Lukacs, Georg - The Twin Crises [an Interview]

7/27/2019 Lukacs, Georg - The Twin Crises [an Interview]

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Comrade Lukcs, how do you see your own life and the era of history in which you have

lived? In five decades of revolutionary and scientific work you had your share both ofhonours and of humiliations. We also understand that your life was in danger after the

arrest of Bla Kun in 1937. If you were to write an autobiography or personal memoir,

what ultimate lessons would you draw from it all? What has it meant to have been a

Marxist militant for fifty years?

To answer you briefly, I should say that it was my great good fortune to have

lived a rich and eventful life. I regard it as my particular privilege that I ex-

perienced the years 191719. For I come from a bourgeois backgroundmyfather was a banker in Budapestand even though I had adopted a somewhat

individual oppositionism in Nyugat,1 nonetheless I was part of the bourgeois

opposition. I would not venture to sayI could notthat the purely negative

impact of the First World War would have been enough to make a socialist

out of me. It was undoubtedly the Russian Revolution and the revolutionary

Interview with Georg Lukcs

The Twin Crises

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movements in Hungary that followed it which made a socialist out ofme, and I remained true to this. I regard this as one of the most positiveaspects of my life. It is another question, whether or not the totality ofmy life moved up or down, in whatever direction, but it can be said tohave had a certain unity. Looking back, I can see that the two tenden-cies in my life were, firstly, to express myself, and secondly, to servethe socialist movementas I understood it at any one time. These

two tendencies never diverged, I was never caught by any conflictbetween them. It frequently emerged laterin my own opinion as wellas that of othersthat what I had been doing was incorrect, and thistoo I can state with a certain equanimity. In those cases, I think I wasright to reject my old views which I afterwards held to be wrong. In thefinal analysis, I can say with tranquillity that I tried at all times to saywhat I had to say as best as I could. But as to what is the value and theshape of my lifes work, on this I cannot pronounceit is not myconcern. History will decide that in one way or another. For my ownpart, I can be satisfied with having made the effort and I can say in thisrespect I am content: which does not mean, of course, that I am satisfiedwith the results of these efforts. During the short time that remains forme, I shall do my best to express certain ideas more accurately, justlyand scientifically, for Marxism.

Can a man be content with his state?Does such a state exist at all?

To be frank, a writer may experience this state from time to time,while writing. It happens that I feel that Ive managed to express whatI wanted to. It is a different question, how it will look three days later.All I am saying is that this state does exist.

You were not only a witness to the history of this century, but also an activeparticipant. If you were now to make a balance-sheet of your youthful ideals anddreamsthe development of socialism from the Hungarian Soviet Republic toour timewhat would it include?

One must make a distinction here between subjective and objectiveelements. Subjectively, I would say, it was already clear by the 1920slet alone todaythat those very intense hopes with which wefollowed the Russian Revolution from 1917 on were not to be ful-filled: the wave of world revolution, in which we placed our con-fidence, did not come to pass. The fact that the Revolution remainedlimited to the Soviet Union is not the result of one mans theories, butof the facts of world history. Ones subjective hopes remain unfulfilledin this sense. On the other hand, someone who calls himself a Marxistand will, therefore, regard himself as a student of historymust knowthat no great social transformation has taken place overnight. Millenniapassed before primitive communism became a class society. Or, to give

an example from historical times, we can now follow the history of thedissolution of societies based on slavery and can conclude that it tookeight hundred, nearly a thousand, years of crises for it to evolve intofeudalism. Consequently, the more one is a Marxist, the more one

1Nyugat, which means West, was an avant-garde literary periodical which set thetone for Hungarian literature before the First World War.

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phystrictly definedand in the social sciences must be scrutinizedcritically. It would be an illusion to think that anything can still belearned from Nietzschealbeit one knows of cases, regrettably, wherepeople disappointed in Stalinist Marxism have tried. Yet the most onecan get out of Nietzsche is a lesson in how not to philosophize and inwhat is dangerous and bad for philosophy. Hence I must make it clearthat my attitude to the question of what can be learned from the West

is a highly critical one. I would like Marxists to be critical and judgeWestern trends too by employing a true Marxist method.

You used the concept official Marxism, as opposed to bourgeois philosophicaltrends, while also saying that much work needs to be done since the classics were

published. What do you understand by official Marxism?

What I mean by official Marxism is that Marxism which developed inthe Soviet Union after Stalin gained an ideological, political andorganizational victory over Trotsky, Bukharin and others. This came

about as a process. I dont want to go into details, but one thing iscertain: one cannot say that up to a given day there was Leninism andthe next day Stalin introduced Stalinism. Rather, in the course of aprocess lasting more than ten years, Marxism was reinterpreted to fitthe needs of the results of Stalinist rule. I have written of the basicprinciples of this several times. If I may repeat myself, what this con-sisted of was the following: Marx derived a great world-historicalperspective from an all-embracing dialectical method and he attemptedto lay its economic and political foundations in every kind of way. Thisperspective provided the ultimate motive force for Marxs activities.

This ultimate force was what enabled him to analyse strategic situationsin every era and in every situation, and within the strategic situation,the tactical causes. Stalin turned all this on its head. For Stalin it was thetactical situation at any one time that was paramount and it was forthis tactical situation that he created a strategy and a general theory.Let us say, even if the 20th Congress did condemn Stalins doctrine thatthe class struggle underwent continuous intensification in socialism, itstill failed to declareunfortunatelythat the problem is not thatStalin concluded this and basing himself on this conclusion, preparedthe Great Purges against Bukharin and others. The problem is ratherthat Stalin felt he had a tactical need for these purges. He carried outthe purges and then made up a theory for them, according to which theclass struggle intensifies under socialism. I could illustrate this with aneven more pregnant episode where Stalin was actually in the righttactically. When he signed his pact with Hitler in 1939, he took atactically correct step. There followed that phase of the war, in whichBritain and the United States fought Hitler in a common alliance withthe USSR which succeeded in warding off the danger of Nazism. To mymind, the great question is whether this would have occurred without

Stalins initial tactical move. As against this, when Stalin decreed in1939 that the Second World War was in essence no different from theFirst, and that the task for Communist Parties was therefore still theLiebknechtian one of fighting the enemy at home, thenstarting froma tactically correct stephe gave, in the name of the Comintern,catastrophically incorrect advice to the French and British parties. Ithink the grotesque results produced by Stalinist methods are shown

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quite clearly by this example. Let us add, that Stalinist conception havestill to be fully liquidated. Consequently many of our conceptions inworld politics are purely tactical ones, which can prove incorrect fromone day to the next and whichto express myself somewhat bluntlyhave precious little to do with the true processes taking place in therealities of society.

How do you see the reception of your works in Yugoslavia?

I must confess I do not consider myself entitled to comment onproblems of Yugoslav ideological development. Briefly, all I can say isthat during the Second World War, Yugoslavia aroused the enthusiasmof all of us. Among the small countries, it was the only nation to wagea large-scale war of Resistance independently against Hitler. From thispoint of view, the behaviour of the Yugoslav people was an exampleto all others, including the Hungarians, whose will to resist Hitlerwas far less conscious, determined or successful. Secondly, all of us

and by this I mean a group of thinking peopleregarded the de-velopment of Stalinism with a certain dissatisfaction. Anyone whoreads my articles from the 1920s and 30s will see that even at that timeI was in disagreement with Stalins and Zhdanovs line. For example,the book I wrote on Hegel was diametrically opposed to Zhdanovsanalysis of him. However, in spite of this, Hungarian policies closelyfollowed the Soviet line and for all of us who were capable of thinkingfor ourselves, it was a great event that Tito took the field againstStalinist methods with practical criticism. The history of socialism willnever forget this great deed of Titos. As a result, Marxist writing inYugoslavia began to be much freer than official Marxism. I did payattention to this, but that also means that at times I criticized it sharply.Such developmentsI must repeatare not like getting out of onetrain and climbing on another. Great ideological battles are neededbefore the ideology of the new phase takes shape. That this process hasbegun, reflects much credit on the Yugoslav comrades and this willnever remain unnoticed. Howeverand this applies not just to Yugo-slavia but the entire movementthe critique of Stalinist thinking andthe struggle for the renewal of Marxism that is under way are being

pursued with whatever intellectual tools are available, as best they may.It is thus evident that wholly clear viewpoints and a single dominanttrend have still to emerge. I am sure you will not take it amiss if I saythat I am hopeful, subjectively, that the trend which I support willemerge as the dominant one, although I know that everyone hopes thathistory will accord his own viewpoint its ultimate approval. In anyevent, such a historical decision, as to which is the correct road, has yetto be given objectively and so there are people everywhere, in socialistand capitalist countries, who are striving for a renewal of Marxism.Everyone tries their own methods, in their own way, debating among

themselves, hoping that some trend will be reached which would leadMarxism out of the unhappy situation into which it strayed thanks toStalins influence.

Some people hold that the system of workers self-management is a peculiarlyYugoslav invention,and not an expression of socialist development. What is youropinion of this?

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It would be very difficult to answer your question in this form. Ingeneral, what I would say is that workers self-government is one of themost important problems of socialism. To my mind it is incorrect whenmany people oppose Stalinism with a general democracymoreaccurately, bourgeois democracy. Marx described the basic structure ofbourgeois democracy already in the 1840s; it is built on the antithesisof the idealist citizen and the materialist bourgeois, and the inevitable

result of the growth of capitalism is that the capitalist bourgeois comesout on top and the idealist citizen becomes his servant. By contrast, theessence of socialist developmentwhich started with the Paris Com-mune and continued with the two Russian Revolutionsis known by aname: workers councils. To express this on a theoretical plane, wecould say that it is the democracy of everyday life. Democratic self-government unfolds at the most elementary levels of everyday life,reaching upwards until it becomes the decision of the people as awhole over all important public issues. We are at the very beginning ofthis development today. But there can be no doubt that those innova-tions which occurred in Yugoslavia, and the fact that they were the sub-ject of responsible debate, will contribute, in the new circumstances oftoday, to the ultimate success of workers councils in becoming onceagain the basic principle of every socialist development.

You once expressed the idea that the complete man is a man of public life .Would you care to expand on this?

I believe that we are concerned here with a basic theme of Marxism,one that Marx dealt with in his very early days in writing his Theses on

Feuerbach. When Marx criticized Feuerbach, what he said was thatFeuerbachs approach to materialism stopped at nature. In the world oforganic nature certain species do come into being, but these speciesas Marx termed them in his arguments against Feuerbachare silentspecies. The lion, the individual lion, belongs to the species Leo. Butthe individual lion knows nothing of this. When it is hunting or whenit is begetting cubs, then it is exclusively satisfying its biological needsand at the same timewithout being conscious of thisit serves andrepresents its species. Now what does it mean when Marx said thathuman society is not a silent species? For a man is just as much an in-separable unit of the species homo and of mankind, as the lion is ofanimals or, if you like, the blade of grass is of plants. As against this,however, man is consciously the member of a tribe even at the mostprimitive level. This fact itself, that he is the member of the mostprimitive tribe, raises him beyond the silence that is purely biological.There arises in this way a singular dialectic between the demands of thespecies vis--vis the individual, the individuals responsibilities vis--visthe species and the mutual impact of the two on both the species andthe individual. This underlies the evolution of man into man. If we

examine history properly, we shall see that this is the true content of allhistory. To this should be added what Marx said a long time ago, thatthe development which we have experiencedand how enormousthat has been can be seen if you compare the stone axe with the atombombis still the pre-history of mankind. Man will begin his realhistory under communism, when he has left behind all the barriers ofclass society. That is to say, when we are assessing contemporary man

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and his relationship to the species, we should be aware that we are stillin the stage of prehistory. How I would interpret this is that in the pre-historic stage, belonging to the species is still essentially in antithesis tomans purely individual demands and the exceptions in history havebeen those individuals where the two have coincided completely.Think, for example, of the inscription commemorating the 300 Spartansat Thermopylae.2 However, the dialectic is constantly intensifying. It

is this dialectic that will prompt more and more people in the course ofhuman society to reflect that personal fulfilment can only be possible ifthe highest commands of the species are accepted as the duty of theindividual. What is so fascinating about figures like Socrates or Leninwithout anyone being necessarily conscious of thisis that the freedevelopment of their individualities and the fulfiment of the commandsof the species, voluntarily undertaken, are in such harmony. What Iwould say now is that Marxist objectives under communism should beprecisely to allow man to escape from his entrapment in the silentspecies, in proportion to his ability to see individual fulfilment in theduties inherent in the acceptance of his place as a member of the species.

You have mentioned Lenins name twice, with especial affection. What did hemean for you in your personal life?

If you mean how much did I have to do with him personally, then theanswer is, terribly little. Our personal contact consisted of Leninshaving written extremely bluntly, in the 1920s, that my article onparliamentarism was bad and un-Marxist. I must confess that this wasone of those criticisms from which I learned a great deal. For Lenin

not actually in this criticism but in his Infantile Disorder, which dealswith the same issuestressed the difference between the decline of aninstitution like Parliament in a world-historical perspective and itspractical political supersession. I confused these two in my article. Ilearned a great deal from Lenins emphasis on the difference; afterwardsI was in a position to appreciate such issues more readily. In effect,that exhausted my personal contact with Lenin. I did actually meetLenin at the Third Comintern Congress, but dont forget that atthe time I was only a Central Committee member of a small illegalparty, and when someone introduced me to Lenin in the corridors,

he would have had more urgent problems than to engage in discussionwith a second-echelon Hungarian. All the same, Lenins behaviour atthe Third Congress made an enormous impression on me. Study ofhis writings only helped to strengthen it. More precisely, we see inLenin an essentially new type of the genuine revolutionary. I do notmean to detract from the old revolutionaries by this. But it can be saidthat after the disintegration of the Polis, there arose an experimentamong the Stoics aiming at a renewal of civic morality, to create a newaristocracy capable of acting more justly, in contrast to the unjustactions of the people. The remnants of this attitude and its resurgencein the 17th and 18th centuries mean that a certain asceticism can bedetected in the great revolutionaries. If you think of Robespierre, forexample, this asceticism is very evident. This has influenced our period

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2 The inscription read: Stranger, bear word to the Spartans that we lie here keepingtheir word.


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as well. If we look at our own revolutionary era and at such outstand-ing figures as Ott Korvin in Hungary3 or Eugen Levin in Munich4,you will see what I mean. Eugen Levin said that communists werealways on leave from death. This, in fact, is the highest degree of as-ceticism. By contrast, Engels already and particularly Lenin after himrepresent a non-ascetic type of revolutionary. Their revolutionarycharacter is evidenced in that their individual human particularities

played no role in their lives and that even if they did make decis-ions against their own individual inclinations, these were not madein an ascetic form. When one reads Gorkys account of Leninespecially the very fine passages where Lenin talks about Beethovens

Appassionatait is clearly visible that, in contrast to the Robespierre-Levin type, Lenin represents a new type of revolutionary, who is justas much a man of public affairs and just as self-sacrificing of his privatefate as the old type, but without this self-sacrifice involving any as-ceticism. In my view, Lenins example will play an enormous role infuture developments.

Is there a direct connection between asceticism andInfantile Disorder?

Naturally. The radical revolutionaries of that time were mostly of theascetic type. Very many of them were extraordinarily upright anddevoted revolutionaries, whichI am convincedLenin knew per-fectly well. It would never have occurred to Lenin to deny that theDutchman Pannekoek or Roland Holst were not genuine revolution-aries, for all that he condemned their sectarianism. Whilst this un-doubtedly was posed as a political problem for Lenin, nevertheless themoral problem is there in the background. Yet being not only an out-standing theoretician but also a great practical man, Lenin knew verywell that this moral problem could only arise in the public context at ahigher stage of development. In the debates of the 1920s it was hisstandpoint on concrete problemsfor or against sectarianismthat ledto the practical decisions for which Lenin fought.

What would be your view of the international labour movement today in thelight ofInfantile Disorder?

Look, this is a very complicated question. Undoubtedly, left-radicalismplays some role. Only we must be very careful here again in how toapply the judgments of historical problems in the classics to those of thepresent day. Anyone who thinks that he can apply a book written byLenin in 1920 to American youth of1969 or that Lenins criticism ofRoland Holst can be made to fit Dutschke would be terribly mistaken.On the other hand, there is a real problem here and one in which we canlearn from Lenin. Namely, that we are now at the very beginnings of a

3 Otto Korvin was a socialist intellectual who took a leading part in the HungarianCommune of1919. He believed acceptance of death was the highest duty of a revolu-tionary, and deliberately refused to escape from Budapest after the fall of the Com-mune. He was executed by the White Terror.4 Eugen Levin was the Russian-born leader of the German Communist Party inMunich, during the Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919. He was executed by thecounter-revolution after the fall of the Republic. In a famous speech at his trial, hedeclared We Communists are all dead men on leave.

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crisis in capitalist society. If you think back to 1945 and the victoryover Hitler, many people believed that the new manipulated capitalismthe American Way of Lifewould signify a new era in the develop-ment of man. They said this was no longer capitalism but some kind ofsociety of a higher order, and so on. Twenty-five years have passedsince then and today this whole system is facing the initial stages of anextraordinarily profound crisis. I must stress both initial stages and

crisis. Initial stages means the revolt of the students and of the in-tellectuals, but this has yet to develop a well-founded programme. Theprogrammes that have been put forward are generally extremely nave.If you remember, for instance, that the young are given to saying thatthe way to overcome manipulation is to transform work into play,then all they are actually doing is to repeat what poor old Fourier saidat the beginning of the 19th century and about which Marx wasrather ironical in the 1840s. Thus what we have here is an ideologicallyvery immature movement, which should be assessed positively be-cause it is opposed to those contradictions which are currently arisingin manipulated capitalist societies. I mean by this the Vietnamese War,the racial crisis in the United States, the inability of Britain to find apost-imperial role, the crises in France, in Germany, in Italy. In otherwords, looked at in a world-historical perspective, we are at the thres-hold of a world crisis. The threshold can, of course, mean 50 years, wemust be clear on this. Today, I see the great practical stimulus to therenewal of Marxism in the fact that there can be no revolution withouta theory of revolution, as Lenin so rightly stated in What is to be Done?.Returning to what I said earlier there has to be a renewal of the

Marxist method in the West and in our own countries, to undertake aneconomic and social analysis of what has been achieved under capitalism:an analysis which we Marxists have not made and lacking which weare unable to isolate the concrete problems which demand solutions.Not until then shall we be in a position to speak of a revolutionarymovement capable of great decisions. This is the reason why I regardthe renewal of Marxism as such an important issue. There are problemsin the socialist countries too, because without the necessary renewal oftheory there can be none of practice. But someone who believes simplythat capitalism can be overthrown by happenings is, naturally, very

nave.

What concrete problems are raised by the renewal of Marxist theory for thepractice of socialist countries? Which of these would you single out for mention?

There are many problems here. Let me begin with economics. TheRussian Revolution, as Lenin well knew, did not break out in the mostdeveloped capitalist country or in the form of a world revolution, butin a relatively backward country, in isolation. This means that theSoviet Union was faced with the unique taskone not covered by the

schema put forward by Marx who imagined the socialist revolution astaking place in the most developed countriesof raising Soviet pro-duction to a level which would make real socialism economicallypossible. Today I suspect that Stalin defeated his rivals not only be-cause he was the only skilful tactician among them, but also because heabove all advocated most resolutely this socialism in one country and theneed to overcome economic backwardness. Now, the Soviet Union

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did catch up, even if not completely, in the Stalinist period. As againstthis, what has not yet happened is that production should become nor-mal production and most of all, the kind of production which can makethe transition to socialism possible. In this context, the problem ofWhat is to be Done? arises in the Soviet Union and in every socialistcountry today. The problem cannot be solved by Stalinist methods.When I was interviewed by Unit (August 22nd 1966) on the occa-

sion of the introduction of the Hungarian economic reforms, what Isaid was that the problem can only be solved by the introduction ofsocialist democracy. The question of new economic development andthe transition from a non-democratic Stalinist system to socialistdemocracy is a single complex of problems. One cannot be solvedwithout the other. But as this is still not even admitted in most coun-triesand where certain individuals do admit it, we are still far from asolutionwe too are in a certain sense in a crisis situation, whichmust somehow be overcome both in theory and in practice.

This is of decisive importance for us, because without it, we cannotreach world standards in our production. Moreover, this democraticdevelopment would remedy a great shortcoming which arose as a re-sult of the Stalinist system. I have said more than once that it wasextraordinarily characteristic that in Lenins time, even though theSoviet Union was facing a military, a political and an economic crisis,when famine ruled in the Soviet Union I remember taking part inVienna in many an migr meeting, where we collected for thosestarving in the Soviet Union. The majority of not only the intellectuals

there but even more so the workers felt that what was happening in theSoviet Union was decisive for their lives too. Or, if I can express it inLatin, nostra causa agiturif the Russians wanted to build socialism. Thedevelopment of Stalinism had the catastrophic result internationallythat this feeling ofnostra causa agiturhas ceased to exist in the Europeansocialist movement. It is not true that a French or an Italian socialist is asocialist because he wants to live like the workers in the Soviet Union.He does not want to live that way. What he would like, if he is a truesocialist, is a socialist life, but he does not regard the life of a Sovietworker or kolkhoz peasant as a socialist life. Here, then, is a kind of

interdependence of these two crises. Until we can revive the socialisttheory deriving from Marxism, until we can make this a living reality inthe socialist countries, the extraordinary attractive power of socialismwhich lasted from 1917 to about the time of the Great Purgesand theinternational sympathy with it, cannot be revived. In this context thetwo great problems of reform are directly interdependent. The basis ofthis interdependenceI cannot stress this too muchcan only be therevival of Marxist theory.

Many people speak of economic reforms in the socialist countries. In your view,

Comrade Lukcs, is it possible to reform only the economy?

The economy can never be looked at in isolation. People hereand inthe Westmake the mistake of thinking that a subject which has achair to itself at a university is an independent entity in reality. I canlecture on economics at a university, without mentioning society orideology and so on, but for all that, real economic development has

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always been the basis and keystone of the development of the whole ofsociety. In other words, what I am saying is that it is not only Marxisteconomics that has to be renewed, but Marxism itself. Marx wasnever an economist pure and simple in the sense that our academicslecture about him. If you look throughDas Kapitalthen on every pageyou see a whole lot of things which we are inclined to classify under therubric of sociology or of history. But Marx was a great thinker and as

such he did not care one iota for rubrics like that and considered socialdevelopment in its own true entirety. Therefore, as I have said already,in Hungary I represent the view that the new economic system cannotbe made to work without the beginnings of a renewal of socialistdemocracy. I am convinced that the many faults and hitches we arefinding in the new economic mechanisms derive precisely from the factthat we introduced an economic regulation without having first takenaccount of its social bases and reformed those. So that here too theproblem ties in with the renewal of the foundations of Marxist method.There is a great deal that one can say about Marx, you see, but neverthat he was a mere professional economist as some professors inHungary or in Yugoslavia seem to thinkI doubt if even Marxsworst enemies can say that of him. At this pointwithout imaginingourselves to be any kind of a second Marxwe must return to hismethodology in our efforts, conceptions and objectives.

You have not had much to say on the problem of nationalities policy.Does thismean that you have nothing special to add on this subject?

My views are that what was said by Marx and LeninI am sorry to beso orthodoxwas absolutely correct. Marx said that a people thatoppresses another cannot be free and Lenin demanded autonomy forevery nation even to the right of secession. In this, they pronouncedon the interdependent factors without which socialist developmentcannot be realized in a multi-national country. I do not think we haveanything particular to add to this. They formulated this interdepen-dence very accurately and our task would be to apply it concretely asand where it is possible and necessary.

Would be?

Yes. It has indeed to be applied in every case. We have so far beendiscussing ideological issues. I do not want to deal with questions ofday-to-day politics. But as a distant observer and as a Hungarianobserver, in general I rather like the way in which you have solved thisproblem in Yugoslavia. I think that certain steps have been taken to-wards a Marxist-Leninist solution. If there are negative aspects, thenmaybe we should avoid mentioning them in this discussion.

A certain view has spread within so-called official Marxism that with the

transformation of property relations, the national question in the socialistcountries will in generalsolve itself.

Lenin never said of any problem at any time that it would solve itself.During the course of a long life, whether in small private questions ormajor public issues, I have never found that a question has solveditself.

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The phrase was in inverted commas.

Very well, but let me translate the inverted commas. If I want to smokea cigarette, I have to go down to the shops and buy a packet of Kossuth,because without that I cant smoke a Kossuth. I have never found inthe course of a long life, that I, a socialist, can sit in this flat and thatcigarettes arrive on my desk of their own accord. Equally, I do not

believe that any problems are easier to solve in major social questionsthan in these trivial questions of everyday life.

If we look at the present situation of Marxism in the light of the writings of itsmost outstanding representatives, they not only differ greatly among themselves,but on many problems reject one anothers views or criticise them strongly.How do you view this increasingly polyphonic character of Marxism?

There is something in the question which implies that this poly-morphism in Marxist philosophy might be a positive phenomenon. Ihave my reservations about this. I do regard it as positive that there arepeople in every country who say I shall now analyze this question orI shall take up a standpoint on that problem. Without a doubt, this isa positive phenomenon. It has the consequence that the Marxismwhich is emerging today has a polyphonic and polymorphicsomewould even saypluralistic character. Let me inject a doubt here. ForMarxism, just as much as everything else, falls under the rule that thereis only one truth. History is either the history of class struggle or it isnot. Now one can argue within the history of class struggle as to

whether it happened in one way or another. That is something quitedifferent. But we must know that objectively in every question therecan be only one truth. Therefore, I do not condemn the existing poly-morphism, but I do think that we are only in the initial stages in theideological solution of the present crisis. Trends will be opposed againstone another, until we reach the truth. But again I must stress that thereis only one truth. This polymorphism does show that we are on theroad towards the truth. Yet it would be extremely undesirable if wewere to accept an incorrect bourgeois notion, and to see a certain idealin pluralism and regard this as the advantage of Marxism that it can be

idealist or materialist, causal or teleological, this way or that. We canleave this to manipulative capitalismit can invent its own theories forMarxism. We must be clear about the fact that in every issue there is onlyone truth and that we Marxists are struggling for its emergence. Untilit does emerge these trends will continue in conflict, and, I must add, Iam against trying to speed the process up by administrative methods.These are ideological problems which must be settled ideologically.At the same time, I do think it necessary to give a wide berth toWestern pluralism and to adopt the principle that in every question

there is only one truth. It could be that I find myself in disagreementwith you in Yugoslavia on this question. But I have already said thatones sympathies do not depend on universal agreement, but on thefeeling that we are all serving the same great cause and thateven if weare involved in the sharpest of polemicswe know that these polemicsserve the same goal.

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Lukacs, Georg - The Twin Crises [an Interview]

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