History Re-Read

Futurism fuelled Italian Fascism, aesthetically; its Russian variant inspired a worker’s revolution and then ameliorated the early years of communism for an erstwhile bourgeois class that then had to behave itself in keeping with proletarian principles.

In addition to the analysis, there is the Manifesto related in full, the preface to a Russian volume of prose and poetry, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, which stands as something of a manifesto for the Russian Futurists. Then there is the Italian Fascist Co-authored by the writer of the Futurist Manifesto, F T Marinetti.

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Mussolini had been in peacetime editor of Avanti, the main social newspaper. He was now owner of what was to be the essential organ of the Fascist movement in Italy from 1914. This was ‘The People of Italy.’ Here, the Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle or simply the Fascist Manifesto was first published on June 6, 1919.

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Futurism for Marinetti was about capturing the movement of the machine in art, at immeasurable, still more, unimaginable levels of speed prior to the industrial revolution. The motor car exemplified this. Futurism was about both the violence implicit in the impact of industrialization on society as well as the manner of man needed to operate its machinery, and, for Marinetti, the welcome danger of speed for man by means of the machine as automobile.

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Where Italian Futurism exulted the machine, Russian Futurism was more about the folk traditions of the country. Despite the Russian Futurist expressing no interest in paying homage to their Italian forerunners, the movement in both these countries had much in common. Chiefly, a call for a complete break from the past, with the great Renaissance painters like Leonardo and Raphael being ditched alongside writers of international renown, like Pushkin, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

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it could be argued thatprior to 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was a failed writer, and that the Futurist Manifesto was something of a publicity stunt. He had had little success with a drama for the stage performed in Paris the same year the Manifesto appeared, and similarly disappointed with an attempt at writing a novel a year later.

He later enjoyed considerably more success with Zang Tumb Tumb, as a self-promoting Futurist. This is a sound poem based on his experience of reporting on the Italo-Turkish war for the French newspaper, Figaro. The onomatopoeic and alliterative elements of this work is somewhat evident in the way his driving into a ditch in described in the manifesto.

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Futurism fuelled Italian Fascism, aesthetically; its Russian variant inspired a worker’s revolution and then ameliorated the early years of communism for an erstwhile bourgeois class that then had to behave itself in keeping with proletarian principles.

Today, Futurism has become part of the consumerist landscape.

Modern smartphone cameras have all manner of devices to recreate the iconography of movement established by Futurist artists like Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni. Moreover, the concept-based multimedia nature of art in the 21st century is evident in art installations rather than room on room hangings of traditional painterly works of art. While this remains part of the movement’s legacy in promotional terms, it acknowledges little of Futurism’s attachment to man and machine in Italy or the folkloric tradition in Russia.

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The claim that Capitalism is subject to periodic crises, with each in turn making life worse for the proletariat, has been central to Marxist thought since 1848, when the manifesto was published more or less at the same time in French, German and English.

The document, itself, reads like a work of Victorian fiction. In English, the modern reader is reminded stylistically of the great European romantic writers, Hugo and Dumas, in original translation, which tends to somewhat obscure the authors’ intentions. This irony, no doubt, would be lost on communist radicals today, when we remember that Marx if not Engels despised both these 19th century French writers.

The analysis looks at the communist position in connection with the recent democratic elections in Germany; excerpts have been taken from the first three chapters of Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto. The very short fourth chapter is a call to arms based on what was posited in the second.

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Here, Marx and Engels, discuss three kinds of socialism: Feudal Socialism, Petty-Bourgeois Socialism, and German or "True," Socialism. They talk about each as a stepping-stone to Communism. Each a penultimate stage in the march of history. The literature and no less the readership relating to each is critiqued with contempt. Especially the German ‘philistine’ petty-bourgeoisie:

“To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.”

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Here Marx and Engels state their case for the Communist movement as being in the vanguard or all other workers’ movements. Through the manifesto’s stated tenets, Communism is given a doctrinal importance, with the implication that dissent from other proletarians is as much a threat to the movement as resistance from the bourgeoisie.

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The long history of class struggle is explained in beautiful English, full of Latinate syntax. Marx and Engels then go on in the same rhetorical vein, evocative of Cicero, no less, to describe the way capital in relation to manufacturing has reduced artisanal skills to mere labour, to be bought and sold as any other commodity.

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