Intellectuals and Class Struggle

Intellectuals and Class Struggle appears untitled among a number of fragments, notes, and shorter essays published by Werner Hecht in the collected works (Gesammelte Werke, XX, 51-3) as Brecht's Marxist Studies. In some cases they represent the prolegomena to later works. In other instances they are dialectical finger exercises in which Brecht is playing critically and self-critically with ideas and possibilities. following piece was probably written shortly after he began his study of Marx in 1926 and is one of a number of these early short essays in which he explores the role of intellectuals in making the revolution. notion of the commodity character of intellect clearly anticipates his own later work The Three Penny Trial (1931) as well as Walter Benjamin's The Author as Producer. In 1934, Benjamin quoted Brecht's comment on writers of the upper bourgeoisie, among whom Benjamin numbered himself For such a writer, there definitely exists a point of solidarity with the interests of the proletariat: it is the point at which he can develop his own means of production. -D.B

Class (philosophy) · Epistemology · Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation

• Class, Nation, and Capitalist Globalization

  Open Access•Wade Matthews•International Review of Social…•2008

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