellung des Geschehens, anders gesagt, einer revolutionären Chance im Kampfe für die unterdrückte Vergangenheit. Er nimmt sie wahr, um eine bestimmte Epoche aus dem homogenen Verlauf der Geschichte herauszusprengen; so sprengt er ein bestimmtes Leben aus der Epoche, so ein bestimmtes Werk aus dem Lebenswerk. Der Ertrag seines Verfahrens besteht darin, daß im Werk das Lebenswerk, im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesamte Geschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt ist und aufgehoben. Die nahrhafte Frucht des historisch Begriffenen hat die Zeit als den kostbaren, aber des Geschmacks entratenden Samen in ihrem Innern.

XVIII

»Die kümmerlichen fünf Jahrzehntausende des homo sapiens«, sagt ein neuerer Biologe, »stellen im Verhältnis zur Geschichte des organischen Lebens auf der Erde etwas wie zwei Sekunden am Schluß eines Tages von vierundzwanzig Stunden dar. Die Geschichte der zivilisierten Menschheit vollends würde, in diesen Maßstab eingetragen, ein Fünftel der letzten Sekunde der letzten Stunde füllen.« Die Jetztzeit, die als Modell der messianischen in einer ungeheueren Abbreviatur die Geschichte der ganzen Menschheit zusammenfaßt, fällt haarscharf mit der Figur zusammen, die die Geschichte der Menschheit im Universum macht.

ANHANG

A

Der Historismus begnügt sich damit, einen Kausalnexus von verschiedenen Momenten der Geschichte zu etablieren. Aber kein Tatbestand ist als Ursache eben darum bereits ein historischer. Er ward das, posthum, durch Begebenheiten, die durch Jahrtausende von ihm getrennt sein mögen. Der Historiker, der davon ausgeht, hört auf, sich die Abfolge von Begebenheiten durch die Finger laufen zu lassen wie einen Rosenkranz. Er erfaßt die Konstellation, in die seine eigene Epoche mit einer ganz bestimmten früheren getreten ist. Er begründet so einen Begriff der Gegenwart als der ´Jetztzeit´, in welcher Splitter der messianischen eingesprengt sind.

B

Sicher wurde die Zeit von den Wahrsagern, die ihr abfragten, was sie in ihrem Schoße birgt, weder als homogen noch als leer erfahren. Wer sich das vor Augen hält, kommt vielleicht zu einem Begriff davon, wie im Eingedenken die vergangene Zeit ist erfahren worden: nämlich ebenso. Bekanntlich war es den Juden untersagt, der Zukunft nachzuforschen. Die Thora und das Gebet unterweisen sie dagegen im Eingedenken. Dieses entzauberte ihnen die Zukunft, der die verfallen sind, die sich bei den Wahrsagern Auskunft holen. Den Juden wurde die Zukunft aber darum doch

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nicht zur homogenen und leeren Zeit. Denn in ihr war jede Sekunde die kleine Pforte, durch die der Messias treten konnte.

THEOLOGISCH-POLITISCHES FRAGMENT

Erst der Messias selbst vollendet alles historische Geschehen, und zwar in dem Sinne, daß er dessen Beziehung auf das Messianische selbst erst erlöst, vollendet, schafft. Darum kann nichts Historisches von sich aus sich auf Messianisches beziehen wollen. Darum ist das Reich Gottes nicht das Telos der historischen Dynamis; es kann nicht zum Ziel gesetzt werden. Historisch gesehen ist es nicht Ziel, sondern Ende. Darum kann die Ordnung des Profanen nicht am Gedanken des Gottesreiches aufgebaut werden, darum hat die Theokratie keinen politischen sondern allein einen religiösen Sinn. Die politische Bedeutung der Theokratie mit aller Intensität geleugnet zu haben ist das größte Verdienst von Blochs »Geist der Utopie«.

Die Ordnung des Profanen hat sich aufzurichten an der Idee des Glücks. Die Beziehung dieser Ordnung auf das Messianische ist eines der wesentlichen Lehrstücke der Geschichtsphilosophie. Und zwar ist von ihr aus eine mystische Geschichtsauffassung bedingt, deren Problem in einem Bilde sich darlegen läßt. Wenn eine Pfeilrichtung das Ziel, in welchem die Dynamis des Profanen wirkt, bezeichnet, eine andere die Richtung der messianischen Intensität, so strebt freilich das Glückssuchen der freien Menschheit von jener messianischen Richtung fort, aber wie eine Kraft durch ihren Weg eine andere auf entgegengesetzt gerichtetem Wege zu befördern vermag, so auch die profane Ordnung des Profanen das Kommen des messianischen Reiches. Das Profane also ist zwar keine Kategorie des Reichs, aber eine Kategorie, und zwar der zutreffendsten eine, seines leisesten Nahens. Denn im Glück erstrebt alles Irdische seinen Untergang, nur im Glück aber ist ihm der Untergang zu finden bestimmt. — Während freilich die unmittelbare messianische Intensität des Herzens, des innern einzelnen Menschen durch Unglück, im Sinne des Leidens hindurchgeht. Der geistlichen restitutio in integrum, welche in die Unsterblichkeit einführt, entspricht eine weltliche, die in die Ewigkeit eines Unterganges führt und der Rhythmus dieses ewig vergehenden, in seiner Totalität vergehenden, in seiner räumlichen, aber auch zeitlichen Totalität vergehenden Weltlichen, der Rhythmus der messianischen Natur, ist Glück. Denn messianisch ist die Natur aus ihrer ewigen und totalen Vergängnis.

Diese zu erstreben, auch für diejenigen Stufen des Menschen, welche Natur sind, ist die Aufgabe der Weltpolitik, deren Methode Nihilismus zu heißen hat.

1940.

17

Walter Benjamin.

On the Concept of History Gesammelten Schriften I:2. Suhrkamp Verlag. Frankfurt am Main, 1974.

Translated by Dennis Redmond, 2005.

(bez „Teološko-političkog fragmenta“)

Two brief notes on the translation: Jetztzeit was translated as “here-and-now”, in order to distinguish it from its polar opposite, the empty and homogenous time of positivism. Stillstellung was rendered as “zero-hour”, rather than the misleading “standstill”; the verb “stillstehen” means to come to a stop or standstill, but Stillstellung is Benjamin’s own unique invention, which connotes an objective interruption of a mechanical process, rather like the dramatic pause at the end of an action-adventure movie, when the audience is waiting to find out if the time-bomb/missile/terrorist device was defused or not.

I

It is well-known that an automaton once existed, which was so constructed that it could counter any move of a chess-player with a counter-move, and thereby assure itself of victory in the match. A puppet in Turkish attire, water-pipe in mouth, sat before the chessboard, which rested on a broad table. Through a system of mirrors, the illusion was created that this table was transparent from all sides. In truth, a hunchbacked dwarf who was a master chess-player sat inside, controlling the hands of the puppet with strings. One can envision a corresponding object to this apparatus in philosophy. The puppet called “historical materialism” is always supposed to win. It can do this with no further ado against any opponent, so long as it employs the services of theology, which as everyone knows is small and ugly and must be kept out of sight.

II

“Among the most noteworthy characteristics of human beings,” says Lotze, “belongs… next to so much self-seeking in individuals, the general absence of envy of each present in relation to the future.” This reflection shows us that the picture of happiness which we harbor is steeped through and through in the time which the course of our own existence has conferred on us. The happiness which could awaken envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed, with people we could have spoken with, with women who might have been able to give themselves to us. The conception of happiness, in other words, resonates irremediably with that of resurrection [Erloesung: transfiguration, redemption]. It is just the same with the conception of the past, which makes history into its affair. The past carries a secret index with it, by which it is referred to its resurrection. Are we not touched by the same breath of air which was among that which came before? is there not an echo of those who have been silenced in the voices to which we lend our ears today? have not the women, who we court, sisters who they do not recognize anymore? If so, then there is a secret

18

protocol [Verabredung: also appointment] between the generations of the past and that of our own. For we have been expected upon this earth. For it has been given us to know, just like every generation before us, a weak messianic power, on which the past has a claim. This claim is not to be settled lightly. The historical materialist knows why.

III

The chronicler, who recounts events without distinguishing between the great and small, thereby accounts for the truth, that nothing which has ever happened is to be given as lost to history. Indeed, the past would fully befall only a resurrected humanity. Said another way: only for a resurrected humanity would its past, in each of its moments, be citable. Each of its lived moments becomes a citation a l’ordre du jour [order of the day] – whose day is precisely that of the Last Judgement.

IV

Secure at first food and clothing, and the kingdom of God will come to you of itself. — Hegel, 1807

The class struggle, which always remains in view for a historian schooled in Marx, is a struggle for the rough and material things, without which there is nothing fine and spiritual. Nevertheless these latter are present in the class struggle as something other than mere booty, which falls to the victor. They are present as confidence, as courage, as humor, as cunning, as steadfastness in this struggle, and they reach far back into the mists of time. They will, ever and anon, call every victory which has ever been won by the rulers into question. Just as flowers turn their heads towards the sun, so too does that which has been turn, by virtue of a secret kind of heliotropism, towards the sun which is dawning in the sky of history. To this most inconspicuous of all transformations the historical materialist must pay heed.

V

The true picture of the past whizzes by. Only as a picture, which flashes its final farewell in the moment of its recognizability, is the past to be held fast. “The truth will not run away from us” – this remark by Gottfried Keller denotes the exact place where historical materialism breaks through historicism’s picture of history. For it is an irretrievable picture of the past, which threatens to disappear with every present, which does not recognize itself as meant in it.

VI

To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger. For historical materialism it is a question of holding fast to a picture of the past, just as if it had unexpectedly thrust itself, in a moment of danger, on the historical subject. The danger threatens the stock of tradition as much as its recipients. For both it is one and the same: handing itself over as the tool of the ruling classes. In every epoch, the attempt must be made to deliver tradition anew from the conformism which is on the

19

point of overwhelming it. For the Messiah arrives not merely as the Redeemer; he also arrives as the vanquisher of the Anti-christ. The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.

VII

Think of the darkness and the great coldIn this valley, which resounds with misery.

— Brecht, Threepenny Opera

Fustel de Coulanges recommended to the historian, that if he wished to reexperience an epoch, he should remove everything he knows about the later course of history from his head. There is no better way of characterizing the method with which historical materialism has broken. It is a procedure of empathy. Its origin is the heaviness at heart, the acedia, which despairs of mastering the genuine historical picture, which so fleetingly flashes by. The theologians of the Middle Ages considered it the primary cause of melancholy. Flaubert, who was acquainted with it, wrote: “Peu de gens devineront combien il a fallu être triste pour ressusciter Carthage.” [Few people can guess how despondent one has to be in order to resuscitate Carthage.] The nature of this melancholy becomes clearer, once one asks the question, with whom does the historical writer of historicism actually empathize. The answer is irrefutably with the victor. Those who currently rule are however the heirs of all those who have ever been victorious. Empathy with the victors thus comes to benefit the current rulers every time. This says quite enough to the historical materialist. Whoever until this day emerges victorious, marches in the triumphal procession in which today’s rulers tread over those who are sprawled underfoot. The spoils are, as was ever the case, carried along in the triumphal procession. They are known as the cultural heritage. In the historical materialist they have to reckon with a distanced observer. For what he surveys as the cultural heritage is part and parcel of a lineage [Abkunft: descent] which he cannot contemplate without horror. It owes its existence not only to the toil of the great geniuses, who created it, but also to the nameless drudgery of its contemporaries. There has never been a document of culture, which is not simultaneously one of barbarism. And just as it is itself not free from barbarism, neither is it free from the process of transmission, in which it falls from one set of hands into another. The historical materialist thus moves as far away from this as measurably possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.

VIII

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history which corresponds to this. Then it will become clear that the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency; and our position in the struggle against Fascism will thereby improve. Not the least reason that the latter has a chance is that its opponents, in the name of progress, greet it as a historical norm. – The astonishment that the things we are experiencing in the 20th century are “still” possible is by no means philosophical. It is not the beginning of knowledge, unless it would be the knowledge that the conception of history on which it rests is untenable.

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IX

My wing is ready to flyI would rather turn backFor had I stayed mortal timeI would have had little luck.

— Gerhard Scholem, “Angelic Greetings”

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.

X

The objects which the monastic rules assigned to monks for meditation had the task of making the world and its drives repugnant. The mode of thought which we pursue today comes from a similar determination. It has the intention, at a moment wherein the politicians in whom the opponents of Fascism had placed their hopes have been knocked supine, and have sealed their downfall by the betrayal of their own cause, of freeing the political child of the world from the nets in which they have ensnared it. The consideration starts from the assumption that the stubborn faith in progress of these politicians, their trust in their “mass basis” and finally their servile subordination into an uncontrollable apparatus have been three sides of the same thing. It seeks to give an idea of how dearly it will cost our accustomed concept of history, to avoid any complicity with that which these politicians continue to hold fast to.

XI

The conformism which has dwelt within social democracy from the very beginning rests not merely on its political tactics, but also on its economic conceptions. It is a fundamental cause of the later collapse. There is nothing which has corrupted the German working-class so much as the opinion that they were swimming with the tide. Technical developments counted to them as the course of the stream, which they thought they were swimming in. From this, it was only a step to the illusion that the factory-labor set forth by the path of technological progress represented a political achievement. The old Protestant work ethic celebrated its resurrection among German workers in secularized form. The Gotha Program [dating from the 1875 Gotha Congress] already bore traces of this confusion. It defined labor as “the source of all wealth and all culture”. Suspecting the worst, Marx responded that human being, who owned no other property aside from his labor-power, “must be the slave of other

21

human beings, who… have made themselves into property-owners.” Oblivious to this, the confusion only increased, and soon afterwards Josef Dietzgen announced: “Labor is the savior of modern times… In the… improvement… of labor… consists the wealth, which can now finally fulfill what no redeemer could hitherto achieve.” This vulgar-Marxist concept of what labor is, does not bother to ask the question of how its products affect workers, so long as these are no longer at their disposal. It wishes to perceive only the progression of the exploitation of nature, not the regression of society. It already bears the technocratic traces which would later be found in Fascism. Among these is a concept of nature which diverges in a worrisome manner from those in the socialist utopias of the Vormaerz period [pre-1848]. Labor, as it is henceforth conceived, is tantamount to the exploitation of nature, which is contrasted to the exploitation of the proletariat with naïve self-satisfaction. Compared to this positivistic conception, the fantasies which provided so much ammunition for the ridicule of Fourier exhibit a surprisingly healthy sensibility. According to Fourier, a beneficent division of social labor would have the following consequences: four moons would illuminate the night sky; ice would be removed from the polar cap; saltwater from the sea would no longer taste salty; and wild beasts would enter into the service of human beings. All this illustrates a labor which, far from exploiting nature, is instead capable of delivering creations whose possibility slumbers in her womb. To the corrupted concept of labor belongs, as its logical complement, that nature which, as Dietzgen put it, “is there gratis [for free]”.

XII

We need history, but we need it differently from the spoiled lazy-bones in the garden of knowledge.

— Nietzsche, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life

The subject of historical cognition is the battling, oppressed class itself. In Marx it steps forwards as the final enslaved and avenging class, which carries out the work of emancipation in the name of generations of downtrodden to its conclusion. This consciousness, which for a short time made itself felt in the “Spartacus” [Spartacist splinter group, the forerunner to the German Communist Party], was objectionable to social democracy from the very beginning. In the course of three decades it succeeded in almost completely erasing the name of Blanqui, whose distant thunder [Erzklang] had made the preceding century tremble. It contented itself with assigning the working-class the role of the savior of future generations. It thereby severed the sinews of its greatest power. Through this schooling the class forgot its hate as much as its spirit of sacrifice. For both nourish themselves on the picture of enslaved forebears, not on the ideal of the emancipated heirs.

XIII

Yet every day our cause becomes clearer and the people more clever.

– Josef Dietzgen, Social Democratic Philosophy

Social democratic theory, and still more the praxis, was determined by a concept of progress which did not hold to reality, but had a dogmatic claim. Progress, as it was painted in the minds of the social democrats, was once upon a time the progress of humanity itself (not only that of its abilities and knowledges). It was, secondly,

22

something unending (something corresponding to an endless perfectibility of humanity). It counted, thirdly, as something essentially unstoppable (as something self-activating, pursuing a straight or spiral path). Each of these predicates is controversial, and critique could be applied to each of them. This latter must, however, when push comes to shove, go behind all these predicates and direct itself at what they all have in common. The concept of the progress of the human race in history is not to be separated from the concept of its progression through a homogenous and empty time. The critique of the concept of this progress must ground the basis of its critique on the concept of progress itself.

XIV

Origin is the goal [Ziel: terminus]. – Karl Kraus, Worte in Versen I [Words in Verse]

History is the object of a construction whose place is formed not in homogenous and empty time, but in that which is fulfilled by the here-and-now [Jetztzeit]. For Robespierre, Roman antiquity was a past charged with the here-and-now, which he exploded out of the continuum of history. The French revolution thought of itself as a latterday Rome. It cited ancient Rome exactly the way fashion cites a past costume. Fashion has an eye for what is up-to-date, wherever it moves in the jungle [Dickicht: maze, thicket] of what was. It is the tiger’s leap into that which has gone before. Only it takes place in an arena in which the ruling classes are in control. The same leap into the open sky of history is the dialectical one, as Marx conceptualized the revolution.

XV

The consciousness of exploding the continuum of history is peculiar to the revolutionary classes in the moment of their action. The Great Revolution introduced a new calendar. The day on which the calendar started functioned as a historical time-lapse camera. And it is fundamentally the same day which, in the shape of holidays and memorials, always returns. The calendar does not therefore count time like clocks. They are monuments of a historical awareness, of which there has not seemed to be the slightest trace for a hundred years. Yet in the July Revolution an incident took place which did justice to this consciousness. During the evening of the first skirmishes, it turned out that the clock-towers were shot at independently and simultaneously in several places in Paris. An eyewitness who may have owed his inspiration to the rhyme wrote at that moment:

Qui le croirait! on dit,  qu’irrités contre l’heure  De nouveaux Josués  au pied de chaque tour, Tiraient sur les cadrans  pour arrêter le jour.  

[Who would’ve thought! As thoughAngered by time’s wayThe new JoshuasBeneath each tower, they sayFired at the dialsTo stop the day.]

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XVI

The historical materialist cannot do without the concept of a present which is not a transition, in which time originates and has come to a standstill. For this concept defines precisely the present in which he writes history for his person. Historicism depicts the “eternal” picture of the past; the historical materialist, an experience with it, which stands alone. He leaves it to others to give themselves to the whore called “Once upon a time” in the bordello of historicism. He remains master of his powers: man enough, to explode the continuum of history.

XVII

Historicism justifiably culminates in universal history. Nowhere does the materialist writing of history distance itself from it more clearly than in terms of method. The former has no theoretical armature. Its method is additive: it offers a mass of facts, in order to fill up a homogenous and empty time. The materialist writing of history for its part is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the movement of thoughts but also their zero-hour [Stillstellung]. Where thinking suddenly halts in a constellation overflowing with tensions, there it yields a shock to the same, through which it crystallizes as a monad. The historical materialist approaches a historical object solely and alone where he encounters it as a monad. In this structure he cognizes the sign of a messianic zero-hour [Stillstellung] of events, or put differently, a revolutionary chance in the struggle for the suppressed past. He perceives it, in order to explode a specific epoch out of the homogenous course of history; thus exploding a specific life out of the epoch, or a specific work out of the life-work. The net gain of this procedure consists of this: that the life-work is preserved and sublated in the work, the epoch in the life-work, and the entire course of history in the epoch. The nourishing fruit of what is historically conceptualized has time as its core, its precious but flavorless seed.

XVIII

“In relation to the history of organic life on Earth,” notes a recent biologist, “the miserable fifty millenia of homo sapiens represents something like the last two seconds of a twenty-four hour day. The entire history of civilized humanity would, on this scale, take up only one fifth of the last second of the last hour.” The here-and-now, which as the model of messianic time summarizes the entire history of humanity into a monstrous abbreviation, coincides to a hair with the figure, which the history of humanity makes in the universe.

(Addendum)

A

Historicism contents itself with establishing a causal nexus of various moments of history. But no state of affairs is, as a cause, already a historical one. It becomes this, posthumously, through eventualities which may be separated from it by millenia. The historian who starts from this, ceases to permit the consequences of eventualities to run through the fingers like the beads of a rosary. He records [erfasst] the

24

constellation in which his own epoch comes into contact with that of an earlier one. He thereby establishes a concept of the present as that of the here-and-now, in which splinters of messianic time are shot through.

B

Surely the time of the soothsayers, who divined what lay hidden in the lap of the future, was experienced neither as homogenous nor as empty. Whoever keeps this in mind will perhaps have an idea of how past time was experienced as remembrance: namely, just the same way. It is well-known that the Jews were forbidden to look into the future. The Torah and the prayers instructed them, by contrast, in remembrance. This disenchanted those who fell prey to the future, who sought advice from the soothsayers. For that reason the future did not, however, turn into a homogenous and empty time for the Jews. For in it every second was the narrow gate, through which the Messiah could enter.

1940.

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Walter Benjamin

Theses on the Philosophy of HistoryTranslated by Harry Zohn

(Prevod iz 1968, takođe bez „Teološko-političkog fragmenta“)

I

The story is told of an automaton constructed in such a way that it could play a winning game of chess, answering each move of an opponent with a countermove. A puppet in Turkish attire and with a hookah in its mouth sat before a chessboard placed on a large table. A system of mirrors created the illusion that this table was transparent from all sides. Actually, a little hunchback who was an expert chess player sat inside and guided the puppet’s hand by means of strings. One can imagine a philosophical counterpart to this device. The puppet called ‘historical materialism’ is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.

II

‘One of the most remarkable characteristics of human nature,’ writes Lotze, ‘is, alongside so much selfishness in specific instances, the freedom from envy which the present displays toward the future.’ Reflection shows us that our image of happiness is thoroughly colored by the time to which the course of our own existence has assigned us. The kind of happiness that could arouse envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed, among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply. Historical materialists are aware of that.

III

A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history. To be sure, only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past-which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation a l'ordre du jour — and that day is Judgment Day.

IV

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Seek for food and clothing first, then the Kingdom of God shall be added unto you. — Hegel, 1807

The class struggle, which is always present to a historian influenced by Marx, is a fight for the crude and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could exist. Nevertheless, it is not in the form of the spoils which fall to the victor that the latter make their presence felt in the class struggle. They manifest themselves in this struggle as courage, humor, cunning, and fortitude. They have retroactive force and will constantly call in question every victory, past and present, of the rulers. As flowers turn toward the sun, by dint of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history. A historical materialist must be aware of this most inconspicuous of all transformations.

V

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again. ‘The truth will not run away from us’: in the historical outlook of historicism these words of Gottfried Keller mark the exact point where historical materialism cuts through historicism. For every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably. (The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.)

VI

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.

VII

Consider the darkness and the great coldIn this vale which resounds with mystery.

— Brecht, The Threepenny Opera

To historians who wish to relive an era, Fustel de Coulanges recommends that they blot out everything they know about the later course of history. There is no better way of characterising the method with which historical materialism has broken. It is a process of empathy whose origin is the indolence of the heart, acedia, which despairs of grasping and holding the genuine historical image as it flares up briefly. Among medieval theologians it was regarded as the root cause of sadness. Flaubert, who was

27

familiar with it, wrote: ‘Peu de gens devineront combien il a fallu être triste pour ressusciter Carthage.’* The nature of this sadness stands out more clearly if one asks with whom the adherents of historicism actually empathize. The answer is inevitable: with the victor. And all rulers are the heirs of those who conquered before them. Hence, empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers. Historical materialists know what that means. Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another. A historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.

* ‘Few will be able to guess how sad one had to be in order to resuscitate Carthage.’

VIII

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are ‘still’ possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge—unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.

IX

My wing is ready for flight,I would like to turn back.If I stayed timeless time,I would have little luck.

Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung bereit,ich kehrte gern zurück,denn blieb ich auch lebendige Zeit,ich hätte wenig Glück.

— Gerherd Scholem, ‘Gruss vom Angelus’

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a

28

violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

X

The themes which monastic discipline assigned to friars for meditation were designed to turn them away from the world and its affairs. The thoughts which we are developing here originate from similar considerations. At a moment when the politicians in whom the opponents of Fascism had placed their hopes are prostrate and confirm their defeat by betraying their own cause, these observations are intended to disintangle the political worldlings from the snares in which the traitors have entrapped them. Our consideration proceeds from the insight that the politicians’ stubborn faith in progress, their confidence in their ‘mass basis’, and, finally, their servile integration in an uncontrollable apparatus have been three aspects of the same thing. It seeks to convey an idea of the high price our accustomed thinking will have to pay for a conception of history that avoids any complicity with the thinking to which these politicians continue to adhere.

XI

The conformism which has been part and parcel of Social Democracy from the beginning attaches not only to its political tactics but to its economic views as well. It is one reason for its later breakdown. Nothing has corrupted the German working, class so much as the notion that it was moving, with the current. It regarded technological developments as the fall of the stream with which it thought it was moving. From there it was but a step to the illusion that the factory work which was supposed to tend toward technological progress constituted a political achievement. The old Protestant ethics of work was resurrected among German workers in secularized form. The Gotha Program* already bears traces of this confusion, defining labor as ‘the source of all wealth and all culture.’ Smelling a rat, Marx countered that ‘…the man who possesses no other property than his labor power’ must of necessity become ‘the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners…’ However, the confusion spread, and soon thereafter Josef Dietzgen proclaimed: ‘The savior of modern times is called work. The …improvement… of labor constitutes the wealth which is now able to accomplish what no redeemer has ever been able to do.’ This vulgar-Marxist conception of the nature of labor bypasses the question of how its products might benefit the workers while still not being at, their disposal. It recognizes only the progress in the mastery of nature, not the retrogression of society; it already displays the technocratic features later encountered in Fascism. Among these is a conception of nature which differs ominously from the one in the Socialist utopias before the 1848 revolution. The new conception of labor amounts to the exploitation of nature, which with naive complacency is contrasted with the exploitation of the proletariat. Compared with this positivistic conception, Fourier's fantasies, which have so often been ridiculed, prove to be surprisingly sound. According to Fourier, as a result of efficient cooperative labor, four moons would illuminate the earthly night, the ice would recede from the poles, sea water would no longer taste salty, and beasts of prey would do man's bidding. All this illustrates a kind of labor which, far from exploiting nature, is capable of delivering her

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of the creations which lie dormant in her womb as potentials. Nature, which, as Dietzgen puts it, ‘exists gratis,’ is a complement to the corrupted conception of labor.

*The Gotha Congress of 1875 'United the two German Socialist parties, one led by Ferdinand Lassalle, the other by Karl Marx and Wilhelm Liebknecht. The program, drafted by Liebknecht and Lassalle, was severely attacked by Marx in London. See his ‘Critique of the Gotha Program’

XII

We need history, but not the way a spoiled loafer in the garden of knowledge needs it. — Nietzsche, Of the Use and Abuse of History

Not man or men but the struggling, oppressed class itself is the depository of historical knowledge. In Marx it appears as the last enslaved class, as the avenger that completes the task of liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden. This conviction, which had a brief resurgence in the Spartacist group,* has always been objectionable to Social Democrats. Within three decades they managed virtually to erase the name of Blanqui, though it had been the rallying sound that had reverberated through the preceding century. Social Democracy thought fit to assign to the working class the role of the redeemer of future generations, in this way cutting the sinews of its greatest strength. This training made the working class forget both its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than that of liberated grandchildren.

* Leftist group, founded by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg at the beginning of World War I in opposition to the pro-war policies of the German Socialist party, later absorbed by the Communist party.

XIII

Every day our cause becomes clearer and people get smarter. — Wilhelm Dietzgen, Die Religion der Sozialdemokratie

Social Democratic theory, and even more its practice, have been formed by a conception of progress which did not adhere to reality but made dogmatic claims. Progress as pictured in the minds of Social Democrats was, first of all, the progress of mankind itself (and not just advances in men’s ability and knowledge). Secondly, it was something boundless, in keeping with the infinite perfectibility of mankind. Thirdly, progress was regarded as irresistible, something that automatically pursued a straight or spiral course. Each of these predicates is controversial and open to criticism. However, when the chips are down, criticism must penetrate beyond these predicates and focus on something that they have in common. The concept of the historical progress of mankind cannot be sundered from the concept of its progression through a homogenous, empty time. A critique of the concept of such a progression must be the basis of any criticism of the concept of progress itself.

XIV

Origin is the goal. — Karl Kraus, Worte in Versen, Vol. 1

History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now [Jetztzeit].* Thus, to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with the time of the now which he blasted out of the continuum of

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history. The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome incarnate. It evoked ancient Rome the way fashion evokes costumes of the past. Fashion has a flair for the topical, no matter where it stirs in the thickets of long ago; it is a tiger’s leap into the past. This jump, however, takes place in an arena where the ruling class give the commands. The same leap in the open air of history is the dialectical one, which is how Marx understood the revolution.

* Benjamin says ‘Jetztzeit’ and indicates by the quotation marks that he does not simply mean an equivalent to Gegenwart, that is, present. He clearly is thinking of the mystical nunc stans.

XV

The awareness that they are about to make the continuum of history explode is characteristic of the revolutionary classes at the moment of their action. The great revolution introduced a new calendar. The initial day of a calendar serves as a historical time-lapse camera. And, basically, it is the same day that keeps recurring in the guise of holidays, which are days of remembrance. Thus the calendars do no measure time as clocks do; they are monuments of a historical consciousness of which not the slightest trace has been apparent in Europe in the past hundred years. In the July revolution an incident occurred which showed this consciousness still alive. On the first evening of fighting it turned out that the clocks in towers were being fired on simultaneously and independently from several places in Paris. An eye-witness, who may have owed his insight to the rhyme, wrote as follows:

Who would have believed it!we are told that new Joshuasat the foot of every tower,as though irritated withtime itself, fired at the dialsin order to stop the day.

Qui le croirait! on dit,qu’irrités contre l’heureDe nouveaux Josuésau pied de chaque tour,Tiraient sur les cadranspour arrêter le jour.

XVI

A historical materialist cannot do without the notion of a present which is not a transition, but in which time stands still and has come to a stop. For this notion defines the present in which he himself is writing history. Historicism gives the ‘eternal’ image of the past; historical materialism supplies a unique experience with the past. The historical materialist leaves it to others to be drained by the whore called ‘Once upon a time’ in historicism’s bordello. He remains in control of his powers, man enough to blast open the continuum of history.

XVII

Historicism rightly culminates in universal history. Materialistic historiography differs from it as to method more clearly than from any other kind. Universal history has no

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theoretical armature. Its method is additive; it musters a mass of data to fill the homogoneous, empty time. Materialistic historiography, on the other hand, is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock, by which it cristallizes into a monad. A historical materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encountes it as a monad. In this structure he recognizes the sign of a Messianic cessation of happening, or, put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past. He takes cognizance of it in order to blast a specific era out of the homogenous course of history—blasting a specific life out of the era or a specific work out of the lifework. As a result of this method the lifework is preserved in this work and at the same time canceled*; in the lifework, the era; and in the era, the entire course of history. The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.

*The Hegelian term aufheben in its threefold meaning: to preserve, to elevate, to cancel.

XVIII

‘In relation to the history of organic life on earth,’ writes a modem biologist, ‘the paltry fifty millennia of homo sapiens constitute something like two seconds at the close of a twenty-four-hour day. On this scale, the history of civilized mankind would fill one-fifth of the last second of the last hour.’ The present, which, as a model of Messianic time, comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides exactly with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe.

A.

Historicism contents itself with establishing a causal connection between various moments in history. But no fact that is a cause is for that very reason historical. It became historical posthumously, as it were, though events that may be separated from it by thousands of years. A historian who takes this as his point of departure stops telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary. Instead, he grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one. Thus he establishes a conception of the present as the ‘time of the now’ which is shot through with chips of Messianic time.

B

The soothsayers who found out from time what it had in store certainly did not experience time as either homogeneous or empty. Anyone who keeps this in mind will perhaps get an idea of how past times were experienced in remembrance--namely, in just the same way. We know that the Jews were prohibited from investigating the future. The Torah and the prayers instruct them in remembrance, however. This stripped the future of its magic, to which all those succumb who turn to the soothsayers for enlightenment. This does not imply, however, that for the Jews the future turned into homogeneous, empty time. For every second of time was the strait gate through which Messiah might enter.

1940.

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