Walter Benjamin argued that capitalism endowed objects with the means to express collective dreams. This drew him to particular urban architectural forms such as arcades, railway stations, department stores, and wax museums, which he called "dream houses of the collective." Whilst these structures embodied a world of mystifying enchantment, the historian could discern the unfulfilled hopes and desires of the collective. For Benjamin, the nineteenth century resulted in a sleep induced by capitalism, which, by implication, had led to the rise of fascism: "Capitalism was a natural phenomenon with which a new dream-filled sleep came over Europe, and, through it, a reactivation of mythical forces."

A work of history was vital in order to slay capitalism by waking the slumbering collective from its from its nineteenth-century dream The task of the historian thus became to use history as a "technique of awakening,"and this project, he wrote, "deals with awakening from the nineteenth century. Benjamin's project of awakening involved the "unconscious world of remembrance" in the form of dream experience.