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Christopher Han~illonlOttoNeumaierIGottfried Schn,eiger/Clenjcns Sed~nak cds.):l:clci?~g rugedies,\Vien- Rcrlin-Miinstcr: LIT Verlag. 2009: 203- zr 4.

SOCIAL TRAGEDY AN D POLITICAL FARCEM ARX' S POETICS OF HISTORY A N D R E V O L U T I O N '

Raphael H iirmann

Engaging with Marx's poetics of revolution and history, this contributionwill focus on the notions of 'social tragedy' and 'political farce: While I donot seek to furnish a sociological definition or to carry out a socio-econom icirlvestigation of actual social tragedies, I will, however, endeavour to alignth e dramatic orm of tragedy with the social material.' As I will argue, this wasalso Marx's principal concern when he developed his poetics of history andrevolution in th e 1840s and 1850s.

I . Social TragedyRegarding tragedy as social, means, first and foremost, rejecting the view,prevalent in liberal-bourgeois ideology, that tragcdy primarily concerns theindividual: the sole protagonist who suffers a tragic fate. Though t he indivi-dualistic view of tragedy allows for conflict between the personal and the po -litical or social, it differs decisively from the c oncep t of 'social tragedy' w hichinvolves a social class, grou p or c ollective as one of its principal actors.Although he does not explicitly use this th e phrase 'social tragedy', thisnotion is based largely on Raymond Williams' concept of tragedy as a socialform. He argues that originally tragedy was understood as predominantlysocial, in th e sense that it involved the entirepulis. As he points out, Atheni-an dramatic spectacles staged constant, interactive, dialogues between theindividual and the collective, between the characters, actors, chorus andaudience. The interaction between these various social participants in th edramatic festival mirrors a fundamental d ialogue operating within the plays."The dramatic form" incorporated a dialectic interrelation between "both- .-- -I . I arli rxtremcly grateful to I:.ugene De Klerk for proo frc i~d in ~his cssay atid providingaslute criticism.2. By this term I undcrstnnd the entire realm of the socio-economic an d the social-politi-cal human relations.

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the history and the presence, the myth and the respon se to the myth." Hencewhat the dramatic form of Greek tragedy "then embodies is not an isolablemetaphysical stance, rooted in individual experience, but a shared and in-deed collective experience, at once and indistinguishably metaphysical andsucial" (cf. Willjams 1966, 18) .This perspective on tragedy, however, which rega rds it as the nexus betweenthe individual and the collective, between history a nd the present, betweenthe social and metaphysical, has become increasingly marginalised. With theloss of the chorus, the collective disappears from the tragic action and theindividual takes centre stage. While this process of decline ha d already begunin ancient Greece, the concept of social tragedy reached its lowest point withthe Roman tic ideological tenet th at "man could free himself only by rejectingor escaping from society, and by seeing his own deepest activities [.. .l as es-sentially asocial or even anti-social" (Williams 19 66,73). These two co nceptsof tragedy, individualistic and social, still tend to remain dissociated from on eother, As I1411llustrate, William's alternative view tha t perceives this drama -tic form and modern society not as irreconcilable opposites but rather as in-exqricably interlinked an d interw oven, w ith "social relationships deeply [. ..]embodied in certain forms of art" (Williams 1986, 148), is closely related tothe perspective on tragedy in Marx's philosophy of histo ry and revolution.

2. 7hc Antithesis ofPolitical Form and Social Content in MarxTo understand Marx's poetics of history a consciousness of his distinctionbetween the political form of historical events and transitions, their 'surfacestructure', and their social and material content, their 'deep structure' is vi-tal.Historical transformation and paradigm shifts, Marx suggests, are alwaysenacted on thcsc two levels. Marx's historical materialism presupposes thatthe material rclalions of produ ction - ogether with the social relations thatthey generate - condition (bu t not mechanistically determine) thc politicaland ideological superstructure. While the material relations are consideredprimary and basic, the secondary political structure is the plane o n whichthe material and social conflicts become manifest and a re negotiated. Henceit would be a grave error to assume "that the struggle for a form of polityis meaningless [inhaltslos], illusory and futile [null]'', as Marx reminds hisreaders in his editorial in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (29 June 1 8 4 8 ) onthe 'June Insurrection' in Paris (Marx/Engels 1 9 7 7 , 1 4 7 ) .He asserts it wouldbe equally naive to dismiss political struggles as merely illusory, as withoutgenuine content, as it would be to idealistically assume that they conditionmaterial being or the social material.

Social Tragcdy and Political Farce 205Marx applies the superstructure-base analogy most consistently in heanalysis of concrete social and historical events he offers in f i e Eighteenth

Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (18 52) .This is his autopsy of the French Revo-lution of 1848149 and its anti-climactic afrermath that ende d with the lowpoint of Bonaparte's inglorious coup dztat on 2 December 1851. 1-he ana-logy finds its structural expression in the antithesis of form and content.RelentlessIy, Marx traces the tensions between - what he terms - manifest'phrase(s)' and latent 'content' an d points out their interactions in terms ofthe superstructure-base analogy. Pivotally, he even explicitly uses the term"superstructure" to denote the level of the political dissension between thetwo monarchical parties in France at the time. For him, the confrontationbetween these two parties constitutes a political expression of the hiddensocio-economic conflict between landed p roperty and industrial capital:

"What kept the two factions ap art was not any so-called principles, it wastheir m aterial cond itions of existence, two different kinds of property; itwas the oid opposition between town and country, the rivalry betweencapital and landed property. 1.. .] On the different forms of property,the social cond itions of existence, arises an entire supe rstructure [Ue-berbau] of different and peculiarly formed sentiments, delusions [Illu-sion en], modes of thoug ht, and o utlook s on life. The whole class createsand forms them from [its] material foundations on up and from thecorrespond ing social relations. The single individual, to whom they aretransmitted through tradition and upbringing, can imagine that theyform th e real motives and th e starting-point for his actions. [.. ] Just asin private life one distinguishes betw een what a ma n thin ks and says [ofhimself], and what he really is and does, so one must all the more in hi-storical conflicts make th e distinction bctwecn th e fine words [Phrasen]and aspirations [Einbildungcn] of the parties from thcir real organisati-on and their real interests, their image [Vorstellung] from their reality"(Marx 2000,42 f.; my alterations).

Drawing a psychological analogy - with the discrepancy between a human'sself-image and his real identity - Marx marks a corresp ondin g gulf in relationto social and class identities, between th e self-image of one's grou p and realsocial identity. To ascertain thc latter it is vital to cut through the polishedphrases and the self-image of the social group. In respect to the monarchi-cal adversaries, Marx juxtaposes their pseudo-medieval show "[blehind thescenes" (during which they stage in "their antique [...l livery [. ] their oldtournaments") with their real social role in the main drama. While they be-lieve of themselves that they act as monarchists, loyal to their respective dy-

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r06 Raphacl liiirmannnastics, this is a merely illusiona ry conflict taking place in a farcical sideshow,In the serious part of the revolutionary drama, "[oln the public stage, [in thechief and state plays] [Haupt- und Staatsaktion], [. . ] they pawned off theirroyal houses with token acts of reverence': In the historical main plot bothparties act out th eir real social role "as the porty o order, i.e. under a socirrlrather than a poiitical banne r, as a representative of the bourgeo is world order,not as knights seeking fair [princesses], as the bourgeois dass against otherclasses, not as royalists against republicans" (Marx 20 00,4 3 f.; Marx's empha-sis; my alterations). While th eir political appearance seems to mark them outas anachronistic aristocrats, their true social identity is that of property ow-ners and capitalists i.e. m emb ers of the bourgeoisie. 'Thus, without being fullyconscious of it, they are takin g part in a m uch m ore substantial hidde n socialdrama in th e face ofrvhich even seemingly insurmountab le political divisions,such as those between royalists and republicans, lose their meaning. As Marxemphasises, "on closer inspection of the parties and the situ ation, this superfi-cial appearance [Schein], which veils the class struggle [...l , disappears" (Marx2000, 42; Mam's emphasis). What Marx exposes and teases out throughoutf i e Eighteenth Brumaire are the tensions, contradictions, consequ ences etc.that arise out of this protean antithesis between social content and politicalform that is being played out by th e political actors.'Moreover, it is on th e basis of the mo del of base and superstructure, ofthe contradictions between latent conte nt at the material level and manifestideoIogical forms that Marx begins to develop a poetics of revolution andhistory in the mid - 1840s. This finds its most complex e xpression in f i e Eigh -teenth Brumaire. Harking back to the topos of history as drama, Marx writesa poetics of history that is based o n the drama tic genres of tragedy and farce.?he principal question that concerns me is how these dramatic forms andtheir poetics relate to the political a nd social events that toge ther furnish thcmaterial for historiography?

3 . ?he Failed Jurre Irrstrrrection as the SocinI Trage dyof the 1848/qg Re~~olutiotrsMarx's principal metaphor to describe the course of revolution throu ghouthistory is the opposition betwe en "tragcdy" and "farcen. He bases his analogyon Greek drama, harkening back to A thenian dram atic festivals, in which- -3. Among thc few critics who emphasise the crucial importance of the antithesis be~wccnforniiplirasc and con tent in ,Marx's text arc Haydcn Wh ite (1973)- 2 1 ff., and JncquesDerrida (1994)~14-117.

Social Tragcdy an d Political Farcc 207tragedy was followed by a satyr play. The latter took up th e plot and action ofthe tragedy and satirised it, turning it into a burlesque farce.It was not until the Europe an Revolutions of 184 8/49 that Marx fully devc-loped his poetics of history in reaction to what he an d othe r socialists consi-dered as the grea t tragedy of these years: the failure of all attem pted proleta ri-an revolutions. These setbacks of the European 1848/49 Revolutions severelydampened Marx's optimism concerning the swift advent of the proletariansocial revolution. Crucially, its imminent arrival which he had predicted in7he ~%fani/estof the Communist Party (February 1848) - using the imageryof drama - turned out to have been a false promise: "the bourgeois revo-lution in Germany will be but the [p rologue] [Vorspiel] to an immediatelyfollowing proletarian revolution" (Marx fEng els 1976, 519; my alterations).Larger proletarian uprisings either largely failed to materialise (in Germany,Britain etc.) or were brutally and decisively quashed. The 'June Insurrection'(23-26 June 1848) in Paris, which left around 2000 rebellious workers dead,with many m ore becoming victims of the ensuing persecutions, epitomisedthe failure of the proletarian social revolution.+Both the high hopes Marx had of this revolution and his subsequent disil-lusionment when it was defeated can be clearly detected in two editorials hewrote for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. In his editorial of 27 Ju ne 1848 he notonly predicted victory for the Parisian w orkers - "the victory ojt he people ismore certain than ever'',he maintained - but he also regarded the rebellionas the catalyst of a pan-European, successful proletarian revolution. Signifi-cantly, he expressed these convictions through the imagery of dram a, clai-ming that the J un e Insurrection as the "second act of th e French revolution isonly the beginning of the European tragedy" (MarxIEngels 1977,128; Marx'semphasis).The hidden class war between bourgeoisie and proletariat had emergedopenly; the political revolution had shown its repressed social conten t whichbefore had been buried beneath the political struggles, both in the July Revo-lution of 1 830 and the February Revolution of 1848. Tragic here m eans thatthe decisive social conflict of the time openly manifests itself and is foughtout. Raymond Williams highlights exactly this connection between socialconflict and tragedy, when he posits that in Marx's view of "social develop-4. As Hauke Bnu nho rst has recently argued, "the inlportance of the failed European Revo-

lution of 1848, not only for Marx's life hut also his work, has still been underestimated(Braunhorst 2007, 138;my translation). For instance Hayden White plays down Marxidisillusionment, when hc argues that thc prediction of the imminent proletarian revolu-tion in the Mnnfesto turns the text into an "Ironicdocunient': since "Marx himselfat thetime of its con~podtion ntertained few hopes for the consummation o f the revolutionthat it enthusiastically proclaimedn White 1973 . 317) .

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20 8 Raphacl HormannItlent I...] ragedy occurs at those points w here the conflicting forces must,by their inner nature, take action, and carry the conflict through to a trans-formation" (Williams 1966,35). While Marx in this editorial - when the out-come of the battle was still undecided - believed that this class war would endwith the victory of the proletariat and the downfall of the bourgeoisie, thisnotion became untenable when the workers' insurrection had been crushed.Society had not been transformed radically. On th e contrary, the position ofthe bourgeoisie as the ruling class seemed even to have been stren gthened.Marx's famous editorial two days later, on 29 J une 1848, presented an at-tempt to come to terms with what - n his view - must amount to a tragiccatastrophe. At an enorm ous cost of lives (mainly those of workers) the pro-letarian revolution had been defeated before it had even properly begun. In -stead of marking the com mencement of the pan-Eur opean social revolution,the June Revolution markeds the beginning of the pan-European counter-revolution. Under these circumstances, Marx was forced to fundanlentallyrevise his poetics of revolution. He did this by presenting th e proletarians astragic heroes in a classical sense. Even in defeat they had remained superiorto their villainous adversary, the bourgeoisie, as Marx underlined throughhis trademark juxtapositions:

"The workers of Paris were overwhelmed by superior strength, but theywere not subdued. Ihey have been defeated but the ir enemie s are vnnquis-hed. The momentary triump h of brute force has been purchased with thedestruction of all the delusions and illusions of the February revolution,the dissolution of the entire moderate republican party and th e division[Zerkliiftung] of the French nation into two nations, the nation of ow-ners and t he nation of workers. The tricolour republic now displays onlyon e colour, the colour of the defeated, the colour of blood. It has beco me ared republic" (MarxJEngels (1977, 144; Marx's em phasis).

Clearly it is the Parisian workers who are portrayed here as tragic heroes.Comparable to the protagonists in the tragedies of Weimar Classicism, theproletariat has won a moral victory even tho ugh it has been m ilitarily routedby its class antagonist. As Marx concludes in ?he Eighteenth Brumaire, "atleast it was defeated with the honou rs of a great world historical struggle; notonly France but all Europe trembles at th e June earthquake" (Marx 2000.26).Their moral victory consists in having revealed the social content that under-lies the political struggles of the revolution. In particular, the Parisian wor-kers have exposed and discredited th e republican ideology of fraternity andbrought the hidden socio-economic confrontation to general attention, theclass war that th e republican notion of universal brotherhood aims to cover

Social ?iagedy and Political Farce 209up. The political struggles pale against the gigantic and pre-eminent socialgulf that has opened up in French society, between those who own goods,proper ty and capital and those who produce them, between bourgeoisie andproletariat. This is implied in the central image of the bloodstained tricolour(epitomising the republican slogan of the French R evolution, libertk, egalitk,fraternitt), which has thus turned into a red flag (the colour of socialism).For Marx the w orkers will achieve victory in the revolutionary dr ama at anunspecified future tim e and b ring about a social republic. Yet, for now theirmain achievement, Marx emphasises, is to have revealed the hidde n socialconten t of the revolution, "the social struggle': which in preceding Februa-ry Kevolution (1848) "had only achieved a nebulous [luftige] existence, anexistence in phrases, in words': Now, class war has materialised itself, as the"phrases have given place to the real thing" (MarxIEng els 1977,149).However, the undeniable fact that, at least for the tim e being, the proletari-an revolution had been defeated posed a poignant setback for Marx's revolu-tionary optimism. The failed June Revolution constituted a genuinely tragicevent, a social tragedy, since it post-poned the proletarian social revolutionand the resolution of class conflict to a distant future. While for Marx theoverall plot of the long-term historic drama is anti-tragic, until the 'happyending: the telos of a socially liberated, class-less society is reached, mankindwill have to endure many disillusioning setbacks, both tragic and farcical.Discussing the anti-tragic resolution to the historical drama, Hayden Whiteeven goes so far as to argue: "while Marx ernplotted the history of the bou r-geoisie as a Tragedy, that of the history of the proletariat is set within the wi-der framework of a Comedyn (White 1973,313). In my opinion, to speak ofcomedy belittles the tragic elements in the revolutionary struggle of the pro-letariat, while to cast th e bourgeoisie as Marx's "Tragic hero" (316) ignoreshow - at least for the period 1848-51 - Marx represents th e bourgeoisie asthe pathetic protagonist in a revolutioriary farce. Ironically, in denying t hetragic dimension to the failed June Insurrection, White actually provides astriking argu ment for M arx regarding it as social tragedy:

"The defeat of the June insurgents was thus characterized as a lamen ta-ble, but hardly Tragic event, inasmuch as their resistance to the bour-geoisie was not inf ormed by a clear notion of their aims o r by any realis-tic assessment of their prospects for victory" (White 1973, 323) .Far from furnishing an argument against regarding the June Insurgents as'tragic heroes', their limited consciousness actually constitutes their tragicflaw that causes their trag ic fall. In their hnnrartia they closely resemble theheroes of Greek tragedy.

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210 Raphael k18rmannMoreover, this event is genuinely 'tragic' as both the social deep struc-turc and the proletariat's revolutionary potential have emerged openly fora moment, only for them to vanish immediately from the theatre of publicaction. As Marx acknowledges in th e Eighteenth Brumaire, with the crushingof the Jun e Revolution, "the proletariat m oves into the background on therevolutionary stage" (Marx 2000, 26; Marx's cmphasis), at least for the re-mainder of the action of the revolutionary dram a of 1848-1851.The failure

of the proletarian social revolution forms the only genuinely tragic plot ofthe revolution, as the proletarian actors - post the June Insurrection - havehad to abandon their socio-revolutionary role. A principal reason for this,Marx emphasises, is that th e proletariat lacks its natural class ally, the peas-antry. The French peasantry deludedly suppo rts Louis Bonaparte who falselypretends to represent their interests. Without this ally, Marx implies, any at-tempt of the French proletariat at social revolution must end in tragedy. Ashe maintains, only when the peasantry will have become disillusioned withBonaparte and subscquently will unite with th e proletariat, "the proletarianrevolution will obtain the chorus withou t which its solo becomes a swa n song inall peasant countries" (Marx 2000,106; Marx's emp hasis).Until then it is the bourgeois revolutionary farce that takes centre-stage,and, increasingly, its second-rate actor-director Louis Bonaparte with the'lumpenproletariat' as his metaphorical extras. Pivotally, the failed JuneRevolution marks the turning point of the entirc revolutionary drama of1848/49. rom this point onwards M arx regards the revolution as one greatanti-climax with one 'non-event' chasing the next in an ever more sordidanJ degenerate rcvolutionary farce. In other words, the revolutionary dramahas lost most of its social content. "[ilnstead of society gaining for itself anew content" (Marx 2000,22, Marx's emphasis). Owin g to "agitation withoutcontent, [...l heroes without heroic actions, history without events': the onlyremaining action on the political stage consists in staging the most anach ro-nistic. "pettiest intrigues and court comedies" (MarxJEngels 1985, 119;mytranslation). Farcical bathos has replaced any tragic pathos.

The whole political farce, however, is haunted by the social spectre of theJune Insurrection, to the point w here the bourgeois fear of anarchy and classwar enables Louis Bonaparte's unlikely victory over th e bourgeoisie. Ironi-cally, in his coup dztat in December 1852 he unwittingly exacts a dispiacedand belated revenge on the bourgeois victors who had bloodily quashed thesocial revolution of the proletariat in June 1848. he social content resurfac-es in a distorted form, as a spectre ["Gespenst"]. The bourgeois revolution-ary farce is so powerfully overshadowed by paranoia of this "'red spectre"'["'rothe Gespenst"'] (Marx 2000, 40) that it paralyses its protagonists andmakes them an easy target for Bonaparte's pa thetic m ilitia:

Social Tragedy and Political Farce 2 1 1"The social republic appeared as a phrase, as a prophecy on the thresh-old of the February revolution. In the June days of 1848 t was drownedin the blood of the Parispro~elariat,ut it stalked the succeeding acts ofthe drama as a spectre [Gespenst]. [...l The bourgeoisie kept France inbreathless terror at the prospective horrors of red anarchy; Bonapartesold it this futu re cheaply when o n 3 an d 4 December he had the distin-guished citiwnr y of the Boulevard Montmartre and th e Boulevard desItaliens shot through their ow n windows by the drunken a rmy of order"(Marx 2000,95; Man 's emphasis).

4. History and Revolution between ' be at tragedynand '\squalid farce"In the fam ous opening lines of the Eighteenth Brumaire Marx no t only assertsthat history always repeats itself, but also posits that the dramatic genre inwhich it is enacte d changes from tragedy to farce. For Marx, farce here car-ries connotations of being both an anachronistic and second-rate perform-ance. The farce of the bourgeois political revolution of 1848/49 s additional-ly characterised as being both a shabby and mean re-enactment, a parody ofprevious revolutionary dramas : Marx applies the attributes "grofle" ('great")to tragedy and "lumpig" ("squalid") to farce in the first edition (1852) f hissatirical study:

"Hegel remarks somew here that all great [facts] and characters of worldhistory oc cur twice, so to speak. He forgot to add: the first time as [great]tragedy, the second time as [squalid] farce. Caussidiere [for] D anton,Louis Blanc {for] Robespierre, the montagne I...]f 1848-51 for themontagne [. ] of 1.793- " (Marx 2000, ig;my alterations).

As this passage highlights, Marx main tains that t he history of the Europeanrevolutions is characterised by a profound paradigm shift that he expressesin terms of the dramatic genre. The French Revolution (1789-1799) asacted o ut "als groi3c Tragodie", whereas the French bourgeoisie staged therevolution of 1848-185 "ah lumpige Farce" (Marx/Engels 1985, 96). Theheroes of the high revolutionary drama of the French Revolution, "Danton':Robespierre" and the Jacobin montdgne of 1793-1795 eoccur as their ep-igoni, as parodies in the lowly revolutionary play of today: "Caussidiire':"Louis Blanc'', and t he petty radical democra ts and socialists of 1848-5 wh ospuriously adopt the famous name of the former radical revolutionary party.With their revolutionary farce they perform a poor imitation, a travesty, ofthe great revolutionary tragedy.

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From Marx's historical-materialist perspective the crucial difference be-tween 1789-1799 and 1848-1851 consists in the fact the French Revolutiontackled t he socio-political and socio-economic tasks of its time, whereas thebourgeois political revolutions of 1848149 totally failed in this respect. In-stead they merely invoked the heroic ghosts of the past when they anachronis-tically tried to imitate the struggles of past bourgeois revolutions. They solelyimitated the political forms that em ptied out of their social content becamefarcical parodies. Due to the - up to now - epetitive structure of history andthe weight of tradition and events of the past, previous bourgeois revolution-ary movements also resorted to conjuring up "the spirits [Geister] of the past"and to borrowing past "nam es, [battle slogans], costumes", Howcvcr, in sharpcontrast to 1848-1851, from 1789-1.799 the "heroes as well as the particsand masses of the old French Revolution" dialectically recalled the past, asthey enacted "in this time-honoured [disguise] an d with this borrowed lan-guage'; "new sc enes in rvorld history" ( Marx 2000, ig f.). The antique politicalform of the d rama hides a new social content. "Camille Desrnoulins, Danton,Robespierre, Saint-Just,Napoleon - hese heroes of the form er French revolu-tion, as well as the political parties and the masscd crowd alike -" performed".in Roman costumes [the task of their time]" (Marx 2000.20; my alteration).Beneath its anachronistic Roman-Republican disguise, 1789-1799 represent-ed a revolution at the height of its time. It constituted a modern bourgeoissocial revolution that provided the basis for the subsequent rise of bourgeoisieand the victory of industrial capitalism throughout Europe.'Ihus, in contrast to the farce of 1848- j 1, Marx casts the French Revolu-tion as tragedy. Giving birth to the "unheroic" bourgeois society, its protago-nists required "heroism, terror," etc. Ruthless against thei r aristocr atic classenemies, the Jacobins "harrowed up the feudal ground and mowed dow n thefeudal heads sprouting there': while Napoleon through out Europe ruthlesslytransformed feudal economic structures into capitalist ones. It is tmgic sinceit carries a social conflict through to its transformation an d creates a newsocia-economic order. By contrast, t he revolutionary farce neither created anew society, nor anything new in world-historicai terms. Entirely derivative,"the Revolution of 1848 could come up with nothing better than to paro-dy 1789 at one point, the revolutionary [tradi tion] of 1793-95 at another"(Marx 2000,20).However, Marx argues, in a surp rising dialectic twist of his argument, thatthe seemingly worthless revolutionary farce of 1848-1851 did achieve some-thing after all. Viewed as the antithesis to the revolutionary tragedy of 1789to 1788, Marx observes a satirical reflection in the revolutionary farce onthe preceding revolutionary tragedy. In a similar way th e satyr play satirisedthe preceding tragedies in ancient Athens. Analogously, the revolutionary

Social 'I'ragedy and Political Farce 21 3farce, functioning as a parody of the earlier revolutionary tragedy, exposesthe limited natur e of the bourgeois revolution. In its bathos the farce mocksthe pathos of thc tragedy. Taking its revolutionary poetics from the "strictclassical traditions of the Roman republic its gladiators found in the idealsand art forms, the self-deceptions that they needed, in order to hide fromthemselves the constrained, bourgeois character of their struggles, and tokeep themselves emotionally at th e levelof [great] historical tragedy" (Ma rx2000,20f.; my alteration), 'fi e revolutionary farce exposes those anachronis-tic poetics and art forms that the revolutionary tragedy requires in order tosustain the delusion it em ancipated the whole of humanity.In Marx's view only th e proletarian social revolution is capable ofsuc h uni-versal emancipation. In contrast to previous bourgeois revolutions, it mustunburden itself of "[tjradition from all the dead generations [that] weighslike a nightmare o n the brain of the livi~lg'' Marx 20 00,ig). Resurrecting histragic hero, Marx assigns this mo nl~m enta l ask to the proletariat of liberat-ing the entire society not by resorting to any ideals but by confronting mate-rial reality without illusions. 'lhe soberi ng spectacle of the farcical drama ofthe bourgeois political revolution of 1848149 and the cath artic experience ofthe tragic failure of the proletarian social rcvolution do not merely demanda reorientation in te rms of the ideology of revolution. But they also call forconstant rigorous self-critique, "perpetual self-criticism" (Marx zooo, 22).and adaptability of the revo lutionary aims, strategies and tactics in the faceof previous failures and ever changing circumstances.Moreover, the m odern revolution also requires a novel poetics and novelliterary representation, a m odern rhetoric an d a poetic language of revolution,in short a novel "Poesie" of history th at correspon ds with its novel content (cf.MarxJEngels 198j,1 0 1 ) .~Ihus, the proletarian social revolution will reversethe shortcomings that marred previous revolutionary dramas which sawphrases and empt y rhetoric blinding the actors to the limited manifestation ofreal social content. By contrast, t he social content of the mod ern social revolu-tion goes far beyond the rhetoric of political phraseology. Only such a radicaltransformation ofbo th form and content will enable humans to rid themselvesof the repetitive stru cture of history a nd achieve comprehensive liberation:

"The social revolution of the nineteenth ce ntury cannot create its poetry[Poesie] from t he past, but only from t he future. It cannot begin till it has5. Metatextually, Marx tries to write such an avant-ga rde, self-reflexive poctics with his

Eighteentlt Bnimaire. Through his use of simultaneously histrionic and (self)-ironic lan-guage, Marx furthcr attempts to create a new revolutionary "Poesic" (in the sense ofpoetical language) that match es the mod ern revolutionary drama.

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stripped off all superstition from the past. Previous revolutions requiredrecollections of world history in ord cr to d ull thcmselvcs [betauben] totheir own content. The revolution of the nineteent h centu ry must let thcdead bury their dead in order to realise its own content. There phrasetranscended content, here content transcends phrase" (M arx 2000, 22).This process, ~Warx uggests, will also establis h a novel genre of rev oluti onarydrama beyond tragedy and farce. It will be totally different from th e short-lived bourgeois revolutionary spectacles in which "dramatic effects outdoone another" only for 'h lengthy hangover [to grip] society before it soberlyabsorbs the lessons of such Sturm rtnd Drang" ( M a r x 2ooo,22 ). As the lastmetaphor implies, unlike the radical adolescent dramas, which character-ised Germ an literature during this eponym ous period and which vanished asquickly as they had appeared, the mature proletarian revolution will pioneera sustained and lived avant-garde. Such a revolution remains both consciousof the social tragedies that it experiences and uses these setbacks dialecticallyand productively, "until a situation is created which makes impossible anyreversion, and circun~stanceshemsclvcs cry out" (Marx 2ooo,23).

ReferencesBrunkhorst, Hauke (2007): Kommentar, in; Ma rx, Karl(zoo7): Der achtzehn-te Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte, FrankfurtJM.: Suhrkamp, 133-328.Derrida, Jacques (1994): Specters of Marx: ?he State of Debt, the Work olf

Mourning and the New Internatio~al,ransl. by Peggy Kamuf, New York:Routledge.Marx, Karl(2000): f i e Eighteetrtl~Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, transl. by l'er-rell Carver, in: Cowling, MarkIMartin, J ames,eds. (2000): marx xi EighteenijtBrumaire: (Post)modern lnterpretations, London: Pluto Press, 19-1 09.Marx, Karl/Engels, Frederick (1976): Collected Works, vol. 6: 1846-1848,London: Lawrence&Wishart.Marx, KarliEngels, Frederick (1977): Collected Works, vol. 7 : 1848, London:Lawrence & Wishart.Marx, KarlfEngels, Friedrich (1985 ):Gesanltausgabe(MEGA), Erste Abteilung,Werke, Artikel, Entwiirfe, vol. 11:Juli 1851 bis Dezember 1852, Berlin: Dietz.White, Hayden (1973):Metahistory. 7heHistorical Imagination in Nineteenth-Centur y Europe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Williams, Raymond (1966):Modern Tragedy, London: Chatto & Windus.Williams, Raynlond (1986): ?he Sociology of Culture. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Chiistopher HamiltonlO tto Neum aierIGottfriud SchweigertClemens Sednlak (eds.):Awitrg f iqei~ics,Wien -Berlin-Miinster: LI T Vcrlag, 2009: 21 5-231,

THE TRAGEDY OF WORKREFLECTIONS FROM AN HEGELIAN PERSPECTIVE'

Gottfried Schweiger

"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains."(Jean- aques Roussau)

lrttroductionIn this paper I will use a simplified Hegelian concept of tragedy in order tounderstand modern working relations. 'This means to understand them asconflicts of two opposing positions which are equally justified. Employersas well as workers have both justified needs regarding the organisation ofwork, but they tend to collide as they are different in their very nature. In thiscontext, "justified" does not mean that they are nlorally accurate but rathe rthat they con form to t he conditions of capitalistic society and their "relationsof production" (Marx's Produktionsverhiiltnisse). What I try to show then isthat modern working relations can be understood as ongoing struggles forrecognition without the possibility of reconsiliation or sublation (Hegel'sAufiebung). This is especially true in the m oder n context of work, that is, ina context of increasingly flexible and atypical working relations.Due to the lim ited scope of this paper I cannot d o justice to HegelS theoryas well as to the complexity of the problem posed here, but the unan sweredquestions I leave might stimulate furthe r considerations.

An Hegelian concept oftragedyHegel's concept of tragedy is one of the mos t quote d and discussed in the last150 years. He no longer sees tragedy as a conflict between good and evil, butrather as one between two justified but one-s ided positions (cf. Roche 1998,2005).

1.This work was supported by a Fellowshipof the City of Salzburg.