In his essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin discusses a shift in perception and its affects in the wake of the advent of film and photography in the twentieth century. He writes numerous significant paragraphs on the sense changes within humanity’s entire mode of existence; the way we look and see the visual work of art has is different now and its consequences remain to be determined. How does human sense perception related to history? Is it a universal perspective that is being critiqued here? Can there be a universal perspective in the first place? Hence, I would like to reflect on and analyze the paragraph that centers on aura:

“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space (aura), its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence (p.220).”

In Marxist fashion, Benjamin sees the transformations of art as an effect of changes in the economic structure.  Art is coming to resemble economic production, albeit at a delayed pace. The movement from contemplation to distraction is creating big changes in how people sense and perceive. Historically, works of art had an ‘aura’ – an appearance of magical or supernatural force arising from their uniqueness (similar to mana). The aura includes a sensory experience of distance between the reader and the work of art.

The aura has disappeared in the modern age because art has become reproducible. Think of the way a work of classic literature can be bought cheaply in paperback, or a painting bought as a poster. Think also of newer forms of art, such as TV shows and adverts. Then compare these to the experience of staring at an original work of art in a gallery, or visiting a unique historic building. This is the difference Benjamin is trying to capture.

The aura is an effect of a work of art being uniquely present in time and space. It is connected to the idea of authenticity. A reproduced artwork is never fully present. If there is no original, it is never fully present anywhere. Authenticity cannot be reproduced, and disappears when everything is reproduced. Benjamin thinks that even the original is depreciated, because it is no longer unique. Along with their authenticity, objects also lose their authority. The masses contribute to the loss of aura by seeking constantly to bring things closer. They create reproducible realities and hence destroy uniqueness. This is apparent, for instance, in the rise of statistics.

As Benjamin continues, a tension between new modes of perception and the aura arise. The removal of authority within the original work of art infers a loss of authority; however, in regards to mass consumption, this liberation is not necessarily contingent. The cameraman, for example, intervenes with what we see in a way which a painting can never do. It directs the eye towards a specific place and a specific story; at the same time it is radical and revolutionary it is also totalitarian. It guides us to a particular side of a story and leaves other parts out. It dulls our perception towards the work of art and introduces distraction as a mode of reception. The location of anything we might call the aura has to be moved into a mythological space; into the cult of genius. This cult of genius relates back to the cultish characteristic of the aura itself; in its absence there is a grabbling for a replacement. What does it mean to place an aura on “someone” or “something”? Is it even necessary to reclaim the aura in the first place? The mystical cult of the original in broken with the loss of the aura, and now everyone can go to a gallery, a museum, the theater or the cinema. A whole new appreciation of art is introduced while at the same time, a whole new mode of deception and distraction also enters.
For Benjamin, the aura is “dead and it exists in an improbable and mystical space”. But in the making of our own myths therein lies an “aesthetic interpretation” of these reproducible images; there is a “temporal world” that is there for you, where you do not truly participate. The object consumes man at the same time man consumes it. Mass consumption revels in this consequence of the loss of the aura. For Benjamin, a “distance from the aura is a good thing”. The loss of the aura has the potential to open up the politicization of art, whether or not that opening is detrimental or beneficial is yet to be determined. However, it allows for us to raise political questions in regards to the reproducible image which can be used in one way or another.

Yet Benjamin makes it clear that in this new age of mechanical reproduction the contemplation of a screen and the nature of the film itself has changed in such a way that the individual no longer contemplates the film per say; the film contemplates them. A constantly moving image in the disjunction of the physical arrest of watching a moving image move, changes the structure of perception itself. Within the reproducibility of images there is an increase of submission towards the film itself. In and of itself this marks a symptom and not a cause of something terrible that is happening. How can we think of subjectivity in the age of mechanical reproduction? What does it mean to reflect back onto ourselves after being absorbed by these inauthentic and politicized images? What does the aestheticization of the work of art mean now when the aura is lost?

HAVE A HAPPY HOLIDAY ALL!!!!

ERNST JUNGER ON PAIN

Written and published in 1934, a year after Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Ernst Jünger's On Pain is an astonishing essay that announces the rise of a new metaphysics of pain in a totalitarian age. One of the most controversial authors of Twentieth century Germany, Jünger rejects the liberal values of liberty, security, ease, and comfort, and seeks instead the measure of man in the capacity to withstand pain and sacrifice. Jünger heralds the rise of a breed of men who—equipped with an unmatched ability to treat themselves and others in a cold and detached way—become one with new, terrorizing machines of death and destruction in human-guided torpedoes and manned airborne missiles, and whose 'peculiarly cruel way of seeing', resembling the insensitive lens of a camera, anticipates the horrors of World War II. With a preface by Russell A. Berman and an introduction by translator David C. Durst, this remarkable essay not only provides valuable insights into the cult of courage and death in Nazi Germany, but also throws light on the ideology of terror.

“In his essay On Pain Jünger attempts to demonstrate that in the great and cruel process of transformation which man is undergoing in our age the touchstone is pain and not value, pain which completely disregards our values. ‘There is nothing,’ he says, ‘for which we are destined with greater certainty than pain’ – the inevitable lot of every human being, most particularly in this vicious world in which we live today. Therefore a person can only maintain himself and prove himself worthy if he does not try to evade or push away pain but sustains it, faces it, and establishes distance from it; if he is able to place himself beyond the zone of pain, even of sensation, if he is able to treat that region of the self where he participates in pain, that is, the body, as an object.” (p. 89) when he spoke of distance he is implying detachment from all stimuli of pain. Though pain can be compared to our shadow, I still concur with his theory of detachment:

“This detachment emerges wherever man is able to treat the space through which he experiences pain, i.e., the body, as an object. Of course, this presupposes a command center, which regards the body as a distant outpost that can be deployed and sacrificed in battle.”

Now, this is not only very Nietzschean, it is also very Buddhist. Pain, in Buddhism, is dukkha, often translated as “suffering”, and the reality of pain is the first of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. The second Noble Truth is the recognition that dukkha, which is pain or suffering, arises from attachment or identification, and so the remaining Noble Truths highlight the way to attain the condition of detachment and so, the cessation of the condition dukkha through dis-identification with dukkha or pain. This state of detachment is, equally, what is called “the place of no pity” in Castaneda’s writing, and appears in Nietzsche’s philosophy as his “become hard” and his repudiation of the value of pity for the sake of preservation and self-maintenance.

After the World Wars Germany was left in one of the most painful state which led to Nihilism and Junger provided solutions to combat this pain which seemed inevitable. Similarly, the pain Sidhartha encountered was incomprehensible and chose the path of detachment to find inner peace and answers to what made him felt incomplete though he was blessed with royalty. Similarly, even in this new era with the rise to totalrianism, technology and power, we are still swathed with pain. The more we have, the more pain we feel. Let’s give ourselves some distance from everything and everyone and find some inner peace.

 

 

NAZISM - TRIUMPH OF WILL BY RIEFENSTAHL

At Hitler's personal request, a 31-year-old actress and movie director named Leni Riefenstahl was filming the entire week-long Rally. Utilizing thirty film cameras and 120 technicians, she produced an extraordinary film record of the festivities, featuring many unique camera angles and dramatic lighting effects.

Riefenstahl's finished masterpiece, Triumph of the Will, contains many impressive scenes, but perhaps none more powerful than the scene in which Hitler, Himmler, and the new SA leader, Viktor Lutze, walk down a wide aisle in the center of Nuremberg stadium flanked on either side by gigantic formations of Nazis in perfectly aligned columns as he thunderously addressed thousands of German youths. This scene was the most impacting and brainwashing of all since his audience was the future of nation.

HITLER’S ODD APPEAL TO THE GERMAN YOUTHS

At the Nazi Party rally in 1935, Hitler described his ideal of the Hitler Youth as "swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp's steel." The phrase was subsequently quoted often and used as a slogan.

On September 14, 1935, a small, unattractive man with a toothbrush moustache, in a stiff white shirt, brown tie and uniform, addressed some 50,000 members of the Hitler Youth Movement in the gigantic stadium of the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. His fists clenched the Führer spoke to a captive audience, which stood to attention in orderly rows and frequently interrupted his words with impassioned shouts of "Sieg Heil!"

The longer he spoke, the more he whipped the crowd into a frenzy of enthusiasm with talk of the rampant degeneracy of the Weimar Republic and the need for a new German who was "more disciplined, fit and trim." He told the sea of upturned faces that "a young German must be as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp's steel."

It's hard to tell from film footage of this speech whether all the young people present were genuinely moved by Hitler's words, whether they actually understood his message or were simply carried away by the electrifying atmosphere. The only surviving footage is stylized in the same way as Leni Riefenstahl's notorious propaganda film "Triumph of the Will," made one year previously at the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg.

Close-ups of young, shining-eyed Aryans and shots of vast arenas filled with rows of blonde, uniformed young people overseen by the Führer himself combine to create the impression that an almost religious event is taking place. This was exactly the effect Hitler's fiery speeches and the spectacular mass rallies so beloved of the Nazis were supposed to achieve.

The media was brought into line to ensure that the desired effect of Hitler's speeches was underscored by press coverage. A day after he gave a speech, almost all the major dailies would reprint it word for word; it would be reported on in the radio; film footage of the event would be shown weeks later on newsreels screened in cinemas.

It was the Nazis' skilled media manipulation that allowed Hitler's appeal to German youth to be "as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp's steel" to become a popular quote that went down in German history. Over the years, the fact that it was first spoken by Hitler was eventually forgotten.

“Swift as greyhounds, tough as leather,” Hitler's speech seems bizarre now, not least on account of his failure to mention any traditional values that young people might aspire to, such as education, wisdom and justice. As it happened, Hitler had come up with the sentence long before the Hitler Youth rally in 1935 - he has used it 10 years earlier in his book "Mein Kampf."

Even then, Hitler was more interested in what Othmar Plöckinger calls "military" discipline rather than educational ambition. "There is no explicit mention of education and young people in "Mein Kampf," although Hitler's fondness for military thought and action is already in evidence," he says. "In this respect, militarism obviously served as one of the main cornerstones of the Nazi society."

Hitler's speech to young Germans in 1935 was a taste of things to come. In 1936, a law was passed that made the Hitler Youth the only youth organization in Germany, made up of the Hitlerjugend proper, for male youths ages 14-18; the younger boys' section Deutsches Jungvolk for ages 10-14; and the girls' section Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM, the League of German Girls).

In 1939, membership became compulsory. Nearly 8 million youngsters took part in drills on the schoolyard, shooting exercises and mustering, all with the goal of becoming as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp's steel. The Hitler Youth was disbanded by Allied authorities in 1945.

The film's most enduring and dangerous illusion is that Nazi Germany was a super-organized state that, although evil in nature, was impressive nonetheless.

In reality, Nazi Germany was only well organized to the degree that it was a murderous police state. The actual Reich government was a tangled mess of inefficient agencies and overlapping bureaucracies led by ruthless men who had little, if any, professional administrative abilities. From the Reich's first hours in January 1933 until the end in May 1945, various departmental leaders battled each other for power, and would do anything to curry favor with a superior Nazi authority and especially with Hitler, the ultimate authority. Hence, they would all become enthusiastic cogs in the Führer's war and extermination machines.

 

 

 

MAX WEBER: POLITICS AS A VOCATION

After googling and reading the reviews of this remarkable piece of work by him, I can testify that Max Weber’s essay Politics as a Vocation (1919) is one of his most well-known and most debated works. It has been considered one of his most revealing texts, addressing topics such as the development of the state, the multiple roles within the political system and, most notably, the ideal ethical stance for a man who chooses politics as his vocation. For this reason, the paragraph below seem most impacting to me. Online Wikipedia Encyclopedia defines a vocation an occupation to which a person is specially drawn or for which she/he is suited, trained, or qualified. Living ‘for’ politics as a vocation, it becomes the politician’s passion; his life; his lover and the blood flowing through his veins. Ultimately, these politicians began to flourish abundantly in economic gains as they began to live “off” politics.

“At the same time everyone who lives ‘for’ politics (vocation), also lives ‘off’ politics (avocation) in that they are financially dependent upon politics for a livelihood. However, the typical way in which politics, status honor, and meaning intersect and mediate each other is through nationalism. The nation then becomes the substitute for the loss of meaning in traditional authorities caused by the rise of nihilistic thought in the late 19th century. The nation becomes a substitute for God. The concept of civic religion is related to this idea and is closely related to the development of republican states in the ancient world.”

There are two ways of making politics one's vocation: Either one lives 'for' politics or one lives 'off' politics. By no means is this contrast an exclusive one. The rule is, rather, that man does both, at least in thought, and certainly he also does both in practice. He who lives 'for' politics makes politics his life, in an internal sense. Either he enjoys the naked possession of the power he exerts, or he nourishes his inner balance and self-feeling by the consciousness that his life has meaning in the service of a 'cause.' In this internal sense, every sincere man who lives for a cause also lives off this cause. The distinction hence refers to a much more substantial aspect of the matter, namely, to the economic. He who strives to make politics a permanent source of income lives 'off' politics as a vocation, whereas he who does not do this lives 'for' politics. Under the dominance of the private property order, some--if you wish--very trivial preconditions must exist in order for a person to be able to live 'for' politics in this economic sense. Under normal conditions, the politician must be economically independent of the income politics can bring him. This means, quite simply, that the politician must be wealthy or must have a personal position in life which yields a sufficient income. This is the case, at least in normal circumstances. The war lord's following is just as little concerned about the conditions of a normal economy as is the street crowd following of the revolutionary hero. Both live off booty, plunder, confiscations, contributions, and the imposition of worthless and compulsory means of tender, which in essence amounts to the same thing. But necessarily, these are extraordinary phenomena. In everyday economic life, only some wealth serves the purpose of making a man economically independent. Yet this alone does not suffice. The professional politician must also be economically 'dispensable,' that is, his income must not depend upon the fact that he constantly and personally places his ability and thinking entirely, or at least by far predominantly, in the service of economic acquisition. In the most unconditional way, the rent ier is dispensable in this sense. Hence, he is a man who receives completely unearned income. He may be the territorial lord of the past or the large landowner and aristocrat of the present who receives ground rent. In Antiquity and the Middle Ages they who received slave or serf rents or in modern times rents from shares or bonds or similar sources--these are rentiers. Neither the worker nor--and this has to be noted well--the entrepreneur, especially the modern, large-scale entrepreneur, is economically dispensable in this sense. For it is precisely the entrepreneur who is tied to his enterprise and is therefore not dispensable. This holds for the entrepreneur in industry far more than for the entrepreneur in agriculture, considering the seasonal character of agriculture. In the main, it is very difficult for the entrepreneur to be represented in his enterprise by someone else, even temporarily. He is as little dispensable as is the medical doctor, and the more eminent and busy he is the less dispensable he is. For purely organizational reasons, it is easier for the lawyer to be dispensable; and therefore the lawyer has played an incomparably greater, and often even a dominant, role as a professional politician. We shall not continue in this classification; rather let us clarify some of its ramifications. The leadership of a state or of a party by men who (in the economic sense of the word) live exclusively for politics and not off politics means necessarily a 'plutocratic' recruitment of the leading political strata. To be sure, this does not mean that such plutocratic leadership signifies at the same time that the politically dominant strata will not also seek to live 'off' politics, and hence that the dominant stratum will not usually exploit their political domination in their own economic interest; all that is unquestionable, of course. There has never been such a stratum that has not somehow lived 'off' politics. Only this is meant: that the professional politician need not seek remuneration directly for his political work, whereas every politician without means must absolutely claim this. On the other hand, we do not mean to say that the’ propertyless’ politician will pursue private economic advantages through politics, exclusively, or even predominantly. Nor do we mean that he will not think, in the first place, of 'the subject matter.' Nothing would be more incorrect.

 

To conclude, I wish to reiterate Weber saying a professional politician is one who is active in politics strives for power either as a means in serving other aims, ideal or egoistic, or as 'power for power's sake,' that is, in order to enjoy the prestige-feeling that power gives. He also noted the importance of passion, the feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion. Moreover, he noted that the politician must also combat vanity, in order to be matter-of-factly devoted to his cause and preserve some distance, not least from him. Lack of objectivity and irresponsibility are the two deadly sins of politics; vanity, the need to personally stand in the foreground, temps the politician to commit these sins. More importantly, a politician should be bound by ethics. The man who believes in an ethic of responsibility takes into account precisely the average deficiencies of people. He does not feel in a position to burden others with the results of his own actions so far as he was able to foresee them; he will say, these results are ascribed to my action. On the other hand, the ultimate ends dude feels a ''responsibility'' only to keep his intentions good. But, can politicians practice and employ ethics?

 

 

 

 

Before 1919 Germany had been – under Kaiser Wilhelm II – virtually a dictatorship.   There was a Reichstag (a parliament), but it could not make laws and did not appoint the government.   The Kaiser did all that.

But the First World War changed everything.   As Germany sank into defeat, the government fell apart.   The navy mutinied (rebelled) and there were food riots.   German had to sign the Armistice in November 1918, and the Kaiser fled to Holland.  

After a short period of political chaos, the members of the Reichstag met in the small town of Weimar, near Berlin, and set up a new government in February 1919.   It was a Republic (it did not have a king – which is why we call it the ‘Weimar Republic’) and it was a democracy.

Weimar Republic's new constitution was adopted in August 1919. Many historians put the blame for Weimar's future political problems on this constitution in that, ironically, it was too fair as it included everybody regardless of their political beliefs. However, Ebert was committed to democracy and the new constitution had his full support.

The constitution introduced a bi-cameral assembly: this was a parliament that was made up of two layers; one represented the whole nation (the Reichstag) and made whole-nation decisions while the other represented regions (the Reichsrat).

The German people, united in all their racial elements and inspired by the will to renew and strengthen their Reich in liberty and justice, to preserve peace at home and abroad, and to promote social progress, have established the constitution which was categorized the Articles into four segments.

Articles 1- 17  represent the Structure and Function of the Reich; Articles 20-76  cater for The Reichstag and  Articles 109-135 provide for the Fundamental Rights of the German.

  The Weimar Republic was a very good democracy.   It had a Bill of Rights to protect the freedoms of the people – for example in Article 118, and it gave the vote to all men and women over the age of 21 as Article 22 declares.  

The voting system was one of ‘proportional representation’. Article 22 declares “The delegates are elected by universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage by men and women over twenty years of age, according to the principle of Proportional Representation (PR). Election day must be a Sunday or a public holiday.” This system elected MPs exactly in line with the wishes of the people.   The people elected the Reichstag, which appointed the government and made the laws.   The Republic did have a President – Frederick Ebert – but he was elected too.

Elections were built around universal suffrage and proportional representation. However, the theoretical strength of the constitution was also its Achilles heel. Everybody was allowed to vote including extremists from both sides of the political spectrum - left and right. The system of proportional representation also meant that if any minor party got the necessary votes, they would have party members in the Reichstag. The major parties would continue to dominate the Reichstag, but the minor parties could disrupt proceedings and make the party in power - the Social Democrats - look incapable of maintaining order in its very seat of power. This is exactly what the new Nazi Party did in its early years. It got enough votes to get a few members into the Reichstag (as a result of proportional representation) and those Nazis elected then did what they could to 'prove' to the German people that Ebert and the Social Democrats were incompetent in dealing with such basics as maintaining discipline within the Reichstag.

The constitution was to play a major part in the years 1930 -1933 when the president, Hindenburg, appointed and sacked chancellors seemingly at will. He also held the power of dissolving the Reichstag and call general election if he felt the political situation warranted it. Though the President was elected by the people through their constitutional right of Proportional Representation, he could veto Reichstag legislation.

With all the downsides of this system on behalf of the President, I still favor the system as it more clearly represents the wishes of the voters’ as expressed at the ballot box. Fewer votes are 'wasted', therefore greater participation may be encouraged. Other systems tend to lead people into not voting for what they might see as a wasted cause. In addition to minority parties having a much fairer representation, there are more opportunities for independent candidates - PR removes 'safe' seats with their characteristics of low turn-outs. If each vote counts, people will feel more inclined to involve themselves in elections.

Voters have more of a choice of candidates using PR and it is possible that those candidates may be of better quality and represent their constituents in a more professional manner. The two-party system (which may have both pros and cons) is usually eliminated using PR and the end result is more ‘pluralist’. The possibility of single-party 'elective dictatorship' is greatly diminished.

In spite of all these bright sides of Proportional Representation in the Weimar Republic, the system still turned out to be a disaster too.   It led to the election of many tiny parties, all of whom squabbled amongst each other, so no government could get a majority in the Reichstag – so it could never pass the laws it wanted.  

One Article that is present in almost all constitution is the “freedom of expression”; “freedom of speech”; “freedom to opinions” and the many other words it can be paraphrased into. All conceptualized as the freedom declared in Article 118 of the Weimar Constitution – “Every German has the right, within the limits of the general laws, to express his opinion freely by word, in writing, in print, in picture form, or in any other way… Censorship is forbidden…,” this is one of my favorite human rights that I enjoy discussing. Why?

Our freedom is explicitly declared but yet there is always that hidden exceptional clause that impinges and stifles this right when it has to do with opinions about the government and large corporations. The press and media suffocate the ‘naked truth’ and disclose only the ‘polished truth’.

Freedom of expression is a cornerstone of democratic rights and freedoms. The right to freedom of expression upholds the rights of all to express their views and opinions freely. It is essentially a right which should be promoted to the maximum extent possible given its critical role in democracy and public participation in political life. There may be certain extreme forms of expression which need to be curtailed for the protection of other human rights. Limiting freedom of expression in such situations is always a fine balancing act. One particular form of expression which is banned in some countries is “hate speech”.

There may be some views which incite intolerance or hatred between groups. This raises the debate about whether such hate speech, as it is known, should be restricted. In some countries hate speech laws have been introduced to outlaw such expression. There is a fine balance between upholding the right to freedom of expression and protecting other human rights. The success of such laws has often been questionable and one of the consequences has been to drive hate speech underground. While it may be necessary to ban certain extreme forms of hate speech and certainly to make its use by the state prohibited, parallel measures involving the promotion of a pluralistic media are essential to give voice to counter viewpoints.

The freedom to impart information can come under attack in a variety of ways and particularly impinge on the freedom of the press. Pressure on journalists poses a very significant threat. This is the point where censorship is imposed and we are well aware why. Censorship refers to a variety of activities by public officials - ranging from telephone calls and threats to physical attacks - designed to prevent or punish the publication of critical material. The right of journalists to protect their sources is also important in ensuring the free flow of information on matters of public interest. International and regional human rights mechanisms have asserted that journalists should never be required to reveal their sources except under certain conditions (it is necessary for a criminal investigation or the defense of a person accused of a criminal offence; they are ordered to do so by a court, after a full opportunity to present their case; necessary’ implies that the information cannot be obtained elsewhere, that it is of great importance and that the public interest in disclosure significantly outweighs the harm to freedom of expression from disclosure). However, I am awed as to the part of Article 118 of the German Constitution which says “censorship is forbidden”. This now explains the long lasting era of German Expressionism is its most naked form depicted through films, cabaret songs, and art especially through Dadaism. The existence of Nihilism after the World Wars, I would like to say, form the foundation of this freedom of opinions without censorship.

Finally, the freedom of speech is the single most important political right of citizens, although private property is required for its operation. Without free speech no political action is possible and no resistance to injustice and oppression is possible. Without free speech elections would have no meaning at all. Policies of contestants become known to the public and become responsive to public opinion only by virtue of free speech. Between elections the freely expressed opinions of citizens help restrain oppressive rule. Without this freedom it is futile to expect political freedom or consequently economic freedom. The sine qua non of a democratic society is the freedom of speech.

 

 

THE GERMAN REVOLUTION & ROSA LUXEMBURG

The revolution that occurred in Germany in 1918-1919 was not really a revolution-at least not in the traditional sense of the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917, or even the German Revolution of 1848. Perhaps, by calling it the "German Revolution," we imply that things are conceived and done differently in Germany. Perhaps, that is true. Her political traditions were somewhat different from those of France and Russia.

The conditions which gave birth to revolution in November 1918 were unlike those of 1789 in France, and although somewhat similar to those in Russia in 1917, they were still not quite the same. Neither in France nor Russia did revolution come as a complete surprise even to purported revolutionaries. But it did in Germany. There was no sustained revolutionary agitation and strategy preceding it and when it came even the Social Democrats were completely overwhelmed by events.

 The revolution began with the Kiel mutiny of late October, which within a week had spread to numerous towns and military bases across Germany. Revolutionary councils, in a similar mould to Russian soviets, formed across the nation and began demanding political reform. Most of these demands were socialist or social-democratic: an end the war, the abolition of the monarchy, greater democratic representation and economic equality. And at this point I would like to introduce Hannah Arendt called Rosa Luxemburg, a "revolutionary heroine." Rosa was the most notable representative of those left-wing socialists who clung to what was once the major plank of the orthodox socialist party: international pacifism. The international socialists found the cause of war in those greedy capitalists who presided over private capitalism, the very structure of evil.

Rosa was an award-winning Polish economist and communist agitator, especially admired in Berlin as a teacher of political economics who made that dismal and obscure subject interesting and clear. Of course her version of economics was "materialistic" and "socialistic," emphasizing the broad distribution of produce to the laboring producers, hence its moral content was more attractive to the majority of Germans - Social Democrats - than the money-grubbing, selfish doctrines of private capitalism.

Rosa believed that the strong German socialist party would be the salvation of international socialism; hence she quoted in Chapter 1 of her work, The Junius Pamphlet, “The fall of the socialist proletariat in the present world war is unprecedented. It is a misfortune for humanity. But socialism will be lost only if the international proletariat fails to measure the depth of this fall, if it refuses to learn from it.” What does this imply or what actually triggered such words in her work while she was thrown in prison? Why socialism?

The enormous coverage given to the centenary of the First World War does occasionally recognize the tragedy of the conflict and the horrendous loss of life it engendered. Recent imperialist wars have been so disastrous that treating the First World War with unashamed jingoism would not be convincing.

Welcome though this may be, the media is very careful to avoid suggesting that anything could have been done to avoid war. The deaths of millions between 1914 and 1918 is portrayed akin to bad weather — unpleasant but natural. To accept this would be a mistake because it would not only be a distortion of what happened, but disarm us in the face of future conflagrations. The killing could have been stopped, and we know this because it was stopped by the greatest peace movement in history — workers’ revolution.

The Bolshevik uprising in October 1917 pulled Russia, the country with the largest army and highest death toll , out of the war. A year later, after Austria-Hungary and Germany jointly suffered the loss of around 3.6 million lives, further revolutions brought the armistice. In the case of Germany it took a week — from the outbreak of the Kiel naval mutiny to the overthrow of the Kaiser in Berlin.

Yet four years before, at the outbreak of war in August 1914, this outcome looked unlikely. What happened that year seemed to prove the impotence of the workers’ movement in the face of imperialism. How can we square these two realities?

The starting point is an understanding of imperialism, a system in which the competitive drive of capitalism was embodied in the actions of states through armed conflict. The huge productive power of modern industry was harnessed into an immense force for destruction. To counter this menace a mass of people with the social power to stop imperialism, and an interest to do so, had to be mobilized. That power appeared to be assembled in the Second International, a world-wide organization of socialist parties and associated trade unionists. The 1910 Congress of the Second International in Copenhagen voted for an immediate international general strike to end any imperialist war should it break out. Two years later the Basel Congress reiterated that when war threatened it was “the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives… to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war…” Leaving nothing to chance, it added, “In case war should break out anyway it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.” Mass organization.

The most impressive organization of the Second International parties was German Social Democracy (SPD). In 1914 it had more than a million members and has been described as “the first true political mass organization in history”. Britain’s Labor Party had more than 2 million affiliated to it. French socialism attracted a million and a half votes in 1914 and over 100 deputies were elected. In the days before war was declared demonstrations and protests were held and bold statements declared in line with the anti-militarist decisions of successive Second International Congresses.

Yet on 4 August 1914 Germany’s 110 socialist deputies backed their leader in overturning their anti-imperialist policy. The scale of the about-turn was such that at first some people thought reports in the various socialist newspapers were faked. When Lenin read in Vorwärts, the German SPD newspaper, about the party’s backing for the war drive he exclaimed, “It cannot be; it must be a forged number.” Romania’s socialists believed stories of German socialist capitulation were a “monstrous lie” and that the Austrian government had taken over the socialist presses in that country. It was not long before the shocking truth sank in. In Germany Rosa Luxemburg, Liebknecht’s collaborator, recognized the cause of the war: “Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth — there stands bourgeois society.” Equally she saw the problem posed by the failure of the Second International to withstand the pressure. Each party had had to choose whether it believed “workers in uniform” should kill other workers just because they came from another country, or whether workers shared a common interest in uniting against their exploiters: “The fall of the socialist proletariat in the present world war is unprecedented. It is a misfortune for humanity. But socialism will be lost only if the international proletariat fails to measure the depth of this fall, if it refuses to learn from it.”

The conclusion that Luxemburg drew, along with others such as Lenin and Trotsky in Russia and John Maclean in Britain, was that the seeds of collapse lay in reformist politics. The Second International called itself socialist and professed to stand in the interests of ordinary people. However, its constituent parties believed that a different society could be achieved by winning a parliamentary majority and thus capturing the national state. If capturing the state is the first priority, then when that state is attacked these parties end up defending it, even if this means worker killing worker.

Opposing the murderous slaughter of the First World War meant opposing your own state and the capitalist system that shaped it. To consistently reject the war was to perform a revolutionary act. The numbers who took this step in 1914 were small. However, by taking a principled stand revolutionaries who were vilified at the start of the war came to lead mass anti-war movements a few years later.

The most effective of these was the Bolshevik Party whose foundation stretched back to 1903. That organizational head-start proved vital. Although revolutions sprang up in many places to stop the war, only in Russia were revolutionaries like Lenin able to take that one step further and destroy the economic system that engenders war itself. Despite the important political work they performed, Maclean was imprisoned, while Luxemburg and Liebknecht were assassinated in 1919: the misfortune to humanity did become a reality and the depth was the fall of the international proletariat was unable to be measured.

 

REFERENCE

Wikipedia Encyclopedia - History of the German Revolution 1918

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Fritz Lang’s 1931 German masterpiece M is unusual as it conveys a message of radical distrust in the state and its process.  The making of M coincided with the rapid disintegration of the political and social structures of the Weimar Republic; German defeat in the First World War had resulted in a general erosion of public trust and governmental authority.  Recession had reached Germany in the form of massive unemployment, rising criminality and political unrest: Berlin had become the site of wild strikes and mass demonstrations. Lynch mobs engaged in open manhunts; violent crime was seen as a symptom of a system that was rotten at the core; Lang’s film culminates in a “kangaroo court,” the focus of this essay.  The court is coordinated by criminals and held in the basement of a defunct cognac distillery.  Lang places the justice system and its process under scrutiny, calling into question who has the right to judge, give retribution, and to punish. The film echoes historical events in Germany at the beginning of the 1930s.  The country had just witnessed an epidemic of serial killers, coupled with an unprecedented public interest in serial crime.  Certainly "M” is a portrait of a diseased society, one that seems even more decadent than the other portraits of Berlin in the 1930s; its characters have no virtues and lack even attractive vices.

I find the film very powerful because it doesn't ask for sympathy for the killer Franz Becker, but it asks for understanding: As he says in his own defense, he cannot escape or control the evil compulsions that overtake him. Let us examine how this is dealt with in the court trial in the basement.

DISCUSSION - SCENE SELECTION

"M” was Lang's first sound picture, and he smartly used dialogue so sparingly. Many early talkies felt they had to talk all the time, but Lang allows his camera to prowl through the streets and dives, providing a rat's-eye view. One of the film's most spectacular shots is utterly silent, as the captured killer is dragged into a basement to be confronted by the city's assembled criminals, and the camera shows their faces: hard, cold, closed, implacable.

It is at this inquisition that Lorre delivers his famous speech in defense, or explanation. Sweating with terror, his face a fright mask, he cries out: "I can't help myself! I haven't any control over this evil thing that's inside of me! The fire, the voices, the torment!” He tries to describe how the compulsion follows him through the streets, and ends: "Who knows what it's like to be me?”

Beckert is put onto what was then called “a kangaroo court” for the underworld’s trial. On the court, Beckert claims that he is a psychopath that kills involuntarily. As with the police, by interrogating an ally to the men who catch Beckert, they accidentally find out where Beckert is taken and get there timely, just before the court of criminals are going to kill Beckert. The final scene ends with the victims’ mothers sitting outside the real court and sobbing, one of them uttering: “This will not bring our children back. One has to keep closer watch over the children! All of you!”
 In the penultimate scene of the kangaroo court, finally, Beckert is the one internally focalized. There are medium shots to show the sight of Beckert: ferocious expressions of the “judge panel” and long shots that pan across the underworld courtroom to show this cramped room of revenge. He is repeatedly scared by the poking arms of the blind vendor and the attorney, as is faithfully portrayed in visual terms: Beckert stays at the center of the picture when an arm extends into the frame and scares him, then the camera pans along the arm to frame both figures in the picture. Longer time is given to him to make monologue confession about his compulsion to kill. But this conclusion is dubious, given such alterations as the close-ups of individual listeners who are secretly sympathetic with Beckert. More importantly, when the attorney stands up on his defense, Beckert is ousted from the frame as he is crouching at the foot of the fence, his head bent down, and no shots is given to suggest what he is thinking. The focal character becomes the attorney who tries fiercely to win over the irritated and agitated audience but seeing his already insane so-called client raving out of his insanity, the lawyer turns away from him, ignoring him, and blowing dust off a document he has just drafted; he spares Beckert only a cursory glance.  We see Schränker at his desk again, wielding his cane. “We just want to render you harmless,” Schränker pronounces, again pointing his gloved finger — “but you’ll only be that way when you’re dead.” We see a medium shot with both Beckert and the lawyer at his desk in frame, Beckerts hand rests on a dividing banister between the two. Beckert screams in retort, “But if you kill me, it’ll be cold-blooded murder!” There is shrill laughter from the crowd.  They are eager to kill Beckert, and happy to do so in cold blood.  The lawyer slowly shakes his head, urging his client to control himself, while also implying to the viewer that what is happening is wrong. 

Horrified and terrified at the injustice of their justice, he lurches towards the camera and screams “I demand that you hand me over to the police.” Laughter from the crowd intensifies, and at the top of his lungs Beckert desperately pleads, “I demand to be handed over to the jurisdiction of common law.”  What is behind this hysteria, however, is the fear for ambivalence. His mental disorder makes him legally and ethically immune, for lawfully he should never be sentenced to death, and his act that is considered good in traditional ethics, (such as being kind to kids) is also in question. It is perhaps the most dangerous when “duality has become homicidal schizophrenia, with an innocent, unassuming façade hiding. (Jensen 94)” However, I am of the view that such ambivalence is symphonic of the time.

Peter Lorre really doesn't have that much screen time (in fact, none of them really does) but each scene that he's in he surely captivates me. Those eyes, that expression, that awkward rat-like persona that he has, it's unforgettable for me. I really hated him so much I wanted to see him stoned by all the mothers. When he was "tried in court" I was waiting for the mob to kill him. But then that speech! Like his "lawyer" said (who suddenly was against death penalty), the fact that it's a compulsion, that Beckert couldn't avoid the urge means that he shouldn't be held accountable for his actions. That he shouldn't be in a criminal court because he needs to be treated by a doctor. I mean what can you really say to that? If you're a real judge, or a police officer, you really can't say "Ahh whatever man, you're crazy, we're gonna kill ya!" It's hard. But it's harder if you think about the future where the asylums & prisons are cramped to the max and we're using taxpayers' money to feed these criminals and after several years we pardon them and let them loose (back to society) and they repeat their offense, and we have a bunch of new victims. Let’s think about it.

 

REFRENCES

　　1.  Jensen, Paul M. Cinema of Fritz Lang. Oak Tree Publications, 1968.
　　
　　 2. Lang, Friz. M , (Germany, Janus Films, 1931). Kaes, Anton. BFI Film Classics M , (London: BFI     Publishing, 2000).