“Baader cited Benjamin in relation to the question of, as he put it: ‘how to secure the specific form of revolutionary violence that is now historically possible and which corresponds to the institutional use of power’. Benjamin, for Baader, introduces the subject of revolutionary violence in a theoretical context and affirms it in practice – revolutionary violence is the only type of violence that can be commensurate with state violence. Baader continues his gloss on Benjamin by defining Benjamin’s revolutionary violence: it is a ‘concept that is directed towards revolutionary breakage’ and this violence is a recognition of the extent of reaction in Europe, which means that, according to Baader, ‘mass action only makes sense, when it integrates the experience of the front of the worldwide armed struggle’. In essence, the claim is that it is necessary to take up arms. This is the conclusion Baader draws from Benjamin – specifically from this thesis in ‘On the Concept of History’:
The subject of historical cognition is the battling, oppressed class itself. In Marx it steps forwards as the final enslaved and avenging class, which carries out the work of emancipation in the name of generations of downtrodden to its conclusion. This consciousness, which for a short time made itself felt in the ‘Spartacus’ was objectionable to social democracy from the very beginning. In the course of three decades it succeeded in almost completely erasing the name of Blanqui, whose distant thunder [Erzklang] had made the preceding century tremble. It contented itself with assigning the working-class the role of the savior of future generations. It thereby severed the sinews of its greatest power. Through this schooling the class forgot its hate as much as its spirit of sacrifice. For both nourish themselves on the picture of enslaved forebears, not on the ideal of the emancipated heirs.
Baader sought a justification for breaking with reformism in Benjamin. He found a ‘fundamental’ point here. He translates Benjamin’s paean to hatred into acts of hatred. It understands ‘the spirit of sacrifice’ to mean complicity in acts of destruction. Baader’s commentary on this citation is as follows: ‘This definition by Benjamin is fundamental. Since the conception of a utopia that presents itself as socialist can only ever be the attempt to make the revolution attractive like a commodity and to await its boomtime. The revolution however is real only as a negation of what exists, as its destruction.’ Baader signals his impatience, one he shares with Benjamin, who in 1940 longed for the sudden and seemingly impossible end to fascist rule. The revolution cannot be awaited. The revolution is also, according to Baader, not something attractive and desirable – it is a negation, a hard schooling, a bloodbath. Such a concept is far from another tradition which sees revolution as carnival, as unfolding. This is the hard and nasty business of political change, a harshness borne not just by the bourgeoisie but also by all.”
— Esther Leslie, “Fear Eats the Soul: Water Benjamin and Baader Meinhof”
