Lukács Today: Essays in Marxist Philosophy

287 Pages·1988·15.967 MB·English

by  T. Rockmore (auth.), Tom Rockmore (eds.)

LUKAcs TODAY
SOVIETICA
PUBLICATIONS AND MONOGRAPHS
OF THE INSTITUTE OF EAST-EUROPEAN STUDIES AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF FRIBOURG / 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), GUIDO KUNG (Fribourg) and
NIKOLAUS LOBKOWICZ (Munich)
Editorial Board
Karl G. Ballestrem (Eichstiitt) 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 Coil.) Andries Sarlemijn (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 PUBUSHERS GROUP
DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LANCASTER /TOKYO
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lukacs today.
(Sovietica; 51)
Includes index.
1. Lukacs, Gyorgy, 1885-197l. I. Rockmore, Tom, 1942- .
II. Series: Sovietica (Universite de Fribourg. Ost-Europa Institut); v. 51.
B4815.L84L885 1987 199' .439 87-32339
ISBN-I3: 978-94-010-7805-4 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-2897-8
DOl: 10. 10071 978-94-009-2897-8
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© 1988 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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CONTENTS
Tom Rockmore, Introduction 1
PART I Lukacs' Marxist Thought
M. Markovic, The Critical Thought 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, Reification from Lukacs to Habermas 86
W.L. McBride, Reification Re-examined 108
A. Feenberg, The Question of Organization in the
Early Marxist Work of
Luk~ics.
Technique or Praxis? 126
A.Ignatow, Is There a 'Proletarian Standpoint'? 157
J.M. Bernstein, Lukacs' Wake: Praxis, Prl~sence and
Metaphysics 167
PART III Lukacs on Hegel
T. I. Ojzerman, Lukacs' Hegel Interpretation 197
T. Rockmore, Lukacs on Modern 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 ta.1ented 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 tradition warrants 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.! 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 extensively studied; but I do not
believe that it has often been well-understood. He was born in 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 Jiirgen Habermas, the
German social theorist. It is certainly difficult, indeed perilous, to
T. Rockmore (ed.), Lukacs Today, 1-12.
© 1988 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.
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 significant theoretical texts in
the Marxist tradition. And from the strictly philosophical 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 significance of 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 Capital.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
INTRODucrION 3
Hegel's thought, this was not the case for Lukacs. When he wrote
History and Class Consciousness, he already possessed a fIrm 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 social reality.
According to Lukacs, the renaissance of Hegel studies in what
Marxists call the "imperialistic" peI10d represents an attempt to utilize
Hegel for what he regards as the "imperialistic, reactionary develop
ment" of neo-Kantianism. Dilthey, in particular, has supposedly
provided an influential contribution in the service of what from a
Marxist angle of vision appears as reactionary imperialistic tendencies
through his interpretation of Hegel in close relation to philosophical
romanticism. From the Marxist perspective, Lukacs regards it as
important to refute the legend of Hegel's romanticism in order better to
understand his role as the predecessor of Marx.
Lukacs' study is limited only to the social and historical com
ponents of the historical problem of the development of the dialectic.
From the historical perspective, he was principally concerned with the
French Revolution and its consequences for Germany. According to
Lukacs, Hegel's importance is not limited \0 his profound insight into
the French Revolution and the Napoleonic period; Lukacs stresses that
Hegel is above all interested in the problems of the industrial revolution
in England and the problems of philosophy, upon which dialectic
depends. Although his thought is "idealistic", and not "materialistic",
Hegel was arguably the predecessor of Marx. Like Marx, Hegel strove
to comprehend the veritable internal structure, and the veritable driving
forces of capitalism, in order to ground the dialectic of its movement.
This is the wider framework of Lukacs' Hegel study; it should not
be confused with the study itself. In general terms, the book is an
attempt to read the development of Hegel's concept of dialectic as the
result of an effort to come to grips with political economy and the
economic relations prevailing in England. As concerns Hegel, Lukacs'
aim is not only to bring out the importance of the history of philosophy
for philosophy; it is further to show in a concrete fashion, through
reference to the social context and the historical background, the inner
connection between economics and dialectic.
Like virtually all of Lukacs' Marxist writings, the Hegel book is
polemical; but it is also in every sense a major scholarly monograph -
closely argued, solidly documented, highly original. It is no accident
4 T. ROCKMORE
that Lukacs' Hegel monograph has had considerable influence on the
subsequent Hegel discussion. It was followed in the same year (1948)
by a much slighter, even scurrilous work, Existentialism or Marxism?
Unlike the Hegel study, this book is not intended as a scholarly
contribution; it is rather intended as an occasional Streitschrift in a
manner well-represented in the Marxist tradition, where political
broadsides abound.
The occasion is the rancorous debate that broke out after the end of
the Second World War among partisans of existentialism and Marxism.
This debate, which was especially fierce in French circles6, played a
major role in Sartre's concern, in his later thought, to come to the aid of
Marxism from an existentialist perspective; it was equally important in
Althusser's politically orthodox, Marxist effort, from a structuralist
angle of vision, to distinguish between philosophical and scientific
periods in Marx' thought. According to Lukacs, this type of debate is
peculiar to the imperialistic stage of capitalism and represents the clash
of two opposing forms of thought: that running from Hegel to Marx,
and that which links Schelling to Kierkegaard, the latest form of which
is existentialism.
Like Lenin, Lukacs believes that philosophy cannot remain neutral;
it must address practical concerns. From the Marxist perspective, the
present philosophical combat consists in the confrontation between
existentialism, which misleadingly presents itself as a "third way"
between idealism and materialism, and historical materialism. This
debate concerns three groups of problems, including: the search for
objectivity, the effort to safeguard freedom, and the fight against
nihilism. Some existentialists, for instance Sartre, like to draw a dis
tinction between their perspective and bourgeois thought. But Lukacs
believes that existentialism in all its forms carries the imprint of the
same spontaneous nihilism which infects all of what Marxists call
modern bourgeois ideology.
In all his writings beginning with History and Class Conscious
ness, Lukacs constantly relies on a Marxist approach to the history of
philosophy. In the book on existentialism, he opposes a view which he
regards as socially pernicious because of its intrinsic relation to
"imperialism". He continues his attack on forms of what he labels as
"bourgeois ideology" in a detailed study of the relation of non-Marxist
philosophy and the rise of fascism, entitled The Destruction of Reason
(1954).
According to Lukacs, what he describes as irrationalism is the
dominant tendency in so-called bourgeois philosophy in all its forms.
He rejects what he regards as the idealist view that philosophical
problems can be studied immanently, or wholly on the philosophical
plane, in favor of the view that such problems are "located" in the con
text circumscribed by the forces of production and historical develop
ment. He further justifies his evidently anti-bourgeois, Marxist ap-
INTRODUCfION 5
proach on the grounds that there is no "innocent" angle of vision
("unschu/dige" Weltanschauung), or neutral standpoint.
Lukacs particularly stresses the unity of different forms of
irrationalism which, from the Marxist angle of vision, he regards as the
reactionary answer to the various problems arising out of class
struggle. He believes that the fIrst important period of modern irration
alism arose in the progression from Schelling to Kierkegaard, in the
fIght against the dialectical and historical concept of progress found in
German Idealism. Just as Marx studied the locus classicus of capital
ism in England, so Lukacs thinks he can show that nineteenth- and
twentieth-century Germany is the "classical" land of fascism. He is
aware that the transformation of "philosophical irrationalism" into
political fascism occurs on a non-philosophical terrain. Hence, his aim
is not to equate "philosophical irrationalism" with fascism; his aim is
rather to show that the possibility of a so-called fascist, aggressive
reactionary ideology is contained in every philosophical form of
"irrationalism" .
The last work I will mention is the unfInished study of The
Ontology of Social Being which properly belongs to his Nachlass.
This immense work, more than two thousand pages long, is not
well-known, even to Lukacs specialists, because of its length and an
unfortunate publication delay. It was originally conceived as a kind of
giant prolegomenon to a work on ethics, which Lukacs did not live to
write. The main topic is, as the name implies, an ontology of social
being, as distinguished from natural being which had been the concern
of metaphysicians since Aristotle. Lukacs' task in this book is to
develop a Marxist theory of social ontology by building upon insights
drawn from the Marxist and non-Marxist sides of the philosophical
tradition.
The study is divided into two main parts: The Present State of the
Problem' (Die gegenwiirtige Problemlage) and 'The most Important
Problem Complexes' (Die wichtigsten Problemkomplexe). In the fIrst
part, after a discussion of neopositivism and existentialism, Lukacs
turns to the ontological approach favored by Nicolai Hartmann, who,
with Heidegger, is one of the two main representatives of ontological
thought in Germany in this century. Lukacs turns to Hartmann because
of his importance for ontology, but also since, as was noted in The
Destruction of Reason, Lukacs believes him to be the only non-Marxist
thinker with a positive attitude towards dialectic.7 He ends the fIrst
volume with a detailed account of the intrinsic contradictions of
Hegelian "idealism" and Marx' allegedly decisive advance beyond
idealism through the "materialist" concept of work.
In the second volume, Lukacs develops this concept further. He
works out in detail a teleological concept of work, with obvious roots in
Aristotle. In this connection, we are reminded of Lukacs' belief that
Marxism is a form of left-wing Aristotelianism. He also discusses in