As an agile and avid innovator Brecht became interested in dialectical materialism as a tool of inquiry applicable in historical and contemporary settings. Guided by the teachings of another non-conformist Marxist social scientist, Karl Korsch, Brecht would call dialectical materialism the Great Method, with which, in fulfilment of his program of 1925, he could analyze the violent dynamic of conflicting class interests in the history of human socio-economic development. Using the Great Method, Brecht would explore the contradictions which, like Marx, he believed would lead to the self-destruction of capitalism in an age of unprecedented violence and upheaval. With much less certainty, he would posit the emergence of a new age out of the ruins of the old, in which the interests of the working class would supplant those of the bourgeoisie. The deeply pessimistic Brecht’s hopes that in that new age the cycle of bloody conflict might be broken waxed and waned in the “dark times” through which he lived.
Stephen Parker, “Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life”, 2014.
