Continental Philosophy Review Volume 45 Issue 4 2012 (Doi 10.1007/s11007-012-9234-9) Ari Hirvonen - Marx and God With Anarchism - On Walter Benjamin's Concepts of History and Violence

Cont Philos Rev (2012) 45:519543
DOI 10.1007/s11007-012-9234-9
Marx and God with anarchism: on Walter Benjamins

concepts of history and violence
Ari Hirvonen
Published online: 4 January 2013

Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
Abstract The article analyses relationships between profane and religious illu-
mination, materialism and theology, politics and religion, Marxism and Messianism.
For Walter Benjamin, every second is the small gateway in time through which the
Messiah might enter. This is the starting point in the reading of Benjamins works,
where we confront various liaisons and couplings of radical politics and messianic
events. Through the reading of Benjamin and through the analysis of his conceptions
of history and time, the article addresses the question what is possible in the world.
Keywords Benjamin Marx Materialism Messianism Judaism Revolution
1 Messianism and/or Marxism
Messianic is the red secret of every revolutionary.1 If this, what Ernst Bloch
claimed, is true, then we could consider Walter Benjamins thinking as a proof of
this.
ber den Begriff der Geschichte (On the Concept of History), Benjamin
In U
considers, as Rolf Tiedemann says, how history is referred to its making
political praxis.2 As Benjamin connects history and politics, he has to rethink the
concept of history. He opposes historical materialism to the bourgeois historicism,
which is drained by the whore called Once upon a time in historicisms
1
Bloch (1968, p. 317).
2
Tiedemann (19831984, p. 91).
A member of Centre of Excellency in Foundations of European Law and Polity, funded by the Academy
of Finland.
A. Hirvonen (&)
Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
e-mail: ari.hirvonen@helsinki.fi
123
520 A. Hirvonen
bordello.3 Historicism sees history as a chain of events and continual progress that
takes place in the homogenous and empty time. The truth of the past exists eternally
and it waits for historicism, which establishes a causal nexus among historical
moments and tells the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary.4 Moreover,
historicism emphasises with victors and the past becomes their conformist history of
victors. Since the rulers are always heirs of victors, historicism benefits those who
are currently ruling.
However, the past carries with it a secret index by which it is referred to
redemption,5 which fact the historical materialist understands. His historical
construction is dedicated to the memory of the anonymous.6 If historicism
supplies the eternal image of the past, the historical materialist seizes the past as an
irretrievable image that flashes up at the moment of its recognisability and is never
seen again. If the present does not recognize itself as intended in that image of the
past, which appears at the moment of danger, the image disappears. Thus, the
historical materialist, who affords a unique experience with the past, which it wrests
away from conformism, cannot do without the notion of a present which is not a
transition, but where time takes a stand and has come to a standstill. For this notion
defines the very present where he himself is writing history.7
The historical materialist, who investigates in this way the structure of history, is
able to determine the presence of a messianic force in history.8 He seizes the past
through remembrance and brings it into the present. He grasps the constellation of his
own era along with an earlier one and realizes that history is a construction whose site
is time filled full by now-time (Jetztzeit),9 which, as a model of messianic time,
comprises the entire history of mankind in a tremendous abbreviation.10 Thus, he
establishes a conception of the present as now-time shot through with the splinters
of messianic time.11 He recognizes the sign of a messianic arrest of happening,
that is, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past.12 The historical
materialist, who comes face to face with history as full of revolutionary possibilities,
is also able to blast open (aufsprengen) the continuity of the homogenous and empty
time with revolutionary moments. For him, every second is the small gateway in
time through which the Messiah might enter.13
Nevertheless, On the Concept of History begins with a strange reference to the
famous story of a chess-playing automaton, which was constructed in such a way that it
3
Benjamin (2006a, p. 396). The original German title U ber den Begriff der Geschichte is often
translated wrongly as Theses on the Philosophy of History.
4
Benjamin (2006a, p. 397).
5
6
Benjamin (2006b, p. 406).
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
123
Marx and God with anarchism 521
can answer each move of an opponent with a countermove and always wins. A puppet in
Turkish attire sits before a chessboard placed on a Maplewood cabinet. A hunchbacked
dwarf, a master at chess, sits inside the cabinet and guides the puppets hand by means of
strings. One can imagine a philosophic counterpart to this apparatus. The puppet, called
historical materialism is to win all the time.14 And that is how it should be, but
Benjamin continues: It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of
theology, which today, as we know, is small and ugly and has to keep out of sight.15
In his notes to On the Concept of History, Benjamin describes his own
relationship to theology: My thinking stands with theology like a blotting-paper
with an ink. It is entirely saturated with it. But if the blotting-paper had its way,
nothing that is written would remain.16 Does Benjamin soak up everything that is
messianic and theological so that his thinking is nothing but the repetition of
somewhat messy inverted theological traces or, if he had his way, would he erase all
these theological traces (like the emancipated puppet who wishes to get rid of the
dwarf)? Does this tension between a thinking materialist and a writing theologian,
which threatens the purity of both of them, remain insoluble? Or, should we
conclude that Benjamins historical materialism, is essentially, though secretly, a
history of fulfilment and salvation in terms of social economy (as it was for Karl
Marx, if Karl Lowith is to be believed).17
According to Warren S. Goldstein, who considers On the Concept of History
as Benjamins most explicit mixture of Messianism and Marxism, Benjamin viewed
reality simultaneously from both a Messianic and a Marxist perspective, because
these two contradictory meaning systems were interconnected. He tried to reveal the
relationship between Messianism and Marxism, between sacred and profane,
between theology and materialism.18 Irving Wohlfarth calls the combination of
Jewish philosophy and messianic politics as messianic materialism.19
The combination of Messianism and Marxism in On the Concept of History was
nothing new to Benjamin. Benjamin had opted Marxism during the economic crises of
1923.20 In a letter to Gershom Scholem from Capri in July of 1924, Benjamin wrote
about events, which have interrupted his work and which are not for the advantage of
bourgeois rhythm of life, which is indispensable to every project, but absolutely to
the advantage of an essential liberation and an intense insight into the relevance of
radical communism; and he continues by telling that he had met a Russian
revolutionary from Riga, one of the most splendid women I have ever metshe was a
Latvian Bolshevik, actress Asja Lacis.21 According to Lacis, the path of a progressive
14
15
16
Benjamin (1974, p. 1235).
17
Lowith (1949, p. 45).
18
Goldstein (2001, p. 271).
19
Wohlfarth (1978, p. 151).
20
Goldstein (2001, p. 250), Rabinbach (1992, ix).
21
Benjamin (1994a, p. 245). Translation modified. Wolin considers this letter as [t]he first significant
indication of a serious turn to leftist political commitment on Benjamins part. Wolin (1981, p. 85).
123
522 A. Hirvonen
person did not lead to Palestine but to Moscow, and she thinks that it is her to thank that
Benjamin did not go to Palestine.22
Lacis introduced Benjamin to Bertolt Brecht, who influenced Benjamins
political commitment. As Brecht one evening found Benjamin in the garden reading
Marxs Capital, he said to Benjamin: I think its very good that youre studying
Marx just now, at a time when one comes across him less and less, especially among
our people.23 These two, who did not share only Marxism but also historical
pessimism and a dialectical understanding about time, became close comrades even
if both Scholem and Theodor Adorno saw this as a dangerous liaison.
In Capri, Benjamin had long conversations also with Ernst Bloch, whose Geist
der Utopie (The Spirit of Utopia), published in 1918, had made a strong impression
on Benjamin. He even wrote a (now lost) review of it. In his book Bloch, who
rethinks the history as a process of revolutionary disruptions, brings Marxism and
Messianism together, which are united in the will to Kingdom.24 Class struggle,
revolution, the new human being in a human society, the soul, the Messiah and the
apocalypse are all brought together in Blochs passionate revolutionary Roman-
ticism, as he later called it, which aims to bring utopian spirit in Marxism by
connecting it to theology.25 Also Blochs Thomas Muntzer als Theologe der
Revolution (Thomas Munzer as the Theologian of Revolution, 1921), a
communist-apocalyptic manifesto, as it was described by an enthusiastic reviewer,
had influenced Benjamin.26 Bloch considered peasant leader and Luthers adver-
sary, Thomas Muntzer as an example of a revolutionary figure, who represented the
Christian ideal of a pure community of love without judicial and state institutions,
someone who among other revolutionaries, knocks at the door in order to put an end
to the State and inhuman power. Muntzer represents the messianic conception of
time. He did not wage the battle for better times, but for the end of time, for the
eruption of Kingdom.27
From Blochs recommendation, Benjamin had started to read Georg Lukacs
History and Class Consciousness, an extraordinary collection of Lukacs political
writings.28 The starting point for Lukacs is the immediate class situation of the
proletariat in capitalism from which the knowledge of reality provided by the
dialectical method was inseparable. From this, he proceeds to Kants (antinomies of
bourgeois existence) and Hegels (contemplative overcoming of these antinomies)
epistemologies. But only from the position of the proletariat, the identical subject-
object of history, the world may be comprehended as totality. The proletarian
revolution, which would actually overcome the antinomies, has a messianico-
eschatological role. In September 1924, Benjamin wrote to Scholem that since he
has been at Capri he has seen the political praxis of communism in a different light
22
Lacis (1971, p. 45).
23
Benjamin (1998, p. 118).
24
Bloch (2000, p. 278).
25
Bloch (2000, p. 279).
26
See Rabinbach (2000, p. 6).
27
Bloch (1977).
28
123
than before. It is no more a theoretical problem, but above all, a binding conduct
(verbindliche Haltung). He also said that in the realm of communism any
definitive insight into theory is bound up with praxis.29
He was enthusiastically welcoming not only Marx and materialism but also
communist politics. In May 1926, Benjamin told to Scholem that he has currently
attempted to leave the purely theoretical sphere, which is possible only in a religious
or political conduct. These two conducts are not essentially different but share a
common feature, which manifests itself in a sudden paradoxical conversion
(Umschalg) of the one into the other (in any direction whatsoever).30 In this letter,
Benjamin considers that what is essential is that every instance of action proceeds
ruthlessly and with radical intent.
2 Dangerous liaison
The combination of radical leftist politics and theology was not so uncommon
among the Jewish intellectuals of German culture before and after World War I.
Anson Rabinbach describes this way of thinking as the modern Jewish Messia-
nism.31 Michael Lowy has divided this group in three sets. First, the anarchist
religious Jews, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber and Scholem, in whose work there
are present universal political and utopian preoccupations even if they return to
Judaism as particular religious and national culture. Second, the religious Jewish
anarchists, Gustav Landauer, Franz Kafka and Benjamin, who have a torn attitude
toward Judaism and Zionism, but whose political utopia is tinted with religiosity
and drawn from Jewish, and sometimes also Christian, messianic sources. Third, the
assimilated, atheist-religious, anarcho-Bolshevik Jews, Lukacs, Ernst Toller and
Bloch, who have abandoned their Jewish identity while keeping, however, an
obscure link with Judaism.32 What is common is the combination of the Jewish
messianic tradition and modern revolutionary libertarian utopias, which includes an
antinomy, a tension between Jewish particularism (national-cultural) of messia-
nism and the universal character (humanistinternationalist) of emancipatory
utopia.33 This mixture Lowy calls a form of elective affinity, in the Goethian
sense of Wahlverwandschaft: two elements or beings which are looking for one
another, are attracted and seize each other [] and then resurge from this intimate
union into a regenerated, new and unexpected form.34 According to Lowy, the
simplest explanation, why the works of these Jewish intellectuals of German culture
contained religious-messianic and revolutionary-utopian dimensions, is to consider
the messianic tradition as the source of the political utopia. However, the spiritual
climate of the German intelligentsiaanti-capitalist and revolutionary romanticism,
29
Benjamin (1994c, p. 248).
30
Benjamin (1994d, p. 300). Translation modified.
31
Rabinbach (1985, p. 80).
32
Lowy (1989, pp. 112113).
33
Lowy (1989, p. 113).
34
Lowy (1989, p. 109).
123
524 A. Hirvonen
which combined the nostalgia for pre-capitalist past and the revolutionary hope in a
new futuremakes this relationship more understandable. For some, this constel-
lation was a transient episode, but for Benjamin the central axis of all his work.35
For Rabinbach Benjamin (and Bloch) represent the pure type of Modern Jewish
Messianism: they brought a self-consciously Jewish and radical Messianism to
their political and intellectual concerns.36
Perhaps, Messianism and Marxism, materialism and theology are not so strange
bedfellows after all. One may see traces of Jewish Messianism in Marxism. If we
consider socialism as an immanent religion, it can be said to share the idea of the
coming of the Messiah. However, it is devoid of any transcendental and
supernatural element and take the form of hope and faith in a profane historical
future, which human beings have to realize by their own action.37 A supreme
community of communist character reminds Lowith of a Kingdom of God,
without God and on earth, which is the ultimate goal and ideal of Marxs historical
messianism.38 However, Lowith continues, the Communist Manifesto consists in a
materialist thesis, according to which the mode of economic production and
exchange and the ensuing social organization is the basis on which alone the
political history of prevailing epoch can be explained. Even if this reduces all
history to economic antagonisms and perverts Jewish messianism and prophetism
[] and insistence on absolute righteousness (which explain the idealistic basis of
Marxs materialism) into secular prognostication, the Communist Manifesto still
retains the basic features of a messianic faith: the assurance of things to be hoped
for.39 As Goldstein says, Messianism and Marxism share in common parallel
structure in their philosophy of history: in the one the history begins from paradise,
in the other from stateless and classless primitive communal society without private
property; in the one the Messiah enters during periods of disasters and brings about
salvation, in the other revolution takes place during crises and brings about radical
social, political and economic transformations. In both of them there is, at the end of
history, a return to the beginning.40 In Specters of Marx, Jacques Derrida, not
willing to disavow Marx, speaks of the duty to remain faithful to the inheritance of a
certain spirit of Marxism, which differs from those spirits of Marxism that rivet it to
the body of Marxist doctrine, to its supposed systematic, metaphysical or
ontological totality, to the history of its apparatuses, to its fundamental concepts.
This spirit is not only a radical critique, a procedure that is ready to undertake a
reflective self-critique, but even more a certain emancipatory and messianic
affirmation, a certain experience of the promise that one can try to liberate from any
dogmatics and even from any metaphysico-religious determination, from any
messianism.41 The communist promise, Derrida says, will and must always keep
35
Lowy (1989, p. 112, see also pp. 109110).
36
Rabinbach (1985, p. 82).
37
C.f. Goldman (1978).
38
Lowith (1949, p. 42).
39
Lowith (1949, pp. 42, 44).
40
Goldstein (2001, p. 247).
41
Derrida (1994, p. 89).
123
within it the absolutely undetermined messianic hope at its heart, this eschato-
logical relation to the to-come of an event and of a singularity, of an alterity that
cannot be anticipated.42 Marxism necessarily carries with it a messianic
eschatology.43
However, there are (scientific, structuralist and statist) spirits of Marxism, which
would oppose these kinds of readings of Marxism, where the spectre of communism
that stalks Europe seems to be a secularized angel of theology. Theologically
oriented scholars may consider Marxism nothing but a contaminating supplement
that must be exorcised from Messianism. If theology is translated into materialism
or/and materialism is re-translated into theology, there is a risk of losing both
theology and materialism as the secularized content dissolves and the theological
idea evaporates.44 This combination also leads to philosophical contradictions and
inconsistencies. Should Benjamin, to avoid this kind of criticism, have made a
decisive decision between Moscow and Jerusalem?
Tiedemann, who considers Benjamins experience of profane illumination that
overcomes a religious illumination and has a materialistic inspiration as still too
mystical, since it is yet an illumination, opposes historical materialism to
Benjamins political Messianism. In On the Concept of History theological and
mystical concepts have a material intent. There is no thought of Messiah in the
religious sense. Everything should be thus fine, but at certain points, Tiedeman
argues, Benjamin translates back into theological language what Marx had
secularized. The theological terminology of On the Concept of History attempts
to preserve the content of the proletarian revolution within the content of the
Messiah, the classless society within the messianic age and the class struggle within
messianic power.45 It is as if a revolution would be a yet-to-come Messiah, who
would bring forth a classless society that would exist beyond the world and the
historical time. Tiedeman sees Benjamins mixture of political revolution and
messianic redemption as an attempt to unite the irreconcilable. Based on this he lays
down his final negative judgement: Benjamins idea of political praxis in the 1940
theses has more of the enthusiasm of the anarchist than the sobriety of Marxism. It
becomes a cloudy mixture of the aspects of utopian socialism and Blanquism,
producing a political Messianism which can neither take Messianism really
seriously nor be seriously transposed into politics.46
Jurgen Habermas considers Benjamins work as inconsistent and discontinuous.
Benjamins concept of history in On the Concept of History as a radical break with
the past cannot be combined with Marxs concept of history, where history is what does
create the dynamic tension from which socialism arises. Benjamin fails to realize his
intention to bring together materialism and theology, enlightenment and mysticism,
42
Derrida (1994, p. 65).
43
Derrida (1994, pp. 59, 90).
44
See Tiedemann (19831984, p. 91).
45
Tiedemann (19831984, p. 91).
46
Tiedemann (19831984, p. 95).
123
526 A. Hirvonen
since one simply cannot insert into the materialistic theory of social development the
anarchistic conception of Jetztzeiten which intermittently come crashing through fate as
if from above47 One cannot tack an anti-evolutionary conception of history onto
historical materialism as if it were a monks cowl.48 Moreover, Benjamins critique,
which prepares itself for a leap into past Jetztzeiten so that it might rescue and redeem
semantic potentials has a very mediated relation to political praxis.49 Even Adorno,
who was the better Marxist, did not see that Benjamins mimetic theory of language,
the messianic theory of history and conservative-revolutionary understanding of
critique prevented the puppet called historical materialism take the direction of its own
ideas, since Benjamin was never prepared to completely dismiss the theology.50 The
theologian in Benjamin, Habermas insists, could not accept the idea of making his
messianic theory of experience serviceable to historical materialism.51
Scholem considered his friend as a theologian marooned in the realm of the
profane.52 For him, Benjamins turn toward Marxism was unacceptable. Benjamin
confuses politics and religion and engages in intensive kind of self-deception.
Moreover, his split between a metaphysical and Marxist mode of thinking casts
bewildering foreignness over his work. Scholem did not condemn Benjamins
interest in the redemptive politics as suchhe would understand it in the Jewish
sense, not so much in accordance with the BiblicalTalmudic legal tradition of the
halakhah but with the mystical and Kabbalistic messianic idea connected with
apocalypticism, with the messianic world of tikkun, the re-establishment of the
harmonious condition of the world.53 Scholem commented to Benjamins essay on
Karl Kraus (according to Bernd Witte this essay was the most radical attempt among
his Weimar writings at a synthesis between early theological and materialist
thinking)54 to him: it shows an astonishing incompatibility and unconnectedness
between your real and your pretended modes of thought. Moreover, Benjamins
output during this time was, according to Scholem, a work of an adventurer, a
purveyor of ambiguities, and a cardsharperthe only question was, Scholem
wondered, how long the insight of Benjamins morality would remain sound in this
kind of a dubious relationship.55
On the Concept of History, which was, according to Scholem, written as a
reaction to the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939, accomplished Benjamins awakening
47
Habermas (1979, p. 51).
48
Habermas (1979, p. 51).
49
Habermas (1979, p. 54).
50
Habermas (1979, p. 54).
51
Habermas (1979, p. 51).
52
Scholem (1976, p. 187).
53
Scholem (1995, p. 13).
54
Witte (1991, p. 126), Benjamin (2005a).
55
Scholem (1988, p. 229). Goldstein (2001, p. 269.) says that after the Kraus-essay Benjamin did not
engage in the same type of explicit mixture of Marxism and Messianism until the late 1930s, even
though the mixture remained under the surface. Then again, Irving Wohlfarth (1986, p. 11) sees Der
Autor als Produzent (The Author as Producer) (1934) as his most programmatic materialist essay.
123
from the shock of the pact.56 For Scholem, it marks Benjamins break with the
historical materialist and his return to metaphysical and theological thinking.57
Actually, nothing remains of historical materialism except the term itself.58
Scholem justifies his interpretation by the chess-automaton metaphor where
Benjamin admits that the historical materialist is nothing but a puppet controlled
by theology. Moreover, Benjamin considers the profane history as melancholic and
desperate, without any hope. The angel of history, who gazes the debris and
wreckage of the past without being able to turn away from it, cannot make whole
again the fragments of history. The historical materialist cannot redeem the
catastrophe of history. Thus, Benjamin admits that the redemption can come only
from the Messiah, Scholem believes, and the only hope lies in a leap into
transcendence. Scholem seems to see that in his final moments Benjamin returned to
the mythical spirit of Messianism purified from Marxist ghosts.
3 Divine violence
To answer these problems, I will turn to Benjamins most problematic theologico-

political, messianico-revolutionary concept, that is, divine violence or force
(gottliche Gewalt), which, as Benjamin himself admitted, is sure to provoke,
particularly today, the most violent reactions.59 This concept is crucial in
Benjamins political thinking, since it may reveal its theological foundation, which
Benjamin seems to explicitly admit in his final essay.
Divine violence is introduced in Zur Kritik der Gewalt (Critique of Violence),
which appeared in Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 3rd of May
1921. This essay was part of Benjamins planned larger project on politics that he
had in mind as he planned to write the review of Blochs Spirit of Utopia.
Benjamins Politik would have consisted of three chapters: (1) Die wahre
Politiker (The True Politician); (2) Die wahre Politik (The True Politics), which
would be divided into Der Abbau der Gewalt (The Decomposition of Violence,
which was, perhaps, identical with Critique of Violence) and Teleologie ohne
Endzweck (Teleology without Final Purpose); (3) a philosophical critique of Paul
Scheerbarts utopian novel Lesabendio (1913).60
Why to return to a text written around 20 years earlier than On the Concept of
History, 3 years or so before Benjamins turn to Marxism? I put off my answer
and move on to illuminate the concept of divine violence, which is the sign and
seal but never the means of sacred dispatch and which may be called sovereign
56
Scholem (1976, p, 231).
57
Wolin (1981, p. 82) sees that there is a re-emergence of theological motifs identical to those of
ber das mimetische Vermogen (On the Mimetic Faculty),
Benjamins early period in his later texts U
Franz Kafka, and the seminal On the Concept of History.
58
Scholem (1976, p, 231).
59
60
In a letter to Scholem in January 1921, Benjamin mentions first time Zur Kritik der Gewalt. The
plan to do a work on politics emerges from his letters. See Benjamin (1996, pp. 54, 109, 119, 127, 177);
Benjamin (1997, p. 9). See also Steinert (2001, p. 61).
123
528 A. Hirvonen
violence.61 What else possible positive definition there could be, if only mythic
violence, not divine, will be recognizable as such with certainty, unless it be in
incomparable effects, because the expiatory power of violence is invisible to
men.62 We have to start by defining divine violence negatively.
In the archetypical form mythic violence (mythische Gewalt) is purely a
manifestation of the gods. Not a means to their ends [] but primarily a
manifestation of their existence.63 However, the mythic manifestation of the
immediate violence is not so pure. Benjamin takes as an example the fate of the
Theban queen Niobe, who challenges gods by boasting that she, who has given birth
to fourteen children, is worthier than the goddess Latona, who has only two
children. Apollo, Latonas son, avenges by killing Niobes children with his arrows.
Thebes is soaked with blood, but the suffering Niobe is not killed. Instead, her
power of speech is taken away and she is frozen in a block of stone for all eternity.
Mythic fate stages and demonstrates a power.64 Niobes arrogance calls down fate
upon her not because her arrogance offends against the law but because it challenges
fateto a fight in which fate must triumph and can bring to light a law only in its
triumph.65 Hence, far more than punishing the infringement of a valid law, the
mythic violence posits a law. The law arises in the place of the myth. Since [l]aws
and circumcised frontiers remain, at least in primeval times, unwritten laws. A man
can unwittingly infringe upon them and thus incur retribution.66 Mythic violence is
crowned by fate, since, Benjamin refers to Cohen, it is fates orders themselves
that seem to cause and bring about this infringement, this offence.67 Hence, the
mythic violence is representative violence that establishes a law and sets
boundariesmythic violence leaves Niobe as a boundary stone on the frontier
between men and gods68and becomes boundary-preserving violence. Mythic
61
Benjamin calls divine violence as waltende, which does not exactly mean sovereign, which has
strong connotations to political and legal sovereignty. We could speak also of effective violence. See
62
63
64
According to Tom McCall, in the Ancient Greek world a myth became a fictive totality, which was
composed from momentary dispersed elements. Once the myth is constituted, it must be held together and
maintained in reiterations and in the illusions of permanence and duration. In the myth, a momentary
event is given temporal span and duration. The new mythology hides the discontinuousness that inhabits
the singular acts of violence. Mythic violence is a theatrical gesture that inscribes pure violence into
contexts where it may appear to be continuous and mythic representation is linked to colossal figures of
authority and authorship, gods and fate, so that violence seems to come from some legitimate source.
Mythic representative violence is thus a power-positing lasting performance. Moreover, the triumph of
fate is the beginning of the law, which is the parasite of the myth just as the myth is the parasite of pure
violence. The law arises only where the myth has been. McCall (1996, pp. 194200).
65
66
67
Benjamin (2004a, p. 249). Hermann Cohen had already made in Religion der Vernunft aus den
Quellen des Judentums (1919) a distinction between mythology and religion, between the mythical
polytheism and the ethical monotheism, in which the idea of unique God, which is not a reflection of
nature, made possible the hope of achieving universal global justice. See Cohen (1972).
68
123
violence has a means to ends structure grounds. As it grounds a new mythical order,
it is power-positing (Machtsetzung).
Just as in all spheres God opposes myth, mythic violence is confronted by the
divine. The latter constitutes its antithesis in all respects.69 Divine violence does
not posit laws but destroys them; it does not set boundaries but destroys boundlessly
all limits, boundaries and differential-hierarchical spaces; it does not bring guilt and
retribution but expiates; it does not threaten with punishment but strikes; it is not
based on bloodshedblood being the symbol of mere lifebut bloodless
annihilation, pure power over all life for the sake of living; it is neither arbitrary
nor mystifying. Benjamin contrasts the legend of Niobe with Gods judgement of
the company of Korah. The judgement strikes the privileged Levites without
warning, without threat, and does not stop short of annihilation.70 No boundary
stones are left behind. But at the same time, it also expiates.
There is an affiliation between modern law and ancient myth and the mythical
manifestation of immediate violence, which shows itself fundamentally identical
with all legal violence.71 When it comes to modern law, Benjamin makes a
difference between law-positing or law-imposing (rechtsetzende Gewalt) and law-
preserving violence (rechtserhaltende Gewalt). Even if law-positing violence is an
original violence beyond the positive law, it, with necessity, points beyond itself by
positing the relatively stable conditions and is thus instrumental and mediated
violence used in the name of the coming law, which will, after the fact, justify it. It
is power-positing. Law-preserving violence serves legal ends under the valid
positive law, which monopolizes the use of violence by making a fundamental
distinction between historically acknowledged legitimate violence and unsanctioned
violence. The aim of the law is to preserve, not merely legal ends, but also the law
itself, since violence that is not in the hands of law threatens it by its mere existence
outside the law. As it does this, law-preserving violence turns against its own
principle of positing violence. All applications of valid legal norms, which seem to
be merely the maintenance of the law, necessarily include an element of law-
positing violence. The decadence of parliamentary democracies, like the Weimar
Republic, owes much to the fact that they are not conscious the revolutionary
forces to which they owe their existence.72
After all, these two forms of legal violence cannot be decisively separated. What
is more, legal violence is subjected to a superior law, which is the law of historical
change, the law of oscillation (Schwankungsgesetz), which decrees that in its
duration all law-preserving violence indirectly weakens law-positing violence,
69
70
71
72
Benjamin (2004a, p. 244). For Benjamin, the police bring forth this suspension of distinction. It
enforces laws serving thus legal ends. However, thanks to its discretionary power, it also decides the
means and ends itself with wide limits that exceed strict legality as it intervenes for security reasons in
countless cases where no clear legal situation exists.
123
530 A. Hirvonen
which it represents, by suppressing hostile counter-violence. The valid law lasts

until new or previously suppressed forces triumph and found a new law or legal
order, which in its turn is destined to decay.73
Divine violence answers to a question that arises necessarily: what kinds of
violence exist other than all those envisaged by legal theory, all those permitted by
natural and positive law?74 Benjamin can now define divine violence as law-
destroying [rechtsvernichtend].75 As such, it opens a redemptive hope: there is a
possibility of founding a new historical epoch, but it demands the existence of
violence outside the law, as pure immediate violence.76 The new epoch is possibly
only if it is founded on the breaking of this cycle maintained by mythic forms of
law, on the deposing [Entsetzung] of law with all the forces on which it depends as
they depend on it, finally therefore on the abolition of state power.77 This
possibility seems to be bound to God. What seems to be needed is, as Benjamin says
in Welt und Zeit (World and Time), authentic divine violence, which, as it enters
the secular world, breathes destruction.78
Why Benjamin does not call the expiatory violence as revolutionary or anarchist
violence, Tracy McNulty correctly wonders. Is revolutionary violence merely a
more impure or limited manifestation of violence, which God alone can wield with
complete justice or does it embody fully the expiatory power of divine
violence?79 Does the opposition between mythic and divine violence come down
to the opposition between Greek and Jewish, between polytheist world order and
monotheist transcendence?80
Divine violence seems to necessarily and essentially contain theologico-
eschatological traits. Benjamin even says that it is never reason that decides on
the justification of means and the justness of ends: fate-imposed violence decides on
the former, and God on the latter.81 Not merely the idea of sacral violence of God
but also images and examples in Benjamins essay on critique of violence seem to
be signs of mysticism, irrationalism and even theocracy. The essay seems to reflect
disenchantment resulting from the secularization, i.e. decaying, of the historical
world and the law. It seems that only the Hebrew God is able to definitely break the
cycle of legal violenceand justice (Gerechtigkeit) is the principle of all divine
end-positing (gottlichen Zwecksetzung).82 All in all, divine violence belongs to the
transcendental sphere of theology, mysticism and the eschatological hope, not to the
world of politics and revolutionary praxis.
73
Benjamin (2004a, p. 251). Translation modified.
74
75
76
77
Benjamin (2004a, pp. 251252).
78
79
McNulty (2007, p. 42).
80
McNulty (2007, p. 42).
81
82
123
4 Theology as ground
My reading of divine violence seems to support Scholems interpretation of On the

Concept of History. After all, the historical materialist or the proletariat that
interrupts production are merely puppets of Messianism. Benjamins political
thinking is nothing but theology dressed in political concepts. And actual politics
was even more unfamiliar to him.
Benjamin had been involved in the radical university student movement, Freie
Studentenschaft, during the first half of the 1910s, but after that he dissolved his
political commitment and began, as Richard Wolin says, to conceive of himself
mostly as a man of letters, a philosopher, and a critic.83 Wolin admits that as an
opponent of war Benjamin sympathized with the anti-war Spartacus League, but his
attraction to the radical left was more a result of his staunch moral convictions than
for political reasons per se and he considered himself more or less as an
anarchist and consequently seemed to harbor an innate distrust of all purely
political solutions to the ills of humanity.84
According to Wolin, Benjamin comes at a Marxist and materialist position only
after the revolutionary swell, which had swept in Europe in the aftermath of the
World War I, had evaporated. A reason for this delayed interest in politics could be
the fact that Benjamin considered himself, above all, as a Jew: as an outsider he
was unable to identify immediately and existentially with the German day-to-day
political fate, and thus his solution to crises took on a more esoteric and unrealistic
quality: the theologically oriented method of redemptive criticism.85 His
philosophy of history condemned history as natural history incapable of fulfilment
directing its hope to the purifying powers of the suprahistorical Messianic age.86
Benjamin chose a non-political outlet for his spiritual energies, which was more
in conformity with his religious heritage.87
Moreover, in his letter to Scholem, Benjamin says that as Lukacs proceeded from
political considerations to the theory of knowledge Lukacs arrived at principles, which
were familiar to me and endorsed by me.88 Since they were already familiar to
Benjamin as he found Lukacs, he had, most probably, come to them from another
direction than from Marxism. This is how Wolin also sees it and concludes: That other
direction can be none other than theology.89 In his essay on Kant, Benjamin protested
against Kants hollow concept of experience presented and aimed at a superior concept
of experience, which would provide a unified perspective. Wolins conclusion is that
only a concept of experience that recognizes religion as its basis would be capable of
surmounting the Kantian mechanical (i.e., natural scientific) view of the world.90
83
Wolin (1981, p. 83).
84
Wolin (1981, p. 81).
85
Wolin (1981, p. 84).
86
Wolin (1981, p. 84).
87
Wolin (1981, p. 84).
88
89
Wolin (1981, p. 87).
90
Wolin (1981, p. 88).
123
532 A. Hirvonen
Wolins sophisticated reading, however, misunderstands Benjamin. From

different reasons and perspective Scholem committed similar misreading, since
he, as Wolin, saw merely the theological face of the Janus-faced Benjamin.
5 Puppet and dwarf
I will bring together On the Concept of History and Critique of Violence,

which do share, at least, the messianic time, to show why these two essays, which
brings revolution and messianic together, are truly political texts that have political
effects.
Let us start with On the Concept of History. One should read together, two
claims Benjamin makes: (1) every second was the small gateway in time through
which the Messiah might enter,91 (2) there is not a moment that would not carry
with it its revolutionary chance.92 This revolutionary chance is grounded on two
things. Firstly, Benjamin says that it is offered for the historical materialist, whom
he now names also as a revolutionary thinker, by a historical moment, which gets its
warrant from the political situation. Secondly, Benjamin says that the historical
materialist cannot do without the notion of a present which takes a stand (einsteht)
and has come to a standstill (Stillstand).93 His experience with the past stands as
unique (einzig dastehen) and in his singular confrontation with the past, he
recognizes the sign of a messianic arrest of happening, which is a revolutionary
chance in the fight for the oppressed past.94 The historical materialist stands there
(dastehen)at the standstill where time stands (einstehen)in a unique (einzig
dastehen) way. From this singular position and at the historicalpolitical moment
the revolutionary thinker has a unique entrance to the past, which has been closed
and locked. This entrance coincides with political action. By means of such entry
political action, however radical and revolutionary, reveals itself as messianic.95
Marxs basic idea was that through the class struggle of the proletariat,
humanity attains to a classless society in the course of historical development.96
In the idea of classless society, Marx secularized the idea of messianic time. And
that was a good thing.97 But Marxs epigones have derived the notion of so called
revolutionary situation, which has always refused to come, from these ideas.
Against this vulgar spirit of Marxism, Benjamin puts his own, which restores a
genuinely messianic face to the concept of the classless society.98
Neither the theological dwarf, who is waiting the coming of the Messiah, nor the
historical materialist puppet, who is waiting for the coming of a classless society as
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
123
an inevitable result of the historical evolution, is able to blast open the continuum of
the history. Neither of them (alone or together) is the victorious master. Benjamin
must cut off his puppet and dwarf from the spirit of indecisive (vulgar) Marxist
puppets and (mythico-utopian) theologian dwarfs. The puppet is the one who enlists
the services of the dwarf, who points out that, as Joshua Robert Gold puts it, the past
is the source of redemption, that it is not a settled matter and that its resonances
reverberate in the present. The dwarf turns the gaze of the puppet from the future
and utopian goals towards the past.99 The historical materialist, turned into a
revolutionary thinker, combines the history of the oppressed and the messianic
redemptive hope with the analysis of the present political situation, the destructive
energies and the revolutionary action. For him, the subject of history is not a
transcendental subject or humankind but the oppressed or the combating
oppressed class in its most exposed situation, whose inheritor is the proletariat.100
The puppet turns its back from the future to the past to be able to win the present
game knowing that every moment in the game is the small gateway101 or the
Day of Judgment [] concerning certain moments that preceded it.102 Three
points that make the foundation of historical materialism are for Benjamin: the
discontinuity of historical time; the destructive force of the working class; the
tradition of the oppressed.103
Moreover, Benjamin writes, The existence of the classless society cannot be
thought at the same time that the struggle for it is thought.104 In other words, the
countermove the revolutionary thinker makes should paradoxically be a
completely new resolution of a completely new task (Aufgabe)105 It brings the
game to stand in its unprecedented and unique move. As Benjamin commented on
Marxs idea of revolutions as the locomotive of world history, Benjamin saw
revolution otherwise, as an attempt by the passengers on this train [] to activate
the emergency break.106 In this way it interrupts the continuum of the history of
oppression without having as a justifying ground any pre-thought program, end or
utopia. It is a pure interruptive force that blasts open history at the moment of a
standstill, stoppage and shutdown (Stillstand). A genuine messianic face must be
restored to Marxism and to the concept of classless society in the interest of
furthering the revolutionary politics of the proletariat itself,107 who is not a
redeemer of future generations but the avenger that completes the task of
liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden.108 The messianic
relation to the past, now-time, political situation and revolution is as intertwined as
99
Gold (2006, p. 1231).
100
Benjamin (1974, p. 1242, 1244).
101
102
103
Benjamin (1974, p. 1246).
104
105
Benjamin (2006b, p. 402). Translation modified.
106
107
Benjamin (2006b, p. 403). Emphasis mine.
108
123
534 A. Hirvonen
the puppet and the dwarf, as the historical materialist, the revolutionary thinker and
the proletariat.
6 Divine and striker
The critique of violence is the philosophy of its history.109 In the next sentence,
however, Benjamin puts quotation marks around philosophy, since only the idea
of the development of force and violence makes possible a decisively critical
approach to its temporal data possible. The gaze of this critique is not merely a gaze
directed at what is close at hand, which would merely perceive the history of the law
as a dialectical rising and falling in the forms of legal violence that takes place in the
homogenous and empty time in which one Constitution follows another. Power, the
principle of legal violence, remains uninterrupted even in the so called revolutionary
breaks. If all rulers are the heirs of prior conquerors,110 then all valid laws are the
heirs of prior laws. Moreover, the continuum of relatively stable conditions under
the rule of law is narrated in the evolutionary schema in which the relationship of
the present legal situation to the past is a purely temporal one. The history of the law
is written from the point of view of the victors, which hides material relations and
conditions and dampens down both the voices of the oppressed and the
revolutionary forces of the past and the present.
Already in 1921, it was the historical materialist who knew all this and realized
that the past is full of waste products, blind spots and lost moments. He claimed a
messianic concept of time in his attempt to realize now-time, which would liberate
and redeem us from the spell of the law, from the magic circle (Bannkreis)111 of
mythical and legal violence. It would break this cycle maintained by mythic forms
of law (Durchbrechung dieses Umlaufs im Banne der mythischen Rechtsfor-
men)112 and call a halt (Einhalt) to their pernicious historical function.113 The
deposing (Entsetzung) of the law would thus be a messianic cessation of the
happening of the law. If Benjamin considered revolution as the pulling of the
emergency break, we could say that this is what takes place in deposing violence.
Pure revolutionary violence is a redemptive stoppage and interruption of the
continuum of history. As interruptive force that pulls the break, that interrupts the
order of things, that ends all mythico-legal violence, Benjamins gottliche Gewalt,
divine violence, is actually gewaltlose Gewalt, non-violent violence, caesuratic
force that does neither found any order nor base itself on any law, ideology or
religion.
It is only divine violence signed by God, gottliche Gewalt, that could blast open
the continuum of the law and legal violence. I am not denying Benjamins
109
110
111
112
113
123
references to Biblical God in Critique of Violence, but in spite of this, I claim that
Benjamin secularizes divine violence like Marx secularized the messianic time.
Firstly, there are manifestations of divine violence, which are not defined by
miracles directly performed by God but by the moments of bloodless, striking,
expiating execution, finally, as the absence (Abwesenheit) of all law-positing.114
Benjamin says that divine power [violence, Gewalt] is not only attested by
religious tradition and today there remains at least one sanctioned [or sacred,
geheiligten] manifestation, the educative power (erzieherische Gewalt) that in
perfected sense is outside the law.115 Beyond the legal system and legal violence is
also nonviolent resolution of conflicts, nonviolent agreement and peaceful
intercourse in the relations between human beings (a conflict concerning an object
is always already regulated by legal norms) that are analogous to pure means (reine
Mittel) in politics and diplomacy between states, which is based on nonviolent
agreements.116 All these take place in language, the space of mediation,
communicability (Mitteilbarkeit) and pure mediality (reine Mittel), that is, the
space of pure medium (reine Mittel) of communication.117 Benjamin then turns to
conflicts between classes. He refers to Georges Sorel, who presents two strikes that
are antithetical in their relation to violence. The political general strike is merely a
transmission of power from the privileged to the privileged and the replication of
force. It preserves and strengthens the state power. On the contrary, the proletarian
or revolutionary general strike sees even the most popular reforms as bourgeois and
aims at the abolition of the state and its legal system. As pure means, it is non-
violent (gewaltlos), since it does not aim at new working conditions and does not
violently cause the redistribution of violence. It has its fulfilment in itself and
therefore it consummates the strike as pure revolution.118 The politics of pure means
is thus the enactment of pure violence and it carries out, as Peter Fenves says, the
law-destroying violence of God.119 And the highest manifestation of pure
violence (reine Gewalt) by man is revolutionary violence.120 About year before
Benjamin had written that divine manifests itself in the historical socio-juridico-
political world, which in its present state is a manifestation of spectral and demonic
power, only in revolutionary force.121
Those who wrongly claim that Benjamins Critique of Violence excludes
politics as praxis and collective action or is fundamentally nothing but pessimistic
nihilism have intentionally misread or unintentionally missed what Benjamin states
114
115
Benjamin (2004a, p. 250). Italics mine.
116
Benjamin (2004a, pp. 244245, 247).
117
See Benjamin (2004c, p. 64).
118
See Salzani (2008, p. 24).
119
Why not the politics of pure ends? The politics of pure ends, Kants ends-in-themselves, may offer,
according to Benjamin, a minimal program for the critique of legal violence, but it does not go very far,
since, Peter Fenves says, every legal order may present itself as means to preserve ones person as its
immediate end. Fenves (1998, p. 46).
120
121
123
536 A. Hirvonen
clearly: revolutionary violence is possible (moglich ist).122 Even if politics would

be, for Benjamin, first of all a philosophical problem, as Uwe Steinert says,123
Benjamins essay is a thinking of the possibilities of a revolutionary-messianic
politics that puts halt to the continuity, logic and structure of legal violenceand
this thinking brings forth a politics of pure means, which are pure because being
beyond the law.
Secondly, when it comes to Benjamins God, divine violence is not recognizable
as such with certainty, since the expiatory power of violence is invisible to human
beings.124 What is beyond our gaze, power and knowledge is the secret world of Ends
or the world of tikkun, that is, the Messianic world, which either re-establishes the
harmonious condition of the world or realizes a more fulfilled condition than the First
Days. In TheologischPolitisches Fragment (TheologicalPolitical Fragment),
written (perhaps) around the same time as Critique of Violence, Benjamin remarks
that only the Messiah himself completes all history, in a sense that he alone
redeems, completes, creates its relation to the messianic.125 Hence, temporal
politics cannot from its own ground relate to messianic and cannot establish the
Divine Kingdom as its goal. However, the tradition of Jewish Messianism includes
views according to which it is not enough for human being merely to hope in his faith
in God but press for the messianic time. Benjamin shares this idea: the secular order
promotes the coming of the Messianic Kingdom.126 He calls for worldly
restitution, which is the task of world politics, whose method must be called
nihilism.127 If understood so, Messianism does not mystify, neutralize or water
down revolutionary politics but activates, accelerates and intensifies it in a struggle
against historical juridico-politico-economico-material necessities. Divine violence
could thus be understood as a dialectical concept, which includes the dialectical
movement where messianic and political move simultaneously in two opposite
directionsfrom messianic to revolution, from revolution to messianic.128
As Benjamin outlines a space outside the law, he gestures towards unnamed
higher orders that constitute the most enduring motive for a politics of pure
meansat this point he stops, since this would lead too far (zu weit fuhren).129
Divine of divine violence is beyond knowledge and representation as a space outside
mythical and legal order. As such it gives itself, without giving anything, not merely
as a hope but also as a task that becomes an obligation in a particular political
situation for a revolutionary. I agree with Simon Critchley, who says about God in
Benjamins thought: God is the first anarchist, calling us into a struggle with the
122
123
Steiner (2001, p. 46). Benjamin compares Sorels political considerations with his own purely
theoretical ones. Benjamin (2004a, p. 245).
124
125
126
127
128
See Goldstein (2001, p. 271).
129
Benjamin (2004a, p. 245). Translation modified. Fenves (1998, p. 45).
123
mythic violence of the law, the state and politics by allowing us to glimpse the
possibility of something that stands apart.130
Divine violence as such does not offer any ground, model, criteria or end for the
politics of pure means, which does not point beyond itself either to worldly goals or
divine ends that would justify it. More generally, we cannot build the secular order
on the idea of the divine kingdom. According to Benjamin, theocracy has only
religious meaning and must be kept out of politics.131 Hence, the politics of pure
means has nothing to do with violent means and theocratic goals of various versions
of religious fundamentalism.
Even if we cannot ascertain that political acts and enactments are manifestations of
true divine violence, we may claim that the politics of pure means purified of all ends
that does not found any new legal or social order may be acts or events of divine violence
or force the principle of which is justice. According to James R. Martel, Acts of divine
violencewhether they come from Messianic sources or from our own responding acts
of revolutiondo not wipe away the existing world; they merely make space for our
own action, for a human judgment that is not the product of presuppositions and facts on
the ground.132 And even if we are not able to recognize divine violence as such, we
may recognize it in incomparable effects.133 One cannot ever be sure whether ones
action is a manifestation of divine violence or merely a positing act, but, for Benjamin,
this does not release the messianic anarchist, the revolutionary thinker or the proletariat
from the past and the present responsibility to decide and act. Anyhow, we have an
insight in the possibility of beyond, which may accelerate profane politics and we,
therefore, know that the profane manifestations of unknown divine violence are possible
in a political situation and the revolutionary thinker or the proletarian striker may press
for the interruption through the political praxis.
7 Marx and anarchist caesura
Benjamins writing in these two messianic-revolutionary essays, I have analysed, can

themselves be considered as a political praxis, as a manifestation of pure violence that
radically interrupts the legal narration made by the bourgeois historicism and legal
theory. Benjamins critical operation in Critique of Violence is scheidende und
entscheidende, discriminating, separating, differentiating and decisive, deciding,
judging.134 On the Concept of History the criteria by which, not only the continuum
of history of historicism, but also the evolutionary materialism and mystical theology,
is judged, by which the revolutionary thinker sets itself apart, is a messianic-
proletarian revolution. Benjamin sees that a critical or destructive element in the
writing of history takes effect in the blowing up of the historical continuum; and the
impulse of redemption is as strong as this destructive impulse (and thus,
130
Critchley (2008, p. 5).
131
132
Martel (2012, p. 147).
133
134
123
538 A. Hirvonen
annihilating deposing is connected to saving redemption).135 In Critique of

Violence this criterion, by which executive (schaltende) and administrative
(verwaltete) violence was judged, was the decisively effective (waltende) violence.136
At the moment of revolutionary action, revolutionary classes are aware that they
are about to make the continuum of history explode,137 they are about to strike the
law. At this moment there is a tigers leap in the open air of divinity. This leap is
always a singular event without pre-given programs and ends. As a unique leap in a
particular political timespace it cannot be predicted, calculated, transferred, repeated
or represented. It is likewise with justice, the principle of divine violence. As it
belongs to divine end-positing it is not something that human beings could know as
such, posit as legal and moral norms or juridical and political goals, but it may have a
singular manifestation as a radical political act in a particular political situation.
The politics of pure means, singular, pure and immediate violence, which
suspends all ends and all ethics focused on the ideas, visions and images of what is to
come, is a pure interruption of the circle of legal violence that makes it possible to
break out of the magic circle of the history of the law and order. It brings the historic
time in halt and replaces it with the messianic now-time exactly as Benjamin
described in On the Concept of History. The deposing of the law, the abolition of
the state, the suspension of the progression and liberation from the empty and
homogenous time are brought together. Pure revolutionary violence does not posit a
new constitution of, lets say, the proletarian state, but is a pure revolt. As it does not
present or represent anything, it is like Holderlins caesura, the pure word, the
counter-rhythmic rupture to which Benjamin refers in his essay on Goethe.138 The
difference between the state of emergence and the real state of emergence Benjamin
presented in that essay is analogous to the difference between the political and
proletarian general strike. Both the real state of emergency and the proletarian
general strike bring the legal violence to a halt and depose the valid law. The singular
event of revolution, the highest human manifestation of the divine violence, includes
all the force of revolt in itself and breaks the temporality of progress, one single
catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage,139 the empty and
homogenous time in which a constitution follows another, a socialist state a tsarist or
capitalist one. The revolutionary force of the proletariat is extinguished if its faith is
in progress and its focus is in yet-to-come, which is what the Social Democrats did
according to Benjamin.140 The politics of pure violence does not even aim to redeem
future generations. Instead, it is an avenger, who recognizes the past struggles of
135
Benjamin (1974, p. 1242).
136
137
138
Benjamin (2004d, pp. 340341); see also Salzani (2008, p. 36).
139
Benjamin (2006a, p. 392). However, between 1933 and 1935 Benjamin considered the technological
progress as an instrument that could forward revolutionary politics. At the same time, he had quite
uncritical stand towards the Soviet Union. Lowy (1985, pp. 5354).
140
Already in Das Leben der Studenten (The Life of Students) (1915), Benjamin spoke against the
view of history that concerns only with the speed of progress. It does not recognize the demands the past
makes on the present. Benjamin (2004e, p. 37). According to Matthias Fritsch, Benjamins construction
of the counter-historical montage of the trash of history demonstrates that Benjamin sees the claim of
123
downtrodden, who works for redemption of the past generations of oppressed and for
liberation in their name. The Spartacus League was for Benjamin as an example of
this kind of pure violence.141
From this, we come to the final issue: what Benjamins politics of pure means, that
rejects all normative programs, utopias and goals, since these include always already
law-positing violence, has to do with Marx? Both Tiedemann (Benjamins political
praxis was more of the enthusiasm of the anarchist than the sobriety of Marxism)
and Habermas (Benjamin had an anarchistic conception of now-times) understand,
after all, correctly Benjamins political orientation. Benjamins communism in its
Marxist form, at least in On the Concept of History, would thus not have been an
antithesis to the anarchistic convictions that Benjamin and Scholem had shared from
which Scholem had expressed his worry.142 I would now propose that Critique of
Violence is Benjamins most programmatic political essay, the effects of which are
seen, not only in On the Concept of History, but in his work generally and especially
in his embrace of Messianism and Marxism. Benjamins revolutionaryeven his
Marxistthinking is penetrated by the idea, and let me quote Habermas, because, once
again, he gets it right, an anarchistic praxis which is distinguished by its banning of
the instrumental character of action from the realm of political praxis and its negation
of purposive rationality in favor of a politics of pure means.143
Benjamin never really dissociated himself from his early messianic anarchism.
Marxism, historical materialism and communism did not replace it. Instead, it was
amalgamated with Marxist theory and politics and it was, even if references to it
seemed to fade away in his writings, subterranean fire actively shaping
developments on the surface.144 Benjamins work aimed to heighten the
revolutionary potential of Marxism and sharpen its critical content, in which his
messianic anarchism played a pivotal role.145 The strength of hatred in Marx. The
battle spirit of the working class. Cross revolutionary destruction and the idea of
redemption.146 If Benjamin would have joined the Communist Party, his stance
would have been, as he once said, to behave radically and never logically when it
came to the most important things.147
Therefore, Lowy correctly sees a basic continuity in Benjamins thought, which
does not mean that there would not have been ruptures and transformations.148 On
May 1926, Benjamin confessed to Scholem that he is not ashamed of his earlier
anarchismand we have to take seriously the quotation marks around earlier. He
Footnote 140 continued

the dead as a call to responsibility. The memory of the past violence is to assume the promises of past
struggles and to draw strength from them for present and further struggles. Fritsch (2005, p. 8).
141
142
See Wolin (1981, p. 86).
143
Habermas (1979, p. 55).
144
Lowy (1985, p. 50).
145
Lowy (1995).
146
Benjamin (1974, p. 1241).
147
Benjamin (1994d, p. 300).
148
Lowy (1985, p. 43).
123
540 A. Hirvonen
added that he considers anarchist methods as useless and communist goalsas

well as all profane and temporal goals (the Kingdom of God is not the goal but the
End (Ende)149meaningless and non-existent, but for him, this does not detract
the value communist action one iota, since action is the corrective of the
communist goals.150 This does not mean merely that the only significant goals are
Messianic, but also, and more importantly, that anarchism, as the politics of pure
means, is not a politics oriented towards political goals. When it comes to means,
Benjamin seems to turn from anarchism to communism, which was now, as he had
earlier written to Scholem, a binding conduct.151 Perhaps, we could argue that the
political situation demanded communism that corrects itself with anarchist goalless
immediacy, that is, communism should become a politics of pure revolutionary
discharge.152 Or, if we take in consideration that in Critique of Violence
Benjamin speaks of childish anarchism,153 which declares that everything that
pleases is permitted and refuses to acknowledge any constraint and force (Zwang)
toward human being. Thus, it excludes reflection on the moral and historical
spheres, and thereby on any meaning of action.154 Perhaps, it is the methods of this
kind of anarchism Benjamin condemns as useless. Anarchism must take in
consideration historical materialism, the past, the political situation and force/
violence, Gewalt. Its interruptive act is not beyond force, power and violence. As
Benjamin says in Das Recht zur Gewaltanwendung (The Right to Use Force),
anarchism denies a moral right for the use of force and violence by any community,
institution or individuality, who claims that right for itself. But anarchism does not
deny the moral right to force as such. According to Benjamin, force is to be
considered as a gift in singular cases bestowed by a divine power.155 This gift that
obligates human beings in singular political situations is the force of interruption
that forges a caesura.
Moreover, in 1929, Benjamin trumpeted: Since [Mikhail] Bakunin, Europe has
lacked a radical concept of freedom, and now it was surrealists, who liquidate the
sclerotic liberal-moral-humanistic ideal of freedom and have come ever closer to
the Communist answer, since they realize that the struggle for liberation in its
simplest revolutionary form remains the only worthy cause.156 Both Benjamin and
surrealism have an experience of a position between an anarchistic Fronde and a
revolutionary discipline.157 It seems that it is Bakunin, who promulgated purely
149
150
151
152
Benjamin (2005b, p. 218). James McBride considers that for Benjamin, Marxisms revolutionary
nature, rather than its dogmatic and epistemological one, contributed to the discovery of truth. McBride
(1989, p. 261).
153
154
155
Benjamin (2004f, p. 233).
156
Benjamin (2005b, pp. 215216).
157
123
negative politics,158 is now the dwarf who pulls the strings of communism. When
Benjamin refers to Sorel, he could as well speak of himself: Taking up occasional
statements by Marx, Sorel rejects every kind of program, of utopiain a word, of
law-positingfor the revolutionary movement: With the [proletarian] general
strike, all these fine things disappear; the revolution appears as a clear, simple
revolt, and no place is reserved either for the sociologists or for the elegant amateurs
of social reforms or for the intellectuals who have made it their profession to think
for the proletariat.159
Instead of speaking of the secularization of Messianism, the messianization of
Marxism or even of the coupling of Messianism and Marxism. Benjamins idea of
the presence of the messianic force in time signifies the possibility of the politics of
revolt that interrupts the history of mythico-legal violence without becoming the
foundation for a new political, social and legal order. Instead of presenting a triangle
drama, Messianism, Marxism and anarchism forms a combination, which also
includes dialectical movements, pending tensions and manifold conversions. All
these liaisons and couplings are signed and sealed neither by Marx nor God but
Benjamins words: is possible.160
References
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123

Continental Philosophy Review Volume 45 Issue 4 2012 (Doi 10.1007/s11007-012-9234-9) Ari Hirvonen - Marx and God With Anarchism - On Walter Benjamin's Concepts of History and Violence

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Continental Philosophy Review Volume 45 Issue 4 2012 (Doi 10.1007/s11007-012-9234-9) Ari Hirvonen - Marx and God With Anarchism - On Walter Benjamin's Concepts of History and Violence

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Cont Philos Rev (2012) 45:519543

Marx and God with anarchism: on Walter Benjamins

Published online: 4 January 2013

Keywords Benjamin Marx Materialism Messianism Judaism Revolution

1 Messianism and/or Marxism

To answer these problems, I will turn to Benjamins most problematic theologico-

which it represents, by suppressing hostile counter-violence. The valid law lasts

My reading of divine violence seems to support Scholems interpretation of On the

Wolins sophisticated reading, however, misunderstands Benjamin. From

5 Puppet and dwarf

I will bring together On the Concept of History and Critique of Violence,

6 Divine and striker

clearly: revolutionary violence is possible (moglich ist).122 Even if politics would

7 Marx and anarchist caesura

Benjamins writing in these two messianic-revolutionary essays, I have analysed, can

annihilating deposing is connected to saving redemption).135 In Critique of

Footnote 140 continued

added that he considers anarchist methods as useless and communist goalsas

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