Between the wars, Benjamin argued that the Marxian dialectic between the relations and forces of production had been blocked first by bourgeois society, then by Fascism. The result was a “failed reception”, indeed a “revolt” of technology, leading inexorably to world war. The alternative - which the Soviet experiment initially seemed to hold out - was a renewed liberation of this dialectic : an end to the exploitation of man and nature and an emancipation of the body and technology. Its indispensable precondition was the formation of a collective historical subject. Fourier’s utopian socialism had its place within this “anthropologically” extended historical materialism. Its implications for today’s ecological politics are radical and disquieting.

Irving Wohlfarth a étudié à Cambridge, Yale et Francfort ; il a enseigné le français et la littérature comparée aux États-Unis, ainsi que la littérature allemande en France. Il a publié différents travaux sur Baudelaire, Kafka, Adorno, et surtout Benjamin. Deux recueils d’articles sont à paraître : Männer aus der Fremde. Essays zum deutsch-jüdischen Parnas et No Man’s Land. Essays on Walter Benjamin. Le présent article fait partie d’un livre à venir sur la politique de Benjamin.