LUKACS TODAY SOVIETICA PUBLICATIONS AND MONOGRAPHS OF THE INSTITUTE OF EAST-EUROPEAN STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF FRIBOURG I SWITZERLAND AND THE CENTER FOR EAST EUROPE, RUSSIA AND ASIA AT BOSTON COLLEGE AND THE SEMINAR FOR POLITICAL THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH Founded by J. M. BocHENSKI (Fribourg) Edited by T. J. BLAKELEY (Boston), Gumo KONG (Fribourg) and NIKOLAUS LOBKOWICZ (Munich) Editorial Board Karl G. Ballestrem (Eichstatt) Bernard Jeu (Lille) Helmut Dahm (Cologne) George L. Kline (Bryn Mawr) Richard T. DeGeorge (Univ. of Kansas) James J. O'Rourke (St. Anselm's) Peter Ehlen (Munich) Friedrich Rapp (Dortmund) Michael Gagern (Munich) Tom Rockmore (Duquesne) Philip Grier (Dickinson Coli.) Andries Sarlemij n (Eindhoven) Felix P. Ingold (ETH St. Gall) James Scanlan (Ohio State) Edward M. Swiderski (Fribourg) VOLUME 51 , LUKACS TODAY Essays in Marxist Philosophy Edited by TOM ROCKMORE Department of Philosophy, Duquesne University, U.S.A. D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP DORDRECHT I BOSTON i LANCASTER I TOKYO Library of Congress Catalogingin Publication Data Lukacs today. (Sovietica; 51) Includes index. 1. Lukacs, Gyorgy, 1885-1971. I. Rockmore, Tom, 1942- . II. Series: Sovietica (Universite de Fribourg. Ost-Europa Institut); v. 51. B4815.L84L885 1987 199' .439 87-32339 ISBN-13: 978-94-010-7805-4 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-2897-8 DOl:10.1007 I 978-94-009-2897-8 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland. Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland. All Rights Reserved © 1988 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland Softcoverreprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner CONTENTS Tom Rockmore, Introduction 1 PART I Lukacs' Marxist Thought M. Markovic, The CriticalThought of Georg Lukacs 14 M. Buhr, Georg Lukacs and the Bourgeois Mind in the Twentieth Century 30 M. Hevesi, Lukacs in the Eyes of Western Philosophy Today 42 PART II Themes in History and Class Consciousness J. Larrain, Lukacs' Concept of Ideology 52 L. Dupre, Objectivism and the Rise of Cultural Alienation 70 J. Grondin, Reificationfrom Lukacs to Halbermas 86 W.L. McBride, Reification Re-examined 108 A. Feenberg, The Question of Organization in the Early MarxistWork of Luk�ics. Technique or Praxis? 126 A. Ignatow, Is There a 'Proletarian Standpoint'? 157 J.M. Bernstein, Lukacs' Wake: Praxis, Presence and Metaphysics 167 PART III Lukacs on Hegel T.I. Ojzerman, Lukacs' Hegel Interpretation 197 T. Rockmore, Lukacs on Modem Philosophy 221 PART IV Lukacs' Later Thought N. Tertulian, Lukacs' Ontology 243 INDEX 274 INTRODUCTION As this century nears an end, it has become increasingly clear that Georg Lukacs is one of the most talented intellectuals of our time, not only in the Marxist tradition, but in general. Lukacs' name is well­ known, and his views are increasingly attracting attention; but it cannot be said that his thought has so far been widely studied, or that it has been studied to the degree its place in the Marxist traditionwarrants or its intrinsic interest demands. In the relatively short period since Lukacs' death, there have been a number of books and many articles devoted to his work. But, despite some efforts in that direction, there is still no adequate treatment of his work as a whole, surely a formidable task. 1 If, as I believe, Lukacs is the most important Marxist philosopher since Marx, and one of the most influential intellectual figures of this century, then surely his ideas are worth scrutinizing frequently and in detail. This is not the place to provide a general description either of Lukacs' life or of his work. Descriptions of his life, especially his early career, are widely available. For present purposes, it will suffice to provide only the barest mention of some biographical facts, together with a brief account of some items in his bibliography. Lukacs' early career has been extensivelt studied; but I do not believe that it has often been well-understood. He was bornin Buda­ pest on April 13, 1885 and he died there on June 4, 1971. After a period in which Lukacs studied widely and wrote on such topics as literary criticism, aesthetics, drama, etc., he joined the just established Hungarian Communist Party in December 1918. From this moment until the end of his long life, he remained faithful to institutionalized Marxism, and he made numerous contributions to Marxist theory. Although his interpretation of Marxism evolved greatly during this lengthy period, there is no reason to believe that he ever doubted the wisdom of his decision to adhere to the Communist Party. Lukacs' bibliography is imposing by any standard. The complete list of his writings, including their translation into various languages, runs to more than seventy pages.3 It is not possible here to describe even the major writings in his entire corpus. Since our interest at pres­ ent is focussed on his contribution to Marxist philosophy, it will be useful to mention in passing several of the main texts from his Marxist period (1918-1971). Any account of Lukacs' Marxist thought must begin with History and Class Consciousness, which appeared in 1923. This work, which is widely thought of as his masterpiece, has continued to influence generations of Marxists, including most recently Jlirgen Habermas, the German social theorist. It is certainly difficult, indeed perilous, to T. Rockmore (ed.), Lukacs Today, 1-12. © 1988 by D. Reidel PublishingCom pany. 2 T. ROCKMORE evaluate the importance and influence of any book, especially one as controversial as this text. But I do not hesitate to say that History and Class Consciousness is one of the most significanttheoretical texts in the Marxist tradition. And from the strictlyphilosophical perspective, I believe that this is the single most important contribution to Marxist philosophy since Marx. Like any book of seminal importance, History and Class Con­ sciousness is a difficult book to describe, especially so in brief compass. Suffice it to say that Lukacs here takes up a series of problems from an angle of vision located somewhere between the disparate perspectives of Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. The interest in Luxemburg, symbolic of the politically unorthodox nature of the work, is one of the reasons for which it was strongly and immediately attacked, even before Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, originally published in 1908, became available in German translation in 1927. In order to maintain and strengthen his ties to Marxist ortho­ . doxy, Lukacs criticized and renounced his book. He realigned himself on Leninist orthodoxy, as it was known to him, as early as 1924, in a slim volume, entitled Lenin. History and Class Consciousness is a series of essays touching on many themes, some of which (e.g. alienation, totality, Hegel inter­ pretation, etc.) continue to recur in Lukacs' later writings. Lukacs here shows the importance of the concept of class consciousness for Marx' thought. He calls attention, prior to the publication of the Paris Manuscripts (in 1932), to the Marxian view of alienation, which he discusses in brilliant fashion under the heading of "reification". He also stresses the approach to Marx in terms of the Hegelian background. Lukacs' emphasis on the significanceof Hegel for the interpretation of Marx was closely followed by Karl Korsch in his book Marxism and Philosophy, which also appeared in 1923. Lukacs and Korsch were the prime architects of the still widespread tendency to understand the philosophical dimension of Marx' thought mainly, or even solely, in relation to Hegel. Lukacs was certainly not the first writer to call attention to Hegel's importance for the comprehension of Marx. Even before Engels' famous remark about Marx' debt to German philosophy4, Marx had indicated the importance of this relation in the well-known comment in the Second Afterword to Capita/.5 Here, in a celebrated passage, Marx unclearly suggested that his own position is to be grasped as the materialistic inversion of Hegelian idealism. It has always been recog­ nized that this passage is important for the interpretation of Marx' position, although it is difficult to specify the meaning of Marx' suggestion. In part for this reason, this passage has given rise to an extensive discussion, which need not detain us here. For present purposes, it will be sufficient to observe that although many participants, especially Marxist writers, were not well grounded in INTRODUCfiON 3 Hegel's thought, this was not the case for Lukacs. When he wrote History and Class Consciousness, he already possessed a flrm grasp, from a Marxist perspective, of Hegel's thought, which he continued to explore in ever greater depth and detail in his later writings .. Lukacs' interest in Hegel later led to a major monograph on his thought, The Young Hegel. Studies in the Relations between Dialectics and Economics, which appeared in 1948. This book was conceived as a contribution to the history of classical German philosophy from the Marxist perspective. Although Lukacs explicitly acknowledges the importance of Hegel's approach, he constantly stresses that it is an "idealist distortion" which requires a "materialist transformation" in order to be adequate as an interpretation of socialreality. According to Lukacs, the renaissance of Hegel studies in what Marxists call the "imperialistic" period represents an attempt to utilize Hegel for what he regards as the "imperialistic, reactionary develop­ ment" of neo-Kantianism.