Benjamin rejected the autonomy of intellectuals, siding with the proletariat over Geist.

Evidence

Brecht had been disappointed in 1931 with the film version of the Dreigroschenoper. From this experience, he argued that intellectuals had themselves been proletarianized, a theme that Benjamin picked up in “Der Autor als Produzent,” written in 1934 and published in his Versuche uber Brecht. Here Benjamin attacked as reactionary the notion of an independent intellectual Logokratie, of the type proposed by Kurt Hiller and the Activists. By implication, Benjamin also questioned the tendency in Adorno’s aesthetics to oppose avant-garde art to the popular culture of the working class. “The revolutionary struggle,” he wrote at the end of the essay, “occurs not between capitalism and Geist [which was the key word of the Activists), but between capitalism and the proletariat” (Versuche fiber Brecht, p. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1514

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Benjamin’s later contradiction with Adorno over mass culture versus the auratic work of art, a debate that recurs in critical theory history. — connects to: Adorno rejected both Hegelian absolute spirit and Lukácsian proletarian totality grasp. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 183; Marx’s choice of the proletariat was disguised faith in philosophy. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 77; Benjamin refused esoteric development out of solidarity with shared political experience — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 888

Broader Connections

• Marx’s choice of the proletariat was disguised faith in philosophy. #expands (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 77
• Adorno rejected both Hegelian absolute spirit and Lukácsian proletarian totality grasp. #complicates (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 183