Vulgar, Crude, Foolish: Brecht, Teaching, Fascism

This essay examines some senses in which we might think of Brecht’s Marxism as vulgar, placing particular emphasis on his interest in the vulgar as vulgate: the teaching of practical knowledge in the common tongue. The essay then contrasts Brecht’s vulgar Marxism with his concept of crude thinking, arguing against Walter Benjamin’s influential interpretation of the concept to claim instead that if we examine how Brecht presents crude thinking in his 1934 Threepenny Novel, we see that for him, crude thinking is not something to be emulated and learned; it is ultimately fascist thinking. Yet precisely because it is an anomalous moment in his work, diametrically opposed to his vulgar Marxism, crude thinking also gives a glimpse of a different Brecht who would have recognized how European fascism has recapitulated European colonialism and reckoned more adequately with the psycho-political mechanisms and force of racialized identification and projection.