reading benjamin's brilliant "on the concept of history" and struck by some of the parallels with our own time. the piece, written in 1940 as the nazis were sweeping across europe, is a meditation on the failures of german social democrats, the alt-centrists of that period 
the reference to the spartacus league is noteworthy: that was when the SPD government ordered the freikorps, which would develop into nazi brownshirts, to arrest and execute luxemburg and liebknecht, two of the most prominent socialist leaders of the time theguardian.com/books/2019/jan…
benjamin saw a party and mass movement, which had come out of the great socialist tradition of the 19th century, become moribund handmaidens of fascism, taking all that he loved and cherished down with it. hunted by the gestapo, he died shortly after writing the "theses"
the most famous part of the essay, which you can read here marxists.org/reference/arch…, are his reflections on the "angel of history". like the marxist, it seeks to redeem history's victims by using their fate as fuel to drive the proletariat's justified hatred of the ruling classes
