communism

The science that wasn’t: The orthodox Marxism of the early Frankfurt School and the turn to critical theory

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Marco A. Torres
Platypus Review 5
May-July 2008
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NOTE: I’m republishing this piece by Marco Torres from 2008 because it underscores the shift away from revolutionary optimism toward critical pessimism that took place among more perceptive Marxists during the 1920s and 1930s. The Frankfurt School, as it’s come to be known, is exemplary of this turn. Nevertheless, this does not mean they ceased to be Marxists. Rather, they represented an attempt to grasp the failure of revolutionary Marxism using the tools of historical materialism itself.

As the economist Alfred Sohn-Rethel explained, this critical reappraisal “began towards the end of the First World War and in its aftermath, at a time when the German proletarian revolution should have occurred and tragically failed. This period led me into personal contact with Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Siegfried Kracauer, and Theodor Adorno and the writings of Georg Lukács and Herbert Marcuse. Strange though it may sound I do not hesitate to say that the new development of Marxist thought which these people represent evolved as the theoretical and ideological superstructure of the revolution that never happened. In it re-echo the thunder of the gun battle for the Marstall in Berlin at Christmas 1918, and the shooting of the Spartacus rising in the following winter. The paradoxical condition of this ideological movement may help to explain its almost exclusive preoccupation with superstructural questions, and the conspicuous lack of concern for the material and economic base that should have been underlying it.”

Enjoy.

AdornoHorkheimerHabermasbyJeremyJShapiro2 (1) Marcuse copy

From their canonization in the 1960s through to their appropriation by postmodernism in the 1980s, the writings of the Frankfurt School have had their Marxian dimension minimized, vulgarized, and ultimately ignored. Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Max Horkheimer — the only names of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Theory’s roster that seem to be remembered today — have instead been characterized as anything from old-timey liberals to mystical eclectics, Left Hegelian hippies to ivory tower elitists. According to the standard narrative, these thinkers abandoned Marxism in the 1940s, when the continued atrocities and political unviability of the Soviet Union turned them into Cold War liberals of varied stripes.

Such narratives, which tend to claim that the deepest insights of these thinkers were accomplished in spite of their Marxism or even in the process of overcoming it, are just plain wrong. From the beginning of Horkheimer’s directorship of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Theory in 1930 through to Adorno’s death in 1969, the goal of the Frankfurt school was to maintain the critical purchase of a Marxian social critique as it was threatened by the accelerated process of decay that the Left began in the 1920s. A look at the Institute’s early history allows us to see how the necessity of this approach came to be. In the early 1920s, the original members of the Frankfurt Institute — half forgotten names such as Carl Grünberg, Henryk Grossman, and Karl August Wittfogel — were social scientists of an orthodox Marxist conviction. They understood their task as an advancement of the sciences that would prove useful in solving the problems of a Europe-wide transition into socialism, which they saw, if not as inevitable, at least as highly likely. But as fascism reared its head in Germany and throughout Europe, the younger members of the Institute saw the necessity for a different kind of Marxist Scholarship. Beyond accumulating knowledge relevant to an orthodox Marxist line, they felt the need to take the more critical and negative approach that is required for the maintenance of an integral and penetrating understanding of society during a moment of reaction. This could be described as the politically necessary transition from Marxist positive science to critical theory.

1919_Liebknecht+Sparticists bundesarchiv_bild_102-00539_berlin_revolution_standrechtlich_erschossene

After the German worker’s revolution of 1918-1919 had been betrayed and crushed by the Social Democrats (SPD), the early 1920s saw a period of relative stability slowly settle upon Germany. Despite the fact that further attempts by the German Communist Party (KPD) to challenge the SPD’s rule were weak and ineffective, the possibility of Europe-wide socialist revolution continued to be a topic of conversation among Leftist intelligentsia in postwar Germany. This sense of possibility seemed justified: the Soviet Union had succeeded in surviving its civil war and from a distance seemed to be on a path to successful stabilization; the KPD’s membership continued to grow in the permissive atmosphere of the Weimar Republic; and, with the exception of Italy, Fascism did not yet appear to be an immediate threat. In spite of their deep conservatism, the Social Democrats continued to hold up Marxism as their ideology, legitimizing it and thus making it into an open, officially sanctioned field of discussion.

It was in this environment that Felix Weil, a young graduate of the Frankfurt University who, at age 20, had fought with the workers during the revolution of 1919, began to use his great inherited wealth to finance initiatives for Marxist theoretical discussion. Having written his dissertation on “the essence and methods of socialization,” financially supported left-wing artists such as George Grosz and taken part in the social circle around KPD members Klara Zetkin and Paul Frölich, his joking self-description as a “Salon Bolshevik” was not far from the truth. One of the initiatives he financially supported was the First Marxist Workweek [Erste Marxistische Arbeitswoche] a retreat at a hotel on the edge of the Thuringian Forest in which more than two dozen Marxist intellectuals, most of them affiliated with the KPD, gathered to discuss the latest works by Karl Korsch and Georg Lukács, respectively “Marxism and Philosophy” and the seminal History and Class Consciousness. Among the attendants were Korsch and Lukács themselves, Horkheimer, Zetkin, and economist Friedrich Pollock. As it turned out, thanks to Weil’s efforts, this gathering could retrospectively be seen as the first “seminar” of what would become the Frankfurt Institute of Social Theory, since throughout the next decade most of its participants would become affiliated with the Institute in some function or another.

Continue reading →

Women’s liberation in non-Western contexts

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Seeing all this press coverage of Malala Yousafzai and the plight of women’s education in Taliban-controlled regions in Pakistan, and having recently revisited the sad history of the degradation of women’s rights in Afghanistan after the PDPA was defeated and the Red Army was driven out in 1989, I’ve been pondering the question of women’s liberation in “Oriental” (i.e., traditional non-Western) contexts. Lately I’m reminded of the revolutionary transformations that took place in Uzbekistan between 1920 and the early 1930s, especially with Zhenotdel‘s mass unveiling ceremonies, programs for women’s education, and anti-illiteracy campaigns in the region. All of these activities were carried out in tandem, as religious prejudices, domestic bondage, and illiteracy were to be combated both directly and indirectly — directly through propaganda work, and then indirectly through the removal of economic conditions that give rise to such social ills.

Education and domestic emancipation are more or less uncontroversial. Abolishing reactionary religious traditions is another matter, however. Despite the fact that Lenin was already insisting in 1922 that militant materialism necessarily implied “militant atheism” [воинствующий атеизм, more literally “warlike” atheism], there’s been a great deal of distortion on this score. This has to do with efforts to reinterpret the past to suit the perceived political exigencies of the present. Making the past dance to the tune of the present is a fairly routine procedure amongst certain parts of the Left.

Tashkent before the reforms.

Dave Crouch, writing for the International Socialist Journal, would like to pin all of the blame for antireligious initiatives like the khudzhum [i.e., the mass unveiling campaigns] on “Stalinist bureaucracy.” The fact of the matter is that the women’s division [Zhenotdel] and the Union of Tatar Godless [Soiuz tatarskykh bezbozhnikov] already laid the groundwork for such measures in the early 1920s. Members of either organization cannot be fairly characterized as “Stalinist”; indeed, Stalin had both of these wings within the party disbanded by the end of the decade.

Luckily, Gerry Byrne has already gone through and written a point-by-point refutation of some of Crouch’s more obvious gaffes. A couple points are worth mentioning. In the footnotes, two passing remarks by Crouch are particularly revealing:

It is a pity that Richard Stites, one of the foremost historians of women’s liberation in Russia, fails to see the khudzhum as part of Stalin’s “sexual Thermidor.” Richard Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism 1860-1930. (Princeton, 1978). Pg. 340.

Crouch only says it’s a pity because Stites’ judgment runs counter to the view he would like to promote. Whether or not the khudzhum was a wise policy, a botched and culturally “insensitive” attempt to liberate women from traditional roles and conventions, it cannot be considered even remotely equivalent to the stricter divorce policies, abortion ban, and recriminalization of homosexuality instituted under Stalin’s regime. Stites is here, as usual, a far better historian than pseudo-Trot revisionists.

Education.

Women reading a book on Leninism
Reading some Lenin
Woman studying geometry
Children learning English
The modern woman of the East
Against Asiatic feudalism

A few footnotes later, Crouch writes:

In 1922 the 4th Congress of the Communist International corrected its policy adopted at the 2nd congress and endorsed temporary alliances with pan-Islamism against imperialism.

If this were actually the case, the Cliffites’ mechanistic anti-imperialism might appear grounded in longstanding revolutionary tradition. Unfortunately, no such “correction” ever took place. Lenin remained adamant to the end that Marxists’ position toward anti-imperialist movements abroad should stress “the need for a struggle against the clergy and other influential reactionary and medieval elements in backward countries,” as well as “the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs, etc.” Of course, as Lenin’s injunction directly contradicts the ISO’s general line toward political struggles in the Middle East, it’s omitted. E.H. Carr’s book indicates nothing of the sort, either. See pgs. 254-255 of his book on The Bolshevik Revolution.

For this post, I’ve assembled three excerpts. The first is excerpted from an article in Kommunistka [Communist Woman] by Marie Vaillant-Couturier (mother of the famous French Resistance fighter Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, who testified at Nuremberg) on women delegates publicly casting off their veils [chadry] and burqas [parandzhi] at the Second International Women’s Congress in 1922. The second is from Louis Bryant, the wife of John Reid and a famous leftist journalist in her own right, in which she records some of Aleksandra Kollontai’s thoughts on women’s liberation, along with a couple of mild criticisms. Finally, I’ve translated an article Kollontai herself wrote about the conference with communist women and labor organizers of the East in April 1921. Moreover, there are some documentary photographs by the extraordinary Constructivist photographer Max Penson, who captured these revolutionary social shifts upon moving to Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1920 (he was Jewish-Belarusian in origin). Penson stayed in Tashkent for the next twenty years. These photos show Uzbek women going from full-body veils (women caught without them were often threatened by men with blades, burning water, and acid, even having dogs sicced on them) to brandishing rifles within ten years. Continue reading →

Ivan Nikolaev’s student housing-commune in Moscow, 1929-1930

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Socialism in one building

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Image: Ivan Nikolaev’s constructivist dormitory
for the Textile Institute in Moscow (1929-1930)

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The following is taken from Martin Gittins’ outstanding Kosmograd site.

I absolutely love this painting by Mikhail Nemtsov of The Communal House of the Textile Institute in Moscow:

Mikhail Nemtsov, painting of Ivan Nikolaev's dormitory in Moscow

Designed by Ivan Sergeevich Nikolaev and completed in 1931, it is one of the seminal buildings of the Constructivist era, and is often referred to simply at Nikolaev’s House. It embodies the radical approach to communal living and education that gained popularity in the post-revolutionary fervent, when all social institutions became open to reexamination. The painting by Nemtsov doesn’t just represent the building but also tries to capture the multitude of social relations that would have taken place in the building.

Since 1968, when it was last repaired, the building has fallen into disrepair, and although Nemtsov likes the fact that it still supports a variety of uses, a renovation is planned.

Then

Ivan Nikolaev's Housing-commune for students of the Moscow Textile Institute, 1929-1930b kommuna Dom-kommuna Ivan Nikolaev's Housing-commune for students of the Moscow Textile Institute, 1929-1930a f93e82b11d3d5f773344d1d9a23422d5 interior lobby 1930

Ivan Nikolaev’s student housing-commune in Moscow, 1929-1930
Ivan Nikolaev’s student housing-commune in Moscow, 1929-1930
Ivan Nikolaev’s student housing-commune in Moscow, 1929-1930
Ivan Nikolaev’s student housing-commune in Moscow, 1929-1930
Ivan Nikolaev’s student housing-commune in Moscow, 1929-1930

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Dom Narkomfin in Moscow, 1929

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Moisei Ginzburg & Ignatii Milinis’
iconic constructivist masterpiece

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Over the last couple years I’ve amassed a frightening number of high-quality photographs and image scans depicting Moisei Ginzburg and Ignatii Milinis’ Dom Narkomfin in Moscow. It is, without question, one of the most iconic pieces of Soviet constructivist architecture that was actually realized.

For this very reason, however, it has already been the subject of countless studies and historical investigations. Some of these have been quite good: Owen Hatherley’s Catherine Cooke’s. Others have been competent, if unmoving: Victor Buchli’s. George Baird’s treatment of Narkomfin in The Space of Appearance left me singularly unimpressed — something I wasn’t counting on, since I generally appreciate his architectural criticism.

Regardless, there’s very little new to say about the building, at least in English or in Russian. While I debated for some time whether or not I should write something “original” on Narkomfin, offering my own “unique” perspective, I’ve finally decided that my energies would be best spent elsewhere. Hence, I am appending just a few short overviews of the structure, detailing its layout and specifications, as well as Owen Hatherley’s longer description of the building from Militant Modernism (2009).

A few months ago, I did something similar with his article “Buried Treasure.” Maybe I’ll translate a short bit on Narkomfin from Sovremennaia arkhitektura soon. Enjoy this for now, however!

Building the main section of Narkomfin
View of Narkomfin’s western facade during construction, 1929
View of Narkomfin’s western facade during construction, 1929
Moisei Ginzburg surveys the site with construction workers, 1929
Workers building Narkomfin, 1929
Narkomfin’s penthouse under construction

Specifications

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Moisei Ginzburg and Ignatii Milinis (1929).
A collective house for workers in the
People’s Commissariat of Finance.
Moscow, USSR. Novinskii Boulevard.

The shorter wing of the complex houses a children’s home, dining room, kitchen, and laundry. The complex is placed in the center of a park, away from street noise. Apartments are two stories high. Height of rooms is 2.2 m, that is, for two-story spaces, 4.4 m. Continuous side corridor every second floor. Roof garden. On the ground floor are rooms for rest and recreation.

The individual bourgeois apartment is no longer appropriate for new dwelling relations, which are based on principles other than the unified patriarchal family with its petty individualistic conduct. The economic routines of the worker’s family (nutrition, cleaning, washing) as well as the education of children, their care and control and the fulfillment of the cultural and sport needs of workers and children, can and must be collectivized, that is, produced on a collective basis. Therefore all those rooms that for their functional destination and their character must serve entire collectives and not only single individuals must be reshaped into corresponding highly collectivized premises: the canteen, common resting rooms, reading rooms and libraries, gyms, child care rooms and nurseries, etc.; single individual rooms are the sleeping cabins, restrooms, rooms for individual use and for scientific work.

The windows open like an accordion to transform the living cell into an open terrace surrounded by greenery. The sense of a room is lost: it becomes a platform integrated within nature.

Axonometric cutaway
Elevation
F-Type split-level dwelling unit

The Building Committee [Stroikom] of
the Economic Soviet RSFSR 1928.
(Architects: Ginzburg, Pasternak, Barshch, Vladimirov).
Project for a collective house, Type F.

This dwelling beehive does not contain any of the functions usually attributed to a full housekeeping flat. In contrast to a hotel, bachelor flats, and pensions, such a dwelling beehive should not be considered in itself a complete dwelling entity. The program of “dwelling” includes all the relevant social, study, etc. spaces, and separate children’s rooms are concentrated outside of this dwelling beehive in their own separate buildings.

  • Collectivization and centralization of all housekeeping and communal functions;
  • Reduction of dwelling to a single cell for each adult person;
  • Liberation of the working woman from household chores and the upbringing of children;
  • Elevation of the housing standard and culture of the working class; Support of popular education and physical culture, as well as community life;
  • Full medical care; Reorganization of the city as a whole; Isolation of an individual’s private life within a single standardized dwelling cell. Continue reading →

PROUN

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The “way station” between
painting and architecture

Untitled.
Image: El Lissitzky,
PROUN 1-C (1919)
untitled2

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From “Theses on the PROUN: From painting to architecture” (1920)

Not world-illusion
but world-reality

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1. We have named PROUN a station on the path to the construction of the new form. […] From being a simple depicter the artist becomes a creator (builder) of forms for a new world — the world of objectivity. This does not mean the creation of a rivalry with the engineer. Art has not yet crossed paths with science.

2. PROUN is understood as the creative construction of form (based on the mastery of space) assisted by economic construction of the applied material. The goal of PROUN is progressive movement on the way to concrete creation, and not the substantiation, explanation, or promotion of life.

The path of the PROUN does not lie within the narrowly limited, fragmented, and isolated scientific disciplines — the builder consolidates them all together in his own experimental investigation.

The path of the PROUN is not the incoherent approach of separate scientific disciplines, theories, and systems, but is rather the straightforward path of learned influence over reality. […]

El Lissitzky, PROUN retrospective (1923)
El Lissitzky, PROUN Hannover 6 (1920)
El Lissitzky, Study for PROUN 4-B (1920)
El Lissitzky, PROUN Hannover 7 (1920)
El Lissitzky, PROUN 1-C (1919)
El Lissitzky, PROUN The Bridge (1920)
El Lissitzky, PROUN Hannover 2 (1920)
El Lissitzky, PROUN Hannover 3 (1920)
El Lissitzky, PROUN Hannover 4 (1919)
El Lissitzky, PROUN 5-A (1919)

Continue reading →

Marxism, selfishness, and competition

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Evan Burger has written up a short piece for Jacobin entitled “Toward a selfish Left.” He summarizes his argument as follows: “The Left doesn’t need a renewed emphasis on morality; instead, we must reclaim the concept of self-interest.” While the rest of the article is rather glib — going so far as to naturalize self-interest at one point (the author urges us to be mindful of “humanity’s inherently self-interested nature”) — its basic point regarding the subpolitical character of most ethical injunctions is sound.

To be sure, “Marxists” and leftists of all stripes have resorted to the most maudlin moralizations in recent decades, hoping to stir the masses from their inertia by appealing to their guilty conscience. Attentive readers of Marx will remember, however, that this has nothing to do with the critical position he advocated for communists:

Communism is quite incomprehensible to [the anarchist and individualist Max Stirner] because the communists do not oppose egoism to selflessness or selflessness to egoism, nor do they express this contradiction theoretically either in its sentimental or in its high-flown ideological form; they rather demonstrate its material source, with which it disappears of itself. The communists do not preach morality at all, as Stirner does so extensively. They do not put to people the moral demand: love one another, do not be egoists, etc.; on the contrary, they are very well aware that egoism, just as much as selflessness, is in definite circumstances a necessary form of the self-assertion of individuals. Hence, the communists by no means want…to do away with the ‘private individual’ for the sake of the ‘general,’ selfless man.

Karl Marx, The German Ideology (1845)

So much for that “hive mind” collectivism libertarians always erroneously ascribe to Marxism and Marx. The freedom of each is a prerequisite for the freedom of all. Bourgeois subjectivity, though it for the first time expresses a widespread sense of individuality (mirroring the shift away from the family toward the individual as the basic productive unit of society), is eventually constrained by the onset of the capitalist mode of production. Continue reading →

On Anatole Kopp

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Representing Soviet modernism

Untitled.
Image: Cover to the English translation of
Anatole Kopp’s Town and Revolution (1967)
untitled2

As promised, this post will briefly consider the main theoretical contentions and scholarly contributions of the French-Russian architectural historian Anatole Kopp. My own remarks will be limited to an examination of Kopp’s work on Soviet avant-garde architecture beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. From there, it will seek to ascertain any political implications that result from his dramatic presentation of the modern movement’s adventures in the USSR.

Kopp’s photos of Soviet avant-garde architecture

Moscow, DK Auto factory, photo by Anatole Kopp 1970
Moscow housing commune on Gogol boulevard, photo by Anatole Kopp 1965
Dinamo factory by Ivan Fomin, phographed by Anatole Kopp, 1977
Photo by Anatole Kopp, 1974
Photo by Anatole Kopp
Moscow Proletarian prospect, photo by Antole Kopp 1972
Melnikov club 1965 Anatole Kopp
Zuev Club in Moscow, photo by Anatole Kopp, 1964
Le Corbusier and Nikolai Kolli’s Tsentrosoiuz in Moscow, photographed by Anatole Kopp 1966
Moisei Ginzburg and Ignatii Milinis’ Dom Narkomfin in Moscow, photo by Anatole Kopp (1965)

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With some justice the historiographical claim could be made that, by rediscovering Soviet architectural modernism from the interwar period, Kopp effectively introduced the subject to a whole generation of architects following the Second World War. Scattered accounts remained, of course, from a few celebrated exponents of the “international style” (a phrase that Kopp, like Giedion, never fully accepted). But these had largely been buried beneath these architects’ subsequent achievements, and remained in any case either a source of embarrassment or embitterment that most of them — Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Ernst May, Hannes Meyer, Mart Stam, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, André Lurçat, Arthur Korn, etc. — preferred to forget.

Henri Lefebvre, 1971

Hegelian Marxist theorist Henri Lefebvre, 1971

Henri Lefebvre, later one of Kopp’s primary collaborators, drew upon Kopp’s reading of the era while spelling out just how groundbreaking his narrative of the Soviet avant-garde was in the 1960s in The Urban Revolution:

Between 1920 and 1930, Russia experienced a tremendous spurt of creative activity. Quite amazingly, Russian society, turned upside down through revolution, managed to produce superstructures (out of the depths) of astonishing novelty. This occurred in just about every field of endeavor, including politics, architecture, and urbanism. These super­structures were far in advance of the existing structures (social relations) and base (productive forces). The existing base and superstructures would have had to follow, make up for their delay, and reach the level of the superstructures that had come into existence through the process of revolutionary creativity. This was a key problem for Lenin during his last years. Today, however, it has become painfully obvious that those structures and the “base” did a poor job of catching up. The superstructures produced by revolutionary genius collapsed on top of a base (peasant, backward) that had been badly or inadequately modified. Isn’t this the great drama of our era? Architectural and urbanist thought cannot arise from thought or theory alone (urbanistic, sociological, economic). It came into being during this total phenomenon known as revolution. The creations of the revolutionary period in the Soviet Union quickly disappeared; they were destroyed and then forgotten. So why did it take forty years, why did we have to wait until today (an age that some claim is characterized by speed, acceleration, vertigo) and the work of Anatole Kopp to acknowledge the achievements of architectural and urban thought and practice in the Soviet Union? (The Urban Revolution, pg. 184).

Kopp’s studies were a revelation not only to Western readers, however, but to many of his comrades in the East as well. Indeed, his archival visits to the USSR roughly overlapped with pioneering investigations in the field by Soviet historians like Selim Khan-Magomedov and Oleg Shvidkovskii. The Soviet modernists’ legacy was unknown even in its country of origin, having been politically suppressed for decades. (Though I’d have to double-check, I seem to recall he even worked in tandem with Khan-Magomedov at one point). Unlike his colleagues/contemporaries, who kept more or less neutral in their appraisal of modern architecture, Kopp assigned it a positively revolutionary value. There is something to this approach, to be sure, though the reasons behind this fact perhaps eluded the historian himself. In the introduction to his seminal treatise, Town and Revolution, he explained some of the motivations for his research. Anticipating potential criticisms, Kopp wrote:

It may be objected that if these buildings and projects, all now more than thirty years old, are technically and formally obsolete, why bother to return to them? Because they constitute an important page of world architectural history and because a knowledge of the history of modem architecture makes it easier to understand and appreciate the architecture of today. Because much current [1966] experimentation and research is merely a continuation of efforts begun during the twenties (when it is not simple plagiarism) and because a knowledge of what was done then could assist modem architecture in escaping from the vicious circle in which it now seems trapped. Because the research undertaken at that time related not only to forms and techniques but also to :first principles and because most of the so-called social programs of today have their origin in that remote period and arc a con­ sequence of precisely the economic, political, and social context that existed then. In my opinion, these reasons are amply sufficient to justify a new look at the Soviet architecture of the twenties. They are, however, only secondary considerations.

The principal reason for undertaking such a study lies elsewhere. For the avant-garde of the Soviet architects of the twenties, architecture was a means, a lever to be employed in achieving the highest goal that man can set himself. For them architecture was, above all, a tool for “transforming mankind.” The world had been turned upside down, a new society was being built on the basis of new productive relations between individuals. Soon it would give birth to a new man freed of the prejudices and·habits of the past. This new society, this new man, could not develop in the old human dens fashioned in the image of a discredited social order. A special environment and appropriate structures were indispensable. But this environment was not conceived merely as a reflection, or material “translation,” of the new society; it had to-be-created Immediately, since only by living in it would man as he was become man as he was to be. Thus was established a dialectical conception of the role of the human environment: a reflection of the new society, it was at the same time the mold in which that society was to be cast. To some extent, the new environment, the new architecture, was viewed as a device designed for correcting, transforming, and improving man. In the language of the time architecture was a “social condenser” within which indispensable mutations were to be produced. (Town and Revolution, pg. 12).

In such passages the logic of Kopp’s argument unfolds magnificently. Here he laid out the case for modern architecture as facilitating, expediting, and even generating social change on its own. Kopp’s own formal training as an architect had come, of course, in the United States, under the supervision of exiled Bauhaus masters such as Walter Gropius and Josef Albers. Returning to France after the war, as Falbel discusses below, Kopp joined the French Communist Party and soon fell into the same circles as the prominent Hegelian Marxist Henri Lefebvre and other leading lights such as Claude Schnaidt. Kopp also came into contact with the well-known French intellectual Paul Virilio, who reminded his interviewer in Crepuscular Dawn that he’d “worked with Anatole Kopp, who published Town and Revolution.” (Virilio goes on to flatter himself in the course of the interview by insisting that it was he, and not Lefebvre, who’d first coined the idea of an “urban revolution”). Continue reading →

Mies’ Memorial to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (1926)

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Honestly, I was at first put off by the raw severity of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Memorial to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, leaders of the Spartakusbund and martyrs of the failed November 1918 Revolution in Germany. The monumental structure — first erected in 1926, before being torn down by the Nazis less than a decade later — is almost proto-brutalist in its cantilevered slabs and brazen use of unrefined materials, made up of jagged bricks held together by unsanded grout organized around a steel-and-concrete frame. It just seemed too willfully barbaric to commemorate anything of value, so stark was its ugliness.

Mies' site-plan and elevation for the monument (1926)

Site-plan and elevation for the monument (1926)

But as it turns out, this was precisely Mies’ intention. In a conversation with the prominent communist and cultural commentator Eduard Fuchs, Mies was reported to have said the following:

As most of these people [Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, other fallen heroes of the revolution] were shot in front of a brick wall, a brick wall would be what I would build as a monument.

Though he’d later downplay its radical Bolshevik origins by recasting it in terms of a sorrowful republicanism, Mies would always emphasize that the building was meant to convey a certain brutal honesty. Even in his deeply apolitical American exile, this remained the case. As recalled at several decades’ remove, the monument did not aspire to beauty but to truth:

[I built it] in a square shape. I meant clarity and truth to join forces against the fog that had descended and was killing all hope — the hopes, as we rightly perceived at the time, of a durable German republic.

"Ich war, Ich bin, Ich werde sein"

“Ich war, Ich bin, Ich werde sein”

To his credit, Mies took seriously Luxemburg’s famous dilemma of “socialism or barbarism” (adapted from some lines by Engels written toward the end of his life). Luxemburg’s pronouncement of this opposition was not meant to be regarded as some sort of perennial choice haunting humanity throughout its existence, but rather was historically specific to her own moment, as Second International Marxism entered into profound crisis. Since socialism did not come to pass, as the world revolution stopped short, it is necessary that everything that transpired afterward be regarded as barbarism. For this reason, I’ve come to appreciate the self-conscious barbarism of Mies’ monument. There is something fitting about the unrelenting gnarliness of the brickwork in embodying Mies’ trademark perfect volumes, proportions, and harmonious distribution. Mies went to great lengths to put this symbolism across: the bricks, stacked some twenty feet high, had been assembled from the bullet-riddled remains of buildings damaged or destroyed during the Spartacist uprising.

The inscription “Ich war, Ich bin, Ich werde sein” [“I was, I am, I will be”], Rosa Luxemburg’s final written words before her execution by the proto-fascist Freikorps in January 1919, actually a quote from Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810-1876) during the 1848 German revolution
Site-plan, section, and elevation for Mies’ monument (1926)
Monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht [Revolutionsdenkmal] (built 1926, destroyed 1935), designed by pioneering modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Photo by famous author Arthur Köstler, then a communist
“Den Toten helden der Revolution” [The dead heroes of the revolution]
Ernst Thälmann, leader of the German Communist Party (KPD) talks at the unveiling of Mies van der Rohe’s Monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in the Friedrichsfelde cemetery in Berlin (June 13, 1926)
German Communist Party demonstration in front of Mies van der Rohe’s Monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, with a quote from the latter: “Wir sind nicht zu verbieten” [“We will not be prohibited”]
Monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht [Revolutionsdenkmal] (built 1926, destroyed 1935), designed by pioneering modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Photo by famous author Arthur Köstler, then a communist
Monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht [Revolutionsdenkmal] (built 1926, destroyed 1935), designed by pioneering modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Photomontage of Ernst Thälmann, leader of the German Communist Party (KPD), standing in front of Mies’ Monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht on May 8, 1929, observing the anniversary of “Bloody May” a decade earlier
Monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht [Revolutionsdenkmal] (built 1926, destroyed 1935), designed by pioneering modernist and later Bauhaus director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Wilhelm Pieck (1876-1960), later president of the GDR, speaking on behalf of the KPD’s leadership at the rally on February 10, 1933.
Wilhelm Pieck (1876-1960), later president of the GDR, speaking on behalf of the KPD’s leadership at the rally on February 10, 1933.
Eberhard Hesse (1911-1986, left) and Gabo Levin (1906-1995, right) at the protest rally on February 10, 1933 before the Monument to the Revolution [Revolutionsdenkmal].
A slightly older Mies van der Rohe standing before the cantilevered brick

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Of course, it is well known that that Mies, the third Bauhaus director and one of the great pioneers of the modern movement in architecture, was never all that political to begin with. True to Tafuri’s by-now canonical interpretation of “Miesian silence,” the architect typically kept his mouth shut when it came to such affairs. Unlike Hannes Meyer, whose position as the rector of the Bauhaus he’d eventually usurp in 1930, he saw no inherent connection between politics and architecture. Continue reading →

Soviet-era erotic alphabet book from 1931 [Советская эротическая азбука 1931 года]

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Image: This threesome brought
to you by the letter «А» (1931)
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UPDATE: Apparently it was Giuliano Vivaldi behind the whole rumor that this collection was intended to “combat adult illiteracy,” as I put it here. He wrote: “I copied this from someone’s wall and added with a few exclamation marks that it was part of Stalin’s fight against illiteracy (joke intended). Since then my joke was cited as fact and traveled the internet.”

Consider me trolled! Still prefer to think of it having been conceived for that purpose.

Reproduced here are a bunch of scans from a fascinating erotic alphabet book printed in the Soviet Union circa 1931, made to combat adult illiteracy. By the sculptor and future People’s Artist of the USSR Sergei Merkurov [Сергей Меркуров], no less. For those of you who enjoyed my previous post on classic Soviet board-games from the 1920s, this should be right up your alley.

Ц, Ш

Ц, Ш

As my friend Jasmine Curcio points out, these images draw upon clear precedents in the phallic imagery of ancient Roman art. Throughout the ABC book one can find images of horny satyrs, indecent cupids, and flying disembodied cocks. Given Merkurov’s own fascination with ancient Greek and Roman art, this is hardly surprising. No doubt, all of these precedents were consciously invoked. Though it is admittedly somewhat interesting to see various dirty motifs cribbed from the style of Roman antiquity deployed for the purposes of a Soviet literacy campaign, which was itself such a distinctly modernizing project.

This should stand as definite challenge the false notion that the Soviet Union suppressed its citizens’ sexual desires, or was in the least conservative when it came to such matters. At least, not until Stalin achieved full control and instituted conservative policies. And, ironically, illustrated by the same man who’d later be commissioned by the Soviet government to sculpt a number of famous monuments to Stalin.

Ф, Ь

Ф, Ь

My friend Anna Khachiyan‘s reaction is worthy of inclusion here:

Thanks for sharing this — it is fantastic! All my years of tumblr trolling, and I’ve never seen anything nearly as good. And so artfully done, too. Alas, if only they had this much sex in real life.

But I must ask: What ever happened to the letter «Ж» in these drawings? This would be a difficult letter to navigate, sexually, but imagine the erotic possibilities!

Anyway, without further delay, some acknowledgments:

All of these great images are reposted from the brilliant Russian Livejournal account Isle of Crimea [Остров Крым]. I’d also like to thank Arya Moghadam for first bringing them to my attention. Credit is also due to Agata Pyzik, who first discovered them for the Anglophone world.

Needless to say, these are not safe for work. Enjoy. Continue reading →

special issue on communism

Platypus Review â„– 54: Special issue on “communism”

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Special Issue on “Communism”

The Platypus Review, â„– 54 [PDF]

1305823769_www.nevsepic.com.ua_doloy-kuhonnoe-rabstvo-1931-shegalVerso’s Pocket Communism series seeks to reorient leftist discourse by taking the idea of “communism” as a shared point of departure.  In this series of articles and interviews, the Platypus Affiliated Society seeks to host a critical dialogue on this subject in order to clarify the various positions and oppositions that are at work, situate them within the broader history of the Left, and evaluate their salience for the present.

‘Communism’ is still the name to be used to designate radical emancipatory projects. It is a name that can not only express the Idea which guides radical activity, but can also help expose the catastrophes of the twentieth century, including those of the Left.

— Slavoj Žižek and Costas Douzinas, The Idea of Communism (2010), pgs. viii-ix.

I am not in favour of raising any dogmatic banner.  On the contrary, we must help the dogmatists to clarify their propositions for themselves.  Thus communism in particular is a dogmatic abstraction.

— Karl Marx, “Letter to Arnold Ruge” (September 1843)

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself.  We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.

— Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (1845)

Contents

Alain Badiou's The Communist Hypothesis (2010) The Marxist hypothesis: A response to Badiou’s Communist Hypothesis
by Chris Cutrone
And yet a very different set of historical periodizations, and hence a very different history, focused on other developments, might be opposed to Badiou’s. Counter to Badiou’s “communist hypothesis,” which reaches back to the origins of the state in the birth of civilization millennia ago, a “Marxist hypothesis” would seek to grasp the history of the society of capital.

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Traversing the heresies: An interview with Bruno Bosteels
by Alec Niedenthal and Ross Wolfe
On October 14th, 2012, Alec Niedenthal and Ross Wolfe both interviewed Bruno Bosteels, a Professor of Romance Studies at Cornell University and author of such books as Badiou and Politics (2011), Marx and Freud in Latin America (2012), and The Actuality of Communism (2011). Click to view an edited transcript of their conversation.

Jodi Dean's Communist Horizon (2012)

What is to be done with the actually-existing Marxist Left? An interview with Jodi Dean
by Ross Wolfe
On October 13th, 2012, Ross Wolfe of the Platypus Affiliated Society interviewed Jodi Dean, Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith College, and author of Žižek’s Politics (2006) and The Communist Horizon (New York: Verso, 2012). Click to view an edited transcript of their conversation.

Boris Groys' Communist Postscript (2009)

A remembrance of things past: An interview with Boris Groys
by Ross Wolfe
On December 15th, 2012, Ross Wolfe interviewed Boris Groys, the Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University. His numerous published books include The Total Art of Stalinism (1986), Art Power (2008), and The Communist Postscript (2009). Click to view an edited transcript of their conversation.

Further reading:

Editorial statement of purpose

Taking stock of the universe of positions and goals that constitutes leftist politics today, we are left with the disquieting suspicion that a deep commonality underlies the apparent variety: What exists today is built upon the desiccated remains of what once was possible.

In order to make sense of the present, we find it necessary to disentangle the vast accumulation of positions on the Left and to evaluate their saliency for the possible reconstitution of emancipatory politics in the present. Doing this implies a reconsideration of what is meant by the Left.

Our task begins from what we see as the general disenchantment with the present state of progressive politics. We feel that this disenchantment cannot be cast off by sheer will, by simply “carrying on the fight,” but must be addressed and itself made an object of critique. Thus we begin with what immediately confronts us.

Vote communist! [Vota comunista!] truck featuring model Sputnik, Rome 1958

Vote communist! [Vota comunista!] truck featuring a model of Sputnik, Rome 1958

The Platypus Review is motivated by its sense that the Left is disoriented. We seek to be a forum among a variety of tendencies and approaches on the Left — not out of a concern with inclusion for its own sake, but rather to provoke disagreement and to open shared goals as sites of contestation. In this way, the recriminations and accusations arising from political disputes of the past may be harnessed to the project of clarifying the object of leftist critique.

The Platypus Review hopes to create and sustain a space for interrogating and clarifying positions and orientations currently represented on the Left, a space in which questions may be raised and discussions pursued that would not otherwise take place. As long as submissions exhibit a genuine commitment to this project, all kinds of content will be considered for publication.

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