Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) In memoriam Editor Joseph Dan Volume Two Department of Jewish Thought The Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jerusalem 2007 Theories of Justice, Profane and Prophetic: Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution by Eric Jacobson Gershom Scholem, The Bolshevik Revolution [1918] (Translated from the German by Eric Jacobson) Bolshevism has a central idea which lends magic to its movement: the messianic kingdom can only unfold in the dictatorship of poverty. (Perhaps the error is that it cannot unfold in itself – which is Tolstoyism. This serious confusion brought so many of Tolstoy’s followers to the movement). Because of this, only the judgement of the impoverished has revolutionary power. The poor may not be just but they can never be unjust. Poverty, even where it is dictatorial, is not Gewalt [authority/ violence]. Moscow’s theory of the firing squad appears as an ethical outcome: the unjust kingdom stands trial. Bolshevism is the attempt to stand divine judgement on its head. It kills in the name of a mission. Revolution exists where the messianic kingdom is to be established without the teachings. For this reason, there can be no revolution for the Jews. The Jewish revolution has to be reconnected to the teachings. A revolution that is clearly based on the messianic kingdom, like the Bolshevik or French revolution, must be distinguished principally from the frail pseudo-revolutions that are centered on “progress”, like Germany in 1848. The messianic kingdom, the eternal now of history, cannot be reached gradually. Liberalism is a conforming imitation of messianism that functions by a rule of operation. In key moments, it is extended indefinitely and thus loses its conformity. Asymptotes are the guidelines of liberalism. The circle turns from hyperbole to the imaginary. Revolutions fail. But this is not, nor can it ever be, an argument against them. Revolutions convey time and again the silent teachings of the unambiguity of history. * This essay is dedicated to David Hitchin. [Gershom Scholem: In memoriam, 2 (Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 21), 2007] Eric Jacobson [2 Intrinsically, the Bolshevik revolution, like every legitimate revolution, has a double point in which Gewalt emerges through the inner collision of structures (which must appear due to the exclusion of the Torah). The great historical paradox put forward is that exactly where poverty reigns, it remains poverty nonetheless – as if the faithfulness of the poor to poverty would be the only and highest guarantee of the Bolshevik idea. Is this possible or sensible? Such a system would be revolutionary consistency – an absolute, self-sustaining system. And precisely because revolutions, unlike liberalism, lack a form of consistency understood in this sense, they fail. Anatole France, in his book, La révolte des anges, sets a limit for the idea of the teachings with ironic necessity. His true, deep, and perhaps unutterable question is: how can one overcome the prescriptive circular reasoning of revolution? He does not answer the question. But true mysticism can, which considers circular reasoning a legitimate, fundamental idea. Even though the Bolshevik revolution will be caught up in bloodshed (and the miraculous thing about it is the very fact that it will not drown in its own blood), it will nevertheless serve as the only high-point of the history of the world war and, however saddening this may be, the messianic reaction against it. Zionism has nothing in common with the world war, from which it turns away without response. Whoever affirms the history has to be a Bolshevist, seeing in it the futuristic and purest form of the present in blood and misdeed. One might be able to designate revolutionary actions as those distinguishable from both the ordinary and historical in that they are conducted in good faith while standing in the face of history. The person who knows that he is acting historically, is revolutionary. Yet Bolshevism does more than this: it acts not only conscious of standing in the face of history, it seeks at the same time to act futurist in a specific sense. But with action, this is not simultaneously possible. Bolshevism tries – perhaps with grandeur but surely for naught – to suspend judgement over itself through the permanence of its singular point of Gewalt which appears to itself as the future it anticipates. For this reason, it is unjust, and the root of its reprehensibility is independent of its position on spirituality and labor. 1 1 Gershom Scholem, Tagebücher, nebst Aufsützen und Entwürfen bis 1923, Band I, 1913–1917, ed. Karlfried Gründer and Friedrich Niewöhner. Frankfurt: Jüdischer Verlag, [60*] 3] Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution No other period was more crucial for Scholem’s early political thought than the moment he joined up with Walter Benjamin in the highly-resigned atmosphere of Switzerland at the end of the First World War. 2 The transition in his thinking from a rather utopian and biblical Zionist ideal to skepticism toward worldly affairs, which culminated in the reevaluation of his earliest political activities, led to a phase that can be characterized as an anarchist nihilism. 3 The raging war and the disappointment in the Zionist and youth movements had brought their contact with the outside world to a near halt. 4 Yet something was to suddenly disrupt these intimate discussions in their sanctuary of practical resignation, causing a reinvigoration of political and social ideas: this was the start of the Russian revolution. “I have never in my life seen a more humanist and politically sincere text”, writes Scholem to Werner Kraft, “than the documents of the maximalist [Bolshevik] revolution”. 5 In a journal entry from November 13, 1917, he adds “the first official text of world history that every decent person can sign”. 6 Scholem augments his comments to Kraft by signaling that although Bolshevism reflects elements of a theocratic revolution, in which anarchism exists as a kind of “precursor” [Vorstufe], he still is reminded of the “principle difference” between his own political ideal and that of the Bolsheviks. Later, he reflects on the relationship between the three – anarchism, Bolshevism and theocracy – in his journal (drafted most likely as a letter to his friend, Albert Baer): The more it becomes clear to me that theocracy is the only organized communal and state structure for humanity, the clearer the criteria 2 3 4 5 6 1995; Band II , 1917–1923, with Karl E. Grözinger. Frankfurt: Jüdischer Verlag, 2000. Henceforth Tagebücher. “Der Bolschewismus” [tag II:556–558]. An atmosphere of resignation with “nihilistic tendencies” (Scholem’s description of Benjamin) is best captured in Scholem, Walter Benjamin. Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990, pp. 69–72. Scholem’s letters to Werner Kraft from this period also testify to his own immersion in their ‘grand chalet’ at the edge of the abyss in the small Swiss town during the First World War. See Eric Jacobson, “Anarchismo e traditione ebraica: Gershom Scholem”, in Amedeo Bertolo (ed.), L’anarchio e l’ebreo, Milan: Eleuthera 2001, pp. 55–75. The following essay on Bolshevism is based on chapter 6 in Metaphysics of the Profane, The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. For an expanded discussion of Scholem’s anarchist nihilism, see idid., chapter 2. Scholem’s descriptions of the evenings he spent at the Benjamins testifies to this. See Walter Benjamin. Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft, pp. 69–70, 76. Gershom Scholem, Briefe, Vol. 1 (1914–1947), ed. Itta Shedletzky. München: C. H. Beck, 1995, pp. 125. Tagebücher, II:79. [61*] Eric Jacobson [4 emerge for both the idea and the value of revolutions. I am considered very sympathetic to Bolshevism, and yet despite the extraordinary absurdity of this opinion, there is something to it: to the degree that I see in Bolshevism – meaning the idea which views the unconditional dictatorship of poverty as the only means of establishing the messianic kingdom – a resolute revolutionary intensity with regard to the history of the here and now. I completely reject this here and now, but in the moment that I can accept it, Bolshevism appears to be the unavoidable consequence. Since theocracy has yet to be achieved, I choose the anarchist over the Bolshevik method (which is wrongly mistaken to be the same). Anarchism (not socialism) is the only conceivable ideal precursor, if one can call it this, of the state of God. This does not mean that anarchy should be sought as a condition, but that the theocratic position, in opposition to every non-eternal now, is anarchism. 7 These emphatic observations on the events taking place in Russia were neither fleeting nor solitary. Among the newly-published papers in the Scholem archive, there is a text written in Scholem’s hand from 1918 which seeks to understand the importance of the category of theocracy for the idea of revolution. In this text, entitled “The Bolshevik Revolution”, Scholem articulates his views on revolution in relationship to his earlier anarchist Zionism and emerging nihilistic politics. Similar to the discussion of another unpublished text from the early period, “Theses on the Concept of Justice”, Scholem raises the question of authority and justice in the context of a messianic perspective, independent of but fully intertwined with Benjamin’s. 8 Anarchism, if implicit, is one of the key themes. Like other anarchists of his period, Scholem first embraces aspects of the revolution, but then launches into a critique of the Bolshevik movement and upheaval which, in his own messianic terms, falls far short of the kingdom of God on earth – the very quality which appears to set it apart from other movements. The vociferous tone of this text is distinctly reminiscent of a political congress. If Scholem indeed had such a gathering in mind, it would have been a society constituted by two: himself and Walter Benjamin. The key to Scholem’s fascination with events in Russia, and with revolution in general, is summarized in the first two lines of “The Bolshevik Revolution”, where he refers to an idea that inspires a movement: a messianic kingdom will 7 8 Tagebücher, II:423–424. For a translation of the text and commentary, see Jacobson, Metaphysics of the Profane, pp. 174–183. [62*] 5] Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution unfold in the dictatorship of poverty. He attributes a prophetic element to Bolshevism which imbues its ranks with a magical force. This magical idea is that only the dictatorship of the impoverished will open the floodgates of redemption; that the miserable have a special relationship to God. The use of the term magic does not appear to be figurative. A degree of consistency can be suggested in Scholem’s adaptation of Benjamin’s early conception of language, in which Benjamin contemplates a linguistic “magic” embedded in the transition of a creating word to profane expression. The redemptive aspects of the creating word are understood to be magical, being lodged in the profane. Magic is its relationship to the divine word, which was active in Creation. 9 A profane remnant must therefore be magical. This principle is at work with regard to the poor, since a class which has been promised its restitution in the world to come is no unlikely candidate for the initiation of the coming world in the here and now. We have the model for such a class in the prophecy of Isaiah 9 regarding the rewards of the suffering righteous who rejoice before God “according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midyan”. Since the proximity between these two worlds – the promise of restitution from suffering and a worldly candidate for redemption taking place in history – also parallel the tension between the divine and profane, the merger of the two would necessitate the existence of a fragment of the divine a priori in the profane. This idea of a residue of the divine can be classified as its magic. The impoverished class emerging in history to achieve its own worldly restitution is deemed capable of initiating redemption through the revolutionary act. This act is authoritative by the very nature of its being imbued with prophecy: by the fact that it has been prophesied, it is the future. We are here approaching the problem of the authority of judgement in the moment where it sees itself endowed with divine qualities. Let us leave this aside for the moment and focus on the nature of the redemptive class. Scholem draws a distinction between a class redeeming itself within itself and the restitution in which it participates under revolutionary conditions. Impoverishment, in itself, is not the condition of revolutionary transformation, as Scholem retorts, what reigns as poverty, remains poverty. The paradox in this formula is plain to see: paradox ensues when the very conditions which are set to be overturned are institutionalized. Scholem explores the notion of a class whose basis of 9 See Jacobson, Metaphysics of the Profane, pp. 93f. [63*] Eric Jacobson [6 authority is poverty, but in the act of seeking to express and preserve its authority in the administration of justice, it preserves poverty as well. There is no doubt that Scholem marveled at the authenticity of the attempt made by the Russian revolutionaries to establish the kingdom of God on earth – an attempt which, save for France, far outweighs in his estimation the pseudo-revolutions of 1848, with their unyielding notion of progress and the amelioration of the present. In contrast to the attempt to transform the idea of redemption by a progressive notion of reform, the messianic kingdom cannot be achieved gradually, Scholem writes. It is, on the contrary, an “eternal now of history”. The fact that Bolshevik doctrine is actually dependent on the idea of progress, if not amelioration then at least historical innovation, is surprisingly absent from his analysis. Such an observation undoubtedly would have contributed to Scholem’s distinction between a class imbued with authority due to its historical role and the idea of a class of the future. While redemption of the impoverished is vital to the Bolshevik revolution, the recognition of which brought many a religious anarchist to the movement, redemption does not take place through a revolutionary agent but before society as a whole: if the weak are to be made strong, this will not be achieved by the rotation of the master but by the complete rupture of the institution of slavery altogether. The impoverishment and disenfranchisement of a Rechtssubjekt [legal subject] as Benjamin terms it in his Critique of Violence, refers to a subject endowed with rights: the right to act, to be a historical agent, the right to the use of violence. For Scholem, a messianic revolution must eliminate the basis of worldly power itself. Following the description of liberation in chapter 9 of Isaiah, chapter 10 suggests a permanent freedom through divine intervention: “His burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed”. The cardinal dilemma of the Bolshevik revolution is the collapse of justice into impoverishment, since in this world it is the impoverished who endure absolute injustice. Although impoverishment is unjust, Scholem writes, the impoverished can not be the basis for justified Gewalt [authority / violence]. One can detect some equivocation here, since the impoverished may not be just for all time, but they also “can never be unjust”, followed by the statement that “poverty, even where it is dictatorial, is not Gewalt”. This opens the question of what is violence, which I chose to retain in the orginal as Gewalt, with its bifurcated meaning of both authority and violence. The ambiguity of the term becomes apparent in Scholem’s critique: in lining up the bourgeois class before judgement, Bolshevism neutralizes the task of the divine by reversing the Last Judgement. Recalling Marx’s famous claim regarding the premises of the Hegelian system, which placed the predicate before the sub[64*] 7] Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution ject, Scholem makes his claim. In the application of the Hegelian dialectical method, it was Marx’s ambition to reverse their relations, and stand Hegel’s method “on its head”. We find Scholem echoing Marx when he writes that Bolshevism is the attempt to stand divine judgement on its head. Unlike divine violence, Bolshevism is executed through the barrel of a gun. Walter Benjamin and Revolutionary Violence Walter Benjamin’s essay, Critique of Violence (begun 1919, completed January 1921), may be pertinent to a more comprehensive understanding of Scholem’s thoughts at this time. 10 Scholem formulates his notes on Bolshevism in Switzerland, in a period of intense cooperation with Benjamin, completing the manuscript shortly before Benjamin summarizes his own theory on revolutionary violence in his now renowned essay. Given the subject and title, the Critique of Violence would seem to be the most expressly political of Benjamin’s early writings. Yet, although it concerns the question of justified violence in the pursuit of revolutionary goals, there is surprisingly little by way of politics. His analysis of general strikes, ethical action, the principles of anarchism – even the notion of violence itself – is not written to rally one party or another, nor is he concerned with the idea of distributive justice which played a central role in the newlydiscovered “Notes to a Study on the Category of Justice”. 11 Rather than a politics of collective action, Benjamin appears to be more focused on articulating a politics of “pure means” and a “culture of the heart” geared once again toward the activities of the individual. 12 More than a political analysis of violence, these aspects resemble a metaphysical discourse on justice. 13 Like many pieces which form the early writings, there is, in fact, a very distinct movement in this work to articulate an authentic theology, here concerning the role of violence in messianic redemption. 10 Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, 7 vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1995, Vol II., p. 943. Henceforth: II:943. 11 This text, Notizen zu einer Arbeit über die Kategorie der Gerechtigkeit, was rediscovered through the recent publication of Scholem’s journals. See Eric Jacobson, Metaphysics of the Profane, pp. 166–174 for a translation and discussion. We see the idea of distributive justice re-emerge in “Kritik der Gewalt”. See II:187. 12 II:191–192. “reine Mittel”; “Kultur des Herzens”. 13 To suggest, however, that “Critique of Violence” is a metaphysical – not a political – work is not to imply that the essay fails to deliver concrete political goals and thus remains an abstract treatise. This principle is also true for Scholem’s notes on Bolshevism, although far more readily apparent in his text. [65*] Eric Jacobson [8 The essay revolves around the juxtaposition of various juridical, political and theological categories. These include: the mediation of ends and means, natural and positive law, law-forming and law-maintaining violence, the divine and profane, laws and rights, and finally, violence / non-violence. Violence is articulated by the word Gewalt, a term not easily rendered in any language. 14 Gewalt represents both the role of authority and the application of violence. In pursuit of a definition, Benjamin proposes an initial series of suppositions which seek to distinguish Gewalt from the notion of law. The first is that Gewalt can only be meaningfully defined in the context of an ethical realm, constituted by law. The term law is predicated by the question of ‘what is right’, expressed by the word Recht. 15 While law is defined first in the context of the relationship of means to ends, justice is taken out of this framework altogether. Benjamin assigns justice purely to the sphere of ends; it is a state, not a means, and therefore cannot be understood from the viewpoint of its application. Law distinguishes itself from justice in that its existence is determined by its ability to be applied. If there is no possibility to view law as a means, the ends of a particular act could never be completely subscribed to justice. However, if justice is viewed as a state in which only ends are known, then justified means would have little to do with its condition, for neither means nor ends have a role in an order constructed solely of ends. Such a state, which has no concept of means or ends, is ultimately a divine order. In this analysis, we encounter a theoretical companion to Scholem’s critique of Bolshevism: ends have divine implications and represent a state of being, rather than a means to be implemented. Benjamin introduces the concept of law as worldly, justice as an end. Bolshevism, according to Scholem, confounds the two in its view of itself as the justified agent of history, ushering in redemption through historical necessity. The right to the use of violence in the pursuit of justified means is in question here, and while it is true that the impoverished are unjustly impoverished, the justification for action and 14 Such is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the study by Derrida. See the expanded German edition of the lecture he first delivered in English: Jacques Derrida, Gesetzeskraft: Der “mystische Grund der Autorität” (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996). The English edition, “Force de loi. Le ‘fondement mystique de l’autorité’ / Force of Law. The Mystical Foundation of Authority”, first appeared in: Cardozo Law Review, 11 (1990), pp. 919–1045. 15 For this reason, a German discussion of Gewalt is not automatically required to define the relationship between ethical good and juridical law. The term Recht covers both the true and the actual definition of what is good and, in this sense, Benjamin begins the discussion with categories determined no less by Hegel than by other, more general sources of jurisprudence. [66*] 9] Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution the authority of justification are at the heart of the analysis of what violence is. For this reason, Benjamin searches for examples of justified uses of Gewalt, such as the idea of a revolutionary general strike. In the case of a strike, the working class is called into action, often precisely at the moment that the state contests the right to strike. We can see the problem of the dictatorship of the poor in Benjamin’s thesis, for if the state contests the right to strike, it reveals a contradiction in the legal basis of the state: it guarantees a right which, if it is to maintain the sole right to the monopoly of rights, it must actually oppose. The right to strike is, therefore, achieved at the expense of legal order. As Benjamin points out here, the question of the right to Gewalt transcends the mere question of violence, “for, however paradoxical this may appear at first sight, even conduct involving the exercise of a right can nevertheless, under certain circumstances, be described as Gewalt”. 16 Therefore Gewalt, in Benjamin’s estimation, makes its appearance as a right. In Gewalt, a right is expressed as such; it may exist without Gewalt but only takes on form with it. The right of the poor to transform their conditions would imbue them with the justification to overturn worldly authority. In this example Gewalt appears as thieving violence. 17 The right of the subject to sanction Gewalt is relegated to “natural” means, easily coming into conflict with the question of what is natural. If the violence of theft is normative, Gewalt takes on Rechtssetzenden or a law-forming character. 18 This is the tendency of modern law which accepts the “violence directed at natural ends of the individual” – as the subject bearing rights – only in the application of violence sanctioned as “natural”. 19 The state responds to law-forming crime in the same way as it does to the right of theft and the right to strike: great crimes threaten to become lawforming acts. Benjamin introduces Georges Sorel here to strengthen the impression that his essay is intended as a contribution to revolutionary theory. However, the discussion of Sorel actually reveals how far Benjamin’s thinking is from syndicalism and how much closer he is to Scholem’s Judaic-theological critique of Bolshevism. Sorel distinguishes between two forms of the general strike: the political and the proletarian. 20 Only the revolutionary general strike 16 Walter Benjamin, Reflections, New York: Schocken Books, 1976, pp. 282. Henceforth: English – ref:282 / German – II:184. 17 II:185. The arbitrary nature of thieving Gewalt and the legal conventions of war are based on the same technical contradiction as the right to strike. 18 ref:283 / II:186. 19 ref:283 / II:186. 20 II:195. [67*] Eric Jacobson [10 is able to use the proletarian strike in the “task of destroying state power”. 21 One form of strike rallies for an altercation in labor conditions, the other for a pure non-violent means. Yet far beyond its appearance and reference to Sorel, Benjamin’s interest in the working class is clearly limited to the ability to define it as a “legal subject” [Rechtssubjekt] for the purposes of analysis. His conception has, in fact, little to do with the question of labor or the capitalist means of production. It does not seek new labor relations but a complete transformation of the relations of labor. Benjamin’s enthusiasm for the revolutionary general strike is not merely to create the conditions for a political cataclysm; it aims to induce a complete historical rupture. Whereas the strike that transforms working conditions actually upholds the ruptured state of existence, Benjamin argues that the revolutionary general strike messianically abolishes it. A messianic conception of labor is therefore: “wholly transformed work, no longer enforced by the state, ...an upheaval that this kind of strike not so much causes as consummates. For this reason, the first of these undertakings is lawmaking but the second is anarchistic”. 22 The revolutionary general strike rejects all forms of plans, programs and even utopian projects of a revolutionary society. It purposefully goes beyond parliamentary revolutionaries and professional intellectuals alike in an anarchist critique of the state. Sorel’s vision, he believes, is beyond the politics of the profane; his revolutionary general strike is taken as messianic politics. Others might very well read Sorel’s anti-intellectualism and his vision of proletarian revolution differently, questioning the notion of the divine embedded in his model of the world to come. 23 Rather than a conviction in the proletariat, or the dictatorship of the poor, one sees here Benjamin’s search for a theory with a revolutionary subject which can truly embody the universal qualities needed for the perpetual maintenance of its authority / violence. This theory of state and subject is indeed not syndicalist but messianic. 21 ref:291 / II:194. 22 ref:292 / II:194. 23 For a Nazi anthology of Sorel’s anti-Semitic and anti-intellectual quotes, see: Michael Freund (ed.), Der Falsche Sieg: Worte aus Werken von Georges Sorel (Berlin: Duncker und Humboldt, 1944). Quite to the contrary, Benjamin even argues for Sorel’s ethical integrity. He claims that Sorel was well aware that the revolution would be susceptible to violence: “Dieser tiefen, sittlichen und echt revolutionären Konzeption kann auch keine Erwägung gegenübertreten, die wegen seiner möglichen katastrophalen Folgen einen solchen Generalstreik als Gewalt brandmarken möchte” [II:195]. Some scholars have sought to show that Benjamin became more critical toward Sorel in the late 1930s. See Chryssoula Kambas, “Walter Benjamin liest Georges Sorel: ‘Reflexions sur la violence’”, Michael Opitz and Erbmut Wizisla (eds.), ‘Aber ein Strum weht vom Paradiese her’. Texte zu Walter Benjamin, Leipzig: Reclam, 1992, pp. 267–268. [68*] 11] Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution A similar sentiment is found in Benjamin’s notes in “Das Recht zur Gewaltanwendung” [The Right to Use Violence], written in response to an article of the same name published in the Blätter für religiösen Sozialismus [Journal for Religious Socialism] 24 (September 1920). The author of the article, H. Vorwerk, begins with the statement that only the state has the right to use violence. In reply, Benjamin considers three positions on authority: (1) the state is the highest legal institution, (2) power is the source of authority from its own or from another source, i.e. the notion of a self-contained, perfect form of power [Machtvollkommenheit], (3) authority is established through “worldly theocracy”. To these possibilities, he matches the following conclusions: the use of violence is or should be (A) denied for both state and individual, (B) sanctioned for both state and individual, (C) justified for the state, or (D) justified for the individual. Vorwerk puts forward his argument specifically against what he terms ethical anarchism. Benjamin, however, takes up the term as the most appropriate description of his own political views: This view, whose material impossibility appears to have disturbed the author so greatly that he fails to establish its logical possibility as a distinct position, is instead referred to as an inconsequential, one-sided application of ethical anarchism. This view has to be represented in the case where, on the one hand (in opposition to A), he sees no principle contradiction between violence and morality and, on the other hand (in contrast to C), he sees a principle contradiction between morality and the state (or law). The exposition of this position is one of the tasks of my moral philosophy in which the term anarchism can surely be used. It calls for a theory which does not reject a moral right to violence in itself, but rather in every human institution, community or individuality which accords itself a monopoly to violence or reserves the right to violence on principle, in general, or from some other 24 The Blätter für religiösen Sozialismus (Berlin: 1920–1927) was a largely Protestant, social democratic journal edited by Carl Mennicke with contributions by Paul Tillich and Martin Buber among others. Mennicke, in discussion with Tillich on the use of violence and the Kapp-Putsch, asked the author of the text, a legal scholar by the name of Herbert Vorwerk, to prepare a juridical analysis of the right to violence. The article, “Das Recht zur Gewaltanwendung”, appeared in the September 1920 issue of the journal (Jg. 1, Nr. 4). This incidentally makes the date of April 1920 (which the editors of the Gesammelte Schriften gave to Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence”) rather improbable. For the comments of the editors, see Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. VI, p. 691. [69*] Eric Jacobson [12 perspective, rather than revere violence as the providence of divine power – as perfect power in a single moment. 25 Benjamin defends the idea of an ethical anarchism which takes as its goal a neutralization of the paradox of the moral application of violence. He develops a political notion concerning the abolition of Gewalt through moral, humanistic institutions, societies and individuals. The right to such a human state is ensured and guaranteed by nothing less than divine power since no profane institution is able to match divine Gewalt. The article on the right to violence led Benjamin to speculate on an ethical anarchism based on morally acting individuals and social institutions, whose authority would ultimately rest on divine Gewalt. The focus of his concern is the elimination of Gewalt altogether from the worldly realm and its placement purely in the realm of the divine. He asks: is it possible to solve human problems through pure, non-violent means? Indeed, like many of the anarchists, it appears that Benjamin sought a measure of utopian behavior in the social realm of individuals. His proposition is unambiguous here: “Nonviolent agreement is possible wherever a culture of the heart has given humanity the use of pure means of agreement. Legal and illegal means of every kind, which are all forms of violence, may be confronted with non-violent ones as pure means”. 26 A model for conflict resolution is to be sought not within the political sphere but within society. In this respect, the edict of the Psalms to love thy neighbor is perhaps the force which is best able to constitute a “culture of the heart” [Kultur des Herzens]. 27 His call to a “culture of the heart” may appear rather vague. However, if we take Ahad Ha-Am’s essay “Die Lehre des Herzens” [“The Teachings of the Heart”] from Am Scheidewege, which Benjamin and Scholem read together, we find something on the order of a Judaic categorical imperative in the words of Hillel: “That which you hate yourself, do not afflict on your neighbor – with this is the entire teachings”. 28 This mutuality was, for Ahad Ha-Am, the cornerstone of a rejuvenation of Judaism beyond mere soil, penetrating into the heart of social relations. Benjamin’s “culture of the heart” sought to extend this maxim of cultural Zionism, with its clear disdain for the dominance of the practical goals of the colonialist mentality. In this, he sought to apply the demands of 25 Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. VI, pp. 107. 26 Ref:289 / II:191. 27 “’Was dir selber verhaßt ist, das füge auch dienem Nächsten nicht zu – darin ist die ganze Lehre Enthalten’”. See Achad Haam, Am Scheidewege, 2 vols., Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1901, p. 99. 28 b. Sabbat fol. 31b. [70*] 13] Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution the cultural Zionists to all culture. Such an idea of culture also emerges in Benjamin’s Theological-Political Fragment of 1921 with the notion of the worldly activity of “messianic intensity”, established through mutual recognition and cooperation. Benjamin names the other virtues which form the basis of a culture of the heart: “courtesy, sympathy, love of peace, trust”. 29 From his analysis of the state, we are able to envisage a political realm dominated by the powerful, seeking to establish rules and rights to serve their own interest. He appears to place all hope in a messianic transformation of society and the individual. Since these qualities or virtues take shape in society, they have an objective character. As pure means they are therefore immediate means. 30 Benjamin rejects the notion of positive law being able to resolve the very thing that it promises to ensure, nor is there a political solution to the problem of Gewalt. The only answer can be found in the divine as it makes its entrance into the social realm. The social realm is radically transformed by a messianic general strike, on the one hand, and a daily politics of pure means on the other. This vision of a worldly form of justice is found in the “natural” rapport of individuals – a series of utopian relationships in a broader social context. For Benjamin, this politics of pure means is found in the “peaceful intercourse between private persons”, in which, much like diplomacy, “private, personal” conflict resolution is transcribed onto worldly, political dimensions. These politics would be based on individual virtues such as honesty. 31 Whereas a politics of pure means is envisioned as an individual act, it is not a private activity. On the contrary, the pure means of all individuals are to be claimed by every individual. Central to Benjamin’s theory of Gewalt is the distiction between divine and profane violence. Without going into the category of myth, which becomes relevant as a counter example to the divine, I would like to briefly outline the concept of divine Gewalt. In Benjamin’s thesis, the Gewalt of God is of a different caliber than that of profane violence. While God’s conflagration of things and people is unmitigated and exhaustive, it is not punishment but purification. Resistance to the will of God may classify sin, but divine Gewalt comes as rectification through destruction, he writes. In contrast to worldly action, divine destruction is bloodless. Citing the story 29 II:191. 30 If it is not implicit in the notion of a non-threatening Gewalt, it is certainly the case that even in utopian, social relations between individuals, one would never be blind to the Gewalt of distopic relations. Therefore, fear alone is enough to show an implicit Gewalt in an ideal society as well. 31 II:193. [71*] Eric Jacobson [14 of Korah, Benjamin suggests “a profound connection between the lack of bloodshed and the expiatory character of this violence”. 32 God destroys without spilling blood, itself considered here the “symbol of mere life” [Symbol des bloßen Lebens]. He can therefore destroy profane forms and rectify sin at the same time. Just as the sinners no longer remain, neither does sin. Blood and sin are both aspects of the profane world, expressed here in the symbol of mere living. 33 Thus divine Gewalt is manifested in the profane world and not merely as a manifestation for its own sake. God enters worldly affairs to cleanse humanity and destroy evil, writes Benjamin, not to work “miracles in unmediated appearances but through the moment of bloodless overwhelming, execution without sin”. 34 God is Himself whole in His actions. He does not send a manifestation of Himself as a miracle such that one would ask why a correction in His divine plan was needed. God’s manifestation comes as the sanctifying, redeeming, completion of worldly affairs: “finally through the absence of all legal formation as relief and liberation from the suffering of administrative law”. 35 Although divine Gewalt is destructive in relation to things, rights and life, it is not so in terms of “souls of the living”. 36 Benjamin asserts here, perhaps in contrast to Kierkegaard, that if action did not take place, judgement itself would be impossible. 37 The reality of an act like murder, however, conceived of as an event which God would be unable to predict or prevent, would make the conception of God improbable. The commandment prohibiting murder must therefore be seen not as a means of, he argues, but rather as an ethical norm which reflects the “divinity of life”. 38 Benjamin leads a small discussion here on the justification for murder and the relationship to its prohibition in the Torah. He argues that while the commandment cannot be read as a measure of judgement as to the justice or injustice of a particular murder, it serves as a measure of action. It is not law which condemns murder but the structure of the action of a given society to confront the ethical isolation of the indi32 See Numbers 16:30–33 where Korah fails to heed the prophecy of Moses. See also II:946, and ref:297 / II:199. 33 Benjamin’s concept of das bloße Leben serves as the basis of Giorgio Agamben’s compelling study on the individual in relation to the power of the state. See his Homo sacer: la potere sovrano e la nuda vita, Torino: Enaudi, 1995. His movement into the French thinkers, particularly Foucault, may however inadvertently lead away from the unique theological dimension of this idea. 34 ref:297 modified / II:200. 35 ref:297 / II:200. 36 II:200. 37 See Jacobson, Metaphysics of the Profane, pp. 157–163. 38 “Heiligkeit des Lebens”. II:201. [72*] 15] Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution vidual. Scholem, who distinguishes between the Torah and the oral tradition with regard to the death penalty, may have been the source for Benjamin’s speculation in his treatment of Talmudic jurisprudence. In Benjamin’s program, ethics become the means of the “divinity of life” as the search for an ethical theorem in the process of the sanctification en route toward the divine. For a world to appear suited to the “not-yet-attained condition of the just human being”, the real-existing world, with its limitations and material suffering, it would have to decline: “To the same degree that man is holy (or the life in him which is identical in worldly existence, death and afterlife), there is little sacred in his condition, in his corporeal, vulnerable life in the collective”. 39 To summarize Benjamin’s contribution to this discussion, I would like to submit the following points: Gewalt is distinguished between divine and profane forms of violence. Law is deemed profane, while justice is ascribed to the divine realm. 40 Following Scholem’s critique of Bolshevism, Benjamin puts forward the idea of the revolutionary general strike as a model. Yet rather than approaching a sanctified theory of syndicalism, he comes remarkably close to Scholem’s thesis which suggests that such revolutionary movements bear “magical” relations to true messianic movements; only a full and complete redemption will transform this world into a realm of justice. Violence of man and the violence of God are two entirely different notions of violence. While the former is geared toward the overturning of worldly law, the latter is the purification from evil and sin, and thus the model of true redemptive activity. Scholem’s Theory of Divine Revolution In the application of revolutionary violence to achieve messianic ends, Scholem places great importance on the meaning of redemption in his critique of Bolshevism. Not only must the agent of revolution extend beyond the universalization of an internal redemption, redemption itself must be bound to a Lehre – a teaching, doctrine or tradition. In the neutralization of the divine, revolution is an attempt to establish a radical kingdom of God without God. It does not appear as a “redemptive” act, nor correspond to an anarchistic conception of the return to Zion which was to capture Scholem’s imagination. 39 ref:299 / II:201. 40 This is a point which is repeatedly discussed between the authors and features prominently in Scholem’s Theses on the Concept of Justice and theses which conclude his discussion of Jonah. For a further discussion, see Jacobson, Metaphysics of the Profane, pp. 174–192. [73*] Eric Jacobson [16 For him, the “Jewish revolution has to be reconnected to the teachings”, meaning the teachings of the Torah. Without such a connection, a revolution for the Jews as Jews would be impossible. Scholem proposes here an interpretation of messianic events which reflects the apocalypse of the prophets: that the kingdom of God is not to be achieved through evolutionary measures but by a sudden breach in the flow of worldly events. Thus the Bolshevik revolutionary act is an attempt at an “eternal-now of history” ascribed to redemption. It is precisely the place in which redemption is initiated without teachings or tradition. Its messianism stands in contrast to the liberalism of the revolutions of 1848, which may have neutralized divine judgement, Scholem writes, but spawned in its place a bad eternity from the task of redemption. Liberalism reflects a “conforming imitation of the messianic” which loses its link to messianism by severing justice from redemption and placing it in the realm of reform. In this respect, liberalism is as much a political failure, in Scholem’s view, as a theological one. Yet revolutions also fail. If there is anything that frees the revolutionary impulse from the bad eternity of liberalism, it would be the transposition of the legacy of redemption, like a marker throughout time and place, conveying “the silent teachings of the unambiguity of history”. In this respect, the Bolshevik revolution, as “every legitimate revolution”, is capable of generating its own Gewalt as an institution or order in the neutralization of the divine. In the process, the impoverished class becomes the norm rather than teachings, tradition, the Torah. In contrast to liberalism, which loses its intimate connection to messianic transformation in its bad eternity, paradox is the only constant in revolution. In this way, liberalism never truly establishes a just and non-contradictory means to redemption, writes Scholem, for it is prone to circuitous reasoning. Because paradox inevitably turns to compulsion and failure, revolution too is unable to provide an answer. “True mysticism”, however, “which considers circular reasoning a legitimate, fundamental idea”, is able to answer the question. Other than the fact that paradox is not foreign to mysticism, and is actually very much at home in it – the way in which mysticism might serve in this regard is left open to interpretation. The final part of Scholem’s treatise is divided into two paragraphs on the historical role of the revolutionary force of Bolshevism, its relationship to history and what, by contrast, would be a more subtle and authentic messianic response to the history of the moment. The Bolshevik revolution may end in bloodshed, Scholem asserts in 1918, but a bloodshed not of its own. Thus, revolution may be the final act of the First World War evoking a messianic response: [74*] 17] Scholem on the Bolshevik Revolution Even though the Bolshevik revolution will be caught up in bloodshed (and the miraculous thing about it is the very fact that it will not drown in its own blood), it will nevertheless serve as the only high-point of the history of the world war and, however saddening this may be, the messianic reaction against it. A bloody end to a purposeless war could hardly be deemed “miraculous” by any account and Scholem surely does not mean to imply by this a belief in the necessity of Bolshevik violence. Rather, he appears to suggest the opposite in his interpretation of the Bolshevik revolution as a messianic reaction. His vision of an anarchic Zionism will have nothing to do with the war nor the salvaging of its ruins. 41 In this sense, a Bolshevik messianic reaction is directed at the war which, although conjuring up images of salvation, can nonetheless never be truly messianic. In the impossibility of world barbarism as a means to redemption, one senses here an attempt to define a political and practical messianism in response to an apocalypticism. “Whoever affirms the history of today”, argues Scholem, “has to be a Bolshevist, seeing in it the futuristic and purest form of the present in blood and misdeed”. Unlike messianism, in this respect the Bolshevik revolution comes to represent the history of the future. Out of the bloodshed of an utterly meaningless war, it is able to project itself as a futurist form of the present. It may not reach an “eternal now” of redemption, nor suffer the bad eternity of liberalism, but it is a force heralding the profane future in the historical moment. Scholem’s comments seem to attribute to Bolshevism a historical force such as it has always claimed. He essentially asks if it is possible to divide the historical from the quotidian. If so, revolution would mean to act “with a legitimate consciousness” in the face of history. This implies a capacity to know history in order to transform it through revolution. Bolshevism does more than this. It does not merely act in a consciously historical way but is “futurist in a specific sense”. It is futuristic but, at the same time, unable to judge its own actions or have its own acts tried by a court of the future. This means that while promising a justice of the future, Bolshevism can only deliver a justice of the here and now. The permanence of its Gewaltpunkte [point of violence / authority], which makes it necessary for it to appear as the historical future that suspends “judgement over itself through the permanence of its sole Gewaltpunkte”, is therefore the very force that makes it “unjust” and “the root of its reprehensibility”. In Scholem’s distinction between justice and judgement, a divine verdict 41 See Jacobson, ibid., pp. 52–63. [75*] Eric Jacobson [18 is synonymous with justice; no gap is conceived between word and act, unlike worldly judgement where the two are clearly remote from one another. Elsewhere, in an essay on Jonah, Scholem formulates the thesis that “divine judgement is both judgement and its own execution”, incorporating the saying of Proverbs 16:33 which places all faith in divine ruling. 42 In the case of Bolshevism, this crucial distinction was lost, making it perhaps the nearest attempt at the divine kingdom on earth and its most monstrous antithesis, precisely because, following Scholem’s critique, it seeks to eliminate the distinction between justice and judgement. In transcending the question posed by the tension between the divine and profane in messianism, Bolshevism initiates its downfall in injustice. Its futuristic judgement, with all its claims to historical necessity, is the only basis of its monopolized Gewaltpunkte and not the legitimacy of a messianic eternal now. It remains trapped within the profane world, in the very conditions which it sought to overthrow from within itself. The dictatorship of its historical futurism – Scholem predicts in conclusion to his treatise, written less than a year after the Russian Revolution – is constituted to end in demise. 42 See Jacobson, ibid., pp. 184–192. [76*]