The increasing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two sides of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly proletarianized masses while leaving intact the property relations which they strive to abolish. It sees its salvation in granting expression to the masses-but on no account granting them rights. The masses have a right to changed property relations; fascism seeks to give them expression in keeping these relations unchanged. The logical outcome of fascism is an aestheticizing of political life. [...]
All efforts to aestheticize politics culminate in one point. That one point is war. War, and only war, makes it possible to set a goal for mass movements on the grandest scale while preserving traditional property relations. That is how the situation presents itself in political terms.
[...]
[The] self-alienation [of humankind] has reached the point where it can experience its own annihilation as a supreme aesthetic pleasure. Such is the aestheticizing of politics, as practiced by fascism. Communism replies by politicizing art.
Excerpt from 'The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducability: Second Version,' transl. Edmund Jephcott and Harry Zohl, in Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducability and Other Writings on Media, Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty and Thomas Y. Levin (eds.), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008, pp. 41-42
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