Ebert had decided to place the slogan Law and Order higher than the
promising
revolutionary reshaping of the German situation.
Peter-Sloterdijk-Critique-of-Cynical-Reason
: "Die Millionen- Montage.
"
Chapter 17
Conspirators and Dissimulators. Political Cynicisms IV: Conviction as Disinhibition
In Germany after the war there was no revolution, but there was a counterrevolution. What is commonly designated as revolution is only the fact that on 9 November 1918, all the monarchs fled in fear of a revolution. When they assessed the real situation, it was too late to keep up the fiction that they were still monarchs. Into the vacuum that had thus arisen, as the bearer of official force, stepped the army, represented by the soldiers' councils. They delegated their power to the Na- tional Assembly and thereby committed suicide.
The monarchists, after 9 November, played dead, so to speak, and claimed that they only wanted to intervene to estab- lish calm and order. Therefore, they supported the Social Democratic government in the struggle it wanted to have with the Left. In this way, the politically anemic forces and the resolute opponents of the republic again gained power. Im- mediately, the dictatorship of means revealed itself. The government of 1919 could not get rid of the spirits it had sum- moned. The armed forces removed the soldier's councils, they removed the leader of the republic, literally, by having him murdered.
E. J. Gumbel, Verschworer. Zur Geschichte und Soziologie der deutschen nationalistischen Geheimbunde 1918-1924, new ed. (Heidelberg, 1979, p. 13; see also the new edition of Vier Jahre politischer Mord [1922], 1980)
With a steady hand, Emil Julius Gumbel, a privatdozent in statistics in Heidel- berg, as well as pacifist, radical democrat, and documenter of the injustice current in his time, sketches the outlines of the German Revolution of 1918-19. Its course was dominated by the interplay of social democracy with the reactionaries, the anemics with the bloodstained forces. What crystallized as the new political order
424
CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV ? 425
in Germany was a dubious interaction of official parliamentary forces with an- tidemocratic and secret organizations. In the latter gathered those who wanted to pursue a politics of refusal. The officials allowed themselves in all this to bite into the sour apple of the given facts: capitulation, the Weimar National Assembly, extorted acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles.
Social democracy had let itself be made a fool of by the political opponent or had offered itself as fool and stopgap measure. It took over the opponent's political inheritance without having looked to see whether it was really dead. Whereas those who were responsible for the war and the defeat had settled outside the country or had submerged in the blustering national opposition, the Social Democrats, with Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Noske at the helm, risked presenting themselves as the force of law and order in a situation of volatile revolutionary- counterrevolutionary ambiguity. They allowed themselves to be used to perform the work of the reaction. An older social democratic conviction complex seemed to emerge here once again. As early as 1914, social democracy had proved that it was prepared to fall into the patriotic line when it was a matter of clearing the way for the war. Thus, in 1919, it wanted to prove how efficient it was at ruling when it was a matter of administering the catastrophes of the other side. Twice within four years it said yes, gritting its teeth, to things that were irresponsible. Both times it showed itself to be the party of tragic illusory realism in Germany. In order to appear completely responsible and realistic, it accepted the responsi- bility for the mistakes and crimes of others, became a collaborator of Wilhel- minianism, and then, after the war, the business partner of military, bourgeois, and populist reaction. In its behavior, it carried to the point of absurdity the an- tithesis described by Max Weber between the ethics of conviction ("the pure line") and the ethics of responsibility ("the view of what is given"). For it practiced a conviction of responsibility, a readiness to accept responsibility as a substitute for conviction, formal realism as substitute for constructive, relevant action. It did not try to understand that even a simple real reform needs a revolutionary core, and thus after 1918, it bloodily choked off the democratic forces in Germany that wanted change. It wanted reforms without real interventions and thereby achieved the highest possible degree of conservation, indeed, restoration.
In this, a basic feature of Weimar mentalities is reflected: illusory realism, false sobriety, self-deception under the facade of the grand overview, positive conviction about the innermost disorientation, nihilistic antinihilism, a reckless readiness to assume responsibility. The naive pretended to be respectable and without illusions. The vengeful disappointed played innocent.
After the pause for reflection until May 1919-by which time the German ex- periments with council-republics also had failed-the men of the reaction had set their sights more clearly on their goals; Down with the props of the republic. The heads of the national and military camps were dreaming, already quite some time
426 ? CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV
before the first serious counterrevolutionary coup, the Kapp putsch (March 1920), of a great blow.
From a memorandum for General von Lossow
It is divided into a purely military part and a civil-political-economic part. The aim of both parts is to prime the entire people for the blow and to psychologically prepare them for the work, for the spirit re- quired after the executed blow.
I. Military Part
. . . An improvement of the state of affairs can only rely on weapons. The armed forces execute the first blow, clear the air, eliminate
quickly and ruthlessly everything that through weakness and criminality suffocates the people. After the executed blow, the part of the people at
arms builds the tatorship. . . .
a) Mobilization b) Mobilization d) Compilation
main force for the so-called civil and economic dic-
3. Preparations
of the armed forces and students(! ) . . , of the citizenry . . .
of black lists
II. The Civil Part The Press
Certain signs and mute indications, often quite harmless hints, as soon as they again and again race(! ) through the pages of the press, will to a large extent help solve the task of the education of the people. (Gumbel, Verschworer, pp. 28-30)
Under the cover of secrecy, the military Right finds its true language. The con- spiracy suspends the compulsion to dissemble in its interior. Outwardly innocent; inwardly, cynicism as the normal tone. On February 11, 1920, a certain Lieu- tenant Mayerl wrote from Wurzburg to the commander of the Berthold Armored Division, a volunteer corps, which around 1919-20 mulled over plans for a great "blow. "
It is to be hoped that the coming dictatorship will not forget to declare open season on the Jews. --One night would suffice to exterminate these dogs. Here, I have already started compiling a black list so that the "right ones" will be beaten to death. . . .
For many a non-Jew also deserves it. (Gumbel, Verschworer, 23)
From the start, the German conspirators practice a game with masks. Only those who can look innocent will be in a position to let fly when the moment is ripe. The philistine cynicism, as it is revealed in Lossow's memorandum, presup- poses for its dictatorship of means a propaganda of pure conviction; the civil
CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV ? 427
preparations for the "blow" are thus necessarily respectable and publicly idealis- tic, apparently innocent. "The work is carried on publicly under the sign of the 'Antibolshevist League' " (Gumbel, p. 30). ' The higher the public goals, the more secretive the cynical means.
Just how strongly the ways of acting and thinking of the German Right were imbued with military cynicism is revealed by documents on the most spectacular action of the populist "idealists"--the murder of the German foreign minister, Walther Rathenau, in Berlin on June 24, 1922.
Just as Rathenau . . . wanted to drive from his villa in Grunewald to the Foreign Office, his car was overtaken by another car, driven by a student, Ernst Werner Techow, in which the former first lieutenant, Er- win Kern, and Hermann Fischer also sat. Kern and Fischer fired a ma- chine gun at Rathenau and threw a hand grenade at him. Rathenau was killed instantly. . . .
. . . After the deed, Techow reported, "It came off. Rathenau is dead. We did it to provoke the reds to an attack. We were out of money. " (Gumbel, Verschworer, p. 48)
The felons were recruited from the former Ehrhardt Brigade, later known as Organization C, as well as from other populist, conspiratorial, and antirepubli- can associations. Fischer committed suicide. Kern, the principal culprit, died in
2
a shoot-out as he was about to be arrested. Giinther--"who was the most likely
to spill the beans"-suffered an attempted assassination with arsenic-laced chocolates.
The most interesting personality is Willy Giinther [who had helped work out the plan;-Author]. In the war, he distinguished himself as deserter and forger of documents, impersonated a Turkish lieutenant,
3
was exposed, punished for desertion. . . .
putsch and gained through this contact with Colonel Bauer and Luden- dorff. He was a member of the League of the Righteous, the German League, the German Officers' League, the League of Loyalty, the League of Protection and Defiance, and the German National Youth League. At a "nest evening" of the latter league, he let himself be celebrated as Rathenau's murderer. Letters from Helfferich, Luden- dorff. . . were found in his possession. . . . One of ten letters from Ludendorff began "Dear Giinther" and ended familiarly "With cordial greetings. " (Gumbel, Verschworer, p. 49)
In his defense, Techow, who was presented as a "populist idealist," claimed that he had believed that the trip was only a test drive. With threats, Kern had "persuaded him to become an accomplice. " He had acted in a subjective situation of distress. The young Ernst von Salomon, who was implicated in the prepara- tions for the murder, also swore that he had believed that the plan had to do with
He took part in the Kapp
428 ? CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV
"setting a prisoner loose. " The tenor of the defense ran: Admittedly, they had the "noble convictions" that would suffice for political murder, but in detail, it "wasn't intended that way. " Techow enjoyed strong public sympathies. At the Technical University in Berlin, a public collection was organized on his behalf.
The art of political dissimulation saturated the ways of thinking of the right- wing conspirators. Since they regarded themselves as having been duped, in other words, since they used the duping as the basic lie to justify their actions, they demanded for themselves the right to declare a secret war on reality. Because they wanted to save populist illusions, traditional privileges, and patriotic megalomaniac fantasies, they proclaimed cunning to be the true morality. With a crafty hyperrealism, they set about defending their illusions. This resulted in several remarkable strategic plans. Gumbel notes that Organization C also sur- rounded itself with "political fantasies" of the following kind:
By the way, an entire system of political fantasies belongs to Organiza- tion C. The best example is a book by the former Major Solf, which appeared as early as 1920, entitled: "1934, Germany's Resurrection. " Colonel Bauer, for whose arrest a warrant had been issued, wrote the preface. Here, as a means for Germany's resurrection, everything is affirmed that the opponents of present-day Germany accuse it of as a proof of the will to wage war.
For starters, there is a Club of the Innocent. It has contacts in the whole country and its goal is a war of retribution against France. Its head has no name but is called the General. (Just as in the national as- sociation Ludendorff was called Dictator L. and Ehrhardt simply "Con- sul. ") The club also has innocent members who, until the last minute, do not have a clue about what is going on. (Just as the Organization Es- cherich or the People's Militia. ) Former officers' boys serve as contacts among the workers. For the officers, mobilization lists are compiled. A famous physicist invents a new means of war, a kind of radiation that causes all ammunition within a certain radius to explode. Disguised as cinema projectors, the individual parts are manufactured in factories (just as now in Schiebungen weapons are declared to be machines). . . . On the decisive day, the General holds a speech: "We will rid ourselves of undesirable elements without many pangs of conscience. . . . " The storm breaks loose. The Reichstag, which is nationalist to the bones, receives the General. The Reich president abdicates, the General receives unconditional power (Enabling Act, state of emergency). The enemy troops of occupation are defeated everywhere. In 1921, 10,000 copies of this book were already sold. (Gumbel, Verschworer, pp. 80-81)
The fantasizers of 1920 will prove to be the realists of 1933. Major Solf s sce- nario contains the politics of murderous innocence in embryo. The deceitful,
CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV ? 429
crafty, and upright partisans of the Club of the Innocent project the spirit of simu- lation also onto everything surrounding them--particularly the political oppo- nent, even when it is already sitting in jail. From Niederschonenfeld, the notori- ous Bavarian fortress for "political prisoners" (Toller, Miihsam, etc. ), it is reported:
The Bavarian parliamentarian Hagemeister suffered unspeakably. He suffered from a very weak heart. The prison doctor adjudged him to be a malingerer who wanted to be transferred to a hospital so as to be able to escape. In mid-January 1922, a high fever set in. The prison doctor said, "Herr Hagemeister, you are so healthy that if you were my private patient, I would advise you to refrain from further treatment because I wanted to save you the cost. " The next Hay, Hagemeister was found dead in his cell. (Gumbel, Verschworer, p. 123)
Excursus 3. The Reasonable Bloodhound: A Social Democratic Elegy
Someone has to become a bloodhound;
I do not shrink from the responsibility.
4
On 9 November 1918, the head of government under Kaiser Wilhelm II, Prince Max of Baden, knew that the situation for the Hohenzollern was hopeless. "We can no longer beat down the revolution, but only suffocate it. " Suffocate the revolution --that means: Grant it a fake vic- tory, let it occupy deserted, exposed positions in order to trap it in a position in reserve prepared for this purpose. Said concretely, the kai- ser had to abdicate, the half Social Democratic government had to be- come completely Social Democratic, and the chancellor had to be called Friedrich Ebert. It fell to Ebert then to send the apparently victorious revolution, startled and disconcerted at the ease of its own victory, home and to recreate order --in the words of Prince Max: to do on a macrolevel what Noske had already done on a microlevel in Kiel.
Ebert was thoroughly willing to do this, and Prince Max knew it. General Groener suspected it at least. All three men were, at the latest since the morning of 9 November (! ) tugging on the same rope. (Sebas- tian Haffner, Die verratene Revolution 1918/1919 [Bern, Vienna, Munich, 1969], p. 77)
The fateful days of the German revolution lasted from January 9 to 12, 1919. At Ebert's command, in these days and nights, the Berlin Revolution, which pointed the way for the development of Germany, was shot to pieces. After "Ebert's bloody Christmas" (there had already been heavy fighting on Christmas Eve, 1918, between reactionary officers from the Reichswehr and revolutionary
Gustav Noske
430 ? CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV
naval troops, which ended with the sailors' victory), it now came to a bloody deci- sion. Should the new order in Germany be created with the aid of forces that wanted something new, or should only a stalling "order" be created that amounted to a conservation of the old deplorable state of affairs?
Ebert had decided to place the slogan Law and Order higher than the promising revolutionary reshaping of the German situation.
Legend has it that the fighting of January 9-12 was a "Communist uprising. " It has been recorded in history as the "Spartacus uprising. " However, neither the former nor the latter can be taken seriously. It was not the case that Ebert and Noske drew together the reactionary volunteer troops to fire on "Communists. " It was not groups of ultraleft conspirators on whom these units of right-wingers had to fire in the name of the Social Democratic chancellor. For the most part, it was Social Democratic masses of workers, for whom it seemed self-evident that after the bankruptcy of the feudal-bourgeois Hohenzollern state, a new democratic social order that served the interests of the people should arise. They had not the slightest understanding for the semiconservative tacking of the Ebert government. Ebert, Scheidemann, Noske-in the eyes of the masses, they were no longer genuine Social Democrats. For the Social Democrats, as far as the popular and not the official basis was concerned, were for clear relations and for a revolutionary break with the old powers.
On January 11, the Maercker Gendarme Volunteer Corps ("at last, real sol- diers again") marched in a demonstration through the suburbs of bourgeois west- ern Berlin. At its fore a lanky and bespectacled civilian: Gustav Noske, "Social Democrat. " This is how he understood what he called "carrying responsibility": putting himself at the head of irresponsible, emotionally explosive, reactionary troops incapable of thinking politically. A few days later, the Social Democratic protege killers of the "Garde-Kavallerie-Schutzendivision" (Guard-Cavalry-Rifle Division) murdered the best minds of the revolution: Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
The name Noske from then on became the trademark of Social Democratic il- lusory realism. The "Noske period" is a phrase that recalls innumerable murders for the sake of "law and order. " It designates the bloody months from January to May 1919 in which in Germany a Social Democratic government "suffocated" a principally Social Democratic mass movement with a clear tendency toward re- form, in the way in which Prince Max had predicted.
Through his role, Noske qualifies himself as a cynic of the coarsest kind. His concept of "responsibility" had the tone of a cynical disinhibition that strengthens itself by confessing to its own "unfortunately necessary" brutality. "Someone has to become a bloodhound . . . " This tragic password of the Social Democratic counterrevolution already breathes a Fascist spirit. The latter equates responsibil- ity with willingness to make decisions, which in turn disinhibits those responsible in a brutal direction, and the brutality is reflected once more in itself by express-
CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV ? 431
30 Pf. I, Jahrgang, Nr. 3 Der Malik-Verlag, Berlin-Leipzig Anfang April 1919 30 Pf.
Prost Noske! ? das Proletariat 1st entwaffnet!
The Bankruptcy: "Congratulations Noske! The proletariat has been disarmed! " ((C)S. P. A. D. E. M. , Paris/V. A. G. A. , New York, 1987. )
? 432 ? CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV
ing not only that it is this way but also that it wants and "has" to be this way. The cynical tone now calls the Social Democratic tune. After Noske had gathered troops together, that is, held an executive organ of large caliber in his hand that all too willingly let fly at the local revolutionary councils and committees, he be- gan to triumph. Noske on January 21, 1919:
The government must gain authority for itself by shaping a factor of power. In the course of a week, a battalion of twenty-two thousand men was created. The intercourse with the solders' councils therefore changed somewhat in tone. Before, the solders' councils were the factor of power; we have now become this power factor. (Quoted after Haffner, Verratene Revolution, p. 170)
We, that is the Social Democrats, the bloodless ones, allied with their own deadly enemies. They provide an opportunity for the bloodhounds to get used to murder and manslaughter within a legal framework. The negligence with which Ebert and Noske came to terms with the existence of the corps of volunteers is incredible; of these, only sixty-eight were officially recognized (which according to estimates comprised almost half a million men). The minds of the commanders of the voluntary corps were thoroughly haunted by "political fantasies" (Gumbel) of the type cited earlier. One of them, a Captain Gengler, noted in his diary on the same January 21, 1919: "The day will come when I will settle accounts with this government and tear the mask off the entire wretched, pitiful pack" (quoted after Haffner, Verratene Revolution, p. 172). Here, a pre-Fascist speaks as en- lightener who wants to unmask the Social Democrats, whom he recognizes as dis- semblers. Even the populists saw through Ebert's philistine pseudorealism that, as a simultaneously restricted and disinhibited conviction of responsibility, wanted to "save" Germany in its hour of need. Ebert's complex about dignitaries misled him to believe that reason could only be something that lies between the extremes. He did not comprehend that there can only be a midpoint between right and left where the left principle had unfolded enough in order to be able to be balanced out. Ebert already set a middle course as preventive measure. Thus it happens that, lacking the left wing, the midpoint between the forces always comes
to lie pretty much to the right. Thus it can occur that what is "reasonable" in a cynically bright hour, will have occasion to confess to being a bloodhound. That is the tragic knot in German history of this century. With its false reasonableness, social democracy destroyed and hindered what was about to take place in Ger- many in those months: the Social Democratic revolution.
Notes
1. This probably refers to Eduard Stadtler's well-known ideological foundation of this name. For more details see Joachim Petzold, Wegbereiter ties deutschen Fascismus. Die Jungkonservativen in der Weimarer Republik (Cologne, 1978), pp. 52ff.
CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV ? 433
2. Erich Fromm provides a psychogram of Kern in his book Anatomic der menschlishen Destruk- tivitat, chapter 11.
3. These details become significant in connection with chapter 23, "On the German Republic of Impostors. "
4. The German revolution of 1918-19 has coined scarcely any frequently quoted phrases. This
is one of the few and it is cynical like scarcely any other. Noske related it on assuming command
of the troops who were to beat down the revolution in Berlin. That was on January 9, 1919. On Janu-
ne ave
ary 10. S orders to attack revolutionary Berlin.
Chapter 18
Depersonalization and Alienation. Functionalist Cynicisms I
Stop! Don't do anything because of your name. A name is something shaky. You cannot build on it!
B. Brecht, Mann ist Mann
The First World War had undermined the thinking of the ideologues who wanted to glorify the warrior. Its proper subject showed itself to be not the battle- stained hero but the massive military machinery. The survivors expressed this ex- perience a thousandfold. It forms the hard core of the modern dissatisfaction with subject-object ways of thinking. The individual subject now appears unmistaka- bly as registered, drafted, uniformed, engaged, disposable --subject in the origi- nal sense of the word as "subjugated. " War spits out the new subject of the times: the "front," the people at arms; this becomes the megasubject of thinking marked by war. A little later, it will be called "community of the people"; in it, the mem- bers of the nation will be forced together in an illusorily homogeneous fighting unit. As a historical alternative to this community-of-the-people-unto-death, parts of the workers' movement, which conjured up the megasubject "working class," presented itself back then and came to think about its real interests in life. The time seemed to belong to the great collectivities; the individualist veil of bour- geois culture disintegrated.
The war had consumed the "warriors" physically as well as psychologically- The "man" sank into the mud trenches, was torn to pieces by shells or mutilated. Here, a bourgeois dream of "wholeness" and personality came to a horrible end. Those who recollect frequently mention castration by shells on the front. Un- countably many experienced the defeat as a social-psychological emasculation. The war had already reduced heroism to a matter-of-factness in fighting. Now, the defeat made one more facticity out of it. In this way, I think, the oft-cited Wei-
434
DEPERSONALIZATION AND ALIENATION. FUNCTIONALIST CYNICISMS I ? 435
? C. van Eestern and L. G. Pineau, City of Traffic, 1926.
mar "matter-of-factness" touches in the first place on a military-psychological state of affairs. In the following years, this seeps into the cultural style: the war- rior as the coolly functioning engineer. The attacks by storm become the heroic deeds of matter-"Storm of Steel. " Finally, in the modern war of artillery, the last connection between heroism and survival slackens. The bond between the soldiers and the weapon systems now is "matter-of-fact. " The man in uniform has to learn to regard himself as the "human factor" in the war of machines and to act accordingly. The general staff phrase "human material" increasingly stamps the modern form of self-experience and way of treating oneself. Those who sur- vive must have learned to regard themselves, their bodies, their morality, their will, as things. The soldier's physical condition and moral attitudes provide only aspects of armament and battle equipment. In this point, war gave all modern
436 ? DEPERSONALIZATION AND ALIENATION. FUNCTIONALIST CYNICISMS I
moral philosophies a drastic, graphic lesson: Morality is called the psychic factor of the war machine.
Military matter-of-factness, so much of which will be inherited in an indirect way by Weimar culture, is for its part, however, woven into an encompassing process for which Walter Rathenau, who was murdered in 1922, had found a striking formula: the mechanization of the world. The book that develops this thought is still worth reading today, and not only because the author displays a style that is almost sensationally brilliant for a politician. Rathenau's On the Cri- tique of the Times (1912) is the outstanding attempt of a bourgeois politican, who was also a successful entrepreneur and philosopher of respectable status, to ana- lyze the essence of modern society for himself and his contemporaries. His start- ing point in describing the mechanization of the world, however, is not the army but the metropolis.
In their structure and mechanics, all larger cities of the white world are identical. Situated at the midpoint of a web of rails, they shoot their petrified street-threads over the countryside. Visible and invisible net- works of rolling traffic crisscross and undermine the vehicular ravines and twice daily pump human bodies from the limbs to the heart. A sec- ond, third, fourth network distributes water, heat and power, an electri- cal bundle of nerves carries the resonances of the spirit. . . . Honey- comb cells, fitted out with silky fabrics, paper, timber, leather, tapestries, are ordered into rows; outwardly supported by iron, stone, glass cement. . . . Only in the old centers of the cities . . . residues of physiognomical peculiarities are still maintained as almost extinct showpieces, while in the surrounding districts, no matter whether in the direction of the factories, residential or recreational areas, the interna- tional world warehouse extends (W. Rathenau, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2 [1977], p. 22)
At first, Rathenau devotes his attention to the process of construction --the out- standing form of piling up of goods in the modern world. The circulation of goods, he says, is negligible beside the petrified results of production of goods. Humanity
builds houses, palaces and towns; it builds factories and storehouses. It builds highways, bridges, railways, tramlines, ships and canals: water, gas and electricity works, telegraph lines, high voltage power lines and cables; machines and furnaces. . . .
The new buildings in German cities would, in the course of about every five years, probably reach a value that in mechanical expenditure would equal the construction value of imperial Rome.
What then is the purpose of these unheard-of constructions? In large part, they directly serve production. In part, they serve transport and trade, and thus indirectly production. In part, they serve administration, domicile and health care, and thus predominantly production. In part,
DEPERSONALIZATION AND ALIENATION. FUNCTIONALIST CYNICISMS I D 437
? Georg Scholz, Flesh and Iron, 1923.
they serve science, art, technology, education, recreation, and thus in- directly . . . once again production, (p. 51)
Mechanical production has long since overshot the elementary goals of food, othing, self-preservation, and the protection of life. In continually expanding circles of production and consumption, it creates new "desires," a measureless "hunger for commodities" that is increasingly directed at artificialities. Mechani- zation thus incorporates even wishes themselves "in the irreality, lifelessness and shadowiness of its products and fashions" (p. 50). Rathenau's conclusions hit un- erringly the quintessence of sociological theories of alienation: "Mechanical
production has elevated itself to an aim in itself. " (p. 52).
This is the mental scenario in which the situation of humanity is determined.
Rathenau seeks it at the productive center itself, in the world of labor.
Labor is no longer an activity of life, no longer an accommodation of the body and the soul to the forces of nature, but a thoroughly alien ac- tivity for the purpose of life, an accommodation of the body and the soul to the mechanism. . . .
Labor is no longer solely a struggle with nature, it is a struggle with people. The struggle, however, is a struggle of private politics; the
most risky business, practiced and nurtured less than two hundred years ago by a handful of statesmen, the art of divining others' interests and using them for one's own ends, to have an overview of global situa- tions, to interpret the will of the times, to negotiate, to make alliances, to isolate and to strike: this art is today not only indispensable for the man of finance alone, but, in an appropriate measure, is indispensable
438 ? DEPERSONALIZATION AND ALIENATION. FUNCTIONALIST CYNICISMS I
to every shopkeeper. The mechanized profession educates one to be- come a politician, (pp. 67-68)
Rathenau's anthropology of the laboring human being accordingly possesses two aspects: On the one hand, the laboring ego becomes an epiphenomenon of the apparatus of production; on the other hand, they who "egoistically" pursue their "own interest" become ineluctably entangled in a kind of war, in diplomatic, polemical, and political business. Where an ego appears in the modern economic world, there it must appear as politician, strategist, deceiver, calculator, and diplomat. For every contemporary, political tactics go to the head; at the same time, this "risky business" of tactics descends to the last shopkeeper. The matter has probably never been presented so disarmingly clearly in such a compact space. Where the ego does not want to become only a cog in an alienated over- sized machine, it must stretch itself in the other direction and learn the art that earlier was the sole province of the great figures of politics. It must go through years of apprenticeship in political cynicism.
It is scarcely any better for our intellectual and psychical powers.
The intellect, still shaking from the excitements of the day, insists on staying in motion and on experiencing a new contest of impressions, with the proviso that these impressions should be more burning and acidic than those that have been gone through. . . . Entertainments of a sensational kind arise, hasty, banal, pompous, fake and poisoned. These joys border on despair. . .
Chapter 17
Conspirators and Dissimulators. Political Cynicisms IV: Conviction as Disinhibition
In Germany after the war there was no revolution, but there was a counterrevolution. What is commonly designated as revolution is only the fact that on 9 November 1918, all the monarchs fled in fear of a revolution. When they assessed the real situation, it was too late to keep up the fiction that they were still monarchs. Into the vacuum that had thus arisen, as the bearer of official force, stepped the army, represented by the soldiers' councils. They delegated their power to the Na- tional Assembly and thereby committed suicide.
The monarchists, after 9 November, played dead, so to speak, and claimed that they only wanted to intervene to estab- lish calm and order. Therefore, they supported the Social Democratic government in the struggle it wanted to have with the Left. In this way, the politically anemic forces and the resolute opponents of the republic again gained power. Im- mediately, the dictatorship of means revealed itself. The government of 1919 could not get rid of the spirits it had sum- moned. The armed forces removed the soldier's councils, they removed the leader of the republic, literally, by having him murdered.
E. J. Gumbel, Verschworer. Zur Geschichte und Soziologie der deutschen nationalistischen Geheimbunde 1918-1924, new ed. (Heidelberg, 1979, p. 13; see also the new edition of Vier Jahre politischer Mord [1922], 1980)
With a steady hand, Emil Julius Gumbel, a privatdozent in statistics in Heidel- berg, as well as pacifist, radical democrat, and documenter of the injustice current in his time, sketches the outlines of the German Revolution of 1918-19. Its course was dominated by the interplay of social democracy with the reactionaries, the anemics with the bloodstained forces. What crystallized as the new political order
424
CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV ? 425
in Germany was a dubious interaction of official parliamentary forces with an- tidemocratic and secret organizations. In the latter gathered those who wanted to pursue a politics of refusal. The officials allowed themselves in all this to bite into the sour apple of the given facts: capitulation, the Weimar National Assembly, extorted acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles.
Social democracy had let itself be made a fool of by the political opponent or had offered itself as fool and stopgap measure. It took over the opponent's political inheritance without having looked to see whether it was really dead. Whereas those who were responsible for the war and the defeat had settled outside the country or had submerged in the blustering national opposition, the Social Democrats, with Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Noske at the helm, risked presenting themselves as the force of law and order in a situation of volatile revolutionary- counterrevolutionary ambiguity. They allowed themselves to be used to perform the work of the reaction. An older social democratic conviction complex seemed to emerge here once again. As early as 1914, social democracy had proved that it was prepared to fall into the patriotic line when it was a matter of clearing the way for the war. Thus, in 1919, it wanted to prove how efficient it was at ruling when it was a matter of administering the catastrophes of the other side. Twice within four years it said yes, gritting its teeth, to things that were irresponsible. Both times it showed itself to be the party of tragic illusory realism in Germany. In order to appear completely responsible and realistic, it accepted the responsi- bility for the mistakes and crimes of others, became a collaborator of Wilhel- minianism, and then, after the war, the business partner of military, bourgeois, and populist reaction. In its behavior, it carried to the point of absurdity the an- tithesis described by Max Weber between the ethics of conviction ("the pure line") and the ethics of responsibility ("the view of what is given"). For it practiced a conviction of responsibility, a readiness to accept responsibility as a substitute for conviction, formal realism as substitute for constructive, relevant action. It did not try to understand that even a simple real reform needs a revolutionary core, and thus after 1918, it bloodily choked off the democratic forces in Germany that wanted change. It wanted reforms without real interventions and thereby achieved the highest possible degree of conservation, indeed, restoration.
In this, a basic feature of Weimar mentalities is reflected: illusory realism, false sobriety, self-deception under the facade of the grand overview, positive conviction about the innermost disorientation, nihilistic antinihilism, a reckless readiness to assume responsibility. The naive pretended to be respectable and without illusions. The vengeful disappointed played innocent.
After the pause for reflection until May 1919-by which time the German ex- periments with council-republics also had failed-the men of the reaction had set their sights more clearly on their goals; Down with the props of the republic. The heads of the national and military camps were dreaming, already quite some time
426 ? CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV
before the first serious counterrevolutionary coup, the Kapp putsch (March 1920), of a great blow.
From a memorandum for General von Lossow
It is divided into a purely military part and a civil-political-economic part. The aim of both parts is to prime the entire people for the blow and to psychologically prepare them for the work, for the spirit re- quired after the executed blow.
I. Military Part
. . . An improvement of the state of affairs can only rely on weapons. The armed forces execute the first blow, clear the air, eliminate
quickly and ruthlessly everything that through weakness and criminality suffocates the people. After the executed blow, the part of the people at
arms builds the tatorship. . . .
a) Mobilization b) Mobilization d) Compilation
main force for the so-called civil and economic dic-
3. Preparations
of the armed forces and students(! ) . . , of the citizenry . . .
of black lists
II. The Civil Part The Press
Certain signs and mute indications, often quite harmless hints, as soon as they again and again race(! ) through the pages of the press, will to a large extent help solve the task of the education of the people. (Gumbel, Verschworer, pp. 28-30)
Under the cover of secrecy, the military Right finds its true language. The con- spiracy suspends the compulsion to dissemble in its interior. Outwardly innocent; inwardly, cynicism as the normal tone. On February 11, 1920, a certain Lieu- tenant Mayerl wrote from Wurzburg to the commander of the Berthold Armored Division, a volunteer corps, which around 1919-20 mulled over plans for a great "blow. "
It is to be hoped that the coming dictatorship will not forget to declare open season on the Jews. --One night would suffice to exterminate these dogs. Here, I have already started compiling a black list so that the "right ones" will be beaten to death. . . .
For many a non-Jew also deserves it. (Gumbel, Verschworer, 23)
From the start, the German conspirators practice a game with masks. Only those who can look innocent will be in a position to let fly when the moment is ripe. The philistine cynicism, as it is revealed in Lossow's memorandum, presup- poses for its dictatorship of means a propaganda of pure conviction; the civil
CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV ? 427
preparations for the "blow" are thus necessarily respectable and publicly idealis- tic, apparently innocent. "The work is carried on publicly under the sign of the 'Antibolshevist League' " (Gumbel, p. 30). ' The higher the public goals, the more secretive the cynical means.
Just how strongly the ways of acting and thinking of the German Right were imbued with military cynicism is revealed by documents on the most spectacular action of the populist "idealists"--the murder of the German foreign minister, Walther Rathenau, in Berlin on June 24, 1922.
Just as Rathenau . . . wanted to drive from his villa in Grunewald to the Foreign Office, his car was overtaken by another car, driven by a student, Ernst Werner Techow, in which the former first lieutenant, Er- win Kern, and Hermann Fischer also sat. Kern and Fischer fired a ma- chine gun at Rathenau and threw a hand grenade at him. Rathenau was killed instantly. . . .
. . . After the deed, Techow reported, "It came off. Rathenau is dead. We did it to provoke the reds to an attack. We were out of money. " (Gumbel, Verschworer, p. 48)
The felons were recruited from the former Ehrhardt Brigade, later known as Organization C, as well as from other populist, conspiratorial, and antirepubli- can associations. Fischer committed suicide. Kern, the principal culprit, died in
2
a shoot-out as he was about to be arrested. Giinther--"who was the most likely
to spill the beans"-suffered an attempted assassination with arsenic-laced chocolates.
The most interesting personality is Willy Giinther [who had helped work out the plan;-Author]. In the war, he distinguished himself as deserter and forger of documents, impersonated a Turkish lieutenant,
3
was exposed, punished for desertion. . . .
putsch and gained through this contact with Colonel Bauer and Luden- dorff. He was a member of the League of the Righteous, the German League, the German Officers' League, the League of Loyalty, the League of Protection and Defiance, and the German National Youth League. At a "nest evening" of the latter league, he let himself be celebrated as Rathenau's murderer. Letters from Helfferich, Luden- dorff. . . were found in his possession. . . . One of ten letters from Ludendorff began "Dear Giinther" and ended familiarly "With cordial greetings. " (Gumbel, Verschworer, p. 49)
In his defense, Techow, who was presented as a "populist idealist," claimed that he had believed that the trip was only a test drive. With threats, Kern had "persuaded him to become an accomplice. " He had acted in a subjective situation of distress. The young Ernst von Salomon, who was implicated in the prepara- tions for the murder, also swore that he had believed that the plan had to do with
He took part in the Kapp
428 ? CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV
"setting a prisoner loose. " The tenor of the defense ran: Admittedly, they had the "noble convictions" that would suffice for political murder, but in detail, it "wasn't intended that way. " Techow enjoyed strong public sympathies. At the Technical University in Berlin, a public collection was organized on his behalf.
The art of political dissimulation saturated the ways of thinking of the right- wing conspirators. Since they regarded themselves as having been duped, in other words, since they used the duping as the basic lie to justify their actions, they demanded for themselves the right to declare a secret war on reality. Because they wanted to save populist illusions, traditional privileges, and patriotic megalomaniac fantasies, they proclaimed cunning to be the true morality. With a crafty hyperrealism, they set about defending their illusions. This resulted in several remarkable strategic plans. Gumbel notes that Organization C also sur- rounded itself with "political fantasies" of the following kind:
By the way, an entire system of political fantasies belongs to Organiza- tion C. The best example is a book by the former Major Solf, which appeared as early as 1920, entitled: "1934, Germany's Resurrection. " Colonel Bauer, for whose arrest a warrant had been issued, wrote the preface. Here, as a means for Germany's resurrection, everything is affirmed that the opponents of present-day Germany accuse it of as a proof of the will to wage war.
For starters, there is a Club of the Innocent. It has contacts in the whole country and its goal is a war of retribution against France. Its head has no name but is called the General. (Just as in the national as- sociation Ludendorff was called Dictator L. and Ehrhardt simply "Con- sul. ") The club also has innocent members who, until the last minute, do not have a clue about what is going on. (Just as the Organization Es- cherich or the People's Militia. ) Former officers' boys serve as contacts among the workers. For the officers, mobilization lists are compiled. A famous physicist invents a new means of war, a kind of radiation that causes all ammunition within a certain radius to explode. Disguised as cinema projectors, the individual parts are manufactured in factories (just as now in Schiebungen weapons are declared to be machines). . . . On the decisive day, the General holds a speech: "We will rid ourselves of undesirable elements without many pangs of conscience. . . . " The storm breaks loose. The Reichstag, which is nationalist to the bones, receives the General. The Reich president abdicates, the General receives unconditional power (Enabling Act, state of emergency). The enemy troops of occupation are defeated everywhere. In 1921, 10,000 copies of this book were already sold. (Gumbel, Verschworer, pp. 80-81)
The fantasizers of 1920 will prove to be the realists of 1933. Major Solf s sce- nario contains the politics of murderous innocence in embryo. The deceitful,
CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV ? 429
crafty, and upright partisans of the Club of the Innocent project the spirit of simu- lation also onto everything surrounding them--particularly the political oppo- nent, even when it is already sitting in jail. From Niederschonenfeld, the notori- ous Bavarian fortress for "political prisoners" (Toller, Miihsam, etc. ), it is reported:
The Bavarian parliamentarian Hagemeister suffered unspeakably. He suffered from a very weak heart. The prison doctor adjudged him to be a malingerer who wanted to be transferred to a hospital so as to be able to escape. In mid-January 1922, a high fever set in. The prison doctor said, "Herr Hagemeister, you are so healthy that if you were my private patient, I would advise you to refrain from further treatment because I wanted to save you the cost. " The next Hay, Hagemeister was found dead in his cell. (Gumbel, Verschworer, p. 123)
Excursus 3. The Reasonable Bloodhound: A Social Democratic Elegy
Someone has to become a bloodhound;
I do not shrink from the responsibility.
4
On 9 November 1918, the head of government under Kaiser Wilhelm II, Prince Max of Baden, knew that the situation for the Hohenzollern was hopeless. "We can no longer beat down the revolution, but only suffocate it. " Suffocate the revolution --that means: Grant it a fake vic- tory, let it occupy deserted, exposed positions in order to trap it in a position in reserve prepared for this purpose. Said concretely, the kai- ser had to abdicate, the half Social Democratic government had to be- come completely Social Democratic, and the chancellor had to be called Friedrich Ebert. It fell to Ebert then to send the apparently victorious revolution, startled and disconcerted at the ease of its own victory, home and to recreate order --in the words of Prince Max: to do on a macrolevel what Noske had already done on a microlevel in Kiel.
Ebert was thoroughly willing to do this, and Prince Max knew it. General Groener suspected it at least. All three men were, at the latest since the morning of 9 November (! ) tugging on the same rope. (Sebas- tian Haffner, Die verratene Revolution 1918/1919 [Bern, Vienna, Munich, 1969], p. 77)
The fateful days of the German revolution lasted from January 9 to 12, 1919. At Ebert's command, in these days and nights, the Berlin Revolution, which pointed the way for the development of Germany, was shot to pieces. After "Ebert's bloody Christmas" (there had already been heavy fighting on Christmas Eve, 1918, between reactionary officers from the Reichswehr and revolutionary
Gustav Noske
430 ? CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV
naval troops, which ended with the sailors' victory), it now came to a bloody deci- sion. Should the new order in Germany be created with the aid of forces that wanted something new, or should only a stalling "order" be created that amounted to a conservation of the old deplorable state of affairs?
Ebert had decided to place the slogan Law and Order higher than the promising revolutionary reshaping of the German situation.
Legend has it that the fighting of January 9-12 was a "Communist uprising. " It has been recorded in history as the "Spartacus uprising. " However, neither the former nor the latter can be taken seriously. It was not the case that Ebert and Noske drew together the reactionary volunteer troops to fire on "Communists. " It was not groups of ultraleft conspirators on whom these units of right-wingers had to fire in the name of the Social Democratic chancellor. For the most part, it was Social Democratic masses of workers, for whom it seemed self-evident that after the bankruptcy of the feudal-bourgeois Hohenzollern state, a new democratic social order that served the interests of the people should arise. They had not the slightest understanding for the semiconservative tacking of the Ebert government. Ebert, Scheidemann, Noske-in the eyes of the masses, they were no longer genuine Social Democrats. For the Social Democrats, as far as the popular and not the official basis was concerned, were for clear relations and for a revolutionary break with the old powers.
On January 11, the Maercker Gendarme Volunteer Corps ("at last, real sol- diers again") marched in a demonstration through the suburbs of bourgeois west- ern Berlin. At its fore a lanky and bespectacled civilian: Gustav Noske, "Social Democrat. " This is how he understood what he called "carrying responsibility": putting himself at the head of irresponsible, emotionally explosive, reactionary troops incapable of thinking politically. A few days later, the Social Democratic protege killers of the "Garde-Kavallerie-Schutzendivision" (Guard-Cavalry-Rifle Division) murdered the best minds of the revolution: Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
The name Noske from then on became the trademark of Social Democratic il- lusory realism. The "Noske period" is a phrase that recalls innumerable murders for the sake of "law and order. " It designates the bloody months from January to May 1919 in which in Germany a Social Democratic government "suffocated" a principally Social Democratic mass movement with a clear tendency toward re- form, in the way in which Prince Max had predicted.
Through his role, Noske qualifies himself as a cynic of the coarsest kind. His concept of "responsibility" had the tone of a cynical disinhibition that strengthens itself by confessing to its own "unfortunately necessary" brutality. "Someone has to become a bloodhound . . . " This tragic password of the Social Democratic counterrevolution already breathes a Fascist spirit. The latter equates responsibil- ity with willingness to make decisions, which in turn disinhibits those responsible in a brutal direction, and the brutality is reflected once more in itself by express-
CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV ? 431
30 Pf. I, Jahrgang, Nr. 3 Der Malik-Verlag, Berlin-Leipzig Anfang April 1919 30 Pf.
Prost Noske! ? das Proletariat 1st entwaffnet!
The Bankruptcy: "Congratulations Noske! The proletariat has been disarmed! " ((C)S. P. A. D. E. M. , Paris/V. A. G. A. , New York, 1987. )
? 432 ? CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV
ing not only that it is this way but also that it wants and "has" to be this way. The cynical tone now calls the Social Democratic tune. After Noske had gathered troops together, that is, held an executive organ of large caliber in his hand that all too willingly let fly at the local revolutionary councils and committees, he be- gan to triumph. Noske on January 21, 1919:
The government must gain authority for itself by shaping a factor of power. In the course of a week, a battalion of twenty-two thousand men was created. The intercourse with the solders' councils therefore changed somewhat in tone. Before, the solders' councils were the factor of power; we have now become this power factor. (Quoted after Haffner, Verratene Revolution, p. 170)
We, that is the Social Democrats, the bloodless ones, allied with their own deadly enemies. They provide an opportunity for the bloodhounds to get used to murder and manslaughter within a legal framework. The negligence with which Ebert and Noske came to terms with the existence of the corps of volunteers is incredible; of these, only sixty-eight were officially recognized (which according to estimates comprised almost half a million men). The minds of the commanders of the voluntary corps were thoroughly haunted by "political fantasies" (Gumbel) of the type cited earlier. One of them, a Captain Gengler, noted in his diary on the same January 21, 1919: "The day will come when I will settle accounts with this government and tear the mask off the entire wretched, pitiful pack" (quoted after Haffner, Verratene Revolution, p. 172). Here, a pre-Fascist speaks as en- lightener who wants to unmask the Social Democrats, whom he recognizes as dis- semblers. Even the populists saw through Ebert's philistine pseudorealism that, as a simultaneously restricted and disinhibited conviction of responsibility, wanted to "save" Germany in its hour of need. Ebert's complex about dignitaries misled him to believe that reason could only be something that lies between the extremes. He did not comprehend that there can only be a midpoint between right and left where the left principle had unfolded enough in order to be able to be balanced out. Ebert already set a middle course as preventive measure. Thus it happens that, lacking the left wing, the midpoint between the forces always comes
to lie pretty much to the right. Thus it can occur that what is "reasonable" in a cynically bright hour, will have occasion to confess to being a bloodhound. That is the tragic knot in German history of this century. With its false reasonableness, social democracy destroyed and hindered what was about to take place in Ger- many in those months: the Social Democratic revolution.
Notes
1. This probably refers to Eduard Stadtler's well-known ideological foundation of this name. For more details see Joachim Petzold, Wegbereiter ties deutschen Fascismus. Die Jungkonservativen in der Weimarer Republik (Cologne, 1978), pp. 52ff.
CONSPIRATORS AND DISSIMULATORS. POLITICAL CYNICISMS IV ? 433
2. Erich Fromm provides a psychogram of Kern in his book Anatomic der menschlishen Destruk- tivitat, chapter 11.
3. These details become significant in connection with chapter 23, "On the German Republic of Impostors. "
4. The German revolution of 1918-19 has coined scarcely any frequently quoted phrases. This
is one of the few and it is cynical like scarcely any other. Noske related it on assuming command
of the troops who were to beat down the revolution in Berlin. That was on January 9, 1919. On Janu-
ne ave
ary 10. S orders to attack revolutionary Berlin.
Chapter 18
Depersonalization and Alienation. Functionalist Cynicisms I
Stop! Don't do anything because of your name. A name is something shaky. You cannot build on it!
B. Brecht, Mann ist Mann
The First World War had undermined the thinking of the ideologues who wanted to glorify the warrior. Its proper subject showed itself to be not the battle- stained hero but the massive military machinery. The survivors expressed this ex- perience a thousandfold. It forms the hard core of the modern dissatisfaction with subject-object ways of thinking. The individual subject now appears unmistaka- bly as registered, drafted, uniformed, engaged, disposable --subject in the origi- nal sense of the word as "subjugated. " War spits out the new subject of the times: the "front," the people at arms; this becomes the megasubject of thinking marked by war. A little later, it will be called "community of the people"; in it, the mem- bers of the nation will be forced together in an illusorily homogeneous fighting unit. As a historical alternative to this community-of-the-people-unto-death, parts of the workers' movement, which conjured up the megasubject "working class," presented itself back then and came to think about its real interests in life. The time seemed to belong to the great collectivities; the individualist veil of bour- geois culture disintegrated.
The war had consumed the "warriors" physically as well as psychologically- The "man" sank into the mud trenches, was torn to pieces by shells or mutilated. Here, a bourgeois dream of "wholeness" and personality came to a horrible end. Those who recollect frequently mention castration by shells on the front. Un- countably many experienced the defeat as a social-psychological emasculation. The war had already reduced heroism to a matter-of-factness in fighting. Now, the defeat made one more facticity out of it. In this way, I think, the oft-cited Wei-
434
DEPERSONALIZATION AND ALIENATION. FUNCTIONALIST CYNICISMS I ? 435
? C. van Eestern and L. G. Pineau, City of Traffic, 1926.
mar "matter-of-factness" touches in the first place on a military-psychological state of affairs. In the following years, this seeps into the cultural style: the war- rior as the coolly functioning engineer. The attacks by storm become the heroic deeds of matter-"Storm of Steel. " Finally, in the modern war of artillery, the last connection between heroism and survival slackens. The bond between the soldiers and the weapon systems now is "matter-of-fact. " The man in uniform has to learn to regard himself as the "human factor" in the war of machines and to act accordingly. The general staff phrase "human material" increasingly stamps the modern form of self-experience and way of treating oneself. Those who sur- vive must have learned to regard themselves, their bodies, their morality, their will, as things. The soldier's physical condition and moral attitudes provide only aspects of armament and battle equipment. In this point, war gave all modern
436 ? DEPERSONALIZATION AND ALIENATION. FUNCTIONALIST CYNICISMS I
moral philosophies a drastic, graphic lesson: Morality is called the psychic factor of the war machine.
Military matter-of-factness, so much of which will be inherited in an indirect way by Weimar culture, is for its part, however, woven into an encompassing process for which Walter Rathenau, who was murdered in 1922, had found a striking formula: the mechanization of the world. The book that develops this thought is still worth reading today, and not only because the author displays a style that is almost sensationally brilliant for a politician. Rathenau's On the Cri- tique of the Times (1912) is the outstanding attempt of a bourgeois politican, who was also a successful entrepreneur and philosopher of respectable status, to ana- lyze the essence of modern society for himself and his contemporaries. His start- ing point in describing the mechanization of the world, however, is not the army but the metropolis.
In their structure and mechanics, all larger cities of the white world are identical. Situated at the midpoint of a web of rails, they shoot their petrified street-threads over the countryside. Visible and invisible net- works of rolling traffic crisscross and undermine the vehicular ravines and twice daily pump human bodies from the limbs to the heart. A sec- ond, third, fourth network distributes water, heat and power, an electri- cal bundle of nerves carries the resonances of the spirit. . . . Honey- comb cells, fitted out with silky fabrics, paper, timber, leather, tapestries, are ordered into rows; outwardly supported by iron, stone, glass cement. . . . Only in the old centers of the cities . . . residues of physiognomical peculiarities are still maintained as almost extinct showpieces, while in the surrounding districts, no matter whether in the direction of the factories, residential or recreational areas, the interna- tional world warehouse extends (W. Rathenau, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2 [1977], p. 22)
At first, Rathenau devotes his attention to the process of construction --the out- standing form of piling up of goods in the modern world. The circulation of goods, he says, is negligible beside the petrified results of production of goods. Humanity
builds houses, palaces and towns; it builds factories and storehouses. It builds highways, bridges, railways, tramlines, ships and canals: water, gas and electricity works, telegraph lines, high voltage power lines and cables; machines and furnaces. . . .
The new buildings in German cities would, in the course of about every five years, probably reach a value that in mechanical expenditure would equal the construction value of imperial Rome.
What then is the purpose of these unheard-of constructions? In large part, they directly serve production. In part, they serve transport and trade, and thus indirectly production. In part, they serve administration, domicile and health care, and thus predominantly production. In part,
DEPERSONALIZATION AND ALIENATION. FUNCTIONALIST CYNICISMS I D 437
? Georg Scholz, Flesh and Iron, 1923.
they serve science, art, technology, education, recreation, and thus in- directly . . . once again production, (p. 51)
Mechanical production has long since overshot the elementary goals of food, othing, self-preservation, and the protection of life. In continually expanding circles of production and consumption, it creates new "desires," a measureless "hunger for commodities" that is increasingly directed at artificialities. Mechani- zation thus incorporates even wishes themselves "in the irreality, lifelessness and shadowiness of its products and fashions" (p. 50). Rathenau's conclusions hit un- erringly the quintessence of sociological theories of alienation: "Mechanical
production has elevated itself to an aim in itself. " (p. 52).
This is the mental scenario in which the situation of humanity is determined.
Rathenau seeks it at the productive center itself, in the world of labor.
Labor is no longer an activity of life, no longer an accommodation of the body and the soul to the forces of nature, but a thoroughly alien ac- tivity for the purpose of life, an accommodation of the body and the soul to the mechanism. . . .
Labor is no longer solely a struggle with nature, it is a struggle with people. The struggle, however, is a struggle of private politics; the
most risky business, practiced and nurtured less than two hundred years ago by a handful of statesmen, the art of divining others' interests and using them for one's own ends, to have an overview of global situa- tions, to interpret the will of the times, to negotiate, to make alliances, to isolate and to strike: this art is today not only indispensable for the man of finance alone, but, in an appropriate measure, is indispensable
438 ? DEPERSONALIZATION AND ALIENATION. FUNCTIONALIST CYNICISMS I
to every shopkeeper. The mechanized profession educates one to be- come a politician, (pp. 67-68)
Rathenau's anthropology of the laboring human being accordingly possesses two aspects: On the one hand, the laboring ego becomes an epiphenomenon of the apparatus of production; on the other hand, they who "egoistically" pursue their "own interest" become ineluctably entangled in a kind of war, in diplomatic, polemical, and political business. Where an ego appears in the modern economic world, there it must appear as politician, strategist, deceiver, calculator, and diplomat. For every contemporary, political tactics go to the head; at the same time, this "risky business" of tactics descends to the last shopkeeper. The matter has probably never been presented so disarmingly clearly in such a compact space. Where the ego does not want to become only a cog in an alienated over- sized machine, it must stretch itself in the other direction and learn the art that earlier was the sole province of the great figures of politics. It must go through years of apprenticeship in political cynicism.
It is scarcely any better for our intellectual and psychical powers.
The intellect, still shaking from the excitements of the day, insists on staying in motion and on experiencing a new contest of impressions, with the proviso that these impressions should be more burning and acidic than those that have been gone through. . . . Entertainments of a sensational kind arise, hasty, banal, pompous, fake and poisoned. These joys border on despair. . .
