Christopher Han~illonlOttoNeumaierIGottfried Schn,eiger/Clenjcns Sed~nak(cds.): l:clci?~g Trugedies, \Vien- Rcrlin-Miinstcr: LIT Verlag. 2009: 203- zr 4.

SOCIAL TRAGEDY A N D POLITICAL FARCE

MARX'S POETICS OF HISTORY A N D REVOLUTION'

Raphael Hiirmann

Engaging with Marx's poetics of revolution and history, this contribution will focus on the notions of 'social tragedy' and 'political farce: While I d o not seek to furnish a sociological definition or to carry out a socio-economic irlvestigation of actual social tragedies, I will, however, endeavour to align the dramaticform of tragedy with the social material.' As I will argue, this was also Marx's principal concern when he developed his poetics of history and revolution in the 1840s and 1850s.
Social Tragedy

I.

Regarding tragedy as social, means, first and foremost, rejecting the view, prevalent in liberal-bourgeois ideology, that tragcdy primarily concerns the individual: the sole protagonist who suffers a tragic fate. Though the individualistic view of tragedy allows for conflict between the personal and the political or social, it differs decisively from the concept of 'social tragedy' which involves a social class, group or collective as one of its principal actors. Although he does not explicitly use this the phrase 'social tragedy', this notion is based largely on Raymond Williams' concept of tragedy as a social form. He argues that originally tragedy was understood as predominantly social, in the sense that it involved the entirepulis. As he points out, Athenian dramatic spectacles staged constant, interactive, dialogues between the individual and the collective, between the characters, actors, chorus and audience. The interaction between these various social participants in the dramatic festival mirrors a fundamental dialogue operating within the plays. "The dramatic form" incorporated a dialectic interrelation between "both
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I.

2.

I arli rxtremcly grateful to I:.ugene De Klerk for proofrci~din~ cssay atid providing this aslute criticism. By this term I undcrstnnd the entire realm of the socio-economic and the social-political human relations.

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the history and the presence, the myth and the response to the myth." Hence what the dramatic form of Greek tragedy "then embodies is not an isolable metaphysical stance, rooted in individual experience, but a shared and indeed collective experience, at once and indistinguishably metaphysical and sucial" (cf. Willjams 1966, 18). This perspective on tragedy, however, which regards it as the nexus between the individual and the collective, between history and the present, between the social and metaphysical, has become increasingly marginalised. With the loss of the chorus, the collective disappears from the tragic action and the individual takes centre stage. While this process of decline had already begun in ancient Greece, the concept of social tragedy reached its lowest point with the Romantic ideological tenet that "man could free himself only by rejecting or escaping from society, and by seeing his own deepest activities [...l as essentially asocial or even anti-social" (Williams 1966,73). These two concepts of tragedy, individualistic and social, still tend to remain dissociated from one other, As I 11illustrate, William's alternative view that perceives this drama41 tic form and modern society not as irreconcilable opposites but rather as inexqricably interlinked and interwoven, with "social relationships deeply [. ..] embodied in certain forms of art" (Williams 1986, 148), is closely related to the perspective on tragedy in Marx's philosophy of history and revolution.

Marx applies the superstructure-base analogy most consistently in he analysis of concrete social and historical events he offers in f i e Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852).This is his autopsy of the French Revolution of 1848149 and its anti-climactic afrermath that ended with the low point of Bonaparte's inglorious coup dztat on 2 December 1851. 1-heanalogy finds its structural expression in the antithesis of form and content. RelentlessIy, Marx traces the tensions between - what he terms - manifest 'phrase(s)' and latent 'content' and points out their interactions in terms of the superstructure-base analogy. Pivotally, he even explicitly uses the term "superstructure" to denote the level of the political dissension between the two monarchical parties in France at the time. For him, the confrontation between these two parties constitutes a political expression of the hidden socio-economic conflict between landed property and industrial capital: "What kept the two factions apart was not any so-called principles, it was their material conditions of existence, two different kinds of property; it was the oid opposition between town and country, the rivalry between capital and landed property. 1.. .] On the different forms of property, the social conditions of existence, arises an entire superstructure [Ueberbau] of different and peculiarly formed sentiments, delusions [Illusionen], modes of thought, and outlooks on life. The whole class creates and forms them from [its] material foundations on up and from the corresponding social relations. The single individual, to whom they are transmitted through tradition and upbringing, can imagine that they form the real motives and the starting-point for his actions. [. ..] Just as in private life one distinguishes between what a man thinks and says [of himself], and what he really is and does, so one must all the more in historical conflicts make the distinction bctwecn the fine words [Phrasen] and aspirations [Einbildungcn] of the parties from thcir real organisation and their real interests, their image [Vorstellung] from their reality" (Marx 2000,42 f.; my alterations). Drawing a psychological analogy - with the discrepancy between a human's self-image and his real identity - Marx marks a corresponding gulf in relation to social and class identities, between the self-image of one's group and real social identity. To ascertain thc latter it is vital to cut through the polished phrases and the self-image of the social group. In respect to the monarchical adversaries, Marx juxtaposes their pseudo-medieval show "[blehind the scenes" (during which they stage in "their antique [...l livery [. ..] their old tournaments") with their real social role in the main drama. While they believe of themselves that they act as monarchists, loyal to their respective dy-

2 .

7hc Antithesis ofPolitical Form and Social Content in Marx

To understand Marx's poetics of history a consciousness of his distinction between the political form of historical events and transitions, their 'surface structure', and their social and material content, their 'deep structure' is vital. Historical transformation and paradigm shifts, Marx suggests, are always enacted on thcsc two levels. Marx's historical materialism presupposes that the material rclalions of production - together with the social relations that they generate - condition (but not mechanistically determine) thc political and ideological superstructure. While the material relations are considered primary and basic, the secondary political structure is the plane on which the material and social conflicts become manifest and are negotiated. Hence it would be a grave error to assume "that the struggle for a form of polity is meaningless [inhaltslos], illusory and futile [null]'', as Marx reminds his readers in his editorial in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (29 June 1848) on the 'June Insurrection' in Paris (Marx/Engels 1977,147).He asserts it would be equally naive to dismiss political struggles as merely illusory, as without genuine content, as it would be to idealistically assume that they condition material being or the social material.

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nastics, this is a merely illusionary conflict taking place in a farcical sideshow, In the serious part of the revolutionary drama, "[oln the public stage, [in the chief and state plays] [Haupt- und Staatsaktion], [. ..] they pawned off their royal houses with token acts of reverence': In the historical main plot both parties act out their real social role "as the porty o order, i.e. under a socirrl f rather than a poiitical banner, as a representative of the bourgeois world order, not as knights seeking fair [princesses], as the bourgeois dass against other classes, not as royalists against republicans" (Marx 2000,43 f.; Marx's emphasis; my alterations). While their political appearance seems to mark them out as anachronistic aristocrats, their true social identity is that of property owners and capitalists i.e. members of the bourgeoisie. 'Thus, without being fully conscious of it, they are taking part in a much more substantial hidden social drama in the face ofrvhich even seemingly insurmountable political divisions, such as those between royalists and republicans, lose their meaning. As Marx emphasises, "on closer inspection of the parties and the situation, this superficial appearance [Schein], which veils the class struggle [...l, disappears" (Marx 2000, 42; Mam's emphasis). What Marx exposes and teases out throughout f i e Eighteenth Brumaire are the tensions, contradictions, consequences etc. that arise out of this protean antithesis between social content and political form that is being played out by the political actors.' Moreover, it is on the basis of the model of base and superstructure, of the contradictions between latent content at the material level and manifest ideoIogical forms that Marx begins to develop a poetics of revolution and history in the mid- 1840s. This finds its most complex expression in f i e Eighteenth Brumaire. Harking back to the topos of history as drama, Marx writes a poetics of history that is based on the dramatic genres of tragedy and farce. ?he principal question that concerns me is how these dramatic forms and their poetics relate to the political and social events that together furnish thc material for historiography?

3. ?he Failed Jurre Irrstrrrection as the SocinI Tragedy

o the 1848/qg Re~~olutiotrs f Marx's principal metaphor to describe the course of revolution throughout history is the opposition between "tragcdy" and "farcen. He bases his analogy on Greek drama, harkening back to Athenian dramatic festivals, in which
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tragedy was followed by a satyr play. The latter took up the plot and action of the tragedy and satirised it, turning it into a burlesque farce. It was not until the European Revolutions of 1848/49 that Marx fully devcloped his poetics of history in reaction to what he and other socialists considered as the great tragedy of these years: the failure of all attempted proletarian revolutions. These setbacks of the European 1848/49 Revolutions severely dampened Marx's optimism concerning the swift advent of the proletarian social revolution. Crucially, its imminent arrival which he had predicted in 7he ~%fani/esto the Communist Party (February 1848) - using the imagery of of drama - turned out to have been a false promise: "the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the [prologue] [Vorspiel] to an immediately following proletarian revolution" (MarxfEngels 1976, 519; my alterations). Larger proletarian uprisings either largely failed to materialise (in Germany, Britain etc.) or were brutally and decisively quashed. The 'June Insurrection' (23-26 June 1848) in Paris, which left around 2000 rebellious workers dead, with many more becoming victims of the ensuing persecutions, epitomised the failure of the proletarian social revolution.+ Both the high hopes Marx had of this revolution and his subsequent disillusionment when it was defeated can be clearly detected in two editorials he wrote for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. In his editorial of 27 June 1848 he not only predicted victory for the Parisian workers - "the victory ojthe people is more certain than ever'',he maintained - but he also regarded the rebellion as the catalyst of a pan-European, successful proletarian revolution. Significantly, he expressed these convictions through the imagery of drama, claiming that the June Insurrection as the "second act ofthe French revolution is only the beginning of the European tragedy" (MarxIEngels 1977,128; Marx's emphasis). The hidden class war between bourgeoisie and proletariat had emerged openly; the political revolution had shown its repressed social content which before had been buried beneath the political struggles, both in the July Revolution of 1830 and the February Revolution of 1848. Tragic here means that the decisive social conflict of the time openly manifests itself and is fought out. Raymond Williams highlights exactly this connection between social conflict and tragedy, when he posits that in Marx's view of "social develop4. As Hauke Bnunhorst has recently argued, "the inlportance of the failed European Revo-

3. Among thc few critics who emphasise the crucial importance of the antithesis be~wccn forniiplirasc and content in ,Marx's text arc Haydcn White (1973)-3 2 1 ff., and Jncques Derrida (1994)~ 114-117.

lution of 1848, not only for Marx's life hut also his work, has still been underestimated (Braunhorst 2007, 138;my translation). For instance Hayden White plays down Marxi disillusionment, when hc argues that thc prediction ofthe imminent proletarian revolution in the Mnnfesto turns the text into an "Ironicdocunient': since "Marx himselfat the time of its con~podtion entertained few hopes for the consummation of the revolution that it enthusiastically proclaimedn(White 1973.317).

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Itlent I...]tragedy occurs at those points where the conflicting forces must, by their inner nature, take action, and carry the conflict through to a transformation" (Williams 1966,35). While Marx in this editorial - when the outcome of the battle was still undecided - believed that this class war would end with the victory of the proletariat and the downfall of the bourgeoisie, this notion became untenable when the workers' insurrection had been crushed. Society had not been transformed radically. On the contrary, the position of the bourgeoisie as the ruling class seemed even to have been strengthened. Marx's famous editorial two days later, on 29 June 1848, presented an attempt to come to terms with what - in his view - must amount to a tragic catastrophe. At an enormous cost of lives (mainly those of workers) the proletarian revolution had been defeated before it had even properly begun. Instead of marking the commencement of the pan-European social revolution, the June Revolution markeds the beginning of the pan-European counterrevolution. Under these circumstances, Marx was forced to fundanlentally revise his poetics of revolution. He did this by presenting the proletarians as tragic heroes in a classical sense. Even in defeat they had remained superior to their villainous adversary, the bourgeoisie, as Marx underlined through his trademark juxtapositions: "The workers of Paris were overwhelmed by superior strength, but they were not subdued. 'Ihey have been defeated but their enemies are vnnquished. The momentary triumph of brute force has been purchased with the destruction of all the delusions and illusions of the February revolution, the dissolution of the entire moderate republican party and the division [Zerkliiftung] of the French nation into two nations, the nation of owners and the nation of workers. The tricolour republic now displays only one colour, the colour of the defeated, the colour of blood. It has become a red republic" (MarxJEngels (1977, 144; Marx's emphasis). Clearly it is the Parisian workers who are portrayed here as tragic heroes. Comparable to the protagonists in the tragedies of Weimar Classicism, the proletariat has won a moral victory even though it has been militarily routed by its class antagonist. As Marx concludes in ?he Eighteenth Brumaire, "at least it was defeated with the honours of a great world historical struggle; not only France but all Europe trembles at the June earthquake" (Marx 2000.26). Their moral victory consists in having revealed the social content that underlies the political struggles of the revolution. In particular, the Parisian workers have exposed and discredited the republican ideology of fraternity and brought the hidden socio-economic confrontation to general attention, the class war that the republican notion of universal brotherhood aims to cover

up. The political struggles pale against the gigantic and pre-eminent social gulf that has opened up in French society, between those who own goods, property and capital and those who produce them, between bourgeoisie and proletariat. This is implied in the central image of the bloodstained tricolour (epitomising the republican slogan of the French Revolution, libertk, egalitk, fraternitt), which has thus turned into a red flag (the colour of socialism). For Marx the workers will achieve victory in the revolutionary drama at an unspecified future time and bring about a social republic. Yet, for now their main achievement, Marx emphasises, is to have revealed the hidden social content of the revolution, "the social struggle': which in preceding February Kevolution (1848) "had only achieved a nebulous [luftige] existence, an existence in phrases, in words': Now, class war has materialised itself, as the "phrases have given place to the real thing" (MarxIEngels 1977,149). However, the undeniable fact that, at least for the time being, the proletarian revolution had been defeated posed a poignant setback for Marx's revolutionary optimism. The failed June Revolution constituted a genuinely tragic event, a social tragedy, since it post-poned the proletarian social revolution and the resolution of class conflict to a distant future. While for Marx the overall plot of the long-term historic drama is anti-tragic, until the 'happy ending: the telos of a socially liberated, class-less society is reached, mankind will have to endure many disillusioning setbacks, both tragic and farcical. Discussing the anti-tragic resolution to the historical drama, Hayden White even goes so far as to argue: "while Marx ernplotted the history of the bourgeoisie as a Tragedy, that of the history of the proletariat is set within the wider framework of a Comedyn (White 1973,313). In my opinion, to speak of comedy belittles the tragic elements in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, while to cast the bourgeoisie as Marx's "Tragic hero" (316) ignores how - at least for the period 1848-51 - Marx represents the bourgeoisie as the pathetic protagonist in a revolutioriary farce. Ironically, in denying the tragic dimension to the failed June Insurrection, White actually provides a striking argument for Marx regarding it as social tragedy: "The defeat of the June insurgents was thus characterized as a lamentable, but hardly Tragic event, inasmuch as their resistance to the bourgeoisie was not informed by a clear notion of their aims or by any realistic assessment of their prospects for victory" (White 1973, 323). Far from furnishing an argument against regarding the June Insurgents as 'tragic heroes', their limited consciousness actually constitutes their tragic flaw that causes their tragic fall. In their hnnrartia they closely resemble the heroes of Greek tragedy.

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Moreover, this event is genuinely 'tragic' as both the social deep structurc and the proletariat's revolutionary potential have emerged openly for a moment, only for them to vanish immediately from the theatre of public action. As Marx acknowledges in the Eighteenth Brumaire, with the crushing of the June Revolution, "the proletariat moves into the background on the revolutionary stage" (Marx 2000, 26; Marx's cmphasis), at least for the remainder of the action of the revolutionary drama of 1848-1851.The failure of the proletarian social revolution forms the only genuinely tragic plot of the revolution, as the proletarian actors - post the June Insurrection - have had to abandon their socio-revolutionary role. A principal reason for this, Marx emphasises, is that the proletariat lacks its natural class ally, the peasantry. The French peasantry deludedly supports Louis Bonaparte who falsely pretends to represent their interests. Without this ally, Marx implies, any attempt of the French proletariat at social revolution must end in tragedy. As he maintains, only when the peasantry will have become disillusioned with Bonaparte and subscquently will unite with the proletariat, "the proletarian revolution will obtain the chorus without which its solo becomes a swan song in all peasant countries" (Marx 2000,106; Marx's emphasis). Until then it is the bourgeois revolutionary farce that takes centre-stage, and, increasingly, its second-rate actor-director Louis Bonaparte with the 'lumpenproletariat' as his metaphorical extras. Pivotally, the failed June Revolution marks the turning point of the entirc revolutionary drama of 1848/49. From this point onwards Marx regards the revolution as one great anti-climax with one 'non-event' chasing the next in an ever more sordid an J degenerate rcvolutionary farce. In other words, the revolutionary drama has lost most of its social content. "[ilnstead of society gaining for itself a new content" (Marx 2000,22, Marx's emphasis). Owing to "agitation without content, [...l heroes without heroic actions, history without events': the only remaining action on the political stage consists in staging the most anachronistic. "pettiest intrigues and court comedies" (MarxJEngels 1985, 119;my translation). Farcical bathos has replaced any tragic pathos. The whole political farce, however, is haunted by the social spectre of the June Insurrection, to the point where the bourgeois fear of anarchy and class war enables Louis Bonaparte's unlikely victory over the bourgeoisie. Ironically, in his coup dztat in December 1852 he unwittingly exacts a dispiaced and belated revenge on the bourgeois victors who had bloodily quashed the social revolution of the proletariat in June 1848.The social content resurfaces in a distorted form, as a spectre ["Gespenst"]. The bourgeois revolutionary farce is so powerfully overshadowed by paranoia of this "'red spectre"' ["'rothe Gespenst"'] (Marx 2000, 40) that it paralyses its protagonists and makes them an easy target for Bonaparte's pathetic militia:

"The social republic appeared as a phrase, as a prophecy on the threshold of the February revolution. In the June days of 1848 it was drowned in the blood of the Parispro~elariat, it stalked the succeeding acts of but the drama as a spectre [Gespenst]. [...l The bourgeoisie kept France in breathless terror at the prospective horrors of red anarchy; Bonaparte sold it this future cheaply when on 3 and 4 December he had the distinguished citiwnry of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Boulevard des Italiens shot through their own windows by the drunken army of order" (Marx 2000,95; Man's emphasis).

4. History and Revolution between 'beat tragedynand

'\squalid farce"

In the famous opening lines of the Eighteenth Brumaire Marx not only asserts that history always repeats itself, but also posits that the dramatic genre in which it is enacted changes from tragedy to farce. For Marx, farce here carries connotations of being both an anachronistic and second-rate performance. The farce of the bourgeois political revolution of 1848/49is additionally characterised as being both a shabby and mean re-enactment, a parody of previous revolutionary dramas: Marx applies the attributes "grofle" ('great") to tragedy and "lumpig" ("squalid") to farce in the first edition (1852) of his satirical study: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great [facts] and characters of world history occur twice, so to speak. He forgot to add: the first time as [great] tragedy, the second time as [squalid] farce. Caussidiere [for] Danton, of Louis Blanc {for] Robespierre, the montagne I...] 1848-51 for the montagne [. ..] of 1.793- j" (Marx 2000, ig; my alterations). As this passage highlights, Marx maintains that the history of the European revolutions is characterised by a profound paradigm shift that he expresses in terms of the dramatic genre. The French Revolution (1789-1799)was acted out "als groi3c Tragodie", whereas the French bourgeoisie staged the revolution of 1848-1851 "ah lumpige Farce" (Marx/Engels 1985, 96). The heroes of the high revolutionary drama of the French Revolution, "Danton': Robespierre" and the Jacobin montdgne of 1793-1795 reoccur as their epigoni, as parodies in the lowly revolutionary play of today: "Caussidiire': "Louis Blanc'', and the petty radical democrats and socialists of 1848-5 1 who spuriously adopt the famous name of the former radical revolutionary party. With their revolutionary farce they perform a poor imitation, a travesty, of the great revolutionary tragedy.

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From Marx's historical-materialist perspective the crucial difference between 1789-1799 and 1848-1851 consists in the fact the French Revolution tackled the socio-political and socio-economic tasks of its time, whereas the bourgeois political revolutions of 1848149 totally failed in this respect. Instead they merely invoked the heroic ghosts of the past when they anachronistically tried to imitate the struggles of past bourgeois revolutions. They solely imitated the political forms that emptied out of their social content became farcical parodies. Due to the - up to now - repetitive structure of history and the weight of tradition and events of the past, previous bourgeois revolutionary movements also resorted to conjuring up "the spirits [Geister] of the past" and to borrowing past "names, [battle slogans], costumes",Howcvcr, in sharp contrast to 1848-1851, from 1789-1.799 the "heroes as well as the partics and masses of the old French Revolution" dialectically recalled the past, as they enacted "in this time-honoured [disguise] and with this borrowed language'; "new scenes in rvorld history" (Marx 2000, igf.). The antique political form of the drama hides a new social content. "Camille Desrnoulins, Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just,Napoleon - these heroes of the former French revolution, as well as the political parties and the masscd crowd alike -" performed ". Roman costumes [the task of their time]" (Marx 2000.20; my alteration). in Beneath its anachronistic Roman-Republican disguise, 1789-1799 represented a revolution at the height of its time. It constituted a modern bourgeois social revolution that provided the basis for the subsequent rise of bourgeoisie and the victory of industrial capitalism throughout Europe. 'Ihus, in contrast to the farce of 1848- j 1, Marx casts the French Revolution as tragedy. Giving birth to the "unheroic" bourgeois society, its protagonists required "heroism, terror," etc. Ruthless against their aristocratic class enemies, the Jacobins "harrowed up the feudal ground and mowed down the feudal heads sprouting there': while Napoleon throughout Europe ruthlessly transformed feudal economic structures into capitalist ones. It is tmgic since it carries a social conflict through to its transformation and creates a new socia-economic order. By contrast, the revolutionary farce neither created a new society, nor anything new in world-historicai terms. Entirely derivative, "the Revolution of 1848 could come up with nothing better than to parody 1789 at one point, the revolutionary [tradition] of 1793-95 at another" (Marx 2000,20). However, Marx argues, in a surprising dialectic twist of his argument, that the seemingly worthless revolutionary farce of 1848-1851 did achieve something after all. Viewed as the antithesis to the revolutionary tragedy of 1789 to 1788, Marx observes a satirical reflection in the revolutionary farce on the preceding revolutionary tragedy. In a similar way the satyr play satirised the preceding tragedies in ancient Athens. Analogously, the revolutionary

farce, functioning as a parody of the earlier revolutionary tragedy, exposes the limited nature of the bourgeois revolution. In its bathos the farce mocks the pathos of thc tragedy. Taking its revolutionary poetics from the "strict classical traditions of the Roman republic its gladiators found in the ideals and art forms, the self-deceptions that they needed, in order to hide from themselves the constrained, bourgeois character of their struggles, and to keep themselves emotionally at the level of [great] historical tragedy" (Marx 2000,20f.; my alteration), 'fie revolutionary farce exposes those anachronistic poetics and art forms that the revolutionary tragedy requires in order to sustain the delusion it emancipated the whole of humanity. In Marx's view only the proletarian social revolution is capable ofsuch universal emancipation. In contrast to previous bourgeois revolutions, it must unburden itself of "[tjradition from all the dead generations [that] weighs like a nightmare on the brain o the livi~lg''(Marx 2000,ig). Resurrecting his f tragic hero, Marx assigns this monl~mental task to the proletariat of liberating the entire society not by resorting to any ideals but by confronting material reality without illusions. 'lhe sobering spectacle of the farcical drama of the bourgeois political revolution of 1848149 and the cathartic experience of the tragic failure of the proletarian social rcvolution do not merely demand a reorientation in terms of the ideology of revolution. But they also call for constant rigorous self-critique, "perpetual self-criticism" (Marx zooo, 22). and adaptability of the revolutionary aims, strategies and tactics in the face of previous failures and ever changing circumstances. Moreover, the modern revolution also requires a novel poetics and novel literary representation, a modern rhetoric and a poetic language of revolution, in short a novel "Poesie" of history that corresponds with its novel content (cf. MarxJEngels 198j, 101).~ 'Ihus, the proletarian social revolution will reverse the shortcomings that marred previous revolutionary dramas which saw phrases and empty rhetoric blinding the actors to the limited manifestation of real social content. By contrast, the social content of the modern social revolution goes far beyond the rhetoric of political phraseology. Only such a radical transformation ofboth form and content will enable humans to rid themselves of the repetitive structure of history and achieve comprehensive liberation: "The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot create its poetry [Poesie] from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin till it has
5. Metatextually, Marx tries to write such an avant-garde, self-reflexive poctics with his

Eighteentlt Bnimaire. Through his use of simultaneously histrionic and (self)-ironic language, Marx furthcr attempts to create a new revolutionary "Poesic" (in the sense of poetical language) that matches the modern revolutionary drama.

Chiistopher HamiltonlOtto NeumaierIGottfriud SchweigertClemens Sednlak (eds.): Awitrg fiqei~ics, Wien - Berlin-Miinster: LIT Vcrlag, 2009: 2 1 5-231,

stripped off all superstition from the past. Previous revolutions required recollections of world history in ordcr to dull thcmselvcs [betauben] to their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let thc dead bury their dead in order to realise its own content. There phrase transcended content, here content transcends phrase" (Marx 2000, 22). This process, ~Warx suggests, will also establish a novel genre of revolutionary drama beyond tragedy and farce. It will be totally different from the shortlived bourgeois revolutionary spectacles in which "dramatic effects outdo one another" only for 'h lengthy hangover [to grip] society before it soberly absorbs the lessons of such Sturm rtnd Drang" ( M a r x 2ooo,22). As the last metaphor implies, unlike the radical adolescent dramas, which characterised German literature during this eponymous period and which vanished as quickly as they had appeared, the mature proletarian revolution will pioneer a sustained and lived avant-garde. Such a revolution remains both conscious of the social tragedies that it experiences and uses these setbacks dialectically and productively, "until a situation is created which makes impossible any themsclvcs cry out" (Marx 2ooo,23). reversion, and circun~stances References Brunkhorst, Hauke (2007): Kommentar, in; Marx, Karl(zoo7): Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte, FrankfurtJM.: Suhrkamp, 133-328. Derrida, Jacques (1994): Specters of Marx: ?he State of Debt, the Work olf Mourning and the New Internatio~al, transl. by Peggy Kamuf, New York: Routledge. Marx, Karl(2000): fie Eighteetrtl~ Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, transl. by l'errell Carver, in: Cowling, MarkIMartin, James,eds. (2000): marx xi Eighteenijt Brumaire: (Post)modern lnterpretations, London: Pluto Press, 19-1 09. Marx, Karl/Engels, Frederick (1976): Collected Works, vol. 6: 1846-1848, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Marx, KarliEngels, Frederick (1977): Collected Works, vol. 7 : 1848, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Marx, KarlfEngels, Friedrich (1985): Gesanltausgabe (MEGA), Erste Abteilung, Werke, Artikel, Entwiirfe, vol. 11: Juli 1851 bis Dezember 1852, Berlin: Dietz. White, Hayden (1973): Metahistory. 7he Historical Imagination in NineteenthCentury Europe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Williams, Raymond (1966): Modern Tragedy, London: Chatto & Windus. Williams, Raynlond (1986): ?he Sociology of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

THE TRAGEDY OF WORK

REFLECTIONS FROM AN HEGELIAN PERSPECTIVE'

Gottfried Schweiger

"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains." (Jean-Jaques Roussau) lrttroduction In this paper I will use a simplified Hegelian concept of tragedy in order to understand modern working relations. 'This means to understand them as conflicts of two opposing positions which are equally justified. Employers as well as workers have both justified needs regarding the organisation of work, but they tend to collide as they are different in their very nature. In this context, "justified" does not mean that they are nlorally accurate but rather that they conform to the conditions of capitalistic society and their "relations of production" (Marx's Produktionsverhiiltnisse). What I try to show then is that modern working relations can be understood as ongoing struggles for recognition without the possibility of reconsiliation or sublation (Hegel's Aufiebung). This is especially true in the modern context of work, that is, in a context of increasingly flexible and atypical working relations. Due to the limited scope of this paper I cannot do justice to HegelS theory as well as to the complexity of the problem posed here, but the unanswered questions I leave might stimulate further considerations.
An Hegelian concept oftragedy

Hegel's concept of tragedy is one of the most quoted and discussed in the last 150 years. He no longer sees tragedy as a conflict between good and evil, but rather as one between two justified but one-sided positions (cf. Roche 1998,
2005).
1. This

work was supported by a Fellowship of the City of Salzburg.