The Philosophical Leninism and Eastern ‘Western Marxism’ of Georg Lukács

For 'Western Marxism' — a term introduced by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in 1955 in his Adventures of the Dialectic (1973) to describe the philosophical tendency stemming from Georg Lukács' History and Class Consciousness (1971; originally published in 1923) — no concept internal to Marxism has been more antithetical to the genuine development of historical materialism than the 'dialectics of nature'. Commonly attributed to Engels rather than Marx, this concept is often seen as the differentia specifica that beginning in the 1920s separated the official Marxism of the Soviet Union from Western Marxism. Yet, as Lukács, who played the leading role in questioning the concept of the dialectic of nature, was later to admit, Western Marxism's rejection of it struck at the very heart of the classical Marxist ontology — that of Marx no less than Engels.KeywordsHistorical MaterialismHuman PraxisClass ConsciousnessDialectical MaterialismMetabolic RelationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The idea of praxis was explored in the 1960s, contemporaneously with the publication of an English translation of History and Class Consciousness—the early writings of Hungarian Marxist Georgy Lukacs. Reminding us that Marx titled Capital Volume One ‘The Process of Production’, his dynamic, processional and revolutionary brand of Marxism inspired many would-be radicals by its contrast with the official Marxism of the Eastern Bloc (and Western European communist parties). Like Elias, his notion of social figurations going through long-term processes of change as the motor of history represented a dynamic breakthrough from the rigidities of previously held versions of necessary stages of historical development. When Lukacs wrote in the 1920s he was countering the determinism represented by the Second International Marxism of Kautsky and Plekhanov, the leading theoreticians of Western social democracy and Russian menshevism. By the 1960s and 1970s this ‘objectivist’ brand of Marxism was associated with Althusser and the structuralists. The political sense of liberation represented by the Paris uprising in May 1968 gelled with Lukacs’ revolutionary ‘subjectivism’, which affirmed that the working class could make history in the dynamic process of making social change. Like his contemporary Antonio Gramsci, Lukacs was centrally involved in a revolutionary uprising in 1919, in Turin and Budapest respectively. Both sought what Lukacs called ‘the algebra of revolution’;1 both wrestled with the ways in which the state and its rulers hegemonised, and the tactics of the resistance; and both wrote in a style that was both suggestive whilst being open to a range of interpretations. Ninety years on, this article explores the extent to which these two ‘Western Marxists’ agree, and still provide relevant insight, and how linked ideologies from contemporaries such as Mannheim and Elias2—and later, Wacquant—have further developed ‘praxical’ sociology. 1 J. Rees, The Algebra of Revolution (London: Routledge, 1998). 2 R. Kilminster, Praxis and Method (London: Routledge, 1979).

This essay reads Georg Lukács’s early thought in light of his vexed relationship to the Social Democratic theorist Karl Kautsky. Though Lukács criticized Kautsky as the archetypal “vulgar Marxist,” Lukács’s larger project of promoting “class consciousness” follows from Kautsky’s own political and pedagogical work. For Kautsky, Social Democratic intellectuals had to transmute proletarian “class instinct” into class consciousness by disseminating a simplified version of scientific socialism, transmitting the conclusions but not the method of Marxist thought. But because Lukács had defined “vulgar Marxism” as the forgetting of Marx’s method in favor of his conclusions, “vulgar Marxism” turned out to be both the precondition and an obstacle to proletarian class consciousness and thus to revolutionary action. The essay then reads Lukács’s changing understanding of the role of the party as a response to this impasse: a response that can help us understand the heterogeneous tradition of “Western Marxism.”

SUMMARY The aim of the article is to offer a closer examination and elucidation of the views of materialism set forth by S. Timpanaro in his book Considerazioni sul materialismo (1970; English translation: On Materialism, NLB, 1975). To this end I first consider the notions developed by one of the authors criticized by Timpanaro, namely A. Schmidt, referring to his study Der Begriff der Natur in der Lehre von Marx. By means of a comparison between these two authors I try to show in more detail the significance of discussing the various conceptions of materialism, and to elucidate Timpanaro's views on the matter. In discussing materialism Schmidt emphasizes the role played by the subject, and the subject's labour. To this end he relies on the theoretical principles of Marx (referred to by Schmidt as “historical materialism”), contrasting them with Engels' principles, which he considers to be the source of the view embodied in soviet Marxism. Engels' principles, called ‘dialectical materialism’ by Schmidt, ...

The tensed relationship between Engels and Western Marxism is well-known. This tension originates from Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness, but it is much less known that the late Lukács seems to change his attitude toward Engels’s dialectic, incorporating Engels’s discussion of “labor” as a key element to grasp the qualitative jump from nature to society. However, this shift does not mean that Lukács admitted that his claim made in History and Class Consciousness was utterly false. One can even argue that his late theory of metabolism is a consistent and continuous development of his earlier view in History and Class Consciousness. Nevertheless, at least one thing has significantly changed in his late writings as a result of his reception of Engels. Lukács briefly elaborated on his theory of “crisis” based on his theory of metabolism in the 1920s, but this is precisely what disappears in his Ontology of Social Being.

Lukács pioneered the Western Marxist intellectual movement, holding significant research value. This study employs a totality approach. To analyze the historical context from three aspects: the Theoretical Dilemma of the Second International, the German Sociological Tradition and the Debates within the Communist International. Analyze the Totality, Class Consciousness and Practice-Oriented of the theory to clarify the fundamental tenets of Lukács' Historical Epistemology, and examine the contemporary relevance of Lukács' Historical Epistemology from the perspectives of criticism of mechanical materialism, communist debate and its influence on contemporary international socialist movement.. This research and analysis method is helpful for us to deepen our understanding of Lukács' Historical Epistemology and Western Marxism. It argues that Lukács' theory represents an innovative response to the crisis of Marxism during the proletarian revolutionary era, while also offering impetus for the global socialist movement in the 21st century.

The Relationship of Lukacs's History and Class Consciousness to Multiculturalism in Postmodern Times

This chapter specifically brings Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov's thought to bear on a set of debates about structure and agency that developed in the journal Open Marxism (OM) between 1992 and 1995. It focuses on John Holloway's contribution to these debates an important contemporary philosopher in the Western Marxist tradition whose book Change the World without Taking Power has been quite influential and the subject of much debate. The chapter demonstrates the relevance of Ilyenkov's work to the project of OM . It also takes seriously recent criticisms of Holloway and the philosophy that informs his political conclusions. Drawing on Ilyenkov's post-Cartesian anti-dualist reading of Marx, the chapter addresses some of these criticisms, specifically OM 's perceived subjectivism. It shows how the dominant categories of intellectual histories Western Marxism and Soviet Marxism exclude the subterranean tradition of creative Soviet Marxism. Keywords: creative Soviet Marxism; Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov; John Holloway; Open Marxism (OM) ; post-Cartesian anti-dualist; Western Marxism

ABSTRACTMarx’s general theory of ideology stresses the necessary connectedness of social structure and social belief. But it also produces two more specific theses: that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas; and that different classes tend to produce different forms of class consciousness. This paper traces the history of these notions in communist Marxism and in Western Marxism.

Karel Kosik, along with Ivan Svitak, was the greatest philosophical influence during the “Prague Spring” of 1968. At that time Kosik taught at Charles University in the Philosophy Faculty and had written three books: Czech Radical Democrats: A Selection of Political Essays (1953), an anthology of writings by activists in the 1848 revolution with an introduction by Kosik; Czech Radical Democracy: A Contribution to the History of Clashes of Opinion in the Czech Society of the 19th Century (1958); and finally, Dialectics of the Concrete (1962), the work through which he is best known in the West. Dialectics of the Concrete marked the theoretical maturation of Kosik's attempts to revitalize the “western Marxist” tradition exemplified by Lukács' History and Class Consciousness by recovering the phenomenological roots of the dialectic which remained obscured by Lukács' neo-Kantianism.

Part 1 Criminology, industrial conflict and the miners' strike: introduction - a history of neglect criminology and the grip of new realism British criminology and the miners' strike class consciousness and policing. Part 2 The strike and its context: policing industrial conflict - the lessons of history, The Featherstone Riot, The Llanelli Riots 1911, the General Strike, policing the Depression the Post-War British political economy - from boom to recession Heath 1970-74 - crsis management social contracts and the Labour Party Thatcher - term one Thatcher - term two preparations for the confrontation - the Government, the Union the Nottinghamshire Coalfield the strike in profile. Part 3 Miners and the police: attitudes - past and present, the experiences of change, the thick blue line, police confrontation, police tactics, the process of arrest, police powers and civil liberties, political detention policing and the question of fairness working miners and the police the politics of strike policing a police state? police, violence and industrial conflict the policing and its effects - behaviour and consciousness. Part 4 Miners and the law: civil law and criminal law - perceptions and distinctions industrial disputes and the law law as an arena of struggle bail conditions - a tactical weapon the Court process legal representation a new consciousness - law, society and industrial conflict. Part 5 Government, employers and welfare: puppets and puppeteers policing by local management working miners and the NCB policing through welfare military intervention government intent. Part 6 trade union officials - policing by bureaucracy: a role of social regulation divisions and vacillations - area leadership branch officials Scargill and the National Executive rank and file organization - the strike committee, the Ollerton Women's Action Group the Trade Union Movement and the TUC. Part 7 Miners and the mass media: introduction - the policing of ideas what they read, what they watched - women, working miners changing options of the media distortion, sensationalism and bias the role of the mass media the lessons drawn neutral and anonymous?. Part 8 Class consciousness, policing and the Ollerton striking community: class consciousness - a theoretical overview policing - an amplifier of consciousness class consciousness and the miners divisions and unevenness - picketing and non-picketing strikers, women, working miners trade unions, reformism and class consciousness the revolutionary party and class consciousness. Appendices: fieldwork - the setting, policing a class consciouness, the interview, participant observation, partisanship and points of caution.

The article reveals the features of the formation and functioning of aesthetic research in such two areas of Marxism as Soviet and Chinese. The study identified three key stages in the development of aesthetics in Soviet Marxism – the pre-war (the 1920s and 1930s), late Stalinism and the Khrushchev thaw, and the late period (1970-1980s). It should be noted that in the context of Soviet Marxism, the key tasks were that aesthetics becomes influential and in-demand science, included in the program of "technical progress" and "education of the builder of communism", important ideological, aesthetic, and applied field of philosophy. Therefore, in addition to the fact that purely ideological works were developed within the framework of aesthetic discourse, aesthetics itself in Soviet Marxism was able to develop thanks to contacts with semiotics, psychology, anthropology, cultural history, and sociology. Relying on a selective stream of translations of Western philosophies of art, Soviet aesthetics is beginning to resonate with global trends, which is facilitated by the unspoken consensus of the idea of aesthetics as a part of philosophical and humanitarian knowledge that has its own autonomy. Proved that in China culture and the cultural revolution are inextricably linked with the Marxist projects of critiquing capitalist modernity and building alternative modernity. Aesthetics and culture also were at the center of attention in Chinese Marxist circles. In this respect, the diverse practices and designs of Chinese Marxism are similar to those of Western Marxism or an equally distinct variety of Euro-American Marxist intellectual enterprises. Aesthetic Marxism in China had a dual mission – to criticize the internal contradictions of revolutionary hegemony and to offer a constructive vision of culture in a post-revolutionary society. This is the value of Chinese aesthetic Marxism, the implications of which go beyond China proper in the world of global cultural criticism. Moreover, being non-Western, Chinese aesthetic Marxism deliberately questioned the inherent Eurocentrism of Marxism. If this Eurocentrism is to be challenged and problematized, the questions posed by Chinese aesthetic Marxists cannot be ignored.

This article explores the work of the young Lukács, from Die Seele und die Formen till Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein, with the main emphasis on the latter work. Its aim is to avoid the pitfalls of an interpretation built exclusively on the idea of discontinuity – Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein conceived of as a kind of fracture between aesthetics and politics. Our reading, on the contrary, shows how the founding text of Western Marxism remains deeply indebted to Lukács’s previous works on aesthetics : it is shown, for instance, that the very notion of ‘class consciousness’ is in fact defined as a kind of work of art even though Lukács explicitly rejects any significant role of aesthetics in the overcoming of reification and alienation. The actual theme of the essay is the constant ambivalence of Lukács when he invokes the work of art (the realm of the aesthetic), an ambibiguity which is structural in the works of Lukács thematized here.

New resources for the critique of capitalism in culture from the late writings of Georg Lukács, one of the first authors in the tradition of Western Marxism. The Hungarian literary critic, philosopher, and Marxist social theorist Georg Lukács is best known for his 1923 History and Class Consciousness, in which he offered an influential critique of reification from the standpoint of a dialectical conception of totality. While Lukács's early works have been central to the study of Marxist thought, his later works have often been dismissed as political accommodations to Stalinism. In this new study, Matthew Smetona argues for a revisionist interpretation of Lukács's later writings on topics as diverse as aesthetics, politics, and ontology. Smetona demonstrates that these writings reveal a methodological unity that follows directly from History and Class Consciousness, in which realism, in both literary and extraliterary senses, becomes the basis for the critique of reification. As Lukács had demonstrated, reification is that process by which the social relations between persons seem to take on the character of a thing. Rooted in Marx's concept of commodity fetishism, the critique of reification proved, in Lukács's hands, to be a flexible tool capable of clarifying all manner of obfuscations that arise within the social relations that capitalism produces. To recover the later work of Lukács is to open up new horizons for Marxist cultural criticism.

História e consciência de classe é considerado, consensualmente, como um dos marcos de fundação do marxismo ocidental. Sua contribuição para a gênese da teoria crítica tampouco pode ser desprezada. O presente artigo procura mostrar como alguns conceitos decisivos do arcabouço teórico da Escola de Frankfurt foram desenvolvidos em 1923 por Georg Lukács. Destaca, sobretudo, os conceitos de reificação e racionalismo. História e consciência de classe considera a reificação, seguindo uma trilha aberta por Karl Marx, o fenômeno central da sociedade capitalista. O racionalismo é exposto em duas dimensões articuladas, na esfera do pensamento – em especial na ciência e na filosofia –, e no âmbito da vida material, como racionalidade econômica.