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History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics

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The grand and celebrated critiques of capitalistic techno-rationality that emerged from the Frankfurt school are all rooted in the dialectical emphasis of Lukacs. Hegelian notions of reification and alienation that Lukacs resurrected even showed up in radically mutated forms in French poststructuralism. This, as well as Horkheimer's "Dialectic of Enlightenment" are must-reads for New-Left enthusiasts who have neither the time nor the IQ to comprehend raw Hegel. Dialectical thinking is at the root of the philosophies of Hegel, Sartre, Heidegger, Marx, Marcuse, Adorno, Lukacs, Horkheimer, and Neumann, and this book is an excellent introduction to the ontology of capitalism as examined through a whole new cognitive apparatus: dialectical thought.

Lukacs' sordid political history does not entirely overturn this intimidating collection of Marxist essays from the early 20s. With the theoretical exposition of such perplexing notions as "reification" and the "unity of consciousness," Lukacs established much of what was to become critical theory. Despite his disavowed idealism, Lukacs' thinking on the structure of class consciousness is among the most nuanced in the Marxian tradition, and it remains critical to any theoretical understanding of the method of dialectical materialism. While much of his meanderings in "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat" are poorly structured, one can't help but be excited through his detours into the major intellects of German Idealism. Nevertheless, he fails to give a full explanatory account of the relation between materiality and class consciousness. And as a result, his analysis falls right back into Hegelian Idealism.

Lukacs' emphasis here on the importance of the ideological terrain in the class struggle was pathbreaking, and this book contains the fruits of a fine mind absorbed with interest and passion in the socialist cause. However the work is marred by a highly abstract and abstruse style of presentation, a style that would reach baffling lows in the writings of his followers in the Frankfort school.

In these pages, Lukacs scores some palpable hits against the ideological dominance of the bourgoisie, as well as against the opportunism and capitulation of the social democratic forces ascendant in the working class movements of Western Europe after WWI. His early recognition that it is precisely where capitalism is most highly developed that it is most difficult for the working class to organize against it turned Marx's assumptions about the progression of socialism on their head. Lukacs' emphasis on the necessary organic link between theory and forms of movement organization are lucid and welcome. But his failure to follow up on his insights and theorize methods of organization that go beyond Leninist dogma, even where he recognizes the problems involved in democratic-centralist party building, is a gaping weakness.

For those coming to the book out of an interest in the history and practice of socialism, I would recommend sticking to the shorter essays: "The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg" for its examination of the links between crisis, class consciousness, and conflict; "Class Consciousness", for a relatively succinct presentation of the class struggle in the realm of ideology; and "Legality and Illegality" and "On the Methodology of Organization" for more concrete discussion of communist party practice. Most of the rest of the book consists of belabored and highly abstract philosophical arguments that assume a high level of familiarity with Kant, Hegel, and Marx.

the Lukacs' theory about History and Class Consciousness answered the question, why the socialist world not yet realized today. Lukacs said that the importance of history not in proletarian class' consciousness. and so, the borgeouis can still made the false consciousness to hegemony proletarian class. i think, it made Lukacs as a outstanding philosopher of neo-marxist today!