(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

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the destruction of the revolutionary dynamics that the workers’ movement
had developed during the course of the nineteenth century. Accordingly,
his Baudelaire book is as carefully candid in its dismissal of Lenin
and Stalin as it is of Hitler. In an extensive footnote he even draws an
explicit comparison between the catastrophes of nineteenth-century history
and the totalitarian configurations in the 1930s: “Mit dem Ehrgeiz,
keine ihrer Unmenschlichkeiten ohne den Paragraphen zu lassen, dessen
Beobachtung in ihr zu erblicken ist, haben die totalitären Staaten einen
Keim zur Blüte gebracht, der . . . in einem früheren Stadium des Kapitalismus
bereits geschlummert hat” (GS I.2:521, note; “With the intent
of leaving no inhumanity undocumented by the law whose observance
it indicates, the totalitarian states have fostered the flowering of a seed
which . . . was already present in an earlier stage of capitalism,” SW 4:69
n.36). Hitler Germany and the Soviet Union are drawn together here and
characterized as political reactions to historical developments, according
to which the radical disintegration of the proletariat has been facilitated
by bureaucratic structures.
Repeatedly Benjamin’s reading of Baudelaire’s poetry collection Les
fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) makes specific reference to the political
situation during his own lifetime. In “Die Bohème” he relinquishes
all hopes that he had pinned on the Soviet Union as a political power
destined to defend the interests of the proletariat. His arguments come
close to the anti-Soviet sentiments entertained by his friends and mentors
in New York. Max Horkheimer had already expressed a thinly veiled criticism
of the aberrations of socialism in the final issue of the “Journal for
Social Research” for the year 1937, in which he condemns Soviet politics
by pointing to the overt “Ökonomismus, auf den die kritische Theorie
mancherorts reduziert ist” (economism, to which critical theory has been
reduced in some parts of the world). Taking a disparaging and admonitory
stance, Horkheimer argues: “Der Entwicklungsgrad der wesentlichen
Elemente der Demokratie und Assoziation gehört mit zum Inhalt
des Begriffs der Vergesellschaftung.” 7 (The degree of development of the
essential elements of democracy and association are an integral part of any
concept of socialization.) In February 1938 Benjamin, deeply engrossed
in his work on the Baudelaire book, writes to Horkheimer: “Mit leidenschaftlicher
Zustimmung lese ich, was Sie im letzten Heft publiziert
haben. Die Kritik an Rußland kann weitertragend und maßvoller schwerlich
formuliert werden” (GB 6:23; I have read what you wrote in the
last issue with avid approval. The criticism levied against Russia could not
have been expressed more comprehensively and more moderately).
Benjamin’s “tiger’s leap into history” is not only limited to a diatribe
against socialism and Fascism. It also indicts his social group, the
intellectuals, who from the very beginning neglected to provide adequate
support to the working class. 8 This also pertains to Baudelaire. A