Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Löwy, Michael

Titel

The revolution is the emergency brake: Walter Benjamin's political-ecological currency

Ist Teil von

• The Revolution is the Emergency Break, 2024, Vol.1, p.79-84

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Walter Benjamin was one of the few Marxists in the years before 1945 to propose a radical critique of the concept of "exploitation of nature" and of civilization's "murderous" relationship with nature. In the theses "On the Concept of History", he makes frequent reference to Marx, but at one important point adopts a critical distance from the author of Capital: "Marx said that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps things are very different. It may be that revolutions are the act by which the human race travelling in the train applies the emergency brake". The image suggests that if humanity allows the train to follow its course, already laid down by the steel structure of the rails, and nothing stops its vertiginous career, we shall be hurled into catastrophe.