ogyofemotions, he consciouslyused the perspective of the workingclass to
challengebasicassumptions about the power of identifications and to enlist de-
cidedlymodernist strategies inaconception of collective agency beyond the psy-
chologyofsufferingand compassion. Introducing perspectivestobedeveloped
further in chapters 11 and17,modernist self-reflection not onlyaffordedJung a
wayout of emotional patterns that until that point had defined the revolutionary
fantasy ingenderedterms,but it also released the proletarian dream from the
discourses of masculinity that,time and again, reinscribed its normative effects
into the narrativesofclass struggle. With these qualities,Jung’swork belongsto
the largerproject of proletarian modernism, identified in this studywith Franz
Wilhelm Seiwert,John Heartfield, Hanns Eisler,and BertoltBrecht,and distin-
guishedfrom other modernisms through its open identificationwith the working
class, its close connectionto communism, its activist and collectivist approach to
culture, and its multimedia practices and international(ist) connections.
In retrospect,the MarchAction can onlybedescribed asasuccession of al-
most tragi-comical events, ill conceivedand badlyexecuted, and with cata-
strophic consequences.“Thegunbringsthe decision,”wroteBélaKunon17
March 1921 inDie RoteFahne,demanding that workers arm themselvesinprep-
aration foramass uprising in the heavilyindustrialized area around Mansfeld,
Halle, Merseburg, and Bitterfeld.⁴TheHungarian representative of the Comin-
tern arrivedatthis center ofminingand chemical industries to monitor the
VKPD’s(i.e., the laterKPD’s) implementation of the new“theory of the offen-
sive,”which meant creatingarevolutionary situation through insurrectionist ac-
tions.⁵Meanwhile, the“communist bandit”Max Hoelz cameto Mansfeld Land to
organize armed groups of workers just as he had previouslydoneduring the
Kapp Putsch.Around the same time, the left-communist KAPD(Communist
Workers Party of Germany)dispatchedFranzJung fromBerlinto takeadvantage
of what turned out to beyetanother failed revolutionary situation.Amonth
later,inmid-April, Hoelz was arrested in the capital, and, by mid-May, Jung
found himself inaDutch prison.⁶In fact,itwas in Breda wherehewroteThe
Conquest of the Machines,anovel haunted by the MarchAction and,for thatrea-
BélaKun, quoted inSigridKoch-Baumgarten,Aufstand derAvantgarde. DieMärzaktion der
KPD1921(Frankfurt am Main: Campus,1986), 154.
VereinigteKommunistische ParteiDeutschlands (VKPD) was the name of the KPD between
1920 and 1922 followingthe mergerwith theUSPD.
FranzJung,“Für MaxHoelz,”Feinde ringsum. Prosaund Aufsätze 1912 bis 1963.Werke 1/ Erster
Halbband(Hamburg: Edition Nautilus,1981),252. The controversial Max Hoelz inspired the
DEFAfilmMaxWolz—Leben undVerklärung eines deutschen Anarchisten(1974)directed by Günt-
er Reisch and GüntherRücker.
TheRevolutionaryFantasy Revisited 195