Just read "On The Concept of History" by Walter Benjamin. Tell me, /his/, why the fuck does these critical theory faggots need to be so cryptic while at the same time writing shit like Sturm and Drang novels?
Fuck you, /his/.
>>953579
Gibe link to a good e-version/torrent and Ill tell you what I think of it.
>>953678
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm
Reading this communist nitwit in the first place was your mistake
Cultural Marxists are naturally obfuscatory. The only concept of history you need is 'the facts of what happened in the past.'
>>953579
Because it wasn't meant to be a scholarly treatise. Read Benjamin's actual scholarship if you want to know what he is like as a scholar. Also Benjamin is not "critical theory," which is some BS concept American English departments made up in the 90s. Benjamin was a literary historian and an amazing one at that.
>>954267
What's it meant to be?
>>953579
Walter Benjamin is cryptic?
>>953579
Because Hegel.
To my understanding, he's claiming Marxist materialist but saying the utopia cannot be thought of as guaranteed, so it's a potential that must be fulfilled and not taken for granted. Whereas traditional Marxists kind of implied (so he argues) that the communist state is guaranteed and whatever happens, whether it looks good or bad for Marxism, its actually just a necessary step closer to the communist state.
Benjamin is saying, no, that logic legitimizes violence done to people who lose, (basically it justifies stuff like the Holocaust by saying that "We'll, it's bad but at least we learned from it and got better.")
Benjamin wants to argue that if we think of the communist state as not a given, but conceive of history in "Messianic time" we can get the communist state while still paying tribute to everyone who had to get killed, enslaved for history to build up to this point, where the communist state is achieved.
I think that's what he was going after. I agree the essay is really dense and maybe it's just useless.
I don't think Marxists have a serious response to this. And even Hegel noted that history sure is "strange" in that way (that basically a lot of people get fucked over and don't get to profit from the goal of history).
