Dr. S. Kracauer
Paris (17e)
3, Avenue Mac-Mahon
The methods of political propaganda developed in fascist countries represent an innovation. Never before has there been this connection between terror and mental manipulation—at least in the modern age—nor, until now, has propaganda been not only a means of realizing whatever political goals, but also politics itself to such an extent. To compare: the propaganda practiced in earlier dictatorships with that of today. An excursus on the role of propaganda in democratic countries would show that it is structurally different from fascist propaganda. Reference to advertising.
How did this propaganda emerge? What reality underlies it? What function is it given?
To simplify matters, I will extrapolate here primarily with reference to Germany, where fascist propaganda has been ingrained in a particularly systematic manner; I would like to note immediately, however, that in the planned project the most varied countries shall be considered. The continuous juxtaposition of the European dictatorships with the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and with the great democracies, on the other, appears essential to me. Crucially important above all is the inclusion of American efforts in the realm of advertising and propaganda.1
The economic crisis in the postwar period. In the countries susceptible to fascism, the economic crisis combines with the political one and assumes a total character.
The social consequences of the crisis: In Germany the crisis leads to the impoverishment of broad strata and to the emergence of new masses around the proletariat.
1. On the situation of the proletariat itself.
2. The proletarianized middle class. Drawing from the findings of my book on salaried employees, I demonstrate here how the German middle classes were partly dispossessed and partly proletarianized after the war.2 The living conditions of salaried employees in the postwar economy come closer and closer to those of workers.
3. The unemployed.
The Ideological consequences of the crisis
1. Dissolution of the bourgeois value-hierarchy. Among other things, this means that the bourgeoisie loses its self-assurance, and that its lifestyle becomes problematic. The capitalist interests become nakedly apparent.
2. The spiritual homelessness of the masses. By and large, it can be said that, apart from those gripped by socialism, the masses that emerged on account of the crisis live in an ideological vacuum.
a) The middle class: The precarious position of the middle class results from the fact that its members are proletarianized, on the one hand, and are completely entrenched in bourgeois traditions, on the other. Precisely because of these traditions, they virulently resist communism, but at the same time have to negate their place in the capitalist production process. They are no longer readily situated in the prevailing system. They therefore seek a change of this system, but are unable to support a dictatorship of the proletariat.
b) The unemployed: They too are no longer able to be integrated as a result of the crisis and technological developments. Because of the length of the crisis, the army of millions of the unemployed is placed in a state of belief in miracles {Wundergläubigkeit}, which makes it susceptible to all extreme influences and promises. Typical for the mass of unemployed people: their constant wavering between National Socialism and communism.
Summary: Like the masses of workers, the newly emerging masses around them also reject the capitalist economy in its existing form. They view themselves as left to ruin economically and socially, and they feel even more lost on an ideological front when the bourgeoisie is hit with powerlessness and bears little appeal anymore.
Through the weight of the masses and the inability of the classes representing capitalism to win back the masses, the antagonism between the left-wing and right-wing parties, between communism and capitalism, intensifies in such a way that it is no longer bridgeable through democratic means.
Since one cannot count on a return of economic prosperity through which large parts of the masses could be absorbed after all, the situation is ripe for revolution. The task posed by this situation can also be formulated as follows:
How is it possible to reabsorb the masses?
The following is certain from the outset: the masses are no longer capable of ready reintegration into the existing economic system under the prevailing circumstances.
Communism offers itself as the only radical solution that would eliminate, with the capitalist economic system, the causes that led to the emergence of the masses characterized here. In a communist society, according to the theory, unemployment would be definitively abolished and the mass as mass would disappear.
The situation in Germany, however, is conditioned such that the communist solution comes up against incredibly strong resistance—even and especially among some of those who belong to the expatriated mass. The dispossessed middle class is a crucial supporter of the resistance.
The dilemma thus emerges: the masses should be reintegrated while maintaining the capitalist system, but are unable to be reintegrated. Only a pseudo-solution {Scheinlösung} is possible. Fascism is a pseudo-solution.
Thesis: With the pseudo-solution, fascism not only fails to eliminate the mass (which would be impossible), but rather underlines its character as a mass all the more and furthermore tries, through appropriate measures, to create the impression that the mass is in fact reintegrated. To produce this pseudo-solution, fascism uses two interlocking methods:
1. Terror, the necessity of which is explained by the facts
a) that within the prevailing system class antagonisms exist that can only be violently stifled, and
b) that the acceptance of a pseudo-solution like the fascist one has to be continually forced;
2. Propaganda. Two general statements about fascist propaganda should be made straightaway:
a) Fascist propaganda is necessary if only because communist propaganda has to be counteracted. It develops in constant friction with the latter; in other words, it is fixated on communist propaganda.
b) Unlike its communist counterpart, fascist propaganda does not have the disappearance of the mass and therewith its own disappearance as its goal. It has—and this is its peculiar feature—no goal whatsoever after the realisation of which it can resign, but rather resists its objective in every such instance, since it would have to be guided to it ad absurdum. Its objective: producing the illusion of the reintegration of the masses. This illusion would dissipate immediately, however, if it were not maintained through constant propaganda. Fascist propaganda thus does not lead to its own demise like every other form of propaganda, but rather breeds itself anew time and again. Fascism can just as little do without propaganda as it can without terror. It subsists through propaganda.
1. To begin with, in order to avoid the dilemma identified above, fascist propaganda is forced to let the non-reintegratable mass persist as a mass, and indeed to exaggerate its mass character even more. Here would be the place for a critical excursus on the various theories of the masses.
How is the hypostatization of the mass achieved through propaganda?
a) One forces the mass to see itself everywhere (mass gatherings, mass marches, etc.). The mass is thus always present to itself, often in the aesthetically seductive form of an ornament or striking image.
b) With the aid of radio, the sitting room is transformed into a public space. (To the extent that men may still exist as individuals at all, their emotions are totally diverted from politics. Fascist propaganda confers to individuals only the sphere of “interiority” and otherwise seeks to transform them into a part of the mass.)
c) All mythical powers that the mass is capable of developing are exploited for the sake of underscoring the significance of the mass as a mass. To many it can thus seem that they are elevated above themselves in the mass.
The cult of the mass produces two desired side effects:
a) It enables a cult of personality, which is useful because it weakens the sense of reality.
b) It seems to legitimate terror.
2. By unleashing the cult of the mass, fascist propaganda succeeds in creating the necessary preconditions for its agenda. The mass as mass meets charlatanry halfway. Historical excursus on the charlatan. The relations between fascist propaganda and charlatanry are to be demonstrated here. (For example, the perpetual arousal of fantastic hopes, etc.)
3. The actual aim of fascist propaganda is the pseudo-reintegration of masses that it has primed in a workmanlike manner. It already achieves this aim by letting the masses march and generally occupying them nonstop, such that the masses gain the conviction that they already serve whatever functions as masses. More crucial, however, is the attempt of propaganda aimed at reintegration to disavow communist doctrine, which is considered to be the greatest danger. This attempt, which is undertaken with the help of middle-class ideologies—it is characteristic of the middle class that it lives on the periphery of the production process and can therefore preserve bourgeois traditions in the most uncontested manner—this attempt, I argue, culminates in the demonstrative refutation of the class struggle.
a) The masses are assembled such that they seem to belie the assumption of class struggle.
b) One appeals primarily to youth, who are still least subjected to the force of economic and social relations and are therefore seemingly classless.
c) One places the terms “nation,” “Volk,” and “honor” center stage and exaggerates their reality and function in a propagandistic manner in order to paralyze the class struggle. Excursus on the sociological function of the term “race” and of anti-Semitic propaganda. Further excursus on the propagandistic significance of fascist foreign policy.
d) Social laws are enacted that do not in fact change the relation of employer and employee—legal fronts {Fassadengesetze} that amount to the preservation of the capitalist economy, just like the establishment of the Dopolavoro.3
4. Since fascist propaganda represents a fictitious solution to the social problem that it faces, it quickly closes itself off. It displays its greatest strength in statu nascendi, during the conquest of power. After the seizure of power, it loses much of its original force. The actual relations shine through; the illusion emerges as illusion. Ideologues serve themselves in the realm of propaganda by aggressively working towards the realization of propagandistic effects, in order to produce intense shocks. Otherwise, where fascism has prevailed, leadership maintains itself by withdrawing from sheer power—that is, from the army and authorities of terror—and by placing the palpable hunger for power and the military-political aspirations in place of the social ones, whereby the due solution of the social problem is deferred once again. Propaganda adapts itself to this.
The end of this main section would be followed by an analysis of communist propaganda, showing that hidden behind the formal similarity between communist and fascist propaganda, there are, nonetheless, differences in principle.
Postscript: This main section of the work is conceived as an inquiry that would work through copious material in a constructive manner. For this reason all the more, I had to restrict myself here to the briefest remarks.
In this last section, I intend among other things to examine the extent to which social reality is affected by the fascist pseudo-solution; whereby I proceed from the assumption that the fascist pseudo-solution is a means of preserving the imperiled capitalist economy. Furthermore, I will consider here what importance is due to the traditions conserved by the middle class—traditions that render the fascist pseudo-solution preferable to a socialist solution.
Postscript: Let me emphasise once more that the project can only obtain its full worth when it is carried out on an international scale and also when it analyses the corresponding relations in the great democracies (above all in America).
S. Kracauer, December 1936.
NOTES
The preceding translation is by Nicholas Baer and originally appeared in Film Studies 16 (Spring 2017): 6–15. We are grateful for permission to republish the translation in this anthology.
1. Various letters were exchanged in November 1936 about whether Kracauer’s study would focus on propaganda and/or advertising, with Adorno advancing the view that the distinction between the two terms was itself a product of the capitalist system and should be dissolved; see Christian Fleck and Bernd Stiegler, “Nachbemerkung und editorische Notiz,” in Siegfried Kracauer, Werke, vol. 2.2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2012), 838. Kracauer would also compose an unpublished essay, “Popular Advertisement,” in the late 1940s, which is included in this anthology.—Trans.
2. See Kracauer, Salaried Masses: Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany, trans. Q. Hoare (New York: Verso, [1930] 1998).—Trans.
3. Founded in 1925, the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND) was an organization for leisure and recreational activity in fascist Italy. The OND attracted a large percentage of the nation’s salaried workers.—Trans.