A Philosopher Against the Grain: The Actuality of Georg Lukács

A Philosopher Against the Grain:The Actuality of Georg Lukács

Paul RJ Falger, PhDMaster Student

Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences

Maastricht University, the Netherlands

GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June 23-24

Georg Lukacs (1885-1971)


Georg Lukács (1885-1971)

• Hungarian philosopher, published History and

Class Consciousness * (1923), the most

influential 20th century Western Marxist text

• Was NOT involved with “Star Wars” episodes.

• *original title: Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein.



• Crucial philosophical texts 1st half, 20th century:

• ‘Tractatus Logico–philosophicus’ (Wittgenstein, 1922)

• ‘Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein’ (Lukács, 1923)

• ‘Sein und Zeit’ (Heidegger, 1927)

• ‘Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein’: little known &

studied (English transl., 1971), politically most important.


Actuality of Georg Lukács

• Precursor, ‘Existentialism’: Heidegger & Sartre (Goldmann, 1977)

• Founding father, ‘Critical Theory’ of Frankfurter Schule: Adorno,

Horkheimer, Fromm & Marcuse (Jay, 1973; Bronner, 2011)

• Grandfather, radical 1967-8 student uprisings: W. Germany,

France, the Netherlands, US et al. (Dannemann, 2009)

• Unintended instigator, Hungarian Uprising, October 1956,

Minister of Education, Nagy administration (Kadarkay, 1991).



• Urgently Needed: Critical theory building for

analyzing, understanding & changing Totalität of

present ‘neo-liberal market’ capitalist thinking

• Urgently Needed: Philosophy & philosopher as

radical political actor: Badiou, Todorov, Žižek et al.

GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June

23-24


• January 1st 2012, the Hungarian Government

officially closed Lukács Archivum (Budapest)

because of “…lack of need for further scientific

study of Lukács (and his [Leftist-Messianic-Utopian] ideas)” (e-

mail December 23, 2011).



• “…Is a new reading of Lukács possible?

Perhaps a more pertinent question would be:

• Is a new reading of Lukács necessary?” (Bewes &

Hall, 2011; Thompson, 2011).



• “…Jewish by birth, raised in a Catholic country,

and turned Protestant, Lukács incarnated

alienation in its deepest and broadest sense”

• “…Archetype of the rebellious son”; …His

father is the key to his tragedy” (Kadarkay, 1991).



• Rejected his haut bourgeois upbringing:

father bank president, mother from wealthiest

Jewish family in Central Europe

• Sought & lived cultural & political alternatives

• ‘From Romanticism to Bolshevism’ (Löwy, 1979).



• Before Marxism, Lukács already was influential

European literary & art critic* in mostly a-political literary

‘circles’ (Weber Circle: Heidelberg – Lukács Circle: Budapest)

• Becoming Marxist: defeat Austrian-Hungarian monarchy

in World War I, Lenin, Russian Revolution 1917,

revolutionary ‘events’ Germany & Hungary 1918-23

(‘Soviet councils’).• * Soul and Form (1911), Theory of the Novel (1915-20).


History and Class Consciousness

• Written 1919-1922

• Published (German),

1923

• Repudiated, after severe

CP criticism, 1924

• Re-printed, with New

Introduction (1967), 1970


Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein

• Essays, reflecting Lukács’ development as

radical Western Marxist thinker (1919–1922)

• Rethinking Kantian-Hegelian roots of Marxism

• Defining alternative concept Verdinglichung

(Reification) vs. Entfremdung (Alienation) (Marx)

• Opposing Engels’ interpretation of Marxism. GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June

23-24


• Theoretical: What is Orthodox Marxism (1919);

Class Consciousness (1920); Reification and

Proletarian Consciousness (1922)

• Political: Legality and Illegality (1920); Towards

a Methodology of the Problem of Organization

(1922).



• Major philosophical & political themes (Löwy, 1979):

• “…A revolutionary humanism defined from standpoint

of the proletariat”:

• Critique of Verdinglichung

• Critique of inhuman effects capitalism

• Guideline for human emancipation through socialist

revolution.



• “…A philosopher and critic: but not much of a writer.

[…] He wrote Hungarian badly. […] Essentially a

German thinker and writer” (J Lukacs, 1988)

• “…Lukács expressed himself in Hegelian terminology

impenetrable to anyone lacking postgraduate

competence in philosophy” (Service, 2007).



• Footnote to Marx’s 11th thesis on Feuerbach:

“…Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur

verschieden interpretiert ; es kommt darauf

an, sie zu verändern ” (Marx, 1845-6).



Philosophical discourse & understanding:

1)Kant: ‘Idealism’: Subject-Object dualism

2)Hegel: ‘Idealism’: Subject-Object identity

Conservative dialectics & ‘History’ (bourgeoisie)

3)Marx: ‘Materialism’: Revolutionary dialectics &

‘History’ (proletariat).



Practical-political discourse & understanding:

•4) Proletariat negates Verdinglichung by revolutionary

action, creating new Totalität (cycle thesis-antithesis-synthesis)

•5) Communist Party (CP) leads proletariat into action

•6) Critique of Lenin’s view of role of CP.GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June

23-24


Verdinglichung: (from ‘commodity fetishism’, Marx):

•Psychic structure of man in capitalist society

•Interhuman relations determined by production relationships

(exchange values)

•Qualitative human values transformed into quantitative ones

•Perception & understanding of Totalität increasingly lost

(alienation).



Totalität:

•The total societal process made up of all relations between

social classes & nature

•Dynamic entity, continuously in the process of structuration &

destructuration through interactions of social classes

•No psychological perspective outside Totalität

•All elements dialectically referring to each other.



•Geschichte: man’s inseparable state from his

(subjective) meaning and his surrounding (objective)

world (as in Hegelian ‘History’)

•Klassenbewuβtsein: consciousness of possibility

& necessity fully understanding (dialectical process

of) Totalität, thereby changing Totalität.


History and Class Consciousness:Its Defence

• Written, 1925-6, not

published, thought lost

• Discovered late 1980’s

• Published, 1996 (German),

2000 (English)



• Lukács ‘encouraged’ to repudiate his masterpiece in 1924

• CP pressure: deviating from Marx – Engels orthodoxy &

criticizing Leninist CP line

• Increasing influence authoritarian Stalinism

• Wrote defence Chvostismus und Dialektik * in 1925-6; lost

manuscript, first published 1996!

• * A Defence of H and CC: Tailism and the Dialectic (2000).



• In 1932, early, unknown works by Marx were

published (Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844)

• Corroborated Lukacs’ ideas of Verdinglichung and

the Hegelian roots of Marxism

• Embarassment of CP doctrine; no rehabilitation,

silent career as philosopher in Moscow.


Life-Span Evaluation

• Lukacs’ lived rebellious life (1919 & 1956

uprisings), courageous in developing

humanistic, Utopian Marxism, going ‘against

the grain’ of orthodox CP doctrine, while

staying loyal to & fighting for personal beliefs

and ‘the right cause for mankind’.GLS Symposium 2012, USC, June

23-24

On the Barricades

• Georg Lukács,

‘Volkscommissar’ for

Education, Budapest

Soviet Council, 1919,

lecturing ‘the proletariat’


Selected References

•G Lukács: Geschichte und Klassenbewuβtsein (1923).

•G Lukács: Chvostismus und Dialektik [1925-6] (1996); A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and

the Dialectic (2000).

•

•T Bewes & T Hall: Georg Lukács - The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence (2011).

•SE Bronner: Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (2011).

•R Dannemann: Georg Lukács: Eine Einführung (n.d.).

•R Dannemann: Lukács und 1968 (2009).

•L Goldmann: Lukács and Heidegger - Towards a New Philosophy (1977).

•M Jay: The Dialectical Imagination - A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923-1950

(1973).

•A Kadarkay: Georg Lukács: Life, Thought, and Politics (1991).

•M Löwy: Georg Lukács - From Romanticism to Bolshevism (1979).

•M Thompson: Georg Lukács Reconsidered (2011).


Kösönum sepen, Thank You!

• Any Questions

Anyone?


A Philosopher Against the Grain: The Actuality of Georg Lukács

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