Mahagonny. com 
 
harmonious and homogeneous community. By presenting the rise of 
fascism in a variety of scenes, Brecht shows the way that a theater of 
unity drives social differences off the streets and into the private 
realm, thus contributing to the rise of fascism. The individual's decision

to protect her or his personal integrity by withdrawing from fascism 
proves to be its most powerful promoter. 
The surrender to fascism is thus rooted in the original desire to 
withdraw from it. Only the three comrades in "Der Entlassene" avoid

this, and they do so by constantly negotiating with one another their 
unavoidable involvement in the fascist state. By challenging each 
other, they confront each potential compromise with the state and 
thus retain the ability to distinguish between accommodating and 
subverting fascism. Each navigates a personal position toward the 
state through her or his position toward the other two as individuals 
and toward their collective. This allows them to detect and thus resist 
fascism's constantly shifting modes of attack. 
Fascism's delusion to unite and capitalism's delusion to satisfy 
both hinder the production of the specific moments in which actual 
relations among people become visible and thus changeable. In 
Mahagonny Brecht presents a capitalist world in which "Verhalten"
as 
social conduct has become obsolete through unlimited supply that 
ends up in nothing.   The opera concludes in "zunehmender 
Verwirrung" in which "die noch nicht Erledigten" move in a
throng 
with placards declaring their political ideals while they sing about their

complete passivity: "Können uns und euch und niemand helfen"
(2: 
392). 
Brecht's alternative is constraint for the purpose of social 
intervention: staying together and creating a public sphere makes an 
investigation of the moment possible. To comprehend a given 
situation, "eingreifendes Denken" uses "solche Definitionen,
die die 
Handhabung   eines definierten Feldes gestatten.  Unter den 
determinierenden  Faktoren  tritt immer das  Verhalten  des 
Definierenden auf" (21: 422). In Furcht und Elend Brecht places fascist

thought in specific contexts in order to examine a range of gestures 
and the ways those gestures change as the contexts producing them 
alter.11 Fascism and anti-fascism result from the interaction among 
people in specific moments. What might be intended as an anti- 
fascist act by one individual can nevertheless become a fascist act, 
depending on circumstance. Political conviction, then, is not a 
matter of a subjective decision based on principles, but something to 
be deciphered and constructed from social reality. Brecht shows how 
the process of deciphering must inform the construction of progressive 
political perception and how that action is hindered under fascism 
through the use of terror to deny difference, as weil as under 
capitalism through the fetishism of consumption to efface the 
conflicts of production. 
Brecht's teaching plays constitute the theatrical genre invented 
to create social action in a theatrical context.  By perceiving 
 
108