to believe:Imakeadifference.Without me thingsdon’twork out.Ihave to be
part of this.Victory is mine.”³¹
Notwithstanding the existenceofauniquelyGerman culture of sentimental-
ity and self-sacrifice, the actual transformation of the workingclass into an emo-
tional communityrarelyfollowed the proposals laid out by SPD politicians or
leftwing intellectuals and encountered its most stubborn obstacles in the form
of privatelife and individual desire. One of the first to acknowledge this non-
identity of collective and individual subjectivity wasKarl Renner(1870–1950),
the father ofAustrianSocial Democracy and first chancellor of the Republic of
Austria afterWorldWarI.“The worker is aboveall asocial being,aman of
his class,”he agreed,“Nonetheless,henever ceases to beaprivatebeing.Too
often, it is overlooked thatacrowdcannot constantlyand without pause be
held under the pressureofclass ideology. Every worker demands the right and
the possibility to feel, at least occasionally, as if he isaprivatebeing.”³²
Unwilling to address the unresolvedquestion of the individual in modernso-
cieties, whether capitalist or socialist,Weimar-era Social Democrats eventually
jettisonedthe emotional and aesthetic baggageofnineteenth-century socialism,
includingits cult of male sentimentality,and either focused on organizational,
tactical questions related to party politics or retreated to thevery different emo-
tional world created by the cultural socialists through their cult of community.In
unexpected ways,eventhe leftwingintellectuals associated with the newly
foundedFrankfurt-based Institute for Social Research remained highlyambiva-
lent about therole of political emotions, and that despite their short-lived theo-
retical romancewith messianism and insurrectionism. Demonstrating the useful-
ness of emotions asacategory of distinction, the philosopher Ernst Bloch
perceptively identifiedtwo variants within Marxism,acold andawarm stream,
and madeacompellingargument forasuccessful socialist praxisbased onrev-
olutionary passions and sustainedbyaMarxist metaphysicsnot hostiletoreli-
gious traditions.³³But even thosearguing in favorofemotions asaproductive
forceinemancipatory politics could be quite dismissive when it came to the
wrongemotions. Thus in his evocative reflections on the concept of history,Wal-
ter Benjamin usedhis palpable contempt for Social Democratsand brief infatu-
ation with the Communiststoconclude that,“Social Democracy soughttoassign
Clara Zetkin,“DerKampfgegenden Faschismus”(1923), reprinted inAusgewählte Reden und
Schriften,2vols. (Berlin: Dietz, 1960), 2:724and 728.
Karl Renner,Wasist Klassenkampf?(Berlin:Vorwärts,1919),9.
Ernst Bloch,ThePrinciple of Hope,trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice,and Paul Knight,2
vols. (Cambridge,MA: MITPress,1995),1:205.
Emotional Socialism and Sentimental Masculinity 79