REVIEWS Hegelian Leninism today! Timothy Bewes and Timothy Hall, eds, Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence. Aesthetics, Politics, Literature, Continuum, London and New York, 2011. 256 pp., £60.00 hb., 978 1 44115 790 4. Michael J. Thompson, ed., Georg Lukács Reconsidered: Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics, Continuum, London and New York, 2011. 272 pp., £70.00 hb., 978 1 44110 876 0. They are like buses. You wait twenty years for a Association with Stalinism also limits the interest substantive critical book on Lukács, then along come of Lukács as the single most important and founding two at once, and both from the same publisher. In ÀJXUH RI :HVWHUQ 0DU[LVP 7KHVH WZR ERRNV PDNH these two hardback books priced for library sales VWURQJ FDVHV IRU UHVWDWLQJ WKH VLJQLÀFDQFH RI /XNiFV rather than student activists, Continuum offer nearly for critical thought. With the possible exception of 500 pages of new material on and by Lukács. Anyone /XFLHQ*ROGPDQQ·VFODLPWKDW/XNiFVZDVDQLQÁXHQFH interested in Lukács will need to read both volumes. on Heidegger, Lukács has scarcely been of interest to There are some differences of orientation and some philosophers outside the traditions of Marxism. The common ground: Andrew Feenberg, Michael Löwy prospect of a group of Oxford analytical philosophers and Timothy Hall offer substantial essays in both VLWWLQJ GRZQ ZLWK VRPH 0,7 VSHFLDOLVWV LQ DUWLÀ- volumes. Anyone approaching these two books might cial intelligence to work through History and Class wonder why they were not combined into one large Consciousness is about as plausible as imagining the volume. The experience of reading both books together central committee of the SWP organizing a week-long nevertheless foregrounds the more interesting ques- retreat to immerse themselves in Being and Time. tions: why Lukács and why now? $OWKRXJKDQLPSRUWDQWLQÁXHQFHRQOLWHUDU\FULWLFLVP Since the collection Lukács Today: Essays in /XNiFVKDVKDGOLWWOHLQÁXHQFHRQSKLORVRSKHUVKRVWLOH Marxist Philosophy (1988), edited by Tom Rockmore, WR0DU[LVWPRGHVRIDUJXPHQWDQGZRUVHVXFKLQÁX- there have been a number of post-1989 shifts in the ence Lukács has had appears tainted by association reception of Lukács. The discovery, publication and with a fuzzy set of humanist and politico-existentialist translation of Lukács’s A Defence of History and Class ODPHQWV DJDLQVW UHLÀFDWLRQ DOLHQDWLRQ DQG WKH OLNH Consciousness (2002) provided important new critical Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Lukács in Adventures of contexts. But, although there has been a steady trickle the Diaelctic ÀQLVKHGRIIWKHFUHGLELOLW\RIVXFKGLD- of critical studies, there has not been an obvious resur- lectical attitudinizing as long ago as 1955. gence in active enthusiasm for Lukács. As a committed Recently, one sign of renewed interest in Lukács’s revolutionary communist, he can just about be defended major work, History and Class Consciousness, has as someone who criticized Stalinism from within, but been Axel Honneth’s critical reworking of Lukács in his evident complicities have won him few friends in 5HLÀFDWLRQ$1HZ/RRNDWDQ2OG,GHD (2008). In the non-Stalinist traditions of Marxism. A parenthetical two volumes reviewed here, Timothy Hall and Andrew remark from Georg Lukács Reconsidered suggests Feenberg both offer persuasive critiques of Honneth: some of the problem: ‘Lukács actually participated in put bluntly, although detailed, Honneth’s reading of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet of 1919, regrettably History and Class Consciousness appropriates Lukács killing a number of hostages…’ Regrettably?! The for his own purposes, and distorts his central philo- social will required to rehabilitate the meaning and sophical and political purposes. Lukács’s work stands struggles of Soviet communism is evidently some way as a Marxist rebuke to Habermasian critical theory off, even if necessary, if anti-capitalist movements are rather than offering anything much to the project of ever to overthrow actually existing capitalism. Lukács communication ethics or the politics of recognition. should be part of any reassessment of the legacy of the 2QH VLJQLÀFDQW IDXOWOLQH WKURXJK ERWK WKHVH FRO- Russian Revolution. It will take more than intellectual lections of essays on Lukács is what might be called HIIRUW KRZHYHU WR GHOLPLW WKH DIÀQLWLHV RI /XNiFV the spectre of Adorno. An initial argument for the with totalitarian communism, not least as regards the necessity of Lukács now might stem from the reali- centrality to his work of categories such as totality. zation that Adorno’s debts both to Lukács and to Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) 33 Marx remain suggestive rather than substantively torted ideal. There is nevertheless a global labour argued. History and Class Consciousness remains the force whose relation to the forces and relations of most sophisticated attempt to sketch a philosophical production of capital remains a site of struggle. Is it so Marxism, and one whose critique of the commodity implausible that the workers of the world might decide IRUPDQGRIUHLÀFDWLRQLVFHQWUDOWR$GRUQLDQFULWLFDO WRUHVLVWWKH¶DXVWHULW\·PHDVXUHVLQÁLFWHGXSRQWKHP theory. Given that the research paradigms gleaned from in the interests of capital, and reinvent revolutionary Adorno’s work appear now to be nearing exhaustion, socialism? Lukács offers the opportunity to rethink and renew (YHQLIWKRURXJKO\UHLÀHGDOLHQDWHGFRPSOLFLWZLWK what is critical about Adorno’s residual Marxism and capital, and mired in the failed solidarity of historical the critique of capitalism. In a number of essays in defeats, the class struggle of the proletariat is bound Georg Lukács Reconsidered and in Georg Lukács: The up with the fortunes of capital and not so simply con- Fundamental Dissonance of Existence, the arguments signed to the historical dustbin. It might make it more offered set up critical dialogues between Lukács and Adorno, with regard to both Adorno’s critical theory and his aesthetics, and the results are often suggestive. Adorno evidently protested his difference from the later Lukács too strongly. But for all the efforts to understand Lukács through Adorno, the substantive confrontation between them remains in the wings of these books: what, then, is more central? In their introductions to the two volumes, the editors variously acknowledge the shibboleths of Lukácsian 0DU[LVP UHLÀFDWLRQ WRWDOLW\ WKH SUROHWDULDW DV WKH VXEMHFW²REMHFWRIKLVWRU\WKHGHIHQFHRIUHDOLVPDJDLQVW acceptable to the habitats of academic argument to modernism. Of these problematics, the question of the pose this as the question of the proletariat, but one of proletariat emerges as a persistent thorn, seeming the provocations of History and Class Consciousness almost an embarrassment. Neil Larsen’s essay in the is the challenge to understand the critical perspec- Bewes and Hall collection is even entitled ‘Lukács sans tive of the proletariat through praxis, rather than as Proletariat, or Can History and Class Consciousness some messianic or utopian horizon of spectrality. Be Rehistoricised’. Andrew Feenberg notes that ‘there The standpoint of proletarian revolution is surely a are many aspects of Lukács’ book [History and Class determinate and historical abstraction, less idealist Consciousness] that are thoroughly outdated, notably than the standpoint of redemption associated with his faith in proletarian revolution.’ Timothy Hall puts Western Marxism’s various negative theologies. Put it a little less bluntly: ‘His work, I believe, remains differently, for all the Hegelian and Marxist original- relevant and this notwithstanding the historical demise ity of History and Class Consciousness, Lukács also of classical class politics.’ There is something more articulates a Leninist understanding of Marxism, con- than a little awkward, if not contradictory, about the cerned with praxis, with party organization, and with intellectual genealogy of ‘classical’ as an adjective the revolutionary legacy of Bolshevik politics. Gramsci used to describe ‘Marxism’. This is compounded by the famously described the Russian Revolution as the assertion that class politics as understood by Marxism revolution against Karl Marx’s Capital, and the extent is historically obsolete. Through much of these books to which history might be made consciously through it is assumed that what has come to be understood as revolutionary praxis rather than as some sociologically ¶FODVVLFDO·0DU[LVP²WKH0DU[LVPRI0DU[(QJHOV determined inevitability is clearly the problematic /HQLQ*UDPVFL7URWVN\DQGSHUKDSVRI/XNiFV²LV horizon for Lukács. As Stanley Aronowitz suggests, at best a kind of negative resource for the critique of in Georg Lukács Reconsidered, ‘a careful reading of capitalism, besides which the critical perspective and History and Class Consciousness reveals a sophis- political praxis associated with proletarian revolu- ticated exposition of the philosophical basis of the tion are moribund. It may be that the proletariat as .DXWVN\²/HQLQWKHVLVDJDLQVWWKHSRVVLELOLW\WKDWWKH understood by Marxism remains immanent only as a working class can, on the basis of its exploitation and potential force, and thereby stands accused of being struggle, achieve revolutionary class consciousness.’ D SUREOHPDWLF FULWLFDO ÀFWLRQ D WKHRUHWLFDO ¶PDVN· D In History and Class Consciousness, and especially speculative counter-factual or an ideologically dis- in his 1924 book Lenin, Lukács is perhaps the prime 34 Radical Philosophy 171 (January/February 2012) example of Hegelian Leninism.