Life Against Nature

Mårten Björk Two days after Christmas Eve in 1934, Walter Benjamin wrote from San Remo to his friend, the historian of Jewish mysticism Gerschom Scholem, that he had: fallen into the headquarters of the genuine Magic Jews. For [Oskar] Goldberg has taken up residence here, and he has delegated his disciple [Adolf] Caspary to the cafés, and Die Wirklichkeit der Hebräer [The Reality of the Hebrews] to the local newspaper stand, while he himself — who knows? — probably spends his time conducting tests of his numerology in the casino. Needless to say, I haven’t engaged in conversation with this flank.1 By distancing himself from Goldberg and Caspary, 1. Walter Benjamin & Benjamin helped to marginalise the so-called Gold- Gerschom Scholem, The Correspondence of berg circle from the history of philosophy that he Walter Benjamin and himself became part of, for better or for worse. This Gershom Scholem, 1932– was a missed chance for what could have been a 1940 (Harvard University fascinating dialogue with a current that theorised the Press 1992), 148. possibility of abandoning the world of capital through 2. Adolf Caspary, a form of biological revolution. Die Maschinenutopie: According to Caspary, the course of capitalism Das Übereinstimmungs- as an industrialised economy showed clearly that moment der bürgerlichen und sozialistischen “[t]he way of life of the masses, within an economy Ökonomie (Verlag David that produces by means of machines, must be prole- 1927), 79–80. All trans- tarian, since even today the machine and not the ‘order’ lations from this book are [die ‘Ordnung’] maintains the relation of capital. If the the author’s. way of life of the masses remains as it is now then that means: justice is impossible. The relation between justice and 2 The Goldberg Circle machines is a utopia”. For Caspary, the machine is more than a mere instrument consisting of different parts that — taken as a whole — uses and the Search for a Non-Catastrophic Politics mechanical power to make particular tasks easier to perform. As we will see, it is a social mechanism bound to a specifically capitalist mode of production, which even produces a kind of “machine utopia” — Maschinenutopie — that is the necessary and deeply mystifying Life Against Nature 307 horizon for an existence that can envision neither an presents him as a prominent member of the vitalist tradition, empha- economy nor a life beyond the factory.3 Anticipating 3. Ibid., 77. sising the psychophysical basis of human thought.5 the arguments of important theorists of technology I have examined Goldberg’s notion of humanity as 5. Bruce Rosenstock, after him, Caspary argued that machinery is not politically neutral, but what I call an animal of the infinite and discussed how Transfinite Life: Oskar Goldberg and the Vitalist rather an apparatus of proletarianisation tied to the production of sur- the liberation of our species from his perspective could Imagination (Indiana plus labour. This did not imply a naive primitivism, rather it raised the never be a simple affirmation of this life since it had University 2017). question of whether or not there is a more productive tool for the sur- to alter humanity’s biological and sociological short- vival of the species than the machinery of industrial capitalism, whose comings.6 The Goldberg circle sought a way out of 6. Mårten Björk, Life Outside Life: The Politics catastrophic consequences for the biosphere Caspary predicted. the long march into the domains of class, state, and of Immortality, 1914–1945 In this essay I shall probe the work on capitalism and technolo- civilisation which humanity, according to them, not (Gothenburg University gy developed by the Goldberg circle during the Weimar period which, only has been entrapped in, but increasingly could be 2018). with its economic crises and political turmoil, many argue is reflected identified with. 7. For Caspary’s critique in our own period of farcical but dangerous nationalist movements It may be the economist Adolf Caspary and his of Grossmann see and protectionist trade wars. In doing so I will show how for this cur- 1927 examination of Karl Marx’s concept of machin- Adolf Caspary, ‘Gross- rent, the critique of capital not only implied a strategy of secession but ery that make this current especially worth returning mann, Henryk: Das also an investigation of myth, philosophy, and religion that ultimately to in our time of climate catastrophes and the over- Akkumulations- und Zusammenbruchsgesetz sought to formulate the possibility of a new anthropogenesis. all decline of capital. Through Caspary’s reading of des kapitalistischen Marx, his critique of the Polish Marxist Henryk Gross- Systems. Zugleich eine INTRODUCTION mann, and the Goldberg circle’s close connection to Krisentheorie’, Weltwirt- the poet and photographer Simon Guttmann, one schaftliches Archiv, 32 (2): 1930, 80–84. The historian of myth Oskar Goldberg (1885–1952), the legal and of the founders of KAPD (Kommunistische Arbeiter- economic historian Adolf Caspary (1898–1953), and their philosopher Partei Deutschlands), the group interacted with 8. Walter Benjamin, The friend Erich Unger (1887–1950) became famous during the Weimar several milieus of revolutionaries during the Weimar Correspondence of Walter Period for their books on anthropology, economy, and religion edited period. 7 Benjamin, 1910–1940, edited by Gershom by David Verlag. Between 1925 and 1933 they organised a series of Benjamin participated in the seminars organ- Scholem & Theodor W. seminars under the name Philosophische Gruppe [the philosophical ised by the Goldberg circle due to his interest in Unger, Adorno (University of group]. The meetings in Berlin were frequented by Bertolt Brecht, whose book Politik und Metaphysik [Politics and Chicago Press 1994), 172. Alfred Döblin, Karl Korsch, Robert Musil, Günther Stern (later An- Metaphysics] from 1921 he enthusiastically described 9. Walter Benjamin, ders), Walter Benjamin and other prominent philosophers, poets, and as the “most significant piece of writing on politics in ‘Capitalism as Religion’ 8 revolutionaries. Today Goldberg and his circle are largely forgotten. our time”. He based his essay “On the Program of the in Selected Writings: Had it not been for Manfred Voigts’s almost archaeological excava- Coming Philosophy” on Unger’s philosophical inter- 1913–1926 (Belknap 1999), tion of the work of Goldberg, Unger, and to a lesser extent Caspary, pretation of Goldberg’s exegesis of the Torah, used 288–291. Here: 290. these three thinkers would probably still be unknown Unger’s examination of the concept of compromise in outside the circles of those specializing in either Ger- 4. Manfred Voigts, Oskar “Critique of Violence” and in the fragment “Capitalism as Religion” en- man Jewish thought or the avant-garde during the Goldberg: Der mythische igmatically wrote: “Overcoming of capitalism through migration [Wan- Experimentalwissen- Weimar period.4 derung], Unger, Politik und Metaphysik”.9 schaftler: Ein verdrängtes Bruce Rosenstock has recently published an Kapitel jüdischer Decades before Jacques Camatte wrote “This world we must important monograph on Goldberg that convincingly Geschichte (Agora 1992). leave” and began to theorise the emergence of a Homo Gemeinwesen, Endnotes 5 308 Life Against Nature 309 and long before Paolo Virno defended his theory of a proletarian exo- In this context it is evident that the Goldberg cir- 15. See Boris Groys and dus from the social factory, Goldberg, Unger, and Caspary sought a cle is related to the left communist nexus and other Michael Hagemeister, eds., Die Neue Men- secession from capital’s “field of activities [Wirkungs- avant-garde circles during the Weimar period that schheit — Biopolitische 10 bereich]”. In practice this withdrawal implied the 10. Erich Unger, dabbled with biological ideas in a time when the Utopien in Russland zu struggle for a “non-catastrophic politics” adequate to Politik und Metaphysik discourses of race were becoming hegemonic. The Beginn des 20. Jahrhun- (Königshausen & the tasks needed for survival in a world that had been group developed a new notion of life as an antidote derts (Suhrkamp 2005). Neumann 1989), 148. ravaged by the first industrialised world war and was to the politicisation of life that would culminate in All translations from this 16. Camatte, ‘Echoes of 11 moving towards new disasters. work are the author’s. the thanatopolitics of Nazism. Goldberg even used the Past’ in This World Recognising them as theorists of a secession See also Jacques the Torah to depict the archaic Hebrew community of We Must Leave, 181–250. Camatte, ‘This World from capitalism helps explain the Goldberg circle’s the five books of Moses as a missionary tribe that can We Must Leave’ in This closeness to Guttmann, who was enthralled by Gold- World We Must Leave be said to affirm what the Nazis called life unworthy of life, Lebens- berg’s religious genius and saved his writings after and Other Essays (Autono- unwertes Leben, by living against the normalcy of nature that Nazism his death in 1953.12 Their hope for an anthropological media 1995), 137–180. would exalt. We will see why this interest in ancient Judaism was — transformation of the human species and their theo- to use Camatte’s description of ideas like these during the 1920s — not 11. Unger, Politik und 16 retical work on myth, philosophy, and religion may Metaphysik, 7. a mere “echo from the past”. It was an intrinsic part of the group’s seem foreign to the nexus of intellectuals belonging attempt to initiate a debate on the necessity of a flight from the West to the KAPD. Yet one of the party’s other founders, 12. For an introduction in the time of Zionism, the general migration from the poverty, misery, to Guttmann’s life and the author and economist Franz Jung, defended an and war in Europe. work see: Nicholas Jacobs explicitly biological theory of revolution.

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