Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

H e n r i L e F e b v r e
the age of reason reverts to a dark age of witches and witch hunts,
of primitive barbarism and axes of evil.
* * *
Lefebvre made a long trip to Germany in 1932, and there’s a breeziness
and carefree air to his descriptions in La Somme et le Reste,
of taking solitary country walks, hopping from one youth hostel
to another, swigging beer with young communists in rustic inns,
swaying to melodies of the Threepenny Opera. 4 Lefebvre spoke to
many different people, observed the German situation firsthand,
gasped at “the exalted ardor of the Hitler Youth,” which clashed
with the “enormous rigidity of the German Communist Party and
its administrative apparatus,” whose “brutal internationalism” was
almost as brutal as Hitler’s nationalism. 5 Lefebvre felt the enormous
power of a volcano about to blow, as economic crisis deepened
and unemployment grew. The desperate plight of workers
seemed to presage political revolt, probably growing support for
the communists.
He returned to France anxious about Hitler yet optimistic
that misery and “unhappy consciousness” would prompt German
working classes to do the right thing. International communists
everywhere thought Hitler was a passing phase, something destined
to fizzle out, a little like U.S. progressives thought Bush
was a passing phase. However, in 1933, forty million Germans
voted for Hitler, many communists included. Rank and filers had
been urged by the apparatchik to rid the government of the liberal
bourgeoisie. The German Communist Party hated the Social
Democrats even more than they hated the National-Socialists, and
in their zeal to overthrow capitalism they’d given a green light
to fascism. Proletarians thereby displaced their angst rightward,
not leftward, and the party hardly set an example. Workers acted
counter to the classical communist texts: once, they had nothing
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