In The Chaplin Machine, Owen Hatherley unearths the hidden history of Soviet film, art and architecture. Turning upside down the common view that the Communist avant-garde was austere and humourless, he reveals an unexpected comedic streak which found its inspiration in the slapstick of the American performers Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Hatherley examines through this Americanised prism a comedy of technology, which began on Henry Ford's production lines and transcended political and cultural boundaries to become an international phenomenon. What did it mean for socialists to combine the ideas of Chaplin and Ford? Did their experiments suggest a new future conception of work and leisure? And to what degree was this emphasis on comedy a precursor to the weirdly festive despotism of Stalin? The Chaplin Machine is a bold, new interpretation of twentieth-century art history.