Abstract This essay offers a novel interpretation of Old and New (a.k.a. The General Line, dir. Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov, USSR, 1926–29), shedding light on the ideological motivations of its famously erotic montage sequences. The peculiar task Eisenstein assigns to montage—namely, inducing a state of ecstasy like an orgasm—is reappraised in the context of the Bolshevik campaign for “primitive socialist accumulation.” In Soviet economic discourse, this term refers to the fundamental challenge of the state socialist economy: how to transition from a predominantly peasant-based to an industrial mode of production in the absence of capitalist imperatives. Yevgeni A. Preobrazhensky, the foremost theoretician of this dilemma, forced his fellow Bolsheviks to confront the paradox of capital formation in the aftermath of a proletarian revolution. In the ensuing controversy, Leon Trotsky envisioned a path to industrialization that hinged on workers’ willingness to create surplus value voluntarily. To this end, he called upon the masses to consent to a period of temporary “self-exploitation” and shortly thereafter endorsed cinema as an instrument of proletariat education. Focusing on the efficacy of film aesthetics as a means of economic reconstruction, this essay shows how Eisenstein “cinefied” Trotsky's vision of primitive socialist accumulation by remediating the peasant way of life to give birth to a new mode of production. Taking advantage of the human capacity for self-alienation, Eisenstein invented a new form of montage. Its deployment in Old and New sexualized the imperative of labor, thereby creating the stimulus for socialist accumulation. Out of its radical experiment with film form would emerge a proletarian subject ready to enjoy their self-exploitation.
Cassandra Guan (Fri,) studied this question.