War, Technology, and Human Nature: Reading Marinetti and Benjamin Today

War as Spectacle. AI art

Introduction

In the early twentieth century, the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti founded Futurism, a movement that exalted speed, machinery, and violence as sources of artistic inspiration. A fervent nationalist and later an open supporter of Mussolini, Marinetti gave cultural expression to fascist ideology by fusing aesthetics with warfare. His Manifesto of the Colonial War in Ethiopia (1935) exemplifies this tendency: it glorified Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia as both a civilizing mission and a technological adventure. Around the same time, Walter Benjamin was formulating his critique of modern art and politics. In The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (1935–36), he warned that fascism transforms political life into spectacle, channeling collective energies into the destructive theater of war. These texts, though written from opposing standpoints, share a common concern with the relation between art, technology, and human drives. Their confrontation raises questions that remain pertinent today, beyond ideological divides.

Marinetti, Futurism, and the Colonial War

Marinetti’s Futurism called for a radical break with the past. Tradition, museums, and classical culture were denounced as stagnant; in their place, Futurists celebrated velocity, machines, and aggression. “War,” Marinetti had already proclaimed in the Futurist Manifesto (1909), “is the world’s only hygiene.” This conviction shaped his later writings, including the 1935 manifesto on Ethiopia. There, war was not only a patriotic duty but also an aesthetic act. The invasion, according to Marinetti, fused artistic creation with technological performance, demonstrating Italy’s vitality against a supposedly “backward” enemy. The manifesto extolled airplanes, armored vehicles, and chemical weapons as instruments of progress and renewal. By portraying violence as beauty and conquest as creativity, Marinetti turned colonial aggression into spectacle.

The political backdrop was Mussolini’s imperial ambitions, which sought to expand Italy’s influence in Africa and cement fascist authority at home. Marinetti’s text served as cultural propaganda, justifying atrocities by casting them as part of an artistic and national destiny. In this sense, the manifesto illustrates how modernism’s fascination with innovation could be harnessed for destructive ends.

Benjamin’s Critique of Aestheticized Politics

Benjamin’s essay offers a sharp counterpoint. For him, fascism does not suppress artistic energies but redirects them toward mythic representations of power. By giving masses the illusion of participation without altering property relations, fascism aestheticizes politics. Benjamin summarized this mechanism in chilling terms: “Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources while maintaining the property system” (Benjamin, 1969, p. 241). War, in other words, absorbs the productive powers of modernity without addressing underlying injustices.

He continued: “If the natural utilization of productive forces is impeded by the property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources of energy will press for an unnatural utilization, and this is found in war” (Benjamin, 1969, p. 242). When social relations prevent technology from serving collective well-being, it finds expression in destruction. War thus becomes the grotesque outlet for blocked creativity. Benjamin’s analysis directly illuminates Marinetti’s glorification of violence: what the Futurist hailed as beauty was, for Benjamin, the symptom of a pathological system.

Beyond Fascism and Communism: The Deeper Problem

It would be misleading, however, to see this dynamic as unique to fascism. The twentieth century offers multiple examples where different ideologies harnessed technology for mass violence. The Soviet Union under Stalin mobilized industrial production for forced collectivization and military buildup, sacrificing millions. Maoist China likewise transformed technological and human resources into engines of repression and devastation during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. These regimes shared little with Italian Fascism in ideology, yet they similarly converted modern capacities into destructive instruments.

This suggests that the problem lies deeper than the labels of capitalism, fascism, or communism. Human impulses such as greed, envy, resentment, and fear repeatedly surface as motors of conflict. Technology amplifies these tendencies, making possible wars on an unprecedented scale. Marinetti’s ecstatic embrace of speed and weaponry, and Benjamin’s sober warning about the unnatural uses of production, converge on this insight: unless human passions are redirected, innovation risks serving annihilation rather than liberation.

Contemporary Relevance

Today, Benjamin’s warnings resonate in new contexts. Military expenditures grow alongside digital warfare, artificial intelligence, and climate-related conflicts. Just as Futurists once celebrated airplanes and tanks, contemporary culture often romanticizes cyberwar or drone strikes as evidence of progress. Meanwhile, blocked social energies—whether due to inequality, resource scarcity, or political frustration—still seek outlets. The danger remains that, as Benjamin foresaw, war will appear as the perverse resolution to systemic impasses.

The challenge, then, is not merely to oppose one ideology with another, but to cultivate cultural and political forms that channel technology toward life rather than destruction. This requires confronting not only institutional structures but also the destructive drives embedded in human nature. Recognizing these impulses is the first step in resisting their exploitation.

Conclusion

The juxtaposition of Marinetti and Benjamin highlights two faces of modernity. Marinetti exalted violence as art and progress, turning colonial conquest into aesthetic spectacle. Benjamin unmasked this fascination as the perverse outcome of a society that could not reconcile technological power with social justice. Yet the persistence of war across ideologies suggests that the roots of violence lie not only in political systems but also in enduring human passions. The task remains to resist the seductions of aestheticized destruction and to reorient creativity toward life. To heed Benjamin today is to accept responsibility: technological potential must be steered by wisdom rather than surrendered to our darker impulses.

References

Benjamin, W. (1969). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (H. Zohn, Trans.). In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (pp. 217–252). Schocken Books.

Marinetti, F. T. (1909). Manifiesto Futurista. Le Figaro.
 

Marinetti, F. T. (1935). Manifesto of the colonial war in Ethiopia.