Georg Lukács: From Romanticism to Bolshevism

by Michael Lowy, Patrick Camiller

The philosophical and political development that converted Georg Luk�cs from a distinguished representative of Central European aesthetic vitalism into a major Marxist theorist and Communist militant has long remained an enigma. In this absorbing scholarly study, Michael L�wy for the first time traces and explains the extraordinary mutation that occurred in Luk�cs's thought between 1909 and 1929. Utilizing many as yet unpublished sources, L�wy meticulously reconstructs the complex itinerary of Luk�cs's thinking as he gradually moved towards his decisive encounter with Bolshevism. The religious convictions of the early Luk�cs, the peculiar spell exercised on him and on Max Weber by Dostoyevskyan images of pre-revolutionary Russia, the nature of his friendships with Ernst Bloch and Thomas Mann, are amongst the discoveries of the book. Then, in a fascinating case-study in the sociology of ideas, L�wy shows how the same philosophical problematic of Lebensphilosophie dominated the intelligentsias of both Germany and Hungary in the pre-war period, yet how the different configurations of social forces in each country bent its political destiny into opposite directions. The famous works produced by Luk�cs during and after the Hungarian Commune- Tactics and Ethics, History and Class Consciousness and Lenin -are analysed and assessed. A concluding chapter discusses Luk�cs's eventual ambiguous settlement with Stalinism in the thirties, and its coda of renewed radicalism in the final years of his life.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Politics, Biography, Nonfiction, History

219 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Nóra · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Hungarian reader the recurring misspellings of names and locations does become annoying by the end of the book, but this of course does not take away from its contents. Still not sold on this thesis that there is a clear continuity between the pre-war romantic anticapitalism and Lukács's conversion, or rather that one could make sense through this notion of romanticism of the conversion. To me it seems that the months long moral dilemmas of Lukács to embrace Bolshevism, up to him joining the Hungarian Communist Party questions the explanatory potential of this approach. While this book is clear about its sociological orientation, on a theoretical level it feels inadequate to be trying to fit a dialectical thinker's work (even if it's just 2 decades) into a single, coherent worldview-based narrative.

[Matthew O'Brien · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the book does exactly what it said it would, that being explaining the ideological change of györgy lukács, the issue with it is that its written by a trotskite who constantly tries to push the cube into the circle hole, that being he constantly tries to push through ideas that Lukács was a Trotskyite of some sort. Whenever Lukács even remotely criticises the soviet union, the author goes "ah ha! he is anti-Stalin" this is of course nonsense.

[Taneli Viitahuhta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent introduction to historical and theoretical development of Lukács in times when the World Revolution was a true thunderstorm over Europe. Written in clear and compact prose, with retentive grasp of important events and unerring judgement over the things aesthetic and political. Highly recommended.