History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics

by György Lukács, Rodney Livingstone (Translator)

This is the first time one of the most important of Lukacs' early theoretical writings, published in Germany in 1923, has been made available in English. The book consists of a series of essays treating, among other topics, the definition of orthodox Marxism, the question of legality and illegality, Rosa Luxemburg as a Marxist, the changing function of Historic Marxism, class consciousness, and the substantiation and consciousness of the Proletariat. Writing in 1968, on the occasion of the appearance of his collected works, Lukacs evaluated the influence of this book as follows:

"For the historical effect of History and Class Consciousness and also for the actuality of the present time one problem is of decisive importance: alienation, which is here treated for the first time since Marx as the central question of a revolutionary critique of capitalism, and whose historical as well as methodological origins are deeply rooted in Hegelian dialectic. It goes without saying that the problem was omnipresent. A few years after History and Class Consciousness was published, it was moved into the focus of philosophical discussion by Heidegger in his Being and Time, a place which it maintains to this day largely as a result of the position occupied by Sartre and his followers. The philologic question raised by L. Goldmann, who considered Heidegger's work partly as a polemic reply to my (admittedly unnamed) work, need not be discussed here. It suffices today to say that the problem was in the air, particularly if we analyze its background in detail in order to clarify its effect, the mixture of Marxist and Existentialist thought processes, which prevailed especially in France immediately after the Second World War. In this connection priorities, influences, and so on are not particularly significant. What is important is that the alienation of man was recognized and appreciated as the central problem of the time in which we live, by bourgeois as well as proletarian, by politically rightist and leftist thinkers. Thus, History and Class Consciousness exerted a profound effect in the circles of the youthful intelligentsia."

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, History, Theory, Nonfiction, Sociology, Economics

401 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, aesthetician, literary historian and critic. He is a founder of the tradition of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Marxist ideological orthodoxy of the Soviet Union. He developed the theory of reification, and contributed to Marxist theory with developments of Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. He was also a philosopher of Leninism. He ideologically developed and organised Lenin's pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution.

His literary criticism was influential in thinking about realism and about the novel as a literary genre. He served briefly as Hungary's Minister of Culture as part of the government of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic.

Reviews

[David M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Lukacs will get you laid. Seriously, just do it.

*
Reification, among other things, is the fragmentation of knowledge, its endless specialization; so that every advance in each individual science is also a step away from the ontological substratum of the whole. Here Lukacs brings to mind Husserl, but of course their solutions are different. Husserl thought that the genius of phenomenology would be enough; that is, a purely contemplative mode of thought could heal these divisions. Lukacs, by contrast, invites history to intervene.

The fragmentation of knowledge is just a species of the greater fragmentation of all social life under capitalism. Philosophy's aporias will not be solved through some ingenious philosophical argument; rather, they will be abolished, along with capitalism itself, come the triumph of the proletariat. Where the reign of the bourgeoisie is one of atomization and disintegration, the proletariat is uniquely able to act from a universal perspective and institute a whole.

It should be said neither Husserl nor Lukacs was correct. Intellectual fragmentation is still with us, and so is capitalism. This book, particularly the central essay 'Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,' is usually cited as the founding text of western Marxism. Lukacs's outlook, however, is by no means as resigned and tragic as his later disciples. Even after the revolution had been put down in western Europe, he retained enormous confidence in the historic mission of the proletariat.

What to make of this now? The book is certainly a masterpiece, one of the great works of philosophy of the 20th century. Lukacs was maybe the single greatest Marxist philosopher who ever lived. Yet in some respects his conjuncture feels very remote from our own. Even as a theory of capitalist crisis and decline is more necessary than ever, the role of the proletariat has become increasingly dubious.

Probably the greatest living representative of western Marxism today is the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, and his contrast with Lukacs is striking. In How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System Streeck dispenses altogether with the category of the proletariat or revolutionary subject; no horizon of wholeness to look forward to, just fragmentation and more fragmentation.

*
I think the first thing to understand about neoliberalism is that there's nothing really new about it. It's quite simply the reassertion of capitalism as it's always been. Writing almost a hundred years ago, Lukacs had this to say about the ideologues of capitalism

It has often been pointed out that the problem that forms the ultimate barrier to the economic thought of the bourgeoisie is the crisis. If we now - in the full awareness of our own one-sidedness - consider this question from a purely methodological point of view , we see that it is the very success with which the economy is totally rationalized and transformed into an abstract and mathematically oriented system of 'formal' laws that creates the methodological barrier to understanding the phenomenon of crisis. In moments of crisis the qualitative existence of the 'things' that lead their lives beyond the purview of economics as misunderstood and neglected things-in-themselves, as use-values, suddenly becomes the decisive factor. (Suddenly, that is, for reified, rational thought.) Or rather: these 'laws' fail to function and the reified mind is unable to perceive a pattern in this 'chaos.' - pp 105

Then as now, the denial of history is the founding gesture of bourgeois economics. From an epistemological point of view, the crisis is when this denial becomes transparently absurd. 'Historical materialism' is probably a better name for Marxism; with this appellation we can perhaps jettison the unfortunate residue of a personality cult and instead focus on history itself.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

I have a sense that any review of this book will be tantamount to shouting into the void. To the extent though, that Lukács' ideas, or ideas built on his ideas, have permeated our consciousness, I think it is profitable to reflect on them; to engage with them in order to determine whether or not they have any validity. To the extent that this is still required reading in certain courses in American universities, such reflection seems paramount. Thus this is not a review--it is rather some personal reflections on these ideas.

First, I think it is important to mention that I believe Marx and Engels had insights into the social structure of men and how that is tied to economic realities. Many people have felt that those insights were weighty enough to base a revolution on, though personally, I do not believe that history has borne this out. This, then, could lead to the claim that Marxism is still a work in progress, and that's where a figure like Lukacs comes in.

Lukács acts as a kind of Pauline figure to the gospels of Marx and Engels in these essays--his determination to find, in their writings, the answers to any theoretical question (it was there all along!) sticks out like a new convert's enthusiasm for a revealed truth. The end result of this was to convince me that Lukacs was going to uphold Marx and Engels as either correct or prophetic in every case, no matter how Procrustean his argument had to be.

One of the important concepts in the book is reification. A dictionary definition would be 'the process of making the abstract concrete', but in a wider sense--and the sense that Lukács gives it--is the illusion that the abstract rules of any given society are 'natural' or 'absolute'. Anyone growing up in a particular society with its particular rules will blindly believe they are the only valid way to live: irrefutable--even if they don't like those rules. Thus, such a person would be 'reified'. Presumably in all societies, but particularly in capitalist societies, people of all classes fall into the illusion that their mores, laws, taboos, etc are all bedrock, when (according to the theory), they are actually arbitrary constructs designed to reinforce the current structure of things. Capitalists (the bourgeoisie) themselves are under this illusion of irrefutability, and the fact that this class benefits from these rules prevents them from ever being the class that will change it, or awaken from the illusion (They'll always choose the blue pill).

The proletariat (the wage-slaves, the interchangeable cogs in the method of production, the workers whose time and energy is commodified) are the only ones with the capability to grasp reality as it really is--after they shake off their reification and develop a class consciousness, that is. This consciousness evolves over a period of time and is exacerbated during times of crisis (such as the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020). In other words, crises elicit the understanding that the society they live in is not natural, and that no cosmetic change (or stimulus check) is going to fix the underlying problems.

But consciousness is useless without action--specifically the action that furthers the revolutionary goal of the proletariat: to sweep capitalist methods and bourgeoisie society into the dustbin of history. This particular type of action is known as praxis. It is only when consciousness is paired with praxis that the theoretical antinomies of Kantean philosophy is superseded, as the proletariat become both movers and the moved; both the thing, and the thing-in-itself. The logic chain that Lukács uses to prove this is entirely too abstract to summarize--I don't grant him his argument, but for the sake of moving on, we'll say that he proves it.

The upshot is that the workers are given not only a theoretical basis but a logical justification for their revolution--workers who were dissatisfied (enraged) with the inherent problems and institutional unfairness of the Capitalist system are given an impeccable argument as to why it not only can be changed, but that it should be changed, in the most extreme manner possible, so that none of it remains. The very thing that they (the proletariat, the disaffected) would have liked to do anyway (assume more power in society) is given the scientific equivalent of a moral crusade.

But Lukács makes it clear that, unfortunately, Capitalism won't simply wither away in the same way that feudalism and absolutism gave way. Every crisis will propel capital to a new solution, propitiating it's soul-destroying alienation forever, or else result in a war amongst its different strata that will eventually end in barbarism. Only the proletariat, with its newly awakened consciousness can intercede and save the world from itself by destroying every vestige of capitalism. It is also unfortunate that consciousness will not arrive to all members of the proletariat at once: in fact, many will have to be steered into it by those already enlightened.

By the 1920s, Lukács is tweaking his arguments to fit the facts of the new situation in world communism--the Russian revolution was in the rear-view mirror, and not everything had unfolded as anticipated. The Changing Function of Historical Materialism and Towards a Methodology of the Problem of Organisation (sic) [of the Communist Party] should, by their very titles, indicate that theory had failed as an oracle. But such tweaking of orthodoxy, as a result of experience, would be somewhat understandable if the accompanying commentary were simply 'we were wrong and we've learned how to do it better'. Due to the forces unleashed by the revolution, it becomes, 'we were wrong when we shot your family before, but rest assured that when we shoot you now, it'll be because we've learned from our past mistakes.' To shore up the idea of 'learning as we go', Lukács quotes Trotsky (and thereby inadvertently dating the essay) to illustrate: "...the fundamental Bolshevik prejudice consists precisely in the idea that one can only learn to ride when one is sitting firmly on a horse." Perhaps--but when one encourages a disaffected mob to use violence to overthrow the established structures of society, you are not riding a horse: it's more like trying to control a car with no steering and no brakes as it careens down a mountainside.

And that raises the aspect that neither Lukács nor any other Marxist I know of confronts: Grant them all their theories, grant them all their logic, but the inescapable fact of unleashing the anger of any group as large as the working class (or any group, for that matter) will always result in one of two things--either it will be an indiscriminate mob or it will be hijacked by demagogues whose interests may or may not intersect with ideology. Empirically and anecdotally, I know of no instance where Marxist revolutions have produced any leaders who do not eventually become self-interested or dictatorial or both, subverting the original aims of those who unleashed the power of workers. That some of these leaders were Ceaușescus and some were Titos makes no difference

I freely grant that unregulated capitalism is an awful thing, but there is no solution in Lukács' brand of Marxism either. George Orwell coined the word doublethink in his book 1984. One of the examples is a motto of Oceania: "Freedom is Slavery". This passage by Lukacs comes from his last essay in the book:

"...it becomes completely clear that the forms of freedom in bourgeois organisations (sic) are nothing but a 'false consciousness' of an actual unfreedom; that is to say, a pattern of consciousness in which man contemplates from a position of formal freedom his own integration in a system of alien compulsions and confuses this formal 'freedom' of his contemplation with an authentic freedom."

Marxist theories have become so mainstream it's almost hard to see it--just as Lukács claimed it was almost impossible for those stuck in capitalist societies to see the bonds that kept them chained to it. One of the fascinating aspects of reading this book is that it becomes easier to see how many movements of the 20th century--even up to today--borrowed from these ideas. As a dilettante historian, I found reading the philosophy behind these idea especially valuable for gaining insight into both the attitudes of personalities from the past (why they might have done the things they did) and also seeing the links to today's power struggles. In that regard, it was a five-star experience. In that I categorically reject Lukács conclusions, it would rate no stars. Proceed with caution, is my advice.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This important collection of essays offers Lukacs’ early thoughts on a variety of related topics ranging from the core principles of Marxism to the nature of false consciousness and the problem of party organization. The middle three essays on reification and class consciousness are the most important but also the most difficult. In them, Lukacs grounds a theory of ideology in the fetish character of the commodity form. Despite these chapters concerning mainly mental activity, subjective attitudes, and conscious reflections of the world, Lukacs maintains a thoroughgoing materialist analysis which reveals how ideology grows out of the actual conditions of production.

I recommend reading this not only on the basis of its own merits but also on account of its historical value as a landmark work of Western Marxism. The highlights of the book, in my opinion, are (a) those three essays on reification and the consciousness of the proletariat and (b) the overall consistent respect for totality and dialectical method that runs throughout the whole work. On the other hand, given my anarchist sympathies, I thought the last two essays on strategy and organization were the least compelling. That being said, they are important arguments to grapple with nonetheless.

The following are short summaries of the individual essays

PREFACES

The first preface was written after 40 years from the publication. In it, Lukacs distances himself from much of the content. Some was right (like the attempt to re-center totality in Marxism) but much was wrong and unfortunately that’s what became most influential. He traces out his personal intellectual development up to and beyond HCC. The main idea of the work is the dialectic of theory and praxis where practice is the proper criteria for the objective validity of theory. He also discusses the historical and political developments during this time of Lukac's "apprenticeship to Marx."

The second preface is the original and mostly concerns the need to revive the Hegelian dialectic in Marxism.

WHAT IS ORTHODOX MARXISM?

The first chapter begins with the bold claim that orthodoxy consists solely in a commitment to Marx's method and not to all, or even any, of his conclusions. It is a commitment to dialectical materialism as the only road to truth. What makes this method the true one turns on the relation of theory and practice, in that they must coincide if revolution is to happen. Lukacs criticizes the revisionist Marxists of his day (eg, the social democrats and Austro-Marxists) on the basis that their philosophies treat "facts" as isolated, discrete, items thereby obscuring the real essence of things lying beneath their mere appearances. To get to the essence, theory must treat facts as elements of a unified totality. This is exactly what dialectical materialism does.

THE MARXISM OF ROSA LUXEMBURG

The aim of this essay is to elucidate two premises of a genuine dialectical method: 1. Postulate the totality as an object 2. Postulate it as a subject as well. Lukacs argues Luxemburg was ahead of her peers in understanding the neccessity of the unity of theory and praxis precisely because she grasped the totality. Any approach that eschews totality severs the theory from the practice and becomes an empty moralizing ethics (like Kant's) where normative theories are purely prescriptive/imaginary and unconnected with actual life. The perspective of totality, which was grasped as a necessity by Hegel if the Truth was ever to be known, was not correctly identified until Marx. The latter's materialist application of Hegel’s idea that the truth must be understood as both substance and subject led him to realize that the standpoint of totality was the standpoint of class (because only class both understands and changes reality). Lukacs then connects this with the historical and theoretical role of The Party which, in his view, bears the class consciousness and expresses the will of the masses, bringing theory and practice together at the moment of revolution. The chapter ends with a defense of the certitude that socialism will win.

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS AND FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS

The starting point of ideology for Lukacs is, basically, that action is purposive but purpose is secondary because classes are generally unaware of what processes they put into action. So the primary question is: what are the material conditions which act on the will? It is these material conditions that are the prime motors of history and they are independent from (psychological) consciousness. This is the heart of Scientific Marxism.

REIFICATION AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE PROLETARIAT

This three part essay is the core contribution of this book. Here Lukacs grounds and entire theory of ideology in the structure of commodity production.

1. The Phenomenon of Reification

The main argument here is that the philosophical problems of modernity--whose pure expression is the subject/object duality--arise due to the fetish character of the commodity form. In other words, the intellectual problems of modernity merely reflect the material conditions of production. This is explained by the concept of Reification (think: "thing-ification"). Since the social relations of production appear as relations between things, the categories of economics including labor/the worker themselves are thought of as mere things subject to external laws with no agency of their own. This first section covers the importance of reification, its relation to modern philosophy, and its development out of the rationalization of production under capitalism.

One particularly interesting moment occurs when Lukacs, in my view, gives a historical materialist account of what Heidegger would call "mechanized time". Capitalist rationalization of the working day results in an experience of time as a sequence of minute qualitatively identical temporal units where "quantity alone decides everything: hour for hour, day for day..." The concrete experience of time as a "coming toward", a "having been", and an "enpresenting" (to use Heideggerian terms) is lost to the "abstract, exactly measurable, physical space" of time.

2. The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought

This section details the insoluble problems of modern philosophy which arise because of reified consciousness. This consciousness treats human life as governed by objects and subject to external alien laws even though, in reality, all of this is produced by human social activity. The strength of the bourgeois philosophical project (from Vico to Berkeley) is that it tries to account for reality in terms of human activity but the weakness is that it goes in the wrong direction: the direction of individual mental activity and not social material activity. It therefore keeps running into fundamentally the same dualistic problems: between form and content, mind and matter, knowledge and the "world out there", subject and object, etc. This is because reified consciousness is limited to the form of material production under capitalism: rationalization or the breaking up into smaller and smaller components of a problem to make sense of it. It therefore loses the ability to conceptualize the totality which is where The True is really found.

3. The Standpoint of the Proletariat

In this chapter Lukacs points the way to overcoming reification through the practical, but theoretically directed, activity of the working class. As noted in the prior section, the truth is only found in the totality, which for Marx is a historical totality. A totality of existing relations produced by a dialectical development of what’s gone on before. Therefore, it will take a historical force to understand the truth in the totality. That force is the proletariat. What makes the proletariat unique in its position as "identical subject and object of history" (a class both in-itself and for-itself) is, of course, found in its material conditions of production. The proletariat doesn’t just make commodities, it is itself a commodity when it sells its thought and action for a contracted period of time in the market. If the commodity is the object of the economic process and the worker is a commodity through the sale of their labor-power, then "his consciousness is the self-consciousness of the commodity" and, therefore, the object is also a subject.

What is central to Lukacs's argument is that knowledge is not merely contemplative but also practical. The proletariat becomes the first class to know its situation and what must be done to change society according to its interests by putting into action what it has theorized. Only in this practical way--using the yardstick of success v failure--can theory be shown to correspond to reality.

THE CHANGING FUNCTION OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

For Lukacs, historical materialism is more than a research program with which we can understand (a) historical events as well as (b) the present in terms of historical forces--it is also a weapon the proletariat can use in waging the class war. By revealing both the current position and future trajectory, historical materialism shows capitalism's inevitable crisis and the workers' part in transitioning to a new society according to their interests.

LEGALITY AND ILLEGALITY

This chapter explores the role of legal vs illegal methods as part of a revolutionary strategy while revealing how 'the law' acts as an ideological weapon wielded by the bourgeoisie in the class struggle. He argues that, absent a historical materialist perspective, the legal structure of a society will appear to the citizens as something natural and given (not surprisingly since this legal structure is rooted in, and mirrors, the apparently natural and given structure of the economy). When this is the case, the workers submit to the law "freely" (though not necessarily approvingly). The upshot to this is capitalist states require a strong ideological component to substitute for outright physical repression since the constant use of explicit force reveals to the worker the unnatural state of things which may lead to challenges to capitalism itself.

The question of legality v illegality for the party hinges on the recognition of the state as a historically contingent phenomenon whose "power structure...has to be taken into account only to the extent to which its power actually stretches." This way, the party avoids the one extreme of purely political/merely reformist programs and the other extreme of naively romanticizing illegalism as an ideal in itself.

CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON ROSA LUXEMBURG’S “CRITIQUE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION”

This was a straightforward chapter dealing less with philosophy and more political strategy. The first criticism Luxemburg puts forth and which Lukacs responds to is that, in her view, the Russian Revolution's actions with regard to agrarian reform was incompatible with genuine socialism. Lukacs's response doesn’t so much disagree as it claims Luxemburg overestimates the power of the Bolshevik party at the time. The reforms (breaking up of land into smaller holdings) were a spontaneous act of the peasantry which, if the Bolsheviks tried to interject and guide toward a more socialist direction, would have been swept away by the peasant population and their counterrevolutionary allies. So that would have to wait. It was a tactically correct decision according to Lukacs.

Lukacs moves then to Luxemburg's assertion that in the age of imperialism, socialist struggles should not take on a national character. He responds that 1. It's wrong to universalize the imperialist character of the present 2. It forgets the nationalist character of anti-colonial liberation struggles and 3. That, like it or not, nationalism can still be an important appeal to the working class. Other criticisms Lukacs responds to include the dismissal of the constituent assembly, the denial of civil rights, and the use of terror.

At the root of all her critiques is an "overestimation of the organic character of the course of history." In other words, that socialism would mechanically develop out of capitalist economic structures if bourgeois politico-legal barriers were removed through revolt. Lukacs argues that revolution has to go further in actively transforming the social conditions of production than Luxemburg envisions. Ultimately, her overly organic conception of history led her to locate the prime mover of the revolution in the spontaneous mass movements of the workers as opposed to the vanguardist conception expounding the primacy of 'the party.'

TOWARDS A METHODOLOGY OF THE PROBLEM OF REVOLUTION

In this final chapter Lukacs inspects the structure of the Party as the vehicle for the consciously directed struggle of the proletariat against capitalism. Put another way, the organization of the party is the mediation between theory and praxis which produces a correct and total practical knowledge of the world. Lukacs first argues that an essential element of the party must be its openness to self-criticism. Without it, developments in theory cannot be guided by honest evaluations of practice. An important part of this chapter is the distinction between the merely "formal" freedom of bourgeois society and the substantive freedom enjoyed only through subordination to the collective will of the party. (It was also this section of the book I had the strongest negative reaction to) The former "freedom" consists in individuals making decisions in the context of a world alien and given to it, while the latter produces a genuine "subject" able to actively shape the world and history.

[Feliks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work starts off very promising. Initially one encounters very fine, clear, lucid writing. The author states his aims precisely and drives straightly and directly towards them. Incisive, plain, and cutting-to-the-heart-of-the-matter. Simple and eloquent; diction and verbosity which runs like a clear spring of water. Very enjoyable at the outset.

However, I must caution you that submerged rocks and treacherous rapids await one, downstream. The middle of this book is one of the worst I have ever encountered for head-spinning jargon, insolubility, and rhetoric. You want to reach out, grab him by the shoulders, and shake him. Get to the point! Plain speech, man!

But it's all to no avail. He refuses. Your pleas fall on stone ears. He batters the hapless journeyer from side-to-side with choppy, frothing, verbal tumult. You are swirled around in a whirlpool that goes nowhere for 150 pages. Lukacs is reminiscent of Hans-Georg Gadamer, another philosopher of epic, meandering, wordiness.

No, you simply can't believe the narrowness and the fineness of the hairs this maniac is obsessed with splitting. I say this in all candor, as an avid reader of Marxist and socialist literature. The bulk of this effort by Lukacs is fruitless; you come away with nearly nothing for your pains.

It is maddening to witness a man who can write so capably, engaged in the roiling and criss-crossing of only the most moot, niggling, preposterous, abstruse, and granular currents of historical materialism and proletarian consciousness. Yes, I realize this is both the title and the aforestated goal of the book, but come on Gyorgi--stop spinning around in circles!

Fortunately...all was not a complete waste. The deadly 'middle' essay of the collection of 4-6 works, is the longest (probably 200 pps., all by itself) but once he concludes you find him wrapping up his remarks with the same brilliance and succinctness which marked the beginning of the book. But what an uneven performance.

I will probably retain this strange exercise on my shelf for its superb analysis of what Marxism owes to Hegelianism--I've never seen this aspect exposed more powerfully; Hegel is mentioned continually throughout the read--as is Immanuel Kant--but, whew..strictly reserved as a reference work. It is not something to ever return to, for 'reading pleasure'.

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is important for Lukacs' concept of 'false consciousness'. Like most marxists, Lukacs assumes that consciousness is an understanding of ones class interests. False consciousness is a state where ones true consciousness is clouded by capitalism, thus classes are living with a false consciousness that can involve commodity fetishism and alienation (or reification). Only the proletariat is able to achieve true consciousness because of its opposition to capitalism. Although presumably, after the revolution, and after classes are dissolved, everyone would achieve true consciousness. One can see how the heavy hand of the state could smash consciousness into the minds of the Proletariat. And for sure, Lukacs was no stranger to advocating a strong state response (the guy was practically a Stalinist). So why is this important, then? Well, Lukacs was hinting at something very simple in this book: The working class is not always looking out for its best interests. Why else would the working class condemn unions and vote for Reactionary governments? We can simply ask ourselves whether or not this is some sort of false consciousness? Has capitalism trained us to accept the way things are?

This book greatly influenced the Situationists (which is interesting seeing that they were opposed to Soviet style communism). And it is hard to argue that this book does not advocate the iron fist.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pleasure to reread, a book which is as relevant then as it is now

[Differengenera · Rating 4 out of 5]

if you're only going to read a single book produced over the course of the period of the second-third international about why need a good materialist Marxist dialectic and not a bad idealist Hegelian one make it this one.

probably one of the most influential books I've ever read as regards my own way of thinking about culture, and certainly the starting point for every subsequent critic I'd rate as being of any use. coming to him after Jameson, Williams, Deane the lack of verve or style is very striking, which does have the advantage of making it v v accessible, particularly if you've read Marx and or Hegel. certain amount of charm too in writing one of the founding texts in the canon of Marxist criticism being absolutely chalk-dry

[Cool_guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential reading, no doubt, although at times I wanted to toss it to the side and read something lighter. I'm glad I stuck with it and managed to hack through the tangle of German philosophy. Now I have a much better understanding of the concept of reification, amongst other things.

[Nihil_ · Rating 5 out of 5]

بعدا مینویسم یا مینوسم بعدا
هرچی...

[V. · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say? This book is essential reading for those wishing to get clear on the theory of alienation in Marx, or the theory that the proletariat occupies a special standpoint from which the world can be best understood. I've been reading this to help in developing criticisms of feminist standpoint theorists and it's hard to believe they even claim to have read the book (they seem to depend on the fact that the book is far less widely read than it ought be).

[Ethan]

Simply excellent. Contains a number of essential essays that one should read if studying Lukács, or the development of Marxism in general.

Famously Lukács brings in a deep Hegelian influence around this period, which has a huge influence on the interpretation of Marx here. It is only by this Hegelian influence that he was able to anticipate the major figuring of alienation in Marx's Economic Manuscripts, a source of rich theoretical produce that was little attended to prior with regards to its social implications. This is of course most present in the famous Reification essay, which is, more than any of the other essays, most deserving of attention both for historical import and philosophical value.

The Hegelian influence continues, and we see here Lukács' more explicit reckoning with the concept of reconciliation (versöhnung), which previously occurs in his work, but without yet the explicit influence of Hegel. Lukács' reckoning with the concept comes to play a huge role in his aesthetics later on, as he switches between accepting its role in a closed totality and rejecting it.

Other than the Reification essay, his essays on Orthodox Marxism and Rosa Luxemburg both stand up to interest, though often contain noticeable cliches that I find myself rolling my eyes at (constant appraisal of how "brilliant" Marx was, how venerable the great Lenin, yadayada). The final essay in the volume "Towards a Methodology of the Problem of Organisation" is rather good, but primarily in the latter half.

The content of many of the other essays does tend toward being a little outmoded: primarily because the USSR no longer exists, and many of the questions addressed have transfigured in time. This does not, however, mean they are of no relevance even if one has to strain a little.

Very excellent.

[Brecht Rogissart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially very decent. Stressing the movement of history as a whole, with no external anchor but the internal, contradictory development of human societies, proved to be a good starting point to look at the 'behaviour' of different classes and their theoretical positions. Necessary intervention towards (unfolding) orthodox economism of his contemporary Marxists. There is nothing but the historical movement, which is undefined. Still, my inner Mouffian (didn't know that part of me was still alive) progressively intensified, as he keeps assuming that the historical movement of capitalism as a whole necessarily leads to class consciousness and overthrow of the system. Despite him bashing on post-WWI social democrats, they still reign!

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The section on “The Changing Function of Historical Materialism” was great. Highly recommended to all members of the working class - not just those in the academy, and certainly not exclusively (contemporary) Marxists. It is very accessible and remains timely. The conclusions are hard to take. This was delivered in 1919, so this is fresh after WWI, and the fiery revolutionary eschatology and messianic utopianism forcefully pulsates through the work. It’s timely in a tragic way, and that tragedy haunts the work.

[Andrew]

Oh Lukacs, how I was expecting so much more. As often as your name is spoken of in reverential terms, this just seemed to be ponderous, self-deluding ultra-orthodox dialectical materialism, devoid of so much of the social awareness that makes reading Luxemburg or Horkheimer such a pleasure. Indeed, he criticizes Luxemburg for her demands of social freedom paired with socialist economy. Some of his observations on alienation and class consciousness are pretty wise, but a good 3/4 of this one can be thrown out.

[Ibrahim · Rating 3 out of 5]

لو استثنينا كتب "انبياء" الماركسية الثلاث: ماركس ولينين وانجلز، فإن هذا الكتاب واحد من اهم الكتب حول الماركسية إن لم يكن اهمها على الاطلاق.
وفي رأيي فإن هذا الكتاب يستحق شهرته ومركزيته في المدرسة الفلسفية الماركسية، وعلى الرغم ان الكتاب ثقيل إلا انه يستحق القراءة فعلا. وشخصيا فخور بأني استطعت ان اقرأ هذا الكتاب الذي شهرته تسبقه.
ولتفهم هذا الكتاب اكثر مما فعلت فعلت يجب ان تكون لديك الخلفية المعرفية اللازمة حول روزا لكوسمبور، الثورة البلشفية، والافكار الاشتراكية التي سبقت ماركس او التي خالفته في طريقته في مواجهة البرجوازية.
الترجمة كانت جيدة في مجملها وعلى الرغم اني في مرات عديدة شعرت بأن تراكيب بعض الجمل كان من الممكن ان تكون اكثر بساطة.
مشكلة الكتاب الحقيقية تكمن في الفصل المسمى بالتشيؤ، لأن الكتاب ككتاب تنظيري فلسفي تناول هذه القضية من الناحية الفلسفية التنظرية بينما كنت اتمنى ان يتم التركيز بشكل أكبر على تأثيرات التشيؤ على الحياة اليومية للعامل والفرد، وهذا ما جعل هذا الفصل شديد الممل، شديد التعقيد، مستحيل الفهم تقريبا
وبالنظر كون ان فصل التشيؤ 100 صفحة تقريبا اي ربع الكتاب فهذا جعلني حائرا بين نجمتين للكتاب بحكم ان ربعه تقريبا معقد جدا وممل او 4 نجوم بحكم ان الكتاب يناقش قضايا وافكار شديدة الأصالة، فقررت في النهاية ان 3 نجوم ستكون فيها نوع من الانصاف.
الكتاب جيد ويستحق.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very flawed yet interesting work where Lukacs attempts to approach, define, and give material analysis towards the Marxist concept of "class consciousness." This edition starts with a Preface from 1967, over 40 years after the original work was published, and for good reason. Lukacs has many erroneous ideas in this work, and he addresses most of them in a commendable self-criticism, although it too contains many ideological flaws. Lukacs underestimates the influence and role of L. Feuerbach in the development of Marx's thought, another continuation of his career-long obsession of cleaving a false divide between the philosophical positions of Marx and Engels. He also directs incorrect criticism towards on the concept of "Social Fascism," and misquotes Stalin. Stalin did not, as Lukacs maintains, maintain an identity of social-democracy and Fascism. He did say they were "twins," but not those of the identical variety. Stalin specifically noted that social democracy was the "moderate" twin of Fascism, in that social democracy could not break through the chains of capitalism and reaction that would ultimately degenerate into Fascist reaction. Lukacs himself seems to take a similar position in the second essay when critiquing social democracy.

The original Preface is interesting as well. Lukacs maintains that this work arose "out of actual work for the Party, to clarify the theoretical positions of the revolutionary movement..." While I have no doubt it did, the nature of the work makes it somewhat difficult for any organic intellectual to comprehend. Lukacs uses terms such as "reification," etc. in the first three essays that are not properly defined until the fourth, and uses Hegelian terminology in many places where such words had already been superseded and replaced with simpler terms by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. This all points to Lukacs' background as petit-bourgeois intellectual who had moved over to the position of the Communists rather than a member of the proletariat (of which there is no fundamental "problem," but it would not have killed him to simplify his terminology and words for the benefit of the rank-and-file in understanding him). Lukacs also correctly notes that Hegel is too overlooked by those who wish to study and understand Marxism (especially today), but he overcorrected and has adopted far too much Hegelianism rather than Marxism.

The first essay, "What Is Orthodox Marxism?" is clearly the most controversial of them all, as most criticism of the work focuses on this section, and for good reason. Here Lukacs has joined the legion of petit-bourgeois intellectuals who scream of a supposed philosophical break between Marx and Engels on the subject of dialectical materialism, namely that in Anti-Duhring Engels advanced the idea that dialectics applied to both society and the natural world whilst Marx only believed they applied to society. This has been adequately debunked by many over the past century or so, and I will add my voice to the ever-expanding chorus. Those who believe Engels misrepresented Marx's views on the matter seem to imply some sort of nefarious attempt by Engels after Marx's death to distort Marx's views and that Marx was actually unfamiliar with Anti-Duhring and Engels' arguments. This is bunk and easily disproved. In 1867, in a letter from Marx to Engels a decade before the publication of Anti-Duhring, Marx himself says that in Capital Vol. I, "I quote Hegel’s discovery of the law of the transformation of a merely quantitative change into a qualitative one as being attested by history and natural science alike." If Marx did not believe in the application of dialectics to nature, why would he say this? Additionally, in 1877 as Anti-Duhring was being published in pieces, Marx wrote to Wilhelm Freund and asked for pieces of work by Dr. Moritz Traube, as Engels planned to cite them in "a work of philosophy" which would become Anti-Duhring. Clearly, Marx was familiar with at least some of the content of Anti-Duhring, and it makes no sense why he would not know of the basic philosophical premises of the work and not maintain any sort of criticism of them anywhere.

You can definitely see Lukacs' influence on the Frankfurt School with his work on reification and concreting on the division of labour in scientific/theoretical endeavors that prevade bourgeois sciences. Lukacs' emphasis on the dialectic of "spontaneity and conscious control" in the Communist Party in revolutionary action is a very good synthesis of Luxemburg and Lenin's positions, and something I think we see in events like the GPCR. Unfortunately, Lukacs is pervaded with a weird, Trotsky-like distaste for the peasantry. He says, "These strata have no class consciousness that might have any bearing on the remoulding of society," whereas we see from historical experience in China, Vietnam, etc. that this is simply untrue.

The section on legality and illegality is one of the best sections of the work in my view, and presents a wonderful analysis of why the Communist Party must adapt an ostensibly "unprincipled" position combing both legal and illegal means based upon each situation in order to prepare the proletariat for genuine revolutionary action.

The rest of the work is interesting, but I find that it places far too much emphasis upon consciousness as the motivator of class struggle rather than genuine material conditions. I would recommend A. Deborin's essay "G. Lukacs and His Criticism of Marxism" as a must-read after the book, or even after the first essay. It is an excellent rebuttal of the anti-dialectical portions of the work, if certainly a bit more harsh than I would be.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and engaging. The discussions of class consciousness remain some of the most theoretically insightful on the topic, whereas the rest of the text is lacking in some major areas. There is a necessity to use Lukács' understanding of class consciousness as a foundation - rather than as an end point, but that is a discussion for now and not an indictment of Lukács' own contributions.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief summary of my big takeaways from History and Class Consciousness:

The forms (or categories) that we perceive as given - under capitalism, or at any other historical stage - are not actually given (or natural), but mediated by history. If/when those forms crystallize and become a hindrance/fetter to human social development, then we need to transcend beyond those given forms.

Things may seem "objective" at first glance, but what about the objects that we produce? Society produces objects. So even though life under capitalism confronts us as if it's "objective" reality, when it's really been historically constructed by us. There's an imprint of the subjective within the objective.

"Social facts are not objects, but relations between men."

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting yet rather uneven work. As a selection of essays rather than a monograph, Lukacs' magnum opus often comes off as disjointed and uneven in its scope and strength of thought, but overall the book is organized on the lines of class consciousness and the role of historical materialism in the revolutionary movement. I find Lukacs' more straightforwardly political arguments less convincing than his philosophical ones given historical foresight. As a result, the best part of this book and an essential read for any Marxist is "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat." While I find he often lapses into subjectivism with his replacement of nature with history as a category, he raises the important problematics of modernity that 20th century Western Marxism was in a sense a response to. While his solutions may feel antiquated, the questions he raises are as crucial as ever.

4.5/5

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

what does this book offer that marx didnt already cover?

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just because you read Marx's Capital, it doesn´t mean you understood it.

[Filip Wijnings · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes me crossed

[Ioannis Drakos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, a collection of essays written from the late 1910s to the early 1920s, forced much wider reading on my part to understand the finer philosophical points. This was a twofold process in attempting to understand Lukacs' own references to Hegel, Kant, and many others, but also in making sense of the book's legacy in the 20th century.

I struggled much more in understanding the former case, particularly with the pure philosophical terms Lukacs used, mostly in the section "antinomies of bourgeois thought" in the central essay on 'reification and the consciousness of the proletariat'. The history of philosophy is a crucial area I need to read up on before a 2nd pass at this work - but I don't think anything too significant was lost on me for a first read. The ability to independently critique and formulate thoughts on some matters comes with much more reading than I have done.

I leave this book with a much more coherent understanding of materialist dialectics than I entered. Concepts like the constant self-movement of historical phenomena, driven by internal contradictions via the struggle and unity of opposites within them, leading to their negation and thus transformation; the inseparable unity of theory and practice; the emphasis on striving toward a total view of the historical process; a rejection of mechanistic and idealistic understandings of the past, present and future in its constant change. It was all very coherently and succinctly put across, and frankly encourages me for the daunting task of tackling Hegel and the Marxist critique of him.

What I gained from Lukacs' discussions on the nature of orthodox marxism, organisation, and most significantly class consciousness, reification and totality were extremely enlightening, and will constantly serve as a reference point in approaching any future matters of practice. Lukacs' contributions, elucidations and innovations here were fascinating and highly readable. In HCC are not lofty arguments from an ivory tower but matters always of a practical importance to the proletariat's and the communists' revolutionary roles and tasks.

It was fascinating to see the interaction of mainly Luxemburg and Lenin on Lukacs' philosophy too. I am quite fond of Zizek calling HCC and the early Lukacs in general "the philosopher of Leninism", and I understand why at many points in the book. For me, it is a positive attribution, and Lenin was, mostly but not totally unbeknownst to Lukacs, also an advocate of re-appraising Hegel to fully understand Marx.

To conclude, I learned a great deal on the nature of Marxist philosophy, one which is not contemplative but rather never loses sight of the constant interaction between theory, practice and totality.

The centrality of the proletariat's task in replacing capitalism extends to much bigger questions of true human freedom, the overcoming of reification, and the liberation of mankind - something wholly within reach.

[Michael’ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this months ago. I read small bits as I needed them or as my mood dictated. The writing is dense. Lukács works with concepts ready-made rather than constructing them from scratch. In these regards, Lukács is greatly inferior to Plekhanov.
This collection starts with 3 great essays. Their only flaw is that they start with finished concepts. They don’t show how these concepts are deduced or how they are constituted. But as Plekhanov covers the same ground in more readable fashion, there is little reason to read these. Plekhanov works without finished constructs such as “a conception of totality”. Therefore, his work will be much more understandable and much more convincing for non-Marxists. Lukács articles can at the most serve as reminders. As deepenings. But as they are rather basic, they don’t serve this purpose well either. At the time, in their original setting, these were no doubt great and very important essays. A recapitulation of Marxism under new conditions, in response to new theoretical misconceptions and the news cycle of that day. His examples can serve today to illustrate the anatomy of revisionism.
The essay on illegalism serves the same purpose. It’s great for (figuratively) beating violent Antifa rioters over the head with. There’s nothing else to say about it. Between the starting articles and the one on illegalism is a huge text on reification. Neither interesting nor important, extremely dry, it makes for poor reading. Then comes an assessment of Rosa Luxemburg’s critique of the Russian Revolution. Too abstract. Quite one sided. Lukács, like Caleb Maupin and certain elements in the populist left, puts an exclusive emphasis on rational planning. The Outlines at the expense of The Paris Commune. while actually the two exist in an inherent and harmonious whole. Then follows a text on organisation which I was not interested enough to read.

Altogether, Lukács is one of the best people to learn Marxism from. But there are so many who teach the same things better (Marx, Engels, Lafargue, Plekhanov, Lenin) that there is hardly a reason to read him. This is a good book. Lukács explains Marxism well. He illustrates it with quotes and examples. With philosophy and with the news cycle. He consistently has deep insight into the questions he analyses. He present his case as a unified whole, one position following from the other, each reinforcing the others. Yet, I do not recommend you read this. It should not be part of a basic Marxist education.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essays collected here, written in the years immediately following the First World War and the Russian Revolution, represent a sustained effort on the part of Lukács to articulate a theory of class consciousness as the nodal point of the historical dialectic and the human being. Humanity, as subject-object of history, is without fixed being; human nature is nothing other than the dialectical flux. It is class consciousness whereby the proletariat simultaneously recognizes and abolishes itself as a class, and thereby transcends the class form of society. On the world-historical scale, the economic situation of the proletariat draws it inexorably, if initially unconsciously, toward realizing its necessary role in the climactic structural contradiction of the capitalist system. Indeed, it is at the very point of acute systemic crisis that objective class interest – substantive class consciousness – impinges upon subjective psychological consciousness. It is then that the manifest objectification of the irreducible subjectivity of the proletarian appears as the condition by which the historical dialectic of capitalist society sublates itself.

Upon this theory, Lukács also draws out the implications of class consciousness and dialectical-materialism for the question of revolutionary political organization, as well as for questions of law and the state as they pertain to revolutionary praxis. Throughout the essays, Lukács's confidence in the ultimate liberation of the proletariat is predicated upon the revolutionary potential he infers within the dialectical process itself; his is a crusading imperative underpinned by a systematic theology – faith guaranteed not by manifest signs but by structuralist logic. Whether one accepts the premises upon which that logic operates is a decision which perhaps escapes rational calculation.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a series of contemporary essays about Marxist theory circa 1920, and as such a background in the foundational reading of historical materialism, Marxist dialectics, etc. would be helpful for this read. Without this background, it's hard for me to really appreciate the work & thinking of Lukacs and hence my ambivalent rating.

That being said, there are a couple of ideas that really stand out for me
- I'd recommend picking out his essay on reification - first developed by Marx and made famous by Lukacs, this background reading is what ultimately brought me to this book. The notion that capitalism systematically and totally recasts what are human relations to resemble commodity relations is powerful and has application more generally beyond revolutionary Marxism.
- His criticism of the bourgeois sciences is also fascinating & relevant today - he accuses academia of aiming to isolate & explain human phenomena as inevitable, natural laws supporting the bourgeois interest of conserving the current order. This analysis feels applicable and compelling as methodological criticism of many pop-scientist reactionaries of today (Pinkers, Petersons, etc.)

Despite it mostly being a jumble of theory, the book did evoke a fantastic nostalgia for a time past. For one, the time Lukacs is writing is objectively fascinating -- in the aftermath of the Great War, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and increasing momentum of the international communist movement. Truly, the spectre of Communism stalked most of the world. So much despair and bloodshed yet also a sense of hope as the modern world was on the cusp of being made.

With that, the politics of this time are also truly fascinating and unlike anything we know in today's neo-liberal representative democracies. The communist political organization was the fulcrum between theory and practice: cutting edge theory was actively being spun up to guide the actions of the proletarian masses towards revolution (this is what much of this book is about). You get a strong sense that an individual's participation in politics truly could shape the course of history and ideas mattered. This is all in contrast to a sense today that politics and how we chose to organize our society has transcended beyond our ability to guide it, and is in fact an autonomous & unassailable extension of capital interest.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starting from the standpoint of the man who is isolated from the world and who doesn't understand the events going on around him, the Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukacs lays out the full gamut of political theory and ideological measurements for what would become the modern aficionado of western Marxism. In so doing, he became not only a key spokesman for Communism but the first intellectual to articulate the relationship of man as a creator of history, and history as a creator of man, for the revolutionary class of people who looked to succeed to power after the events of 1848. This book is very dense in terms of the amalgamation of buzzwords, keywords and code-words that structure a typical Marxist view of history. In it I learned that Lukacs is the figure who most propped up Marx on a philosophical level, in much the same way that Lenin established the Marxist foundation for politics and Plekhanov established Marx's scientific standing for the Bolshevik perspective. Three stars.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Korsch, Lukacs distances himself from the comintern orthodoxy by viewing Marxist philosophy not as a collection of dogmatic assertions, but as a method - the scientific method of historical materialism. Lukacs was incredibly erudite and well-versed in German Idealist philosophy, and this shows here in his careful dismantling of bourgeois thought from Descartes through Kant to Hegel, and his many diagnoses of the problems of class struggle viewed through a critical historical materialist lense. The central problematic which Lukacs develops in these essays is reification, which is not only adopted from Marx but allowed to develop here in upside-down Hegelian fashion and reveals itself to be the major alienating factor in all forms of social life under early 20th-century capitalism. It is a fully fledged copernican revolution and reversal of the german idealist subject-object paradigm and a must read for anybody with a background in idealism who wants to better understand marxist dialectics.

[Sajid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rather than making some objective economic structure for the proletariats,Lukács in this book focuses on how the consciousness of the proletariats as a historical necessity can make it revolutionary like never before. He explores the relationship between historical materialism and consciousness. Lukács argues that class consciousness is crucial for social transformation, emphasizing the role of subjective experiences in shaping revolutionary potential. The book critiques orthodox Marxism, proposing a more humanistic approach that considers the lived experiences of individuals in understanding historical development. Lukács' ideas have had a significant impact on Marxist thought and discussions around the intersection of philosophy, politics, and social change. Besides, there are so many reflections on the difference between Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin, Bolshevik revolution. Also it was quite refreshing to view Marx in Hegelian dialectics. Overall, this book was interesting contemplation on Marxist thought.

[Matis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Articles très intéressants, polémiques. Rédigés pendant les années de jeunesse de l'auteur, qui sont également celles de la courte République des Soviets de Hongrie, à laquelle l'auteur a participé, ces écrits sont intéressants en cela que l'auteur entend remettre au centre du débat politique d'alors (traversé par les marxistes révolutionnaires auxquels Lukacs appartient et ceux appelés "révisionnistes", partisans de la réforme et de l'insertion du socialisme à l'État bourgeois) plusieurs catégories héritées de Hegel: la Totalité et la Dialectique, lesquelles lui permettent de justifier sa réprobation des réformistes et la nécessité du processus révolutionnaire (cf Légalité et illégalité). Ces textes seront l'objet d'une autocritique sincère de l'auteur plus tard, en raison de ce qu'il juge être un idéalisme trop important (sur la ligne de Hegel, avec un caractère téléologique). Cela est, à mon sens, justifié, mais ne doit surtout pas conduire à rejeter ces articles de jeunesses, qui restent, a mon sens, très intéressants à lire, bien que nécessitant malgré tout des bases en philosophie.