The renaissance of human material

Text Stefan Buchen, journalist, ARD

When public attention is sustained on one issue, there are dangers. This is especially true when that attention is combined with a strong and dominant narrative, as in the case of the war in Ukraine. The Russian attack on Ukraine, which seemed out of time and therefore surprised many, is a political impetus in the West, the seeds of which were planted in today’s generation of politicians as they sat at their desks in social and civics classes. Back then, in the 1970s and 1980s, the shadow of the Slavic world hung over Europe. Freedom and democracy had to be defended—if necessary robustly. The Red Army withdrew from East Germany without firing a shot. But of course people like it when what they learned as a child later proves to be valid.

Freedom and democracy, extended by civilization, law and humanity, must be defended with armed force in Ukraine. That is the dominant impulse in German politics, from Anton Hofreiter to Friedrich Merz. Cautious dissenting voices are drowned out by the thunder of the howitzers delivered to the Donetsk Basin and warning letters to the Chancellor are pushed into the morass by the tracks of the Cheetah tanks rolling east, even if the epistle is signed by well-known names.

The media-compatible smoothness of the aggressor’s face has turned out to be a mask that archaic brutality and cynical calculation had successfully hushed up for too long. Being against Putin, the unmasked, is a common denominator that many can agree on, even if they otherwise follow rather heterogeneous everyday slogans such as “free market economy” and “climate protection.”

Skepticism is ignited by the torrent of flat ideology that accompanies debate and political action. Freedom and democracy must win in the war over Ukraine. This is no longer just a value judgement, but a practical certainty since the Russian advance has been successfully stopped and the battlefield has been limited to the east of the country.

Simply continuing to write with the present in mind has often turned out to be a mistake, especially during the war, when the wagons rolling unhindered through Belgium implied the coming great victories. The dictatorship of the present, a phenomenon accompanying liberal democracy that critical observers recognize as problematic, could now unfold its power in the geopolitical challenge of the Ukraine war.

Political wise guys always knew how to use such situations well to do things for which they would otherwise have been censured internationally. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can now count on his campaign against the Kurdish PKK in northern Iraq not attracting much attention. Exactly on September 12, 2001, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched a multi-week military operation in the West Bank. Despite their real importance, these are literally sideshows. Whether blood is spilled in Yemen or Ethiopia or people die of hunger is of little interest. The central interests of the West are not affected by such fringe events.

A man walks by a destroyed T72 tank in the ruins of central Mariupol.

In literary exaggeration, Erich Kästner showed that world attention has its blind spots, especially in times of crisis. In his novel “Fabian” from 1931, a Berlin newspaper editor had to quickly fill a white column with a short message. He simply made it up: “In Calcutta, street fighting took place between Moslems and Hindus. There were 14 dead and 22 injured, although the police soon got the situation under control. Calm has been fully restored.” The objection of a volunteer that there were no riots in Calcutta was answered by the editor in Kästner’s book: “Do you want to prove that to me first? There are always riots in Calcutta.”

But that’s beside the point. Central are the weaknesses of the dominant narrative used to portray the main theme, the war in Ukraine. The struggle for freedom and democracy emphasizes an idealistic motif rich in subjectivity. One fact is in danger of being lost in the sea of solidarity with Ukraine. Between the Donets and the Dnepr there is not only one empire that started the war, the Russian one, but also a second one that wants to defeat the aggressor, the American one. President Joe Biden wants to restore the global standing and power of the United States after the Afghanistan debacle. He dug out the classic textbooks on interventionist foreign and military policy, blew away the dust of the Trump years and, as the supreme coach, drilled the content into his staff. Biden has the Chinese rise in mind more than anything else. The current competition between imperial powers is reminiscent of the situation before World War I, which was characterized by a series of smaller wars, for example in the Balkans.

Biden has sent his Secretary of Defense Lloyd James Austin to the US airbase in Ramstein, Germany, to summon his European counterparts. In this gathering in the field, far away from the capitals’ diplomatic parquet floor, where Austin set the western course of action in Ukraine, there is a message. The US sees Europe as a military marching ground that could turn into a major battlefield at any time. Much will depend on whether or not China ultimately takes the same stance on Russia as the Wilhelmine Empire did on Habsburg in 1914. In any case, objectively more will depend on that than on the weight of the weapons that Germany is delivering to Ukraine today.

A broken mannequin seen in the debris caused by Russian shelling in Kharkiv. War I, which was characterized by a series of smaller wars, forexample in the Balkans.

Strengthening Europe’s defense capacity and building up an independent, credible armed force has been discussed for a long time. Words have lingered as political rifts deepened within the Union. The nuclear power Great Britain has left, Poland and Hungary are openly challenging democratic principles such as the separation of powers. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which came as a surprise to Germany in particular, burst into this situation. In Berlin, there is a “chicken coop problem in foreign policy,” as an experienced retired politician put it in a confidential conversation. The West’s route is set by the Biden administration. Your closest partners in Europe are the Eastern European EU members apart from Hungary and, of course, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi.

The rough front lines divide the world into good and evil. The antagonism could make one forget something very important, the unity of the epoch. Vladimir Putin can be credited with breathing new life into a concept that seemed to belong to a bygone era: human material. It was not without reason that the “language-critical action,” which is a genuinely German organization, declared it the “most ugly word of the 20th century.” Since the massacres of Mariupol, Chernihiv and Bucha and since our contemporary dictator Putin proved that he can send tens of thousands of young soldiers to their deaths without having to fear a revolt, the term has become terribly topical.

Karl Marx coined the term human material as an ironic commentary on the social self-confidence of the property-owning, exploiting class. The German warlords and heads of concentration camps of the 20th century objectified the term, stripping it of all irony. Putin doesn’t even put it in his mouth, lets the revived concept of human material speak alone and through his actions, post-cynically, you could say.

Democracy has set itself the task of protecting the freedom, dignity and autonomy of the individual.

Democracy has set itself the task of protecting the freedom, dignity and autonomy of the individual. And of course everyone who is outraged because Putin is trampling on these rights and the actual right to life is right. The renaissance of human material is the horrible harvest of the Ukraine war.

And yet it would be wrong to attribute the trend solely to the Russian Empire. Whether human freedom and autonomy actually thrive in existing democracies must be questioned. The human material can also be reincarnated in variant guises, as a mega traffic jam on a freeway, as a crowd on a cruise ship, as a target group and consumer of superfluous goods and services, as exploited factory workers, seamstresses, and perhaps as well-equipped and combat-ready soldiers after the turn of eras again also here among us.

Whether the free and enlightened human being is able to fulfill his responsibility to preserve the natural foundations of his own existence is something that some commentators have seen as the key question of the 21st century. Now the challenge is being radically reformulated. It is about the conflict between the political systems, between democracies and autocracies. It sounds a bit like a collective escape. As if one did not trust oneself to pass the actual test from the outset. It seems more appealing to regress and run into the ground as human material. It’s like suicide for fear of death. The unifying element of the epoch lies in this general trend, across all systems and trenches.