In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

ASSEMBLY LINES 2S
jamin expresses astonishment over the prevailing uncritical attitude toward
technology in the Soviet Union: "Everything technical is sacrosanct
here; nothing is taken more seriously than technology" (Benjamin, 82).
In the expressionist discourse of the Communist poet Johannes R.
Becher, men coupled to machines belong to the scenery of a contemporary
world of production that he constantly paints as a nightmare:
"Machine-men I build, twelve per day. / Headless and with winged
trunks; a thousand limbs: / Pliers, hammers; slit in the stomach to neigh"
(Becher, 132). The name of the lyric "I" behind this fantasy, however, is
"Director S. of Steel Ltd." It is an open question whether Becher would
apply the same imagery to the bodies of Soviet workers coupled to Soviet
machines. For the optimization of Taylorist modes of industrial production-within
a Communist political order and for the sake of a socialist
society-appears as a viable vision of future redemption from a classbased
society.
Related Entries
Automobiles, Engineers, Revues, Sobriety vs. Exuberance, Present = Past
(Eternity)
References
Les Annees-memoire: 1926. Paris, 1988.
Johannes R. Becher, Maschinenrhythmen. Berlin, 1926.
Walter Benjamin, Moskauer Tagebuch (9 December 1926-1 February 1927).
Frankfurt, 1980.
Berliner Tageblatt.
Peter Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret. Cambridge, Mass., 1993.
Friedrich Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Fordismus: Ober Industrie und technische Vernunft.
Jena, 1926.
Helmut Lethen, Neue Sachlichkeit, 1924-1932: Studien zur Literatur des
"Weissen Sozialismus." Stuttgart, 1970.
Kristine von Soden and Maruta Schmidt, eds., Neue Frauen: Die zwanziger
Jahre. Berlin, 1988.
Ernst Toller, Russische Reisebilder (1926). In Quer durch: Reisebilder und
Reden. Heidelberg, 1978.
Die wilden Zwanziger: Weimar und die Welt, 1919-1933. Berlin, 1986.