cult,but it can be taken. The party lives, the workingclass lives, we will win!Today, tomor-
row [...]They live and they will win! Andyoulive, will live,will survive,will be with us!
Holdyour head high!²Athird type of communist mourning work, beyond the divinevoice from above
inLeuna1921and the interior monologue inMarch Storms,can be found in
AlexanderAbusch’sshort storyKampf vor denFabriken(1926,The Fight in
Front of theFactories). Here the coldrationality of communist vanguardism pro-
vides the required emotional scaffolding.Abusch (1902–1982),aKPD (and later
SED) politician and editor ofDie RoteFahnefrom 1930 to 1932, introducesaskil-
led agitator to put the workers’sense of defeat into historical perspective.His ar-
guments are based on the samebelief in the inevitability of historical progress
that animates the other two works,but he no longer needsto aestheticize suffer-
ingto make his point.Reinvigorated by the irrefutable logic of dialectical mate-
rialism,Abusch’sworkers simply leave the meeting softlywhistling“The Interna-
tionale,”mindful of the agitator’sfinal words:
If we weresostrongalreadythat we would no longer have to enduredefeats,wecould have
the victorious takeover of power alreadytoday. It is essential that in every part of the strug-
gle we makeour male and femalecolleaguesawarethat the safeguardingoftheir basic liv-
ing conditions isaquestion of power, that is, of ownership of the factories and political
power in the hands of theworkers.³The 1921 MarchAction offered communist writersasecond opportunitytoreturn
to the main questions asked afterthe 1920 Ruhr Uprising:how to maintain the
revolutionary fantasy,how to deal with feelingsofresignation, how not to suc-
cumb to an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, and how to make sense of
these emotions within the largernarratives of classstruggle? Once again it fell
to writers associated with the KPD and BPRS to provide dreams ofrevolution
in which the workingclasscould continue to playits designated role as the
class for itself and in itself.Furthermore, such fictionalization depended on
the projection of individual needs and desires onto the figure of the sexualized
woman and the aestheticization of violence in the spectacle of the all-male col-
lective.Onlyone writer,Franz Jung (1888–1963), inDie Eroberungder Maschinen
(1923,The Conquest of the Machines), rejected theavailablegenderedtropes and
the emotional regimes established in their name.Known for his complicated re-
lationship with communism and his interest in modernism asadistinct technol-
OttoGotsche,Märzstürme(Berlin: Dietz, 1954),166–167.
AlexanderAbusch,DerKampf vor denFabriken(Berlin: InternationaleVerlags-Anstalt, 1926),
72.
194 Chapter 10