Walter Benjamin argues that the experience of art has lost its authentic "aura" in the age of mechanical reproduction, as most people only encounter art through copies. He says fascism seeks to give the proletarian masses an outlet through aesthetics rather than their right to change property relations. Ultimately, Benjamin asserts that fascism sees war as the only way to mobilize technology while maintaining the traditional property system and giving the masses an aesthetic experience of destruction.

1. “The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproduction.”
Walter Benjamin

2. Argument:
• Original art has lost its “aura” because we primarily
encounter art through a mass-produced copy of it.
• A photograph of the Mona Lisa is all most of us will ever
know--and it lacks a special veneer of authenticity,
specificity and history that gives the original its “aura.”
• Later, French Marxist critic Jean Baudrillard would call this
the “precession of the simulacrum.” That is, individuals have
no direct experience of anything: they always encounter an
image or simulacrum before they have the real experience.
The experience is thus never “real” in the sense that it is
unmediated by the expectations created by the
simulacrum.

3. Argument:
• Original art has lost its “aura” because we primarily
encounter art through a mass-produced copy of it.
• A photograph of the Mona Lisa is all most of us will ever
know--and it lacks a special veneer of authenticity,
specificity and history that gives the original its “aura.”
• Later, French Marxist critic Jean Baudrillard would call this
the “precession of the simulacrum.” That is, individuals have
no direct experience of anything: they always encounter an
image or simulacrum before they have the real experience.
The experience is thus never “real” in the sense that it is
unmediated by the expectations created by the
simulacrum.

4. EPILOGUE
The growing proletarianization of
modern man and the increasing
formation of masses are two aspects
of the same process. Facism attempts
to organize the newly created
proletarian masses without affecting
the property structure which the
masses strive to eliminate.
pro·le·tar·i·at
prōlə terēət/ˌ ˈ
noun
workers or working-class people,
regarded collectively (often used with
reference to Marxism).
"the growth of the industrial
proletariat"

5. Facism sees its salvation in giving these
masses not their right, but instead a
chance to express themselves.

6. fas·cism
faSH izəm/ˈ ˌ
noun
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy,
movement, or regime (as that of the
Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race
above the individual and that stands for a
centralized autocratic government
headed by a dictatorial leader, severe
economic and social regimentation, and
forcible suppression of opposition
The masses have a right to change
property relations; Facism seeks to
give them an expression while
preserving property. The logical result
of Facism is the introduction of
aesthetics into political life. The
violation of the masses, whom Facism,
with its Führer cult, forces to their
knees, has its counterpart in the
violation of an apparatus which is
pressed into the production of ritual
values.

7. All efforts to render politics aesthetic
culminate in one thing: war. War and
war only can set a goal for mass
movements on the largest scale while
respecting the traditional property
system. This is the political formula for
the situation. The technological
formula may be stated as follows:
Only war makes it possible to
mobilize all of today’s technical
resources while maintaining the
property system.
Benjamin was writing after
WWI, the first great
implementation of machine
warfare, which created death
on a massive scale never
before seen in human history:
17 MILLION dead
11 million military
7 million civilian
20 million more wounded

8. It goes without saying that the Facist
apotheosis of war does not employ
such arguments. Still, Marinetti says in
his manifesto on the Ethiopian colonial
war: “For twenty-seven years we
Futurists have rebelled against the
branding of war as antiaesthetic...
Accordingly we state: ...War is
beautiful because it establishes man’s
dominion over the subjugated
machinery by means of gas masks,
terrifying megaphones, flame
throwers, and small tanks.
a·poth·e·o·sis
ə päTHē ōsəs/ˌ ˈ
noun
•the highest point in the development
of something; culmination or
climax."his appearance as Hamlet
was the apotheosis of his career"
◦the elevation of someone to divine
status; deification.
1935-36
The Ethiopian Empire (also known as the
Assyrians) attempted to fend of the
invading Italian Kingdom.
Ethiopia lost and became part of Italian
occupied territory in East Africa, Africa
Orientale Italiana, under Mussolini.
Marinetti: Italian poet and founder of the
Futurist movement
(1876-1944)

9. War is beautiful because it initiates
the dreamt-of metalization of the
human body. War is beautiful because
it enriches a flowering meadow with
the fiery orchids of machine guns.
War is beautiful because it combines
the gunfire, the cannonades, the
cease-fire, the scents and the stench
of putrefaction into a symphony. War
is beautiful because it creates new
architecture, like that of the big tanks,
the geometrical formation flights, the
smoke spirals from burning villages
and many others...
aes·thet·ic
es THedik/ˈ
adjective
•concerned with beauty or the
appreciation of beauty."the pictures
give great aesthetic pleasure"
noun
•a set of principles underlying and
guiding the work of a particular artist
or artistic movement.
Futurism (Italian: Futurismo) was an
artistic and social movement that
originated in Italy in the early 20th
century. It emphasized speed,
technology, youth and violence and
objects such as the car, the aeroplane
and the industrial city.

10. Poets and artists of Futurism! ...
remember these principles of an
aesthetics of war so that your struggle
for a new literature and a new graphic
art... may be illumined by them!” ...
...Imperialistic war is a rebellion of
technology which collects, in the form
of “human material,” the claims to
which society has denied its natural
material. Instead of draining rivers,
society directs a human stream into a
bed of trenches;

11. instead of dropping seeds from
airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs
over cities; and through gas warfare
the aura is abolished in a new way.
“Fiat ars--pereat mundus,” says Facism,
and, as Marinetti admits, expects war
to supply the artistic gratification of a
sense perception that has been
changed by technology. This is
evidently the consummation of “l’art
pour l’art.”
MAKE ART--let the world
perish!
Art for Art’s Sake--late 19th-century
Bohemian and artist’s creed decrying
critics of art who demand “utility” over
everything else.
This movement was an attempt to resist
the enslavement of all labor, craft, and
expression to capital and industry.
In England it produced what is known as
the Arts and Crafts movement, in
which artisans purposely looked back to
older technologies and making objects by
hand rather than machine-made
“products.” This produced a nostalgic
kind of medievalism in the late Victorian
period.

12. Mankind, which in Homer’s time was
an object of contemplation for the
Olympian gods, now is one for itself.
Its self-alienation has reached such a
degree that it can experience its own
destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of
the first order. This is the situation of
politics which Facism is rendering
aesthetic.

13. -1936

14. Walter Benjamin was born a German Jew.
He fled Germany upon Hitler’s assumption of
power in 1932.

15. He killed himself September 25, 1940.