The Arcades Project - Operi

""Despite all the posturing with which Teutonic arrogance tries to represent the
capital of the Reich as the brightest beacon of civilization, Berlin has not yet been
able to mount a world exhihition . . . . To try to excuse this deplorable fact by
claiming that world exhibitions have had their day and now are nothing but gaudy
and grandiose vanity fairs, and so forth, is a crass evasion. We have no wish to
deny the drawbacks of world exhibitions ... ; nevertheless, in every case they
remain incomparably more powerful levers of human culture than the countless
barracks and churches with which Berlin has been inundated at such great cost.
The recurrent initiatives to establish a world exhibition have foundered, first of
all, on the lack of energy . .. afflicting the bourgeoisie, and, second, on the poorly
disguised resentment with which an ahsolutist-feudal militarism looks on anything
that could t.hreaten its-alas!-still germinating roots." " l(las8enkampfe,"
Die neue Zeit, 12, no. 2 (Stuttgart, 1894), p. 257. [G4a,2]
On the oecasion of the world exhibition of 1867, Victor Hugo issued a manifesto to
the peoples of Europe. [G4a,3]
Chevalier was a disciple of Enfantin. Editor of Le Globe. [G4a,4]
Apropos of Roland de la Platiere '8 Encyclopedie nuthodique: '''Turning to les
manIfactu,.es, . .. Roland writes: 'Industry is horn of need . ... ' It might appear
from this that the term is heing used in the classical sense of industria. What
follows provides clarification: 'But this fecund and perverse riverhead, of irregular
and retrogressive disposition, eventually came down from the uplands to flood
the fields, and soon nothing could satisfy the need which overspread the land.' . ..
What is significant is his ready employment of the word industrie, more than thirty
years before the work of Chaptal." Henri Hauser, Les Debuts du capitalisme
(Paris , 1931), pp. 315-316. [G4a,5]
"With price tag affixed, the commodity comes on the market. Its material quality
and individuality are merely an incentive for buying and selling; for the socia]
measure of its value, such quality is of no importance whatsoever. The commodity
has become an abstraction. Once escaped from the hand of the producer and
divested of its real particularity, it ceases to be a product and to he ruled over by
human beings. It has acquired a 'ghostly ohjectivity' and leads a life ofits own. 'A
eommodity appears, at first sight, to be a trivial and easily understood thing. Our
analysis shows that, in reality, it is a vexed and complicated thing, abounding in
metaphysical suhtleties and theological niceties.' Cut off from the will of man, it
aligns itself in a mysterious hierarchy, develops or declines exchangeability, and,
in aceordance with its own peculiar laws, performs as an actor on a phantom stage.
In the language of the commodities exchange, cotton "soars,' copper 'slumps,'
COrn 'is active; coal 'is sluggish,' wheat 'is on the road to recovery,' and petroleum
"displays a healthy trend.' Things have gained autonomy, and they take on
human features . ... The commodity has heen transformed into an idol that, although
the product of human hands, disposes over the human. Marx speaks of the