Critical Reading of Alberto Toscano’s “Destructive Creation”

In “Destructive Creation”, Toscano unravels the ideology behind Marxism as expressed through politically informed art, and uses three principles of Dziga Vertov (or Denis Kaufman, 1896-1954) as examples of artistic practice to rationalize the basic principles of the political movement. There are two intermittent themes: ‘truth’ with regards to perception of the individual (sensed); and scientifically proven ‘truth’ in terms of a doctrine, developed from philosophy. This yearning of science from ideology, also accounts for the communist admiration for ‘the machine’, expressed in “Vertov’s tragically enthusiastic machinic communism”[1] .

The Heglian concept of an ideal society involves the liberation of ‘alienated’ lives. Marx took Hegel’s basic principles, and applied them to an industrial society, which had caused the fall of feudal society, and the widening gap between the bourgeois and proletariat.
Toscano directs us to four doctrinal definitions of communism, yet seems to gravitate to the “emancipation of human [and inhuman] sensation”[2] for the majority of the reading.
Since Russia’s religious alienation from Europe in both 1054 (Christian Church split) and 1453 (fall of Byzantium to Turkish Empire, and renamed Constantinople), it has been a country that has known the sensation of isolation with no outside authority. With the basic definition of a state that is in control of its own production, sensing how much was needed by the country is essential for a successful communist state, and accordingly much of Marx’s writing is based on man’s ability to sense and produce as a collective.

Malevich was head of the Institute of Artistic Culture investigating art as a psychological phenomenon, and concluded that “the new world of the masses needs constructivism because it needs fundamentals that are without deceit”[3]. Toscano notes that the constructivists used “the economy as in a sense the subject and object of art”[4] for their inspiration, but I find it more important to observe the similarities of the Constructivists concern for truth that is found in the writings of Marx, in Vertov’s films and the principles of structuralism that Marcuse devised. Though Vertov and Malevich both began used proletarian culture as a means to define their art, their later explorations / experiments are informed by an extension of those principles that detach themselves from the economy. Their autonomous art-forms were both superseded with the new regime of Trotsky, who enforced ‘Soviet-realism’ stating that “the revolution cannot live together with mysticism.”[5]

However, Toscano takes these axioms to relate them to both the economy and collective sensation through the concept of property. Comparing capitalism (that utilizes man as a productive commodity), communism regards man as the ‘social individual’ instead. An object (such as sensuous, tactile property or one made by labour) is the key to understanding Toscano’s view of Marxism, because it is portrayed as an ‘interface’ in that man can both sense it, (socially / collectively), and create it.
Capitalism actually uses alienation as an “anesthesia of man’s most intimate creative [objectifying] capacities”[6] , so that the product of labour is an object of estrangement itself. Here we see the basis for the concept of communal property and collective organs of sensation. This relates to the author’s ‘emancipation of human (and inhuman) sensation’ as we find the objectifying abilities of mankind numbed by the economy through alienation in a non-communist society. This is principally because capitalism is founded on private property, and Marxism perceives it as the way that “man can treat himself...as an object”[7].
Thus, without property, (or at least with communal land collectively sensed), man is “no longer stifled by the sovereignty of the “sense of having’”[8] . Toscano then mentions that pain and suffering are necessary to be sensed, in order to attain ‘passion’, which is “man’s essential power vigorously striving to attain it’s object”[9] . This seemingly unending quest appears similar to Vertov’s “march toward October”[10] ; an endless asymptotic direction hinting at constant revolution.

The communist concern for industry and respect for the machine is well documented and expressed by both critics, followers and artists of communism. Bertrand Russell, though a critic, agreed with Marx, that humanity could advance from mere ideology to pure science once the ideological character of the history of philosophy was exposed. He also expressed his belief that the political movement was a reaction to it’s context:
“Philosophy since Descartes...tends to embody the prejudices of the commercial middle class...[just] as Marxism and fascism are philosophies appropriate to the modern industrial state.”[11]
Vertov attempted to demonstrate through his films, eschewing beauty and acting, that they were revolutionary because they were based on attacking the “art’s tower of Babel”[12] (also known as the ‘Institutional Mode of Representation”). Despite Toscano’s attempt to exhibit a “glimpse [of] how communism could be...counter-effectuated”[13] I remain unconvinced that it could be. This is because the world is no longer industrially celebrating and expanding in the same pattern, and members of the regime would be aware of the illusion of constant revolution from outside sources via the internet; particularly so if a reactivated communist society attempted to evolve their ideology to science utilizing art-forms such as film media.

[1] Watson, Grant; van Noord, Gerrie; Everall, Gavin; “Make everything new : a project on communism”, London: Book Works, 2006: Toscano, Alberto “Destructive Creation”, p 127
[2] Ibid, 119
[3] Molholy-Nagy, Lazlo: “Construction of the Proletariat” MA: May 1922
[4] Watson, Grant; van Noord, Gerrie; Everall, Gavin; “Make everything new : a project on communism”, London: Book Works, 2006: Toscano, Alberto: “Destructive Creation”, p 126
[5] Trotsky, Leon: “Literature and Revolution”, New York: Russell and Russell, 1957, p 220
[6] Watson, Grant; van Noord, Gerrie; Everall, Gavin; “Make everything new : a project on communism”, London: Book Works, 2006: Toscano, Alberto “Destructive Creation”, p 127
[7] Ibid, p 121
[8] Marx, Karl: “Early writings” (trans. R. Livingstone and G. Benton), London: Penguin, 1975, p 352
[9] Ibid, p 390
[10] Zorkaya, Neya “Illustrated History of Soviet Cinema”, Sankt-Peterburg: Aleteĭi︠a︡, 2005, p 138
[11] Monk, Ray; Palmer, Anthony, “Bertrand Russell and the Origins of Analytical Philosophy”, Bristol : Thoemmes Press, 1996, p 751
[12] Interview with Dziga Vertov, “On ‘Kino-Pravda’”. 1924
[13] Watson, Grant; van Noord, Gerrie; Everall, Gavin; “Make everything new : a project on communism”, London: Book Works, 2006: Toscano, Alberto “Destructive Creation”, p 127