Benjamin avoided Marxism postwar partly due to its expressionist aesthetic

Evidence

One possible reason for Benjamin’s distance from Marxism directly after the war was that it was often connected with an expressionist aesthetic, which he strongly disliked. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1473

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Benjamin located commodity fetishism in collective consciousness, contradicting Marxism — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 241; Adorno judged Benjamin’s Marxism an unwitting productive misreading, not orthodoxy — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 297; Elite avant-garde rejection of liberal hypocrisy enabled attraction to totalitarian movements

Broader Connections

• Benjamin located commodity fetishism in collective consciousness, contradicting Marxism #complicates (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 241
• Elite avant-garde rejection of liberal hypocrisy enabled attraction to totalitarian movements #expands (0.72)
• Adorno judged Benjamin’s Marxism an unwitting productive misreading, not orthodoxy #responds-to (0.70) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 297