responses from the orthodoxleft established the pattern earlyon, with Gertrud
Alexander,inher review ofTheConquest of the Machines,confessing toyetan-
other disappointment in her ongoing quest for the great proletarian novel. By re-
jecting individualization asafeature of bourgeois literature, she complained,
Jung ends up showing political struggles without the individuals that make
them possible. Instead of engaginghis readers emotionally, Jung confronts
them with chillydetachment and dry factuality;hence Alexander’sconclusion:
“This coolness will be incomprehensibleto arevolutionary worker.”¹⁴Afew crit-
ics welcomed the honesty with which theauthor posed the all-important ques-
tion“Well then, what should we do?”and laid out modest proposals for provi-
sional“attempts atarevolutionary life.”¹⁵The shadows of left communism
continued to haunt the negative reception ofJung well into the 1970s, withWalter
Fähnders and Martin Rector taking issue with his actionism and utopianism. De-
picting the worker not as the subjectbut the object of history,TheConquest of the
Machinesin their view amounted to little more than a“compendium of left-com-
munist theory”and achievednothing but“the self-annulment of the aesthetic
project.”¹⁶
All these complaints are responses to the provocative gesture of refusal per-
formedin, and by,the text itself: refusal of psychologicallydeveloped characters
and, with it,ofinteriority,immersion, and identification. In their place, the novel
introduces social types with personal choices but without individual agency,
with even the staterepresentativesappearing as mere functionarieswithin a
largersystem. Moreover,the absence of revolutionary romanticism deprives
the reader of anycompensatory fantasiesorsurrogateidentities, includingthe
homosocial scenarios found in almostall novels by the BPRS writers.Without
recoursetothe dangerous sexual attractionsand pathos-laden speeches offered
up by fellow communists from GrünbergtoLask,Jung is able to concentrate on
the formal elements and techniques that best establish the conditionsfor radical
change; this includesareconsideration of therelationship betweenauthors and
readers and between literature and politics. That his call for turning art into a
weapon can be taken quite literallyisconfirmed byJohn Heartfield’scover de-
sign for the Malik edition ofTheConquest of the Machines(see figure10.1).
Gertrud Alexander,1923review ofDie Eroberung derMaschinen,rpt.inVom“Trottelbuch”
zum“Torpedokäfer.”FranzJung in der Literaturkritik 1912–1963,ed. Walter Fähnders and An-
dreas Hansen (Bielefeld: Aisthesis,2003), 126.
Anon.“Wassoll der Proletarier lesen?Franz Jung,”Die RoteFahne,23July1922.
Walter Fähnders and Martin Rector,Linksradikalismus und Literatur.Untersuchungen zur Ge-
schichte der sozialistischen Literatur in derWeimarer Republik,2vols. (Reinbek: Rowohlt,1974),
1:218.
The RevolutionaryFantasyRevisited 199