Marshall Berman

All That is Solid Melts Into Air: : The Experience of Modernity

 

Berman’s All That is Solid Melts Into Air is both a critique and celebration of modernism. He explores the “experience of modernity” using Goethe, Baudelaire, and Marx to explain how and why modernity came into existence during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Berman cites Marx’s dictum “all that is solid melts into air,” a phrase he takes as a statement about the transitory nature of things in the world. So, he argues, in spite of the ills of capitalism, the dynamism associated with modernity allows for instantaneous change, and while people are subject to the whims of global capitalism, they are also agents of their own destinies. Berman’s account is detailed, fascinating, and hopeful.