The Philosophical Leninism and Eastern âWestern Marxismâ of Georg Lukács
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Abstract
This essay centres on the English translation (2000) of Georg Lukácsâs Tailism and the Dialectic (written in either 1925 or 1926). Lukács is generally heralded as a founding theoretician of a âWestern Marxismâ, in opposition to âEasternâ Soviet Marxism, and his most impressive and most influential work, History and Class Consciousness (1923), is generally treated as having rehabilitated Marxist concern with questions of subjectivity. It might therefore come as a surprise when Lukács in Tailism states that the purpose of History and Class Consciousness was to demonstrate âthat the organisation and tactics of Bolshevism are the only possible consequence of Marxismâ. In my view, however, this should already be abundantly clear from History and Class Consciousness. For Lukácsâs absorption with proletarian subjectivity was motivated by an obsession with what he saw as its immaturity. And he coined the category of âreificationâ in order to explain his disappointed expectations, to explain, that is, why the proletariat did not make a âsocialistâ revolution in the âobjectively ripeâ situation of an âimperialist warâ created by âmoribund capitalismâ. In short, Lukács did raise anew the question of the subjective, but only to then declare that workers, not even âthe most revolutionary among themâ, could never attain proper class consciousness, which he attributed instead to the ârevolutionary partyâ bearing the properly revolutionary theory. For this reason I agree with Slavoj Žižekâs characterisation of Lukács as the âultimate philosopher [my emphasis] of Leninismâ â although I do think that Lenin himself would have found, as he did in connection with one of Lukácsâs other works, Marxism âpresent only at a verbal levelâ. My concern is two-fold: with a critique of the methodological short-cuts that Lukács made in his purely conceptual derivation of the concept of reification, and his purely conceptual attribution of it as the necessary form of working-class consciousness âin its immediacyâ; and with the dangerous political consequences that Lukács derived from his assessment of the reified character of working-class subjectivity, mainly a theoretical guarantee that the party with the proper revolutionary theory must always be right, or at least more right than anyone else.
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Anderson Perry Considerations on Western Marxism 1976 London New Left Books
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Arato Andrew & Breines Paul The Young Lukács and the Origins of Western Marxism 1979 New York Seabury
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Bernstein Eduard Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie 1969 [1899] Hamburg Rowohlt
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Foucault Michel Gordon Colin Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1980 New York Pantheon
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Fracchia Joseph âThe Capitalist Labour-Process and the Body in Pain: The Corporeal Depths of Marxâs Concept of Immiserationâ Historical Materialism 2008 16 4 35 66
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Groh Dieter Negative Integration und revolutionärer Attentismus. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges 1973 Frankfurt Ullstein
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Jacoby Russell Dialectic of Defeat: Contours of Western Marxism 1981 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
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Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Selected Works 1935 Volume VI New York International Publishers
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Lenin Vladimir Ilyich What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement 1988 [1902] New York International Publishers
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Liebman Marcel Leninism under Lenin 1980 [1973] London Merlin Press
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Löwy Michael Camiller P. Georg Lukács: From Romanticism to Bolshevism 1995 [1979] London Verso
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Lukács Georg Geschichte und KlassenbewuÃtsein. Studien über marxistische Dialektik 1968 [1923/67] Neuwied/Berlin Hermann Luchterhand
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Lukács Georg Livingstone Rodney History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics 1971 [1923/67] Cambridge, MA. The MIT Press
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Lukács Georg Leslie Esther A Defence of âHistory and Class Consciousnessâ: Tailism and the Dialectic 2000 London Verso
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MacKenzie Donald âMarx and the Machineâ Technology and Culture 1984 25 3 473 502
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Marx Karl Fowkes Ben Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume One 1976 [1867] Harmondsworth Penguin
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Mészáros István Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition 1995 New York Monthly Review Press
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Postone Moishe Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marxâs Critical Theory 1993 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
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Psychopedis Kosmas Gesellschaftswissenschaftliche Begründung und historische Reflexion 1981 Habilitationsschrift, Göttingen
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Rees John âIntroductionâ 2000 Lukács 2000
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Sperl Richard Karl Marx und die Gründung der 1. Internationale: Dokumente und Materialien 1964 Berlin Dietz Verlag
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Tucker Robert C. The Marx-Engels Reader 1978 Second Revised and Enlarged Edition New York Norton
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Žižek Slavoj âPostface: Georg Lukács as the Philosopher of Leninismâ 2000 Lukács 2000
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Žižek Slavoj âOccupy Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street Open Forumâ 2011a October 9 available at: <http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/occupy-wall-street/>
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Žižek Slavoj âOccupy First, Demands Come Laterâ The Guardian 2011b October 26 available at: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/26/occupy-protesters-bill-clinton>
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1.
Lukács 2000, p. 47.
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2.
Lukács 1971, p. xlii.
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3.
Žižek 2000, p. 179, n. 4; my italics.
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5.
See Jacoby 1981, Anderson 1976.
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6.
Lukács 2000, p. 67.
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7.
Bernstein 1969, p. 200.
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8.
Groh 1973.
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9.
Lukács 1971, p. 309.
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10.
Lukács 1971, p. 310.
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11.
Lukács 1971, pp. 79â80. This verdict concluding the chapter on âClass Consciousnessâ that imputes to the proletariat an inevitable lack of authentic class consciousness leads so seamlessly into the analysis of âReification and the [empirical] Consciousness of the Proletariatâ that it seems almost disconcerting to learn that Lukács wrote the essay on class consciousness as a stand-alone piece in 1920. As he notes in the Foreword (1922), he wrote only the reification chapter (1922) and âMethodisches zur Organisationsfrageâ explicitly for the collection of essays that would be published in book form as History and Class Consciousness. Even though, or perhaps because, the essay on âClass Consciousnessâ (1920) was written as an essay, and not as a chapter intended to precede the analysis of reification and the (empirical) class consciousness of the proletariat (1922), the seamless fit is telling.
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12.
Lukács 2000, p. 66.
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13.
Lukács 1971, p. 79.
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16.
Rees 2000, pp. 12â13; my italics.
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18.
Lukács 1971, p. 84.
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20.
Rees 2000, p. 11.
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21.
Lukács 1971, p. 85.
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22.
Lukács 1971, p. 86.
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24.
Lukács 1971, p. 90; my italics.
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25.
Lukács 1971, p. 91.
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26.
Lukács 1971, p. 93; my italics.
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27.
Lukács 1971, p. 103.
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28.
Lukács 1971, p. 149.
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30.
Lukács 1971, p. 150.
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31.
Lukács 1971, p. 174.
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32.
Lukács 1971, p. 89.
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33.
Lukács 1971, p. 98; Lukácsâs italics.
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34.
Psychopedis 1981.
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35.
MacKenzie 1984, p. 488.
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36.
Marx 1976, pp. 291, 358, 439. The technological character or the labour-process is of course the major factor determining the measure of relative surplus-value.
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37.
Lukács 1971, p. 89.
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38.
Lukács 1971, p. 89, n. 11.
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39.
See Fracchia 2008.
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40.
Lukács 1971, p. 335.
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42.
Lukács 2000, p. 94.
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43.
Trotsky quoted in Liebman 1980, p. 99; Liebman 1980, p. 103.
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44.
Lenin 1935, p. 215.
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45.
Lenin 1935, p. 223.
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46.
Žižek 2000, p. 179, n. 4. Citation in next sentence, Žižek 2000, p. 178.
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48.
Lukács 1971, p. 297. Lenin based his theory of party organisation explicitly on the particular conditions in Czarist Russia that made clandestinity a prerequisite for survival. This entailed the practical necessity of an organisational separation of the party of professional revolutionaries from the working class. However, in theory at least, he imagined a very symbiotic relation between the party and the working class. See his sketch in âWhat Is to Be Done?â (Lenin 1988, pp. 72â4.) As I shall argue below, the rigidity of Lukácsâs âphilosophical Leninismâ, however, condemns âeven the most revolutionary workerâ to a deficient consciousness far short of âauthentic class consciousnessâ, and establishes a rigid hierarchy in the party-class relationship and the spectre of the party always being right, or at least more authentic. While Stalinâs notion of the party always being right is one possible consequence of the organisational separation of party and class that Lenin established as a practical necessity (and then turned into a virtue by exporting that party form through the requirements for membership in the Comintern), the correctness of the party is guaranteed by Lukácsâs historical-philosophical argumentation. That is not at all to say that Lukács condoned Stalin; but it is to say, unfortunately, that there is no basis in his philosophy to condemn him.
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49.
Žižek 2000, p. 164. This essay was written in 2001 well before the Occupy Movement of 2011 in which Žižek played a very important part with inspirational speeches and insightful commentaries. In these, however, he seems to advocate a very different notion of praxis and revolutionary social change from that of his Postface to Tailism â one that, as he put it, breaks with the â20th century alternatives [that] obviously did not workâ and that subordinates the event to the process. In a speech in Zuccotti Park he urged: âFall in love with hard and patient work â we are the beginning, not the end. Our basic message is: the taboo is broken, we do not live in the best possible world, we are allowed and obliged even to think about alternatives. There is a long road ahead, and soon we will have to address the truly difficult questions â questions not about what we do not want, but about what we DO want. What social organization can replace the existing capitalism? What type of new leaders we need? The XXth century alternatives obviously did not work.â (Žižek 2011a.)
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50.
Lukács 1971, p. 327.
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51.
Lukács 1971, p. 41.
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52.
Lukács 1971, p. 42.
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53.
Lukács 1971, p. 315.
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54.
Lukács 1971, p. 327.
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55.
Lukács 1971, p. 330.
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56.
Lukács 1971, p. 326.
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57.
Lukács 1971, p. 329.
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58.
Mészáros 1995, p. 324. This term is the source for my earlier phrase âhypostatisation of the momentâ.
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59.
Mészáros 1995, pp. 327, 377.
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63.
Sperl (ed.) 1964, p. 54.
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64.
Žižek 2000, pp. 151, 153.
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65.
Rees 2000, p. 27.
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66.
Foucault 1980, p. 97.
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67.
Žižek 2000, p. 173.
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68.
Žižek 2000, p. 164. As Žižek cautioned in an article for The Guardian: âWhat one should always bear in mind is that any debate here and now necessarily remains a debate on enemyâs turf; time is needed to deploy the new contentâ (my italics). (Žižek 2011b.)
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69.
Žižek 2000, pp. 177â178.
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70.
Mészáros 1995, p. 284.
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The Philosophical Leninism and Eastern âWestern Marxismâ of Georg Lukács
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Joseph Fracchia in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This essay centres on the English translation (2000) of Georg Lukácsâs Tailism and the Dialectic (written in either 1925 or 1926). Lukács is generally heralded as a founding theoretician of a âWestern Marxismâ, in opposition to âEasternâ Soviet Marxism, and his most impressive and most influential work, History and Class Consciousness (1923), is generally treated as having rehabilitated Marxist concern with questions of subjectivity. It might therefore come as a surprise when Lukács in Tailism states that the purpose of History and Class Consciousness was to demonstrate âthat the organisation and tactics of Bolshevism are the only possible consequence of Marxismâ. In my view, however, this should already be abundantly clear from History and Class Consciousness. For Lukácsâs absorption with proletarian subjectivity was motivated by an obsession with what he saw as its immaturity. And he coined the category of âreificationâ in order to explain his disappointed expectations, to explain, that is, why the proletariat did not make a âsocialistâ revolution in the âobjectively ripeâ situation of an âimperialist warâ created by âmoribund capitalismâ. In short, Lukács did raise anew the question of the subjective, but only to then declare that workers, not even âthe most revolutionary among themâ, could never attain proper class consciousness, which he attributed instead to the ârevolutionary partyâ bearing the properly revolutionary theory. For this reason I agree with Slavoj Žižekâs characterisation of Lukács as the âultimate philosopher [my emphasis] of Leninismâ â although I do think that Lenin himself would have found, as he did in connection with one of Lukácsâs other works, Marxism âpresent only at a verbal levelâ. My concern is two-fold: with a critique of the methodological short-cuts that Lukács made in his purely conceptual derivation of the concept of reification, and his purely conceptual attribution of it as the necessary form of working-class consciousness âin its immediacyâ; and with the dangerous political consequences that Lukács derived from his assessment of the reified character of working-class subjectivity, mainly a theoretical guarantee that the party with the proper revolutionary theory must always be right, or at least more right than anyone else.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1783 | 219 | 21 |
| Full Text Views | 363 | 6 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 355 | 17 | 0 |
