Philosophical analysis of Walter Benjamin on progress and social democracy

An analysis of Walter Benjamin’s preparatory notes for his ‘Book of Passages’ examines his critique of the concepts of decadence and progress. Benjamin argued that the bourgeois conception of progress lost its critical function as a measure of historical change, instead becoming a way to measure the distance between legendary historical origins and ends.

In his ‘Theses on History,’ Benjamin linked the rise of fascism to the ‘blind faith’ of social democratic politicians in the concept of progress and their integration into uncontrollable political apparatuses. He suggested that social democracy’s focus on technical progress and the mastery of nature often ignored social regression and the exploitation of the working class, a tendency he noted foreshadowed technocratic features found in fascism.