Das Unerträgliche und die Ethik der Revolution

Abstract

The Unbearable and the Ethics of Revolution - Marx tries to argue that revolution, or even Revolution, is a necessary phenomenon of capitalistic societies. He claims that there is something like a critical mass of suffering, the “‘unbearable’ power,” emerging from an overload of “alienation.” The article criticizes this idea with thoughts by Primo Levi, who experienced that extremely starving people tend not to rebel. If a revolution cannot begin from social necessity, the decision of Lenin that a revolution must be organized by activists, is a consequent correction of Marx. But if the revolution is a result of free praxis, revolution becomes a moral phenomenon. Therefore, the article tries to meditate upon Walter Benjamin’s claim: “Ethics, applied to history, is the doctrine of the Revolution.” (In this sense, Hannah Arendt’s idea: “That the aim of revolution was, and always has been, freedom,” is definitively influenced by Benjamin.)

Keywords

• revolution
• marx
• žižek
• arendt
• benjamin