From the second version of the essay [in Walter Benjamin's Gesammelte Schriften VII.1 p376 - p377]:
"In der Repräsentation des Menschen durch die Apparatur hat dessen Selbstentfremdung, eine höchst produktive Verwertung erfahren. Diese Verwertung kann man daran ermessen, daß das Befremden des Darstellers vor der Apparatur, wie Pirandello es schildert, von Hause aus von der gleichen Art ist, wie das Befremden des Menschen vor seiner Erscheinung im Spiegel, bei der die Romantiker zu verweilen liebten. Nun aber ist dieses Spiegelbild von ihm ablösbar, es ist transportabel geworden. Und wohin wird es transportiert? Vor die Masse. Das Bewußtsein davon verläßt den Filmdarsteller natürlich nicht einen Augenblick. Er weiß, während er vor der Apparatur steht, hat er es in letzter Instanz mit der Masse zu tun. Diese Masse ist's, die ihn kontrollieren wird. Und gerade sie ist nicht sichtbar, noch nicht vorhanden, während er die Kunstleistung absolviert, die sie kontrollieren wird. Die Authorität dieser Kontrolle wird durch jener Unsichtbarkeit gesteigert. Freilich darf nicht vergessen werden, daß die politische Auswertung dieser Kontrolle so lange auf sich warten lassen, bis sich der Film aus den Fesseln seiner kapitalistischen Ausbeutung befreit haben wird. Denn durch das Filmkapital werden die revolutionären Chancen dieser Kontrolle in gegenrevolutionäre verwandelt. Der von ihm geförderte Starkultus konserviert nicht allein jenen Zauber der Persönlichkeit, welcher schon längst im fauligen Schimmer ihres Warencharakters besteht, sondern sein Komplement, der Kultus des Publikums, befördert zugleich die korrupte Verfassung der Masse, die der Faschismus an die Stelle ihrer klassenbewußten zu setzen sucht."

TRANSLATION:
"The person's self alienation finds a highly productive utilization in representation by the apparatus. This utilization can be measured by the fact that the estrangement of the performer in front of the apparatus, as Pirandello presents it, is identical to the estrangement of a person in front of his appearance in the mirror, a thought on which the Romantics loved to dwell. But now this mirror image is detachable, and has become portable. And where is it transported? In front of the masses. Not for one moment, of course, does the performer cease to be conscious of this fact. He knows that while he stands in front of the apparatus, he is dealing, in the last instance, with the masses. It is this mass who will inspect him. And at that moment when he is completing the art performance that it will inspect, the mass is not visible, not yet extant. The authority of the inspection is increased by its invisibility. Of course, it must not be forgotten that the political analysis of this inspection will not manifest itself until film has liberated itself from the fetters of capitalist exploitation. For, via film capital, the revolutionary impulses of this inspection are converted into counter revolutionary ones. The star cult that it promotes conserves not only that magic of personality which for a long time has consisted of the rotten gleam of its commodity character, but also its complement, the cult of the public, promotes, at the same time, a corrupt version of the mass, which fascism seeks to substitute for the class conscious one."

COMMENTS:
This passage does not appear in the third version of Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, though some of the words and ideas are carried over. Also missing from the third version is a lengthy footnote that was appended to the last sentence. Adorno read this version of the essay, and it was in response to this that he wrote a critique in his letter of 18th March 1936, anthologized in New Left Books' influential collection Aesthetics and Politics. Benjamin's footnote developed a theory of revolutionary and reactionary crowd behaviour, and a critical analysis of the praxis of the German Communist Party. Comparing Benjamin to Lenin, Adorno wrote of it: I cannot conclude without telling you that your few sentences about the disintegration of the proletariat as 'masses' through revolution are among the profoundest and most powerful statements of political theory that I have encountered since I read State and Revolution. A combination of editorial pressure, self critique and historical change led to the modification of Benjamin's sentiments in the final version of the essay. Other material disappeared. Benjamin described the essay as representing a formalization of conclusions reached during the course of ten years' engagement with materialist poetics. It was to be a grand statement that developed concepts that are completely useless for the purposes of Fascism. Organizing a new model for the discussion of cultural production and cultural analysis, the second version of Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit establishes a number of concepts, including first technique and second technique, and semblance and play, which operate in conjunction with the categories of cult value and exhibition value. The loss or marginalization of these concepts in the final version of the argument might be said to disrupt the intricate dialectical framework. Is the second version of the essay, the longest version, then, the most complete, and, therefore, the authentic one?
[Esther Leslie]