Einleitung zu Arnold Schoenbergs Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene

Capitalism is bad. Fascism is bad. There is a connection between the two, so that makes it worse. That's all I managed to get from this rather flaccid exercise in political polemic. There are some legitimate questions raised, but the time for this sort of inquiry has long since passed. For fans of Straub-Huillet in didactic mode only.

Brecht is no doubt right to insist that critique of fascism requires a critique of capitalism as that which begets it, but there is something irksome about making this the counter to Schönberg's scathing, despairing criticism of Kandinsky's anti-Semitism: it may be that critique of capitalism is itself a necessary but not sufficient condition, and that other factors, some more profound and deeply embedded, are equally significant. In short, perhaps this exposes the limits of Straub's Marxism.