[At the top of the page Kracauer records a “Titulary” of the planned essay/book:]
Titulary:
Total Propaganda
A. The genesis of total propaganda
B. The character of total propaganda
C. The method of total propaganda
D. Total propaganda on the way to power
E. Total propaganda as instrument of power
10, 11, 12, 13 July 1937
Total Propaganda
I. The independent life of mental {seelischen} structures, concepts, etc.* Their economic classification a new problem.
II. The founders of total dictatorships. Identification of the core troops (demobilized officers, the déclassé, bohemians, adventurers). They are excrescences of war. About the direct postwar situation in Germany and Italy: national humiliation, ruination of the economic and social organism; defeat of the socialist upsurge. This situation and the war induced psychological {seelischen} structure of the core troops produce the mentality and objectives of the totalitarian type: nation and/or people as the ultimate entity. Enhancement of the national power apparatus. Dream of unlimited expansion of power of the nation (= people = people’s front) and/or the state, the communities of the people {Volksgruppen} … In order to achieve this power once again, the people must be unified. (Interesting Strasser’s dictum: first fight for power, then German socialism = national unity; de facto vice versa: first German unity, then win power. The extent to which this comes from the army demonstrates the sympathy of the army for the fascist type. Yoking the fascist type with the interests of imperialist big capital. Origins of Sorel and Nietzsche. Völkisch.
III. Interim considerations on the postwar situation. This consideration serves to assess the objective chances of the fascist type in Italy and Germany.
1) Finding, that for the forceful subjugation of the socialist movement, fascism and/or National Socialism were not united. Socialism hoped that the bourgeois regimes would maintain the upper hand.* But:
2) In both countries, democracy is a distorted picture. A democratic character has not been established in either country. Therefore, opposition to attacks by the agents of power {Machttyps} is lacking. What’s more:
3) Both in Italy and Germany, capital is pushing—to differing degrees and for different reasons—towards dictatorship.
IV. From the outset, one thing is certain for the agents of power: that the unity to be achieved cannot be maintained with bayonets, but only through the conviction of the masses. He must win the masses, put them in mental bondage {geistig fesseln}. Where does this fundamental desire come from? From the experience of propaganda during the war. From the experience of socialism (Mein Kampf). As a result, for the agent of power propaganda becomes necessary.
V. How does the agent of power see the situation which is to be changed? His attitude defined by the will to re-establish and to perfect limitlessly the national power apparatus. Thus, he sees with hatred: the fragmentation into parties, into the right and the left, the class struggle. In the interest of resolving this fragmentation, he wishes to win the masses. Thus, he sees with hatred that the concepts that mobilize the masses are not only claimed as their own by various parties but also linked to modern pacific concepts. “Socialism,” a great ideal, is linked with pacifism and internationalism: the national idea, to make use of this catchphrase, is commandeered by money powers and so devalued for the masses—by the money powers who are themselves engaged in class struggle. The agent of power cannot structurally consider that the parties and their conceptual linkages are anchored in real interests, are therefore only symptoms; he recognizes only the ready images, not their origins. It seems to him therefore worth fighting against: the class struggle, the rigid linking of useful concepts with those of the enemy, moreover their linkage with certain social strata and interests, i.e., rigidity per se. In the end the agent of power type views with hatred the blinded masses’ inclination towards communism.1
[Preceded by:] New Montage of the Concepts
VI. The situation depicted gives rise to the task of organizing propaganda by the agent of power: the objectives that excite the masses must be freed from their rigid attachment to the parties and to certain combinations of ideas and used instead for one’s own purposes. This means uprooting established conceptual formations, in order to set the superstructure in motion. This is tantamount to overcoming the class struggle in the interest of national unity, serving to perfect the national power apparatus. But this only in appearance [Bild], not reality. The intention is not to eliminate class struggle by abolishing exploitation, but to compel the warring classes to come together in a show of unity—a show of unity, because the cause of class struggle is not to be eliminated, merely the symptoms eradicated. Thus, much greater emphasis must be placed on transforming the superstructure. It is clear that these interests conform with those of the large landowners and of big capital. The task of propaganda is to liquidate the prevailing “system” of ideas, to uproot ideas that excite the masses and to manipulate them in the interests of power. This is “movement” in the strictest sense of the word. The Italian “Actualism.”
I. Total propaganda must have the character of regression. Its fundamental trait: to go back beyond the French Revolution. (Anti-liberalism, anti-Marxism—borne by the important insight that democracy and Marxism belong together; the latter supersedes the former; accordingly anti-intellectualism). Appeal to the lower classes (as in war!!). But this regression itself dialectical: the democratic fiction seen through: socialist internationalism too early. As Russia professes socialism in one country, and in so doing regresses itself, there remains in fact as a possible next stage: the realization of national imperialism for the benefit of the ruling class. Sign of the dialectical character of regression: the Roman salute—its interpretation.
II. Total propaganda must lay claim to exclusivity. Its claim to totality is determined by the character of the regression. If democracy and Marxism are to be eliminated, there has to be absolute control over the formation of opinion; all the more so since—as a result of the efforts not to overcome class differences, but only to force them together—all emphasis is placed on organizing the superstructure. The demand is for total power over opinion formation. This is why totalitarian propaganda strives for autocracy. Here for the first time about the relationship to authority with its command and obedience up to the power over and sacrifice of life and death.
III. Total propaganda must see its criterion only in success. It does not serve to win over the masses for a doctrine or a program; in fact, it has absolutely no doctrine and the program serves only to win over the masses, since the true objective of the agent of power—reconstruction of the national power apparatus for the use of capital—wouldn’t exactly be a useful propaganda medium. Apart from a few items indicative of capitalism’s ideological inventory, such as the retention of property rights, no further objective remains, so that success in winning over the masses becomes itself the ultimate criterion (see Hitler, Goebbels).2
Thus: Propaganda per se, propaganda in “pure culture” {Reinkultur} … Here also: the mystifying concepts of “Volk” (in National Socialism) and “State” (in Fascism). Furthermore, the position of the “program” (Muss[olini] and Hitler). Almost complete ambivalence regarding promises.3
[Preceding addendum in margin:
Volk: leader and a vicious circle
Volk: romantic, Savigny
State: Roman empire
Romans]
Due to the fact that propaganda measures itself only in terms of success—a fact which betrays that the executors of this propaganda only value power per se, but in general are nihilistic in their conduct towards all values—it follows that:
1) The irrelevance of the lie.—This is a propaganda medium. Meyrow[itz].* Fin-de-siècle attitude. Here the openness to forms advertising, that Hitler and Goebbels develop in their propaganda.4
2) The aesthetic-cynical attitude of the executors of the propaganda. This attitude legitimated from the standpoint of nihilistic power. Here already the guiding formula for this propaganda clearly emerges: it is the technique [Technik] of totally influencing opinion as such. No wonder that the best formulations about propaganda stem from Hitler.
[Addition in the left margin:] Here: total propaganda always suspects the opponent of what it is and wants itself. See Heilbut: essential objectives: recognized as phenomenon and called “mirror reflection.” How is this to be interpreted? It is a forced confession! The urge to reveal the truth emerges as a mirror reflection.
In order to set the superstructure in motion in the aforementioned sense, propaganda must change the psycho-physical structure of the people, indeed the psyche itself. This is dependent on two decisive conditions:
The systematic use of terror. Terror = the creation of fear by means of violence.
Demonstrated by fascist punishment expeditions and Feme murders.
1) Terror is not an end in itself, for the agent of power proceeds from the assumption that it is a question of winning over the opinion of the masses. But terror also corresponds intrinsically to the regressive character of the “movement.” Open terror reveals the dismantling of layers of civilization and the affirmation of elementary, conspiring role of nature in exploitation as a “principle of nature.” Terror as a sign of monopoly capitalism, of monopoly as such. Of course, regression is dialectical and so terror also contains a revelatory moment. Direct terror uncovers the terror basis of class society (Hitler on the “terror” of the SPD, Nazis in general on the “terror” of the system). Remark: terror always implemented by the dominant power, not out of cowardice, but in order to peel back layers of civilization; in order to create a passageway for raw nature.
2) Terror therefore not an end in itself, but a means to the end of carrying out the task of propaganda. It facilitates this task in a twofold way. Terror
a) produces fear in the people to be won over, the fear takes the fear from the concepts, under its pressure mass-mobilizing concepts can be separated from their interests, put in motion and redirected.5 (Terror, comparable with drumfire, the function of which is to wear down the enemy to prepare an assault on their position.) Examples of this fear (Paris World Exhibition?). Chronic fear creates hysteria, leads to a blurring of the lines between reality and semblance. The spell takes effect, the ground slips from under one’s feet. Lies and inversion of images in this state are matter of course. [Preceded here by:] Corruption.
Remark: terror is denied not out of a sense of shame, but because it must remain taboo in the interests of the propaganda and because its denial heightens fear further and, making the lie true tests the effect of the terror (just as with the lie of the grotesque = Aryanism).
b) reaffirms the illusion—the illusion that class divisions have been overcome and a community of the people has been established. Blood appears to give truth to the illusion, to make it real.
3) terror not only the condition of total propaganda, but propaganda itself. It has appeal because
a) it excites the (economically and socially determined) sadomasochistic structure of its executors and victims and
c) it appears to be the product of limitless power. Power attracts. Why? (Reflect!) [How to include Horkheimer’s interpretation of terror: terror as the revenge of those who have fared badly against the happiness of the fortunate.]*
II. The Systematic Production of the Masses
1) The structure of the mass. Individual consciousness diminished in the mass. In addition, the mass as a source of energy.
2) But not every mass is a mass in the sense of the Moehl type.6 Here, an analysis of the revolutionary mass: it consists in principle of members of the exploited class and subscribes to a doctrine. It is not the end, but the means. Its revolutionary energies are to be used. It is not a homeland [Heimat] either, (as the mass of the dictator), but by (all means) a passage or passageway to a homeland. The diminution of the individual consciousness has here a progressive aspect to it.
[Noted in left-hand margin:] mass as homeland
3) The mass in the sense of the agent of power is instead a prerequisite of the effectiveness of total propaganda. What is it? The recipient of suggestions. Interject here that ideal mass is one which unites people with the most varied real interests = symbol of the community of the people [Volksgemeinschaft]. Mass from the street! In order to be that, the mass is sedated, hypnotized and prepared in every way. Means employed to this end:
a) the long wait (see Hitler)
b) the symbols
c) the speech itself with its repetitions. Speech not writing (opposing the Enlightenment!) Written language enlightens.
No matter what the subject of the speech, it always moves from horror to happiness. Like sensationalism, it exploits concepts that have been mobilized and that excite the masses. Horror and the promise of happiness both equally present. Ultimately, the content of the speech is not what really matters; instead, the mass hypnotizes itself (citation from Silone “Bread and Wine”).
[Preceding the paragraph:] Charlatan!
4) Since total propaganda depends on maximizing its influence, the preexisting “natural masses” do not suffice; instead, it systematically produces new masses.
The innumerable gatherings, festivals, celebrations, radio masses.
For the purpose of consolidating the mass:
Marshalling the masses with rituals (marching = war and “movement”) and the art of mass images [Massenbildkunst].
[Preceded by:] The mass as “homeland” for Hitler
The goal would be that each individual constantly finds themselves in that state in which they are a member of the mass (this is contradicted, however, by esteem for the family; but that belongs in the chapter on antinomies).
[Preceded by:] Speaking choir
Postulating the ideal of the personality in no way refutes mass as ideal. There have to be people there to manipulate the masses and what does personality mean here anyway—the superior man? Ley quotation about the superior caste (see Heiden I)
[Preceded by:] Myth
5) The crowd not only means of propaganda, but propaganda itself.
a) It seems to represent national unity, the community of the people and its effect is therefore propagandistic (Hitler says: the individual finds his homeland in the mass). That the mass is not the people is proven by the lack of culture. National Socialism produces no culture.
b) It represents power, which attracts
c) Its effect (therefore becomes mass ornament) is aesthetically appealing. An effect in the material present. Embellishing existing conditions with aesthetic, decorative features, disables the forces aiming to change them.
Concluding remark: In the space demarcated by terror the superstructure is set in motion and, after the mass-mobilizing concepts are set free, they are injected at the most effective time and place into the masses. [as the most dangerous weapon, see Goebbels]*
1) Starting thesis: the propaganda of the power squad would not prevail if there were no existing receptivity for it. (Proof: the decline of National Socialism in the Dollar Years 1924–29, initially of bourgeois democracy): but such a link between propaganda and situation has to exist since, after all, propaganda develops in close contact with the situation.
The social basis of propaganda, its natural foundation:
2) What matters to the propaganda of the agent of power: liquefying the superstructure = destruction of rigid parties, as already partially occurred during the postwar crises (= poor blanket term, must be discarded) … and the societal developments caused by them. The crises, etc. have the effect of objective terror, they generated in the different strata fear, which took the fear out of the concepts. In all circumstances, it is the “movement” which profits. A number of strata are particularly susceptible to its propaganda.
[Added here with an arrow:] Workers!
3) Outstanding role played by the middle class, that stratum stretching from the petit bourgeoisie to the liberal professions.
a) Their abridged sociological analysis; they are partly regressive—partly progressive (white-collar employees)
b) Proletarianized by the hyperinflation. As white-collar employees and academics, they become acquainted with unemployment during the crisis of 1929/30.
c) What should the proletarianized, déclassé middle classes do? They originate in the bourgeoisie but find no representation of their interests in the bourgeois parties. Economically proletarianized, their middle-class interests are equally poorly represented in the proletarian parties. Should they, therefore, pledge allegiance to the proletariat? They are hindered by the glaring weaknesses and one-sidedness of the SPD and KPD (the latter international and unable to see the whole picture). Furthermore, the risk of parting with a traditional psychological structure is too great (see Horkheimer).*
The entire superstructure retreats from the middle classes, for as little as Marxism appears an alternative, they see though capitalist ideologies just as much. The spiritual wasteland which plagues them, the cult of distraction / dissipation (see work on “white-collar employees”).*
d) Important to add: the untenable position of the proletarianized middle classes between the parties, and their distance from the production process create a natural affinity between the mentalities of the middle-class mentality and the agent power. (the middle classes must also wish for a false reconciliation of class antagonisms, not their elimination {Aufhebung} in a sociological sense). Furthermore: the agent of power is, in fact, usually of middle-class origin.
[But that does not mean that the “movement” is petit bourgeois!]
4) The role of the unemployed—lumpen proletariat—inadequately grasped by class concepts.
5) The role of the youth—also distant from class and inadequately grasped [by class concepts]
6) Peasants, etc.
7) The social process thus leads to the formation of masses particularly receptive to the propaganda of the agent of power. How is propaganda carried out in relation to the different strata of the population? It deals with each in its own way, promises each heaven on earth. (Program: “political advertising”) (see, for example, Strasser’s speeches intended for workers)—compare with Hitler’s speeches in industrialist circles. Total propaganda has been reproached with this (it takes money)—very unjustly. In fact, it only uses given propensities, without identifying with a particular stratum. Its goal is precisely the dissolution of the strata which embody various interests, total influence over opinion formation per se, for the sake of power. It functions according to horror and happiness—sacrifice and bliss. That appeals to the sadomasochistic type.
[Preceded here by:] Heroism
1) After the seizure of power—i.e., after the establishment of a totalitarian dictatorship—can propaganda cease? No! For two reasons:
a) The construction of the national power apparatus is just one stage on the way to the imperialist goal. Thus, propaganda must be continued—as foreign policy—on an international scale. Installation of propaganda a./b. explicit propaganda acts.*
b) Propaganda cannot stop domestically either since its content—community of the people, elimination of class struggle, etc.—is in reality not achievable. This means propaganda becomes an essential component of the dictatorship (Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment). Terror is incorporated into the system (jurisdiction), the mass eternalized.
2) No need to consider world propaganda here since it proceeds in the same way as domestic propaganda striving for power. [The implementation of terror is facilitated by perfecting the potential de guerre;* the incitements are, for example, the global threat of Bolshevism—Volk without living space—but all suggestions are of course interchangeable].† Investigate solely the—ideal typical—development of propaganda directed inwards; since it alone is an ongoing process.
[Added in margin, left:] Do not forget:
a) continuation of crisis
b) enforced censorship
3) After the seizure of power follow necessarily attempts to realize propagandistic promises. But these measures and institutions do not remove social antagonisms; at best they paper over them. Propaganda has to give the impression that semblance is not semblance, but reality. This takes place by:
a) creating, with these measures and institutions, sinecurists and beneficiaries of the regime who are happy to accept these attempts at face value; [Added in margin:] Corruption
b) pressing on with the relevant measure and institutions to the point of grotesque absurdity. The absurdity of the Aryan paragraph, for example, heightens terror and serves as a doctrine of faith.
Summary: All the fulfillments of propaganda are at the same time themselves propaganda; since they undeniably represent realizations, without however attacking the reality of class itself, they incline toward an attempt to uproot—at least psychologically—the concept of reality.
Comment: The more that total dictatorships develop, the more dominant the sphere of psychological pseudo-reality becomes in them, related to insanity. Pseudo-reality could only become reality if dictatorships succeeded in achieving their ideal of total autarchy, but that would mean attaining absolute world domination. But not even then, since pseudo-reality reveals itself as just that in the immanent contradictions in the superstructure of the regime (family, freedom of art, church, etc.).
4) Concurrent with this development of propaganda, there occurs in fact an enhancement of the national power apparatus. Its characteristics: fulfillment of the aspirations of the masses. Controlled national (military) economy [progressive tendency]. All this under the pressure of the crisis (Mussolini’s speech in Silone). Who profits from this? Large-scale industry, high finance. [Closely tied to capitalism, but the axis is the party. Does it call the shots? Can it shift over to the “second revolution,” to Bolshevism?]*
5) At a certain stage propaganda becomes worn out insofar as it relies on specific convictions and the nihilistic character of the regime becomes ever more apparent.
a) Propaganda must wear out because
α) social antagonisms gradually break through again, which were only covered up and were not—even with the enhancement of the national power apparatus—done away with. Such antagonisms are:
those of the classes
those of autarchy and the world economy
economic and social (…)
as a result of this, various particular real interests and interest groups are created, which tend toward different ideologies.
β) the contents of the propaganda are in themselves contradictory
Family affirmed and denied
Art free and bound
Religion registered as a positive force and opposed as worldly
Youth disciplined and anarchic
Culture should be made and should not be made, etc.
b) The nihilistic nature of power is revealed precisely in the regime’s increasingly open reliance upon the armed forces, from which it originates, and in its imperialist objectives. Devaluation of the party.
6) To avoid economic decline, which would mean the end of the regime, the propaganda must change. Its change in function consists in the closer alignment of certain contents and convictions. The nihilism of the agent of power breaks through—as had the nihilism of the exercise of power—and increasingly reveals itself as what it was intended to be from the beginning: the technique of totally controlling opinion as such (—as trivialization). In view of the antagonisms and contradictions surfacing everywhere, it becomes complete power. Keeping the masses in line, regardless of how it’s done. That is their function. The image of the fencer.
[But world propaganda also becomes the domestic agitator of the masses. Thus, the increasing importance of foreign policy. Foreign policy actions increasingly become means of propaganda.]*
Further: Wherever a weakness is exposed, similar to motorized troops, any old concepts and/or the ruins of concepts are hastily deployed. It is not about their content. Propaganda formalizes itself. More decisive than its content is the rhythm of the waves of propaganda, its artful acceleration or delay. The shock. The contradiction between word and deed can become propaganda, the change of the measures in itself. Interesting: NS Propaganda, which opposed/set itself up against relativism in art and objectivity in science, is driven to the complete relativization of all content. Mass mobilization for its own sake is its end and its nihilism becomes manifest. Born of war, it tends towards its own destruction in war.
Translated by Bernadette Boyle and Graeme Gilloch
NOTES
1. [“moreover” and “blinded” uncertain in Kracauer’s original text.]
2. [“indicative” uncertain in Kracauer’s original text.]
3. [“promises” uncertain in Kracauer’s original text.]
4. [“advertising” uncertain in Kracauer’s original text.]
5. [“takes the fear” uncertain in Kracauer’s original text.]
6. [Kracauer is likely referring here to Ernst Moehl, Hermann Goering. Ein deutscher Führer (Paderborn und Würzburg, 1934).]
* {The underlining throughout this text appears in the original.}
* {Kracauer is referring here to the more moderate Majority Social Democratic Party in Germany, which supported the Weimar Republic and cooperated with bourgeois parties that also supported the Republic.}
* {Kracauer is probably referring here to Henri Meyrowitz, who was born in Darmstadt in 1909, studied law at the University of Frankfurt, and moved to Paris in 1933. He was the author of numerous books and articles on the law of armed conflicts.}
* {The square brackets here are Kracauer’s own. Here, also, we see another example of Kracauer’s genuine interest in Horkheimer’s analysis of authoritarianism.}
* {Kracauer’s own square brackets here.}
* {Kracauer is referring here to Horkheimer’s concept of “cultural lag,” which he introduces in his introduction to the Institute’s 1936 Studies on Authority and Family. For the English translation, see “Authority and the Family,” trans. Matthew J. O’Connell, in Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Continuum, 1992), 47–68.}
* {Kracauer is referring here to his own study, Die Angestellten, which was first published in 1929. In English: Siegfried Kracauer, The Salaried Masses: Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany, trans. Quintin Hoare (London: Verso, 1998).}
* {It’s unclear what “a./b.” signifies in the original text.}
* {“Potential of war.”}
† {Kracauer’s own square brackets here.}
* {Kracauer’s own square brackets in this paragraph.}
* {Kracauer’s own square brackets here.}