Furthermore, as Tafuri points out, the intervention model of the Siedlungenformed
part of a broad anti-urban ideology that was rooted in a hostility toward the big city:
“But the settlement itself openly set the model of ‘town’ against that of the large city.
This was Tönnies against Simmel and Weber.”^161
In choosing this approach, Tafuri argues, these architects were opting for a
fragmented and static organization of the city. This was the immediate reason for the
limited success of this strategy: the modern city that is the product of capitalism
does not permit any permanent balance; its internal dynamic undermines every at-
tempt to impose a balance of this sort. The longing for a Gemeinschaft (community)
as Tönnies had formulated it was continually forced to make way for the ever-
encroaching reality of the Gesellschaft(society), and so the attempts of the New Ob-
jectivity to create a rational organization were doomed to failure: “Improbability,
multifunctionality, multiplicity, and lack of organic structure—in short, all the contra-
dictory aspects assumed by the modern metropolis—are thus seen to have re-
mained outside the attempts at a rationalization pursued by central European
architecture.”^162
Tafuri’s set of hypotheses betrays the unmistakable imprint of Walter Ben-
jamin—at least of the Benjamin who wrote the work of art essay and “The Author as
Producer.” While Benjamin analyzes the work of Baudelaire as the product of an in-
teriorizing of the shock experience that is typical of modernity, Tafuri applies the
same notion to the whole of the avant-garde and to different currents in modern ar-
chitecture. The pivotal notion here is the idea that the principles that prevailed in the
avant-garde movements—the destruction of values, the pursuit of the new, the
quest for Form, the extolling of Chaos—are the same as those that underlie capital-
ist civilization. Tafuri shares this idea with other authors who were influenced by
Marxism, such as Benjamin, Bloch, and Adorno. The problem is that they all draw dif-
ferent conclusions from this fundamental notion. Benjamin, for instance, continued
to cherish the hope that an action of radicalizing capitalist rationalization might at a
certain point bring about a transformation that would inaugurate a new form of soci-
ety. For Bloch, on the other hand, the inner relationship that he perceived between
the New Objectivity and capitalism was proof that modern architecture was inca-
pable of designing a new society (he did not, however, include the whole avant-garde
movement in this diagnosis). Adorno—as I will show later—sees this relationship as
indispensable for developing an artistic practice that contains a genuine critique of
the social system, while at the same time it has the effect of making this very critique
marginal and inefficacious. The striking feature of Tafuri’s analysis is that, unlike
these other authors, he does not allow any margin for critical possibilities or for the
hope of alternatives. Tafuri’s critique of ideologies reveals everyartistic and theoret-
ical development—apparently without exception—as operating within the logic of
the capitalist system and as being “historically necessary” to it. Tafuri attributes a
monolithic character to this system that seems to be ineluctable.
3
Reflections in a Mirror