The thesis that the revolutionary nature of the writer (artist) can only be talked about when he shows the ambition to participate in the production process itself, which implies the possibility of changing the production apparatus and the disposal of means of production, is a key thesis Benjamin's text The writer as producer.
Or, as the author says in one place: "the political tendency, no matter how revolutionary it may seem, acts as counter-revolutionary until the writer feels his solidarity with the proletariat only according to his conviction, but not as a producer."
The material for such a thesis was given to him by the left-wing intelligentsia, which saw its position in Germany in the thirties of the last century mainly in what could be defined as a position of spirit and thought, and less in concrete engagement in practice. More precisely, Benjamin claims that many "productive heads" of that intelligentsia managed to pave the way for revolutionary development "without at the same time being capable of really revolutionary thinking about their own work, about its relationship to the means of production..."
This insistence on a strict division of labor was advocated by the greater part of the left-wing intelligentsia in Germany in the thirties of the last century. Opinion of a left-wing activist Row - according to which the party leaders can speak more comprehensibly to the people, fight more bravely than him, but that they think less well - according to Benjamin, leads to class-undefined activism that "undertook to replace the materialistic dialectic with the category of common sense... Its spirits represent, at best, , class.”
He recalls another defense of that class position, the one he presented Alfred Deblin in his writing Know and change! which is the answer to a certain young gentleman Hockey, i.e. to his text What to do?, addressed to a famous writer. Having explained to his correspondent that he should not join the proletarian front, Deblin continues: "You have to content yourself with excited and embittered agreement with that struggle, but you also know this: if you do as much as possible, an incomparably more important position will remain unoccupied... ... the pre-communist position of human individual freedom, spontaneous solidarity and alliance of people... This position, dear sir, is the only one that belongs to you."
Here, it is especially noticeable that the left intellectuals considered that they held a more important and incomparably more important position in the revolutionary struggle, which was defined by some kind of metaphysical constant noticed in some embryo of individualism, freedom and solidarity.
The appeal to class consciousness is an invitation to a kind of grounding of the writer himself, who in this Deblin's "advice to a young writer" should remain in some ethereal heights defending his individualistic position. Benjamin states somewhat ironically that logocracy is present in the activism of the left - a ruling spirit, i.e. advocacy for the rule of spiritual people, which, as he says, "imposed itself in the camp of the left intelligentsia and which governs their political manifestos from Heinrich Mann to Alfred Deblin.”
Those spirits, according to Hiller, should not be determined by "belonging to a professional branch", but rather they are defined as a certain characterological type. Benjamin concludes that this characterological type, by the nature of things, is "between the classes", or, as he will locate it later in a narrower context, "next to the proletariat". "But what kind of place is that?" Benjamin asks and concludes: "A place of a patron, an ideological patron. An impossible place.” However, a writer in such a position is uninterested in the means of production and changing the production itself, which essentially makes him uninterested in any class issue.
Benjamin recalls that far-reaching request that is Brecht set intellectuals "that by supplying the apparatus of production, they simultaneously change that apparatus", because if this does not happen, it is, as Benjamin says, "an extremely questionable procedure, even when it seems that the material with which this apparatus is supplied is of a revolutionary nature." That paradox is in the text The writer as producer, particularly problematizes through a kind of cynicism that the bourgeois apparatus of production and publishing showed towards every revolutionary phenomenon of the XNUMXs in Germany, because it could "assimilate an astonishing number of revolutionary themes, and even propagate them, without seriously questioning its own existence and the existence of the class that owns it.”
Isn't this how most of the artistic and intellectual life of the advanced world, a world full of freedom of speech and artistic and intellectual freedom, has been functioning for decades. How many theoretical and artistic works of a revolutionary character have been created in the past decades in the countries of developed capitalism, without any censorial interventions, moreover with the logistical support of that same capitalism, without even the slightest crack appearing on its facade. This assimilation mechanism is brought to perfection, for example, in the concept of Hollywood.
It would be a big lie to say that Hollywood is not full of subversions towards capitalism, just as it would be an even bigger lie to say that these subversions have at least axed the guardians of the capitalist order. On the contrary, they strengthened it, persistently confirming it as a system of freedom of speech and artistic creativity, more precisely, as a desirable socio-economic framework for art and overall culture. But what kind of freedom of speech and what kind of free artistic creativity? Those in which the authors accepted that with the means of production of big film companies and corporate publishers, those undisguised capitalist machines, they create their subversive works, without participating in the production and especially without the desire to change that production.
Such creators tread the same path followed by those subversive creators according to the bourgeois class that Benjamin defines as "routineers" in the aforementioned text, even when they are revolutionary routiners. Because, as he goes on to say: "I, however, define a routinist as a man who, in principle, refuses to, by making improvements, alienate the production apparatus from the ruling class in favor of socialism. And I further claim that a significant part of the so-called leftist literature had no other social function than to constantly extract new effects from the political situation in order to entertain the audience." Even after a hundred years, this observation is relevant, both here and in the white world.
However, the idea of some present-day left revolutionaryism is completely out of place. For decades now, the left-wing intelligentsia has been reduced to activist practices of a purely evolutionary type with an increasingly pronounced symbiosis with environmental activism, and through left-centrists with liberalism. It is clear that these are contents that are easily digestible for today's capitalism. Left-wing environmental activism, today's most prevalent criticism of capitalism, will eventually lose its purpose, because in the future technological development itself, and capitalism will continue to manage it, will eliminate problems, above all the use of fossil fuels, which left-wing environmental activists blame for it.
When this happens, they can consider that the goal of their struggle has been achieved, regardless of the fact that the production system will continue to be structured according to capitalist principles - cleaner and healthier, but certainly more efficient and stable. Already now, in this new leftist reality, the class question and ownership of the means of production figure as classic, almost archived narratives, which is the essential capitulation of the mentioned left forces before the assimilation powers of today's capitalism and all its modifications in those areas whose development is deprived of the experiences of classical capitalism. Which is to say, today's left-wing subversiveness remains at the level of the routine that Benjamin clearly defined.
A more simplified and general routine, the one that has been manifested for three decades as the most common form of civil resistance to the post-Yugoslav autocracies, has been actualized on the Serbian public scene these days in the uproar caused by the incident caused by the statement of a turbo-folk diva. She is, defending her pragmatic-calculating decision to support Aleksandar Vučić, asked the actors of the series printed under the auspices of Telekom a question that coincidentally corresponds to the problematic of Benjamin's text.
Whatever it is Karleush "stabbed" this question, it calls attention to a much deeper problem than the one that appears at first and leads us to a much more important question - what is the meaning of any criticism of the Vučić regime when all the activity of that criticism takes place using the production apparatus that is literally in the hands of that regime? The purely technical use of that apparatus is a compromise with the valid relationship that prevails in today's Serbian society in the context of owning the means of production. The devastating effect of that compromise was particularly evident in the persecution of some of those who agreed to it, the actors of Telekom's series, by the spokespersons of the Vučić regime, who perverted the whole controversy by putting themselves in a position of caring and high morals, from where the actors were accused of amorality and hypocrisy for days.
For years, one of the most important production systems in Vučić's Serbia, such as Telekom, by producing various crime series, enables a brutal depiction of the stumbling of the socio-cultural environment created by the authorities, without this having any effect in the essential criticism of that regime. On the contrary, those serials become assimilated subversions thanks to which the regime appears receptive to criticism.
The key problem of this cooperation is the fact that shows that the creators of these subversions are not interested in whose hands they were offered the means of production, with which they will vent their indignation in some fiction, laden with references to the darkest reality. As long as this is the case, they will only attach their talent to some dislocated altar of freedom from the current reality and every class division. Any abstract or class-unsituated subversiveness towards some usurping regime is futile as much as consent to the state imposed by that regime.
Nothing will be done in Serbia by insisting on changes in the brutal mechanisms of the production apparatus of its ruling regime, such as the media controlled by it, if its more sophisticated, and therefore more powerful, mechanisms remain untouched. The fact that, thanks to Telekom's production apparatus, series were created that spread the darkness of transitional Serbia in front of the audience, does not mean anything because the owner of the production means will use these effects "to entertain the audience" and, above all, to make a significant profit. And since that profit is in many ways also the profit of the ruling regime, every participant in the creation of those watched series, willy-nilly, contributes to the strengthening of that regime. Artists in Serbia have been agreeing to that for decades.
For example, at one time many writers who were critical of the regime knew about the usurpation of the means of production in publishing by the ruling politicians, i.e. they knew, for example, what the People's Book was for Milička Mijović and the Official Gazette, but they persistently supplied those regime production apparatuses with their subversive works, which the aforementioned publishers published and advertised intact. Such a state has been ruling for decades, both in film and literature as well as in theater, music and fine arts. That poor guild defense "we are just doing our job" leads to the complete capitulation of the artist as a subject who should have ambitions to change not only the socio-cultural, but also the socio-political environment.
The artist, dedicated exclusively to his craft, leaves the authorities to assign the management of the complete production apparatus in culture to his political cadres and possibly to a completely loyal artist or "cultural worker". They will enable the artist to work, and he will only accept that work in a guild self-determined manner and will not be interested in its process or its effects, the employer will decide on that. Such a relationship between the owner of the means of production and the artist is prevalent today, which has resulted in the artist-worker becoming an extremely harmless category, because he renounces any participation in the process of changing the generally valid usurper-corporate relations, both those that are the product of the free market in the liberal center as well as those transitional-oligarchic and partitocratic on the hybrid or non-democratic peripheries. It is clear that this harmlessness can be overcome only when the artist stops being a (collaborator) and becomes a producer.
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