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

Abstract

Current postmodern discourse on Lukacs's History and Class Consciousness has been recently focused on Cultural Marxism or Marxist Cultural Theory which originated from the original construct of Lukacs's Western Marxism, a term designed to differentiate the Marxism which evolved in Europe from that which predominated in the USSR (Clarke, 2008). Kimball (2007) explained that Cultural Marxism is a modern form of Marxist communism that is very much alive here in America in the form of multiculturalism. In this perspective, this reflection highlights Lukacs's Hegelian Marxism and Kimball's (2007) Cultural Marxism in America in modern and postmodern times. In doing so, this paper defines and explains the three Lukacs's Hegelian thoughts: 1) the notion of the expressive totality, 2) the dialectical development of history, and 3) class consciousness; and connects multiculturalism to Cultural Marxism (CM) in America based on Kimball's (2007) illustrative narratives of thoughts on CM's realistic existence in America in modern and postmodern times.