Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis: From Neo-Kantianism to Marxism 9781474267410, 9781474267489, 9781474267427

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Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

Also available from Bloomsbury Georg Lukacs Reconsidered: Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics, edited by Michael J. Thompson Aesthetic Marx, edited by Samir Gandesha and Johan Hartle Ernst Bloch and His Contemporaries, Ivan Boldyrev

Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis From Neo-Kantianism to Marxism Konstantinos Kavoulakos University of Crete, Greece

Preface by Andrew Feenberg

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For Christos, the new generation

Only he who is called upon and is willing to create the future can see the concrete truth of the present —Georg Lukács

Contents Preface by Andrew Feenberg Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations 1

Introduction: The Need to Reconsider Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

x xv xvi 1

Part 1 Method

11

2

13

3

4

The Problem of Content: A Neo-Kantian Theme 2.1 Heinrich Rickert’s theory of knowledge 2.2 Emil Lask’s turn toward a “logic of philosophy” 2.3 Form and material in Lask’s transcendental ontology 2.4 Lask’s theory of contemplative and active subjectivity 2.5 Lask and Lukács on the history of the problem of irrationality 2.6 Lukács’s neo-Kantian account of the thing in itself Flawed Philosophical Alternatives 3.1 Mathematics as a methodological model of rational systematization 3.2 Praxis as the first principle of systematization 3.3 Lukács’s critique of ethical praxis 3.4 The principle of art and its mythologization 3.5 Aesthetic education and its limits 3.6 Lask and Lukács on Hegel’s dialectical holism 3.7 Lukács’s critique of the formalist tendency in Hegel’s philosophy of history Lukács’s Materialist Theory of History 4.1 Lukács’s critique of the formalist philosophy of history 4.2 Lukács’s critique of political economy and reformist Marxism 4.3 The metacritique of knowledge and the unity of theory and praxis 4.4 Materialist dialectic

14 18 20 23 26 29 35 37 39 44 48 54 58 64 71 73 77 79 82

viii

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4.5 Dialectical theory of history: Beyond objectivism and subjectivism 4.6 The concept of the form of objectivity

87 90

Part 2 Theory

93

5

95

6

7

The Origins of the Concept of Reification in Lukács’s Early Work 5.1 Methodological presuppositions of a non-reductionist social history of literature 5.2 Lukács’s early theory of social rationalization 5.3 Lukács’s neo-Kantian distanciation from Lebensphilosophie 5.4 A neo-Kantian theory of the ossification of “experienced reality” 5.5 The historicization of the theory of experienced reality The Modern Form of Objectivity 6.1 Commodity form as the prototype of the modern form of objectivity 6.2 The universalization of the modern form of objectivity: Calculative rationality 6.3 Crisis as the limit of the modern form of objectivity What Is Reification? 7.1 Lukács’s concept of reification 7.2 Reification and objectification 7.3 Reification and contemplation 7.4 What reification is not 7.5 A reified concept of reification

96 98 102 104 109 115 115 121 124 129 130 134 137 141 146

Part 3 Praxis

151

8

153

From Mystical Ethics to Transformative Praxis 8.1 Lukács’s mystical “second ethics” 8.2 The tragedy of revolutionary action 8.3 Beyond ethics: The paradigm of class consciousness 8.4 Lukács’s theory of ascribed class consciousness 8.5 The unity of theory and praxis 8.6 The dialectic of transformative praxis

154 158 161 163 170 172

Contents

9 Dereifying Capitalism 9.1 Lukács’s typology of class consciousness 9.2 Proletarian subjectification as a corollary of a natural principle 9.3 The constitution of class consciousness as a leap to the radically new 9.4 Subjectification as a historical process 9.5 Revolutionary juncture and the problem of violence 9.6 Dereification as a historical process 10 Limits of Dereification 10.1 The party as a “real form of mediation” 10.2 The dialectic of the party’s external and internal life 10.3 Party politics and the internal limit of dereification 10.4 Nature as a social category 10.5 The dialectic of nature and the external limit of dereification

ix 177 178 182 185 187 190 194 199 200 204 207 210 213

11 Epilogue: The Significance of Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis Today

219

References Index

229 247

Preface Andrew Feenberg

Georg Lukács’s famous book History and Class  Consciousness has a strange history. Published in 1923, it was briefly the object of furious condemnation and then largely disappeared from view. True, it had a decisive influence on the Western Marxists, especially the first generation of the Frankfurt School, but references to it were so scarce that it was easy to overlook. Forgotten on the shelves of the few libraries that had a copy, History and Class Consciousness seemed lost in the mists of time along with thousands of other obscure books by minor philosophers. Then there was a brief rebound in the 1970s and ’80s, stimulated by the campus radicalism of students of European philosophy and intellectual history. Marcuse awakened interest in Western Marxism, and some young scholars followed the traces back to History and Class  Consciousness. Articles and a few books appeared, most of them by Marxists who condemned Lukács even as they brought his work to the attention of the intellectual community after a long neglect. Surprisingly, both the so-called scientific Marxists and most of the young followers of Western Marxism were in agreement in their attacks on the book. Adorno’s influential critique of Lukács’s supposed idealism resonated with Althusser’s dubious charge of humanism. Finally, in his 1984 Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas’s systems-theoretic reinterpretation of Lukácsian reification seemed to drive a stake through the heart of this inconvenient revenant. But the story was not over yet. Another generation has passed and again interest in History and Class Consciousness has revived. Not all of the attention is welcome. The Hungarian government removed the statue of Lukács from a Budapest park in 2017 and threatens to close the Lukács archive. In response, a successful conference, called on short notice, signaled international recognition of Lukács. Apparently, there are still quite a few people interested in his thought. Some of the research on History and Class Consciousness that has appeared recently is of a much higher quality than the earlier critiques. Of particular interest are those analyses that acknowledge the importance of neo-Kantianism.

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This was a subject occasionally mentioned by critics but never deeply analyzed. Lukács was assumed to be a Hegelian, a position seemingly incompatible with Kantianism. It is certainly correct that Lukács attempted to renew interest in Hegel among Marxists as an alternative to both mechanistic determinism and ethical interpretations of Marx influenced by Kant. However, this book shows that the turn to Hegel was by no means incompatible with a continuing reliance on many themes and concepts drawn from the neo-Kantian background of contemporary philosophy to which Lukács himself made significant contributions before he became a Marxist. Unfortunately, the English translation of History and Class Consciousness has made it more difficult than it might be to notice this important influence. It should be said that we owe a debt of gratitude to Rodney Livingstone for providing us with a readable English version of the book, but which, like all translations, contains errors, including mistranslations of certain neo-Kantian technical terms. For example, consider this version of one of the key sentences in the whole book, found on the first page of the essay on reification. After asserting that the commodity is the central structural issue in understanding every aspect of capitalist society, Lukács adds: “Only in this case can the structure of commodityrelations be made to yield a model of all the objective forms of bourgeois society together with all the subjective forms corresponding to them” (HCC: 83). For a cursory reading, the sentence seems to make sense, but what is an “objective form”? Unless this concept is understood, it cannot be clear what Lukács is trying to say. In fact the German original does make it clear. In place of the translator’s “objective forms,” we find the neo-Kantian term “Gegenständlichkeitsformen,” “forms of objectivity.” This term reappears many times in the book and is almost always translated in a way that obscures its meaning. Furthermore, the use of different expressions to translate the same term makes it difficult to grasp the common theoretical idea. But that idea is critically important to the interpretation of History and Class Consciousness! The term Gegenständlichkeitsform refers to a particular way of being an object, a particular type of what we might call “object-ness.” In the neo-Kantian framework, such ways are multiple. The natural sciences have objects of a certain type, quite different from the objects of artistic production, and so on. Many types of objects exist, each of them a coherent cross-section of the infinite complexity of experience. In the sentence I have highlighted, Lukács is saying that the commodity exemplifies the particular way of being an object that characterizes all objects in bourgeois society and shapes the subjective response to those objects. That he employs a neo-Kantian term is significant because of

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his many references to the contemporary debates over the relation between forms of objectivity and their content. This is a puzzling aspect of the book. Why does Lukács pose the problem of the revolution in terms of this relation rather than in the usual way, for example, in terms of the poverty and oppression of the working class? The answer to this question is developed at length in this book. Here I can only sketch a few relevant points. The form of objectivity is characterized in the first part of Lukács’s essay on reification. The objects of bourgeois society come to resemble the objects of the natural sciences in terms of quantification and lawfulness. Lukács is thus describing the submission of society to rational forms resembling those successfully imposed on nature through experimentation and research. In sum, capitalism strives to create a “second nature,” built out of the materials—the content—of the social world, including the human beings who inhabit that world. Technology and new forms of “rational” organization play a key role in this process. This explains why the philosophical debates over the nature and limits of scientific-technical rationality, which began in the seventeenth century and continue through Kant down to the present, turn out to be relevant to social theory. This surprising connection becomes visible toward the end of the nineteenth century as the industrialization process reaches a climax. German philosophers struggle to save a remnant of culture from the aggressive advance of business and technology. The neo-Kantians distinguish “meaning” from factual existence in order to better understand the place and limits of science, art, and history. They introduce the notion that objectivities of different types reflect specific domains of meaning. In this way they attempt to escape the grip of a scientism that reflects the totalization of capitalist industrialism. But the gap between meaning and existence shows up in a problem that already worried Kant: the thing-in-itself. Meanings constitute forms that are instantiated in contents of some sort. But what is the relation between those forms and their contents? Can the meanings fully determine the content, or is there a remainder that escapes from any formal structuring? When the question is posed at the purely theoretical level, it leads to recognition of the limits of the attempt to shape the world in accordance with human intentions. The objects of science, its contents, have dimensions that cannot be apprehended scientifically, as do the objects of art, historical study, and so on. The world is complex beyond the human ability to understand it fully. This poses no practical obstacle to the pursuit of knowledge, art, and historical knowledge, but reflects the theoretical limits of finite human subjects.

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Lukács participated in such discussions and was closely associated with the neo-Kantian philosophers Heinrich Rickert and Emil Lask. He was a friend of Max Weber who was himself influenced by neo-Kantianism. At the time these thinkers were giants, although today only Weber is remembered by more than a few specialists. When Lukács turned to Marxism, he employed the intellectual equipment of neo-Kantianism to bring Marx’s conception up-to-date with the further development of industrial society. By the early 1920s it was clear that the effects of industrialism went well beyond the expansion of the market. Apparent to Lukács as to many of his contemporaries was the parallel growth of mechanization and bureaucracy. Together with markets, these new techniques of production and organization aimed at the total submission of society to technical rationality. The neo-Kantian problematic of the tension between form and content, meaning and the thingin-itself, appeared now in the relation of technical rationality to the human beings whose lives it shaped. Where neo-Kantianism had found a theoretical limit, Lukács identified a practical one: resistance to the imposition of capitalist forms, class struggle. The critique of technical rationality in Lukács was formulated in terms of the concept of “reification.” This concept refers to the thing-like character of the objects of scientific-technical rationality, the “res” in “reification.” The implied concept of “thing” does not refer to entity in general as it often does in everyday speech, but rather to a specific type of fact that can be measured and analyzed in isolation from other similar facts. This is the object corresponding to the capitalist form of objectivity. Recall that that form is a “model” based on the commodity, a “thing” that is neatly isolated from other things and measured by its price, a quantity. The generalization of such thinghood to the entire social world, including the people in it, is capitalist reification. Many later critics argued that Lukács was a romantic, hostile to science and reason. This is incorrect. History and Class Consciousness poses the problem of how to live freely within a rational society. The crux of the problem, as he poses it, is the capitalist control of the productive forces. Of course, he is aware of the injustice and inequality associated with capitalism, but those conditions cannot be overcome without finding another way of organizing a modern industrial society. The question then is whether the proletariat can create the conditions for such a radical transformation of the society. As a Marxist, Lukács replies in the affirmative and argues that the Marxian “realm of freedom” begins to appear already in the class struggle. He found resources in Hegel for conceiving this rational alternative. We may be less convinced today, but that is no reason to

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misread Lukács’s very sophisticated argument as a crude relapse into romantic protest against reason. The author takes up the further development of Lukács’s argument in the rest of the book. It should be noted that Lukács’s innovative application of the concept of form of objectivity had a significant afterlife, even though History and Class Consciousness was quickly forgotten, and later widely misunderstood. The philosophers of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, who were to play such an important role in the intellectual world created by the upheavals of the 1960s, were directly influenced by Lukács’s theory of reification. They transformed that theory into a critique of “instrumental rationality” (Adorno and Horkheimer), “technological rationality” (Marcuse), and “colonization of the lifeworld” (Habermas). The critical perspective they introduced into mainstream philosophical culture in Europe persists to this day as a challenge to complacent acceptance of the claims of scientific-technical rationality as it is deployed under capitalism. But the Frankfurt School’s appropriation of the theory of reification revealed its limitations in the pessimism of Adorno and Habermas’s concessions to “system rationality.” This is where the return to Lukács can play an important role. His essential contribution for us today is the elaboration of what Adorno called “a rational critique of reason.” He showed the contingency of the rationally structured forms of capitalist social life. The imperfectly formed contents of those forms can become active and restructure them in conformity with suppressed interests. That process, which Lukács analyzed in terms of proletarian resistance to capitalism, now appears in many other domains, such as the environmental movement. Whatever the particular goals of these movements, their dereifying dynamic signifies the possibility of another modernity.

Acknowledgments This study greatly profited from occasional or systematic discussions with Dimitris Alexakis, Andreas Arndt, Rüdiger Dannemann, Mischka Dammaschke, Maria Daskalaki, Patrick Eiden-Offe, Frank Engster, Giorgos Faraklas, Andrew Feenberg, Thanasis Giouras, Dimitris Karydas, Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Aliki Lavranu, Albrecht Wellmer, the members of the permanent colloquium “Philosophy and Social Sciences” (Department of Philosophy and Social Studies, University of Crete), and many undergraduate and graduate students I  have instructed in recent years. I  am grateful to Anne Koulouriotis who proofread the manuscript. I  would also like to thank Frankie Mace from Bloomsbury Academic for assisting me throughout the process of the publication of this book. My family—the old one as well as the new—showed remarkable understanding for my need to stay devoted to philosophical research over such a long period. I would especially like to thank my life partner Maria for her multifaceted support and my son Christos for his distinctive patience and encouragement.

Abbreviations FIG

Emil Lask, Fichtes Idealismus und die Geschichte, in Emil Lask, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Eugen Herrigel, vol. Ι, 1–274, Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1923.

GE

Heinrich Rickert, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis. Einführung in die Transzendentalphilosophie, Tübingen, Leipzig: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1904.

HCC

Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness. Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971; Georg Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein. Studien über marxistische Dialektik, Berlin: Malik Verlag, 1923. The first page number(s) relate(s) to the English translation, while the italicized number(s) after the semicolon relate(s) to the German original.

LdPh

Emil Lask, Die Logik der Philosophie und die Kategorienlehre, in Emil Lask, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Eugen Herrigel, vol. ΙΙ, 1–282, Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1923.

LvU

Emil Lask, Die Lehre vom Urteil, in Emil Lask, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Eugen Herrigel, vol. ΙΙ, 283–463, Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1923.

1

Introduction: The Need to Reconsider Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

Acknowledging Georg Lukács’s decisive contribution to the formation of the broad intellectual current of the twentieth century that we usually summarize as “Hegelian,” “dialectical,” “western,” or “critical Marxism”1 is commonplace among theorists of this tradition. It is also hard to overlook the influence of Lukács’s famous book History and Class  Consciousness (1923) on the political theory and practice of the activists during the 1960s (see, e.g., Dannemann 2009). Of course, the great importance of this work is not only connected with its socialpolitical radicalism but also with its philosophical depth. In fact, the central essay of this collection, “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,” contains the basic lines of a radical critique of the formalist philosophical and scientific discourse and investigates the possibility of overcoming it in theory and in practice. In this respect, it is not misplaced to analogize Lukács’s early philosophy of praxis with other theoretical efforts toward a radical reorientation of thought in the twentieth century. Such a comparison has already been attempted. In a work that remained uncompleted due to his premature death, Lucien Goldmann paralleled Lukács with Heidegger. In the introduction to this work, Goldmann highlights the two philosophers’ common interest in overcoming the typical neo-Kantian opposition between the subject and the object. In his opinion, both philosophers move toward a reappropriation of “the Hegelian tradition” and a “rejection of the transcendental subject” by understanding “man as inseparable from the world which he is a part of ” and by defining “his place in the universe as historicity.”2 1

2

Martin Jay (1984a: 1–14) attempts to delineate the theoretical field described by those terms. See also Anderson (1979). Cf. Goldmann (1977: 1–8), quotes: 7. Goldmann formulated the daring assumption that Heidegger’s Being and Time is a reaction to History and Class  Consciousness (see the analysis of Goldmann’s argumentation in I.  Fehér 1996:  153–67). On Lukács’s overall influence on Goldmann, cf. Fehér

2

Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

Even if most theorists of critical theory are prepared to recognize the historical significance of Lukács’s philosophy of praxis, this is not automatically the case in relation to its actuality. This is hardly surprising, since there has been a long sequence of critiques formulated, among others, by protagonists of this intellectual current, which have led to the view that Lukács is a “finished case” and that any positive contribution of his to critical theory has already been incorporated into what followed after him. My attitude toward this superficial appraisal of Lukács’s early Marxist work is very critical: In my view it belongs to an epoch that is definitely over. Naturally, showing its significance in the new era we are already living in would demand a comprehensive theory of contemporary society, which I  do not claim to possess yet. My book has a more moderate aim:  to suggest another way of reading Lukács’s philosophy of praxis—a way that takes the critiques on this philosophy into consideration. At the time it occurred, Lukács’s dialectical Marxism was particularly groundbreaking. Lukács’s bourgeois education rendered him capable of confronting the “opportunist,” social democratic theorists of the Second International on a remarkably high philosophical level, to defend revolutionary politics and give solid philosophical foundations to it. In this book I acknowledge the importance of Lukács’s “pre-Marxist” philosophical dowry I myself worked out in an earlier book of mine (see Kavoulakos 2014a). However, compared to this earlier investigation, the present book is less historically and more systematically oriented.3 It aims at clarifying the dialectical-practical theory of modernity exposed in History and Class Consciousness. Lukács’s attempt to open a theoretical path beyond the bourgeois schools of thought (including the Marxist-social democratic orthodoxy) of his time, in order to forge the appropriate theoretical means for articulating the selfunderstanding of the new reality that emerged out of the ruins of the old world, could only lead to solutions and formulations that left the proponents of more conventional theoretical directions unsatisfied. It is typical that immediately after the publication of History and Class Consciousness the subjectivists-dualists began to criticize it for its theoretically and politically unacceptable tendency toward a social-historical ontology and the theoretical exposition of a “real

3

(1979) and Márkus (1981). For a recent comparison of Lukács and Heidegger, see Christ (2008: 109– 31). Following Goldmann’s intellectual gesture, Jay Bernstein interprets Lukács’s philosophy of praxis as an attempt to transcend metaphysics, analogous to that of Heidegger and Derrida (cf. Bernstein 1988). Therefore I only refer to the absolutely necessary information on Lukács’s political and intellectual biography. Such information can easily be found in books like Raddatz (1972), Hermann (1978), Congdon (1983), Hermann (1986), Jung (1989), and Kadarkay (1991).

Introduction

3

dialectic” (Realdialektik) of social totality (cf., e.g., Marck 1977: 52–7). At the same time the proponents of some kind of theoretical monism, for example, a materialist one, found the lack of systematic closure within the complete certainty of a unified materialist dialectic of nature and society unpalatable (see, e.g., Rudas 1977a; Deborin 1969). Since that time, Lukács’s detractors have never ceased to formulate contradictory critiques, which depict him now as an objectivist-fatalist, now as a subjectivist-voluntarist—in both cases mostly as an idealist philosopher. Even prominent theorists of the tradition of critical theory, such as Adorno and Habermas, failed to escape this trend toward a one-sided interpretation of Lukács’s early Marxist work. Indeed, their critiques of Lukács became a model for the reception of his work by the younger generation of critical theorists. Although their criticism is based on different philosophical foundations, they arrive at similar conclusions: Both credit Lukács with an idealist orientation. It is also interesting that Adorno’s and Habermas’s main arguments concur with those used against Lukács by orthodox Marxist-Leninists as well as representatives of the school of Althusser (cf. Feenberg 2014: 121–2, 124–9). Since, in this book, I often allude to Adorno’s and Habermas’s critiques, I briefly outline them here. In other chapters of the book, I also refer to commentators, who were influenced by those critiques, and to the self-critique of old Lukács himself that has been aptly characterized as an “example of philosophical self-misunderstanding” (Feenberg 2014: 126). As commentators have pointed out, “until the end of the 1920s” Adorno “was less a Marxist and more an unorthodox Lukácsian” (Braunstein and Duckheim 2015: 32; see also Jay 1984b: 28–9). Adorno himself confessed, in a letter to Lucien Goldmann in 1963, that the decisive “experience,” which led him to philosophy in his youth, was the reading of “Lukács’s early writings; and above all his theory of the novel.”4 Although Adorno distanced himself from the philosophical hero of his youth fairly early on and later entered into an open controversy with him (see Adorno 1980), he never ceased to recognize his theoretical indebtedness to Lukács. Hence, in a 1960 lecture, Adorno praised Lukács’s significant contribution to critical theory, namely his attempt to demonstrate the social mediation of knowledge, “to deduce in the most binding way possible, the form of some philosophies of decisive importance, above all the philosophies of Kant and

4

Theodor W. Adorno to Lucien Goldmann, October 15, 1963, Theodor W. Adorno Archive, BR 484/42 (quoted in Braunstein and Duckheim 2015: 33).

4

Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

Hegel, from social facts, namely from economic relations of production” (Adorno 2011: 136). The same positive evaluation of Lukács’s social theory of knowledge can be found in a lecture of 1963/64 on “Problems of Dialectics.” Here Adorno characterizes History and Class Consciousness as the “most important Marxist publication on Hegel” and explains that “the universality specifically attributed to the concept of reification in this book and the transfer of the problems connected with the concepts of reification and alienation to the whole theory of knowledge is something eminently fruitful.”5 However, in the same text Adorno also refers to his main reservation about Lukács’s theory. The problem he detects in it is its “excessive Hegelianism,” the “idealist extremity” of History and Class Consciousness. This is the element that misled Lukács into replacing Hegel’s world spirit by the Communist Party, with all the disastrous political effects of this theoretical choice.6 A coherent explication of this critique can be found in the section of Negative Dialectics (1966) entitled “Objectivity and reification” (Adorno 1973: 189–92). Commenting on Lukács’s main diagnostic concept—reification—in these three dense pages, Adorno explains that “reification itself is the reflexive form of false objectivity” (Adorno 1973:  190). In other words, it is the form in which the society of commodity exchange is reflected in men’s consciousness. Therefore, the theory that concentrates all its attention on this “form of consciousness” (Adorno 1973: 190) can only have an idealist orientation. Against such a theory, Adorno insists that “the trouble is with the conditions that condemn mankind to impotence and apathy and would yet be changeable by human action; it is not primarily with people and with the way conditions appear to people” (Adorno 1973: 190). By interpreting reification as an idealist concept, Adorno joins those “brutal and primitive functionaries” (Adorno 1973:  190) of the party, who critiqued History and Class Consciousness at the time of its first publication.7 They were right to “sense the idealistic nature of his conception” (Adorno 1973:  190). Indeed, Adorno finds Lukács’s main predecessor in Fichte, whose philosophical

5 6 7

Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Vo 8831–2 (quoted in Braunstein 2011: 41). Cf. Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Vo 8831–2 (quoted in Braunstein 2011: 41). E.g., László Rudas and Abram Deborin (mentioned above), but also others, like Grigori Zinoviev, who in a talk at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International (June–July 1924)  classified Lukács as a “revisionist,” guilty of a deviation that should not be “tolerated without a punishment” (cf. Sinowjew 1977:  64–5). Right after its publication, Lukács’s book was harshly attacked by the “orthodox” communists. Such attacks “were echoed and re-echoed in the pages of virtually every important Communist publication, until ‘Lukácsianism’ became a term of abuse in party vocabulary,” and Lukács was forced to remain silent until the beginning of the 1930s (cf. Watnick 1962: 145–7, quote: 145).

Introduction

5

subjectivism could not bear the heteronomous dependence of the subject upon anything alien, anything thing-like. Therefore, he aimed for an idealistic liquefaction of things, their absorption into the “pure actuality” of the absolute action of a subject that posits itself and, at the same time, the world (cf. Adorno 1973: 189). This Fichtean attitude is repeated in Lukács’s idealism: If a man looks upon thingness as radical evil, if he would like to dynamize all entity into pure actuality, he tends to be hostile to otherness, to the alien thing that has lent its name to alienation, and not in vain. (Adorno 1973: 191)

This otherness, the independence of which is negated by idealism, is the Adornian non-identical. Contrary to idealism, authentic materialism acknowledges the objective grounding of reification as a “form of subjective reflection” on the actual “supremacy of commodities.” This is why “Marx already expresses the difference between the object’s preponderance as a product of criticism and its extant caricature, its distortion by the merchandise character” (Adorno 1973: 190). Critical theory criticizes commodity fetishism as the subjective form of appearance of the false social conditions that distort the objectivity of things and “create a false consciousness” (Adorno 1973:  190). In the reified object, two elements are “intertwined,” which critical thinking has to distinguish: “the object’s unidentical side and the submission of men to prevailing conditions of production, to their own functional context which they cannot know” (Adorno 1973: 192). For Adorno, Lukács fails to make this distinction. As a result, his critique of reification repeats the mistake of identifying thought that shows up as omnipotent only because it ignores the object as the non-identical. This tendency is, according to Adorno, also characteristic of the historico-philosophical construction that supports Lukács’s critique of reification. In a discussion with Horkheimer in 1939, Adorno claimed that Lukács followed an “idealist conception of dialectics,” according to which “the particular and real movement in history is deduced from a general and conceptual movement.”8 Even if in Lukács’s work this general concept refers to the relations of production in bourgeois society, his dialectic continues to raise, “as to its form, the claim of subjectivity to dominate the world with its concepts” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1985: 527). Paradoxically, in Negative Dialectics Adorno does not develop this critique of Lukács’s Marxist theory of history but refers to his earlier philosophy of

8

Horkheimer and Adorno (1985: 527). The dating of the discussion is uncertain. It is very likely that it took place in 1931 instead of 1939 (see the editor’s note in Horkheimer and Adorno 1985: 526).

6

Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

history implied in The Theory of the Novel (1916)—the work which led Adorno to philosophy, according to his own testimony already mentioned above. In the first part of his famous Historico-philosophical Essay on the novel, Lukács sketches a suggestive image of the “integrated culture” of an archaic epoch, in which life was full of meaning because individuality had not yet been separated from the collective, nor subjectivity from objectivity or values from facts etc. (cf. Lukács 1978: 29–39; 1920: 9–22). In Adorno’s reading, Lukács yearned for the “return” of those “meaningful times.”9 Against such romantic nostalgia for a lost golden age, Adorno reminds us that its alleged harmony was no less an effect of coercion than the repressive order of modern society. Besides, the idealization of societies with no notion of individuality can lead to a reinforcement of contemporary tendencies toward its total abolition for the sake of a false collectivity. This is why the mature Marx “distinguished the state of freedom from original immediacy” (Adorno 1973:  192) and why he construed a social ideal, in which the “moment of planning” and thus of mediation “preserved the alien thing” (192). Contrary to Marx’s cautious preservation of the non-identity of the object, Lukács’s idealist negation of thingness goes hand in hand with his romantic idealization of the past. Like the young Adorno, Habermas was “very excited” by the suggestive power of History and Class Consciousness in his youth (Habermas 1981: 515). And again:  like Adorno, Habermas subsequently distanced himself from Lukács’s philosophy, searching for another road to social critique. As in the case of Adorno, the motive for this distanciation was first of all political. In the introduction to the new edition of his essay-collection Theory and Practice (1971), Habermas strictly criticized Lukács’s model of the mediation between theory and practice as proposed in his essay on the problem of the organization of the Communist Party. For Habermas, the close embrace of theory and party politics proposed by Lukács is a result of his theoretical premises, namely, his “objectivist philosophy of history” (Habermas 1974: 36). Several years earlier, Habermas had already distanced himself from this “objectivist philosophy of history.” At a time when he was still investigating the relation between materialist dialectics and social sciences, he claimed that historical materialism cannot be constituted on the grounds of a dialectic “that,

9

Cf. Adorno (1973: 191). Timothy Hall detects a similar critique of Lukács’s “romantic” tendencies in another section of Negative Dialectics entitled “On the Dialectics of Identity” (Adorno 1973: 146–8). Cf. Hall (2011a: 67–9).

Introduction

7

as it precedes and lies at the basis of all history, it is actualized according to the ticking clock of metaphysical necessity” (Habermas 1971:  443). With this argument he opposed Lukács’s notion of the “objective possibility” of proletarian class consciousness and revolution, since—in his opinion—it is equivalent to the “dialectical identification of a necessity, in view of which even the greatest decision has become a natural thing under the laws of nature” (Habermas, 1971: 444). And he added that, “as it originates from the dialectics of absolute consciousness, Lukács’s category of objective possibility implies the historical necessity” (Habermas 1971: 444)—this fact can explain Lukács’s unconditional identification with actually existing socialism. In Theory and Practice, Habermas does not give further explications as to why Lukács’s concept of objective possibility is identical to historical necessity. In The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), he offers a more detailed elaboration of his older thesis that Lukács’s critique of reification is based on a metaphysical philosophy of history. The influence of Adorno’s critique becomes more obvious here:  The problem is Lukács’s espousal of Hegelian dialectics, despite all his critical reservations about it. Hegelian logic is the basis of Lukács’s attempt to reunite the different moments of reason that separate in modernity because of the phenomenon of reification (cf. Habermas 1991: 362). At this point Habermas draws on Albrecht Wellmer’s view that “Lukács’s philosophical reconstruction of Marxism amounts, in some key respects, to a return to objective idealism” and thus reproduces the “theoretical shortcomings of objective idealism” (Wellmer 1977: 477–8). Of course, Habermas admits that Lukács turns to Hegelian objective reason in the critical way of the young Hegelians. He critiques the restriction of dialectical reason to philosophical thought and claims its actualization in reality through a praxis that constitutes a rational form of life (cf. Habermas 1991: 362–3). Then, the ambiguous program of an “actualization of philosophy” is formulated as the  particular standpoint of a dialectical philosophy of praxis. The ambiguity of the Lukácsian version of this program lies in the fact that, while it recognizes the limits of a philosophical reconciliation with existent reality and aims at a practical realization of reason, Lukács’s “praxis” is once again dependent on theory as it represents nothing more than the notion of a “revolutionary actualization of philosophy” (Habermas 1991: 364): In doing so, he [Lukács] has to credit theory with more power than even metaphysics had claimed for itself. Now philosophy has to be capable of thinking not only the totality that is hypostatized as the world order, but the

8

Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis world-historical process as well—the historical development of this totality through the self-conscious practice of those who are enlightened by philosophy about their active role in the self-realization of reason. (364)

Thus, Lukács seeks to substitute his dialectical philosophy of history for the metaphysical knowledge, which—in modernity—has lost its power to form a unitary, dominant worldview. Lukács’s metaphysics of history even claims to determine the subject of the realization of reason through practice. Lukács handles this second task with the aid of his theory of proletarian class consciousness. Thus, the possibility of disastrous effects on political action is built into the conditions of the constitution of his metaphysical theory of the proletariat as the identical subject-object of history (Habermas 1991:  364–5). This is the elaborated justification of the critique Habermas first formulated, as we have already seen, in 1971. Although Habermas embraces a reading of Lukács’s early Marxist work similar to the one of Adorno, the theoretical path he opened up in the 1970s led him to positions equally distant from the latter. This was, of course, an effect of his parallel critique of the old Frankfurt School. If the positive dialectic of class consciousness results in a metaphysics of history, the negative dialectic of the non-identical leads to the dead-end of a relentless negativism that cannot rationally found the criteria of social critique (cf. Habermas 1991:  366–86; 1987: 106–30; see also Hohendahl 1985). Habermas’s “communicative turn” in critical theory was designed as a way out of the alleged impasse of the Lukácsian theory of reification and of the critique of instrumental reason formulated by Horkheimer and Adorno. However, with his communicative pragmatism, Habermas decisively distanced himself from the dialectical theory of the socialhistorical and turned to a formalist theory of communicative reason and a corresponding social theory divided into two separate levels—a hermeneutic theory of agency and a systems theory of social structures (see Habermas 1991; 1992). During the last few decades, this theoretical direction has been criticized in many respects—here I can only refer to the assessment I formulated elsewhere, that the recent social transformation of contemporary capitalism has made evident the utopian character of communicative critical theory. The same social change to a global domination of a technocratic and authoritarian neoliberalism makes, in my opinion, Lukács’s social criticism more appealing (see Kavoulakos 2011:  152–7). However, a return to the texts of the 1920s cannot possibly

Introduction

9

bypass the criticism they have undergone—in any case this criticism has to be substantially considered. In this book I  consider Adorno’s critique of Lukács’s alleged idealism as partly legitimate. I wish to show that it is not Adorno’s criterion which is wrong, but his interpretation of the essence of Lukács’s theoretical perspective. I have already laid the fundaments for a new interpretation of Lukács’s early Marxist philosophy in my above-mentioned book, in which I  worked out the neoKantian background of his so-called pre-Marxist period. I utilize the findings of my previous research to investigate the neo-Kantian influence on Lukács’s early Marxist work10 as is reflected in the central position which the problem of otherness occupies in his thought. Such a reading might seem strange, given the dominant interpretation of Lukács’s philosophical orientation. The aim of this book is to show that a more charitable approach to Lukács’s philosophy of praxis is much more interesting, coherent, and fruitful than the more or less unfounded and theoretically unproductive prejudice that prevails in a great part of the critical intelligentsia today. From a general standpoint, the crucial question posed in the controversy between Adorno and Lukács is the question of the constitution of materialist dialectics. Since this is one of the most difficult problems of a radical critical theory—which contemporary discussions unfortunately only minimally raise—I can only hope that my new interpretation of Lukács’s Marxist work will indirectly contribute to clarifying some of its dimensions. I  am aware of the fact that emphasizing Lukács’s neo-Kantian origins might create the impression of neglecting the Hegelian component of his thought. I  do not at all wish to downgrade the importance of Lukács’s turn to Hegel (and, of course, to Marx), without which his philosophy of praxis would never have been born. However, given the fact that the undifferentiated identification of Lukács’s theoretical perspective with that of Hegel was used, as we have already seen, as an argument for its critical rejection,11 it is obviously of utmost importance to clarify the specific prism through which Lukács appropriated elements of the great dialectician of the modern times. As we will see, Lukács’s individual path to Marx had been partly prepared by his neo-Kantian philosophical

10

11

In respect to the investigation of this influence, Hartmunt Rosshoff ’s study (1975) has been formally path-breaking. However, in respect of its substance, it is not really informative. See also Dannemann’s relevant remarks (1987: 113–14).

10

Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

education. The standpoint adopted in the present book allows a more accurate account of Lukács’s reservations about Hegelian philosophy. In front of us lies a distinct path with three major parts, a path we now have to follow. The careful reconstruction of the philosophical presuppositions of Lukács’s early Marxism (Part 1: “Method”) will open the way to a radical reconsideration of his theory of rationality and modern society (Part 2: “Theory”), and of his theory of social and political change (Part 3: “Praxis”).

Part One

Method

2

The Problem of Content: A Neo-Kantian Theme

At the end of 1918, when Lukács suddenly decided to join the Hungarian Communist Party, he had already been systematically preoccupied with philosophy. Since 1912 he had largely left behind his previous engagement with essayism and the historical-sociological investigation of literature, and had dedicated his work to purely philosophical research. This period coincides with his moving to Heidelberg to study philosophy and write a habilitation thesis under the supervision of philosophers of the southwest German school of neo-Kantianism. His philosophical education was determined by the intense intellectual experiences of this period. At that time the leading figure of southwest German neo-Kantianism was Heinrich Rickert. During the same period, among his disciples one could distinguish a rising young philosopher, Emil Lask, whose work was to remain incomplete, since he fell at the eastern front in the First World War, in 1915. I  confine my reference to the discussion between these two neo-Kantian philosophers as it determined the framework of Lukács’s study in philosophy. The crucial period starts in 1908 and ends with the publication of Lask’s second programmatic work, The Doctrine of Judgement, in 1912. This was precisely the year Lukács started working on his first Aesthetic. During this time Lask critiqued Rickert and attempted to reformulate the neo-Kantian theory of knowledge.1 It would not be exaggerating to say that Lukács learned philosophy from the neo-Kantians of Heidelberg. Thus, when he turned to Marxism he was not compelled to limit himself to absorbing the Marxist dogma, but was able to read Marx’s texts in a new, fruitful way, based on the deep knowledge of the problems of modern philosophy he had already acquired. This becomes apparent in 1

For a general introduction to neo-Kantianism, see Pascher (1997). For a historical and systematic presentation of the specific kind of neo-Kantian philosophy that influenced Lukács, see Häußer (1989). On the dispute between Rickert and Lask, see Sommerhäuser (1965).

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Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

History and Class Consciousness, especially in the essay on “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat.” His frequent references to central protagonists of neo-Kantian philosophy of that time are a clear indication of the fact that the philosophical questions he dealt with during his study in Heidelberg continued to form the framework of his thought. Notwithstanding his criticisms, his references to Rickert and Lask are remarkably positive. The neo-Kantian influence on Lukács is also reflected in the content of his analyses. It becomes especially apparent in the formulation of the central problem of modern philosophy:  the problem of the content of knowledge. Of course, with his shift to dialectical philosophy Lukács intended to transcend the neo-Kantian epistemological framework. However, we should not overlook two important facts:  First, the need for such transcendence had already been clearly discerned by Lask, even though he rejected the conceptual means of dialectical philosophy. Second, Lukács’s understanding of the theoretical problems of dialectical method continues, up to a point, to bear the stamp of the neo-Kantian reservations about it. In the present chapter I show how Lukács’s conceptualization of the problem of content is rooted in the relevant analyses of Rickert and Lask. I start with a reconstruction of Rickert’s critical theory of knowledge and Lask’s critique of it (Sections 2.1 and 2.2) and then proceed to examine Lask’s attempt to overcome his teacher’s entrapment in the subjectivist perspective (Sections 2.3 and 2.4). Finally, we will look at the way in which elements of Rickert’s and Lask’s theory of knowledge determined the framework of the discussion of Kantian philosophy in the section on “The antinomies of bourgeois thought” in History and Class Consciousness (Sections 2.5 and 2.6).

2.1. Heinrich Rickert’s theory of knowledge Rickert’s philosophy is based on a reformulation of the classic Kantian notion of the subjective constitution of the objects of knowledge. Rickert’s habilitation thesis entitled The Object of Knowledge—a book that served as the basis for the discussions in the southwest German neo-Kantian school at the beginning of the twentieth century—starts with the general ascertainment that “to the concept of cognition belongs, apart from a subject that cognizes, an object that is cognized.”2 The theory of knowledge ought to define them 2

GE:  1 (see the List of Abbreviations). I  refer to the second, reworked edition of Rickert’s Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis. Einführung in die Transzendentalphilosophie (1904), to which Lask and Lukács referred at that time.

The Problem of Content

15

both. As for the subject, it is defined in orthodox Kantian terms:  It is not the empirical subject, but the abstract “subject in general” that constitutes a “boundary concept” of the theory of knowledge (cf. GE: 145–7) and refers to that which “from no standpoint can become an object and therefore must necessarily be determined as the concept of the supra-individual subject of cognition” (GE: 146). As for the object of knowledge, however, Rickert introduces an innovation, already prepared by his teacher Wilhelm Windelband: He relates the question of the object of knowledge to the problem of values and their validity (Geltung), which he thus poses at the center of philosophical reflection. For Rickert philosophy is a “science of value” (Wertwissenschaft) in contradistinction to the “sciences of being” (Seinswissenschaften), that is, the individual sciences referring to the existent. In opposition to them, philosophy asks about the meaning (Sinn) connected to the values that do not exist, but are valid (cf. GE: 235). Thus, values are not a special problem of ethics or the philosophy of culture, but play a central role even in the traditional branch of epistemology, since “philosophy always discusses values and norms and the forms of their recognition.”3 In Rickert’s eyes, the philosophy of values allows for the solution to the problem of the object of knowledge in general. By overcoming the standpoints of epistemological realism as well as of absolute subjective idealism, a version of which is positivism (cf. GE:  163–4), Rickert forms his own “standpoint of immanence” (cf. GE:  35–6, 72–4), which totally contradicts the idea of a “transcendent object” of knowledge that exists “outside” and “beyond” the representations of the subject. According to Rickert, knowledge is not given to us in representations (Vorstellungen) that “reflect” or “depict” an object (see GE:  81–4), but in judgments (see GE: 102–3). Leaning on Windelband’s analyses, Rickert points out the fact that the judgment (Urteil) forms a “connection or an analysis of representations” (GE:  85). However, to the “representational components” of judgment a “non representational element” is added. The latter represents an affirmation or rejection of a specific “relation between representations,” that is, its “evaluation” (Beurteilung; cf. GE:  94–5, 101)  which is based on reference to a value. For Rickert, even “pure theoretical cognition is a statement (Stellungnahme) about a value” (GE: 106).

3

GE:  234. In this way Rickert founds the normative notion of philosophy, previously defended by Windelband (1911a).

16

Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

Thus, the feeling of “certainty” and “evidentness” (Evidenz) that accompanies our judgments has a logical sense. It is connected with the claim to timeless validity, that is, with the “absolute necessity” of the judgment (see GE:  111– 13). Rickert calls this dimension of transcendence and necessity contained in judgments the “ought,” since it “appears to the judging subject as an imperative, the legitimacy of which we acknowledge in the judgment and which we espouse, as it were, in our will” (GE: 115). In this way, Rickert analogizes the search for truth with the fulfillment of the duty and the “concept of the logical ought” with the “norms that are valid for the willing man” (GE: 230). Hence, he concludes that “the final basis of knowledge (Wissen) is a moral conscience” (Gewissen; GE: 231). Since even “the recognition of the logical ought is a kind of fulfilment of the duty in general” (GE: 234), for transcendental philosophy the transcendent ought is logically prior to the concept of the immanent being or, in other words, “validity” (Geltung) has “logical priority” over being, which is determined according to validity’s demands (cf. GE: 151, 155, 164–5). Indeed, Rickert refers explicitly to the “primacy of practical reason” (GE: VI, 234)—a Kantian position particularly emphasized by Fichte (see Section 3.2). As has been commented on in the relevant literature, Rickert, in fact, comes close to Fichte’s theoretical philosophy—it is however controversial whether placing the problem of values in the centre of the theory of knowledge was an effect of the direct influence of Fichte on him.4 In any case, for Rickert, our knowledge is always the “recognition” of a valid transcendent value by the subject. Therefore value represents the real object of knowledge (cf. GE: 116–17, 122, 124). Without deviating from the spirit of Kantianism, Rickert points out that it is not only the knowledge of the empirical subject which is limited, but even that of the transcendental subject:  Epistemology can only reveal the form of knowledge, that is, its element that represents the validity of the recognized value. But it cannot conceptually derive the sensible content of empirical knowledge which, precisely for this reason, must be characterized as irrational. Therefore the responsibility for grasping the content of knowledge lies with the 4

In 1900 Rickert published a short study on Fichte in the Kant-Studien, in which he emphasized the primacy of practical reason in Fichtean philosophy (see Rickert 1899–1900). However, at this time the basic orientation of the southwest German school of neo-Kantianism had already been formed— probably independently of the influence of Fichte. On the relation between the Fichtean and the Rickertian version of the primacy of practical reason, see Heinz (1997:  113–21) and Przylebski (1997:  136–41). In the relevant secondary literature we also encounter the view that Rickert’s primacy of practical reason must be ascribed to the direct influence of Fichte (see Piché 1997: 143– 50). According to Stolzenberg, this influence is filtered by Rickert’s idiosyncratic interpretation of central Fichtean views (see Stolzenberg 2002: 425–8).

The Problem of Content

17

empirical sciences (see GE: 168, 184, 219). This non reducibility of the content of knowledge to its rational forms is the essence of the problem of content. Due to this fundamental problem, epistemology is compelled to remain strictly formal and thus to confine itself to the knowledge of the valid forms. More concretely, epistemology is preoccupied with clarifying the so-called constitutive forms. On this level, Rickert introduces the threefold distinction between the “norm,” the “category” and the “transcendental form.” The “norm” is the form of the “transcendent ought” that demands recognition (GE:  173). The “transcendental form” is the “form of the performed judgment,”5 the form of the “finished cognitive product” (GE: 174), which is identical with the “form of reality” (GE: 170, 174). The “category” mediates between these two extremes. It is the form that “grounds being according to the ought” (GE: 172), the form of the act of recognizing the transcendent value, that is, the form of judging. Such categories, through which the individual facts and their wider empirical connection are constituted, are the “givenness” (Gegebenheit; GE:  180–82), the “effect” (Wirkung; GE:  197–8) of one thing on another (causation) or the “thingness” (Dinghaftigkeit; GE: 200) that refers to the concept of “thing” (Ding). According to Rickert, such forms constitute the “objective reality” (objektive Wirklichkeit; cf. GE:  194–7). Objective reality has thus an epistemological status:  It represents the idea of totality and as such it is a cognitive mission (Aufgabe) that cannot be fulfilled by any empirical subject, but must be ascribed to the “judging consciousness in general” (GE: 201). In other words, for Rickert objective reality is not the “whole of the world” or a “finished reality” (GE: 202), but the “product” of the recognition of the constitutive forms by an abstract subjectivity. In opposition to the consciousness in general, the empirical subject can only cognize through the so-called methodological forms. As the knowledge of objective reality is impossible for it, its cognition depends on objective reality’s scientific-conceptual transformation. In scientific knowledge the individual facts of objective reality are replaced by “conceptions” (Auffassungen) of the empirical subject that are constituted through the general concepts of the “scientific concept formation,” which the theory of science has to develop and justify (cf. GE: 206–7). Thus, the theory of science refers to the individual sciences which treat objective reality as their material (cf. GE:  189, 205). Hence, the methodological forms, detected by the theory of science, correspond to different concept formations of particular sciences (cf. GE: 208). 5

GE: 171. For Rickert “every knowledge is a judgement” (GE: 169).

18

Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

One can thus accept the pluralism of scientific concept formations on the level of the theory of science without harming the unity of knowledge, since they all refer to the same constitutive objective reality (cf. GE: 225–6). Despite their difference, the theory of knowledge and the theory of science are equally based on valid forms/values that ground the objectivity of scientific knowledge (cf. GE: 212–26). By understanding philosophy as the “science of values” Rickert aspired to fortify philosophical truth against relativism (cf. GE:  126–41), to overcome the antithesis between theory and praxis (cf. GE: 234) and to resolve the antinomy between necessity and freedom on the basis of the primacy of ought over being (cf. GE:  239–42). Nonetheless, at the time Lukács approached the circle of the neo-Kantians of Heidelberg, Rickert’s foundational argumentation had already been questioned by his disciple Emil Lask.

2.2. Emil Lask’s turn toward a “logic of philosophy” In Emil Lask’s main philosophical works, Rickert’s philosophy of values is subjected to an objectivistic transformation, prefigured in his presentation at the Third International Congress of Philosophy in Heidelberg, in 1908. In this talk Lask stressed the importance of the theory of knowledge of his teachers Windelband and Rickert:  They both put the problem of value or meaning at the center of their theory of knowledge and distinguished the objectively valid meaning from its subjective recognition. Their mistake was, however, that they understood the subjective meaning, that is, cognition, as a kind of ethical practice dependent on moral conscience (cf. Lask 1923b: 350). Lask’s critique of the “primacy of practical reason” claimed by his teachers aims to open up the way to an objective foundation of philosophy. Though Rickert distinguished the transcendent value from its realization in judgment, he proceeded to an analysis of the recognition of value based on the “feeling of evidentness” that accompanies the formulation of judgments. This close connection of values to a subjective psychological fact could easily lead one to query their independent status. For Lask it does not suffice to show the valueladen character of the object of knowledge in order to prevent regression to psychologism and relativism, since this orientation does not offer a “theory of the constitution of the logical” (see Zeidler 1995: 50). Therefore Lask put the stress on the logical grounding of philosophy in general and developed the paradox program of unifying “objectivism and Copernicanism” (LdPh:  277). In this framework, the classic subjectivist

The Problem of Content

19

interpretation of the Kantian theory of knowledge would have to be replaced by a new objectivist elaboration of Kant’s “Copernican turn” in philosophy. By exclusively connecting valid knowledge with the synthesis of the categories of understanding and the intuitive material of sensibility Kant unjustifiably confined the theory of categories to the “logic of one-world-theory,” thus “letting only the field of being and the knowledge of being count in the ‘theory of knowledge’ ” (LdPh:  21). The knowing of the non-sensible material of the theory of knowledge, that is, the knowing of the categories themselves remained unfounded. However, as long as the logical “locus” of the philosophical categories remains undetermined, the possibility of a psychologist misinterpretation of Kantianism is retained. As has been noted, “such misreading was altogether understandable . . . since Kant had defined the object of knowledge phenomenalistically—i.e., by appealing to the concept of experience—and had taken up the transcendental problem of truth at the level of the judgment, the ‘representation of a representation’ ” (Crowell 1996:  71). This same way was followed by Lask’s neo-Kantian teachers, namely Windelband and Rickert, who thus left the foundations of philosophy vulnerable to skepticism.6 As Stephan Nachtsheim remarks, “the idea of a critique of philosophical knowledge connects Lask with the problems of German idealism, especially with Hegel, and between his contemporaries with different forms of neo-Hegelianism.” Nevertheless, “the objective problems led Hegelianism to dialectics, Lask however to a totally different conception” (Nachtsheim 1994: 502, n. 6). Hence, only Lask’s central problem is “Hegelian,” not its solution, since Lask rejected the very principle of Hegelian panlogism.7 As Lask explains, the purpose of his book The Logic of Philosophy and the Doctrine of Categories (1911) was to “expand the circle of the tasks of logic” (Lask 1911: 356), that is, to reveal the entire scope of the universality of the logical (cf. LdPh: 4–5)—the so-called panarchy of logos (see Lask 1911: 356; LdPh: 133)—through a complete theory of the categories (cf. LdPh:  21–4). To achieve this goal the new, expanded logic would firstly have to abandon any reference to the subject and, through an ontological shift in transcendental philosophy, to “locate” the logical in the object itself (cf. Schweitz 1984: 216–17). 6

7

The decisive role of this deficit of “orthodox” Kantianism for the formation of Lask’s program is stressed in the relevant literature. Cf. among others: Zeidler (1995: 47–50); Crowell (1996: 70–72); Schweitz (1984: 213–14); Nachtsheim (1994: 501–4). On Lask’s twofold relation to Hegel, see Levy (1927:  74–5). Lask’s proximity to Hegelianism and to the new ontology of the twentieth century (e.g., Nicolai Hartmann) is also noticed by other commentators (cf. Zeidler 1995: 52; Schweitz 1984: 225; Malter 1987: 90).

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Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

According to Lask’s objectivist theory, the meaning of Kant’s “Copernican act” was not the turn toward an epistemological elaboration of the synthetic acts of an ideal judging subject, but the revelation of the principle of the socalled logos-immanence of the object (cf. LdPh:  245). With this term Lask describes the dependence of all objectivity on valid logical forms within the primordial unity of form and content that constitutes the realm of true objects.8 Lask thus transforms the form of objectivity into an element of the “objective meaning,” which must be distinguished from its material component. A sensible (not valid), a non-sensible (valid) or a supersensible (metaphysical) element can occupy the place of the material. In the first case we have the constitution of the sensible objectivity of the so-called first floor or meaning; in the second case we have the “second floor of meaning,” that is, the non–sensible-philosophical objectivity of the “logic of philosophy,” in which the valid forms of sensible objectivity are formed by philosophical categories (cf. LdPh: 92–3, 103, 122–3). Finally, in the third case we have the constitution of metaphysical objects.9

2.3. Form and material in Lask’s transcendental ontology I am not concerned here with the problems of Lask’s argument on the “logic of philosophy” and his theory of the “two floors of objective meaning” I discussed elsewhere (see Kavoulakos 2014a:  62–5). I  exclusively turn my attention to the relation between form and material on the level of the objectivity of the sensible-existent world, in which the problem of the “irrationality of content” we have already met in Rickert’s epistemology firstly emerges. As in all domains of objectivity, here too, the form corresponds to the valid element, which counts in respect of an independent material or, in Lask’s words, it “counts onto” it (hingilt; cf. LdPh:  32–3). For Lask then there are not two separate “realms” (the realm of the sensible and the realm of the intelligible), but two “structural elements” that stand in a “primordial relation” (Urverhältnis): They constitute the “primordial meaning,” which is identical with the object or the truth. Hence, a “theory of two elements” is substituted for the traditional theory of two worlds (see LdPh: 40–42). 8

9

On Lask’s interpretation of Kant’s Copernican act see LdPh:  27–31. On Lask’s “objectivist Copernicanism” also see Glatz (2001: 173–88). Lask leaves the possibility of such objects open (cf. Schweitz 1984: 214; Nachtsheim 1994: 509–10; Crowell 1996: 73–4).

The Problem of Content

21

Lask describes the “primordial relation” that forms the “whole” (LdPh: 34) of the archetypical theoretical meaning as a “one-in-another” (Ineinander; LdPh: 34), an interpenetration of the “primordial form” (Urform; LdPh: 70) and the “primordial material” (Urmaterial; LdPh: 50). With this peculiar formulation Lask wants to express the idea that the two elements form an inseparable, “simple” (schlicht) unity and simultaneously remain distinct within the primordial whole of the meaning. As has been commented: The material “is” its intelligibility by “standing within” the clarity of logical form, and thus Lask calls the object “logos-immanent”—immanent to, but not identical with, its logical clarity . . . This non-identity precludes absorption of the material into the realm of the logos. (Crowell 1996: 81)

The “transcendental topography of the domain of being” encompasses in respect of the form the “categorial content of truth,” that is, the categories of the domain of being, while in respect of the material we find in it the non-valid “material of being” (LdPh:  48–9). The form is the “moment of clarity” (Klarheitsmoment; LdPh:  75), which “dresses” (umkleidet; LdPh:  66), “embraces” (umfasst) or “encloses” (umschliesst) the material as a “logical crust” or a “logical hold” (logischer Halt; LdPh:  69). On the other side we have the material of being. It is the “otherness” (Andersheit), the “non-this” (Nichtdies; LdPh:  51), the “meaningless” (Bedeutungsfremde; LdPh:  53), the “incomprehensible” (Unbegreifliche), the “all round non construable” (allseitig Undeutbare) and “unconceivable” (Unverstehbare; LdPh:  56). It is identical with the sensible (Sinnliches), the sensible-intuitable (Sinnlich-Anschauliches; LdPh:  51), with “what is only brutally here” (LdPh: 56). Such characterizations might seem to be positive, but they are in fact “philosophically totally mute,” since they cannot be further explicated.10 Lask calls the inconceivable sensible material “logically naked”—a formulation which denotes the lack of all formal-logical “embracing” of it.11 The sensible is also alogical, since it lacks logical form, and irrational, since it cannot be completely rationalized by logical form (cf. LdPh:  76–7). The view that the material of the primordial relation remains in every respect logically impenetrable occupies a central position in Lask’s transcendental-ontological 10

11

Cf. LdPh: 52. Crowell is right to discern an inconsistency in these attributes of the material as the “sensible-intuitable” element, since they restore the terminology of the philosophy of the subject in the heart of Lask’s transcendental ontology (cf. Crowell 1996: 83). Besides the sensible material, the logical forms themselves can also be logically naked. This holds true, e.g., for the categories of the domain of being as long as they are not embraced by the logical forms of philosophy.

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theory and specifies its originality. As Hanspeter Sommerhäuser has shown, Lask’s interest in the specific function of the material element is a reaction to a central problem of the whole neo-Kantian philosophy, namely the problem of the tension between the quaestio iuris and the quaestio facti in the theory of knowledge. This tension represents a fundamental dimension of the problem Lukács would later summarize under the title “antinomies of bourgeois thought.” For the neo-Kantians, including Windelband and Rickert, the primacy of the quastio iuris was self-evident. However, the two masters of the southwest German school unwittingly prepared the field for Lask’s turn to a radical revaluation of the quaestio facti.12 In Lask’s transcendental-ontological theory, the material moment of the object becomes independent and determinative through a “hypostatization” of sensibility. As Sommerhäuser points out, in Lask “the independency of the material, which cannot be resolved by the form, but only be embraced and clarified,” is revealed “in its power to differentiate the significations” (Sommerhäuser 1965: 104). Indeed, the crucial point in Lask’s understanding of the primordial relation is that the primordial material remains essentially unaltered; it is only surrounded and “elucidated” (umklärt) by the form (cf. LdPh: 76). Conversely, the purity of the form is “blurred” (getrübt) when intertwined with the primordial material, which is the element of opacity (Undurchsichtigkeit; see LdPh: 60–61). This “blurring” causes the so-called significational determination (Bedeutungsbestimmtheit; cf. LdPh:  59–60) of the form. Hence, for Lask, it is not the logical element that “produces” the material, but conversely the categorial-formal element is the one that depends on the material element. This relation of dependence takes on the form of the “significational ladenness” (Bedeutungsbelastung) of the valid element that is “blurred” and “nuanced” by the alogical, to which it refers (cf. LdPh:  62–3). The first, most fundamental “significational differentiation” (Bedeutungsdifferenzierung) of the primordial form leads to the formation of the most general “form of objectivity” (Form der Gegenständlichkeit) or “form of the object” (Gegenstandsform).13 Thus, the “form of objectivity” is the most universal “significationally laden” category of theoretical philosophy, which stands between the pure primordial form and the 12

13

This is due to the working out of the problem of individuality and, especially in Rickert, of the irrationality of the given (see Section 2.1). On the primacy of the quaestio iuris in Windelband, see Sommerhäuser (1965: 32). On his elaboration of individuality, see Sommerhäuser (1965: 38–40). On the primacy of the quaestio iuris in Rickert without a total elimination of the question about the given content as the “alogical rest” within logical forms, see Sommerhäuser (1965: 64–5, 106–7). Cf. LdPh: 72–3. At another point in the text, this “most abstract objectivity” seems to refer to the domain of being as well as to the domain of validity (cf. LdPh: 110–11). See also Hobe (1968: 62–3).

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so-called domain-categories that differentiate according to the specificity of the relevant material. For example, the fundamental domain-category of the “sphere of the sensible” is the category of “being.” It penetrates the rest of the constitutive categories of this domain, for example, the categories of thingness, causality, etc. that result from its further significational differentiation (cf. LdPh: 71–2). The task of logic is to systematize these fundamental constitutive categories as distinct from the derivative, reflective categories (cf. LdPh: 67–8), which I will discuss in Section 2.4. Thus, Lask’s realm of objective meaning is identical with the realm of truth, but this “logification of objectivity” does not lead to panlogism, because the archetype of meaning itself comprises two interdependent elements, which in no way can be reduced one to the other: one is logical and the other alogical, that is, the form and the material (cf. LdPh:  34, 37–8). As we have already seen, not only is the material not “produced” by the form, but it is the element that modifies and forces it to adapt to its specificity. On the basis of his theory of the significational differentiation of forms, Lask repudiates all forms of intellectualism (see LdPh: 101–3, 127) and panlogism, Hegelian or any other kind.14

2.4. Lask’s theory of contemplative and active subjectivity It is clear that with his objectivist interpretation of Kant’s Copernican act, Lask is obliged to drastically downplay the constitutive role of the subject. In this new view, the transcendental investigation pertains to the primordial relation of form and material, since this relation gives us the model in order to understand the relevant subjective “behavior” (Verhalten; cf. Sommerhäuser 1965: 154–7). Archetypical cognizing is stripped of every trace of spontaneity and is transformed into contemplation, that is, into the subject’s “surrender” (Hingabe) to the objective meaning that “counts towards it” (ihm entgegengilt; cf. LdPh:  27–31; Sommerhäuser 1965:  217). Due to its passive attitude the subject is transformed into a “correlate” of the objective meaning (cf. LdPh: 80). Therefore, for Lask, the subjective meaning is also an interpenetration of form

14

Cf. LdPh: 109–10. Lask distances himself from Hegelian dialectics as well as from the deduction of the content from the logical forms as we find it in the logicistic neo-Kantianism of the Marburg school. See Malter (1987: 92, n. 8, 100–101); Schweitz (1984: 216–17); Crowell (1996: 70, 81). On Lask’s critique of the “logical absolutism” of the Marburg school, see also Altwicker (1971:  8–9, 29–32).

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and material. Hence, the theoretical behavior, that is, “cognizing” (Erkennen), must be understood as “a specifically theoretical ‘intentionality’ directed towards something that is surrounded by categorial form” (LdPh: 81). In cognizing the material, the “something,” is experienced in respect to its categorial “elucidation” (cf. LdPh: 82). This means that the material is not directly experienced—only the form that embraces it is directly experienced. In this sense, one can say that by cognizing, the purely contemplative subject “ ‘lives’ only within the truth” (LdPh: 86–7). Given this obvious downgrade of the active role of subjectivity, the spontaneity of which is no longer viewed as a presupposition of true knowledge (cf. Schweitz 1984:  225; Sommerhäuser 1965:  156; Altwicker 1971:  28), the formulation of harsh Kantian criticism against Lask’s theory of knowledge must not surprise us at all (cf. Kavoulakos 2014a:  66–7). Such criticism points out Lask’s tendency toward ontology (cf. Zeidler 1995: 51; Malter 1987: 98, 103–4) and the subsequent emergence, in the field of the theory of knowledge, of a kind of cognition that approaches the—obsolete, from a Kantian perspective— model of intellectual intuition (cf. Glatz 2001:  205). The bearer of knowledge is no longer viewed as transcendental subjectivity but as an empirical-concrete subject (cf. Glatz 2001: 213; Schweitz 1984: 226). Then the classic dilemma of all platonic metaphysics arises, since the objectivity of archetypical knowledge would have to be completely known in advance, if it is going to function as a criterion of the cognition of the empirical subject. Be that as it may, in Lask the knowledge of the empirical subject is distinguished from the subjective correlate of the primordial meaning. Their relation is the one between the prototype (Vorbild) of the “realm of truth” and its image (Abbild) in the “region” of the “oppositeness of meaning” (cf. LvU: 293–4). This region is the “product” of the “fragmentation” or the “dissolution of the structure of meaning,” of the “blurring” or the “diluting” of objective meaning. It is the effect of the “fall” of cognition to a lower level than the one of pure contemplation. And the fall itself is effectuated by the activation of subjectivity (cf. LdPh: 138– 50; LvU: 413–26). Thus, for Lask, the productive subject ceases to be the guarantor of the objectivity of knowledge—as it is in Kantianism—and it is understood as a principle of its distortion (see Sommerhäuser 1965: 154). At least in respect to the theoretical sphere, the subject is responsible for the constitution of a depraved, “imitative region” (nachbildliche Region) of meaning, which Lask investigates on two levels:  first, on the level of the theory of judgment, and second, on that of the so-called reflective forms. As we will see in Chapter 5,

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Lask’s theory of the active role of the subject had a significant influence on Lukács’s early work. Lukács incorporated elements of it in his theory of “experienced reality” that can be viewed as an early version of his theory of reification. The aim of Lask’s second major work, The Doctrine of Judgment (1912), was to investigate the sphere of the so-called immanent meaning (LvU: 414), that is, the “artificial intermediate region between the objects and the decision of judgment” (Urteilsentscheidung) that corresponds to the “oppositional structural formations of the imitative meaning” (LvU: 413–14). The description of this region reveals “all the independence and arbitrariness of subjectivity” as manifested in the “creation of something new” through the “fatal activity of experiencing” (LvU: 416–17). In this “activity” the “inadequacy of experiencing” is revealed, that is, its tendency to ignore “the doubtless transcendent interpenetration of the category and the categorial material” (LvU: 417–18). This ignorance effectuates the activity of “isolating the elements,” of “fragmenting” the objective meaning and experiencing its isolated elements (LvU:  418). However, the separated and isolated elements are transformed into new “forms” that occur as “complications” of the primordial meaning, as products of its “processing” by the experiencing subject (cf. LvU:  419). This is why Lask describes the fragmentation of meaning as the “Fall of cognition,” after which the primordial meaning is transformed into a “lost paradise” (LvU: 426). Indeed, after the “Fall” the problem of “intelligible contingency” dramatically emerges, since the subject is henceforth obliged to search for a way to restore the unity of the categories and their material on the level of the “artificial” (gekünstelt), immanent meaning through the formulation of judgements. This is why the main purpose of The Doctrine of Judgment is to show that the structure of judgment is an imitation of the primordial relation between form and material, the “locus” of which lies “beyond the judgment.”15 The second active intervention of subjectivity on archetypical meaning is connected with the significational differentiation of the primordial form that is not effectuated by the material, as in the case of the constitutive categories, but by the subject. The subjective behavior, that is, cognizing, brings about such a significational differentiation when it is directed toward “any something” and, thus, sets “the ground for a pale categorial content” through a “feeble experiencing” (LdPh: 139). The intervention of this “alienated from validity, alogical experiential factor” (LdPh: 139) brings about the “reflective categories.” 15

See the “Introduction” in LvU: 286–307, and Lukács’s reconstruction in Lukács (1918b: 362–5).

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The “immanent-reflective” or “immanent and ‘subjective’ character” of these categories16 contrasts the objective character of the constitutive categories. Besides, this is why Lask talks about the “totally abnormal and artificial character of this form that is instigated by the subjectivity,” a form which finds its material in “a mere creation and artificial product of the logical form itself ” (LdPh: 140).

2.5. Lask and Lukács on the history of the problem of irrationality In Section 2.1 I reconstructed how, in Rickert’s theoretical philosophy, the classic Kantian notion of the radical heterogeneity of the two sources of knowledge— understanding and sensibility—took the form of the irrationality of the sensible content that is cognitively tamed by the rational form. Yet, despite its recognition by Rickert, the problem of the irrationality of the content did not acquire in his thought the same significance Lask ascribed to it (see Section 2.3). In Lask’s transcendental ontology the content of knowledge, the logically naked, alogical and irrational material “intrudes” into the hitherto “pure” domain of the valid forms and determines their constitution. During the period of his philosophy study in Heidelberg, Lukács became well acquainted with the problematics of the radical otherness of the material. At this time he vacillated between the neo-Kantian orthodoxy of the southwest German school, represented by Rickert, and Lask’s daring philosophical experiments. This vacillation can be clearly discerned in the obituary he published three years after Lask’s death. In this text Lukács refers to the two possibilities of conceptualizing the transcendent criterion of knowledge as an “ought” or as an “objective meaning” simply as two alternative viewpoints (cf. Lukács 1918b: 366– 7), while explicitly negating Lask’s influence on the Aesthetic he was preparing (cf. Lukács 1918b: 366, n. 28). In reality, Lask’s influence was much more intense than Lukács was ready to admit and it would continue even after his conversion to Marxism at the end of 1918. In fact, a careful examination of his famous essay on the concept of reification from History and Class  Consciousness shows that Lukács’s analysis of the antinomies of modern philosophy relies to a great extent on the philosophical 16

LdPh: 138. In his theory of experienced reality Lukács adopts, as we will see in Chapter 5, precisely this terminology.

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experiences and inquiries of his early neo-Kantian period. The first indication of this is the remarkable fact that in the reification essay he frequently refers to neo-Kantian philosophers.17 What is more interesting of course are the substantial similarities with their analyses. István Féher is right to remark that, in his elaboration of “the basic antinomies of modern philosophy  .  .  . Lukács derives his central concept of irrationality from neo-Kantian philosophy and, in particular, from Lask” (I. Fehér 1992: 379). In his obituary for Lask Lukács had already pointed out the radical character of the Laskian notion of irrationality that entails the logical impenetrability of every material (even of the logical contents) as well as the central importance of Lask’s decisive distanciation from any kind of panlogism (Lukács 1918b: 354–5). Lask had already ascribed a central position to the problem of irrationality in his doctoral thesis Fichte’s Idealism and History (1902), in which he aspired to offer, among other things, “a small contribution to the history of the problem of irrationality” (FIG: 70, n. 1). Lask’s relevant analyses seem to have been the source of inspiration of Lukács’s reconstruction of the problem of content in modern philosophy and particularly in German idealism. In the first part of his study on Fichte, Lask distinguishes the fundamental types of philosophical thought on the basis of its respective stance toward the problem of irrationality—which he also describes as the problem of “individuality,” of the “content,” the “material” or the “empirical reality.” Exactly as Lukács does in the section on “The antinomies of bourgeois thought,” Lask turns his attention toward the epistemological and logical dimensions of the problem of irrationality, with the ultimate goal of examining their significance in theorizing on historical and cultural phenomena (see FIG: 2). Lukács and Lask also share a further aim: To find a middle road toward the constitution of concepts in relation to their irrational content; a road between the abstract universal concepts of the Kantian transcendental logic and the dialectical concepts of Hegelian holism. Lask locates this middle solution of “a possible unification of the Kantian theory of the concept with the formation of the Hegelian concepts of value” (FIG:  28) in Fichte’s late epistemological

17

I refer to the English translation of History and Class Consciousness (henceforth abbreviated as HCC). However, since I had to make amendments, I also put the relevant page numbers of the first German edition of 1923 in italics after the semicolon. For the same reason I also use double references to the other Lukács texts. In History and Class Consciousness Lukács refers, among others, to Cohen (HCC:  212, n.  17; 133, n.  1), Vaihinger (HCC:  120; 133), Natorp (HCC:  111; 122), Windelband (HCC: 212, n. 16, 120; 132, n. 1, 133), and particularly to Rickert (HCC: 212, n. 15, 120, 212, n. 18, 150–51, 153, 154, 202; 131, n. 2, 133, n. 2, 166–7, 168, 170, 220) and Lask (HCC: 211, n. 9, 211, n. 13, 120, 215, n. 56, 222, n. 66; 128, n. 3, 130, n. 1, 133, 157, n. 1, 221, n. 2).

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reflections.18 As I will show in the next chapter, Lukács discerned the possibility of a similar middle road between, on the one hand, Kant and Fichte and on the other Hegel: This is Marx’s road. As Féher notes, Lukács’s analyses on modern philosophy rely on the “partly reinterpreted Laskian doctrines” of “irrationality and of form/material” (I. Féher 1992:  380, my emphasis). Before I  elaborate on Lukács’s “reinterpretation” we must consider how Lask uses the stance toward the problem of the irrational content and the subsequent philosophical theory of the concept as the criterion for the categorization of philosophical theories. According to Lask, the Kantian theory of the concept is a characteristic case of “analytical logic,” whereas the Hegelian theory of the concept represents the most typical post-Kantian case of an “emanatist logic” (emanatistische Logik). This distinction leans on the differentiation of the relation between rational concept and irrational content: the relation of the universal and the particular or the relation of the whole and the part respectively. In the case of analytical logic, the empirical element represents the only substantial reality, while the concept, under which it falls, is an abstract construction of the mind. On the contrary, in emanatist logic, the concept represents the higher reality, while the empirical element is an emanation (Ausfluss, Emanation) of the substantial concept (cf. FIG: 29–30). Thus, in analytical logic the irrationality of the empirical content is insurmountable, while in emanatist logic it is totally sublated. By distinguishing the two fundamental types of logic Lask gains the conceptual basis he needs to form the outline of the history of the epistemological problem of irrationality in philosophy. According to Lask, before the epistemological illumination of analytical logic by Kant we encounter different versions of rationalism, which take the form of dogmatic metaphysics. Through the hypostatization of the rational elements of knowledge pre-Kantian rationalism is pushed in the direction of a twoworld theory, the world of essence and the world of phenomena. Knowledge aims to depict the world of “true being,” while the latter is the unconscious product of knowledge itself, since it represents a “hypostatization of cognitive values as substantially determined realities” (FIG: 33). In this sense, pre-critical

18

Cf. FIG:  25–7. In this way Lask sought the appropriate logical means to solve the problem of “value-individuality” (Wertindividualität), which is closely connected to the possibility of historical knowledge. Searching for a solution to this problem through references to Fichte is a tendency that characterizes the southwest German school of neo-Kantianism in general (see Cruz-Cruz 1981: 345–62).

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rationalism is a naïve emanatism, for which the “cognitive values” directly correspond to “true reality.” In his examination of the “antinomies of bourgeois thought” Lukács also uses the problem of the irrationality of the content as the criterion for comprehending “the parting of the ways in modern philosophy and with it the chief stages in its evolution” (HCC: 119; 132). Thus the fact that he characterizes pre-Kantian philosophy in a way similar to the way Lask does is no surprise. In his view, the occurrence of Kant’s critical philosophy is preceded by “the era of philosophical ‘dogmatism’ or—to put it in social history terms—the age in which the bourgeois class naïvely equated its own forms of thought . . . with reality and with being as such” (HCC: 119; 132). Kant puts an end to the epoch of dogmatism by showing that knowledge is a synthesis of two radically heterogeneous elements, a rational-conceptual and an irrational-sensuous one that is taken as something “given.” As Lask points out, in Kant the independence of the given material of knowledge from the rational forms concerns the fields of formal logic as well as transcendental logic. In both cases the concepts have an abstract character, they only correspond to taxonomic or constitutive functions of the mind, while the objects fall under them as “samples” (see FIG: 31–2, 34–5). Thus, with his characteristic nominalism and empiricism, Kant can be seen as the “typical representative of an analytical theory of the concept” (FIG: 31), with whose critical rationalism “analytical logic celebrates its greatest triumphs” (FIG: 35). While acknowledging the philosophical greatness of Kant, Lukács examines the problems entailed by these “triumphs.”

2.6. Lukács’s neo-Kantian account of the thing in itself Lukács’s understanding of these problems continues to be decisively influenced by the relevant directions defined by the philosophers of the southwest German neoKantian school. This holds characteristically true for the problem of the “thing in itself.” Following Rickert and Lask, Lukács relates the question of the thing in itself to the problem of the content of knowledge and not to an alleged thing that stands beyond human experience and cognition. He thus avoids its ontologizing interpretation, which Kant himself tried to rule out when he emphasized the fact that, in opposition to the appearances constituted by understanding, the “merely intelligible cause of appearances” (Kant 1998:  B 522)  is a noumenon and thus remains an undetermined “boundary concept” (cf. Kant 1998: B 310).

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Indeed, also following, at this point, Lask’s explications in Fichte’s Idealism and History, according to which the content can be the “individual,” the “particular,” the “empirically real,” the “intuitable” etc., Lukács considers the problem from a wider angle as the problem of the content of knowledge in general, regardless of whether it refers to the sensible material or to “empirical facts,” that is, the conceptually formed empirical material in general (cf. HCC: 116; 128). Thus, the first of the two fundamental meanings of the “thing in itself ” pertains—according to Lukács—to “the problem of the material (in the logical-methodological sense)” (HCC: 115; 127). This is nothing but the problem of the impossibility of reducing empirical contents to rational forms of knowledge, which implies that knowledge necessarily depends on something that is “merely given.” Therefore the problem of the content can also be formulated as the problem of the given. To characterize the relation between rational form and irrational content in Kantian epistemology, Lukács takes recourse to the concept of “intelligible contingency.” This concept, which we met in Section 2.4, pertains to that kind of contingency which—in opposition to the mere “empirical contingency” that occurs within categorially constituted experience—is attributed to our experience as a whole. Intelligible contingency is the result of the fact that the reference of the categories to concrete material is not inherently necessary, that is, it is a result of the external relation between the a priori and the a posteriori elements of knowledge. In this case too, Lukács deploys his good knowledge of the relevant neoKantian discussion. When he points out that, according to Kant, “pure reason is unable to carry out any synthetic proposition that constitutes the object and so its principles cannot be deduced ‘directly from concepts but only indirectly by relating these concepts to something wholly contingent, namely possible experience’ ” (HCC:  116; 128–9), he does nothing more than cite the same quote from the Critique of Pure Reason (Kant 1998: Β 764–5), which Hermann Cohen, the main figure of the neo-Kantian school of Marburg, commented on to explicate the contingency of experience as a whole (see Cohen 1885: 499–500). In fact, in his fundamental work Kant’s Theory of Experience (1871), Cohen connects the contingency of experience in general with the “boundary concept” of the thing in itself (see Cohen 1885: 502–3, 506–8). He repeats the same interpretation in his work Kant’s Founding of Ethics (1877), in which he characterizes the contingency of experience with the same term used after him by Lukács:  “intelligible contingency.” According to Cohen, anyone who attempts to “comprehend the causality of appearances in their interior,” that is, to “comprehend their contingency from the standpoint of the noumenon”

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(Cohen 1877:  30), tries to precisely overcome this contingency. For the transcendental theory of knowledge such an undertaking is impossible, as “the whole of experience hangs . . . over the ‘abyss’ of intelligible contingency” (Cohen 1877: 31). Lask—from whom Lukács might have borrowed these references—remarks that Cohen failed to relate intelligible contingency to the problem of the nonreducibility of the material element to the formal (cf. FIG:  58–9, n.  3). He attempts precisely this connection in his book on Fichte, in which, referring to “our knowledge,” he describes the irrational relation between the universal and the particular in terms of contingency: The particular is not logically contained in the universal, under which it falls, therefore it is “contingent” in respect to the concept. The irrationality that is revealed in this inability of our cognizing establishes the logical concept of contingency. (FIG: 39)

Drawing upon Windelband’s analysis of the logical concept of contingency, according to which “everywhere the universal is separated from the particular through human thought, the phenomenon of contingency occurs” (Windelband 1870: 78), Lask explains that Kant expanded the field in which the concept of contingency can be applied, so as to include the relation of the transcendental concepts to the content of knowledge. Kant used this notion of contingency— particularly in the final form given to it in the Critique of the Power of Judgment— to elucidate the limits of the necessary-universal formal element of knowledge vis-à-vis the contingent-particular material element (FIG: 39–43). As Kant notes: Our understanding is a faculty of concepts, i.e., a discursive understanding, for which it must of course be contingent what and how different might be the particular that can be given to it in nature and brought under its concepts. (Kant 2000: § 77)

Lukács refers precisely to this “logical concept of contingency” as the “speculative foundation of the whole Critique of the Power of Judgment” (FIG: 40) when he claims that in Kant’s third Critique “this notion of ‘intelligible contingency’ both of the elements of possible experience and of all laws relating to it and regulating it is made the central problem of systematization” (HCC: 116; 129). Thus, the problem of systematization emerges as a further dimension of the problem of the thing in itself—an extension, as it were, of the problem of the irrationality of the content. At this point Lukács explicitly draws on Lask and the fact that he pointed out this problem “in the clearest way,” when he noted that—contrary

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to what holds in the case of the transcendent, primordial meaning—in the imitating field of the oppositional meaning what has no meaning on the transcendent level, i.e. the question which pieces of material fall under which categories . . . becomes a permanent problem. For subjectivity it is not self-evident, but it is the whole purpose of its investigation to find to which category the logical form in general will differentiate when it comes to grasp any particular material in categorial reference or, to put it differently, which particular material defines the material area of the particular categories each time.19

In Section 2.4 we saw that, in the light of Lask’s theory of judgment, the human discursive understanding is the outcome of the “Fall of cognition,” of the loss of the “paradise” of archetypical meaning. After the “Fall,” restoring the primordial unity of form and material can only be set as a regulative purpose of our cognitive activity. A return to the lost cognitive “paradise” would equate with the overcoming of intelligible contingency, that is, the full restoration of the unity and necessity of experience, the completion of the system of knowledge. In fact, in the “Transcendental dialectic” of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant first rules out the possibility of cognizing the totality of objects and, second, transforms the cosmological concept of totality into a principle of the regulative use of reason (cf. Kant 1998: Β 536–93). Under its guidance the understanding must study empirical reality “as if systematic and purposive unity together with the greatest possible manifoldness were to be encountered everywhere to infinity” (Kant 1998: Β 728). However, in this way the transcendental principle of totality is turned into a “subjective,” “reflective” concept, and as such it lacks the objective validity of the constitutive categories of understanding (cf. Kant 1998: Β 721, also Β 536–8). Lukács points out that, as in the case of the concept of totality, “God, the soul, etc.,”—that is, the concepts that designate further central problems of the “Transcendental dialectic”—“are nothing but conceptualmythological expressions to denote the unified subject or the unified object of the totality of all the objects of knowledge considered as perfect (and wholly known)” (HCC: 115; 127). With his critical resolution of the antinomies of totality, Kant acknowledges that the constitution of knowledge as a complete system is impossible for the formally rational thought which relies on abstract universal concepts and forms. 19

LvU: 418. Lukács cites a part of this quote in HCC: 211, n. 9; 128, n. 3. Exactly the same quote is cited also in Lukács (1918b: 368).

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Nevertheless, even in his first Critique, he connects the transcendental principle of the “systematic and purposive unity” of experience with the hypothesis of a fundament of nature capable of guaranteeing its function. Since, for Kant, the systematic and purposive unity of nature “is legislative for us,” “it is very natural to assume a corresponding legislative reason (intellectus archetypus) from which all systematic unity of nature, as the object of our reason, is to be derived” (Kant 1998: Β 723). From the standpoint of a Kantian theory of knowledge this concept of the archetypical intellect and the related concepts of “intuitive understanding” or “intellectual intuition” remain basically epistemological constructions, which allow for a negative determination of the limits of the human, “imitating” understanding.20 However, simultaneously, in this way reason’s inherent need to reach the systematic completion of knowledge by overcoming the limitations of understanding is acknowledged, even if the suggestion of a creative divine intellect that would be able to guarantee the systematic unity of experience could not possibly rely on knowledge, but only on an interest of reason (cf. Kant 1998: Β 704). Similar questions are raised in the Critique of the Power of Judgment in the frame of the investigation of the reflective use of reason and the formulation of teleological judgments.21 After Kant’s recognition of the two interrelated sides of the problem of the thing in itself, that is, the problem of the non-reducible, contingent content and the problem of the impossibility of knowing the totality (see HCC:  114– 15; 126–7), bourgeois thought stands before an inescapable dilemma, which Lukács formulates through reference to the neo-Kantian philosophy of his time. Either the theory of knowledge returns to formalist dogmatism and is transformed into some kind of panlogism, according to which the content is immediately “produced” by the rational forms: This is the case of the logicism of the Marburg neo-Kantian school and its basic representative, Hermann Cohen. Or the theory of knowledge capitulates unconditionally in view of the problem of irrationality. This is tantamount to an explicit or implicit undermining of the idea of the philosophical system and leads to a shift to the theory of science: That 20

21

The same interpretation is found in Lask, who—like Lukács—connects the concept of intuitive understanding with the “whole of experience,” the unconditional (Unbedingte) and the corresponding “absolute rationality” as the ideal transcendence of the barrier of irrationality in opposition to the finite, dualistically structured human understanding (cf. FIG: 35, 56–61). Cf. Kant (2000:  §§ 75–8). I  hope it has become apparent that Lukács possessed a sophisticated understanding of Kant’s theory of knowledge and therefore could not have imputed Kant a “failure” to “cognize the thing in itself ” as Tom Rockmore contends, in order to be able to critique Lukács for his alleged closeness to Engels and the Marxist reading of idealist philosophy (cf. Rockmore 2000: 23–8).

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is the case of the so-called doctrine of fiction (Fiktionslehre)—such as the one of Hans Vaihinger, according to which our knowledge is nothing but a fictitious construction—but also the case of the neo-Kantians of the southwest German school (Windelband, Rickert, Lask), who merely accept the ineffaceable irrationality of the content.22 For Lukács the fact that the critical epistemology of the neo-Kantians is led to the impasse of the dilemma between dogmatism and skepticism and that its most critical version confronts it with “the refusal to understand reality as a whole” (HCC: 121; 133) bears witness to the fact that these schools do not push philosophical reflection to its extreme consequences. Lukács draws here on a motif of his youth: The idea that in modernity the only way that remains open for thought is the one that escalates the problematic character of meaning “tothe-end.”23 Such a radicalization of philosophical thought can be found only in the post-Kantian attempts of classical German philosophy, in which the problem of the “irrational chasm” between the subject and the object was acknowledged without abandoning the efforts to bridge it (cf. HCC: 118, 121; 131, 134). Every new attempt in this direction would have to follow the lead of the philosophy that was “able to think the deepest and most fundamental problems of the development of bourgeois society through to the very end—as philosophical problems” (HCC: 121; 134).

22

23

Cf. HCC: 120; 133. Lukács recognizes Lask as the “most ingenious and consistent of the modern neo-Kantians” (HCC: 215, n. 56; 157, n. 1). But at the same time he points out that in Lask’s theory of objective meaning too the problem of the thing in itself is finally retained. The fact that in his theory “the given, the material, reaches into the forming process, into the structure of forms, the relation between the forms, i.e. into the structure of the system itself in a determining way” (HCC: 118; 130), undermines every possibility of the constitution of knowledge as a complete rational system—a result of his theory, which Lask failed, according to Lukács, to discern (HCC: 211, n. 13; 130, n. 1). “When something has once become problematic . . . then salvation can only come from accentuating the dubiousness to the maximum degree, from going-to-the-end in every problem” (Lukács 2010a:  31; 1911:  33). On the motif of “going-to-the-end” in Lukács’s early work, see Kavoulakos (2015a: 227–30; 2014b: 408–9, 416–18, 420–21).

3

Flawed Philosophical Alternatives

In the previous chapter I began to substantiate the claim that Lukács’s analysis of the antinomies of modern philosophy is rooted in the problems of the neoKantian philosophy of the beginning of the twentieth century. Using them as a guiding thread, Lukács occupied a standpoint which allowed him to accurately describe the inability of Kant’s critical philosophy to overcome the antinomies of rationalism as well as the capitulation in view of the problem of the content, to which the neo-Kantian philosophy of his time was voluntarily led. By turning to the post-Kantian attempts of classical German philosophy to transcend the antinomies of bourgeois philosophy Lukács did not search for an insuperable model of thought, but—relying to a significant extent on neo-Kantian readings— he attempted to locate the shortcomings of even those attempts, in order to find a possible alternative. In this chapter I highlight the influence of neo-Kantian analyses, especially those of Lask but also of the young Lukács himself, on the reconstruction of postKantian German philosophy offered in History and Class Consciousness. In this way I wish to determine the philosophical position of Lukács’s approach more accurately than is usually done in the critiques I presented in the introduction or in the rest of the secondary bibliography.1 Thus, I wish to lay the foundations for a better understanding of the scope of Lukács’s reconstruction: that is, the opening of a philosophical perspective beyond the deficits of every kind of intellectualist, rationalist formalism. In this way, the present chapter contributes substantially

1

Most commentators are content with a mere reproduction of Lukács’s views on classical German philosophy. See, e.g., Arato (1972: 46–51); Arato and Breines (1979: 124–30); Bernstein (1984: 15– 24). This even holds for recent studies like the one of Rob Jackson (see Jackson 2013: 159–70, 204–7). Although he acknowledges the neo-Kantian influence on Lukács (see Rockmore 1988: 225–6, 229, 236), Rockmore finally reproduces the conventional reading, according to which Lukács reduces the history of modern philosophy to a progressive move from Kant to Hegelian dialectics and Marx’s historical materialism, whose superiority he a priori accepts.

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to the investigation of the philosophical foundations of Lukács’s philosophy of praxis. As we saw in Section 2.6, the critical acknowledgment of the problem of the content renders the systematization of knowledge impossible. However, for the formalist-rationalist type of knowledge the demand for its universal systematization is not an accidental but an essential determination—besides, this is why Kant retained it at least in the form of a regulative idea that guides “our” cognitive activities. Indeed, the systematic structuring of knowledge is of particular importance for modern rationalism. As Lukács emphasizes, modern rationalism is distinguished from the rationalism of other historical periods, even that of ancient Greece (cf. HCC: 110–11; 122–3). Therefore it is wrong to consider rationalism “abstractly-formally” and to reduce it to a “supra-historical principle inherent in the essence of human thought” (HCC: 114; 126). Referring to Max Weber’s essays on the sociology of religion, Lukács points out that in eastern cultures the formal-rational systems have always had a partial character, since they only represented the means for the achievement of wider, “irrational” goals and meanings.2 On the contrary, modern rationalism claims to be the universal method of explaining the world and thus of constituting a complete theoretical system that embraces everything. Modern rationalism raises the “claim that it has discovered the principle that connects all phenomena which in nature and society are found to confront mankind” (HCC: 113; 125). It demands that the totality of objects be exhaustively cognizable through rational forms. In this sense, the object should not be “something that has arisen independently of the knowing subject (e.g., has been created by God),” but must be conceivable as a “product” of man himself (HCC: 111–12; 123–4). In modern times, the exclusive legitimacy of formal-rational knowledge is generally accepted. Even the skeptics who criticize it use it as a standard: They ascertain the inability of “our” knowledge to grasp reality without posing the question whether a reasonable knowledge of another kind is possible. Thus, the “salient characteristic of the whole epoch is the equation, which appears naïve and dogmatic even in the most ‘critical’ philosophers, of formal, mathematical, rational knowledge both with knowledge in general and also with ‘our’ knowledge” (HCC:  112; 124). As Lukács points out, even the most critical 2

See HCC: 113–14; 125–6. Lukács refers to Max Weber’s analysis of the fact that traditional Indian sciences were embedded in the wider framework of salvation-striving and to his remarks on the “rationalized” ecstatic practices and/or techniques of contemplation that similarly aimed at facilitating the “irrational experience” or the “gnostic knowledge” of the godly (see Weber 1958: 146–7, 161–6).

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theories of knowledge share this dogmatic notion; therefore they capitulate in view of their inability to constitute the rational system of knowledge without any irrational remainder. Could we possibly overcome the dogmatic faith “that the rational-formalistic mode of cognition is the only possible way of apprehending reality” (HCC: 121; 134) without abandoning reason? Lukács notes that the dogmatic absolutization of formal-rational knowledge was “partly a true guide and partly a source of confusion” (HCC: 122; 134) in the development of classical German philosophy. This somewhat enigmatic ascertainment alludes to the paradoxical fact that it was precisely this dogmatic persistence of formalism which motivated postKantian philosophy to search for a true resolution of the antinomies of bourgeois thought through locating a necessary and not just contingent unity of form and content but, at the same time, it was the very same persistence that cancelled the realization of this unity by directing the search along the wrong paths. In the present chapter I refer to Lukács’s reconstruction of these grandiose but flawed attempts of classical German philosophy to solve the problem of content.

3.1. Mathematics as a methodological model of rational systematization As is well known, the investigations of post-Kantian philosophy took the form of an attempt at constituting philosophy as a system. After all, as we saw in Section 2.6, the system is nothing but the solved riddle of a knowledge no longer flawed by the problem of the irrationality of the content. The movement of post-Kantian philosophy toward the system was simultaneously its course toward a concept of form, as a product of which the content of knowledge should be considered, or toward a form completely in harmony with its content. The possibility of a form of the first kind has been known since ancient times: It is connected with the paradigm of mathematics which, according to Lukács, offered the “methodological model” and the “guide” for many dogmatic systems in the past: For the way in which their axioms are methodologically related to the partial systems and results deduced from them corresponds exactly to the postulate that systematic rationalism sets itself, the postulate, namely, that every given aspect of the system should be capable of being deduced from its basic principle, that it should be exactly predictable and calculable according to it. (HCC: 117; 130)

38

Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

For Lukács, even after Kant’s critical turn in philosophy, mathematics continues to form the “methodological model” for the attempts to overcome the antinomies of theoretical thought (cf. HCC:  118; 131). In the frame of this model, the irrationality of the given demands a revision of the “system of forms . . . so that what had at first sight appeared as a ‘given’ content, now appeared to have been ‘created,’ so that actuality was resolved into necessity.”3 The same conception of the significance of mathematics for modern philosophy can be found in Lask’s Fichte’s Idealism and History. Lask presents mathematics from a logical-critical standpoint as a “middle between analytical and emanatist logic” (FIG:  44). He explains that “the chasm between the universal and the particular that exists in conceptual knowledge, consequently the irrationality, is bridged in mathematical intuition through the ability of construction. The individual realizations of the mathematical concept can be produced through the concept itself ” (FIG: 45). This means that even the last remainder of content is contained as a possibility in the concept that organizes it. Therefore, according to a formulation of Kant which was highlighted by Maimon, the particular intuitive object of mathematics must be regarded as “a priori given”4—and not as “a posteriori given,” as is the case for the empiricalintuitive material. It cannot be a coincidence that Lukács refers in passing to exactly this notion of Maimon on the mathematical content as “intelligible material” (cf. HCC: 119; 132). This intelligible character of the material reveals the limits of the mathematical model of the relation between the universal and the particular/individual. Thus, “as a kind of knowledge freed from the fate of irrationality,” mathematics sharply reveals “the concept of contingency of the discursive-transcendental knowledge” (FIG:  51) as its inherent limit. For, whereas “in the a priori given one can let the manifold be born out of the concept, the universal rule,” in the “a posteriori given . . . he hits . . . on the hard core of the logically impenetrable” (FIG: 46). In the knowledge of the empirical world the chasm between the concept and empirical reality is unbridgeable—it is the chasm of the insuperable irrationality 3

4

HCC: 118; 131. At this point (HCC: 212, n. 15; 131, n. 2) Lukács refers to the analysis of the problem of irrationality in mathematics offered by Rickert (1911/1912). In this article, Rickert set the basis for a consideration of the number from the standpoint of transcendental empiricism, positioning the latter between its purely logical and its empirical theory. Cf. FIG: 46, n. 2. Lask explains that Maimon’s skepticism is precisely oriented on the basis of this mathematical model of the relation between the universal and the particular/individual. For Maimon who thought in critical Kantian terms, it is clear that the “model of absolute rationality” cannot correspond to empirical knowledge but only to mathematics as “a field in which ‘we resemble God.’ ” Thus, Maimon does not doubt the existence of the synthetic apriori, but the “comprehensibility of the transition from the rational to the empirical” (FIG: 50).

Flawed Philosophical Alternatives

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of the particular, the individual, the sensible. Lukács repeats these remarks of Lask when he refers to mathematical method: It must never be forgotten that the uninterrupted “production” of content has quite a different meaning in reference to the material of being from what it involves in the world of mathematics which wholly relies upon construction; that “production” means here only the comprehensibility of the facts on the basis of understanding, whereas for mathematics, production and comprehensibility are completely identical. (HCC: 119; 132)

This is why Lukács claims that in mathematics philosophy did not find “the method itself ” but only the “methodological model” for overcoming the problem of irrationality (HCC:  119; 131). Mathematics does not represent the adequate method, since it appears to totally ignore the relevant problem. Nevertheless, the model of “mathematical method,” the model “of constructing, of producing  the object” (HCC:  112; 124) was espoused by philosophy in its attempt to find the way to the system of knowledge. Lask develops exactly the same view, when he points out the fact that the mathematical relation between the universal and the particular played the role of the model for the formation of emanatist logic (cf. FIG: 55–6) and when he refers to the use of mathematical analogies in the emanatist philosophical systems, for example, in Fichte’s early philosophy of the subject (cf. FIG: 90–92) and in Hegel’s dialectical philosophy (cf. FIG:  69–70). Lukács turns his attention to these post-Kantian attempts to constitute knowledge as a system and points out the fact that, in opposition to dogmatic or skeptical attitudes toward the problem of the content, classical German philosophy, while it accepted it as a problem, did not capitulate. Therefore it was able to invent a series of philosophical solutions which, although flawed, opened up the way for a new approach to philosophical problems.

3.2. Praxis as the first principle of systematization The demand for a constitution of the system of knowledge was already expressed by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, in which he referred to the “complete system of pure reason” (Kant 1998: Β 736), emphasizing the fact that “systematic unity is that which first makes ordinary cognition into science, i.e., makes a system out of a mere aggregate of it” (Kant 1998: Β 860). In his book on Fichte, Lask stresses the fact that the necessity entailed in the systematic development

40

Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

of knowledge appears as a postulate of Kantian theoretical philosophy itself (cf. FIG: 81). Without demonstrating the systematic unity of reason and given the chasm between the rational forms and the irrational content of empirical knowledge, the realm of the a priori would remain exposed to skeptical controversy (cf. FIG: 81–3). Thus, it is not by accident that the continuation of philosophy after Kant unfolds . . . as a search for the systematic form, through which philosophy would be presented as science—a search not just for an order, but for a foundation of knowledge, a “founding” on the basis of principles or even one principle or proposition, as well as for a procedure, under the guidance of which further propositions can be deduced from a first principle, so that the system is built in a secure way. For Kant’s successors the “system” is  .  .  . a foundational context that makes possible the deduction of corollaries out of a first principle or precept. (Jaeschke and Arndt 2012: 32)

Relying on the ground prepared by Kant’s philosophy, Fichte undertook the task of completing critical rationalism by turning from the critique of reason to the “system of pure reason.” As Lukács notes, to achieve this transition he followed “the road that leads inwards,” that is, he searched for that “subject of thought, as a product of which the existent could be thought of.”5 Fichte’s “doctrine of scientific knowledge” (Wissenschaftslehre) is precisely the attempt to found knowledge on “a conception of the subject which can be thought of as the creator of the totality of content” (HCC: 122–3; 135–6). Attempting to give a final reply to the skeptical objections to transcendental philosophy, Fichte located the selffounding principle, on which the “complete system of reason” can be built: It is the “egoness” (Ichheit), the primordial active act (Tathandlung), through which the subject poses itself and the objects of its cognition. Thus, the primordial unity of the ego is thought of as a practical activity of self-positing, as an active act, for which there is yet no distinction between acting and the act, the producer and the product, positing and being. Since the ego is firstly considered as activity, every anti-idealist hypostatization of his is precluded (see Gamm 1997: 48–9; Jaeschke and Arndt 2012: 67–8). Moreover, it must not surprise us that Fichte called the active act “intelligible intuition,” since it represents the primordial unity of subject and object, the point of their indifference. In his “Review on Aenesidemus” (1794), Fichte already noted: “The 5

HCC: 122; 134–5. Here it becomes comprehensible why the mathematical principle of construction or production has been, according to Lukács, the “methodological model” of this philosophical inquiry. Indeed, Lukács detects the mathematical method of relativizing the problem of irrationality in Leibniz and points out its influence via Maimon on Fichte and the later philosophical developments (see HCC: 212, n. 15; 131, n. 2).

Flawed Philosophical Alternatives

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absolute subject, the I, is not given in empirical intuition, but posited through intellectual intuition; and the absolute object, the non-I, is that which is opposed to it.”6 Lukács particularly emphasizes an element of Fichtean philosophy, the significance of which had been highlighted before by Rickert (see Section 2.1):  the idea that theoretical philosophy can be founded on a radicalized version of the Kantian “primacy of practical reason.” As he notes, “after Kant’s attempt in the Critique of Practical Reason  .  .  . to show that the theoretically (contemplatively) insuperable barriers are amenable to practical solutions, Fichte puts the practical, acting, activity in the methodological center of the unified overall philosophy” (HCC: 123; 136). Due to his turn to practice, Fichte was able to locate that “level of objectivity,” of “positing of the objects, where the duality of subject and object . . . is transcended, i.e. where subject and object coincide, where they are identical” (HCC: 123; 135–6). Dualism on the level of experience could then be comprehended “as a special case derived from this primordial unity” (HCC: 123; 136). In a first reading, these remarks seem to refer to the initial formulation of Fichte’s “doctrine of scientific knowledge,” the Fundament of the Entire Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge (1794). In the first part of this work entitled “The basic principles of the doctrine of scientific knowledge,” Fichte develops his famous three principles, according to which the subject actively poses itself and the objects of knowledge (see Fichte 1971b:  91–123). It is however characteristic that Lukács does not refer explicitly to this version of the doctrine of scientific knowledge, which was more commented on at that time,7 but limits himself to making some general remarks on the ego-principle, the “active act” and the “identical subject-object.” Lukács was certainly acquainted with Lask’s analysis, according to which the Fundament of the Entire Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge is the only work in which Fichte tends toward emanatist logic. Indeed in this work the problem of irrationality vanishes, since the content is considered a product of a substantial ego (see FIG: 86–99). This first version of the doctrine of scientific knowledge is succeeded by Fichte’s decisive shift to analytical logic, in 1797. 6

7

Fichte (1971a): 10. Of course—contrary to Kant—Fichte understood intellectual intuition as an act of the human subject and not of the infinite, godly intellect (cf. Jaeschke and Arndt 2012: 94). Lask remarked that, because of the great influence of the first version of the Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge, it “claims exclusive domination until today”: “In the entire historiography of philosophy, when presenting the early theory of scientific knowledge, i.e., the one Fichte defended in the eighteenth century, one orients himself almost exclusively towards the Fundament of 1794” (FIG: 77– 8), without considering the changes Fichte made during these years.

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Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis

In his book on Fichte’s Idealism Lask demonstrated that, with the exception of the suggestive Fundament of the Entire Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge, Fichte tried to combine the systematic founding of philosophy with the model of analytical logic, distancing himself from a systematic emanatism of the Hegelian kind. According to this reading, Fichte attempted to find a middle road between the Kantian non-systematic, “rhapsodic” method of the critique of reason and its systematic founding on a highest principle, without however succumbing—like Hegel—to the temptation of resolving the problem of irrationality through the production of the contents by the dialectical self-movement of the concept. For Lask there are two kinds of “dialectical” method, Hegel’s “emanatist-systematic” and Fichte’s “analytical-systematic” method. In fact, after his shift in 1797, Fichte attempted a systematization of the isolated sphere of the pure concepts vis-àvis the dialectically impenetrable sphere of experience (cf. FIG:  84–6), while simultaneously considering the subject in a Kantian way as a purely formal principle (cf. FIG: 99–101). Thus, for Lask, the project of systematization does not automatically entail accession to emanatist logic. Following Lask’s reading of Fichte’s philosophy, Lukács exclusively cites excerpts from Fichte’s works that succeeded his turn of 1797.8 He is also interested in highlighting the persistent presence of the problem of irrationality in Fichte’s theory of knowledge, however he does not follow Lask’s pathway toward working out the logical conditions of this persistence, which are connected with Fichte’s return to analytical logic. Although both philosophers pursue the same goal, to show that Fichte finally lines up with the Kantian formalist notion of knowledge, Lask’s purely logical point of view would not serve Lukács’s further objectives, since it completely omits the practical orientation of Fichte’s theory of knowledge as an alternative way to transcend dualism.9 Lukács utilizes Lask’s logical investigation to achieve his own theoretical goals. As for Lask, for Lukács too, Kant and Hegel represent the two great opposing poles of classical German philosophy—both aim at finding a middle theoretical perspective that would lie between them. Lukács also agrees with Lask in positioning Fichte closer to Kant than to Hegel. But contrary to Lask, he

8

9

Indeed, it is very likely that Lukács found the quote from the Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge of 1804 on the hiatus irrationalis between knowledge and the empirical object (HCC: 119, 212, n. 16; 132, n. 1) in Lask, who also cites it (cf. FIG: 173). In Section 2.2 we saw that Lask, at the latest, explicitly distanced himself from Rickert’s position on the primacy of practical reason with his talk at the International Congress of Philosophy, in 1908. Of course, in his book on Fichte he already proposed an interpretation of Fichtean philosophy that bypassed its foundation on the notion of praxis, as for Lask the reference to values had never been the most central problem (cf. Heinz 1997: 125).

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attempts to form a theoretical synthesis of Fichte’s primacy of practical reason and Hegelian dialectics, a synthesis capable of opening up the perspective of overcoming dualism through their reciprocal rectification. Thus, Lukács’s viewpoint lies beyond the dilemma of non-systematic versus systematic foundation, because the bridging of the antinomies to which it aims is not theoretical-contemplative but practical. This is precisely the point at which the great significance of Fichte for Lukács emerges. With his radical turn to the praxis of the productive subject, Fichte made an important step toward delving deeper into the problem of the “genesis” or the “production” of objectivity (see HCC: 141, 155; 156, 171). The consistent, “to-the-end” pursuit of the goal of constituting the system of intellectual forms revealed the need to move away from theoretical contemplation and to transcend dualism through praxis. In Lukács’s eyes, praxis is the only possible substitute for the unifying function that the theoretical system would fulfill if its constitution was possible: Theory and praxis in fact refer to the same objects, for every object exists as an— immediately—inseparable complex of form and content. However, the diversity of the subjective behavior orientates praxis towards what is qualitatively unique, towards the content and the material substratum of the object concerned. Theoretical contemplation leads . . . to the neglect of this moment. For theoretical purification and theoretical coping with the object reach their highest point only in the progressively starker working out of the formal elements freed from all content (from all “contingent facticity”). (HCC: 126; 139)

It seems that for Lukács, theory must necessarily be dualistic, whereas praxis must not. The opposition of theoretical-contemplative vs. practical is thus added as a criterion for the logical categorization of the possible theoretical attitudes toward the problem of content. In the place of Lask’s threefold distinction between non–systematic-analytical (Kant), systematic-analytical (Fichte) and systematic-emanatist method (Hegel), Lukács puts—without explicitly stating it—a more complex categorization of the possible types of theory: Kantian philosophy follows a non–systematic-contemplative-analytical approach, while Fichtean philosophy is (for reasons to be clarified in the next section) a systematic-halfway-practical and—as it returns to dualism—finally contemplative variation of it. On the other side stands the suggestive edifice of Hegel’s systematiccontemplative-emanatist (or systematic-contemplative-panlogicist) philosophy. Between Fichte and Hegel a fourth possibility appears: A theoretical perspective

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beyond the contemplative dilemmas between systematic and non-systematic theory and between analytical and emanatist logic. That is the possibility of a non–systematic-practical-dialectical theory, which avoids the “chiliasm in the logical field” (FIG: 97), the contemplative genesis or production of the object. Therefore, instead of striving for rational systematization, with its dialectical logical means it prepares the ground for the practical harmonization of form and content. For Lukács, this theoretical possibility is represented by Marx’s theory.

3.3. Lukács’s critique of ethical praxis To open up the way to this fourth theoretical possibility one must first critique Fichte’s “halfway-practical” theory. As I have already pointed out earlier, in his critique Lukács does not take his start from the logical means of Fichte’s theory of knowledge, as Lask does, but he turns his attention to the model, on the basis of which Fichte explicates the nature of the practical. In his opinion, “from the moment the question about the concrete essence” of the “identical subject-object emerges” thought is compelled to turn to the “relation of the ethically acting (individual) subject to itself.” For “this configuration of consciousness can only be found really and concretely in the ethical act” (HCC: 123–4; 137). In the field of ethics the autonomous subject can be thought of as the producer of the ethical forms, the Kantian ethical maxims. Although at this point Lukács does not refer directly to Fichte, he derives this analogy from the “Second Introduction to the Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge” (1797). Besides, the quote on the significance of starting philosophy from the active act, which Lukács cites before going into the problems of ethical action and its limits, is derived from this text.10 In the “Second Introduction” Fichte repeats the characterization of the active act as intellectual intuition which the philosopher approaches as a “fact of consciousness.” To underpin the faith in the reality of intellectual intuition the philosopher can indicate the “ethical law in us,” since the consciousness of the ethical law “is founded on the intuition of spontaneity and freedom”:  “Only through this medium of the ethical law I  behold myself; and beholding myself through it, I  necessarily see it as selfacting” (cf. Fichte 1971c: 465–7, quotes 466). This “consciousness of the ethical law in us,” the ethical law as a “fact of reason” directly refers to the relevant analyses in Kant’s Critique of Practical 10

See HCC: 123, 212, n. 20; 136, n. 1. The quote can be found in Fichte (1971c: 468).

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Reason (cf. Kant 2015:  28). As Lukács notes, it is not by accident that Kant himself connected practical reason with the only possible “for us” road to the great metaphysical problems of the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and the question of freedom—the only question that is answered automatically through the inevitable acceptance of ethical law as a “fact of reason,” since ethical law is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom (cf. Kant 2015: 4, n.). Thus, Kant ascribes objective reality only to the concept of freedom, while for him the postulates of practical reason retain a subjective-practical character (cf. HCC: 125; 138). Be that as it may, in this way ethics was acknowledged as the via regia to the sphere of the supersensible, the unconditioned—a fact from which Fichte’s attempt to practically found philosophy in general takes its cues (cf. HCC: 123; 136). In his pre-Marxist period, Lukács had already repeatedly shown the limits of rationalist ethical philosophy. His critique can be summarized as follows: Even if ethics can internally transform the subject according to its formal standards, on the level of ethical praxis the alienation of the subjective forms from the merely given external reality of experience reaches its highest point. By definition the ethical subject has a contingent relation to the empirical world, which has the power to completely frustrate the purest ethical intents. This problem emerges in Lukács’s early inquiries into different variations on the same basic theme, namely the insuperable opposition between the “forms” and “life.” First, in the essay on Kierkegaard from the collection The Soul and the Forms (1911) Lukács discusses Kierkegaard’s “honest” and “heroic” attempt “to create forms from life,” “to live what cannot be lived” (Lukács 2010a:  56; 1911:  88). Kierkegaard’s “gesture” of appearing as a seducer by which he terminated his relationship with the much younger Regine Olsen is interpreted as “a movement which clearly expresses something unambiguous” (Lukács 2010a: 44; 1911: 63). However, this ethical impulse toward the formation of life could only “founder” against the polysemous chaos of psychological experiences and opposing motives (cf. Lukács 2010a: 48–55; 1911: 72–85), the “most insubstantial . . . of all kingdoms . . . the kingdom of psychology” (Lukács 2010a: 56; 1911: 86). The continually changing and chaotic character of psychic life does not allow for the unambiguous connection of a signifier or a sign to a specific experience. Thus, the intersubjective validity of actions and/or communicative forms is undermined. The form cannot impose itself on the chaotic material of empirical life; it can blossom only in the field of art, where the “material,” that is, human psychology, is determined ad hoc by the artist (cf. Lukács 2010a: 56; 1911: 86–7). Second, similar reflections can be found in the essay “On the Poverty of Spirit” (1912). Here Lukács does not content himself with showing the necessary

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foundering of form against life, but also harshly critiques ethical formation itself. The “ethical work,” that is, the realization of duty, expresses what is “clear,” which nevertheless presupposes “that everything that had tied it to the earth is cut away” (Lukács 2010b: 210; 1912: 83). In fact, the constitution of the universal norms of an ethics of the Kantian type demands abstracting from all content of empirical life. For most people fulfilling their duty may then represent the “only possible exaltation of their lives” (Lukács 2010b:  203–4; 1912:  71), but at the expense of blocking authentic human communication caused by the alienation of ethical form from the content of life. The “ethical work” is thus “a bridge that separates; a bridge upon which we go back and forth, always coming upon ourselves and never meeting one another” (Lukács 2010b: 204; 1912: 71–2). In fact, in his notes from this period Lukács referred to the “inhuman character of Kantian ethics” (Lukács 1997: 60). Finally, Lukács offers a more elaborate version of his early critique of ethics in his neo-Kantian Heidelberg Philosophy of Art (1912–14). Here, the ethical sphere appears to be constituted through its separation from the so-called experienced reality of the subject (see Section 5.4), to which ethics must consequently return to actively intervene. According to Lukács, in opposition to the “symbolic” character of aesthetic formations—which we will consider in the next section— ethics shows an allegorical constitution. As “allegorical” one should understand the inadequacy between the “significance” and the content which it organizes, that is, the contingent and arbitrary relation between form and material. Thus, ethics presupposes an alien and heterogeneous external world and a psychic reality that are confronted with its subject, the ethical-purified will, and it will be right to consider as inexistent anything that cannot be thought of as clearly opposite or as a mute obstacle to ethical action. For experience, however, all these will be present, and as they will—for experience—be inseparably mixed with the ethically precious and the ethically malefic, the ethical formations appear in experienced reality as inadequate, as external, in other words, as allegoric. (Lukács 1974: 86)

As Lukács explains, the problem of ethics described in this quote does not pertain to the opposition between ethical norms and man’s natural inclinations, but to the inertia of elements of life that, while remaining untouched by ethical decision, retain an indeterminate number of links with the subject and its life. Thus, the allegorical relation between the pure ethical form and the material of everyday life is a relation of total indifference and alienation (cf. Lukács

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1974: 85–6). These short remarks suffice to point out the fact that, in his preMarxist work, Lukács had already worked out the problem of the contingent relation of ethical forms and life, that is, the problem of ethical formalism which he reformulates in History and Class Consciousness. Thus, in concordance with his early views, in the section of the reification essay on Fichte, Lukács briefly analyses how the inadequacy of form and content that characterizes the structure of the formal-rational relation of man and the world in general is repeated in the field of ethical praxis: As he points out, Kant himself based his ethical theory on the investigation of “ethical facts in the individual consciousness” (HCC:  124; 137), philosophically explicating ethical freedom as the only “fact of reason” (cf. Kant 2015:  28)—in any case, as something not produced by the subject itself. But the problem of the given also appears in ethics from another side: In Kant, freedom is transformed into a “point of view,” from which the actions of the subject are considered. These same actions appear from “another point of view,” that of theoretical reason, as products of subjectively independent, objective laws. Thus, the dualism of freedom and necessity is reproduced on a higher level. And this separation of the two principles is conveyed to the subject splitting it into phenomenon and noumenon. Finally, Kantian ethics relies on the pure rational form, while its content depends on a “world of phenomena” that is alien to it (cf. HCC: 124–5; 137–8). Since “the principle of production collapses as soon as the first concrete content is to be produced” (HCC: 125; 138), ethics is obliged to find it “readymade” in the merely given reality. To the extent that the practical is thought of formalistically in terms of constituting abstract universal ethical norms, the problem of content necessarily returns to the heart of the attempt to overcome it. With the Kantian ethics as well as the Fichtean concept of praxis in mind, Lukács ascertains that it is exactly the entrapment of bourgeois thought within the model of formalist knowledge that leads to its inability to find the “truly opposite principle of the practical that would really overcome contemplation.”11 The true “essence of the practical consists in sublating that indifference of form towards content, in which the

11

HCC:  122; 135. Given this ascertainment, it is not a surprise that in a review published shortly after History and Class Consciousness Lukács connected the hidden Fichteanism of the “Hegelian” Lassalle (cf. Lukács 1972: 5; 1973b: 205) with his tendency toward formalism in his theory of history (cf. Lukács 1972:  6–8; 1973b:  207–10), the insuperable dualism in theory and praxis (cf. Lukács 1972: 7, 9; 1973b: 209, 212), his formalist understanding of law (cf. Lukács 1972: 14–16; 1973b: 221– 3), etc. In another review of the same period, Lukács detected similar tendencies in Moses Hess, which he also connected with Hess’s Fichtean interpretation of Hegelian philosophy (cf. Lukács 1971b: 5–9, 11–18; 1973c: 242–8, 252–63).

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problem of the thing in itself is methodologically reflected,”12 that is, it consists in overcoming the formalist model of knowledge and praxis. A necessary but not sufficient condition of such transcendence is the turn to praxis. This turn must be accompanied by a change in the relation between form and content, the formation of a new “logic of praxis”: The practical as a principle of philosophy will be really found only when, at the same time, a conception of form is indicated, which—as the foundation and methodological presupposition of its validity—will no longer display that freedom from every content, that pure rationality. (HCC: 126; 139)

At this point Lukács introduces a Laskian element, that is, the idea of an adaptation of form to the concrete material concerned (see Section 2.3), to distinguish that kind of practical behavior which is clearly different from the contemplative attitude of formalist knowledge. The distinctive characteristic of this practical behavior is the fact that, instead of reproducing the given, it turns toward changing the world: “The principle of the practical as the principle of changing the reality must be tailored to the concrete, material substratum of action, so as to affect it through its activation” (HCC: 126; 139). Finally every practice which does not adapt to its concrete material substratum must have a contemplativeformalist character.13 Thus, Lukács’s frequent use of the concept of the “active act” in no way indicates an alleged agreement with the Fichtean perspective, but denotes the principle the latter represents, that is, the principle of the practical unity of form and content, which Lukács regards as the epistemological basis of every dialectical theory (cf. Lukács 1971b: 5; 1973c: 242).

3.4. The principle of art and its mythologization The failure of modern philosophy to think of the world as a “product” of the subject and its rational forms, in other words, the insuperable character of the antinomies of bourgeois thought in the fields of theoretical as well as practical reason explains the “systematic-theoretical and ideological importance which the principle of art acquires” in modern times (HCC: 137; 151). In this field a 12

13

HCC: 126; 139. Lask uses exactly the same term (“indifference”) to denote the relation between the empty concept of analytical logic and the concrete individual entity (cf. FIG: 67). Apart from ethical action that makes up the basis of Fichte’s approach, Lukács analyses Engels’s view that the industrial and experimental practices form the fundament of theoretical truth as an example of the same formalist understanding of praxis (cf. HCC: 131–3; 145–7).

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different, non-dominative relation between form and content can be detected— a relation that seems to overcome their unbridgeable opposition summarized earlier as the “problem of content.” Since the greatest part of Lukács’s early work pertains to problems in the history and theory of art, as well as problems of philosophical aesthetics, he was familiar with the issue of establishing an “organic” unity of form and content in the sphere of the aesthetic of the work of art, in which form does not exert coercion on a contingent material, but actively harmonizes with its specificity. As I  have noted in Section 3.3, in his early essay on Kierkegaard Lukács explained why such an unambiguous unity of form and content is not possible in life, but only in the field of art (cf. Lukács 2010a:  56; 1911:  86– 7). In a similar way, in his essay on “The Metaphysics of Tragedy” from The Soul and the Forms, Lukács described life as “an anarchy of light and dark,” a formless sequence of experiences without inner necessity, which excludes anything unequivocal, complete and absolute that would represent “true life” (cf. Lukács 2010a:  175–6; 1911:  327–9). Thus, the tragic conflict between the “regular accidentality” (Lukács 2010a:  191; 1911:  359) of “ordinary life” (Lukács 2010a:  180; 1911:  337) and the “real necessity” of the essential or “lively life” (Lukács 2010a: 180; 1911: 336) cannot be practically resolved in the empirical world—it can only be represented through the integrated form in art, especially in the tragic drama. The aestheticism that is characteristic of Lukács’s early period (see Kavoulakos 2014c, 2015a) finds its theoretical foundation in his first great Aesthetic he worked on in Heidelberg.14 Lukács aspired to formulate an original aesthetic philosophy that would satisfy the highest standards of the neo-Kantian philosophy of his time—a field, in which he discerned a research gap.15 In fact, he developed his aesthetic theory within the framework of the neo-Kantian advocacy of the autonomy of aesthetics against other “value-spheres.” In this sense, his theory strongly criticized every tendency to a metaphysical interpretation of aesthetics. Even a synoptic overview of Lukács’s early aesthetic theory is impossible here (see however Kavoulakos 2014a: 83–118, 203–38), therefore I only briefly refer to its dimensions that directly pertain to the discussion of the relation of form and content in art in History and Class Consciousness. 14

15

As has been pointed out in the bibliography, in particular, a part of the first version of Lukács’s Aesthetic can be read as an attempt to philosophically ground the tragic worldview he presented in The Soul and the Forms (cf. Weisser 1992: 35). And he was probably right, since Rickert himself admitted this gap in his review on Lukács’s habilitation thesis (the final version of his early Aesthetic). Cf. Rickert (1984: 102).

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In the first version of the Aesthetic on which Lukács worked between 1912 and 1914, the work of art is presented as the realization of a kind of coincidentia oppositorum, which thus represents the unity of value and experience, form and content, the universal-transindividual and the particular-individual. In this sense, art is the fulfillment of the human desire for unity of the most individual with the universal. Therefore, for men, works of art represent “a world of fulfillment” (Lukács 1974: 54–5). In the previous section we saw that, for the young Lukács, the formations of ethics are allegorically constituted, in opposition to those of aesthetics, which have a symbolical character. As has been noted, Lukács adopted in this way a fundamental pair of concepts of the wider current of romantic aesthetics. However, he altered its meaning in such a way that the “symbol” is understood as “the overall structure of the work of art” (Hoeschen 1999:  175). At the same time, he explicitly rejected the connection between the concept of the symbol and the problems of metaphysics, to which classical German aesthetic idealism related it (see Hoeschen 1999: 176–82). In opposition to the allegorically constituted formations, the symbol achieves the reciprocal “adjustment” of form and content, so that they appear as inseparable and, at the same time, distinctive elements, not reducible one to the other. Thus, the relation between form and content structurally resembles their “interpenetration” on the level of the Laskian archetypical meaning (see Section 2.3). As this level represents the “lost paradise” (see Section 2.4), in the same way the work of art constitutes a “utopian reality” with the traits of independency, closeness, totality and infinity (cf. Lukács 1974: 87–8). For Lukács, the quasi divine nature of the work of art as a utopian reality is due to the fact that its formation is guided by a fundamental “standpoint” or “worldview,” on the basis of which its material is selected and the essential is separated from the inessential—something impossible in experienced reality. Through the procedure of “constitutive ignorance” of the elements that do not harmonize with the guiding “standpoint” the work reaches its internal homogenization (cf. Lukács 1974: 83, 85). The characteristic independence and completeness of the work of art, its “free floating” above every particular experienced reality is due to precisely this “constitutive homogeneity” of its elements, the fact that they are all permeated by the form so as to constitute a “homogeneous formation,” that is, an “internally complete system” (all quotes from Lukács 1974: 57–8). In the second version of his Aesthetic, on which he worked between 1916 and 1918, Lukács describes this independency of the work of art on the basis of the “symbolic and formal,” aesthetic concept of “microcosm” (cf. Lukács

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1975c: 110–11). The work of art “is an integrated, complete and self-contained totality” (Lukács 1975c: 110), it is a microcosm, the cosmic character of which . . . is revealed in the fact that all that is possible in respect of its constitutive principles matures in it as reality, [in the fact] that the categories “possible,” “real” and “necessary” lose their distinctive meaning in it through their complete identification. (100)

Lukács describes this totalization achieved by the work of art through another remark that directly refers to the problems discussed in History and Class  Consciousness:  “Τhe problem of the thing in itself cannot be posed in aesthetics,” as “the world of aesthetic forms does not emerge out of chaos . . . their ‘production’ does not draw upon the chaos” (Lukács 1975c: 59). In this view, the aesthetic sphere is not opposed to chaos, but to the “absolute nothing,” since what is not posited within the work of art is merely inexistent for it (cf. Lukács 1975c: 61). On the contrary, what is contained in the work of art is embraced by a form, which has become the “form of a concrete content, i.e. it does not only elevate it on the level of validity, but it becomes hereinafter inseparable from it” (Lukács 1975c: 60). Lukács’s neo-Kantian reconstruction of the aesthetic sphere highlights, in other words, the fact that art represents a certain solution to the problem of the irrationality of content, as it is defined in History and Class Consciousness. Thus, it is no surprise that in the third section of the second part of the essay on reification Lukács continues the same line of thought he inaugurated in his early Aesthetic. As he points out, the “principle of art” is the creation of a concrete totality that springs from a conception of form which is precisely oriented towards the concrete content of its material substratum and therefore it is able to resolve the “contingent” relation of the parts to the whole and to sublate the merely apparent opposition of contingency and necessity. (HCC: 137; 151)

In art one can detect the functioning of a “formal principle in reality, which is not characterized by indifference towards the content with all the problems of the thing in itself, ‘intelligible contingency’ etc.” (HCC: 138; 152). Already in his early Aesthetic, Lukács explained that the principle of the “primacy of content” over the form, the demand for a “materially authentic” (materialechte)—that is, materially adjusted—form, in other words, the postulate of overcoming the “abstract transcendence of form must itself bring the concept of form close to the aesthetic element” (Lukács 1975c: 172).

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If, however, the principle of art appears to represent a real possibility of transcending the problem of content and intelligible contingency, the reasonable question of whether art must be thought of as the via regia to the solution of the problems of metaphysics is raised. In History and Class  Consciousness Lukács explicitly opposes such a philosophical mythologization of aesthetic reason and repudiates any metaphysical interpretation of art by relating it to the concept of “intuitive understanding” and considering it as the fundament of a holistic philosophical system. When Lukács synoptically rejects Schelling’s “intellectualmythologizing method” (cf. HCC:  215, n.  52 and 53; 154–5, n.  1 and 2) and makes critical comments on the aesthetics of early German romanticism (cf. HCC:  215, n.  53; 154–5, n.  2), he simply repeats the conclusion of the sharp critique of the philosophical tendencies toward a metaphysical interpretation of the aesthetic principle he had formulated in his early Aesthetic. In fact, in the Heidelberg Philosophy of Art, Lukács explicated the structure of the aesthetic sphere in terms of the necessary chasm between the subjectivity of experience and the objectivity of the work of art as the realization of artistic form (cf. Wirkus 1975: 107–8). This chasm renders the communicative function of art impossible, according to which the artist purportedly discloses an experience of his to other subjects, who receive and understand it. Thus, in the field of art the inadequacy between the communicative form and the experiential content that permeates human communication in general is simply repeated. Nevertheless, the symbolic constitution of the work of art, to which I referred earlier, could lead to the wrong conclusion that it represents the most appropriate means for constituting transsubjective validity and, moreover, for conceptualizing the highest, metaphysical unity of the world. Of course, such a conjecture would automatically lead to an infringement of the Kantian autonomy of the work of art and to its mythologization. In the Heidelberg Philosophy of Art this rejectable version of aesthetic philosophy is connected with the “expressive theory” (Ausdruckstheorie) of art.16 As such cases Lukács considers Schelling’s (cf. Lukács 1974:  16, 36)  and Hegel’s (cf. Lukács 1974: 36) theories of art, to whose critique he dedicates long analyses in the chapter of the Heidelberg Aesthetic, characteristically entitled “Transcendental dialectic of the idea of beauty” (see Lukács 1975c: 133–224). It is remarkable that in History and Class  Consciousness Lukács continues to 16

See the first chapter of the Heidelberg Philosophy of Art with the characteristic title “Art as ‘expression’ and the forms of notification of experienced reality” (Lukács 1974: 9–41). This chapter offers a philosophical elaboration of the impossibility of communication discussed in the essay on Kierkegaard from The Soul and the Forms or in the essay “On the Poverty of Spirit” (see Section 3.3).

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consider the “truly critical, not metaphysically hypostatized artistic view of the world” (HCC: 215, n. 53; 154, n. 2) as the main opponent of the mythologizing interpretation of the principle of art, referring indeed to his essay on “The Relation of Subject and Object in Aesthetics.”17 What is that “truly critical view”? Whereas, as we saw earlier, for the critical approach art represents a “world of fulfillment” of man’s longings, this does not entail the reduction of the distance between the work of art and the man of experienced reality. As Lukács explained in his Aesthetic, despite its selfcompletion and self-containment, the work of art is finally nothing but the “scheme of every possible misunderstanding,” since its symbolic nature is only the other side of the fact that it cannot have the communicative function of transmitting experiential contents (cf. Hoeschen 1999: 183, 188). In the Heidelberg Philosophy of Art the idea of the “misunderstanding” of art nourishes Lukács’s view on the “tragedy of the artist,” that is, the view that artists finally remain “without redemption” and “more speechless  .  .  . than everyday men who are trapped in themselves,” in spite of their attempt to express their most personal and individual experiences in a universal way (Lukács 1974: 80). Thus, the deep “longing for community and unity with the others” (Lukács 1974:  15), for “overcoming isolation” (35), cannot find a true solution in art. Despite the coincidentia oppositorum within the work of art, the relation between art and ordinary empirical reality is finally “tragic,” given the fact that in art the “misunderstanding” that reigns in every communicative notification appears as “necessary, constitutive and, because of that, fruitful and blooming” (Lukács 1974: 74). As has been aptly noted, “art transcends the alienation of life without abolishing it,” since it cannot “get rid of the inadequacy of interhuman communication which tends to isolate individuals” (Márkus 1977: 106). We find the very same idea of an insuperable inadequacy in the Heidelberg Aesthetic, where Lukács describes the constitution of the normative subject of aesthetics in terms of the concept of “pure experience,” that is, the specifically aesthetic-normative behavior of the subject vis-à-vis the aesthetic object (see Hoeschen 1999: 195), in which the normative subjectivity turns to the meaning, the value, without “losing its immediacy, its experiential character, its totality as an experiencing subject” (Lukács 1975c: 57). However, an abyss separates the pure experience of the internally homogenized, aesthetic “man ‘wholly’ ” (Mensch “ganz”) from the

17

See Lukács (1917/1918). This essay is identical to the third chapter of the Heidelberg Aesthetic (see Lukács 1975c: 91–132).

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ordinary experience of the heterogeneous “whole man” (“ganzer Mensch”) of experienced reality.18 As has been noted in the relevant secondary bibliography, whereas from Lukács’s peculiar neo-Kantian point of view the work of art can be regarded as a “theodicy that can give meaning to the dissonance, the irrationality of reality” by representing the complete unity of form and content, it nonetheless leaves “the subjects excluded from redemption,” a fact that defines its “luciferian traits” (Weisser 1992:  170). Indeed, the “homogenization” of the experiential abilities of man “wholly” is internally linked with the “luciferian” (luciferisch) character of art,19 that is, with the misleading constitution of a utopian world that leaves the real, alienated world intact (see Čačinovič-Puhovski 1986: 65). As we will see in the next section, in History and Class Consciousness Lukács repeats this critical view about the impotence of art against the merely given empirical reality.

3.5. Aesthetic education and its limits However, at the crossroads opened through the revaluation of the philosophical significance of the principle of art there is another road, apart from that of the mythologization of aesthetic reason:  It is the road of highlighting the wider civilizing role of art, as it unifies the subject’s competences and aestheticizes its relation to the world (see HCC: 138–40; 152–5). In his early work, Lukács evaluates this alternative by considering the “Lebensphilosophie” of early German romanticism.20 In his essay on Novalis from The Soul and the Forms the question of the relation between art and life occupies a central position. Lukács presents the representatives of early German romanticism as “cultural revolutionaries” (Keller 1984: 102) who shared the dream of the formation of a “new, harmonious, all-embracing culture” (Lukács 2010a: 59; 1911: 93). According to Lukács, their dream was articulated around the combination of an idealistic “mythology” with an individualist “ethics of genius” and poetry 18

19

20

Cf. Lukács (1975c:  58). As Lukács explains, the “man ‘wholly’ means  .  .  . a reduction of man’s experiential possibilities to completely determined, and in this determination, homogenized, inner organs of the reception of the world,” through which “a world built in relation to those organs, internally formed into a totality, can come to life fulfilled in his experience” (Lukács 1975c: 100). Lukács refers to the “luciferian” character of art at the end of the chapter on “The relation of subject and object in aesthetics” (cf. Lukács 1975c: 132). One of the unrealized plans of the young Lukács was a book on romanticism and especially on Friedrich Schlegel, whom Lukács considered to be a precursor of the modern problematic man (see Kruse 1993).

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as a principle that must embrace everything, to make “the man who can truly live” (Lukács 2010a: 65; 1911: 105) possible. However, this announcement of a new culture was canceled when the “monumental, powerful constructions” of the romantics proved to be “sandcastles” (Lukács 2010a: 68; 1911: 110). Their weakness was due to the fact that they “identified the cosmos they had created in their dreams with the real world,” therefore their “awakening from a beautiful, feverish dream” could only lead to a “tragic-sad end, without elevation and without enrichment” (all quotes from Lukács 2010a: 68; 1911: 110), that is, the collapse of the romantic edifice. In this early critique, Lukács stresses the fact that the romantic attitude entails the domination of the “passive life-experiencing capacity” (Lukács 2010a:  66; 1911:  106), instead of the active-forming attitude toward things (cf. Lukács 2010a: 66, 69; 1911: 106, 112)—a remark he repeats in History and Class Consciousness, where he notes that the aestheticization of the world renders “the subject purely contemplative” and “annihilates ‘active action’ ” (HCC: 140; 154). As early as 1907, he explained why this happens: Embracing everything by the poetic action of the romantic “I” may seemingly eliminate contradictions and the resistance of reality, composing a harmonized and unified picture of it, but this becomes possible only through its “poetization” which renders everything familiar: “Their art of living was an ingenious adaptation to all events of life, an intensive exploitation, a making of everything that fate put in their path a necessity. A poetization of fate, not its forming or its overcoming” (Lukács 2010a: 66; 1911: 106). Thus, behind the sovereignty of romantic irony21 hides a deeper attitude of adaptation to anything given.22 In History and Class  Consciousness Lukács returns to the question of the “cultural-philosophical tendency” (HCC:  140; 155) developed around the epistemological problem of the content in its connection with the wider problems of the fragmentation of modern culture and its subject—issues that will be elaborated on in the second part of the book. At this point the opportunity to discuss the relation between art and life is given by Schiller’s aesthetic humanism and the search for a road to a reunification of the “fragmented man” of modernity through aesthetic education (HCC: 138–9; 153). As the guiding thread of “aesthetic education,” aesthetic reason allows the constitution of a concept of subjectivity other than that of the abstract subject 21

22

Lukács refers in passing to the need to understand romantic irony from a systematic point of view (see HCC: 215, n. 53; 154, n. 2). Lukács follows to a great extent Hegel’s critique of romantic irony and its arbitrary subjectivism that, ignoring the object, is finally alienated from reality (see Hegel 1975a: 64–9).

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of theoretical or practical reason in its opposition to the laws of the external world. From this point of view, aesthetic reason is internally connected with that critical, value-laden concept of nature, which expresses the resistance to the alienated relation of modern rationalism to the world: Here nature refers to authentic humanity, the true essence of man liberated from the false, mechanizing forms of society: man as an internally complete totality who has inwardly overcome the dichotomies of theory and practice, reason and sensibility, form and material; [man] whose tendency to give form to himself does not imply an abstract rationality which ignores concrete contents; [man] for whom freedom and necessity are identical. (HCC: 136–7; 151)

The possibility of such a man is clearly described in Schiller’s famous letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795). In this work Schiller introduces the concepts of the drive for form (Formtrieb; the drive which pertains to the reasonable nature of man) and the drive for matter (Stofftrieb; the drive which pertains to the sensible-material side of man), the balanced cultivation of which leads to the formation of a well-structured personality (cf. Schiller 1965:  64–72). The two drives must stand in a harmonious interaction, a relation that is secured by the “drive for play” (Spieltrieb) which reconciles the two basic drives and opens up the perspective of the “idea of humanity” that finds its highest manifestation in the totalizing experience of art (cf. Schiller 1965: 73–5). Thus, according to Lukács, Schiller extends “the aesthetic principle far beyond the confines of aesthetics, by seeing it as the key to the solution to the question of the meaning of man’s existence in society” (HCC: 139; 153). Human perfection becomes possible through the experience of beauty that consists in the reconciliation of the drive for matter (life-sensibility) with the drive for form (spiritual form) in the “living form,” which is the object of the drive for play—an experience which aesthetic education aspires to cultivate (cf. Schiller 1965:  75–81). The ideal of aesthetic education acquires a clear cultural-critical edge, since the attempt to restore the internal unity of the subject presupposes the recognition of its fragmentation in modern civilization (cf. HCC: 139; 153)— a theme on which Schiller’s Letters contain important remarks and comments. In this respect, it is characteristic that Jürgen Habemas analyses the Letters as “the first programmatic work toward an aesthetic critique of modernity” which “carries out its analysis of a modernity divided within itself using the concepts of Kant’s philosophy and sketches out an aesthetic utopia that attributes to art a

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virtually social-revolutionary role” (cf. Habermas 1987: 45; on his interpretation see also Frick 2006: 124–8). Lukács’s youthful critique of early German romanticism as well as his analysis of the luciferian character of art in his Aesthetic anticipated his critique of the cultural-philosophical use of the principle of art formulated in History and Class  Consciousness. Schiller’s view on the role of art differs of course from that of early German romanticism, since—as Habermas explains—his “aesthetic utopia is . . . not aimed at an aestheticization of living conditions, but at revolutionizing the conditions of mutual understanding” (Habermas 1987:  49). Indeed, Schiller espoused the Kantian understanding of the autonomy of the aesthetic sphere (see Pott 2010: 14, 18) and turned to art only as a means of notifying experiences and thus as a medium of reconciliation through enhancing the feeling of community (see Habermas 1987: 48–50). As we have seen in Section 3.4, in his early aesthetics— the basic principles of which are not negated in History and Class Consciousness— Lukács demonstrated the inability of art to function as a means of notification and connected its “expressive” consideration with the tendencies toward its metaphysical interpretation. Even if Habermas is correct in his ascertainment that Schiller proceeds to an “aestheticization of the life-world” in the only legitimate sense “that art operates as a catalyst, as a form of communication, as a medium within which separated moments are rejoined into an uncoerced totality” (Habermas 1987:  50), for Lukács it is still an aestheticization which burdens art with duties which it cannot fulfill. The limits of every aestheticization of our relation to the world are predetermined and visible, since aesthetic perception leaves the objective world as it is; it changes nothing in respect to its fragmentation caused by the domination of rationalist dogmatism. Any restoration of the internal unity of the subject in thought is obviously practically powerless against the given external world; it is only philosophical-contemplative (cf. HCC: 139–40; 153–4). Without changing the dualistically constituted reality itself the dualism of form and content returns and is established in the fields outside the aesthetic sphere, in the sphere of rational knowledge as well as in that of practical life. The dogmatism of bourgeois society that only the formal-rational type of knowledge should count as valid knowledge remains intact (cf. HCC: 139; 154). In these conditions, regarding the principle of art as a unifying factor of culture can only lead to adding another field of life, the field of aesthetic experience, alongside the spheres of theoretical and practical life. In this way the desired internal unification of the subject is cancelled, as its life remains fragmented

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between such separated spheres.23 The critique of the mythologization of art and of its unifying role within the overall culture leads to a more moderate view of it:  The principle of art must be considered “at most an illustrating example” for a possible totalization of limited strength, so that the search for an authentic principle of the unity of form and content can be continued in another direction—no longer in thought, but in historical reality and human action itself (cf. HCC: 140; 155). In this version, the principle of art represents the possibility of that “materially authentic” form (materialechte form) which could be applied in social praxis. The examination of this possibility presupposes the turn of interest toward dialectical logic.

3.6. Lask and Lukács on Hegel’s dialectical holism In Sections 3.2 and 3.3, I attempted a parallel reading of Lukács’s analyses on Fichte’s understanding of the primacy of practice and Lask’s positioning of Fichte’s method between Kant’s analytical logic and Hegel’s emanatist logic. This reading does not only philologically show that the neo-Kantian discussions, with which Lukács was well acquainted at the time of his turn to Marxism, decisively influenced his point of view in History and Class Consciousness; it is also interpretatively fruitful, as it sheds new light on the fact that Lukács searched for a middle philosophical perspective that would lie between Kant and Fichte on the one side and Hegel on the other. At the same time this interpretation allows us to locate the criteria, on the basis of which Lukács implicitly discerned the different theoretical alternatives opened up by classical German philosophy and later philosophical schools. From what preceded it is already clear that Lask’s and Lukács’s interpretative perspectives are not identical, but can nevertheless be related to one another, to the extent that they both take their start from the problem of irrationality of content and are interested in the possibility of a solution. Their attitude toward such a solution is, as I  will show, up to a point the same:  They both regard a theoretical solution impossible. However, the conclusions to which they come in view of this impossibility are different. Speaking in Lukács’s terms, Lask is led to “capitulation,” accepting irrationality as a fate, while Lukács looks for a way that

23

Cf. HCC: 140; 155. At this point Lukács refers to Hegel’s critique of Kant’s “soul-sack” containing the different separated “faculties” of the subject. He had already drawn upon exactly the same critique in the Heidelberg Aesthetic (cf. Lukács 1975c: 212).

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“goes-to-the-end” in the practical reformulation of the problem and, thus, in the practical transcendence of speculative philosophy itself. This is the course that leads him to Marx.24 In this section I continue my parallel reading of Lask and Lukács, turning my attention to their references to Hegelian philosophy, in order to disclose the specific way that led Lukács through Hegel beyond Hegel. In a similar way to Lask, Lukács does not focus on the ideological implications of Hegelian philosophy—for example, its “conservatism” etc.—but on its logical presuppositions. Schematically speaking, Lask rejects Hegelian dialectics as the fundament of a panlogicist metaphysical knowledge, but acknowledges the  significance of the holistic method for the methodology of history and for the philosophy of culture, while Lukács, reversely, wants to highlight its enormous fruitfulness for a new theoretical conceptualization of history and, at the same time, to concretely show its ambiguity as the “absolute peak of the rationalist method.”25 Lukács emphasized the need to constitute a new logic and the corresponding theory of the concept that would not rely upon the rigid, static, abstract concepts of formal logic or categories of understanding already in his analyses on Fichte. Explicitly referring to Hegel’s critique of Kant’s unbridgeable opposition of the abstract concepts and the empirical-concrete content,26 Lukács detects an indirect-negative acknowledgment of the need to transcend the rigidity of analytically purified concepts in Kant’s refutation of the ontological proof of the existence of God (cf. Kant 1998: 620–31). As Lukács points out (GuK: 140; 155– 6), for Kant, existence is not a real attribute, otherwise, ascribing it to a thing would entail the need to change its concept, so as to make it contain the concept of being (cf. Kant 1998: B 627–8). This Kantian “theoretical behavior” toward a specific content, which treats existence or non-existence as something indifferent, corresponds to the rationalist-formalist contemplation that isolates objects from their concrete framework to reduce them to its categories. The opposite of this theoretical behavior is Hegel’s conceptualization of the object as a part of a concrete totality, in which different concepts of being are gradually ordered as inseparable 24

25

26

This course concretizes Lukács’s thesis, formulated in passing in the Developmental History of the Modern Drama of 1911, that the “whole philosophy” of Marx “essentially sprang out of one source, that of Fichte” (Lukács 1981: 98). HCC: 215, n. 52; 154, n. 1. Lask also notes that “there has never been before or after him [i.e., Hegel] a more powerful, more penetrant rationalism” (FIG: 72). In other words, referring to Hegel’s critique of Kantian dualism—which Lask also emphasizes as Hegel’s starting point (cf. FIG: 61–3).

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determinations of its particular dialectical moments (cf. HCC: 127–8; 140–1). As Kant indirectly recognized, to reconstruct such a concrete totality a rupture with the rigid-abstract conceptual system of formalist contemplation and a new logic of changing concepts that adapt to changing contents would be needed. With his remark that the logic of the changing contents and the relevant concepts corresponds to the “structure of true praxis” (HCC: 127; 140), Lukács connects it with the field of history. It is characteristic that, in order to show the limitation of Kant’s separation of the concept from being, he draws on the Marxian example of the practically-historically concrete existence of ancient gods (cf. HCC: 127; 141). In such epochs, the isolation of the existence of gods from their concept, as demanded in Kant’s argument, would be meaningless, insofar as with their concept—and the corresponding social practices—they were already posited as existent. Therefore, historical knowledge about those epochs in their uniqueness cannot rely upon isolated, abstract concepts. It rather demands the reconstruction of the comprehensive meaning that permeates and gives unity to the concrete social-practical totality. In Fichte’s Idealism and History, Lask had already pointed out Hegel’s great contribution to the constitution of a logic of history as the realm of the unrepeatable individuality. More concretely, Lask emphasized that, by distancing himself from the abstract universality of the rationalist attitude of Enlightenment toward history, Hegel paved the way to a philosophy of history and culture capable of conceptualizing the logically paradox “value-individuality” (Wertindividualität), the object of every historical knowledge par excellence. Examining the logical conditions of historical knowledge, Lask espouses, up to a point, Hegel’s critique of the rationalism of Enlightenment, which cancels every possibility of an authentic conceptualization of the particular, the individual, due to its insuperable tendency toward reducing it as an exemplar to abstractly universal concepts. Against this logical emphasis on “value-universality” (Wertallgemeinheit), Hegel developed the method of integrating the particularindividual in a wider “value-totality” (Werttotalität), so as to precisely save its specificity and uniqueness (cf. FIG: 6–23). Indeed, from this point of view, Lask regards Hegel as “the greatest and most characteristic representative” of “valueindividualism” (FIG: 17, n. 3, 21–2). In an analogous fashion, in History and Class Consciousness Lukács does not tire of repeating that the common modern rationalist attitude toward history consists in an attempt to reduce the qualitatively determined, unrepeatable contents and the lively process of their emergence to abstract forms, that is, universal concepts or laws. However, in this way the road to conceptualizing

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history is blocked, since “it is of the essence of such a law that within its jurisdiction nothing new can happen by definition” (HCC: 144; 159). The problem is that the new as the unique and unrepeatable historical content cannot be calculated through abstract universal concepts. Therefore, the need for another logic emerges that is no longer characterized by the rationalist “indifference of form towards content” (HCC: 126; 139). At this point, a crucial interpretative difference between Lukács and Lask appears. Both ascertain that the central goal of Hegelian philosophy is to find a solution to the problem of the irrationality of the content. Therefore, one can maintain that in dialectical method “the call for an intuitive understanding (for method to supersede the rationalistic principle of knowledge) is clearly, objectively and scientifically stated.”27 However, Lask explains the function of the “emanatist logic of the self-moving concept,” as it were, “from above,” from the point of view of the concept, from which “every individual reality [becomes] a phase of the development of the concept, a ‘position of the whole’, but of the ‘whole of the movement’ ” (FIG: 65). The self-movement of the concept becomes the rational principle from which the concrete content “emanates”; hence, the problem of its irrationality is abolished: Because, from the inner penetration of the “self-moving thought” and the particular, concrete realization that results as its emanation follows the dialectically “mediated” complete rationality of the transition from the infinite to the finite; and on the other hand the finite does not vanish in the absolute, but it represents a necessary “moment” in the process of the whole. (FIG: 65–6)

For Lask, Hegel discerned the fact that it does not suffice to postulate an intuitive understanding capable of grasping the absolute, since its fixed and “fruitless” character would eliminate the distinction between the universal and the particular, thus absorbing every difference in it. Therefore he searched for a solution in “transferring the becoming and the infinitely adjustable gradation of life” (FIG:  65) into the concepts themselves, which now incorporate the principle of their alteration, from which the manifoldness of their “realizations” “emanates.” According to Lask, Hegelian dialectics relies upon the primacy of the dialectically moving concept over the individual content that becomes a mere

27

HCC: 141; 156. Lask similarly ascertains that “Hegel claims for us the logic of intellectus intuitivus; in place of dualism he postulates the ‘absolute middle’ of intuitive understanding” (FIG: 62). In the Heidelberg Aesthetic Lukács had already pointed out the fact that, in spite of his critique of the notion of intellectual intuition, Hegel methodologically presupposes it when he sets the identity of subject and object as his goal (see Lukács 1975c: 175–6, 182).

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moment of the overall movement. Therefore, Hegel “hypostatizes the concept itself as a metaphysical reality that conjoins its individual realizations to a united whole” (FIG: 68). Precisely this hypostatization of the concept is the scandal for critical thought, as it leads directly to a metaphysical-panlogicist ignorance of the inexorable irrationality of the material moment (cf. FIG:  72). Hegel’s mistake was that, instead of interpreting the one-sided domination of the model of abstract universality in the field of historical knowledge simply as a wrong methodology that leads in fact to the disintegration of the historical object, to its fragmentation into isolated, value-indifferent “atoms”-exemplars of the universal concepts, he located the cause of this incorrect cultural-historical atomism in analytical logic itself. Therefore, he worked his whole life against it, developing his dialecticalemanatist logic, for which the problem of value-individuality would be resolved by definition—a metaphysical logic which, according to Lask, must be rejected (see FIG: 20, n. 2, 22–3, 66–72). Contrary to Lask, Lukács approaches the problematics of Hegelian dialectical logic, as it were, “from below,” from the point of view of the content. For Lukács, in the Phenomenology and in his Logic Hegel consciously attempted to recast “all problems of logic by grounding them οn the qualitative material nature of their content, οn the material in the logical-philosophical sense of the word” (HCC:  142; 157). This problem of “the material in the logical-philosophical sense of the world” is nothing but the problem of the irrationality of the content Lask also put at the center of his reconstruction of Hegelian philosophy. The aim of dialectics is to succeed where the analytical concepts fail, in conceptualizing the “becoming of the real contents” (HCC: 144; 159), in cognitively grasping the qualitatively unique, the “novelty.” According to this reading, the primacy is not ascribed to the concept, but to the content. Thus, dialectics is a “logic of changing contents” which finds its “paradigmatic order and connection of things in history, in the historical process, in the becoming of what is qualitatively new, and only there” (HCC: 144; 109). This interpretation was prepared through the reading of Hegelian philosophy Lukács suggested in his early Aesthetic. In spite of his critique of Hegel, Lukács emphasized the fact that the logic of the concrete concept is oriented from the beginning toward the abolition of the indifference of form against the content, an abolition that can be realized through their dialectic relativization. The “decisive motif ” of this relativization is “that the content has a certain primacy over the form ascribed to it” (Lukács 1975c:  172). Lukács explicitly acknowledged the fact that the elements of systematic knowledge generated on the basis of

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this “primacy of the content over the form or, in other words, the primacy of the complete form over the abstract” acquire “an artistic character,” that is, they appear as “aesthetic structural elements” of the philosophical system.28 Interpreted in this way as “materially authentic” (materialechte), that is, contentladen form, Hegel’s concrete concept consists in an intelligible structure that refers to Lask’s interpenetration of form and material and, therefore, rules out every unilateral autonomization of the form from the content.29 Another dimension must be added to this dialectical interrelation of the form and its specific content: In History and Class Consciousness Lukács stresses the fact that, compared to older views on dialectics, the specific characteristic of its Hegelian version that makes it unique in the history of philosophy is the consistent reciprocal relativization of the subject and the object. In Hegelian philosophy, the subject ceases to be an “unchanged observer of the objective dialectic of being and the concepts” (HCC: 142; 157). Therefore, the true must not be understood “only as substance, but also as subject.”30 The demand to identify the order of concepts with the order of things is not one-sidedly made from the standpoint of objectivity or subjectivity, but in the framework of the dialectic process unfolding between the two (cf. HCC:  142–3; 157–8). This process is history, therefore “history is  .  .  . the natural, the only possible lifeelement of the dialectical method” (HCC: 147; 162). With Hegel’s turn to history the question about its subject is automatically raised; the question on the historically concrete subject of “active action.” If history is going to be thought of as the field of human practice, in which the subject is “both producer and product of the dialectical process” (HCC:  142; 157), if we are going to regard “the whole reality as history,” namely, “as our history, for there is no other” (HCC:  145; 160), then theory must concretely indicate this “we” of historical praxis, the “we” that is already being dialectically constituted—even without a full consciousness of itself—within the historical reality of human practice. Thus, the dialectical theory of history cannot be separated from historical praxis. Without the intellectual and real-historical “production of the producer”

28

29

30

Lukács (1975c:  173). It is clear that Lukács uses aesthetics here only as a model to elucidate the relation of form and content in dialectical logic, without reducing the first to the latter. In his obituary for Lask, Lukács uses the notion of “materially authentic forms” precisely to describe Lask’s theory of the significational differentiation of the forms in respect to the content they “enclose” (see Lukács 1918b: 357). HCC: 142; 157. The quote is a slightly altered version of the famous Hegelian phrase from the preface to Phenomenology of Spirit, according to which philosophy aims at “grasping and expressing the true, not only as substance, but equally as subject” (Hegel 1977: 10).

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of history (cf. HCC:  140; 155) thought inextricably returns to formalist dualism, to mythologizing idealism—even if it continues to make consistent use of dialectical schemes. As we will soon see, this has been exactly, according to Lukács, the limitation of Hegel’s view of history. At this point too, Lukács meets Lask, who was interested in the possibility of a holistic logic of historical knowledge without succumbing to Hegelian emanatism or panlogism. Of course Lukács takes a further step forward by closely connecting the possibility of a non-panlogicist dialectical theory of history with the turn to social practice.

3.7. Lukács’s critique of the formalist tendency in Hegel’s philosophy of history In his critique of Hegel, Lukács highlights two elements that demonstrate “the not entirely overcome Kantianism”31 or the “formalist aspects” (Lukács 1971b: 12; 1973c: 253) of Hegel’s theory of history: the mythologizing concept of the world spirit and the concomitant idea of the “cunning of reason.” In both cases it becomes obvious that, despite Hegel’s invention of the new logic of the concrete concept, the antinomies of bourgeois thought finally remained unresolved in his work as well. Indeed, Lukács imputes this failure to Hegel’s “solution” itself, to the requested “reconciliation,” which reveals “a dual essence”: “Retensively, it is the resolution of Kant’s antinomies while protensively, it is their reproduction on a higher level” (Lukács 1971b: 11; 1973c: 251). A manifestation of this failure to overcome the Kantian formalist dualism is Hegel’s recourse to conceptualmythological constructions that allude to the subject of history. For Hegel, the subject, the “we” of history is a particular “spirit of the people.” However, such spirits of the people only represent the concrete, unconscious forms the world spirit takes each time. Then, they only appear to be the makers of history, since in reality they execute the plan of the world spirit which remains unknown to them. Therefore, only from the higher point of view of philosophical reflection can they appear as the unconscious subjects of history: “But in this way the deed becomes something transcendent for the doer himself and the freedom that seems to have been won is transformed unnoticed into the specious form

31

Lukács (1971b:  8; 1973c:  247). In another essay, Lukács connects Hegel’s “idealism” with the “formalist philosophy of history” (Lukács 1972: 13; 1973b: 218). It is worth mentioning that Lukács formulates a similar critique—of course alluding to the field of aesthetics—in the Heidelberg Aesthetic, where he notes that “Hegel did not proceed radically enough to-the-end in transcending the abstract-reflective transcendental philosophy” (Lukács 1975c: 222).

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to reflect upon laws which themselves govern man” (HCC: 146; 162). Then, the only real freedom is that of the philosopher, the freedom of reconstructing history post festum from the standpoint of a suprahistorical reason that is purportedly realized by a mythical subject, the world spirit.32 In fact, given that the suprahistorical reason of history is revealed only to philosophical reflection, it is clear that for Hegel the rational development of history as the field of human practice takes place completely independently of the meaning the acting subjects impute to their actions. Therefore, in the Hegelian philosophical framework the recourse to the notion of the “cunning of reason” is necessary, since reason “uses” the particular plans of action of individuals and groups to realize itself within history. Only from the standpoint of this reason can the particular historical events be judged as steps toward its realization, as demanded by Hegel’s philosophy of history. For Lukács, the “solution” of the “cunning of reason” is nothing but a “conceptual mythology,” since Hegelian philosophy “is forced to go out beyond history and, there, to establish the empire of reason which has discovered itself, from the vantage point of which it became possible to understand history as a mere stage” of precisely this return of reason to itself (HCC: 147; 162). In this way, however, the significance of history is degraded; history becomes a mere moment of the completed system. The system itself finds its true peak only in the “absolute spirit,” in art, religion, and philosophy. Then Hegelian philosophy reconstructs a suprahistorical reason that gives meaning to the particular historical events and not the reason which inheres in them—in this way the opposition between the rational form and the irrational content is reproduced, while reason is seen as something external to the historical object and, thus, it “succumb[s] to all the antinomies of the thing in itself characteristic of pre-dialectical methods” (HCC: 147; 163). As philosophical thought regresses to the formalism it tried to transcend, it “relapses into the contemplative duality of subject and object” (HCC:  148; 164). In view of the failure to find the real subject-object of history, Hegel’s logic itself, his theory of the concept acquires a “Kantian-idealist meaning” (HCC: 217, n. 65; 164, n. 1). In Hegel himself, the failure of a purely intellectual resolution of the antinomies of bourgeois thought is manifested in his anti-dialectic position on the “end of history”; an end accompanied by the completion of philosophical truth in the Hegelian system. This is another irrefutable indication of his tendency to regress

32

Many times Lukács repeats the critique that Hegel was not able to recognize the real subject of history (see HCC: 17, 145–6, 148; 31, 161–2, 163).

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to a formalist view of historical reason that leads Hegel to social and political conservatism, since the end of history would entail that the social and political formations of the present have a definitive character (cf. HCC: 147; 163). This conservatism is the unavoidable effect of the logical separation of the intellectualdialectical genesis of the “spirit” (i.e., of the philosophical history) from real history and human praxis (see also Lukács 1971b: 10–11; 1973c: 249–51). These two elements make possible an unstable “completion” of the philosophical system, which—after Marx’s critique of it—remained as a “dead body” for “the scavenging philologists and system-makers to feast upon” (HCC: 17; 31). Of course, in Hegel’s work there are also points of vacillation, where the tendency to constitute a panlogicist system occasionally seems to be questioned:  Whereas in the finished Hegelian system history appears as a moment of transition from the philosophy of right to absolute spirit (cf. Hegel 2007:  §§ 548–52), elsewhere Hegel admits that the absolute spirit does not sublate history, but is contained in it (cf. HCC:  216–17, n.  62; 162, n.  2). However, such occasional flashes of a dialectization of the absolute spirit itself do not cancel Hegel’s general tendency toward the completion of the rationalist systematization and thus toward regressing to the antinomies of contemplative behavior. The cause of this regression of Hegelian philosophy to the antinomies of formalism is not further explained in History and Class Consciousness.33 In his essay on Moses Hess, Lukács briefly refers to Hegel’s tendency to transform the “highest achievement of his dialectic, i.e., the dialectic of concepts” to “a kind of aesthetics,” in the sense of making it independent as a “play” in opposition to the real movement of the dialectic of being and becoming (cf. Lukács 1971b: 10; 1973c:  250). Contemplative reconciliation demands the separation of the dialectical concept from the real historical process and, thus, the fixation of the present, the abolition of history as an open future (cf. Lukács 1971b: 10–12, 28–9; 1973c: 249–51, 279–80). In the theories of the left successors of Hegelian idealist dialectic, this separation leads to a regression below the level achieved by Hegel, the level of the dialectical reconstruction of the present, that is, it leads to the dualism of an a priori utopianism that takes on the form of a “dialectical”

33

In a note in the reification essay Lukács remarks that confronting the logical side of the problem exceeds “the scope of this study” (HCC: 217, n. 65; 164, n. 1). In another essay of the volume, Lukács alludes to Hegel’s “remaining imprisoned” in the “Platonic-Kantian outlook,” i.e., “in the duality of thought and being, of form and material,” for which the material “remained tainted . . . with the ‘stain of specificity’ ” (HCC: 17–18; 31).

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construction of history that “violates” the material, the historical reality, maintaining a “contingent” relation to it (cf. Lukács 1971b: 8, 11–13; 1973c: 246, 252–4; 1972: 7–8; 1973b: 208–10). We have already seen that modern rationalism is closely linked with the demand for a complete systematization of knowledge (Section 2.6). I also referred to Lukács’s assertion that Hegel represents the “absolute peak of the rationalist method” (HCC: 215, n. 52; 154, n. 1)—a claim, that is in agreement with Lask’s view that “there has never been before or after him [i.e., Hegel] a more powerful, more penetrant rationalism” (FIG: 72). Neither Lukács nor Lask give this remark a mostly positive meaning. Lask continues with a comment which was quoted by Lukács after praising Lask as the “most ingenious and consistent of the modern neo-Kantians” (HCC: 215, n. 56; 157, n. 1): “In this respect even the critic must admit that Hegel is in the right: irrationality can be overcome if and only if we can accept the dialectically self-changing concepts.”34 Contrary to what might be the first impression, Lukács’s reference to Lask’s assessment of the dialectical concepts is rather ambiguous. Instead of considering it as an unconditional agreement with Hegelian logic (as Fehér does; I. Fehér 1992: 380), we should rather acknowledge in it a deeper congruence with Lask’s view, but with a different justification. According to this reading, Lukács agrees that overcoming irrationality with purely logical means is impossible. Besides, as he admits, the logic of the concrete concept remained “in Hegel himself in a very problematic form which was not seriously developed after him” (HCC: 142; 157). This logic cannot be the logic of a theoretical system, because its completion necessarily negates its very dialectical constitution, reproducing the antinomies of rationalism. In the Heidelberg Aesthetic, Lukács already commented on this dilemma of the de-dialectization entailed in the inherent demand of the systematization of Hegelian philosophy. In his reconstruction, the completion of the concrete concept, the conceptualization of the absolute through the return of spirit to itself, the production of the content out of the form is identical to the activation of the principle of intellectual intuition with all the antinomies that accompany it (cf. Lukács 1975c: 177–8). The danger of rigidity and fixation occurring on the level of the achieved identity of essence and being in the dialectical system poses

34

FIG: 72. Of course Lask adds right away that the “critic refuses however the presupposition of the premise: the concepts in the sense they are understood by Hegel” (FIG: 72)—a phrase not quoted by Lukács.

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the demand for a dynamic overcoming of this identity too, through returning from the infinite—thought of as achieved—to the level of the finite. However, if this movement remained at the level of the finite, the regression to “a Platonic or a Kantian, an abstract-transcendent or formal-valid world of ideas” (Lukács 1975c: 182) would be unavoidable. That is, it would entail the caging within an abstract transcendence or the abstract-empty form, which cannot be overcome through an “abstract transition from one finite to another ad infinitum,” because this would be equivalent to the “bad infinity” of the “abiding ought” that undermines the completion of the system. Therefore, the only alternative open to Hegel is—against his claim to transcend immediacy—“to concede the transformation of the finite into an infinite” (all quotes in Lukács 1975c: 182). Even before his turn to historical materialism, Lukács discerned a possible antidote to the de-dialectization entailed by the alleged achievement of the identity of subject and object in the completed system: It is the methodologically necessary—even though logically problematic—intertwining of system and history: Since the system must not remain on each level of the achieved, present, true and existent infinity, the latter must once again face a barrier, it must be reminded of an internal inadequacy to itself, in short, it must become again something finite—in order to be lead to a higher infinity. (Lukács 1975c: 182)

History is characterized by the dialectically required tension “of the finite within the infinite and reversely” (Lukács 1975c: 182), therefore it seems that this principle [i.e., of history] does not prevail only at the locus in the system ascribed to it by Hegel (as the relation between the state and history, as the transition from objective to absolute spirit), but permeates the whole system:  No concrete fulfillment and no concrete moving further from one moment to another  .  .  . can be thought of as realized without this construction. (183)

Thus, in spite of the fact that the intertwinement of system and history poses great logical problems—since the one cannot be identified with the other and neither can history be put in a specific position within the system (cf. Lukács 1975c:  180)—history takes on the role of the dialectically necessary introduction of a “level of realizing the not yet completed, but always tending towards completion, coinciding of being and ought” in the system (Lukács 1975c: 181).

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In his early work, Lukács was not negatively biased against the idea of the system. However, any interpretation of the quotes, in which he seems to postulate it, must be particularly careful, since in all cases the demand for systematization comes after the principle of approaching the unique, individual content. Thus, the system—inasmuch as it would someday become possible—must be the result of a long confrontation with “the things” themselves.35 In History and Class Consciousness, Lukács takes a further step. He emphasizes the ambiguity of Hegel’s attitude toward history and stresses the fact that “history is so much the natural, the only possible life-element of the dialectical method,” that Hegel’s attempt to smoothly integrate it “cannot succeed” (HCC: 147; 162). Instead of such an enterprise, Lukács actively propels the idea of the primacy of history over the system. Insisting on the completion of the system now appears to be an effect of the contemplative attitude of rationalist philosophy, which must be rejected and replaced by a practically oriented form of knowledge that acknowledges its radical historicality and its dependence upon real-historical contents. Thus, the traditional opinion that in History and Class Consciousness Lukács pursued the formulation of a dialectically constituted system (see, e.g., I. Féher 1992: 375–7, 380, 383–5) must be abandoned as wrong. With similar reservations one must consider readings such as that of Adorno that totally ignore Lukács’s critique of Hegel’s completion of idealist dialectics. For Lukács, Hegel unfolded the systematic-rationalist tendency of bourgeois philosophy to-its-end; therefore, its “overcoming can be only an interrelation of thought and existence that has ceased to be contemplative, the concrete demonstration of the identical subject-object” (HCC: 215, n. 52; 154, n. 1), that is, the turn to praxis. Hegel’s philosophy remained within the frame prescribed, as we will see in the second part of this book, by the bourgeois epoch. Here dialectical logic became the fundament of a new rationalist system, in which the content emanates one-sidedly from the hypostatized rational forms, finally 35

In the deleted fragment “The existence of the work” of the Heidelberg Philosophy of Art, Lukács points out that philosophy’s mission is “to learn from the things” through turning them away from “the wrong connections and the weak separations of their mere giveness” to “save them in the system” (Lukács 1974:  235). His scruple with the problem of systematization is manifested in the fact that he finally deleted his reference to the idea of a system built “from below,” while in the Heidelberg Aesthetic he proceeded to a consistent neo-Kantian defense of the autonomy of the particular spheres of validity, which are lined up with no higher principle to unify them (cf. Weisser 1992: 74). Indeed, in his obituary for Lask, Lukács connected Kant’s “rhapsodic method” with the fundamental impossibility of philosophical systematization entailed in Lask’s view on the significational differentiation of the forms, i.e., the primacy of the content. Thus, only an “asymmetrical system with many dimensions” that would be confined to describing the internal connections between those spheres can be postulated (cf. Lukács 1918b: 356–8).

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from a suprahistorical reason. This perspective does not solve the problem of irrationality, but reproduces it by concealing it and by functioning in an ideological way. The aim of those who continue the efforts to solve the problem of content cannot be to find a new, better theory, since “theoretical contemplation leads to the neglect” of the “moment” of content (HCC: 126; 139). The aim must be to break through the confinement to contemplation and to constitute the dialectical concepts in such a way as to cognitively prepare and enhance the “practical element as the principle of changing reality” (HCC: 126; 139).

4

Lukács’s Materialist Theory of History

Through his confrontation with Kant’s and Fichte’s formalism, the mythologization of aesthetic reason and also with Hegel’s dialectically constituted system, Lukács forms the outlines of an alternative theory that would combine the dialectical treatment of the unique, the “new,” the changing content, with the radical turn to “active action,” the praxis of changing the given. The central motto of this approach is the “overcoming of contemplation” toward a “practical theory that transforms reality” (HCC: 205; 225) or—according to Marx’s formulation espoused by Lukács—a “practical-critical activity” (HCC:  20, 78, 262; 35, 90, 267). The combined practical and dialectical character of such a “solution” stands in opposition to the demand for a complete theoretical system, since it emphasizes the emergence of the “new” that is not formalistically conceptualized as something merely given, but it is grasped as a moment in the dialectical process of practically changing the world.1 In Marx’s work Lukács found exactly this direction of a practically oriented, dialectical theory that seeks to overcome irrationality, however not theoretically-contemplatively, through some kind of panlogicist formalism, but through the praxis of changing the world. To be precise, Lukács recognized in Marx the thinker who “extricated” dialectical method from Hegelian panlogism, and thus transformed idealist dialectics into materialist dialectics. In Lukács’s words, “Marx’s critique of Hegel is the direct continuation and extension of the criticism that Hegel himself leveled at Kant and Fichte,” therefore “Marx’s dialectical method was born … as a consistent continuation of what Hegel had striven for but had failed to achieve in a concrete form” (HCC: 17; 31).

1

The aesthetic harmonization of form and content is incorporated in the practical-dialectical principle of the primacy of content. As we saw above (Sections 3.4 and 3.5), Lukács had early on been critical of the romantic abolition of the limits between art and life. Therefore, it is meaningless to search for traces of an aestheticization of his theory of society and history, especially in his Marxist period.

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For Lukács, Marx adopted Hegel’s understanding of theory as the “selfknowledge of reality”—reality as the mediated historical totality. He clearly discerned, however, that Hegelian “dialectic—as an inner, real dialectic of the historical process—was a mere illusion” (HCC: 16; 29–30), since Hegel failed to “overcome the duality of thought and being, of theory and practice, of subject and object” (HCC:  16; 29). Thus, he remained imprisoned in the Kantian framework, as his “knowledge is merely knowledge about an—essentially alien in itself—material, but not the self-knowledge of this material, the human society” (HCC: 16; 30). As Hegel’s theory repeats the structure of formalism, its conservative tendency—the tendency toward the completion of the system, the post festum, forced harmonization of the opposites that “accordingly had to turn to the past rather than the future” (HCC: 18; 31–2)—finally tends to dominate. Nevertheless, as we saw in Section 3.7, in Hegel’s work one can also discern a revolutionary moment that points to a non-systematic dialectic of history—nonsystematic, because it refuses to violently harmonize the subject and the object, the form and the material, and rather learns a lesson from their continuing inadequacy in reality. For Lukács, with his critique of Hegel, Marx revealed this possibility by acknowledging the relative independence of the material in theory—that remains in spite of all dialectical mediation—in order to pave the way for the transformative praxis of the collective subject of history. However, the established reading of History and Class Consciousness overlooks Lukács’s turning away from Hegelian systematization and its logical presuppositions and downplays his radical shift to praxis, regarding his approach as a mere repetition of idealist dialectical theory that seeks the philosophical identity of subject and object. In the framework of reconsidering this interpretation, in the present chapter I investigate the methodological guidelines of the materialist theory of history in the form they appear through Lukács’s confrontation with rival theories. Such theories include different versions of the formalist philosophy of history (Section 4.1) and the scientific conceptualization of society (Section 4.2). The fundament of Lukács’s confrontation with them is a metacritique of the formalist separation of theory and practice from the viewpoint of the postulate of its sublation (Section 4.3). A  further fundament of his materialist theory of history is the principle of the primacy of content, dialectically mediated with the principle of subjectivity (Section 4.4). Lukács’s perspective can be summarized as a dialectical theory of history that moves beyond the traditional philosophical dilemma of subjectivism and objectivism (Section 4.5). Thus, the central category of this

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theory, the concept of the “form of objectivity” shows a dual, epistemological and ontological nature (Section 4.6).

4.1. Lukács’s critique of the formalist philosophy of history Formalism is not exclusively a feature of idealist theories. Lukács points out the fact that the philosophers of the early bourgeois materialism of the eighteenth century remained imprisoned within the dogmatic-formalist conceptualization of history. In their thought, the inherent problem of modern formalism, the problem of content, takes on the form of an antinomy between considering man as a “producer” or as a “product” of his “social milieu” (cf. HCC: 134–5; 148–9). At this point, Lukács draws on the relevant analyses of Plekhanov. Examining the antinomic views in the work of Holbach, in his Contributions to the History of Materialism (1921) Plekhanov noted:  “For the Materialists of the eighteenth century it was impossible to know whether ‘public opinion’ forms the social milieu or the social milieu forms ‘public opinion.’ ”2 In spite of their materialist orientation, philosophers such as Holbach or Helvétius3 were obliged to accept that “for the system of rationalism historical becoming is a limit of possible knowledge” in general.4 This acceptance of an insuperable barrier of human reason can easily be explained from a logical point of view. The formalist approach searches for a stable and unchangeable element in history. In this search it transforms current social formations into eternal, “natural” forms or into a “goal” which history as a whole moves toward (cf. HCC: 47–8; 58–9). Thus, “the objects of history appear as the objects of immutable, eternal laws of nature” (HCC: 48; 59). As rationalists, the materialists of the eighteenth century could not but orient themselves to the universal logical forms and to their corresponding logically-formally produced contents, which “rationalist thought must define . . . as immutable” (HCC: 143–4; 194). Thus, this way of thinking distances itself from the “real contents” and

2

3

4

Plechanow (1921:  58). See the analysis of this antinomy in Holbach’s thought in Plechanow (1921: 54–9). Plekhanov detects a similar antinomy between interest and public opinion in Helvétius (cf. Plechanow 1921: 121–5). He finds the causes of this theoretical inability of Holbach and Helvétius in the metaphysical orientation of their thought and in the lack of dialectical understanding of the historical process (see Plechanow 1921: 59–60, 125–6). HCC:  143; 158. Plekhanov quotes Holbach’s phrase that “man does not have the ability to know everything; he does not have the ability to know his origin, and he does not have the ability to reach the essence of things, nor the first principles” (Plechanow 1921: 9, similarly 51, 58). Lukács refers precisely to these pages of Plekhanov’s Contributions (cf. HCC: 216, n. 57; 158, n. 1).

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their alteration by building a system of formally describable laws, on the basis of which it calculates “foreseeable possibilities” (HCC:  144; 194). By its very nature, the focus on the concept of universal law entails the negation of the “new,” that is, the negation of the emergence of the radically other, that which cannot be logically derived from given conditions.5 But if the “new” is the element of history par excellence, if history represents the “uninterrupted emergence of the qualitatively new” (HCC:  144; 159), then for formalist thought, for methodological reasons, the historical process becomes a thing in itself.6 Vis-á-vis this dogmatic-formalist theory a “critical”-formalist methodology of history and philosophy of history is developed, in which the problem of the conceptual mediation of all historical knowledge occupies a central position. In spite of the critical alertness against dogmatism, in this case as well, the same methodological structure is repeated. The problem of content is merely transferred to a next, “higher” level. Lukács shows this persistent reappearance of the same fundamental problem in the methodologically subtle critical philosophy of the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century—more concretely, in Rickert’s developed methodological reflections on the science and the philosophy of history.7 Continuing the tradition of the southwest German school of neo-Kantianism, inaugurated by his teacher Windelband,8 Rickert was particularly interested in the logic of historical knowledge. He connected history with the individualizing method (individualisierendes Verfahren) that—in opposition to the generalizing method of the natural sciences that aims at formulating the universal laws of phenomena—aims to conceptualize the unrepeatable individuality (cf. Rickert 1910: 52–6, 80–3; 1907: 335–41). Thus, there are two fundamental goals of science that correspond to different methods. In History and Class Consciousness, Lukács explicitly acknowledges the fact that neo-Kantianism represented a progress in theory compared to the dogmatic and empiricist theories of history, insofar as it revealed the subjective conditions of the constitution of historical knowledge.9 5

6

7

8

9

“It is of the essence of such a law that within its jurisdiction nothing new can happen by definition” (HCC: 144; 159). Lukács repeats the same association of the view Plekhanov ascribes to the materialists of the eighteenth century and the Kantian attitude toward becoming regarded as a thing in itself, in Lukács (1971b: 9, n. 16; 1973c, 248, n. 18). Lukács refers to Rickert’s famous book The Limits of the Concept Formation of the Natural Sciences (2nd edn, 1913). On the theme in question see especially Rickert (1913: 274–353, 586–610). At that time, Rickert had presented the main lines of his views on the historical sciences and the philosophy of history more briefly in another two of his publications. See Rickert (1907, 1910). The basis for Rickert’s analyses was Windelband’s distinction between “nomothetic” and “idiographic” sciences. See Windelband (1911b). Lukács praises Rickert and “the modern theory of history” for this achievement (cf. HCC: 154; 170).

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At the same time, however, Lukács points out the limits of the critical approach to history. For Rickert the distinctive concept formation of the historical sciences is determined by the central position values occupy in them. The object of history itself, the cultural formations can be constituted only through “relating to values” (Wertbeziehung; cf. Rickert 1910: 19–21, 87–8; 1907: 355–6)—in opposition to the natural sciences, the object of which is thought of as “free of values” (wertfrei; cf. Rickert 1907: 354). As a result, in order to be cognized, the “raw facts” are selected and considered from the viewpoint of such a connection—they are thus always mediated by values. Through relating to values the individualizing method integrates historical individuality into the historical whole in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions, thus retaining the unique and unrepeatable character of historical phenomena.10 However, the question raised is where these values originate from. According to Rickert, this problem never becomes central in ordinary historical research, because the historian can lean upon the values given within a certain cultural context, the values of “our society” taken as universal forms after abstracting from their particular content (cf. Rickert 1910: 87–8, 139–40; 1907: 358–9). In this way the arbitrariness of the selection and the interpretation of the given material of historical knowledge is firstly transcended (cf. Rickert 1910: 99–100). But the problem of arbitrariness is thus only transferred to the level of values, in relation to which the historian judges the significance of his material, since a higher criterion is needed to evaluate their de facto validity: “For the historian the ‘cultural values’ become a thing in itself ” (HCC: 151; 209). At the heart of the critical methodology of history the same problem of the irrationality of the given “fact” that accompanies—as we have seen—formalist thought from its birth onwards returns. This dimension of the problem of values as “things in themselves” is also connected with the problem of reconstructing the totality of historical knowledge, a fact Rickert was perceptive enough to discern (cf. HCC:  151; 167). Relating to the given values of the community can suffice to secure the scientific credibility of particular historical studies, but the claim to universality raised by historical knowledge itself poses the 10

Cf. Rickert (1907: 343–6). We are already familiar with this theoretical problem from the discussion on the problem of individuality in Lask. It is interesting to note the affinity between the holisticindividualizing approach—that is based on integrating individuality within the wider synchronic context and understanding it as the “new” within the framework of the diachronic sequence—and Lukács’s methodological guidelines. The great divide between them consists, of course, in the fact that Lukács’s dialectical approach aspired to transcend Rickert’s purely subjective-methodological perspective.

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question of the unity of the particular historical cognitions in the framework of “universal history.” As Rickert confesses, approaching universal history could only become possible from the standpoint of a “substantive philosophy of history” (Rickert 1913: 606), founded on a suprahistorical system of cultural values (cf. Rickert 1910: 142–6; 1907: 394, 399–403). Since Rickert retains the formalist method of separating the rational form (universal value) from the irrational content (historical material), their antinomy is reproduced on a higher level. As Lukács shows, the “critical” resolution of this antinomy takes on the form of a search for a “principle of reflection,” that is, a philosophy of history that would be “transcendent in respect to the particular historical events,” the irrationality of which would remain undiminished (cf. HCC:  152; 167). As Lukács notes, the problem of totality is not an issue of the scope of the historical object, that is, the transition from particular historical studies to the level of universal history and its philosophical conceptualization, but an issue of method (cf. HCC: 151; 167). It is characteristic that the opponent of formalism in history, historicism or “historical relativism” (HCC:  157; 173) lives a parasitical life as the defender of the unrepeatable individuality of the historical material, who negates its reduction to abstract universal laws. However, historicism is in essence nothing but a reversed formalism:  By abolishing “every meaning, every purposefulness from the historical process” (HCC:  48; 59) it remains at the given immediacy. Thus it results in the “abolition of history” (HCC: 157; 173), the abolition of “the process of history” (HCC:  48; 59). For historicism, “history—finally—becomes an irrational rule of blind forces  .  .  . that can only be described pragmatically but cannot be rationally comprehended” (HCC: 48–9; 60). From the standpoint of historical materialism, the deeper correlation between the two poles in the dilemma of modern historical knowledge (formalism vs. historicism) is revealed in the fact that they both result in an abolition of history as a succession of qualitatively new social-historical forms. The impasse in the bourgeois theory of history is an effect of the domination of formalist method. It is connected with its inherent inability to conceptualize the dialectical unity of form and content, its inability to grasp history as the change in the forms of “conjoining men in society, as forms that, starting from the objective economic relations, dominate all relations between men (and hence also man’s relations with himself, with nature etc.)” (HCC: 48; 59). In Section 4.6 we will see that Lukács calls these forms “forms of objectivity.”

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4.2. Lukács’s critique of political economy and reformist Marxism Formalist rationality not only permeates the bourgeois philosophy of history, but also the developed social and historical sciences. Such is the case of the bourgeois political economy, on which Marx focused his critique. Political economy is a science of capitalist society. It corresponds to the concrete constitution of capitalist economy, that is, to the fact that it forms a separate sphere which is ruled by specific laws that can, in principle, be known and more or less accurately calculated (cf. HCC: 5–6; 18). Thus, at first sight there seems to be a real correspondence between the object and the quantitative-calculative method of political economy that searches for constant relations and laws of economic development, considering it in the natural-scientific way as a kind of humanly constituted “nature.” However, bourgeois economic science reveals the very same antinomy between universal-rational form and the impermeable “concrete underlying reality” that “is considered to be lying methodically and in principle beyond its grasp” (HCC: 104; 116). In political economy, this unknown “underlying reality” is the “use-value,” for the conceptualization of which this science claims to not be responsible (cf. HCC: 104; 116). In addition, the abstract confrontation between the scientific categories and the “material substratum” forces economic science to interpret “this material as an immutable, eternal ‘datum’ ” (HCC: 105; 116). Thus, the social determination of scientific concepts, as well as the role of the material in “the emergence and the demise” of the social forms of its mediation is obscured (cf. HCC: 105; 116). It is, however, precisely this methodologically ignored use-value, “the qualitative being of the ‘things’ ” (HCC:  105; 117) that comes to the fore in periods in which the “normal” function of the laws of capitalist economy collapses. These are the periods of crisis, the true cause and meaning of which cannot be grasped by political economy, since it ignores the qualitative element of economic life, that is, the concrete, qualitatively determined social needs that have to be satisfied. These needs then appear as the limit of this scientific concept formation (cf. HCC: 106–7; 117–18). Lukács’s critique of bourgeois economics is not confined to showing that it conceals specific class interests—it focuses on the deeper level of its methodological constitution. Its methodological confinements compel it to understand crisis as an irrational fact. The rationally unexpected occurrence

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of the “new” is interpreted as “a catastrophe, a sudden, unexpected turn that comes from outside and eliminates all mediations.”11 Scientific thought remains caught in immediacy, in the “rigid isolation of its objects,” ignoring “their interrelatedness, the interaction between these ‘relations’ and the ‘things’ ” (HCC:  154; 170). Finally, bourgeois economics ignores the “categories of mediation” that would allow relating the unmediated given to the reconstructed totality of society’s economic life (cf. HCC: 156; 172). Lukács formulates the same methodological critique against the “scientific Marxism” that dominated in the Second International. Despite the fact that they demand the transformation of capitalist economy, the different versions of “scientific” Marxism reproduce the fundamental formalist orientation of the dominant bourgeois thought. This is why they must remain imprisoned in the dilemma between fatalism in theory and utopian voluntarism in praxis. Whether in the form of a “blinkered” (HCC: 5; 17) or a more subtle empiricism, scientific Marxism remains faithful to the method of natural sciences as the only legitimate way of approaching reality. Scientific knowledge thus means reducing the isolated “facts” to equally isolated causal factors and laws, so as to make them foreseeable (cf. HCC: 5; 17–18). We already saw that this method necessarily leads to misrecognizing the historical change of the object itself (cf. HCC:  6; 19). Even more crucial is, however, the fact that this kind of science refers to “facts” that “are—precisely in respect to the structure of their objectivity—products of a specific historical epoch, namely capitalism” (HCC: 7; 20). Even if such a theory refers to the dialectic, it reinterprets it idealistically, and thus it repeats the antinomies of formalism, which it firstly aspired to resolve. In any case, in view of the theoretical fixation of facticity, the postulated social change becomes a utopian demand. Lukács traces this tendency in the “orthodox Hegelianism” of the founding figure of German social democracy, Ferdinand Lassalle. In History and Class Consciousness he detects Lassalle’s oscillation between the fatalist and the utopian tendencies of his social and political theory, which he links to the fact that Lassalle remained caught in the immediacy of capitalist society and thus formalistically separated the economic from the political sphere.12 Lukács locates the split into an empiricist-fatalist and a utopian component as a basic trait of the 11

12

HCC: 154; 169. In the note, Lukács directly analogizes the bourgeois materialism of the eighteenth century with the method of political economy and modern jurisprudence (cf. HCC: 217, n. 7; 169, n. 1). HCC:  195–6; 213–14. In his review on Lassalle’s correspondence, Lukács analyses in detail the persistent and multiple reappearance of the antinomies of bourgeois theory in Lassalle’s thought and practice (see particularly Lukács 1972: 6–19; 1973b: 207–29). In this text it is particularly clear that Lukács was aware that even a “dialectical” theory runs the risk of regressing to idealist formalism.

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further development of social-democratic thought, for example, in the work of Karl Kautsky (cf. HCC: 221, n. 59; 215, n. 1) or in Eduard Bernstein’s revisionism (cf. HCC:  5, 29–30, 182; 17, 41–2, 199–200). In this way, Lukács transcends the usual left criticism of social-democratic ideology for its tendency toward a compromise with the interests of the bourgeoisie. He detects the deeper root of this compromise in the adoption of the dominant bourgeois form of objectivity. Because of this deeper capitulation with the existent, social democracy is, for methodological reasons, unable to concretely discern the emergence of the new in history and to practically use this knowledge to change society (cf. HCC: 196– 7; 214–16).

4.3. The metacritique of knowledge and the unity of theory and praxis As we have already seen, a general characteristic of the philosophical and scientific knowledge of bourgeois society is the fact that they artificially isolate knowledge from history and therefore develop the tendency to theoretically justify the existent. This apologetic function of established knowledge is internally linked to its methodological fundament, as the latter corresponds to the basic principles that organize social reality itself. This is the core idea of one of the fundamental components of Lukács’s theory, namely the metacritique of bourgeois philosophical and scientific thought.13 Lukács does not tire of repeating that the antinomies of bourgeois thought, particularly the opposition of form and content, are a manifestation of the contradictions of the “social being” of the bourgeois epoch.14 The separation of theory and praxis, necessity and freedom, subject and object, in other words the dominant formalist model of thought reflects a fundamental structure that also permeates the dominant social relations and practices. In the second part of this book we will examine Lukács’s theory of the social-historical framework of the capitalist epoch. Here I confine myself to a rough outline 13

14

Andrew Feenberg suggest the adoption of the term “metacritique” used by Habermas in Knowledge and Interest after restoring its meaning as it can be found in Lukács and Marx. In their work, the “metacritical” analysis of knowledge does not aim at revealing abstract anthropological determinations of cognitive processes—as in the case of Habermas—but finding the links between theoretical abstractions and the concrete social-historical reality (cf. Feenberg 2014:  11–12). Jay Bernstein and Timothy Hall use the term in a similar way (cf. Bernstein 1984: 3–5; Hall 2015: 87– 91). My slight differentiation from Feenberg (and Bernstein and Hall) is that I do not confine the application of the term to the critique of philosophy, but extend it to modern science. See, e.g., HCC: 105, 112, 135, 139–40, 150, 188, 197; 116–17, 124, 149, 153–4, 166, 205–6, 215–16.

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of his parallelism between the antinomies of thought and the contradictions of society. In the bourgeois epoch “man” is acknowledged as the “creator” of society. However, this man corresponds to the isolated bourgeois subject, the activity of which is formally rational, but does not constitute a rational totality. Therefore, the social reality “produced” by human activity appears to be determined by alien laws. This opposition between the individual and the social-historical objectivity is the substratum of the separations and antitheses that characterize the bourgeois worldview and philosophy (cf. HCC: 135; 149). For Lukács The contradiction that appears . . . between subjectivity and objectivity in modern rationalist formal systems, the entanglements and equivocations hidden in their concepts of subject and object, the conflict between their nature as systems “produced” by “us” and their fatalistic necessity distant from and alien to man is nothing but the logical-methodological formulation of the modern state of society: A state in which, on the one hand, men are progressively demolishing, replacing and leaving behind them the “natural,” irrational, merely given bonds, while, on the other hand, they erect around themselves in the reality they have created and “produced” a kind of second nature, the unfolding of which opposes them with exactly the same inexorable necessity as was the case earlier on with irrational forces of nature (more exactly: the social relations which appeared in this form). (HCC: 128; 141–2)

While the metacritique of bourgeois thought is a form of its social critique, it is apparent that it is not a simple critique of ideology, in the sense of relating the dominant knowledge to specific social interests. This is a dimension Lukács mentions without putting it at the center of his metacritique. In his eyes, such a connection is an effect of a deeper link that has a methodological nature. Formalism is an intellectual model as well as a form of social practice that reproduces the class structure and the respective class interests. We have already encountered the same view when we examined the methodological limitations of political economy and “scientific” Marxism (Section 4.2). The critique of the formalist divide of theory and praxis presupposes the idea of their unity as a criterion on which I make some short remarks here. The metacritique of bourgeois thought is a social theory of knowledge that takes into consideration the unity of intellectual and historical “genesis” (cf. HCC: 155; 171), as well as their difference (cf. HCC: 8–9; 21). This means that the knowledge of the inherent contradictions of society does not suffice to overcome them in reality. To achieve such an overcoming, reality itself has to be

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changed through social practice.15 For the practical theory that is constituted in this way, praxis is not a mere extension of theory, a simple “implementation” of logical conclusions, safeguarded by “pure” theory. Theory inherently refers to something extratheoretical, since the true overcoming of the antinomies is only possible in the framework of the “active act,”16 the “transformative practice” (HCC: 221, n. 61; 217, n. 1) that changes society. Then, the “principle of the practical that would truly overcome contemplation” (HCC: 122; 135), the principle of the homogeneity of form and content, is found in the real activity of men producing the conditions of their social existence. But at the same time, we must consider the fact that these conditions are also the ones that determine men. Overcoming dualism then presupposes a turn to the dialectical conceptualization of the practical interrelation of man and the world, in other words, the turn toward the “most essential interaction: the dialectical relation between subject and object in the historical process” (HCC: 3; 15). Through such a dialectical conceptualization, for the first time it becomes possible to understand reality as a human “product,” without succumbing to the “rationalist prejudice” that “had recognised as deeds only those actions which were consciously performed whereas the historical environment we have created . . . was regarded as a reality which influences us by virtue of laws alien to us” (HCC: 145; 160–61). Lukács’s critique of Fichte which we considered in Section 3.3 showed that the turn to praxis alone does not suffice to overcome the antinomies of formalism if practice continues to be thought of as individual ethical action. Lukács remarks that, in order to transcend Hegelian conservatism, the left Hegelians recurred to a Fichtean radicalization of Hegelian philosophy, which always resulted however, in returning to formalism.17 Thus, apart from the practical turn, an internal transformation of the Hegelian dialectic is needed through a radical, materialist historicization of theoretical categories.18 Hence, the dialectical method of 15

16

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18

As Beiersdörfer notes, following the famous Marxian thesis on Feuerbach, Lukács makes a turn to praxis and, thus, transcends the epistemological viewpoint of philosophy (cf. Beiersdörfer 1986: 120–21). Rockmore totally overlooks the practical critique of the modern theory of knowledge and maintains that “Lukács insists on the need for a theoretical solution” (Rockmore 2002: 126). To justify his thesis on the tension between Lukács’s philosophy and the theoretical concessions to his communist political engagement, Rockmore moves away from the true core of Lukács’s understanding of theory. The frequent use of Fichte’s concept of “active action” in the reification essay can easily lead to misunderstanding. For Lukács, this is only the code word for the practical homogeneity of form and content—it no longer alludes to the first principle of a philosophical systematization. Cf. Lukács (1972: 4–8; 1973b: 204–10; 1971b: 5–8, 11–13; 1973c: 242–6, 251–5). It becomes apparent that Adorno’s equation of Lukács’s alleged idealism with that of Fichte (see above, the introduction) does not take into account Lukács’s clearly articulated critique of every kind of Fichtean formalism. This is the meaning of the view that the concrete historical process represents the “original dialectical element” (Lukács 1972: 9; 1973b: 211) and that dialectic must, therefore, be founded in real history

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the adequate theory is internally linked to its “practical essence.” After all, the “materialist dialectic is a revolutionary dialectic” (HCC: 2; 14).

4.4. Materialist dialectic The problem of the relation between theory and practice already points to the second fundamental principle of an alternative theory of history, that is, the principle of its materialist-dialectical constitution. The element that gives dialectical theory its materialist character is its orientation toward the content, the “material in the logical-philosophical sense” (HCC: 142; 157). By historicizing all that is immediately given, dialectical theory founds its “logical problems” on “the qualitative material nature of the content” (HCC:  142; 157). Drawing upon the logic of the concrete concept, the materialist dialectic overcomes the rigidity of forms and contents that characterizes the abstract rationalist-formalist conception of history. This dialectic is the only one that can answer the “problem of history” by theoretically grasping the “becoming of the real contents,” that is, conceptualizing history as the uninterrupted emergence of the radically “new,” in view of which formalism’s one-sided emphasis on the identical fails (cf. HCC: 144; 159). The primacy of the content entails the primacy of history as “the natural, the only possible life-element of the dialectical method” (HCC: 147; 162; see also Section 3.7). Indeed, dialectical theory paves the way to considering “the whole of reality as history” (HCC: 145; 160). It leans upon the theoretical acknowledgment of a radical notion of history as the process of the emergence of the “new,” the nonidentical, to which theory must adjust the formation of its concepts. It must not escape our attention that Lukács does not give a recipe as for how the concepts of such a theory must be constituted. Since history is understood as the “original dialectical element”—as in the case of Marx—it becomes possible to “hark” the “decisive tendencies of social becoming” and thus to make them “an object of knowledge” (Lukács 1972: 9; 1973b: 211). Elsewhere, Lukács refers to Hegel’s realistic intention “to conceive of the present as simultaneously constituted by what has become and by what is becoming” and to understand the “tendencies” that point toward the future. In this intention Lukács recognizes the “seed of ” Hegel’s “real historical dialectic

and not be confined to the purely logical “supra-historicality of the system of categories” (Lukács 1972: 18; 1973b: 227–8).

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(the dialectic of history itself grasped in thought).”19 For this approach it is obvious “that the real philosophical ‘deduction’ of a concept, a category can only consist in its ‘production’ and in the demonstration of its historical genesis, and that history also consists in the uninterrupted change of those forms which the preceding undialectical thought . . . viewed as eternal and supra-historical” (Lukács 1971b: 28; 1973c: 278). Marx paved the way in this direction by positing the goal of developing the categories according to their succession in the object, in bourgeois society.20 He thus erected the historical concretization as the “only control device and the only help” against the “solidification of dialectical method.”21 In view of such an open conception of method it is meaningless to complain about an alleged neo-Kantian separation of method from the content in History and Class  Consciousness, as Cornelius Castoriadis does, referring to the definition of Marxism as a method Lukács suggests in his essay “What is orthodox Marxism?” (see Castoriadis 1987: 12). Lukács’s method lacks precisely what Castoriadis ascribes to it (see Castoriadis 1987:  12–13), that is, fixed, suprahistorical categories. Gillian Rose comes much closer to Lukács’s actual spirit, when she notes that “as ‘method’ Lukács did not mean a neo-Kantian general logic, nor did he intend any codification of dialectical materialism,” but his reference to Marxist method was, “in fact, an invitation to hermeneutic anarchy.”22 Does this mean a complete surrender of the materialist dialectic to arbitrariness? This method may not have fixed categories, since its concepts always depend on the changing contents, but it has a repertoire of dialectical schemes of thought, which allow for the constitution of fluid, changing concepts. In Lukács’s reconstructions two fundamental logical schemes prevail: First, the scheme of mediation of the immediately given, the “naked fact” of formalist knowledge, that is, the scheme of integrating all individual objects in the “concrete totality of 19

20

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22

Lukács (1971b: 10; 1973c: 249). According to Lukács, Hegel consequently abandoned this attitude and distanced himself from history as a dynamic process (Lukács 1971b: 10–11; 1973c: 250–51). Lukács (1971b:  32; 1973c:  286). As Marx notes, “it would be impractical and wrong to arrange the economic categories in the order in which they were the determining factors in the course of history. Their order of sequence is rather determined by the relation which they bear to one another in modern bourgeois society, and which is the exact opposite of what seems to be their natural order or the order of their historical development” (Marx 1904: 304; 1961: 638). This is why in the theoretical exposition of capitalist economy the category of capital must precede the category of land ownership, despite the fact that the historical occurrence of the latter preceded that of the first. HCC:  207; 226. Such an anti-formalist attitude also satisfies Lask’s demand for an “unbiased immersion in historical reality” (FIG: 12). Rose (2009:  31). Of course Rose’s position does not explain how we should think of Lukács’s interpretation of Marx’s notion of form that is not constituted “through abstraction, but through inclusion of the historical content concerned” (Beiersdörfer 1986: 273, n. 33).

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the historical world.”23 This holistic approach to the qualitatively unique does not mean the abolition of its otherness but, on the contrary, its salvation from reduction to abstract universal concepts. In this perspective the social-historical totality does not represent a fixed universal principle, but is itself fragmented and changing—therefore theory remains open to its contradictory, dynamically evolving structure (cf. HCC: 9–10; 22). Second, closely interwoven with the dialectic of immediacy and mediation is another fundamental dialectical scheme, the sublation of illusion (Schein), of the form of appearance (Erscheinungsform) of the merely real existence (reale Existenz), and consequently the revelation of essence (Wesen), of the totally mediated actual reality (Wirklichkeit, cf. HCC: 5–6, 7–8; 18, 20–21). This scheme stems from the Hegelian dialectic of essence (cf. also Cerutti 1970: 198). As Lukács notes, “the kernel of the Hegelian dialectic capable of development is indeed in the doctrine of essence,” as this “kernel” was decisively “worked into Marx’s and Engels’s dialectic of history and into the understanding of the structure of capitalist society” (Lukács 1971b: 25, n. 50, also 27–8; 1973c: 273, n. 56, also 277–8). Beiersdörfer interrelates these two dialectical schemes under the general notion of mediation, which thus contains, on the one hand, the “mediation of the immediately given with the ‘totality of experience’ ” and on the other hand, the “mediation of appearance and essence.” He also correctly explains that “essence” in this context does not have an essentialist meaning, but alludes to the “praxeological foundation of social theory” (all quotes from Beiersdörfer 1986:  130). In order to avoid such misinterpretations, his suggestion that we understand Lukács’s dialectic of mediation as a genetic approach to the historicality of the object and, at the same time, as a conceptualization of its function within the totality of social relations is useful. Lukács method could in fact be characterized as genetic structural functionalism or critical systems theory, providing of course that this characterization would not delete its dialectical nature (cf. Beiersdörfer 1986: 130–34, 199–204). Relying on Beiersdörfer’s reading, one can indeed deal with some of the most frequent misinterpretations of Lukács’s approach:  First, the view that talking about the “totality” entails the absolutist postulate of acquiring knowledge of “everything.” However, Lukács was probably better trained in Kant’s critique of totality than Kant’s contemporary imitators. He very well knew that “a theory

23

HCC: 145; 160. In respect to this scheme, Lukács mainly draws on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Cf., e.g., HCC: 155–6; 171–2. See also Cerutti (1970: 197).

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that—while remaining contemplative—deals with ‘all problems’ in a substantive manner . . . is an impossibility” (HCC: 221, n. 61; 167, n. 1). But this did not deter even Lukács’s neo-Kantian teachers from using the concept of totality in the field of the knowledge of history and culture, where it is methodologically necessary. Lukács followed this theoretical direction, although he transcended it of course toward the Marxian unity of thought and being in an ontologicaldialectical theory of history. As we saw in the previous chapter, he admitted that theory itself always remains contemplative, that is, dualist—thus he rejected the idea of a completed rationalist system. His project of a practically guided conceptualization of the totality does not aim at acquiring the “knowledge of everything,” but at the dialectical mediation through the detection of central principles that structure an open historical whole by permeating every particular element of it (cf. HCC: 198; 217). I will return to this aspect in Section 4.6. The second misinterpretation ascribes to Lukács a kind of economic determinism.24 Generally, this critique is simply incomprehensible; it can only rest upon a totally superficial knowledge of Lukács’s oeuvre or the vulgar view that every kind of Marxism is “in the final analysis” nothing but an economic reductionism. However, Lukács could not distance himself more clearly from economism than he did when he argued that “it is not the primacy of economic motives in historical explanation that constitutes the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois thought, but the point of view of totality” (HCC:  27; 39). After all, from the beginning Lukács’s dialectical theory was developed as a critique of the methodological presuppositions of every kind of reductionism, including economic reductionism, that is, as a critique of the formalist-rationalist model of knowledge. Therefore, it is correct that, by definition, in Lukács there “can be no question of economy as a historical-universal basis of reduction” (Beiersdörfer 1986: 132, similarly 166; also cf. Mészáros 1972: 71–4). Equally problematic is, third, imputing to Lukács a kind of functionalist determinism (see, e.g., Honneth 2008:  23). When I  referred above to Beiersdörfer’s interpretation of Lukács’s theory as a “genetic functionalism” or a “critical systems theory,” I stressed the need to rule out its interpretation as a timeless, formalist analysis of social structures.25 Indeed, the genetic-historical 24

25

E.g., Honneth imputes to Lukács the view that “the expansion of commodity exchange” is the “social cause” of the phenomenon of reification (Honneth 2008: 22, similarly 28). Closely related to this interpretation is the thesis that Lukács’s reductionism results in a “totalization” of the instrumental rationality of capitalism (see Honneth 1999: 76, 82). Cerutti emphasizes the fact that “Lukács does not understand the category of totality objectivistically as ‘extensive-substantial completeness’, nor functionalistically as interaction” and, consequently, stresses the dialectical nature of his theory that postulates the adaptation of logical forms to the historical content concerned (see Cerutti 1970: 195–6).

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and the structural-functionalist moment of this theory are dialectically mediated and mutually balanced:  Structures and their functions are always thought of as historical, while historical practice is always mediated by existent social structures. When Lukács talks about the “function” of a moment within the concrete totality (e.g., in HCC: 13, 186–7; 27, 204–5) he does not draw upon functionalism or systems theory; rather, he refers to a theory of historically concrete dialectical relations between structures and agency.26 The difference between this theory and ordinary functionalism becomes even clearer if one considers the fact that, for Lukács, the usual functionality of social formations includes its opposite, namely its disintegration in periods of crisis (see Section 6.3). Ultimately, normal functionalism or systems theory are, because of their methodological constitution on the basis of formalist rationality, totally alien to Lukács’s historical-materialist dialectic. A brief reference to Lukács’s reconstruction of the most characteristic example of such a theory, the Marxian critique of political economy, can facilitate the comprehension of his method. For Lukács, Marx’s critique is precisely based on positioning the immediately given “facts” and concepts—like commodity, money, price, wages, profit, capital etc.—in the totality of capitalist economy as a partial system of the entire bourgeois society, thus allowing for their comprehension as forms of appearance of specific social-historical relations. In this way, their historical character becomes apparent: Behind the veil of their facticity the “essence” of a concrete social process of production and reproduction appears, based on historically determined power relations. At the same time the “necessity” of the illusionary appearance of the immediately given “facts” of the capitalist totality becomes comprehensible (cf. HCC: 8; 21). However, the materialist dialectic would remain one-sided and dogmatic if it was thought of only as the dialectic of social-historical objectivity. As we saw in Section 3.7, for such a theory of the historical process the question of the real subject of history automatically arises for methodological reasons.27 Every level of the dialectical mediation has its own moment of immediacy: “To go beyond this immediacy can only mean the genesis, the ‘production’ of the object” 26

27

Feenberg and Beiersdörfer interpret Lukács’s position in this direction (see Feenberg 2014: 114–19, 224–30; Beiersdörfer 1986: 132–3, 201–2). This is overlooked by Beiersdörfer who, despite his generally very careful reconstruction, thinks it is possible—indeed, it is called for—to separate Lukács’s social theory from its praxeologicalphilosophical infrastructure, which he interprets, in line with the common critique, as a Hegelian, teleologically constituted dialectic of subject and object (see Beiersdörfer 1986: 102, 107–9, 121–3, 127, 134, 207–8). On the contrary, the unity of social theory and philosophy in Lukács is stressed by Bernstein (see Bernstein 1984: 1, 4).

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(HCC: 163; 171). However, since dialectical theory conceptualizes this genesis as dialectical interaction between the subject and the object, it is obliged—if it is not going to return at some point of reflection to mere immediacy—to “produce” the subject of production (cf. HCC: 140, 155–6; 155, 171–2). Otherwise, the subject must be considered itself to be a given fact and this obviously leads us back to some kind of immediacy.28 Only conceptualizing the concrete, historically realized unity of subject and object opens up the perspective of the historical process as the substance and simultaneously the subject of reality. Lukács’s concrete views on the subject of history will preoccupy us in the third part of this study. But already the discussion of the abstract methodological principles of his approach, offered here, shows that an alternative reading of his materialist theory is possible, even necessary. This reading distances itself decisively from the customary critique of Lukács’s alleged “idealism” and “metaphysics of history.”

4.5. Dialectical theory of history: Beyond objectivism and subjectivism For Lukács, Marx was the theorist who paved the way to a practically oriented, materialist-dialectical theory of the social-historical totality. After all the preceding elaborations it must be clear that in his opinion it would be wrong to interpret Marx’s approach in an exclusively epistemological way, as a holistic method for the acquisition of historical knowledge. Such a one-sided reading would amount to a return to the antinomies of formalism, and Lukács knew this very well. As he characteristically notes, for the dialectical-practical theory, history as totality (universal history) is neither the mechanical aggregate of individual historical events, nor is it a principle of reflection transcendent in respect to the events of history, which could therefore only become effective with the aid of a special discipline, the philosophy of history. (HCC: 151–2; 167) 28

Cf. HCC: 155; 171. Because of its ambiguity, it will always be possible to misinterpret the “production of the subject” as a conceptually mythological principle. Then, Lukács’s proletariat appears as a mere substitute for Hegel’s world spirit and class consciousness as the substitute for “absolute knowledge.” See, e.g., Marck (1977:  55); Arato and Breines (1979:  130, 156, 159); Beiersdörfer (1986: 107, 123). Even Lukács’s “follower” (in the 1920s) Josef Révai detects, in his review of History and Class Consciousness, “contemplative” elements and a tendency toward “conceptual mythology” in Lukács’s theory of the subject of history (cf. Révai 1977: 187–91). Merleau-Ponty criticizes Révai’s position on the mythical character of the proletariat that cancels the “philosophical substance” of Lukács’s theory (see Merleau-Ponty 1973: 54).

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The dialectical conception of historical totality distances itself from both, the empiricist-objectivist and the transcendental-subjectivist understanding of theory. As we saw in Section 4.1, the naïve objectivism of the “immediately given facts” is not overcome by the realization of their subjective constitution, nor is it unified through a “critical-subjectivist” philosophy of history. Because the latter’s formalist limitation to the standpoint of the subject leaves the content of knowledge untouched. It must then be understood as an irrational fact. On the contrary, in dialectical-practical theory, integration in the totality . . . does not merely affect our judgment of individual phenomena decisively, but it also fundamentally alters the objective structure, the actual content of the individual phenomenon—as individual phenomenon. (HCC: 152; 168)

Confronting the one-sided epistemological standpoint of empiricism and formalism, dialectical theory brings to the fore another objectivity of the “appearances” themselves. This does not mean that it stands on the side of objectivism, as Habermas and Wellmer contend.29 Rather, it aims at a transcendence of the dilemma between subjectivism and objectivism through a dialectical-ontological notion of “the whole of reality as history” (HCC:  145; 160) and of history itself as a process of mediation of subject and object.30 As Lukács notes in another text of the same period, “this dialectical interrelation is a moment of becoming,” which must be “understood as an over-reachingconcrete moment” if the problem of the thing in itself is going to be overcome.31 Hence, for the theory of becoming, history is the substance, the “philosophically fundamental order and connection of things” (HCC:  143; 158) that we can simultaneously grasp as subject, for it consists precisely in the dialectical interrelation of subject and object (HCC:  3, 142; 15, 157). The concept of substance used here is not the same as the rigid substance of Spinoza (HCC: 143; 158), nor the motionless substance of Lask’s “objective meaning” (see Section 2.3), but history as becoming, as a dialectical process of the emergence 29

30

31

See the introduction of this book. Marković espouses a similar interpretation (cf. Marković 1988: 21–2). Feenberg is right to stress the unity of history and ontology in Lukács, which he regards as a fundamental trait of the philosophy of praxis in opposition to interpretations that originate from the field of critical theory, but also from the school of Althusser. Cf. Feenberg (2014: 6–7, 73–6, 123). Also see the similar interpretation of Mészáros (1972: 61–4). Lukács (2000:  123; 1996:  68). At this point too, Lukács refers to the model of the reciprocal “dialectical relativization of being and becoming,” as well as that of “subject and substance” found in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. He reminds us that conceptualizing the process of becoming is precisely the problem at which—as we saw in Section 4.1—the modern theory of history fails (cf. Lukács 2000: 123–4; 1996: 67–9).

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of the “new.” In this framework the “identity of the connection of things and the connection of ideas” (HCC: 143; 158) is postulated: Τhat [intellectual] genesis and history coincide or, more exactly, that they are different moments of the same process, is possible, on the one hand, only if all the categories in which human existence is constructed appear as the determinants of that existence itself (and not merely of its comprehensibility) and, on the other hand, if their succession, coherence and connection appear as moments of the historical process itself, as the structural characteristics of the present. The succession and the internal coherence of the categories constitute neither a purely logical sequence, nor are they organized according to purely historical facticity. (159; 175)

In this quote too, Lukács demands the avoidance of logicism as well as naïve empiricism in the theory of history. He suggests a dialectical-ontological approach instead, for which “the forms of mediation in and through which the immediacy of the existence of the given objects is transcended are shown to be the structural principles and the real tendencies of the movement of the objects themselves” (HCC: 155; 171). It is characteristic that in this theory the significance of the concept of “tendency” is revaluated. The tendencies permeating the social totality become a socio-ontological concept that is more realistic than the social “facts” and “things” (cf. HCC: 181–5; 198–203). This shift does not only presuppose a new concept of the substance of history, but also a new conceptualization of the subject as historically concrete, that is, dialectically mediated. Lukács rejects the classical Kantian notion of the abstract subject as “that which can never become an object”32 and turns his attention toward the real subject. Nor is this subject simply the empirical subject as an object of knowledge. As in Kantianism, the subject mediates reality; reality is its “product.” At the same time, however, the real subject is itself a product of this reality. This is the meaning of Lukács’s reference to the “identical subject-object”: The subject is simultaneously identical and non-identical with itself, it is both subject and simultaneously object, since it is confronted with the world it constitutes.33 Unfortunately, by adopting the expression “identical subject-object” from 32 33

Cf. the definition of transcendental subjectivity given by Rickert in GE: 24–6, 146 (see Section 2.1). As we will see below (especially in chapter  9), according to the common interpretation, Lukács deified the proletariat by emphasizing only its activity as a subject. In reality this activity is unintelligible without its passivity as an object. Lukács himself alludes to Marx’s remark from The Holy Family (1845), according to which “when socialist writers attribute this world-historical role to the proletariat it is not because they believe . . . that the proletariats are gods,” but because the absolutely inhuman conditions of their lives push them “to rebel against this inhumanity” (HCC: 20; 34).

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German Idealism, Lukács condemned his theory to constant misinterpretation. He might have been acquitted of the charge of idealism if he had only referred to the “unity” or—even better—to the “mediation” of subject and object. Indeed, one of the few interpretations that does not insist only on partial aspects of Lukács’s thought but takes its wider spirit into account poses the claim that “this version of subject-object identity abolishes the thing-in-itself not by reducing it to the subject but by mediating objectivity in a never-ending process” (Feenberg 2014:  137). The dialectization of history as mediated substance is inevitably accompanied by a dialectical conceptualization of the subject as an active and simultaneously passive moment of the overall process. In the third part we will see how Lukács historically concretized such a conceptualization of the identical subject-object of history.

4.6. The concept of the form of objectivity The same dual, objective and simultaneously subjective—finally simply dialectical—character must be attributed to the central concept of Lukács’s theory of the social-historical totality, the concept of the “form of objectivity.”34 We have already encountered it as a central concept of Lask’s theory of categories (see Section 2.3). In Lask it represented the most general category of transcendental ontology, the most general logical-categorial element of objective meaning. In Lukács the form and function of this neo-Kantian concept is altered without setting aside its original ontological nature. The form of objectivity thus becomes the most general category of a dialectically constituted ontology of the social-historical.35 Lask had already performed the decisive step toward the dialectical understanding of the relation between form and content, albeit without proceeding to a dynamic conceptualization of the relation between subject and object. In Lukács the concept of the form of objectivity undergoes a further dialectical transformation, as the dialectical interrelation of form and content is supplemented and explicated by the alternating practical mediation of subject 34

35

This concept occupies a central position in the reification essay—it is introduced in its first paragraph (cf. HCC:  83; 94). Lukács uses it also elsewhere in History and Class  Consciousness, but without giving it the same central significance. The assumption that Lukács borrowed the concept from Lask is strengthened by the fact that he refers to it in his obituary (cf. Lukács 1918b: 355). This connection is supported by Feenberg, who also clearly sees the ontological significance of the form of objectivity in both Lukács and Lask (Feenberg 2014: 65–6, 69, 73–4).

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and object. With this enriched meaning, the form of objectivity mediates the historically concrete relation of subject and object; therefore it is able to elucidate the changing, socially-historically determined constitution of reality itself. Through its radical dialectization the form of objectivity makes possible an understanding of history as the product of subjective action, which it simultaneously determines as an external factor. Thus, the concept of the form of objectivity contains two dialectically entangled dimensions:  an ontological and an epistemological. As the basis of a dialectical ontology of history the concept of the form of objectivity corresponds to the historically unique form of the mediation of man and world in a specific epoch. As the basis of epistemology, the same concept corresponds to the logical structure of the theory of historical and/or natural reality. In History and class consciousness one meets both versions of the concept. As a fundamental socio-ontological concept, the dominant form of objectivity at a given moment is a central object of holistic theory. For the essence of history lies precisely in the changes undergone by those structural forms through which man’s interaction with the environment at any given moment takes place and which determine the objectivity of both his inner and his outer life. But this only becomes objectively possible (and hence can only be adequately comprehended) when the individuality, the uniqueness of an epoch, a historical form, etc., is grounded in the peculiarity of these structural forms, when it is discovered and exhibited in them and through them. (HCC: 153; 169)

The discovered form of objectivity must then correspond to the structure of reality itself as a social-historical totality of the interrelations between subject and object. In this sense, the form of objectivity is the form of existence (Daseinsform)36 of the objective social-historical process itself: History is, on the one hand, the product—albeit the unconscious one—of men’s own activity, on the other hand it is the succession of those processes in which the forms taken by this activity, the relations of man to himself (to nature and to other men) change. (HCC: 185–6; 203)

Finally, “history is precisely the history of the unceasing change of the forms of objectivity that shape the existence of man” (HCC:  186; 203). Acquiring the knowledge of the form of objectivity of a given epoch is equal to its

36

Lukács adopts Marx’s thesis that the categories of “every historical and social science” are simultaneously “forms of existence, existential determinations” (Marx 1904:  302; 1961:  637; cf. HCC: 4, 57; 17, 69).

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conceptualization as a historical totality, since “the path” to its discovery “is the path to the knowledge of the historical process in its totality” (HCC: 153; 169). Finding the dominant form of objectivity of an epoch allows for the sublation of the immediacy of its individual objects, the overcoming of their “rigid isolation,” as it poses “the relations between them, their interrelatedness, the interaction between these ‘relations’ and the ‘things’ on the same plane of reality” (HCC: 154; 170), the plane of the concrete social-historical totality.37 At this point, the second, epistemological dimension of the form of objectivity comes to the fore. The latter does not only inhere in the material of knowledge, the formation of the historical process itself, but is also connected with the structure of thought that attempts to grasp these objects. The idea of an epistemology as social theory, that is, the idea that guides Lukács’s metacritique of knowledge, is based on this concept of the form of objectivity.38 But also the theoretical reconstruction of the historical totality presupposes the methodological espousal of the adequate form of objectivity—the espousal of the materialist dialectic as the form of objectivity of the knowledge of the historical process.

37

38

On the level of the economy one could, together with Cerutti (1983:  372) and Beiersdörfer (1986: 131, 257, n. 39), relate the concept of the form of objectivity to Marx’s concept of the economic determination of form (ökonomische Formbestimmtheit), which Marx uses in the second and third volume of Capital. Cf. Marx (1978:  241, 246–7; 1981:  953–1016, particularly 964, 966–7, 1011; 1963: 162, 167–8; 1964: 822–83, particularly 833, 836, 879), but providing that the first is understood as a universal category and the latter as a particular. See Section 4.3. This epistemological-methodological concept of the form of objectivity appears, e.g., in HCC: 7, 12–15, 123, 189; 19–20, 25–8, 136, 145, 206 (unfortunately the term is not always recognizable in the English translation—one is obliged to refer to the German original). It is characteristic that in many cases it is difficult to distinguish when the concept has mostly an epistemological meaning or a socio-ontological one in the text. This is understandable, since in Lukács’s metacritique of knowledge those dimensions are closely interwoven.

Part Two

Theory

5

The Origins of the Concept of Reification in Lukács’s Early Work

Lukács developed fairly early on a strong interest in the social sciences and acquired a solid sociological education.1 After all, a good knowledge of sociology was a prerequisite for his early investigations in his first book, the Evolutionary History of the Modern Drama (1911), in which he aspired to offer a socialhistorical examination of the question on the possibility of a “great drama” in modern society (see Lukács 1981). More specifically, at the time he began working on this book, Lukács was significantly influenced by Georg Simmel. He had the opportunity to visit Simmel in Berlin, attend his private seminars and have personal contact with him (see Keller 1984:  55–6; also Frisby 2011:  17). It is not wrong to contend that in his early youth Lukács had been Simmel’s “disciple.”2 Also, those who discern the traces of Simmel’s influence in History and Class  Consciousness are right (see, e.g., Frisby 2011:  22–3; Dannemann 1987: 61–82). In the present chapter I show the way in which Lukács’s early acquaintance with Simmel’s sociology and Lebensphilosophie led him to form a specific understanding of the phenomenon of alienation that became one of his starting points for the constitution of the Marxist concept of reification we meet in History and Class Consciousness. As we will see, in the Evolutionary History of the Modern Drama Lukács follows Simmel’s anti-positivist methodological orientation (Section 5.1), while in respect to the content of his social theory he adopts, to a great extent, Simmel’s analysis of modern social rationalization and its problems (Section 5.2). However, it would be a mistake

1

2

Ferenc Fehér notes, not without some exaggeration, that in Lukács’s first significant work “the sociological culture of the 22  year-old was already complete  .  .  . and could not easily be further enriched” (Fehér 1977a: 13). Cf. Frisby (2011: 17). On Simmel’s influence on Lukács’s early work, see Frisby (2011: 17–22); Jung (1981: 23, 26, 28–9); Grauer (1985: 45–9).

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to overlook Lukács’s gradual distanciation from Simmelian Lebensphilosophie that started well before his turn to Marxism. Another goal of this chapter will be to also reconstruct this criticism, which was formulated from the standpoint of the neo-Kantian philosophy of values (Section 5.3) and resulted in a new approach to the phenomenon of alienation (Section 5.4). Finally, a historicized version of this approach posed the socio-theoretical framework of the Theory of the Novel of 1916 (Section 5.5), and prepared the ground for a historical-materialist conceptualization of the social phenomenon of reification.

5.1. Methodological presuppositions of a non-reductionist social history of literature In his essay “On the Theory of the History of Literature” (1910), Lukács attempted to give a retrospective self-critical account of the conceptual means he used in his book on the modern drama.3 His explications rely on central concepts of Lebensphilosophie—such as “form,” “experience” (Erlebnis) and “life”—through explicit references to Simmel and Bergson. The aim of Lukács’s methodological essay is to present the basic concepts and problems of the history of literature as a “new organic unity” that consists in a “unification of sociology and aesthetics” (Lukács 1973d:  24). Thus, all the concepts of the history of literature reveal a synthetic character; they have an aesthetico-philosophical and, simultaneously, a sociological dimension. This firstly holds true for the fundamental concept of form:  On the one hand, the latter denotes an evaluative condition of the constitution of literary phenomena, a condition that represents the timeless aesthetic value of the work of art (cf. Lukács 1973d: 27). On the other hand, form also has a social dimension, linked to the fact that literature represents a communicative announcement, a notification of “specific emotions, thoughts, evaluations, etc.,” in other words, of “specific experiences” (Lukács 1973d:  28; 1981:  10–11). Thus, form is a “mediating element” (Lukács 1973d:  31) between subject and object, but also between the subjects themselves in the field of human culture represented by art. However, for Lukács, the formative force of this mediating element is restricted by its peculiar dependence on the material of “life,” which it forms (cf. Lukács

3

See Lukács’s own recollections from that period, quoted in Fekete and Karádi (1981: 30).

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1981: 12). Hence, as Judith Butler aptly notes, “the context enters into the form and becomes part of the forming process itself.”4 In Evolutionary History Lukács’s model of conceptualizing the dependence of literary form upon its social-historical context was Wilhelm Dilthey’s Experience and Literary Creation (1905) (see Kavoulakos 2015b:  27–8; also Weisser 1992: 12–15), in which Dilthey attempted to detect the essential elements of an epoch and to elaborate their influence on the artist’s experience that determines his or her artistic forms.5 In a similar manner, Lukács views life as a general context, irreducible to the forms, from which the content of art is derived and in which a certain “worldview” (Weltanschauung) can be expressed through an artistic form and acquire social function and influence on an audience capable of sharing its meaning. Thus, Lukács focuses on the “atmosphere of an epoch” and its “ideology,” contending that every form is always “in its deepest foundations . . . a worldview” (Lukács 1973d: 32), which thus depends on social conditions that must be sociologically elucidated (cf. Lukács 1981: 13). Because the relation of literary forms to social circumstances is mediated through worldviews or ideologies, “the influence of economic conditions on the work of art is only an indirect one” (Lukács 1981:  12) and thus, “the economic conditions themselves play only a subordinate role as a fundamental fact” (13). This approach pursues theoretical objectives that are similar to those of Simmel’s Philosophy of Money (1900). In this work, Simmel delivered arguments against a “one-dimensional” or “mechanical” economic explanation of cultural phenomena. Simmel described the “basic intention” of his book as “the attempt . . . to construct a new storey beneath historical materialism such that the explanatory value of the incorporation of economic life into the causes of intellectual culture is preserved, while these economic forms themselves are recognized as the result of more profound valuations and currents of psychological or even metaphysical preconditions” (Simmel 2011:  56). At the same time, Simmel’s orientation was hermeneutical-holistic; he aspired to find “in each of life’s details the totality of its meaning.”6 Following Simmel’s anti-positivist and non-reductionist methodological orientation, Lukács rejects every kind of sociology that nourishes the “ambition to highlight the economic conditions of an epoch as the ultimate and deepest

4

5 6

Butler (2010: 7). As we can see, early on Lukács searched for a way to grasp the dialectical relation between form and content, even before becoming acquainted with Lask’s experimental thought or turning to historical dialectic—a tendency clearly acknowledged by Butler (cf. Butler 2010: 4–7). See Dilthey (1985: 7–17, 141). On Dilthey’s influence on the young Lukács, see also Jung (1988). Simmel (2011: 56). For Simmel’s “aesthetic”-holistic method, see Frisby (2011: 7–8).

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cause of artistic phenomena” (Lukács 1981: 10), for example, the sociology of the “consistent Marxists” who falsely reduce literature to economic conditions (cf. Lukács 1973d:  25, 34). During this period, Lukács’s critique is developed in the framework of the contemporaneous discussions on the “principle of individuality” in historical hermeneutics and thus, it must be observed as a contribution to the attempt to ground a bourgeois sociology on the basis of the independence of culture from economy, in opposition to the relevant theses of historical materialism (see Beiersdörfer 1986: 30–31). One can also discern here the root of Lukács’s more general opposition to economic reductionism and consequently, his preference for holistic approaches to social phenomena—an orientation he kept alive even after his shift to Marxism at the end of 1918.7

5.2. Lukács’s early theory of social rationalization During his early period, Lukács was particularly interested in a sociological diagnosis of the situation in modern society and its culture, since this was a basic presupposition required to answer the central question of the Evolutionary History of Modern Drama: The question of the possibility of a “great” modern drama. In fact, in this book Lukács offers a brief description of the fragmented and objectified social structures of the modern world in order to explicate its dominant historicist worldview and consequently, to examine whether it allows for the drama to flourish.8 His remarks on modern social structures rely on Simmel’s relevant views. Despite its brevity, Lukács’s description of the fundamental traits of modern society is particularly interesting as it contains, in a seminal form, some of the central elements of his subsequent theory of reification. As Simmel before him, Lukács connects the distinctiveness of the bourgeois culture with the wider process of rationalization of economic life, the social relations and the dominant intellectual forms. For Simmel, the generalized use of money has a decisive impact on social life that is increasingly dominated by the objective attitude of the calculative intellect and by the depersonalization of human relations (cf. Simmel 2011: 465–83). This change is particularly visible in

7

8

See Fehér (1977a: 49–50, nn. 7, 10). In an interview, Lukács characteristically stated that he never regretted the fact that he took his first lessons in social sciences from Simmel and Weber and not from Kautsky (cf. Frisby 2011: 45, n. 78). I cannot refer here to Lukács’s analyses of the modern drama. However, see my article: Kavoulakos (2015b).

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economic life, in the development of the division of labor and the specialization of workers. For Simmel this development renders it impossible to acknowledge the individual self in the result of practice, which “appears only as a wholly specialized part of our being that is indifferent to the total unity of man” (Simmel 2011: 493). Hence, with its separation from the unitary personality of the producer, for him the process of production  acquires an external and objective character. Work itself becomes a commodity and thus, it becomes “something objectively separate from the worker, something that he not only no longer is, but also no longer has” (Simmel 2011: 494). This tendency is reinforced by the separation of the immediate producer from the productive means, that is, the separation of “the subjective and the objective conditions of work” (Simmel 2011: 494). And of course, also the product of labor becomes independent from the worker and develops “its own laws of motion,” that is, “a character alien to the producing subject” (Simmel 2011: 495). Leaning upon Werner Sombart’s analyses, Lukács concretizes Simmel’s description of the consequences of the generalized use of money on the structure of production by turning his attention from the role of money in general to the role of capital.9 For Lukács the dominance of capital in production leads to the separation of the abstract, objective process of production from the personality, the psychic life and the distinctive, individual qualities of the people who serve it—regardless of whether they are its owners or workers (cf. Lukács 1981: 95). Thus, for Lukács, as for Simmel, “work acquires a distinctive, objective life vis-à-vis the individuality of the individual man, so that it [the individuality] must express itself in something else than in what he does at that time” (Lukács 1981: 95). As has been remarked, these descriptions of the capitalist labor process seemingly “contained some Marxist elements, albeit of a Marx seen ‘through spectacles tinted by Simmel and Max Weber’ ” (Löwy 1979:  97). In fact, Lukács’s analysis points out the emerging opposition between, on the one hand, the impersonal capitalist division of labor and its objective “criteria of purposefulness” and, on the other hand, the “always irrational and thus only qualitatively determinable abilities of the worker” (Lukács 1981: 94–5) that are violently subjected to the demands of a system external to them. In a similar manner, in The Philosophy of Money Simmel points out the fact that money economy leads to the formation of a system of abstract necessities, that is, to an “all-embracing teleological nexus” (Simmel 2011:  467). Its independent 9

Lukács makes explicit references to Sombart (1902).

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development results in an unprecedented growth of “objective culture” in permanently increasing discrepancy to the “subjective culture” of the individuals (cf. Simmel 2011: 486–8). For Lukács, subjecting the individual-irrational elements to objectiverational standards generates a strong trend toward a growing homogenization of the work process as well as all other fields of modern life (cf. Lukács 1981: 94). He refers to the very same fields in which Simmel detected precisely the same tendency: Apart from industrial production, objectification finally embraces all the manifestations of social life, for example, bureaucracy, transport, clothing, education, the army, the shaping of the metropolitan environment, etc.10 A further tendency of social rationalization pointed out by both theorists pertains to the depersonalization of social relations. Simmel himself highlighted the fact that a great part of his analyses focused on the birth of the modern sense of individual freedom generated through the depersonalization of social relations (cf. Simmel 1989b: 721; 1997b: 180–81). In a similar manner, Lukács connects the tendency toward depersonalization with the predominance of rationalized social structures and the calculative reason corresponding to them. While, for example, the feudalist society was based on the dependence of the sharecropper upon the liege or the apprentice upon the master, in modern society we experience an objectification and hence, a depersonalization of social relations, which are now mediated by the objective system of social production (cf. Lukács 1981: 95). Objectification and depersonalization are consequences of the reduction of the irrational individual uniqueness, the unrepeatable qualitative element to homogeneous “quantitative categories.” According to Lukács, exactly the same tendencies also permeate the dominant intellectual and cognitive models: The “miracle” vanishes from the world, and everything is reduced to mathematically formulated natural laws (cf. Lukács 1981: 95). In opposition to the qualitative science of the Middle Ages, modern scientific research is based on schematization and quantification, which have become established even in the cultural sciences (cf. Lukács 1981:  92–3). Before Lukács, Simmel had pointed out the same connection between money economy and the modern understanding of valid knowledge when he noted that the “epistemic ideal” of modern times “is to conceive the world as a huge arithmetical problem, to conceive events and the qualitative distinction of things as a system of numbers” (Simmel 2011: 481).

10

A condensed version of Simmel’s diagnosis about life in modern society can be found in his essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903). See Simmel (1997b).

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As we can see, both for Simmel and Lukács, objectification, homogenization and depersonalization are structural features not only of the “material” social processes, but also of the intellectual and cognitive dimensions of modern life. This assumption is central in the Philosophy of Money and in the Evolutionary History of the Modern Drama, but also in the description of the objective dimension of the rationalization process offered in History and Class  Consciousness. This objective side of rationalization is supplemented by a “subjective” aspect that pertains to the formation of a corresponding form of consciousness. The examination of this form of consciousness or worldview in Evolutionary History prefigures the subsequent analysis of reified consciousness in History and Class Consciousness. The opposition between modern life and individuality diagnosed by Lukács determines a form of consciousness which he describes in Dilthey’s terms: The fundamental common experience of the members of bourgeois society is the “historical experience” (das historische Erlebnis).11 It corresponds to the awareness of the so-called historical problem, that is, the “problem of the existent, which—even if its inadequacy were known—is, purely through its existence, capable of effective, even victorious resistance” (Lukács 1981:  55). The historical problem is nothing but the omnipotence of the given, of the historically established. Hence, the “historical experience” is the “hopelessness of the consciousness” (Lukács 1981: 55), the awareness of the deep chasm and disharmony between subject and object. Lukács describes this experience of impotence toward the given as “a symbol of the eternal conflict between two abstractions,” as the representation of an abstract collision between the “abstract worldview” of the individual and the equally abstract “historical process” that “goes beyond the level of individuality and the mutual interrelation of the individuals” (Lukács 1981:  70). This formulation allowed the suggestion that, even if it emerges as the fundamental experience of men in bourgeois society, the historical experience finally expresses a suprahistorical opposition that cannot be resolved. Thus, the Evolutionary History of the Modern Drama seems to be characterized by a tension between the historical concretization of the disharmony of subjectivity and objectivity and its suprahistorical, metaphysical description (see Nyiri 1987:  41; Márkus 1977:  101–2, 110–13). It must not surprise us that here some commentators discern a “historicization” of Simmel’s “ontological-metaphysical” perspective

11

Lukács (1981: 69). Lukács’s elaboration of the fundamental experience of bourgeois society leans upon the similar views of Dilthey, to which Lukács explicitly refers (cf. Lukács 1981: 71).

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developed  in his essay on the “Tragedy of Culture,”12 while others prefer an ontological reading of the opposition between the subject and the historical facticity (see Kiss 2002:  39–40). Even if a more dialectical interpretation of Lukács’s early social theory is in principle possible (see Butler 2010: 2; Kavoulakos 2015b:  37), it is certain that until his turn to Marxism Lukács continued to oscillate between the two opposite poles of a tragic worldview and a radical historicization of the antinomies of culture.

5.3. Lukács’s neo-Kantian distanciation from Lebensphilosophie At the beginning of 1912, after ten years of preoccupation with the history and sociology of literature and with essayism, Lukács turned to philosophy and moved to Heidelberg planning to habilitate under the supervision of the neoKantians of the southwest German school. This decision coincides with his distanciation from Lebensphilosophie and thus, from Simmel—a distanciation that is apparent in his obituary for Simmel published in the German-language Hungarian newspaper Pester Lloyd, in 1918. Instead of confining himself to a positive evaluation of Simmel’s work, as is customary in such cases, Lukács formulates in this text a series of critical remarks on Simmel’s philosophical orientation. Hence, even if he acknowledges that “Georg Simmel was undoubtedly the most significant and interesting transitional phenomenon in all modern philosophy,” at the same time he points out the fundamental impotence of a “problematic” and “transitional” philosophy such as his. For Lukács, Simmel’s “limitless and unrestrained sensibility” is the other side of his “lack of a centre,” his “inability to take final, immediate decisions.” The duality of Simmel’s “essence” is the element that renders him the “true philosopher of impressionism,” that is, the “glorifier of life” who negates the “hard and eternal forms as rapists of life, of its abundance and colorfulness” (Lukács 1918a:  2). At this point one can discern the limits of Lukács’s identification with Simmel’s worldview. For his young Hungarian disciple Simmel was too much a pluralist, a fact that rendered him unable to find the systematic unity of the manifold in the “great forms” (Lukács 1918a: 3). 12

See Arato and Breines (1979: 16–17). In his famous essay “The Concept and Tragedy of Culture” Simmel analyses the inherent “logic” of the cultural process and shows that it leads to the predominance of objective over subjective culture and, thus, to “cultural formlessness.” Simmel calls this immanent and irresolvable antithesis the “tragedy of culture” (see Simmel 1997a).

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Lukács’s tendency to separate form from life and to judge the latter from the standpoint of the first was particularly strong in the essays of The Soul and the Forms (see Kavoulakos 2014b). Besides, one of the aims of his first Aesthetic was in fact to philosophically explicate the unbridgeable chasm between the sphere of artistic aesthetic values and everyday life that he had described in an essayistic way in The Soul and the Forms. The grounding of this chasm presupposed the critical reformulation of positions of Lebensphilosophie from the perspective of a neo-Kantian theory of the work of art. Let us examine briefly this reformulation in the first version of Lukács’s Aesthetic, written between 1912 and 1914. In the first chapter of the Heidelberg Philosophy of Art entitled “Art as ‘expression’ and the forms of experienced reality,” Lukács sets the basis for a philosophical understanding of that which in The Soul and the Forms or in the essay “On the Poverty of Spirit” he named the “empirical” or “ordinary life.”13 Lukács conceptualizes ordinary life through a central concept of Lebensphilosophie, the concept of subjective experience (Erlebnis). The sum of the experiences of a subject forms its “experienced reality” (Erlebniswirklichkeit): The reality of this world consists precisely in the fact that nothing can exist in it that will not instantly receive the character of the “experienced” or “experienceable,” a character which for the object is in fact subjective-reflective and for the subject is only constitutive. (Lukács 1974: 17)

Lukács derives the notion of the “subjective-reflective” character of the object from Lask’s distinction between “reflective” and “constitutive categories” (cf. LdPh: 115–25), which I exposed in Section 2.4. When Lukács—by combining Lask’s terminology with Rickert’s subjectivist viewpoint—ascribes to the object a “reflective character,” he means that the object is given as “finished,” “readymade,” that is, as constituted independently of the experiencing subject. As far as the subject is concerned this results in the predominance of a passive attitude in opposition to the active constitution of the object. The subject’s spontaneity is put aside, while the experiencing subject is constituted through passively experiencing the “finished” objects. There is no reason to go into detail here about Lukács’s approach, which aims at highlighting the fact that in the field of experienced reality, that is, ordinary life, experiences always maintain a deeply personal “colouring,” because of their determination by the “qualitative experiential apriori” of each subject (cf. Lukács 1974: 31). Due to its insuperably individual character, experienced 13

Cf. Lukács (2010a: 176, 180–81; 1911: 328–9, 336–9; 2010b: 204, 205, 210, 211; 1912: 72, 75, 83, 86).

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reality is a solipsistic “prison of individuality” (Lukács 1974:  31) that cancels all attempts to establish authentic communication between subjects. Hence it is impossible to overcome the fundamental discrepancy between the ordinary communicative forms and their individual experiential reference (see Lukács 1974:  21). Experienced reality “cannot feature  .  .  . any rule for adopting a normative position toward the objects,” as the experiences of different people “remain purely subjective and never refer univocally to, as it were, a guaranteed common object” (Lukács 1974: 17). This is why the supra-subjective aesthetic value cannot be explained in terms of a theory of artistic “expression” and communication between men (cf. Lukács 1974: 26–7). An unbridgeable chasm separates ordinary life from the spheres of supra-subjective validity. Through his new, neo-Kantian position Lukács critiqued the methodological views of the exponents of Lebensphilosophie, like Dilthey, Simmel or Bergson, on the possibility of constituting intersubjective meaning exclusively on the basis of the ordinary psychological experience of everyday man.14 Thus Lukács abandons the idea of reconstructing the main experience of a certain epoch and explaining art as an “expression” of this experience—an idea he naïvely presupposed in Evolutionary History, where he followed the model of Dilthey.15 He may of course—in the second version of the introductory chapter of his Aesthetic, written in 1916 under the title “The essence of aesthetic positing”— still praise Dilthey for acknowledging in his “descriptive psychology” the “distinctiveness and cognizability” of experienced reality as a “lively totality” (Lukács 1975c:  25). But he immediately adds the critical remark that—in opposition to Dilthey’s self-understanding—this theoretical perspective does not allow “any gradual transition that leads from the reality, approached and cognized in this way, to the value-spheres” (Lukács 1975c: 25).

5.4. A neo-Kantian theory of the ossification of “experienced reality” Having considerably distanced himself from Lebensphilosophie, in the second, final version of his Aesthetic, Lukács directly recourses to the neo-Kantian

14

15

On Lukács’s critique of Dilthey, Simmel and Bergson, cf. Kavoulakos (2014a: 88–101); Hoeschen (1999: 54–7, 61–7). See Section 5.1. In the Heidelberg Philosophy of Art Lukács explicitly repudiates the possibility of reconstructing the “life-feeling” of a certain epoch, since this would presuppose overcoming the “necessary misunderstanding” of communication in general (cf. Lukács 1974: 192–3).

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analysis of the spheres of validity and conceptualizes experienced reality as a secondary, derivative sphere or, in the new terminology he now uses, a derivative “positing” (Setzung). The positing of a sphere of validity (Geltungssphäre) or of a formation of meaning (Sinngebilde) is, according to Lukács, identical to the “systematization” or the “forming of the ‘world’ ” (Lukács 1975c:  16). The fundament of this philosophical approach is formed by Rickert’s epistemological analysis of the subjective constitution of reality (see Section 2.1), enriched through elements of Lask’s analysis of the “primordial” relation of form and material (see Section 2.3; also Kavoulakos 2014a:  204–12). Hence, according to Lukács’s new approach, the experienced reality represents a specific kind of subjectively constituted objectivity. To describe its distinctive nature, Lukács distinguishes two types of “positing” objectivities. The first type, the original positing, corresponds to a “totally autonomous, self-determining” (Lukács 1975c: 14) objectivity, since in this case the formation permeates a totally raw material. Examples of this type of positing are “theory” and “ethics” (cf. Lukács 1975c: 14). In the second type, that of the secondary positing, “objects which owe their objectivity to another positing are enclosed unaltered or simply transfigured by the new form of this kind of positing” (Lukács 1975c: 14). Examples of this second kind of positing given by Lukács are culture (cf. Lukács 1975c: 15) and the “ ‘natural’ sphere of life” (32), that is, experienced reality. Lukács presents experienced reality as a secondary, derivative and “artificial” (gekünstelt; Lukács 1975c:  28) realm of appearances.16 As in the first version of the Aesthetic, here too, this realm represents the field of the heterogeneouschaotic life one meets in the essays of The Soul and the Forms. The problematic character of experienced reality is not connected with its material, that is, the “ready-made” objects of original positing, like the objects of theory and ethics (cf. Lukács 1975c:  27, 30–31), but with the specific form of objectivity that embraces them. According to Lukács, this form is “experienceness,” through which objects appear in the experience of the “historical human being” or the “whole man” (cf. Lukács 1975c: 26). At this point, Lukács draws on Rickert’s critique of Dilthey’s attempt to found the theory of knowledge on the concept of the “whole man,” that is, the real, historical subject (see GE: 62–3, 108–9). Against Dilthey’s historicist orientation, Rickert defended the philosophical isolation of the “boundary concept” of the

16

Lukács explicitly refers to the “artificial and degenerate forms of appearance” (Erscheinungsformen) of validity in experienced reality (cf. Lukács 1975c: 29).

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“epistemological subject” as the “consciousness in general” (see GE:  145–7). Lukács simply extends Rickert’s distinction between empirical and normative subjectivity in the field of the objectivities constituted by them. Thus, the “whole man” corresponds to the “lively totality” of experienced reality, that is, to “life” in its opposition to the field of “validity” (cf. Lukács 1975c: 25–6). Dressing the already constituted objects with the form of experience is identical to the “immediate,” “natural behaviour” of the “whole man,” who finds the object of experiencing as “a finished world of objectivity,” without changing anything in it, “without being able to create something in it” (Lukács 1975c: 26–7). Hence, experienced reality is constituted through a type of experiencing that consists in a kind of normatively neutralized attitude of mere experiential acceptance of the objectivity given ready-made to the “whole man.” The formations of meaning of the normative positing are thus stripped of their normative validity (cf. Lukács 1975c: 27). Acknowledging their validity would demand an active initiative of the subject that leads to what Lukács describes as a leap from the “whole man” to the normative subject. It is a “decided abandoning of experienced reality” that leads to the “autonomous positing” and to the “restitution of the validity of the valid forms.”17 For as long as this decision is not made, the categorial forms fall into oblivion; they cease, as it were, to count for the subject. With his overall emphasis on the role of subjectivity, Lukács moves in the direction of Rickert’s analysis of acknowledging values that thus acquire the character of the transcendent ought addressed to an abstract, normative (epistemological, ethical or aesthetic) subject (cf. GE:  106, 122–3, 144–7). For Lukács, value “holds” in the complete sense of the word only toward the normative subject of a specific sphere of validity, while the empirical man of experienced reality maintains only an immediate and experiential, that is, validity-free, “behavior” toward the already constituted, finished object of autonomous positing. Thus a clear and unbridgeable separation of the two subjective behaviors goes hand in hand with the opposition between the normative and the empirical subject: It is the separation of the active constitution of objects and their merely passive experiencing. At this point the influence of Lask’s analysis of the role of subjectivity in constituting a degenerate, “imitative region” (nachbildliche Region) of cognition becomes apparent. As we have seen in Section 2.4, Lask describes a kind of experiencing that consists in ignoring the archetypical unity

17

Lukács (1975c:  28). With his direct reference to Descartes, Lukács gives an example of the abandonment of “natural reality”: the turn to science and philosophy.

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of meaning. The objects experienced in this way are not acknowledged as valid formations of meaning, but disintegrate, thus producing the structural materials for a new region of valid meaning which, although not “untouched” any longer, continues to be “supra-subjective” (cf. LvU: 424). When Lukács constructs the concept of experience of the “whole man,” he finds inspiration in Lask’s theory of the “fatal activity of experiencing” (LvU: 417), which he radicalizes, since in Lukács’s experienced reality any element of supraindividual validity ceases to exist. The experience of the “whole man” abolishes any validity and lets the subject sink into the “being of experiencing” (Sein des Erlebens; Lukács 1975c:  65) by blocking its access to the “alien to being validity” (LvU: 424). When Lukács characterizes the form of “experienceness” as a “subjective-reflective form” (Lukács 1975c: 27), he draws on the second kind of the subject’s intervention into the primordial meaning, which Lask described as the constitution of subjective “reflective categories” by a “feeble experiencing” (see Section 2.4). I have already mentioned the difference between Lask and Lukács: For Lask there is no such thing as an experience completely free of validity as the one suggested by Lukács. Even though “reflective categories” are inferior to the “constitutive” ones (see LdPh: 149–50), they still retain a kind of validity which holds independently of the subject (see LdPh:  146–8). A  further difference between them relates to the passive and active attitude of the subject. For Lask, passivity corresponds to the subjectivity that “ ‘lives’ only within the truth” (LdPh: 86–7), whereas the destruction of the original meaning is an effect of the activation of the subject. In opposition, Lukács remains an orthodox Kantian or Rickertian, that is, a subjectivist: The constitution of normative objectivities is a product of the spontaneity of the subject, while sinking in the chaos of experienced reality is an effect of the subjective constitution of reality through passive “experienceness.” However, even this passive attitude must be thought of as a kind of subjective positing. With his peculiar combination of Laskian and Rickertian motifs, Lukács forms the concept of experienced reality as an artificial construction of subjectivity that lacks the criteria of “normative behavior,” inasmuch as it is stripped of the dimension of validity. This sphere is constituted through the “immediateexperiential relation” of the whole man to the “already finished objects” (Lukács 1975c:  32). The objects are thus characterized by a kind of ossification, a fact suggested by the metaphors Lukács uses to connect passive experiencing with being. In fact, leaning upon the classical neo-Kantian opposition of being and validity, Lukács characterizes the function of passive experiencing in a positive

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way as “transformation of validity into being,” as the sinking of the whole man in the “experience as being” or in the “being of experience.”18 Lukács’s different explications of these enigmatic formulations have a common significational component:  the transformation of the objects into meaningless, simply functional “facts.” In the “practical behavior” of the whole man a mechanistic adaptation to the imperatives of the “apparatus” of the given ethical context prevails. “Theoretical elements” can also be incorporated in ordinary practical life or in the “contemplative” relation with the objects in respect to the atmosphere (Stimmung) they create (cf. Lukács 1975c: 30–33). In all these cases we simply meet the acceptance of facticity, which may promote or impede the desires, the emotions and the activities of the “whole man.” What is totally bypassed is the question of the meaning of the formations man is confronted with, that is, the problem of their validity. The subject is confined to passively experiencing them, without “any synthesis, any production” (Lukács 1975c: 32), taking reality simply “as it is.” Therefore, experienced reality is finally a sphere of “brute facts” (factum brutum; Lukács 1975c:  30), the basic trait of which is their “transcendence” (29). Here Lukács draws upon the notion of transcendence of transcendental philosophy, that is, the “independence from the subject.”19 It is precisely in this sense that he calls the experienced reality the “level of the completely transcendent objectivity” (Lukács 1975c:  29). It is the impenetrable transcendence of the merely given, toward which the “whole man” can only adopt an instrumental attitude, but never develop a constitutive behavior. For this subject the objects retain only a practical significance within the process of life. The “whole man” must take them into account as facts while he pursues his practical aims.20 In the next two chapters I  attempt to clarify the concept of reification. The cautious reader will not find it difficult to draw parallels with Lukács’s neo-Kantian theory of experienced reality. Their structural homologies are obvious:  In both theories the constitution of reality is performed through a form of objectivity that entails the passive attitude of merely “experiencing” the objects. The subject of this immediate experience is confronted with an ossified,

18 19

20

Similar formulations repeatedly appear in the text. Cf., e.g., Lukács (1975c: 27, 31, 63, 65). Cf. LvU: 414, n. 133. For the transcendental theory of the constitution of objectivities “transcendent” is the primordial material of a “positing,” but also the absolute form/value that forms it. As such, both elements form necessary conditions of the constitution of an immanent, non-transcendent objectivity (e.g., of the field of theoretical knowledge or of ethics). Indeed, Lukács praises pragmatism for comprehending the practical nature of “thought” on the level of experienced reality. On this level, thought aims to “dominate over the reality of the impeding or promoting formations standing vis-à-vis the ‘whole man’ ” (Lukács 1975c: 31).

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“transcendent” reality to which it cannot give meaning. It can only take it into account in its calculations and practical pursuits. This subject sinks into the forgetfulness of the fact that the “ready-made” objects given to it are in reality products of its spontaneity. Lukács’s ascertainment that “a distant, completely transcendent world of objects corresponds to the immediacy of the common experiencing” (Lukács 1975c: 34) could be a phrase from his essay on reification.

5.5. The historicization of the theory of experienced reality Lukács’s neo-Kantian reformulation of his early critique of culture opened up the way to a more reliable philosophical founding of the opposition between subject and object that is typical of bourgeois culture—a problem that occupied him in the Evolutionary History of Modern Drama (see Section 5.2). However, in comparison to the Evolutionary History, the new approach led to a onesided ontologization of alienation. It lacked every historical reference and thus presented the “prison of individuality” of experienced reality as an ahistorical, insuperable fact of human existence in general. Though it might suffice to philosophically ground Lukács’s tragic worldview (see Kavoulakos 2014c), it could not satisfy his sociological and historico-philosophical aspirations. Thus, at least a historicization of the theory of experienced reality was called for. This was in fact one of the objectives of the most famous work of Lukács’s so-called pre-Marxist period, the Theory of the Novel (1916). Despite its brevity, this essayistic work on the epic forms of literature is particularly complex. Its interpretation poses a long series of questions that cannot occupy us here (however see Kavoulakos 2014a:  119–76). From the perspective that interests us, the question of its methodological presuppositions is crucial. Its established reading remained more or less within the framework of Lukács’s selfinterpretation in the preface of the 1963 edition. In this preface Lukács describes his “historico-philosophical essay” as an early step in the “process of turning from Kant to Hegel.”21 However, this interpretation of the Theory of the Novel overlooks the fact that in this text there is no trace of a dialectical theory of historical evolution. On the contrary, Lukács remains within the formalist theoretical framework of his neo-Kantian Aesthetic, applying a series of typologies and formal periodizations,

21

Lukács (1978:  12). See my critical confrontation with the relevant bibliography in Kavoulakos (2014a: 124–8).

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which make it more plausible to relate its method to Lukács’s reflections on the “Historicality and timelessness of the work of art” exposed in the third chapter of the Heidelberg Philosophy of Art.22 Another point that must not escape our attention is the fact that, in order to describe the two main epochs of culture, in many cases Lukács uses the terminology which Lask used to distinguish between the aletheiological level of the “primordial meaning” and the gnoseological level of “reflexivity.”23 In what follows I mainly focus on the basic lines of the critique of modern culture formulated in this work. In the first part of the Theory of the Novel Lukács takes his cues from a description of the so-called closed or integrated culture, which he uses as a contrasting background for the analysis of the “problematic,” modern culture. According to Lukács, the closed culture—its paradigmatic form is represented by ancient Greek culture—is characterized by the lack of distance (Abstandlosigkeit) between the subject and the object, the “soul” and our “deeds” which, albeit distinguished, evidently harmonize in it under the auspices of a pre-given meaning. In these “happy ages” the unity of the soul and the world is secured by a clear and univocal archetypical “map” of life (Lukács 1978:  29; 1920:  9), in which everything finds its “transcendental locus” (1978: 29; 1920: 10), that is, an a priori determined position in the “transcendental topography of the spirit” (1978: 31; 1920: 12–13). Therefore, the closed culture is a “home” (Lukács 1978: 32; 1920: 13), in which “being and destiny, adventure and accomplishment, life and essence are . . . identical concepts” (1978: 30; 1920: 11). It is not difficult to locate significant analogies between the transcendental topography of closed culture and Lask’s philosophical mapping of the “interpenetration” (Ineinander) of the experiential material and the corresponding, significationally differentiated forms. Nor is it accidental that “the spirit’s attitude within such a home is a passively-contemplative acceptance of ready-made existent meaning” (Lukács 1978: 32; 1920: 13), in the same way as for Lask, the subject has a contemplative attitude toward objective meaning (see Section 2.4). The type of problematic culture is defined as the exact opposite of the closed culture in terms of a fundamental deficit. It is a culture that lacks the “immanence of meaning in life” which characterizes the closed culture (cf. Lukács 1978: 56; 1920:  44). The modern world falls under the category of the problematic 22

23

See Lukács (1974:  151–232). See also my argumentation for this connection in Kavoulakos (2014a: 133–76). This is aptly noted by Hoeschen; however, he justifies it with only some brief remarks (cf. Hoeschen 1999: 238–9).

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culture—it is the “epoch of absolute sinfulness” (Lukács 1978: 152–3; 1920: 167– 8) as Lukács calls it by drawing upon a category of Fichte’s philosophy of history. One can discern here an analogy: As in Lask the level of archetypical meaning is the guarantor of objectivity, while on the level of “immanent meaning” we have only a deficient and finite image of the first (see Section 2.4), so in Lukács too, the closed culture functions as a hypothetical historical archetype, in the light of which the nature of the fragmented and inadequate forms of the problematic culture can be comprehended. The main characteristic of the new “transcendental topography” of the modern spirit is its disintegration as a “topography,” the lack of an “archetypical map,” that is, of a firm and comprehensive meaning of life. The “transcendental homelessness” of the subject (Lukács 1978: 41; 1920: 23–4) means precisely that it is henceforth obliged to exclusively lean upon its own powers to orient itself in life, since it does not meet a finished order “out there.” Therefore, “to be a man in the new world is to be solitary” (Lukács 1978: 36; 1920: 19). Lukács thinks of the transition to the problematic culture in the same terms Lask thought of the “Fall” from aletheiology to gnosiology: What is responsible for the fragmentation of the modern worldview is the subjectivity and its reflexivity. The modern discovery of the “productivity of the spirit” destroys the naïve relation to the forms of mediation of the subject and its objects; it deprives the closed culture’s “archetypes” of their self-evidence. Now, the archetypical meaning is transformed into a regulative idea, on the basis of which the modern subject orients its activity without however accomplishing the realization of the idea (cf. Lukács 1978: 33–4; 1920: 15). The differences between the types of culture do not only refer to the behavior of the subject, but also to the constitution of the objectivity that rises against it as an alien force. This relation is described in exactly the same way in the theory of experienced reality (see Section 5.4), with one decisive difference: According to the theory of problematic culture, alienation characterizes a specific epoch; it is the alienation of man from social-historical formations that are products of his very (psychic) activity (cf. Lukács 1978:  62; 1920:  52). In this sense, in his “historico-philosophical essay” Lukács synthesizes the social-historical standpoint with the neo-Kantian theory of experienced reality he developed in his Aesthetic. His aim is to explain how the merely given, indifferent and meaningless social formations constitute the modern “world of convention” that he also characterizes as a “second nature” (Lukács 1978: 62; 1920: 52–3). As we will see below (in Section 7.1), Lukács also uses this important concept in History and

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Class Consciousness with a meaning very close to the one it has in The Theory of the Novel:  The “second nature” refers precisely to the “formations” which, albeit a product of men, resemble the objects of the (“first”) nature, inasmuch as they obey laws that can be cognized but not understood as meaningful. Using a literary language, Lukács describes second nature as follows: This [second] nature is not dumb, sensuous and yet meaningless as the first is: it is a rigidified and alienated complex of meaning which no longer awakens interiority; it is a charnel-house of long-dead interiorities . . . When the soulcontent of these formations cannot directly become soul, when the formations no longer appear as the agglomerate and concentrate of interiorities which can at any moment be transformed back into a soul, then they must, in order to subsist, achieve a power which dominates men blindly, without exception or choice. (Lukács 1978: 64–5; 1920: 55–6)

As the “ready-made,” “reflective” objectivity of experienced reality—which Lukács analyses in the Aesthetic—remains transcendent for the subject that is not able to “permeate” it, so the second nature too, as a “rigidified, alienated complex of meaning” (Lukács 1978: 64; 1920: 55) is totally alien and indifferent to the powers of the soul. Its ossified, long-dead forms can no longer return to the living interiority of the soul that produced them; therefore they remain a “prison,”24 at least until the moment in which a “metaphysical act of reawakening the soul-element” (Lukács 1978: 64; 1920: 55) that created them will bring them back to life. This reawakening of the dead conventions would be possible only through the identification of “pure ethics”—in which the subject is “constitutive” because it “acts from within”—with “right and custom.” Only in this case does one not “need to put soul-element into the formations in order to act in them, but it can be extracted from them by acting” (Lukács 1978: 65; 1920: 56–7). However, the possibility of such a lively ethical-practical relation of man to the social world is canceled in the problematic culture, where the formations are raised against him as alien, coercive forces—an ascertainment that anticipates the analysis of the “apparatus” of the established customs in the Heidelberg Aesthetic, to which I referred above (see Section 5.4). According to it, as long as the subject does not turn to the sphere of ethical validity, it remains within the “merely experienced facticity of the customs,” which appear “as pure being, as factum brutum, as a transcendent object” (Lukács 1975c: 30). 24

Lukács (1978:  64; 1920:  55). As we have seen in Section 5.3, Lukács also describes experienced reality as a “prison.”

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In his Theory of the Novel, Lukács re-establishes a social-historical reference of the abstract critique of culture he formulated in his Aesthetic. Nevertheless, he does not yet form a dialectical theory of society and history. While retaining the idea of the distortive effect of a specific form of mediation of the subject and the object, he disconnects it from the timeless form of “experienceness” and links it to the emergence and domination of modern subjectivism. Even if he is not yet able to synthesize his early views on social rationalization with the problem of the modern form of objectivity, as he would do a short time later in History and Class Consciousness, he detects the distortion in the alienation of man from the self-created social formations and in his passive attitude toward them. From our retrospective point of view, for Lukács’s “sudden” turn in 1918 there was only one more step to be made: To find in Marx the language that would allow him a complete synthesis and a non-idealist understanding of all these elements.

6

The Modern Form of Objectivity

In Section 4.6 we saw that the dialectical cognition of the social totality pursued by Lukács’s materialist theory is burdened with the task of finding the central form or structure that permeates its particular objects. Lukács calls it the form of objectivity and imputes a socio-ontological as well as an epistemological meaning to it. In the previous chapter I pointed to the origins of this idea—the idea of locating the fundament of the constitution of social reality in a particular formation of the world—in Lukács’s early, pre-Marxist work. In the reification essay from History and Class Consciousness, Lukács deploys elements of his previous analyses and synthesizes them under the guidance of a Marxist analysis of the commodity and a Weberian theory of social rationalization (see Sections 6.1 and 6.2). The Marxist and Weberian roots of his theory are intensively discussed in the bibliography;1 therefore, here I confine myself to a brief reconstruction of them. The distinctiveness of my interpretation consists in the fact that I distinguish the form of objectivity of modern society from the “phenomenon of reification,” which I  will discuss in the next chapter. In my opinion, this is a distinction implicitly made by Lukács himself, whereas this has not been remarked on yet in the relevant literature. However, overlooking this distinction facilitates the common misinterpretation that Lukács confuses objectification and reification. Finally, I  close this chapter by pointing out the limits of the modern form of objectivity (Section 6.3).

6.1. Commodity form as the prototype of the modern form of objectivity In the preface of History and Class  Consciousness Lukács notes that his book is to a significant extent focused on the problems of the method of historical 1

See, e.g., Arato and Breines (1979: 114–18); Beiersdörfer (1986: 156–77); Dannemann (1987: 83–96); Dahms (1997).

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materialism. Therefore, only a limited confrontation with the problems of modern society was possible in it (cf. HCC: xliii; 7). In fact, the analysis of the modern form of objectivity offered by Lukács in the first part of his reification essay is particularly brief. However, its penetrating force is so strong that it heavily influenced the development of the critical theory of society in the decades that followed the publication of the work. Lukács starts this first part by connecting the modern form of objectivity with the concept of “commodity form” which he constitutes by drawing upon the first chapter of Marx’s Capital (cf. Marx 1976: 125–77; 1962: 49–98). To talk about the “commodity form,” Lukács firstly examines the position of the commodity in pre-capitalist societies. This retrospect serves to acquire a better knowledge of the social-historical present through comprehending its historical distinctiveness, “as our interest in history is determined in the last analysis by our desire to understand the present” (HCC: 158; 174). The careful reader immediately discerns that Lukács’s references to the restricted role of the commodity in traditional societies are not connected with some kind of a causal or teleological explanation of history, but give a criterion for the evaluation of the decisive significance of the commodity form as a “constitutive form” (HCC: 85; 96) of modern society.2 Leaning upon Marx’s relevant remarks, Lukács stresses the fact that, whereas exchange and barter had already appeared in primitive forms of social organization, the exchange value did not take a form independent of the use-value of the commodities in them. Therefore the primitive forms of barter develop at the borders between the “natural communities” (HCC: 85; 96), without significantly influencing their “natural” mode of production. Where “commodity exchange is not dominant” it is the merchant who sets the equivalence between the exchanged goods—a contingency that gradually diminishes, as exchange and the production for exchange develop (cf. HCC: 85; 96). Precisely this weight of the subjective-personal factor that was retained until the emergence of bourgeois society is the reason for which “the personal nature of economic relations was still understood quite clearly on occasion at the start of capitalist development” (HCC: 86; 97).

2

Beiersdörfer points out Lukács’s sensitivity toward the distinctive character of modern rationalism and its social preconditions; a sensitivity that can be compared to the similar sensitivity of Max Weber (see Beiersdörfer 1986: 110–11, 252–3, n. 7). What Beiersdörfer symptomatically cannot see is that such sensitivity cannot possibly coincide with a rationalist-teleological philosophy of history such as the one he ascribes to Lukács, following the usual reading of his work (see Beiersdörfer 1986: 123, 127, 207).

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The difference between such historical periods and the capitalist epoch arises from the fact that in them the commodity form is not yet the “universal form of shaping society” (HCC: 85; 96, my emphasis). The historical uniqueness of capitalist society is precisely connected with the trend of the universalization of the commodity form and, subsequently, with the decisive, “constitutive” role of the “problem of the commodity  .  .  . as the central, structural problem of capitalist society in all manifestations of its life” (HCC:  83; 94). Thus, Lukács emphasizes the qualitative difference between pre-capitalist and capitalist societies, that is, the radically new element that capitalist societies represent in historical development: For “all the subjective and objective phenomena in the societies concerned acquire, due to this difference, qualitatively different forms of objectivity” (HCC: 84; 95). What is, however, the particular structure represented by the commodity as the original form of objectivity in bourgeois society? As an object to be exchanged, the commodity represents the principle of formal equality of qualitatively different things. The “commodity relation” (GuK:  96, 97, 98; 69, 71, 74) is founded on the reduction of different things to their only common element, that is, the objectively countable, abstract labor needed for their production. With the universalization of the commodity form in economic life every contingency of the quantitative relation at the basis of commodity exchange ceases, since it is integrated in a system of market relations, in which the abstraction necessary for exchange is performed according to “objective laws,” independent of the agents’ will. As it is not a part of a determinist theory of history, neither can Lukács’s analysis of the commodity be incorporated in a mechanistic economic explanation of the “laws” of capitalism. To comprehend this one needs to take into account Lukács’s declaration that the correct conceptualization of the problem of commodity—as we find it, in his opinion, in Marx—must avoid considering it an isolated problem or a problem of an individual science in order to see its significance for the totality of capitalist society, for “all manifestations of its life” (HCC: 83; 94). In other words, the world of the universalized commodity constitutes a radically new social and cultural totality. In fact, the way Lukács associates the commodity form with the form of objectivity of bourgeois society presupposes a non-economistic understanding of economic categories. Besides, for him, it would be a concession to the dominant formalist thought to isolate the commodity form as an economic category and consequently, to reduce other fields of social life to a causal effect of stable “economic laws.” As we saw in Section 4.4, Lukács could not possibly

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claim, and in fact never claimed, that the predominance of the commodity form is the economic cause that explains the phenomena of bourgeois society.3 Instead of such an assertion, he uses a formulation that calls for interpretation: In his opinion, in opposition to what is the case in pre-capitalist societies, in capitalism the “commodity form” or “commodity structure” is “the prototype (Urbild) of all forms of objectivity and all forms of subjectivity that correspond to them” (HCC: 83; 94, my emphasis). If the commodity is the “prototypical form,” then in bourgeois society there must be other structural forms in other social fields apart from the economic sphere, which constitute variations of it. The relation between them will not be that of a cause to its effect, but should rather be described as a relation of structural homology. Thus, instead of a mechanistic explanation of the genesis and functioning of capitalism, in Lukács we have a holistic presentation of the fundamental form of objectivity that permeates the relation of bourgeois society to nature, the relations between men, as well as the relation of man with himself (see HCC: 88; 99). This presentation may start from the field of economy, but it extends to the rest of the fields of social life, detecting the structural homologies between their forming principles, without attempting to reduce them to an “economic basis” (cf. Feenberg 2014: 73–7). The transition to a society in which the commodity is the “universal category of the overall social being” (HCC:  86; 97) can only be thought of as a dialectical process, that poses its own preconditions: “The universality of the commodity form determines . . . an abstraction of the human labour objectified in commodities,” while its “historical possibility is determined by the real performing of this process of abstraction.”4 The supervening change does not concern only the field of “economy,” but also the “overall social being” (HCC: 87; 98)—an aspect that will occupy us in the next section. Before going into this aspect, presupposing Marx’s analyses (cf. HCC: 84; 95) and drastically restricting the claim to the completeness of his elaborations (cf. HCC:  87, 93; 98, 104), Lukács turns his attention to the immediate consequences of the dominance of the modern form of objectivity in the economic life of bourgeois society, that is, to the “structure-forming effects” of the “developed production of commodities” (Beiersdörfer 1986: 167). 3

4

Contrary to what Honneth thinks (see Sections 7.4 and 7.5). In a similar interpretative line, Arato and Breines critically refer to the reductionism and the primacy of economy in Lukács (Arato and Breines 1979: 122). HCC: 87; 98. Feenberg aptly draws on the contemporary socio-ontological concept of “performativity” to describe the “circularity of culture,” i.e., precisely this relation of reciprocal presupposition of the cultural process and its conditions (see Feenberg 2014: 65).

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Objectively, the universalization of the commodity form entails the establishment of a system of relations between objects and persons that leans upon abstraction and objective calculation of qualitative properties. The organization of economic activity in capitalism is based, on the one hand, on the principles of objective measuring and “rational calculation” and, on the other hand, on “rational mechanisation” (HCC: 91; 103). The need to accurately measure labor leads to an increasing “rationalization” of the labor process, through its fragmentation into specialized operations, their mechanisation and calculative coordination, etc.5 Human activity is organized in such partial systems whose motion becomes independent from human will and practice, obeying only their own rational laws. These subsystems are coordinated on the basis of external necessities, which men can cognize but not change. They constitute the unity of economic life as the unintentional, mechanical effect of the calculative-economic activity of men (cf. HCC:  87, 88–9; 98, 100). With these descriptions Lukács moves in the direction of a critical-Marxist systems theory of economy.6 Subjectivity must adequately adapt to this objective constitution of the productive and economic process. The establishment of the market economy goes hand in hand with the constitution and wide expansion of the human type of the “free” worker, whose labor power has become an objectively measured “thing” that she sells “freely” in the labor market (cf. HCC:  91; 102). In the same way the object of production becomes fragmented by the separation and specialization of particular productive functions, so the subject must also be fragmented (cf. HCC: 89; 100). Man’s activity is objectified; it is transformed into an accurately measured commodity (cf. HCC: 87; 98) that must be homogenized through the isolation of the worker’s peculiarities as non-rationalizeable as well as non-calculable factors which could disturb the smooth functioning of the process of production (cf. HCC: 89; 100). As we saw in Section 5.2, even before turning to Marxism Lukács was familiarized with similar descriptions of capitalist economy and its consequences for the subject, like those found in Simmel’s Philosophy of Money. Such descriptions are now reformulated from Marx’s viewpoint.7 This holds true also for Lukács’s remark on the impact of the capitalist division of labor on the

5

6

7

Cf. HCC:  88–89; 99–100. Dannemann aptly summarizes the traits of capitalist production in Dannemann (1997: 48–9). The systemic dimension of social rationalization is stressed by Cerutti (1983:  354, 371)  and Hall (2011b: 124–5). For the integration of Simmelian analyses in Lukács’s Marxist theory, see Dannemann (1987: 61–82).

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“categories of the immediate relation of men to the world” and, more concretely, the transformation of time into space (HCC: 89; 101). In his pre-Marxist period, Lukács had already received, with great interest, Bergson’s antithesis between the mechanical-measurable time of natural science and the qualitatively determined time of experienced duration.8 Now, in the Marxist description of capitalist labor he finds the archetype of this opposition: The social process of replacing the “qualitative, variable, flowing nature” of time with “an exactly delimited, quantifiable continuum filled with quantifiable ‘things,’ ” that is, the “reified, mechanically objectified ‘performance’ of the worker, wholly separated from his total human personality” (HCC: 90; 101). Also, this change in the objectivity of time is a product and simultaneously a precondition of the capitalist division of labor.9 In summary, the new division of labor is accompanied by the social establishment of a new form of objectivity, which it simultaneously presupposes, on the objective as well as the subjective level: it is the form of “calculability” (HCC: 88; 99), of calculative rationality. As has been noted, the implementation of this calculative form of objectivity corresponds to that which Marx described as a “social process of abstraction,” as an imposition of abstract categories which thus become “real abstractions” (Realabstraktionen) that govern real economic life.10 Lukács describes this process as “rational objectification” that has as a consequence the concealment of “above all the— qualitative and material—immediate character of things as things” (HCC: 92; 104). Setting the material-substantial dimension of things aside for the sake of a formally-calculatively constituted objectivity has particularly problematic consequences, which become manifest—as we will see in Section 6.3—in the phenomenon of crisis.

8

9

10

Around 1910, before turning to neo-Kantianism, Lukács read the German translation of Bergson’s Introduction to Metaphysics (first German edition, Bergson 1909). He was very impressed by this book, in which the French philosopher laid the fundaments for his theory of intuitively approaching the experience flow as “duration.” These analyses continued to influence him even after espousing neo-Kantianism (cf. Kavoulakos 2014a: 90–91, 94). Cf. HCC: 90; 101. In the tenth chapter of the first volume of Capital (“The working day,” the eighth chapter of the German edition), presenting the inherent tendency of capitalist production to increase the daily time of labor, Marx referred to the “vampire thirst for the living blood of labour” (Marx 1976: 367; 1962: 271). Describing the struggles for the regulation of the working day, Marx explained that the “whole living day” of the worker is at the disposition of capital, which “steals the time” the worker has to live, i.e., to perform his cultural-ethical and/or simply natural functions (Marx 1976: 375–6; 1962: 280–81). Lukács stresses the fact that this stealing of the time to live takes on the form of its rationalization. Cf. Dannemann (1987:  31–2); Beiersdörfer (1986:  157–8); Βösinger (2015:  107–8). The concept of real abstraction can be derived from Marx’s analyses on the role of abstractions as “forms of existence” in the “Introduction” of 1857 (Marx 1904: 302; 1961: 637).

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6.2. The universalization of the modern form of objectivity: Calculative rationality When Lukács moved to Heidelberg in 1912, he developed an intellectual friendship with Max Weber that lasted even after his turn to Marxism, until Weber’s death. The biographical as well as theoretical interaction between Weber and Lukács has been sufficiently commented upon11—I restrict myself here to summarizing the way Lukács integrated elements of Weber’s theory of rationalization into his own holistic theory of modern society and its distinctive form of objectivity. In the previous section we saw that in its most abstract version the form of objectivity that corresponds to the capitalist division of labor is the form of calculability. This abstract determination of it allows Lukács to draw on Max Weber’s diagnosis on the structural homology of the capitalist enterprise and other fields of social life, for example, the system of justice and bureaucracy. In both fields one can observe the same fundamental trend we find in the field of economy toward establishing a total system of formal relations that leans upon abstracting the qualitative nature of the objects and reducing them to calculable and thus predictable regularities. Therefore, despite the disharmonies that can occur between the partial fields of social agency, a common determining principle remains—the principle of rational calculation. An analysis of bourgeois society on the basis of this principle can lean upon Weber’s work. Indeed, in his Economy and Society (1921) Weber suggested a theory of modern societies based on the concept of “purposive” or “formal rationality.” The principle governing modern society is the principle of calculation, the precondition of the implementation of which is the establishment of capitalist relations of production: The establishment of private ownership of the means of production, the free market, freedom of entrepreneurship etc. Further preconditions of social rationalization are the formation of big companies, the development of rational techniques of production, the creation of bureaucratic mechanisms and a system of formal justice, a formally rational monetary system etc. (cf. Weber 1978: 161–4; 1972: 94–5). Once these preconditions are fulfilled, the rational calculation of the profitability of entrepreneurial activity—the essence of economic activity in capitalism—becomes feasible. This is the case because economic activity is 11

See particularly Beiersdörfer (1986); Dannemann (1987:  83–96); Tarr (1993:  59–69); Käsler (1987: 74–85); Karádi (1987: 86–96); Greven (1987: 97–122); Bösinger (2015).

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oriented according to the model of formally rational action that abstracts from the material-substantial aims of agency.12 What Lukács finds of great importance in Weber’s theory is not only his analysis of the economic rationality of capitalist enterprise, but also the diagnosis that, as a structuring principle, “formal rationality” also permeates the other partial social systems of contemporary societies, such as the judiciary system and modern law, the bureaucratic administration etc. In these rationalized fields of social life one can observe the very same tendency toward the objectification of relations and regulations, the formalization of human behavior to make it predictable, the abstraction of concrete content and its reduction to universal forms. Indeed, for Weber, the prevalence of the market as a system of coordinating social agency requires “a legal system the functioning of which is calculable in accordance with rational rules” (Weber 1978:  337; 1972:  198). The “formal rationalization” of law is closely connected with the interests of the rational economic and political agents, that is, of those groups that are particularly interested in guarding a “formal and rational legal order” with systematic codified norms (cf. Weber 1978: 809–14; 1972: 468–71). Thus, modern political domination takes on the form of rational administration (cf. Weber 1972: 825– 37), the form of the bureaucratic “machine” that forces men “to serve it  .  .  . as it is . . . the case in the factory” (cf. Weber 1972: 835). Finally, the rational state based on bureaucracy and rational law and entrepreneurial capitalism supplement each other, while obeying the same fundamental logic (cf. Weber 1972: 815–21). In his diagnosis of the form of objectivity of bourgeois society, Lukács uses Weber’s theory of social rationalization as an implementation of the principle of formal rationality in all subsystems of social life to describe the universalization of the same intellectual and practical structure which Marx analyzed in the case of the commodity. He thus attempts to synthesize Marx, Weber and Simmel’s theory of social rationalization (cf. Dannemann 1987: 95; 2015: 120). In Lukács’s eyes, what these three theories of modern society have in common is the attempt to analyze it with respect to the predominance of a formal, calculative form of rationality that abstracts the particular, qualitative, individual nature of things and subjects. Lukács firstly adopts Weber’s idea that the formally rational institutions, like law and bureaucratic administration, constitute functional preconditions and

12

For the “formally rational” in opposition to the “substantively rational” economic activity, see Weber (1978: 85–6; 1972: 44–5).

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simultaneously, consequences of the implementation of capitalist economic relations. Following Weber, he connects the homology of the economic and legal structure of bourgeois society with their common reliance upon the principle of rational calculation (cf. HCC: 95–6; 106–8). As a result, in bourgeois society “a rational systematization of all statutes regulating life arises, which represents, or at least tends towards a closed system applicable to all possible and imaginable cases” (HCC: 96; 108). As in economy, in the field of the legal regulation of human relations, the “breach with the empirical and irrational methods of administration and dispensing justice” (HCC:  96; 108) and the “rational systematization” serve the constitution of an accurately calculable “modern legal objectivity,” in the framework of which the legal system “is capable of referring, with formal generality, to all possible events of life and to be predictable and calculable in this respect” (HCC: 96; 108). It is characteristic that the same structure is repeated on the intellectual level, in jurisprudence that focuses precisely on the general form of law, regarding its content as being beyond comprehension (see HCC: 107–9; 119–21). The fact that the structure of the bureaucratic administration is analogous to that of the rationalized law comes as no surprise. As in capitalist enterprise, here too, objectively one observes a fragmentation of social functions and a calculative coordination of their rational subsystems. Therefore, bureaucratic organization relies upon the same type of rational division of labor with its emphasis on specialization, the mechanical coordination of the parts and the cultivation of the characteristic attitude of formal objectivity, that is, the distanciation of man from the “qualitative-material essence of the ‘things’ ” (HCC:  99; 110). Then, subjectively one meets here the same tendency toward the self-objectification of the subject we already know from the capitalist enterprise—the only difference is that in this case it is applied on the “ethical-spiritual” substance of man itself, demanding his standardization and submission to the bureaucratic mechanism (cf. HCC: 99–100; 110–11). As a dominant tendency of bourgeois society, the process of rationalization embraces all human institutions and practices. As the subjects are obliged to rationally objectify their abilities to render them calculable and exchangeable, their whole personality undergoes a calculative-rational processing; it is constituted by the same form of objectivity that penetrates the whole social world. Thus, psychic qualities and human relations are finally reduced to this form of objectivity, as in the examples given by Lukács:  the “prostitution” of the intellectual abilities and experiences of journalists and the transformation of

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marriage to a contract of exchanging sexual services, as described even in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals (cf. HCC: 100; 111–12).

6.3. Crisis as the limit of the modern form of objectivity As we saw in Chapter  5, even before turning to Marxism, Lukács had tried different interpretations of modern culture and its crisis, based on the opposition of form and content, society and the individual. Indeed, especially the Theory of the Novel with its characteristic construction of the antithesis between the archaic, substantial totality and the modern, fragmented conventionality was written under the pressure of the catastrophic peak of the crisis in the First World War. In History and Class  Consciousness, Lukács appears to be certain that in Marx’s work he has found the explanation of the phenomenon of crisis accompanying modern society from its birth onwards.13 As a matter of fact, the period in which the essays of this volume were written was full of unmistakable indications of modern society’s inherent tendency toward selfdestruction: Economic crisis, the World War, and the uprising of the oppressed are, for Lukács, clear manifestations of a fundamental social discrepancy that must be theoretically comprehended instead of put aside as a random event of secondary importance, as happens with its consideration by bourgeois social science or philosophy. In fact, instead of recognizing the recurrent eruptions of crises as an empirical indication of the latent irrationality of capitalist social totality, bourgeois economic science insists on characterizing them as “temporary,” “contingent” disruptions (cf. HCC: 105; 117) —a tendency that evidences the fact that “crisis is the problem that forms the insuperable limit of the economic thought of the bourgeoisie” (HCC: 105; 117). I do not need to repeat Lukács’s critique of bourgeois economic science here, which I discussed in Section 4.2. Recall that its meta-critical orientation points to two dialectically interrelated dimensions of its cognitive limit: Its objective-sociological roots in the “class interests of the bourgeoisie” and the subjective-epistemological inadequacy of the formalistcalculative method that ignores the “qualitative being of the ‘things’ which leads

13

Opposing Habermas’s critique of Lukács’s alleged idealism, Cerutti points out the central significance of the concept of crisis—and the subsequent theoretical emphasis on the resistance of class to the causes of crisis—for the constitution of a materialist theory of modern society (cf. Cerutti 1983: 372).

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its extra-economic life . . . as use-value,” and though “in moments of crisis” it “becomes the decisive factor” (HCC: 105; 117). In view of the necessary blindness of conventional science, an alternative critical theory would have to consider the phenomena under examination on their real basis by integrating them in the social-historical totality. This is already the orientation of the meta-critique of economic science. In addition, the double—methodological and socio-ontological—meaning of the concept of the form of objectivity points to the connection between the crisis of the dominant forms of knowledge and the objective economic, social and political crisis of bourgeois society.14 Both dimensions of the social crisis are due to the inadequacy of the fundamental form of objectivity of modern society, the deeper lack of unity and the conflict between rational forms and the contents of life that cannot be reduced to these forms without being violated. Indeed, for Lukács what is at stake is finally the unavoidable crisis of the dominant practical and intellectual formalism of modern times, as the “seemingly complete rationalization of the world that penetrates the very depths of man’s physical and psychic being meets its limits in the formal character of its rationality” (HCC: 101; 112). Rationalization consists in a specific kind of “processing”: the isolation of the “elements of life” (HCC: 101; 112) and their subsumtion under abstract universal concepts and laws. The “limit” of rationalization is precisely the “neglect of the concrete character of the material” (HCC: 101; 112), which we discovered earlier, in the first part of this study, as a fundamental trait of modern rationalism.15 Hence, crisis reveals a fundamental disharmony that penetrates the “normal” everyday life of bourgeois society itself below the surface of its rational organization: “The structure of crisis is seen to be no more than a heightening of the degree and intensity of the daily life of bourgeois society” (HCC: 101; 112) and, thus, it is not the effect of the intervention of a contingent, “irrational” factor in a generally unhindered social process.16 14

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It is not by accident that only a few years later, in 1932, Max Horkheimer published as an “introduction” to the first issue of the journal of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, the legendary Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, a brief article on the problem of “Science and Crisis,” in which he worked out the connection between social and intellectual-scientific crisis (cf. Horkheimer 1988: 40–47). This connection is clearly made by Ernst Bloch in his review of History and Class Consciousness. Bloch recognized “crisis as the economic manifestation of the simple organized contingency” that “returns in bourgeois thought as the problem of the thing in itself ” (cf. Bloch 1977:  165–8, quote 168). Recently, the view was formulated that in an epoch in which Lukács’s idea of the proletariat as the subject of history seems to have irreversibly lost its credibility, crisis could be considered as the

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The opposition of form and the repressed content appears, from another point of view, as an antithesis between the whole and the parts. As we have already seen, through the subsumtion of the material under the rationalcalculative forms, “subsystems” of formally rational regularities are constituted, which “join together into what superficially seems to constitute a unified system of general ‘laws’ ” (HCC: 101; 112). However, this joining together is revealed as merely “apparent,” since the split of rational form and the “disregarded” material is now repeated on a higher level, where it manifests itself as “real incoherence of the system of laws” caused by the “adventitious connection” (HCC: 101; 112) between the subsystems. Marx had precisely this incoherence of the subsystems in mind when he talked about the “anarchic” character of capitalist economy (Marx 1976: 667; 1962: 552). Lukács describes the same situation through the opposition “between a necessity subject to strict laws in all isolated phenomena and the relative irrationality of the total process” that characterizes “the whole structure of capitalist production” (HCC: 102; 113). The incoherence of the “total process” clearly appears in periods of crisis, when the subsystems cease to interact relatively smoothly and their independence from each other is revealed (cf. HCC: 101; 112). Economic crises are the effect of a deeper irrationality of the whole that is expressed in a series of internal conflicts and imbalances between the subsystems (e.g., between different branches of production, between economy and administration, etc.; cf. HCC: 103; 114–15) or in the split between the “production” (aiming at quantitative maximization) and “consumption” (in which the qualitative dimension is retained) as manifested in crises of overproduction.17 Finally, the objective dimension of crisis as an economic-social process is internally connected with a “subjective” dimension that supersedes the problem of scientific knowledge of social-historical reality and concerns the ordinary awareness of its nature. We have already seen that the rationalization process permeates the whole physical and psychic existence of men and, for reasons we will investigate in the next chapter, forms a consciousness that is incapable of proceeding beyond the immediacy of bourgeois society, which it takes as a

17

ultimate proof of the plausibility of the theory of reification, since in crisis social life in general is jeopardized (cf. Larsen 2011:  94–8). What Neil Larsen overlooks is, however, that the diagnosis of reification and the causes of crisis requires a previous interpretation of the relevant social phenomena from a specific standpoint, that must itself be theoretically elucidated. Cf. HCC: 106–7; 117–18. See also Goldmann (1966: 104–6). It does not interest me here whether Lukács’s brief explications do justice to the whole range of Marx’s analyses about economic crises. After all, Lukács admits that his remarks only “want to shed methodological light on the state of affairs; in no way do they claim to present even a superficial attempt to substantially treat the issue concerned” (HCC: 101; 113).

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quasi-natural fact. As for bourgeois scientific thought, for this consciousness too, crisis always appears as a random accident, equally unintelligible as a natural catastrophe. If this irrational “fate” is going to cease oppressing us, a holistic theory and a corresponding ordinary consciousness are called for, capable of discerning the roots of the phenomenon of crisis in the concrete totality of established social relations and practices.

7

What Is Reification?

In the previous chapter I  presented Lukács’s theory of the modern form of objectivity without referring to the phenomenon of reification to emphasize the fact that we must distinguish them. For a philosopher with neo-Kantian education like Lukács it was self-evident that every—cognitive or practical— objectification is performed under the guidance of concepts/forms that can be traced through philosophical reflection. Following his neo-Kantian teachers, Lukács called the higher category of objectification “form of objectivity”— interpreting it, of course, in a dialectical-historical way that supersedes its merely epistemological or even transcendental-ontological sense, which it has in the neo-Kantians of the southwest German school. For Lukács, the distinctive trait of modern society is precisely the universal spread of a formally rational, calculative form of objectivity in all fields of social life. However, because of the discrepancy between the rational forms and the material of life, modern social life is characterized by the recurrent appearance of the catastrophic phenomena of crisis. However, such crises do not automatically lead to a change of the dominant form of objectivity. The reason for this lies in the fact that the universal domination of the modern form of objectivity gives rise to the phenomenon of beclouding the social-historical character of the relation between subject and object that it organizes and delimits. In this way a social “second nature” is constituted, which is governed by definite, empiricallyanalytically describable “laws,” and appears to be impenetrable by human intellect and action. Lukács describes precisely this dual, objective–socio-ontological and subjective-mental phenomenon as “reification” (Section 7.1). Against the usual reading of History and Class  Consciousness according to which Lukács confused the concept of objectification with that of reification, I  contend that, even if he does not explicitly formulate it anywhere, this distinction is in essence retained in the whole text (Section 7.2). As a social phenomenon, on the level of the individual, reification is accompanied by a

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correlative “subjective behavior,” namely, “contemplation” (Section 7.3). After clarifying these dimensions of Lukács’s theory of reification, I will proceed to a brief critique of its recent reformulation by Axel Honneth, showing that this reformulation cannot be considered as an interpretation of Lukács (Section 7.4), but also—more importantly—that it relies on a concept of reification that could itself be viewed as reified (Section 7.5).

7.1. Lukács’s concept of reification The discussion on what Lukács’s concept of reification means would have easily come to a clear and simultaneously definite conclusion if the meaning of the term in Marx had been taken into account.1 The truth is that Marx himself uses the term “reification” only once in the forty-eighth chapter of the third volume of Capital. At this point he describes the “mystification of the capitalist mode of production,” the “reification of social relations,” the “immediate coalescence of the material relations with their historical and social specificity.”2 It can be regarded as certain that this reference served as the source of inspiration for the constitution of Lukács’s concept of reification, for Lukács elsewhere cites the continuation of the above quote.3 1

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Hanna Pitkin’s case clearly shows where an attempt to understand Lukács’s concept of reification can lead, which exclusively relies upon Lukács’s own—admittedly not always elucidating—formulations, a limited knowledge of Marx, and the total neglect of his neo-Kantian and Hegelian background— data for which Pitkin explicitly confesses her ignorance (cf. Pitkin 1987:  266, 290, n.  35). As she misses the spirit of the reification essay, Pitkin reads its letter as diligently as she can. She more or less aptly locates and lists different dimensions of Lukács’s concept of reification (cf. Pitkin 1987: 267), which she cannot however synthesize in a unified view—in particular the unity of the “subjective” and the “objective” dimension of reification puzzles her (cf. Pitkin 1987: 266). Ironically, she puts the blame for this failure on Lukács who, in her eyes, was “very probably confused” (Pitkin 1987: 285); therefore, in her opinion, his central concept “mystifies more than it reveals” (285). The suspicion that the cause of such confusion lies less in Lukács himself and more in the subsequent misinterpretations of his thesis is strengthened by Timothy Bewes’s recent book on reification. Although generally a well-informed study, it reproduces a good number of such misinterpretations (cf., e.g., the introductory explications on the concept of reification; Bewes 2002: 3–9). Marx (1981: 969; 1964: 838). The term also appears without further explications in chapter 51 (Marx 1981:  1020; 1964:  887). Marx also uses the term “Versachlichung” in exactly the same sense, as “reification of the relations of production” (cf. Marx 1981: 516, 969; 1964: 405, 838, 839). See HCC: 95, 209, n. 18; 106, n. 1. The assumption that the concept of reification also originates from Simmel (cf. Frisby 2011: 22) cannot be philologically and substantially justified. In the Philosophy of Money Simmel uses the term three times, twice as a noun and once as an adjective; in all cases in the literal and not in the metaphoric sense of the constitution of a “phantom objectivity” which exists in both Marx and Lukács (cf. Simmel 2011: 298, 507, 509; 1989a: 366, 649, 652). In this respect, the English edition of the work causes confusion, as different words apart from “Verdinglichung” are translated in it as “reification.” From a more substantial point of view, Lukács was right to recognize the fact that the Philosophy of Money is a “very interesting and perceptive work in matters of detail” (HCC: 95; 106) and at the same time definitely distance himself from Simmel’s approach. For Lukács, Simmel’s weakness was that he did not manage to conceptualize the phenomenon of reification

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György Márkus explains that the “material relations of production,” to which Marx refers, pertain to the “technical” dimensions of social practice, that is, the abstract functions that are necessary for the social reproduction of every society. Marx ascertains that these functions are merged, are inseparably interwoven with their historically concrete realization so that the latter’s historicality is concealed (cf. Márkus 1982: 149–51). As we will see in detail below, for Lukács as for Marx, reification always refers to precisely this “vanishing” of the historical character of social relations through their appearance as “material relations of production,” as “technical imperatives” that have the unchangeable traits of a “thing.” In this sense, reification means to “treat social relations as things” (Feenberg 2014: 66). This does not, of course, mean that the relations are not mediated by “things,” that they do not have a “material character.” As in every “mystification,” the problem here is that the materially mediated relations do not appear as they are, that is, socially-historically determined, but as something else: As “things,” whose nature is given and unchangeable. Lukács uses Marx’s expression “phantom objectivity” (gespenstige Gegenständlichkeit; Marx 1976: 128; 1962: 52; HCC: 83, 100; 94, 112) to denote the capitalist mystification of the social-historical reality, the constitution of a phantom-like objectivity of the commodity relation as a “thing.” However, how can this “mystification” or—as one could also say—this “naturalization” of social relations be explained? To answer this question Lukács synthesizes his concept of the “prototypical” form of objectivity of the modern time, inspired by neo-Kantianism, with Marx’s analysis of commodity fetishism. In the section on commodity fetishism  of Capital (Marx 1976:  163–77; 1962:  85–8) Marx showed that, since the form of value commodity exchange relies upon takes on the form of the equivalence of qualitatively unequal things, their value appears to be an “objective property” they possess. Thus the value-form immediately produces an appearance that conceals the social relations lying at the basis of the material reproduction of society, since “it is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here  .  .  . the fantastic form of a relation between things.”4 While socially determined, the form of value is thus transformed into a

4

as such, since he tended to present the capitalist forms as a “timeless type of the possible human relations in general” (HCC: 95; 106; a criticism repeated in HCC: 156–7; 172–3). Bewes’s suggestion that Lukács discerns in Simmel “the reified form of the concept of reification” (cf. Bewes 2002: 93–5) relies upon the classic confusions about Lukács’s concept of reification. Although it fits with Bewes’s hypothesis of the “reflexive character of reification,” it is theoretically redundant, since for Lukács the idea of a “non-reified reification” would be meaningless. Marx (1976:  165; 1962:  86). Partly drawing upon analyses of Eberhard Braun (cf. Braun 2000), Dannemann aptly connects Lukács’s concept of reification with the “distortive reversal” (Verkehrung) that takes place “when a social relation . . . is presented as a natural quality of a thing” (Dannemann 2002:  84). Dannemann sees that this distortion “is not purely ideology, but an expression of the

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quasi-natural fact, a “natural form” (Naturform; Marx 1976: 168; 1962: 90) that produces a series of further capitalist mystifications, due to which labor, capital and land are separated from the context of the social relations they represent and appear as “natural” sources of value (Marx 1981: 968–70; 1964: 838–9). Does this mean that reification is only a phenomenon that relates to the false consciousness of men in capitalist society? An examination of the quotes in which Lukács refers to reification seems firstly to support such a reading, since in their majority they pertain to the “reified consciousness,” the “reified thought” or “theory” etc., while, when the term reification refers to the “world” or the “relations,” one can easily think that it describes the way in which these are perceived by the subject as something fixed and unchangeable.5 This interpretation does not consider the fact that for Marx and Lukács thought and being, consciousness and reality are dialectically interrelated.6 In Marx it is clear that the mystification of the relations of production, that is, capitalist fetishism, does not only consist in a false form of consciousness, but also pertains to the reality of alienated capitalist economy. Capital (as accumulated unpaid labor) becomes autonomous and imposes the logic of capitalization as superior to the satisfaction of social needs. As Marx writes about actors in capitalism: “Their social movement within society has, for them, the form of a movement made by things, and these things, far from being under their control, in fact control them” (Marx 1976:  167–8; 1962:  89). But their subordination to the “movement of the things” is not a mere illusion; therefore “freedom in this sphere can consist only in this, that . . . the associated producers govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control, instead of being dominated by it as a blind power” (Marx 1981: 959; 1964: 828). For both Marx and Lukács, the distorted consciousness (verkehrtes Bewusstsein) is the other side of a “real distortion” (Realverkehrung) on the level of the relations of production.7

5

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real loss of social control over the process of production” (Dannemann 2002: 84); therefore, from a political standpoint the theory of reification must be considered as a “theory of the recovery of autonomy or an emphatic theory of democratization” (85). As we saw in the introduction, this is Adorno’s interpretation of reification. It is interesting that on this issue he is in agreement with the structuralist opponent of critical theory Gareth Stedman Jones, who ascribes to Lukács the obviously idealist view that “the emergence of true proletarian class consciousness is itself tantamount to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie” (cf. Stedman Jones 1971: 48, 52–3). Bewes aptly notes that reification is not “an ideal structure, existing ‘solely’ at the level of consciousness; rather, the concept of reification alerts us to the dialectical interpenetration of consciousness (subject) and world (object), to the intimacy between thought and action, and to the necessary mediation of the opposition of materialism and idealism” (Bewes 2002: 90). Dannemann stresses these dual aspects of reification as ideology and “real reification” (Realverdinglichung; cf. Dannemann 1987: 42–7).

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Lukács emphatically notes that, as “forms of appearance,” the “reified laws . . . are by no means merely modes of thought, they are forms of objectivity of the present bourgeois society” (HCC:  177; 194). Therefore, one must assume that the abstract social forms of objectivity correspond to the “necessary existential and intellectual form of bourgeois society, the reification of being and thought” (HCC: 177; 194). Because the problem of reification pertains to both being and thought, its resolution—which we will consider in the third part of this book— cannot be confined to a transformation of consciousness, but must include the practical alteration of reality itself. The abolition of the reified forms “cannot simply be a movement of thought alone, it must also amount to their practical sublation as the actual forms of social life” (HCC:  177; 194), to the practical disruption of the “reified structure of existence” (HCC: 197, similarly 205; 216, similarly 224). Thus, as a “phenomenon” reification is “existent,” it belongs—to speak in a Hegelian manner—to the level of “illusion” (Schein), effectuated by the immediately given form of appearance (Erscheinungsform) of bourgeois society: “Reification is . . . the necessary, immediate reality of every person living in capitalist society.”8 This immediate facticity that is permeated by “reified laws” corresponds to what Lukács calls “second nature” (HCC: 86, 128; 97, 142). In contemporary terms one can identify second nature with the social system; after all it consists in an “ineluctable sequence of known, knowable, rational systems of laws” (HCC: 129; 142) that are externally imposed upon men, in a fashion analogous to the laws of (first) nature, that is, independently of our will.9 With the mechanization and the rationalization of economic life, “objectively a world of finished things and relations between things springs into being (the world of commodities and their movements on the market), governed by laws that are indeed gradually cognized by man, but even so they confront him as untamed forces that function on their own power” (HCC: 87; 98). Repeating a motif we have already met in the description of the “apparatus” of the customs or of the conventional formations in his pre-Marxist work, Lukács explains that one can indeed externally conceptualize the laws of “second nature” and 8

9

HCC: 197; 216. As Arato and Breines aptly point out, “the appearances (Erscheinungen) do take on the form of illusion (Schein) when, for instance, they appear to be historically unchangeable. But as appearances, they are the historically necessary forms of existence in which their likewise historical ‘inner core’, their essence, is manifest” (Arato and Breines 1979: 114). Without the Hegelian concepts of appearance, illusion and essence, Lukács’s view remains unintelligible. For the influence of Hegel’s logic of essence on Lukács, cf. Feenberg (2014: 83–7). Besides Beiersdörfer (1986: 156–203), Dannemann (1987: 40–47), and Feenberg (2014: 65–73), Jean Grondin also acknowledges the interdependence of the objective and the subjective dimensions of the phenomenon of reification (cf. Grondin 1988: 90–91).

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use this knowledge pragmatically to his advantage, but he cannot change the laws themselves, since he has already acknowledged them as independent of his practice. This leads to the result that, irrespective of the position of the subject in society, the given reality rises in front of it as an alien world of external necessities, to which it can only adapt. So far I  have referred to the explication of reification as a phenomenon provoked by the universal domination of the commodity form. However, according to Lukács, this phenomenon can be found in all fields of modern social life penetrated by rational-calculative forms: the state, the administration, the legal system, journalism etc. But, in a strict sense, the rigidification and dehistoricization of the rational-calculative structures of such fields of modern life do not depend upon their “transformation into things,”10 but to their appearance as incarnations of the only valid form of rationality, that is, to what one could call their “rational consecration.” In any case, in Lukács’s turn to the reificative consequences of the formalist rationality of commodity exchange and to the social generalization of the calculative form of rationality one can discern the origins of a critique of capitalism that took the form of a “critique of instrumental reason” or a “critique of technical rationality,” a model that would become the core piece of the critical theory of the Frankfurt school.11

7.2. Reification and objectification Even though my reply to the misplaced critique, that in History and Class Consciousness Lukács identifies reification with objectification, can easily be derived from my considerations set out earlier, I will add further arguments here, since this criticism determined a great part of the reception of this work even by prominent authors, while Lukács adopted the same misinterpretation of his own position in the preface to History and Class Consciousness of 1967.12 There he notes that reading Marx’s Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts helped him

10

11

12

Beiersdörfer aptly notes that the metaphor of reification makes sense only in the field of economy. However, he does not make further comments on this issue (cf. Beiersdörfer 1986: 267, n. 31). See the classic texts of this type of social criticism: Horkheimer and Adorno (2002); Horkheimer (1974). Cf. HCC:  xxiii–xxiv; Lukács (1970:  25–6). As an Althusserian critic of the so-called humanist historicism, Stedman Jones naturally welcomes Lukács’s self-criticism in the framework of his demolishing critique of the latter’s “idealism” (cf. Stedman Jones 1971: 52). Lukács’s self-critique is also espoused by Ágnes Heller, who repeats the standard interpretation (2015: 16–17), Martin Jay (1984a: 114–15), Frank Engster (2015a: 58–9), Stefan Müller and Johannes Rhein (2015: 221–5), Sabine Doyé (2005: 138), and Tom Rockmore (2000: 22).

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to critically view his “Hegelian interpretation” of Marx’s texts, since he became conscious of the difference between objectification (Vergegenständlichung), “that is a natural  .  .  . way of the human mastery of nature,” and alienation (Entfremdung), which “is a special variant of that activity that is realized in definite social relations” (HCC:  xxxvi; Lukács 1970:  42)—a distinction he allegedly ignored in History and Class Consciousness. However, even a superficial reading of the reification essay suffices to confirm that Lukács was well aware of the difference between objectification and reification, even before reading Marx’s Manuscripts at the beginning of the 1930s.13 First, the suggested lack of this distinction could be corroborated only if for Lukács every rational objectification inevitably led to reification. But Lukács does not contend any such thing—quite the opposite: only a historically specific form of rational objectification brings about the phenomenon of reification. More concretely, in the previous chapter we saw that the prototype of the modern form of objectivity, namely the commodity form, had already appeared in pre-capitalist societies, without however having the same effects on the social structures in them that it has in capitalism. Similarly, at the beginning of the third chapter we saw that, indeed, the rational-calculative forms of thought and practice also existed in pre-capitalist societies, but they did not claim to embrace the whole world, that is, to constitute a complete rational system. Herein lies the qualitative difference of modern philosophy even to ancient Greek philosophy that “knew the phenomena of reification, but without experiencing them as universal forms of the overall being” (HCC: 111; 123). This simply means that the calculative form of objectivity could possibly be partially implemented in a specific epoch, without however being universalized and thus, without being accompanied by the phenomenon of reification. Only (the postulate of) its universalization leads to that qualitative social change which is connected with the phenomenon of reification.14 Lukács notes the role of the commodity form in modern society: 13

14

The fact that Lukács’s self-critique is mistaken is recognized, e.g., by Ferenc Lendvai (1987: 146–7), Jay Bernstein (1984: 5–6), Kurt Beiersdörfer (1986: 205), and György Márkus (1982: 154–5). By adopting the suggested distinction between rational objectification and reification (as the social phenomenon provoked by the modern universalization of rational objectification) one avoids a further misinterpretation we meet in Márkus, who assumes that Lukács abolished the difference between alienation and reification (cf. Márkus 1982: 155–6). For Lukács, the phenomena which Márkus reconstructs as the content of “alienation” in late Marx, i.e., the dissolution of community relations, depersonalization, individualization, competitive sociality, the alienation of the worker from knowledge, etc. (cf. Márkus 1982:  145–59), constitute immediate consequences of the implementation of the modern form of objectivity. They have to be distinguished from the phenomenon of reification, which emerges on both, the objective (constitution of systems) and the subjective level (reified consciousness), as an effect of “alienated” social practices.

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The commodity can only be understood in its undistorted essence when it becomes the universal category of the overall social being. Only in this context does the reification that results from the commodity relation assume decisive importance both for the objective evolution of society and for the behaviour of men towards it. (HCC: 86; 97, my emphasis)

This quote clarifies beyond any doubt that reification is—according to the title of the first part of the reification essay—a “phenomenon” that results from the universalization of the “commodity relation” or the “commodity form.” As we saw in Section 6.2, the generalization of the calculative form does not pertain only to the field of capitalist economy—with its inherent tendency toward the constant expansion of commodification—but to all social structures. This extensive implementation of the principle of calculation impedes the comprehension of its historical character even more, since it facilitates the further “divorce of the phenomena of reification from their economic bases” (HCC: 95; 106). The phenomenon of reification, of the alienation of men from their sociability and the historicality of their existence is thus extended to all rationalized social relations. The universalization of rational-calculative forms entails the claim and, consequently, the tendency that they form a complete system which exhaustively organizes the world and human life in it. The claim to systematization we meet in rationalist philosophy and science reflects precisely this tendency on the level of intellect and knowledge. The universality and systematization of the rationalcalculative formations is not a self-evident characteristic of every historically realized rational objectification, but only of the rational objectification in the framework of modern rationalism, which in modern times is—as we have seen in the third chapter—considered to be the only valid model of knowledge. Second, ascribing to Lukács the identification of objectification and reification seems to be confirmed by the description of the rational-calculative objectification of the self, which pertains to the subjective dimension of reification. At this point, commentators are strongly tempted to identify the objectification of the subjective abilities or performances with their “reification.”15 After all, is it

15

Even Goldmann gives in to this temptation. Therefore his reading results in a vague concept of reification that in some cases means understanding value as a natural property of a thing (cf. Goldmann 1966:  79), in other cases reducing social relations to natural laws (87), transforming intellectual or psychic reality into a thing (87, 92–3), the autonomization of the economic system (96), the loss of humanity and meaning (103) or the transformation of man himself into a thing (109) that finds its peak in the atrocities of the Nazis (117). Contrary to Lukács, Goldmann greatly confuses rational objectification with its alienating consequences and the subsequent phenomenon of reification. Thus, his reading is an example of what must be avoided.

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not Lukács himself who tells us that the abilities of the subject are transformed into a “thing” (cf. HCC, 87, 90, 91, 99, 100; 98, 101, 102, 110, 112)? Indeed, a further variant of this interpretation imputes to Lukács, an identification “of the reification of relations and the reification of labor itself.”16 Actually Lukács was attentive enough to use in almost all cases only the terms “rational mechanization,” “calculability,” “rational” or “mechanical objectification,” etc., to describe the process of separating a specific ability from the whole personality, abstracting its qualities and rationalizing it through measuring and quantitatively expressing it (cf. HCC, 88, 89, 92, 100; 99, 100, 104, 110–11). Even if in a few places he refers to the “reified, mechanically objectified ‘performance’ of the worker” (HCC: 90; 101) or to the reification that penetrates “deep” in the “ ‘soul’ of the man who sells his performance as a commodity” (HCC: 172; 188), despite all ambiguity, it is more plausible to interpret these points in the light of the overall spirit of the text, as we have understood it so far: as the concealment of the social basis of the rational objectification of the subject’s physical and psychic abilities, that is, as the obfuscation of the internal connection of their measurable objectivity with the capitalist division of labor. In this case of rational “self-objectification” too (HCC: 92; 104), what becomes reified is not the self but the social fundament of its rational objectification: a specific system of social relations.

7.3. Reification and contemplation Lukács’s intention from the beginning was to theoretically conceptualize the dialectical relation between social being and consciousness, object and subject in modern society. Besides, this is why, when he turned his attention to the commodity form as the “prototype of all forms of objectivity,” he simultaneously saw it as the prototype of “all forms of subjectivity that correspond to them in bourgeois society” (HCC:  83; 94). The concept of subjectivity does not only 16

Müller and Rhein (2015:  222). This—in my opinion, unfounded—interpretation allows the two commentators to formulate a conventional critique of Lukács’s “idealism”; a critique that focuses on the alleged misrecognition of the material nature of labor and on the subsequent construction of the identical subject-object (cf. Müller and Rhein 2015: 222–5). A similar—equally problematic— interpretation of the reification of man and his labor is that of Bastian Bredtmann, who discerns Lukács’s need for an anthropological claim of a “not reified remainder in the (proletarian) subject” (cf. Bredtmann 2015:  263 and 293, n.  21; similarly Greven 1987:  117–18) and focuses on its incompatibility to Marx’s theory (cf. Bredtmann 2015:  263–4). This critique is also based on the presupposition that Lukács confuses (rational) objectification (in this case: labor) with reification. In a similar way, William McBride focuses on the reification of labor and the persons themselves (cf. McBride 1988:  116–18) to question the actuality of the concept of reification (cf. McBride 1988: 122).

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contain its passive formation by the objective conditions—its constitution on the basis of the dominant form of objectivity. An essential part of it is also the stance, the behavior of the subject or the way it relates (Verhalten) to the world. Its examination is of particular importance for Lukács, who searched for the possibility of an active intervention of the subject to change the social-historical objectivity. As he notes in a quote already cited, the phenomenon of reification “that results from the commodity relation” is of decisive importance both for the objective evolution of society and for the behaviour of men towards it; for the subjugation of men’s consciousness to the forms in which this reification finds expression; for the attempts to comprehend this process or to rebel against its disastrous effects, to liberate themselves from servitude to a “second nature” so created. (HCC: 86; 97)

Thus, as far as the subject is concerned reification takes on the form of a particular kind of behavior or stance toward the reified “second nature” of social power relations. This stance depends on a specific kind of consciousness, the “natural ideology” of the members of bourgeois society. It is that “reified form of consciousness” which becomes the “fundamental category of the whole of society” (HCC: 99; 111). In this form, reification consists in treating the system of dominant social relations as a ready-made “thing” which does not depend on human activity, that is, it does not have a historical and finite character and thus, it cannot possibly be changed. In the first part of the essay on reification, Lukács already defines reified consciousness as the imprisonment of the subject within the immediacy of capitalist reality and its inability to adopt the standpoint of totality (cf. HCC:  94; 104–5). As we have already seen in the first part of this study, this form of consciousness takes on sophisticated forms in philosophy or in modern science with their characteristic dualism and their fundamental contemplative attitude. However, the latter is only a specific manifestation of a more general contemplative behavior of the subject in all its everyday practices in capitalist society. When he uses the term “contemplation” Lukács does not allude only to an epistemic stance, but to a wider cognitive and practical behavior. Indeed, as has been aptly remarked, this stance must not be misunderstood as “a psychological property of individuals,” but must be considered as a “categorial appearance form of (individual) social existence in capitalist social formations,” as a “historically produced and derived mode of relatedness to the world.”17 17

Bernstein (1984:  9). Bernstein talks about “categorial contemplation” to distinguish it from the merely psychological passive stance. He clearly discerns that “categorial contemplation is the

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First, in the field of economy, reification in its two dimensions, the objective and the subjective, leads to a specific subjective behavior. This is the passive adaptation of man to an external system of mechanical social necessities, to the production and reproduction of which he unconsciously contributes with his stance. This is the meaning of Lukács’s position that as the rationalization and mechanization of the labor process progresses “the worker’s activity increasingly loses its practical character and is transformed into a contemplative stance” (HCC: 89; 100–101). In fact, the attitude of the unengaged spectator dominates in the immediate productive process, in which the worker is forced to adapt to the functioning of the machines, as well as toward the social-economic process in general (cf. HCC: 89; 100). The same “passive submission” (HCC:  89; 100) is found in the attitude of the subject toward the fragmentation of its own personality. The type of the “free worker” corresponds to an internally fragmented, isolated and individualized subject, whose organic bonds with the community have been torn and replaced by the external laws of the productive-economic mechanism (cf. HCC: 90; 101–2). For these subjects the coercion of the whole system of economic relations has replaced the personal relations of dependence and oppression we find in pre-capitalist societies. The price for this “liberation” from personal bonds is precisely the subjugation to impersonal, quasi natural laws and regularities—as Lukács was taught early on by Simmel (see Section 5.2). The social-historical character of these laws remains concealed, because of the phenomenon of the reification of consciousness. Thus, with the establishment of capitalist relations of production, the fate of the free worker—his or her necessary submission to the laws of the social process— becomes the general destiny of all members of bourgeois society (cf. HCC: 91, 92; 102, 103–4). Lukács inquires into the consequences of this fact in all rationalized fields of social practice. For example, the rationalization of law has significant effects on how the legal system is perceived “from the standpoint of the participating subject” (HCC:  97; 109). Although modern law continually changes in order to adjust to the dynamically evolving modern social reality, it “confronts the individual events of social life as something permanently established, exactly defined, i.e. as a rigid system” (HCC: 97; 108).

subjective corollary and effect of this process of reification, of making social practices appear as things” (Bernstein 1984: 14).

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This rigidity as opposed to the plasticity of traditional law—which characterized it, although it remained more or less unchanged even for centuries—represents the way in which modern legal objectivity is reflected in the consciousness of the subjects participating in modern life. As a strict system of calculating the behavior of men, modern law inevitably conflicts with the fluid nature of human action. It is precisely this fluidity, the individual particularity and “arbitrariness” of practice— which were acknowledged as such in traditional forms of law—that must be excluded, for the calculation to be possible. Thus, modern legal objectivity reveals the problem of content we are already well acquainted with and leads to a contemplative behavior that “exhausts itself in the correct calculation of the possibilities . . . of the unfolding” of law-governed processes, in the knowledge of the “ready-made” laws of these processes, in “taking measures of protection and prevention,” etc. (HCC: 98; 109). Lukács finds the same passivity of the subject toward the “ready-made” system in the case of the bureaucrat, whose “conscientiousness” and “impartiality” are nothing more than a “total subjection to a system of objective relations to which he is exposed” (HCC: 99; 111). The contemplative passive stance is the cause and, at the same time, the effect of the annihilation of the ability of the subject to actively intervene in the social process—an annihilation that leaves no social class untouched, the proletariat as well as the bourgeoisie. Thus, the difference in the relation of the two classes to reality “means only a quantitative gradation and not directly a qualitative difference in the structure of consciousness” (HCC: 98; 110). This is why, although—as we will see in the third part—only the proletariat can realize the objective possibility of overcoming reification through becoming self-conscious as a class, when describing the phenomenon of reification Lukács feels justified to abstract its class character and to examine it as a “general, structural fundamental phenomenon of the whole of bourgeois society” (HCC: 210, n. 19; 110, n. 1). Although Lukács notes that “for the first time capitalism created, with its unified economic structure, a—formally—unified consciousness for the whole of society” (HCC:  100; 111), it would be a mistake to think that he totally reduces consciousness to the given social context. For the reader who takes into account the wider spirit of the text, it is clear that Lukács speaks about the dominant form of consciousness in bourgeois society—other, even antagonistic forms of consciousness remain of course possible. Critics who would like to discern some kind of performative contradiction here18 obviously rely upon

18

See, e.g., Honneth’s interpretation (2008:  53–5; see also the next section). Generally, this interpretation is a projection of Habermas’s classic critique of the old Frankfurt school (on this

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the erroneous premise that Lukács reduces consciousness to economy or ontologizes its reified form.19

7.4. What reification is not In his book Reification (2008, German original 2005), Axel Honneth proposed a new interpretation of Lukács’s theory of reification through the conceptual means of the theory of recognition he had been developing by the beginning of the 1990s. With his book Honneth brought Lukács and his History and Class  Consciousness back to the international discussion. However, from the standpoint of the theory of reification as I  reconstructed it above, this is the only essential benefit of his intervention. In fact, Honneth’s prominently eclectic reading totally deletes the most radical dimensions of Lukács’s theory and distorts the concept of reification by transforming it to a kind of constant anthropological factor. Honneth undertakes the paradoxical task of updating Lukács’s theory of reification while he simultaneously takes the established interpretation of History and Class  Consciousness for granted, according to which Lukács’s was imprisoned in an idealist way of thinking closely linked to the outdated “paradigm of production.”20 However, for Honneth this critique holds for what he calls the “official version” of the theory of reification, which he connects with an idealist “philosophy of identity”: According to this view, only that kind of practice, in which the object can be thought of as a product of the subject, is undistorted. However, such a theory represents an immediate retreat to obsolete views of German Idealism (cf. Honneth 2008: 27). In the first part of this book I argued

19

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critique see, e.g., Hohendahl 1985) on Lukács. It is not by accident, of course, that detecting an alleged self-contradictory “totalization” of reification usually results in criticizing Lukács’s revolutionary radicalism. E.g., Arato and Breines also discern Lukács’s tendency to “totalize” reification that purportedly forced him to search for a total rupture through the revolution of a mythical “absolute subject” (cf. Arato and Breines 1979:  121–3, 140–41, 155)  or the communist party as its representative (cf. Arato and Breines 1979:  157–8). Also Lendvai refers to Lukács’s “messianic idea” of overcoming the total reification of the proletariat (cf. Lendvai 1987: 151–2). Where a biased reading can lead becomes apparent in the case of Beiersdörfer. Though his study is one of the most careful investigations of the neo-Kantian influences on Lukács, in some places, especially in its last pages, he loses his usual interpretative tact and espouses Habermas’s prejudices. Thus, he discerns a contradiction in Lukács between “absolute reification” and emancipatory praxis that becomes a “pure miracle,” a leap without mediations. In view of this impasse he suggests— what else?—the distanciation from Lukács’s “utopian messianism” and the turn to a search for the normative fundaments of critical theory in communicative rationality (cf. Beiersdörfer 1986: 205–6). Unfortunately, this reading of Lukács, which has a long history within the Frankfurt school, continues to remain unchallenged by its younger successors—see, e.g., Jaeggi (1999: 70–71); Stahl (2012: 303–4).

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in length as to why this usual reading of History and Class  Consciousness is deeply problematic. Be that as it may, in the light of this interpretation, Honneth feels obliged to search in Lukács for an “unofficial version” of the concept of reification to restore its true core. In his investigation he takes his cues from two fundamental choices: First, he turns his attention to a problem that is, as he himself admits (cf. Honneth 2008:  20), alien to Lukács’s philosophical self-understanding:  the problem of the normative foundations of his theory.21 For Honneth, Lukács’s social criticism is grounded on an implicit fundament that has “only an indirectly normative character” (Honneth 2008: 21). This is the case, because this criterion’s nature is anthropological; it refers to the notion of “a more genuine or better form of human praxis” (Honneth 2008: 26). Second, Honneth abandons the dialectical method. He replaces the integration of the phenomenon of reification in a dialectical-holistic theory of the capitalist present with a consideration of the primordial anthropological conditions of human life, of the very “foundations of our existence” (Honneth 2008:  21) and their secondary infringement or distortion in actual social life. On this basis he interprets reification as the eclipse of the recognitional attitude that is necessary for human ontogenesis. Honneth is of course right to connect the phenomenon of reification with “a form of praxis that is structurally false” and not with “a mere epistemic category mistake nor a form of moral misconduct” (Honneth 2008:  26). However, abandoning the dialectical-holistic perspective leads to a series of significant alterations in Lukács’s theory of reification, which probably lie outside the boundaries of the interpreter’s legitimate freedom. Instead of describing the consequences of the social implementation of a socio-ontological category— namely, the calculative form of objectivity—Honneth’s “reification” has the same trivial meaning one could give it in everyday talk: Reification “designates a cognitive occurrence in which something that doesn’t possess thing-like characteristics in itself (e.g. something human) comes to be regarded as a thing.”22 As we saw in Section 7.1, for Lukács, as for Marx, what “takes on the character of a thing” is “a relation between persons” (HCC: 83; 94, my emphasis) 21

22

In 1999, Honneth had already pointed out the lack of explicit normative foundations in Lukács’s social critique (cf. Honneth 1999:  76). This criticism is a continuation of Habermas’s critique of the old Frankfurt school; therefore, it totally overlooks the reasons for Lukács’s (and Adorno’s) abstinence from a “normative” justification that would correspond to a “reification of ethics” (on this issue cf. Grondin 1988: 97–102). Honneth (2008: 21). It has been correctly noted that Honneth takes reification in its literal sense (cf. Feenberg 2011a: 102; Jütten 2010: 236). It is ironic that, interpreting him in this doubtful manner, allows Honneth to ascribe to Lukács an “ontologizing everyday understanding of the concept of reification” and to conclude that he lacks the appropriate categorial means to conceptualize phenomena “that he often grasps in a phenomenologically accurate way” (Honneth 2008: 21).

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and not merely “something human.”23 One wonders about the fact that, although Honneth accurately cites Lukács’s definition (cf. Honneth 2008: 21), he does not see the obvious fact that this definition essentially deviates from his interpretation.24 In any case, Honneth’s idiosyncratic interpretation of reification allows him to reconstruct the “unofficial version” of Lukács’s theory that is supposedly based on the model of an “intersubjective attitude on the part of the subject” (Honneth 2008:  27). In the light of this attitude, reification appears as “an atrophied or distorted form of a more primordial and genuine form of praxis, in which humans take on an empathetic and engaged relationship toward themselves and their surroundings” (Honneth 2008:  27). To further elaborate on this intersubjective attitude, Honneth develops a multifaceted argument on the original significance of recognition as the basis for the constitution of the self and its relations to others, and particularly of the objectification that is entailed in the cognitive relation of man to the world (cf. Honneth 2008: 28–52). His “recognition-precedes-cognition claim” (Jütten 2010:  239–40) allows Honneth to reformulate a critique that—as we saw in Section 7.2—is frequently found in the bibliography on Lukács: The critique that he erroneously identifies objectification and reification. According to Honneth, Lukács’s “fundamental idea” (Honneth 2008:  24) is the following:  Commodity exchange implies calculating prospective profits and therefore forming a “purely objective, as far as possible emotionless stance” (Honneth 2008: 25). This attitude becomes individuals’ “second nature,” insofar as socialization processes establish it as a “habit” in all fields of everyday life (cf. Honneth 2008: 25, 28). Like the concept of reification, the concept of “second nature” is interpreted by Honneth in the same sense we use it in everyday talk: It is nothing but the sum of the socially established attitudes and behavioral patterns of men (cf. Honneth 2008: 23–5, 28, 32–3)—an interpretation that has nothing to do with Lukács’s use of the term which I reconstructed above. From Honneth’s peculiar point of view, reification is thought of as a secondary neutralization of the primary recognition and emotional engagement with other 23

24

Jütten aptly points out the contradiction that occurs between this literal meaning of the concept and Honneth’s position that reification should not be interpreted as a deviation from a moral norm (Jütten 2010: 242–5). Fabian Kettner’s reading of Lukács shows how easy it is to assume this naïve understanding of reification as objectification of other persons or even as self-objectification, while at the same time correctly interpreting it as “naturalization” of social relations (cf. Kettner 2002: 106). Honneth’s blurred focus on the transformation of “something human” into a thing more suitably matches Goldmann’s problematic concept of reification (see above,  n.  15)  which relies upon the opposition of the “human element” and the “mechanism” (cf. Goldmann 1966: 111).

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persons and objects in the world, accompanied by its permanent replacement by the ontogenetically derivative, objectifying attitude of the cognitive subject (cf. Honneth 2008:  54). By taking objectification as a cognitive procedure, as “objectifying thought” (Honneth 2008: 54), Honneth interprets Lukács’s concept of reification as “a kind of mental habit or habitually ossified perspective” (Honneth 2008: 53) that takes the place of the original empathetic engagement of the subject with other humans and objects. This interpretation relies on a modification of the meaning of Lukács’s concept of “contemplation.” Honneth understands it as the “emotionally neutral,” “detached stance” of a “neutral observer, psychically and existentially untouched by his surroundings” (Honneth 2008: 24). In the previous section we saw, of course, that Lukács did not use the term “contemplative” to describe any psychological fact, but rather the passive stance of subjects that adapt to a given and unchangeable social-historical world.25 Be that as it may, Honneth interprets “contemplation” as “a stance of indulgent, passive observation,” while the stance of “detachment” (Teilnahmlosigkeit)—a term originally used by Lukács to describe the passive attitude of the members of bourgeois political parties—is supposed to mean that “the agent is no longer emotionally affected by the events in his surroundings, instead letting them go by without any inner involvement, merely observing their passing” (Honneth 2008: 24). Thus, for Honneth, Lukács . . . understands “reification” to be a habit of mere contemplation and observation, in which one’s natural surroundings, social environment, and personal characteristics come to be apprehended in a detached and emotionless manner—in short, as things. (Honneth 2008: 25)

Having so radically modified Lukács’s theory of reification, Honneth reformulates the standard critique that Lukács identifies reification with objectification in general. If objectification leads to reification—in the sense given to it by Honneth—then one is, together with Honneth’s Lukács, obliged to assume that the institutionalization of specific social practices, such as market exchange or bureaucratic administration, must go hand in hand with the total substitution of the objectifying attitude for the fundamental recognitional stance (cf. Honneth 2008:  53). But how could it be possible, asks Honneth, to totally substitute a “secondary” and derivative for a “primary,” constitutive stance? In Honneth’s opinion, because of his problematic “conceptual strategy,” Lukács is compelled to “hold that every social innovation that requires that 25

Also Feenberg sees that clearly (2011a: 104–5).

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we neutralize our original act of recognition and make this neutralization institutionally permanent is a case of reification” (Honneth 2008:  54–5). Social rationalization seems then to propel a totalization of reification in all fields of life. However, this supposition is at odds with Lukács’s alleged need to simultaneously retain the assertion that the “original stance of empathetic engagement can never be lost—since, after all, it lies at the base of all social relations” (Honneth 2008: 55). For Honneth, what we can learn in view of the alleged impasse of Lukács’s “conceptual strategy” is that the concept of reification “must be understood differently than Lukács understands it in his own work” (Honneth 2008:  55). To avoid the totalization of reification, which is supposedly implied in Lukács’s understanding of it, Honneth suggests a distinction between two cognitive attitudes: one in which an “intuition” (Gespür)26 or a “consciousness” (Honneth 2008:  56) of “antecedent,” original recognition is retained and one in which it is lost. Honneth connects the second kind of a cognitive attitude with the concept of the “forgetfulness of recognition”:  “I thereby mean to indicate the process by which we lose the consciousness of the degree to which we owe our knowledge and cognition of other persons to an antecedent stance of empathetic engagement and recognition” (Honneth 2008: 56). Reification as forgetfulness of recognition means then “that in the course of our acts of cognition, we lose our attentiveness to the fact that this cognition owes its existence to an antecedent act of recognition” (Honneth 2008:  59). Honneth considers the causes of such a “reduction of attentiveness” (Honneth 2008: 59) to be, on the one hand, the one-sided focus of a subject on an aim that discards other, possibly more fundamental goals and, on the other hand, the influence of social “prejudices” and “thought schemata” on its behavior. As an example of the first case Honneth mentions the tennis player “who, in her ambitious focus on winning, forgets that her opponent is in fact her best friend, for the sake of whom she took up the game in the first place.”27 The second case is not illustrated by Honneth on the grounds that it is all too “well known.” This is obviously the case of social exclusion and discrimination of minorities, in which

26

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Honneth (2008: 56). The word does not appear in the English translation, as it is replaced by the expression “every trace.” Honneth (2008: 59). In his “Rejoinder” to criticism, Honneth admits that the example of the tennis player “was most likely a poor choice.” Therefore he replaces it with the example of the “activity of war,” during which the “purpose of annihilation becomes so much a purpose in itself that even in the perception of those not involved (e.g., women and children), all attentiveness for fellow human qualities is lost.” This supposedly leads to treating them “as lifeless, thing-like objects that deserve to be murdered and abused” (Honneth 2008: 155–6).

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we should rather speak of a “denial” of or “defensiveness” toward the original recognition of the other.28

7.5. A reified concept of reification In the previous section I pointed to the great distance that separates Honneth’s understanding of reification from Lukacs’s. It must have become clear that it is impossible to consider the first as an interpretation of the latter.29 In this section I proceed to a substantial critique of Honneth’s reformulation from a Lukácsian standpoint. From this point of view it is characteristic that Honneth’s separation of the concept of reification from its dialectical theoretical framework reproduces what Lukács called the “antinomies of bourgeois thought.” In this sense it can be considered a case of a reified concept of reification.30 Let us briefly see why. Although Honneth critiques Lukács’s tendency toward idealism, a similar kind of tendency to ignore the materiality of social structures can be traced in his own thought. As one commentator notes: “With his theory of recognition, Honneth grasps crucial dimensions of the normative order of capitalist social relations, but he does so at the expense of neglecting the material constitution of those relations.”31 It is characteristic that, whereas in the beginning of his essay he connects reification with a “structurally false form of praxis” (Honneth

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Honneth (2008:  59). Jütten cogently notes that Honneth’s examples represent cases of obvious violation of moral or even legal rules, thus they cannot be considered as cases of reification in the non-ethical sense assumed by Honneth himself (cf. Jütten 2010: 242–5). Fairly early on, Frederick Neuhouser rightly noted that only “very little of Lukács’s original view—and even less of Marx’s—remains in the theory of reification that Honneth develops.” Therefore, in his opinion, his “allusions to Lukács, though rhetorically understandable, tend to obscure the fact that Honneth’s book is much less a reconstructive enterprise than the erection of a new edifice on a thoroughly cleared plot of ground” (Neuhouser 2006). This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that Honneth’s interlocutors (Judith Butler, Raymond Geuss and Jonathan Lear), who contribute to his thin volume (cf. Honneth 2008:  97–143), are basically concerned with the problems of recognition and much less with Honneth’s references to Lukács, which they do not question at all. Dannemann clearly sees the danger that Honneth’s attempt to reconstruct Lukács’s concept of reification might “become part of the very reification that it undertook to reveal” (Dannemann 2008:  105). In this article, Dannemann plausibly—even if moderately—critiques Rahel Jaeggi’s interpretation of alienation and Honneth’s theory of reification. However, given Dannemann’s charge of excessive deradicalization (cf. Dannemann 2008: 102–5), his view that Honneth’s attempt “in fact virtually paves the way to an actual discussion on reification” (Dannemann 2015:  136) remains obscure. Chari (2010: 599–600). Dirk Quadflieg detects the problem of neglecting the dialectics of subject and object in Habermas’s and Honneth’s accounts of reification and searches for a corrective in the early work of Hegel, seen through the lenses of the late Adorno (cf. Quadflieg 2011: 708–14).

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2008: 26), as he unfolds his argumentation he shifts his critique from praxis to “knowledge” or “cognition.”32 In fact, as we have already seen, in the greater part of his essay reification is interpreted as a mental “habit of perceiving” oneself “and the surrounding world as mere things and objects” (Honneth 2008: 23). It is understood as a “reduced attentiveness” for original recognition, its “forgetfulness” and its replacement by a purely cognitive attitude, etc. While the material dimensions of the phenomenon of reification are absorbed by its mental dimension, the fact that the concept of “second nature” is interpreted in a way that totally eliminates Lukács’s historicalmaterialist reference to the social mechanisms and their material laws, namely as the sum of man’s acquired mental habits, does no longer surprise us. This idealist reduction of reification goes hand in hand with the espousal of a kind of methodological individualism. Honneth analyses the attitude connected with reification as an attitude of the individual. However, as Feenberg aptly notes in his critique of Honneth’s understanding of reification, “Lukács’s discussion of reification focuses on social processes, specifically on what today we would call the dialectic of structure and agency,” while “the individual is of only marginal interest to” him (Feenberg 2011a: 101; see also Hall 2011c: 197). As has already been pointed out, after his turn from a theory of the interrelation of social institutions or cultural structures and human behavior to methodological individualism, a social explanation of “reification” seems to lie totally beyond the capabilities of Honneth’s interpretation.33 For Honneth, Lukács’s non-reductive, dialectical holism has become so alien that, although the declared aim of History and Class Consciousness is to contribute to the clarification of the methodological foundations of Marxism (HCC: xliii; 7), he goes so far as to complain that the theoretical basis of the social generalization of the phenomenon of reification “isn’t clear from the text” (Honneth 2008: 23). It is exactly this blindness toward dialectical method that leads Honneth to the view that according to Lukács’s theory the “expansion of commodity exchange” is the “social cause” of reification (Honneth 2008:  22, 28)—Honneth implies that a kind of economic reductionism is involved here. Furthermore, the generalization of the phenomenon in bourgeois society is supposedly explained

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Christoph Henning discerns this tendency toward a problematic “epistemological re-interpretation” of reification in Honneth (cf. Henning 2012: 250–54). See Chari (2010: 598–601). Chari connects this inability with Honneth’s “interactionist model of intersubjectivity,” which “is less able to grasp the material conditions of social struggles” (Chari 2010: 598). Other commentators make similar remarks on the limitations of a concept of reification that is too narrowly related to intersubjective relations (e.g., Stahl 2011: 737; Quadflieg 2011: 707–8).

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through functionalist arguments or with the aid of Weberian views about the expansion of instrumental-rational action (cf. Honneth 2008: 23). In this way Honneth totally overlooks the form of objectivity as a concept of central importance for the reconstruction of the social and cultural totality that determines the framework of every causal or functional link between particular phenomena.34 It is not necessary at this point to repeat my critique of the view that Lukács’s theory is reductionist (see Section 4.4). Timothy Hall is right to note that “Honneth’s engagement with Lukács’s social theory is minimal and, in general, reliant on Habermas’s critique in volume 1 of The Theory of Communicative Action”—therefore “he ends up imputing a base-superstructure model of society on Lukács and rejecting his account of the origin of reifying behavior as reductive.”35 Even more questionable is the fact that in his reconstruction a classical formalist tendency toward separating different fields of social life spontaneously occurs—such as economy from interpersonal relations, ideology, politics, and so on.36 The purpose of such a fragmentation of contemporary society is to blunt the “totalizing” edge of Lukács’s critique and to locate spheres of social life (such as the capitalist market or the bureaucratic organization), in which “observing, detached behavior has a perfectly legitimate place,” while its retention is required “for reasons of efficiency” in “highly differentiated societies” (Honneth 2008: 28; 1999: 78–9). With such authentically functionalist arguments Honneth discards Lukács’s systems-theoretically “naïve,” anti-capitalist orientation, which contemporary academic critical theory can barely handle. However, the problem with this theoretical perspective is not only that it acquits the capitalist economy and the bureaucratic organization of the state in advance by declaring them innocent of the phenomenon of reification, but rather that Honneth’s explicit rejection of the mechanistic explanation and his implicit opposition to the dialectical-holistic explication of reification do not open the way for another model of illuminating its social roots. In this way even the social basis of the phenomenon of the emotionally neutral stance toward others, which Honneth understands as “reification,” is obscured. This tendency is further strengthened due to the elaboration of reification through concepts of a philosophical anthropology that replaces Lukács’s social-historical perspective. 34

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See Feenberg’s illuminating remarks on Lukács’s non-reductionist theory of the relation between economy and culture, based on the concept of the form of objectivity (Feenberg 2014: 63–7). Hall (2011c: 204). However, as Hall adds, “it is pretty clear that this is not what Lukács understands by the ‘economic structure’ of modern societies” (204). Henning connects this tendency with Honneth’s implicit adoption of the neoclassic view that economy is a separate field of exclusively economic exchange (cf. Henning 2012: 248).

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Alone Honneth’s preference for anthropology would suffice to demonstrate the great distance that separates him from Lukács, who emphatically rejected philosophical anthropology as a kind of reified thought. For Lukács, an anthropological theory can be nothing but ahistorical.37 Indeed, the antecedent, original recognition that is necessary for the constitution of human subjects can only be thought of as a universal, ahistorical, constant element of human existence that we find in all societies and epochs. Accordingly, its “forgetfulness” must be understood as a kind of constant anthropological trait or at least as the permanent possibility of an individual slip into “reification”—even more so, since it is not explained through a social cause. This inevitably amounts to an ontologization or—in Lukács’s terms—a reification of reification.38 Finally, even if it were possible to overcome the opposition between history and ahistorical anthropology in theory, it remains unclear how this theory would have consequences for praxis. One does not have to be a follower of the philosophy of praxis to accept that no critical theory can abandon the demand of its internal connection with an emancipative social praxis without ceasing to be critical. But what exactly is the practice Honneth refers to in his theory of the forgetfulness of recognition? It is not by accident that he remains silent on that issue. After all there is no point in opposing an ontological or anthropological characteristic of human existence. In any case, the fact that Honneth exclusively locates the phenomenon of reification on the level of “thought” or “cognition” motivates the interpretation that dereification has to be something equivalent: some kind of an “inner changing” of the individual. Even if we are today compelled to reduce our expectations from the “principle of praxis,” which Lukács connected with revolution, Honneth’s version of it is admittedly too thin. Through explicating dereification in terms of a “remembrance” of recognition, of cultivating a cognitive attitude with attentiveness for this fundamental anthropological presupposition theory would only take on the role of a preacher: It would limit itself to formulating an ethical demand for the individual’s inner reform and respect for the relevant stance in its interpersonal relations. All the above-mentioned elements of a critique of Honneth’s theory of reification strengthen the suggestion of its reifying tendency. In the final

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Cf. HCC:  185–97; 203–16. As Merleau-Ponty notes “the very concept of man must be rendered dialectical; and if by man one understood a positive nature of attributes, Lukács would no more accept this idol than any other” (Merleau-Ponty 1973: 56). Also Hall stresses Lukács’s rejection of anthropology in his own critique of Honneth’s reading (cf. Hall 2011b: 126). Jütten formulates a similar critique of Honneth’s anthropological orientation (Jütten 2010: 246–7).

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analysis they all have to do with Honneth’s abandonment of Lukács’s dialectical social-historical method. They thus lead to misrecognition of its basic aim to demonstrate the historically contingent character of capitalist social relations. The result of Honneth’s attempt at a recognition-theoretical reformulation of Lukács’s classical theorem is in every respect disappointing. Paraphrasing Honneth’s above-cited conclusion about Lukács’s failure to teach us what reification is (Honneth 2008: 55), one could say that what we can learn from its Honnethian reformulation is that such a reinterpretation must be constructed differently from the way Honneth understands it in his own work—at least insofar as it is supposed to be understood as a reinterpretation of Lukács.39 Honneth seems to have achieved what he aimed at in 1999—to take Lukács’s theory out of its “isolation” and to integrate it into the “discussions that are to a great extent determined by analytic philosophy” (Honneth 1999: 85–6). However the cost of this success was too high: Interpreting reification as “forgetfulness of recognition” obscures Lukács’s radical initial idea that human relations are reified as long as their historicality is obscured and that it is precisely in this case that they are transformed into an irresistible system of blind, compulsive, seemingly natural laws, which reduces people to passive observers of an independent, external process.

39

Theorists of the younger generation of critical theory prove to be more successful in updating aspects of Lukács’s reification theory. Jütten proposes a positively predisposed reconstruction of this theory through a charitable reading of Lukács’s allusions to German idealism, which he interprets as a defence of a concept of “social freedom” (cf. Jütten 2011). Also Stahl’s call to comprehend reification as a “second order pathology” seems to update an essential part of Lukács’s idea of a structural obstruction of practically transforming established social practices (cf. Stahl 2011).

Part Three

Praxis

8

From Mystical Ethics to Transformative Praxis

In Chapter 3 we saw that Lukács aspired to find a way out of the antinomies of bourgeois thought through following the turn of classical German philosophy to praxis. In Section 3.3 I also examined Lukács’s critique of formalist, individual ethics—a critique that represented a constant feature of his early work. Discerning the insuperable dualism of the ethical formation of the world, Lukács searched for a more radical solution. He distinguished the “first ethic,” the ethic of rational forms, from a mystical “second ethic.” The first ethic includes the “authentic ethic,” that is, the subjective ethics of the Kantian type (cf. Lukács 2010b: 210; 1912: 83), as well as the Hegelian ethics of ethical life (Sittlichkeitsethik), that is, the ethics of “rights and duties that are derived from an ethically internalized institution.”1 In opposition to these two versions of ethical formation, the mystical “second ethic” totally overrides ethical forms. Even though it does not totally abolish them, it retains an “absolute priority” (Lukács 1986: 248; 1982: 352) over them. For this “metaphysical ethics”2 it becomes possible what for the first ethic is impossible: overcoming solipsism. The second ethic paves the way for authentic communication in the sense of a direct, unmediated contact of the souls. Therefore, it is characterized as the ethics of “soul-reality,” that is, of that utopian situation, which the young Lukács had planned to indirectly treat through the “formal analysis” of Dostoevsky’s works (Lukács 1978:  152; 1920:  168). Lukács never wrote this book apart from its introduction, which he published in 1916 under the title The Theory of the Novel. As we can assume relying on his notes for this book, Lukács aspired to show that Dostoevsky can be read as the representative of a “new world” beyond the “age of absolute sinfulness.”3 Dostoevsky’s new world is precisely the utopian world of soul-reality.

1 2 3

Lukács’s letter to Paul Ernst (on May 4, 1915), in Lukács (1986: 248; 1982: 352). Which Lukács announced in a letter to Paul Ernst, in March 1915, in Lukács (1986: 244; 1982: 345). As Lukács calls the modern epoch of Western civilization, using a category of Fichte’s philosophy of history (cf. Lukács 1978: 152–3; 1920: 167–8).

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In the present chapter I  start from Lukács’s early investigations (Section 8.1), to show, in a second step, their significance for his turn to the Communist Party, at the end of 1918 (Section 8.2). Even if Lukács’s motives for his participation in the government of the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 were to a great extent determined by his peculiar ethico-philosophical reflections, his political experiences in combination with his turn to Marxist schemes of thought consequently led him in a different direction. I then examine Lukács’s distanciation from his mystical ethics, which left, however, the idea of a practical transcendence of the antinomies of rationalism untouched (Section 8.3).4 The three pillars of his new conception were the theory of class consciousness (Section 8.4), the principle of the unity of theory and praxis (Section 8.5) and the dialectic understanding of the collective practice that changes the world (Section 8.6).

8.1. Lukács’s mystical “second ethics” In his thin book on Béla Balázs of 19185 Lukács clarifies the significance of Dostoevsky’s utopia of “soul-reality as the authentic reality” (Lukács 1985c: 154; 1985b:  27), delimiting it against the merely contingent, conventional-social engagement of man: Positing soul-reality as the only reality means a radical shift in man’s sociological stance:  on the level of soul-reality all these bonds through which soul was normally bound to its social position, class, origin, etc., are separated from it and in their place new, concrete relations between soul and soul are put. The discovery of this world was Dostoevsky’s great achievement. (Lukács 1985c: 156; 1985b: 29)

In Dostoevsky Lukács finds a world free of sociological and psychological determinations that keep human souls bound to meaningless, social-cultural “formations of the objective spirit.”6 He finds a world without the solipsism

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I am not concerned here with the exact phases of the development of the theory of transformative praxis. A good reconstruction of Lukács’s gradual shifts from ethical leftism to bolshevism can be found in Löwy (1979: 145–67). See also the detailed historical reconstruction of the connection of Lukács’s political views with social and political struggles after the First World War in Grunenberg (1976). Lukács (1918c). The part of the text that interests us here was translated into German under the title “Béla Balázs: Tödliche Jugend” (see Lukács 1985c). The same fragment can also be found in a slightly different translation in: Lukács (1985b: 27–32). Lukács’s letter to Paul Ernst (on May 4, 1915), in Lukács (1986: 247; 1982: 352).

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of ordinary psychic life and without that of the ethics of duty. This world no longer depends on the power of the “bridge that separates” (Lukács 2010b: 204; 1912:  71), on the power of the ethical-practical (normative or conventional) form, which is totally overridden. In his eyes, the persons in Dostoevsky’s novels are “nude concrete souls” due to a mystical “abolition of every form” (Lukács 1985c: 156; 1985b: 30). However, in opposition to Eastern mysticism, in which the abolition of forms and the unification with the divine simultaneously entails the abolition of the concrete, finite relations between the souls, in Dostoevsky’s world overcoming forms and approaching the “non-social, non-empirical level of the soul’s arrival to itself ” coincides with “a connection between people that is equally concrete with the empirical one; it is precisely . . . an authentic ‘living life’, because it is the immediately experienced connection of concrete souls with the absolute” (Lukács 1985c: 157; 1985b: 30). The “living life” represents the world of the realized “second ethic.” In this respect, the second ethic corresponds to a “paracletic” (parakletisch) ethics of “goodness.” As has been noted, this is a “communitarian ethics of personality” (Fehér 1977b: 311; Beiersdörfer 1986: 83), in which every man’s way to his own soul passes through his relation with the others. According to Lukács’s typology of solidarity found in his notes on Dostoevsky, Russian solidarity—the model of his paracletic ethics—means that “the other is my brother; when I find myself, by finding myself, I find him” (Lukács 1985b: 181). In Lukács’s notes on Dostoevsky it becomes apparent that the second ethic stands in stark opposition to the first ethic of the “formations of the objective spirit,” that is, the ethic that makes them “thing-like and metaphysical” (Lukács 1986: 248; 1982: 352, my emphasis). However, given the fact that “only the soul can possess metaphysical reality” (Lukács 1986: 248; 1982: 352), the question is posed, what must be done when the duties imposed by the social formations oppose the “imperatives of the soul” (Lukács 1986: 248; 1982: 352). Then, every concession to the authority of the formations is a “deadly sin against the spirit.” It is the sin “of German thought since Hegel’s time: offering metaphysical consecration to every power.”7 The aim of Lukács’s ethics was not to eliminate social formations in a society of immediate brotherhood, as a frequent critique contends.8 Its aim was rather 7 8

Lukács’s letter to Paul Ernst (on April 14, 1915), in Lukács (1986: 246; 1982: 349). This is a variation of the view that Lukács confuses alienation (in this case: alienation from social institutions) with objectification in general. Some commentators think they can trace this tendency back to his pre-Marxist work. Cf., e.g., Fehér (1977b:  289–90); similarly Beiersdörfer (1986:  84– 5, 244, n.  60). Cf. particularly Arato and Breines (1979:  70–71)—the two commentators project this alleged tendency of the young Lukács on his Marxist work, ascribing to him a “long-standing

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to change the relation of man to the institutions, to change the hierarchical order between the “rights and duties” stemming from the institutions and the essential issues of the “soul” that always have priority (cf. Lukács 1986: 248; 1982: 352). Certainly, at the time of the First World War and the subsequent enormous increase in the power of oppressive institutions, the idea of their de-fetishization seemed particularly timely.9 Lukács also recognized that in these conditions it had no meaning to merely suggest a utopian ethics as the solution to world problems. The utopian vision of a new community could at most function as a “mystical doctrine of community as a reflection of redemption” (Lukács 1985b: 182). As soon as one acknowledges that “there is no immediate health of the spirit” (Lukács 1985b: 173), the question of how to find an appropriate treatment must be posed (cf. Dannemann 1987: 195). From this question a further version of second ethics emerges. It is the ethics of a “new man,” of the “Russian revolutionary who is sacrificed in the Christian way” (Fehér 1977b: 308). According to Michael Löwy, this is a variation of the Russian mysticism of the community that takes on the form of an “authentic atheism”: “The most interesting point here is that the highest expression of such mystical atheism is seen in the Russian terrorist” (Löwy 1979: 119). Hence, Lukács poses the “ethical problem of terrorism” (Lukács 1986: 245; 1982:  348) and its “peculiar dialectical complications” (Lukács 1986:  248; 1982:  352). In terrorist action we have “a new form of appearance of the old conflict between the first . . . and the second ethics” (Lukács 1986: 248; 1982: 352) that calls for a new ethico-philosophical comprehension:  Out of love for humanity, the “political man, the revolutionary” (Lukács 1986: 248; 1982: 352) turns against the “jehovistic” formations—as Lukács calls the fetishized social institutions of the Greek-Western world—in this case against the state, aiming to abolish it. However, for ethical reasons emanating from the higher second ethic, he is compelled to infringe the prohibition of murder: “Here the soul must be sacrificed in order to save the soul: One must become a cruel Realpolitiker out of a mystical ethic and has to violate the absolute commandment: ‘Thou shalt not kill’ ” (Lukács 1986: 248; 1982: 352).

9

hatred of the objective spirit” that could only lead to the myth of an “absolute subject” (cf. Arato and Breines 1979: 121–2, 155, 242, n. 13). Bermbach ascribes to Lukács “anti-institutional thought” and a “politico-theoretical deficit” that can purportedly explain his distanciation from the modern state and formal democracy (cf. Bermbach 1987). Cf. Lukács’s letter to Paul Ernst (on April 14, 1915), in Lukács (1986: 246; 1982: 349). During that time, Lukács strongly opposed chauvinism and militarism. In his letter to Ernst (on May 4)  he characteristically noted that he considers “the modern practice of general conscription to be the vilest slavery that has ever existed” (Lukács 1986: 248; 1982: 352).

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Next to the “paracletic” a “luciferic” (luciferisch) variant of the second ethic emerges (cf. Lukács 1985b:  176). The “dialectical complication” that occurs in it refers to the tragedy of revolutionary action, to the sacrifice of the soul (“sacrificio del’ anima”; Lukács 1985b: 65) of the revolutionary who is obliged to carry the burden of the guilt for acts of violence he performs for the sake of humanity. Because, “if the external shaping of the world has an ethical meaning,” then the problem of “ethical transcendence, political action” is posed (Lukács 1985b:  129). However, “one cannot act without sin (but even not acting is an act  =  sin)” (Lukács 1985b:  130). Then, sin is unavoidable, since the revolutionary is conscious of his responsibility for the pains of all others.10 His choice retains all its tragic character, given the fact that the luciferic second ethics does not rely upon an abstract ethical demand for subversive action that would make his responsibility for concrete persons a secondary issue. In any case, Lukács knew that his luciferic second ethic revealed a significant inadequacy:  It was not able to offer directions, nor credible roads to social change. As Dannemann notes, Lukács’s ethic could not solve “the problem he had posed for himself, to reconcile the soul and the formations in a homogenous immediacy” (Dannemann 1987: 196–7). Neither paracletic goodness that remains within the inwardness of soul-reality, nor the tragic activism of revolutionary goodness can achieve a harmonization of the subject with objectivity—they end up reproducing the “ubiquitous dualism between internal and external world” (Dannemann 1987: 197). Lukács’s notes include only two hints at a possible solution to this problem that foreshadow his subsequent intellectual development. First, he transcribes a quote from the introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843–4), in which Marx alludes to the truly revolutionary atheism and comments on it positively as “Russian Feuerbachism,” referring to the necessary “program:  disillusion” that will make man turn from religion to his own powers (Lukács 1985b:  79–80, 128). Second, he points to a way of transcending the unavoidable restrictions of ethico-philosophical reflection by noting that the knowledge of the “true structure of objective spirit” depends on the philosophy of history:  “here lies the significance of Marx” (Lukács 1985b: 90).

10

Beiersdörfer highlighted the fact that this description of the “tragic” choice of the terrorist is unintelligible without involving Weber’s notion of the ethic of responsibility (cf. Beiersdörfer 1986: 88–96; similarly Karádi 1987: 93–5).

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8.2. The tragedy of revolutionary action In the years that followed the publication of The Theory of the Novel (1916), Lukács continued to discuss the problems of his second ethics in the “Sunday circle” he formed at the end of 1915.11 However, his public interventions in 1918 were confined within the frame of “progressive politics” with neoKantian fundaments. This holds true for his “Contribution to a Discussion on Conservative and Progressive Idealism” which he presented at a public discussion on progressive politics, organized by the Society of Social Sciences, in March and April 1918, in Budapest,12 as well as for his article “Bolshevism as a Moral Problem” (1918), which he published shortly before joining the Communist Party. In this article he explicitly distanced himself from revolutionary action, arguing that it is humanly impossible to foresee all the ethical consequences of a violation of the rules of democratic politics. Thus, the revolutionary tactic for changing the world compels the individual to confront an “insoluble ethical problem,” since it relies on the “metaphysical assumption that good can issue from evil.”13 Lukács’s vacillation ended at the end of 1918, when he became a member of the newly founded Hungarian Communist Party. This shift ceases to seem so “sudden”14 if one takes into account that, in his notes on Dostoevsky, Lukács had already located the possibility of a mediation between revolutionary action and reality.15 In fact, as we will see below, following his note on the historicophilosophical knowledge of the objective spirit I  alluded to at the end of the previous section, Lukács integrated revolutionary action and its tragedy into the wider framework of a new concept of objectivity, thus suggesting a new solution to the problem of human alienation. Shortly after his engagement with the Communist Party, in the first months of 1919 Lukács developed relevant reflections in his essay “Tactics and

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14

15

See particularly Karádi (1985: 16–17); Bendl (1997: 36–7); Hauser (1978: 15, 50, 53). On the “Sunday circle,” see also Jung (1989: 60–61); Hermann (1978: 71–3, 75); Fekete and Karádi (1981: 70–71). For the Hungarian Society of Social Sciences and its activity, cf. Kettler (1971: 41–7). For Lukács’s intervention in this specific discussion, cf. Karádi (1985: 19). Lukács (1995:  220; 1975a:  33). It is characteristic that here Lukács draws on the example of Razumikhin in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, who contended that it is possible to reach truth through lies. As was characterized by Anna Lesznai, a close friend of Lukács from the “Sunday circle,” in a private discussion with David Kettler (cf. Kettler 1971: 69). This is what Trautmann fails to do. On the contrary, he emphasizes only those elements of Lukács’s pre-Marxist work that make his “daring leap” to the extreme left seem even more sudden and inexplicable (cf. Trautmann 1987: 133).

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Ethics.”16 Very briefly, here for the first time, Lukács introduces the concept of class consciousness as that form of knowledge of the historical process in the framework of which “the subject and the known object are homogeneous in respect to their essence” (Lukács 1973e: 15, n. 2; 1975b: 58, n.). The so-called historico-philosophical consciousness is a kind of practical knowledge that pertains to the tendencies of class struggle, that is, to the objective possibility of establishing an emancipated society (cf. Lukács 1973e: 9–10; 1975b: 51–2). Indeed, it is constituted on the basis of the Hegelian dialectic and has, thus, a holistic character (cf. Lukács 1973e: 19–24; 1975b: 63–4, 66–8, 70). Whatever the inadequacies in the dialectical constitution of Lukács’s early understanding of the historico-philosophical consciousness might be,17 it is clear that in the first months of 1919 he had already started to work out what would become his theory of class consciousness in the following years. However, in “Tactics and Ethics” the continuity to Lukács’s early reflections on the ethical dilemmas of revolutionary action is apparent. In spite of the weight ascribed to the mediating historico-philosophical consciousness for choosing the right political engagement, Lukács equally emphasizes the question on the relation of “conscience” and the “sense of responsibility” of the individual with “the problem of the tactically correct collective action” (Lukács 1973e:  7; 1975b:  49). For Lukács, these two levels are closely interwoven, as taking the individual responsibility for the realization of the objectively possible utopian goal can be avoided no longer, “once the purely ethically motivated action of the individual brings him into the field of politics” (Lukács 1973e:  7; 1975b:  49). Then, “its objective (historico-philosophical) correctness” (Lukács 1973e:  7; 1975b:  49) must be judged on the basis of class consciousness that “must raise itself above the level of its merely real facticity and reflect its world-historical mission and the consciousness of its responsibility” (Lukács 1973e:  9; 1975b:  51). In view of the historicophilosophical consciousness, no one can avoid taking the responsibility for a possible new world, neither the one who is for the revolution, nor the one who is for the perpetuation of the existing regime. Therefore, Lukács notes that moral conscience is confronted with the demand that the individual

16

17

This text was first published as a brochure of the commissariat of education (in which Lukács held the position of deputy commissar of the people) in May 1919, about two months after the proclamation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic on 21 March of the same year. Commentators detect a one-sided emphasis on the voluntarist dimension of social change in Lukács’s first Marxist texts. Cf., e.g., Schmidt (1975: 17–18); Arato and Breines (1979: 85–8); Löwy (1979: 148–9, 173–4).

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“must act as if the changing of the world’s destiny depended on his action or inaction” (Lukács 1973e: 8; 1975b: 50). Here, it is not difficult to recognize reflections formulated in the notes on Dostoevsky on the responsibility of everyone for all others, from which the revolutionary is not exempted, nor is it the social-democratic proponent of a gradual social change that would amount to the continuation of barbarism for an indefinite period of time (cf. Lukács 1973e:  8; 1975b:  50). By taking recourse on class consciousness, Lukács reverses the “ethic of responsibility” we met in “Bolshevism as a Moral Problem.” The behavior that realizes imperatives derived from the historico-philosophical consciousness is now responsible and not the one that persists with abstract, universal duties within a given social-historical context. In the terminology of the notes on Dostoevsky one could say that in the conflict between the first and the second ethic the primacy belongs to the latter.18 Nevertheless, this does not mean that the use of violence is really “justified” on the level of the individual ethical conscience of the revolutionary. On the contrary, as is also the case in the “luciferic second ethic” of the terrorist, in the communist political engagement the individual confronts an authentically tragic dilemma to which it is compelled to answer through the sacrifice of its moral conscience for the sake of realizing the objectively possible, collective goal (cf. Lukács 1973e: 10–11; 1975b: 53). Such reflections of the individual moral decision of the revolutionary were rapidly displaced by that part of the theory which already played the role of the mediating third between the ethical subject and reality: the theory of class consciousness. In History and Class Consciousness, from Lukács’s early mystical ethics, what remains is only the conviction that the solution to the problem of alienation cannot be theoretical but only practical, in the sense of practically changing the social formations and man’s relation to them. Only now, the issue is no longer about the individual, but the collective praxis; the only one that allows the possibility of a harmonization of subject and object, form and content, freedom and necessity. The mystical ethics has now been replaced by a theory of the conscious political practice of the self-determination of a collective subject.

18

In his recollections from the time of the Soviet Republic, József Lengyel notes that, in the hotel in which the members of the revolutionary government stayed, the group around Lukács was known as the “ethicists,” who had long discussions—with references to Dostoevsky and Hebbel’s Judith—on the idea that the communists’ mission, like Judas, is to carry the sins of the world to save it from evil (cf. Lengyel 1959: 244–6; also Kettler 1971: 75–6).

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8.3. Beyond ethics: The paradigm of class consciousness With his turn to Marxism, Lukács definitely realized the inadequacy of all ethico-philosophical attempts to solve the problem of the indifference of social formations and conventions toward the individual subject. Indeed, in the essay “What is orthodox Marxism?,” Lukács starts his investigation of the relation between theory and practice with a brief critique of ethics, in which he reformulates, from a new standpoint, reflections he had already developed in his early work: As Lukács emphasizes, ethical action is always individual. If we consider ethics as the only possible practical relation of man to the world, society immediately rises against it as a complex of quasi natural necessities that man can cognize but not change. Focusing on ethical action is, thus, the other side of the reification of society and history (cf. HCC: 18–19; 32–3). It is not by accident that the ethical grounding of socialism is always accompanied by some kind of “economic fatalism” (cf. HCC: 37–8; 49–50, and Section 4.2). Thus, a radical philosophy of praxis needs another notion of practice, beyond individual ethical practice. The solution Lukács searches for lies beyond the problems raised in “Tactics and Ethics,” however in a direction that had already been opened up by this text: The dualism of ought and being can be overcome only through a holistic theory of social-historical reality in unity with a practice that “is in essence the penetration and transformation of reality” (HCC: 39; 51). This dual, theoretical and practical penetration of reality cannot be achieved by the individual subject, but only by “a subject which is itself a totality” (HCC: 39; 51). Therefore, the question of the identical subject-object which cognitively and practically constitutes reality is central to Lukács’s theory: Only the class can penetrate the reality of society and transform its totality. For this reason, “criticism” advanced from this standpoint, as a consideration of totality, represents the dialectical unity of theory and practice. It is in inseparable dialectical unity at once reason and consequence, mirror and motor of the historical-dialectical process. (HCC: 39; 51)

Thus, espousing the standpoint of class in matters of knowledge and practice presupposes a theory that stands in lively interaction with the “historicaldialectical process.” It is exactly this meeting of theory and history which is represented, according to Lukács, by Marx’s conceptualization of man as “simultaneously the subject and object of the socio-historical process,” of man “as a social being” (HCC: 19; 33). This notion of historical materialism that being is the “hitherto unconscious product of human activity” (HCC: 19; 33) is itself

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a historical product: It became possible for the first time in the capitalist epoch, when the postulate of the formal equality of men destroyed the previous “natural” social bonds and, above all, gave birth to a new social class, the proletariat (cf. HCC: 19–20; 33–4). As Lukács notes elsewhere, “the proletariat is the first, and until now, the only subject in the course of history for which this perception is valid” (Lukács 2000: 53; 1996, 11). As an expression of class consciousness, historical materialism itself formulates a theory of class consciousness. In the theoretical discussion on the role of consciousness in history19 usually the problem of its inadequacy in relation to the real historical process, of the mismatch between the conscious intentions of the historical actors and the effects of their actions, is posed. According to Lukács, historical materialism recognizes this inadequacy, but does not persist with it, as bourgeois philosophical and scientific thought does. As a first step, it proceeds to a “historical criticism” (HCC: 47; 58) and to a “theory of theory” (HCC: 47; 58) that reveal the formalist limitation of established historical knowledge and connect it metacritically with the antagonistic structure of the capitalist social order and its dominant form of objectivity (cf. HCC: 48–9; 59–61, and Sections 4.1 and 4.3). In a second step, historical materialism turns to a new theory of consciousness and its role in history. For Lukács, Marx’s youthful philosophical investigations aimed at overcoming Hegel’s idealist theory, as well as Feuerbach’s materialist critique of it. As we saw in Section 3.7, Hegel’s absolute spirit is located beyond history—a tendency that becomes even stronger in Hegel’s reactionary disciples. In Feuerbach, consciousness becomes immanent, but it is identified with the consciousness of the bourgeois individual. As a result, the typical bourgeois dualism is reproduced—a tendency also met in utopian thinkers of the nineteenth century (cf. HCC:  77–8; 90–91). On the contrary, Marx turns his attention to class consciousness that “does not lie outside the real process of history” (HCC: 77; 90), but is a part of it. Synthesizing these two steps, historical materialism first points out that the fact that the social process normally appears to the members of bourgeois society as independent of their consciousness does not mean they act unconsciously. It means they act with “false consciousness.”20 Historical materialism does not 19

20

Here we are chiefly concerned with the methodological dimension of this discussion. From a historical-philological standpoint it is worth investigating the assumption, formulated but not further developed by Günter Trautmann, on the influence of Ervin Szábo’s anarcho-syndicalism on Lukács’s theory of class consciousness (cf. Trautmann 1987: 136–8). Hence, Stedman Jones’s criticism that by constructing a concept of correct class consciousness Lukács is compelled to condemn the classes that do not possess it to “complete unconsciousness” (Stedman Jones 1971: 50) is superficial and wrong (the functionary of the Hungarian Communist Party, László Rudas came to the same problematic conclusion in 1924; cf. Rudas 1977:  130–33).

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only reject false consciousness, but it is interested in comprehending its necessity within the concrete social totality. Only through this concrete criticism of false consciousness is it, second, possible to constitute “correct consciousness.” In this sense, false consciousness seems to be subjectively correct—as it can be explained on the basis of the social position of the subject—and simultaneously objectively wrong, since it does not correspond to the social process. At the same time, the same consciousness does not match the subjective goals, while it serves unintended objective goals (cf. HCC: 50–51; 61–2).

8.4. Lukács’s theory of ascribed class consciousness This “twofold dialectical determination” (HCC: 50; 62) of false consciousness that is revealed through its integration in the concrete social-historical totality points to a criterion of true knowledge that corresponds to “correct consciousness” as opposed to the merely “empirically given” or “psychologically describable” consciousness (HCC: 51; 63). Lukács attempted to treat the problem of the dual inadequacy of the subjectively imputed meaning and the objective function of social practice through a synthesis of Weber’s hermeneutics and Marx’s functionalist analysis of the forms of social consciousness.21 For Lukács, an inseparable part of “historical criticism” of the empirical, false consciousness is, thus, the constitution of the ideal type of “objective possibility”22 or of the concept of “ascribed class consciousness”: By relating consciousness to the whole of society it becomes possible to infer the thoughts and feelings which men would have in a particular situation if they were able to completely grasp both it and the interests arising from it in their impact on immediate action and on the whole structure of society, i.e. to infer the thoughts and feelings appropriate to their objective situation. (HCC: 51; 62)

In other words, Lukács defines ascribed class consciousness as the “rationally appropriate reaction” that is “ascribed to a particular typical position in the process of production” and thus must be distinguished from the mere sum or

21 22

According to Stedman Jones’s interpretation, either the proletariat possesses full consciousness or it has no consciousness at all. In what follows I show that for Lukács there is no such dilemma. The best explication of this synthesis is offered by Beiersdörfer (1986: 136–55). As Beiersdörfer notes, though for Weber not every “objective possibility” is an ideal type—since this concept is also used in his theory of historical causality—every ideal type is an “objective possibility,” since through it “some elements of reality are emphasized on the basis of rational, normative or other criteria and are synthesized to an ‘objectively possible’ construction” (Beiersdörfer 1986: 259, n. 20).

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the average of the empirical attitudes of the particular subjects that hold this position.23 As a type, the concept of ascribed class consciousness is constructed by the historical materialist in order to estimate the distance between empirical consciousness and the real function of social practice in a concrete socialhistorical context. As Lukács explains, the notion of imputation or ascription (Zurechnung) refers to the “objectively-typical” character of a specific form of consciousness.24 Hence, the objective possibility is—as for Weber—firstly a methodological concept historians use in their investigations: “That is to say, from the facts that are presented to us, the attempt is made to reconstruct the objective situation and ‘subjective’ moments are explained from this (and not the other way round)” (Lukács 2000: 64; 1996: 21). With the description of “what people acting according to normal and correct knowledge of their situation were able to do” (Lukács 2000: 64; 1996: 21) we acquire a criterion to judge their errors or their correct cognitive and practical reactions. However, if the concept of ascribed class consciousness is simply a “rational construct” of the theorist that provides an “external” criterion to judge the “falseness” of empirical class consciousness,25 then it is no surprise that the criticism formulated by many sides has been so harsh. As early as the first publication of History and Class  Consciousness neoKantian social-democracy formulated a criticism that anticipates the critique of Habermas I reconstructed in the introduction. According to this criticism, the fundamental problem of Lukács’s approach pertains to the “metaphysicization of social being” due to the fact that the dialectic is not considered to be a methodological means of research but in a Hegelian fashion, a “real dialectic” (Realdialektik) of the movement of history, in such a way that the problems of “speculative philosophy and social theory” are merged.26 Hence, Lukács is led to an “absolutization of the proletariat” and to a retreat to the “mythology of 23

24

25

26

HCC:  51; 62. Similarly Lukács (2000:  63–4; 1996:  20–21). According to Goldmann’s apt formulation: “the possible ascribed consciousness” is “the maximum of reality that can be known by a social class without coming into conflict with the economic and social interests connected with this class” (Goldmann 1966: 113). Lukács (2000:  64; 1996:  20). Lukács’s explications are part of his defense of History and Class Consciousness against the “orthodox” Marxist criticism, formulated by Rudas, for whom the aim of Lukács’s theory of ascription was to “agnostically” reject causality in social science (cf. Rudas 1977b: 114–25). This is how Iring Fetscher interprets it (cf. Fetscher 1973: 507–9). In a similar way, Bermbach notes that the “objective possibility” must “be understood in the sense of a Kantian ‘regulative idea’ ” (Bermbach 1987, 164). Cf. Marck (1977:  54–6). Inspired by Habermas, Beiersdörfer intends in his reconstruction to overcome the “ambiguity” of Lukács’s theory of class consciousness that, in his opinion, vacillates between a Hegelian philosophy of history and empirical social theory (cf. Beiersdörfer 1986: 147).

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class consciousness” that thus takes the place of Hegel’s world spirit. Finally, the primacy of the ideal type of class consciousness over the empirical-psychological consciousness inescapably leads to dogmatism that “renders possible the theoretical grounding of the dictatorship of the avant-garde” (all quotes Marck 1977: 55–6). Nor did the “orthodox” Marxists of that time appear to be satisfied with Lukács’s theory—quite the contrary. In his critique, László Rudas categorized Lukács under the “idealist-agnostics” like Rickert and Weber (cf. Rudas 1977b:  113– 25). Indeed, Rudas analogizes Lukács’s approach with that of the neo-Kantian Marxist Max Adler and points out the alleged affinity of the ascribed class consciousness and the Kantian “consciousness in general” (cf. Rudas 1977b: 140– 44). In this form, the ascribed consciousness is, for him, nothing but a “delusion” (Hirngespinst; Rudas 1977b: 120), a “hypostatization” (Rudas 1977b: 124) that is transformed into the “creator of the real, of history,” according to the model of the Hegelian “Idea” (Rudas 1977b:  129). Whether it follows a neo-Kantian or a neo-Hegelian thread, Lukács’s theory of class consciousness is unavoidably led to a metaphysics of history, to a purely idealist—as Rudas does not tire to repeat—approach to society and history, whose characteristic autonomization of consciousness and subsequent voluntarism (cf. Rudas 1977b:  156–61) are totally incompatible with orthodox dialectical materialism.27 This critique also anticipates, as it were, Althusser’s critique of Lukács’s “idealist and voluntarist interpretation of Marxism as the exclusive product and expression of proletarian practice,” that is, as a manifestation of the spontaneity of the proletariat.28 27

28

Most of these arguments continued to be used by the defenders of “orthodoxy,” like Raphael de la Vega, for whom, as an “idealist,” Lukács represents a “danger for Marxist theory that should no way be underestimated” (Vega 1978: 69). This reading is also espoused by non-Marxists, such as Panajotis Kondylis, who relates the “ideal-typical construct” of class consciousness and Lukács’s rejection of Engels’s dialectic of nature (see Section 10.5) with his “ ‘idealist’ years of apprenticeship” (Kondylis 2000: 345). Althusser and Balibar (1970:  141). According to Althusser, Lukács viewed historical materialism as an immediate “expression” of the “proletariat as the site and missionary of the human essence.” This approach is the kernel of his “left-wing humanist,” “historicist” interpretation of Marxism (cf. Althusser and Balibar 1970:  140–41). Adopting the terminology of French structuralist Marxism and paradoxically combining it with Adorno’s critique, Martin Jay ascribes to Lukács the Fichtean model of “expressive totality” (cf. Jay 1977: 124). Although Moishe Postone distances himself from Althusserianism, his critique of Lukács shows some affinities to it:  He too thinks that Lukács substitutes the proletariat as the “Subject” of history that is constituted through labor for Hegel’s spirit. This ontological function of labor allegedly imprisons Lukács in what Postone calls “traditional Marxism,” that is, that interpretation of Marxism which is limited to revealing the concealed “homogeneous totality,” the “Subject” that, under the veil of capitalist relations of ownership, remains the true creator of reality (cf. Postone 1993: 72–83). From my entire reading it becomes, I think, clear that the proletariat is not constituted ontologically in the traditional sense, but relationally, within a ruptured, incomplete and heterogeneous social totality. Simultaneously, Lukács’s concept of labor—which, contrary to what Postone seems to suggest, plays a rather secondary role in History and Class  Consciousness compared to the significance it should have

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It does not suffice to point out, as Löwy does, that these critiques accuse Lukács “now of vanguardism, now of spontaneism” to conclude that “these antipodean critiques may be said to cancel each other out” (Löwy 1979: 177). It is more important to see that such contradictory critiques usually refer to theories that search for a road between seemingly opposing, established approaches, and to attempt to comprehend the distinctiveness of this road. Because, as Merleau-Ponty notes, the concept of class consciousness as an “objective possibility” makes “Marxism another philosophy and not simply a materialistic transposition of Hegel” (Merleau-Ponty 1973:  47). The mutually canceled critiques overlook the real nature of Lukács’s notion of objective reality, which is neither one-sidedly methodological nor one-sidedly ontological, but is—as all his central concepts—internally linked to the dialectic of consciousness and social-historical reality.29 Unfortunately, Lukács did not explicate the relation between the category of objective possibility and Weber’s concept of “ideal type” or Marx’s category of the “economic persona” or “character” (Charaktermaske), to which he refers apropos in a note in History and Class  Consciousness (cf. HCC:  81, n.  18; 62, n. 1). But even from this reference one can conclude that his intention was to combine Weberianism with historical materialism. From the former he espouses the constitution of methodological concepts that undermine a deterministic explanation of social processes—this is something Rudas correctly discerned— while from the latter he adopts the constitution of concepts that rely upon diagnosing the distance between the subjective meaning and the real function of the socially determined roles within a concrete social totality. By synthesizing these two perspectives a double transcendence of the one-sidedness of Weberian hermeneutics of subjective meaning and that of a Marxist functionalism that reduces subjective meaning to its objective economic basis becomes possible. By adopting the holistic approach, the theorist can then reconstruct possible forms of consciousness according to the social/class standpoints that correspond to a specific society.30

29

30

(cf. Lendvai 1987: 146–7)—does not have an ontological character, but always refers to a socially mediated, reified practice. Far from relating to some given ontological core, subjectification is then a process triggered by the very same opposition between social forms and contents of life, which also stands at the center of the theory of reification. Francis Hearn clearly discerns the integration of the ideal type of class consciousness in a dialectical conceptualization of historical totality (cf. Hearn 1975: 537–43). Indeed, where he introduces the concept of ascribed class consciousness, Lukács also postulates a typology of the possible positions within society and the respective types of consciousness (cf. HCC: 51; 62), one of which is also the (ascribed) class consciousness of the proletariat. I will come back to this dimension of his theory in Section 9.1.

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The synthetic character of Lukács’s approach entails that the objective possibility of the ascribed class consciousness ceases to represent an abstract possibility invented by the theorist and becomes immanent in social reality, which it co-determines, although it retains its distance from empirical class consciousness. As Beiersdörfer cogently shows, despite the opposing views that have been contended,31 in order to give this particular meaning to the ideal type of class consciousness Lukács did not totally deviate from Max Weber’s concept of ideal type. In Weber there is not only a nominalist-methodological concept of the ideal type but, integrated in his theory of social rationalization, the ideal type of intellectual objects (such as forms of consciousness, world-views, ethical systems etc.) can coincide with the actual ideas. But even if they do not, it can be considered to co-determine them, in spite of the retention of the distance between them (cf. Beiersdörfer 1986: 147–9). Lukács did not need to do more than to integrate this concept of the historically actual ideal type of a form of consciousness into his materialist-dialectical theory of historical totality. The ascribed class consciousness has then—as the rest of the concepts of his materialist dialectic—a dual, methodological and historicoontological character, without one-sidedly relating to a subjectivist-idealist or an objectivist-determinist approach to the relevant issues. On the contrary, combining Weberianism and dialectical Marxism allows the derivation of a historical-immanent criterion of rational class consciousness, on the basis of which empirical class consciousness can be criticized. As Lukács himself notes, the “historical analysis” is able to “elucidate, through the category of objective possibility, the conditions in which a real resolution of illusion, a penetration up to the real connection with the totality is within the field of the possibility at all” (HCC: 52; 64). And, at the same time, although the distance between the ascribed and the empirical class consciousness is retained, Lukács insists that “the historically significant actions of the class as a totality are determined in the last resort by this consciousness and not by the thought of the individual—and they can be cognized only by reference to this consciousness.”32 The ascribed class consciousness already possesses an extra-theoretical reality, without reference to which no form of class consciousness can be comprehended. This can easily be discerned in the case of the proletariat. Indeed,

31

32

Namely the view that, since Weber’s ideal type has an exclusively methodological character, Lukács had to essentially deviate from the Weberian understanding, to leave space for its realization in history (cf., e.g., Stedman Jones 1971: 32, n. 19; Hearn 1975: 540; Cerutti 1970: 203–4). HCC:  51; 62. As Hearn puts it “proletarian class consciousness is real as long as the tendencies residing in society make it objectively possible” (Hearn 1975: 539).

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the unity of the proletariat has already been shaped before its theorization by the theorist, through spontaneous rebellions and acts of resistance.33 However, with the organization of these spontaneous resistances and the development of the forms of their manifestation on the way to the revolution, the issue of mediating the spontaneous and the objectively more mature forms of proletarian consciousness is raised, as well as the problem of actively intervening to elevate the first to the level of the latter (cf. Lukács 2000:  67–8; 1996:  23–4). In this sense, the ascribed consciousness is only the articulated meaning, the reasonable explication of the actions of resistance already performed by the self-conscious part of the proletariat; thus, it is a moment in the process of the latter’s becoming self-conscious (cf. HCC: 259; 264). The concept of objective possibility thus acquires a dynamic character, since its content must be readjusted according to the concrete social-historical situation. Indications of this dynamic development can be discerned in the great shifts of the workers’ movement, as long as they are considered from the holistic standpoint of historical materialism.34 The first such turning point is the establishment of the workers’ parties. In his essay “Rosa Luxemburg as a Marxist,” Lukács praises Luxemburg because she “perceived at a very early stage that organization is much more likely to be the effect rather than the cause of the revolutionary process” (HCC: 41; 53), since organization presupposes in fact the manifest tendency of the proletariat to constitute itself as a revolutionary class through a long process of social struggles. As we will see in Section 10.1, Lukács amended his initial position after his decisive turn to Bolshevism. He then ascribed to the party a more crucial role in the movement to social change, that is, the role of representing the ascribed class consciousness and, thus, not replacing, but leading the activity of the revolutionary class at the decisive moments in the revolutionary process. Even then, however, he continued to give great importance to a second historical event, the invention of the workers’ councils—although he did not reflect on the 33

34

In this sense, Antonia Grunenberg’s ascertainment that “the ‘ascribed’ consciousness is a category that has nothing to do with praxis” (Grunenberg 1976:  199) is wrong. Merleau-Ponty is right to stress the close connection between class consciousness and praxis as the essence of Marxism’s new approach beyond the dilemma of subjectivism and objectivism (cf. Merleau-Ponty 1973: 46–50; see also Bösinger 2015: 118). My interpretation is the antipode of Jörg Kammler’s reading, according to which Lukács’s extrapolation of class consciousness is purely theoretical, without essential reference to real history (cf. Kammler 1974: 182–4). Kammler does not recognize that his critique of the allegedly abstract character of Lukács’s historical dialectic of class consciousness stands in conflict with the central hypothesis of his book that Lukács’s political theory cannot be comprehended independently of the discussions, disputes, actions and vicissitudes of the struggling workers’ movement of his time (cf., e.g., Kammler 1974: 187–8).

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possibility of a conflict between the party and the directly democratic institutions of the struggling workers’ movement:35 Every proletarian revolution has created workers’ councils in an increasingly radical and conscious manner. When this weapon increases in power to the point where it becomes the organ of state, this is a sign that the class consciousness of the proletariat is on the verge of overcoming the bourgeois outlook of its leaders. (HCC: 80; 92–3)

In Lukács’s eyes, the workers’ council reflects a progress of class consciousness in the direction of holistically grasping social reality, as the council represents the overcoming of the bourgeois separation of economy from politics that hitherto led the proletariat to utopian ideological positions. For Lukács, “the workers’ council is the political-economic overcoming of capitalist reification,” as it paves the way to the unity of the proletariat, “it connects economy and politics in the true unity of proletarian praxis and in this way it helps reconcile the dialectical conflict between immediate interests and ultimate goal” (HCC:  80; 93). The holistic-dialectical interpretation of such steps that represent institutional innovations in the struggle for a new society points at the fact that the ascribed consciousness and the corresponding social praxis are already moments of the process of social change, while they pave the way to further objective possibilities as present-absent elements of historical reality. For the theorist, the question of the forms of mediation between empirical and ascribed class consciousness is posed, given the fact that the distance between them remains. This question will preoccupy us in the following chapters. Here, I confine myself to the remark that, for a dialectical theory of historical reality, class consciousness must be understood as a dynamic process unfolding through contradictions, inequalities, conflicts and regressions. Thus, ascribed class consciousness becomes a moment of “the infinitely painful path of proletarian revolution, with its many reverses” (HCC: 75–6; 88). Löwy correctly notes that Lukács “conceived of the relationship” between empirical and ascribed class consciousness “not as a rigid metaphysical duality but as a historical process through which the class, assisted by its vanguard, rises to zugerechnetes Bewusstsein through its own experience of struggle” (Löwy 1979: 178).

35

Patrick Eiden-Offe aptly remarks that Lukács did not engage in the classic discussion on the priority of the party or the workers’ councils, because he treated both as different proletarian “forms of struggle” (Kampfformen) and was particularly concerned with how to avoid their equally probable erosion by the reifying spirit of the bourgeois institutions (cf. Eiden-Offe 2015: 91–4).

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8.5. The unity of theory and praxis In Section 4.3 we met the postulate of the unity of theory and praxis in the form it emerges, from the standpoint of a dialectical theory of history. Here we will examine the same postulate from the standpoint of praxis as a necessary condition of overcoming the contemplative attitude of the bourgeois subject. Merleau-Ponty explains that, for Lukács, proletarian class consciousness “is a praxis; that is to say, it is less than a subject and more than an object; it is a polarized existence, a possibility” (Merleau-Ponty 1973:  47). And, as Lukács notes about the proletariat, “by recognizing its situation it acts. By combating capitalism it discovers its own place in society” (HCC: 40; 52). Hence, the unity of theory and praxis has two complementary dimensions. First, theory has a practical nature; it is itself praxis: The struggle to develop class consciousness and the corresponding knowledge of the social-historical totality is not a purely scientific issue; it is organically related to the praxis of changing social relations in an emancipatory direction: “Praxis is the form of knowing and acting appropriate to a class subject which has transcended (is transcending) a contemplative relation to the social world” (Bernstein 1984: 31– 2). Indeed, Lukács does not tire of repeating that knowledge is the most crucial weapon in the proletarian struggle for power (see HCC: 68, 197, 221–2, 251, 311; 80, 215, 229–30, 257, 314). This is why the ideological fight against opportunism with its dualist, bourgeois consciousness (cf. Section 4.2) becomes particularly important in this struggle.36 Simultaneously, correct knowledge is more than merely a tool. For Lukács, realizing the social position of the working class within the totality of social relations already has a practical character. In History and Class Consciousness, Lukács explains that correct knowledge of the totality “brings about an objective structural change in the object of knowledge” (HCC:  169; 185). On the one hand, by implementing a new form of objectivity, a new objectivity of the reality as something historically constituted occurs. On the other hand, as this knowledge is the self-knowledge of the proletariat, it effectuates a change of its object, that is, the proletariat and its attitude toward the social world, since it

36

Cf. HCC: 69; 81–2. Lukács’s evaluation of the significance of the struggle around class consciousness was harshly criticized by Rudas (cf. Rudas 1977b: 153–61). Lukács defended his view as orthodox Leninist in Lukács (2000:  85–6; 1996:  37–8). It is characteristic that in his small book on Lenin (1924) he essentially retains his thesis on the central importance of class consciousness in the phase of the “actuality of revolution” and defines the formation of a “clear class consciousness” as the “historical task” of the proletariat (cf. Lukács 2009: 24; 1967, 22).

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brings the dehumanizing mechanism of reification to consciousness and allows the perspective of emancipation through taking political action. Knowledge becomes the first step to the dissolution of the fetishist character of social forms, institutions and relations; it is a first step in the process of dereification, the nature of which will occupy us in the next chapter.37 Second, the unity of theory and praxis also means that theory is able to lead the conscious praxis of changing social reality. Theory acquires concrete content and is tested on the basis of its contribution to the transformation of social relations: The unity of theory and praxis exists not only in theory but also for practice. The proletariat as a class can only conquer and retain a hold on class consciousness and raise itself to the level of its—objectively given—historic task through conflict and action. In exactly the same way, the party and the individual fighters can only really take possession of their theory if they are able to bring this unity [of theory and praxis] into their praxis. (HCC: 43; 55)

The criterion of the correctness of practical knowledge is its functionality for the practical enhancement of the immanent tendencies of the whole process. In this process, the constant actualization and further development of the correct class consciousness that gives new impetus to the realization of the practical goals of the collective subject plays a significant role. Theory and praxis thus stand in a permanent interrelation due to the practical unity of form and content, on which the possibility of overcoming bourgeois dualisms in practical thought as well as in practice itself depend. In the same way, on the level of proletarian class consciousness we have the knowledge of the totality and an uninterrupted movement of the sublation of immediacy (cf. HCC, 173–4; 190–91), on the level of praxis we have from the beginning a practical intention that aims at a practical mediation and the transformation of social totality: The category of totality begins to have an effect long before the whole multiplicity of objects can be illuminated by it. It appears precisely in the fact that actions which seem to confine themselves to particular objects—in both

37

Ignoring these elements of Lukács’s view allows Sabine Doyé to interpret Lukács’s thesis that the “praxis of becoming conscious” transforms the “form of objectivity of the object” as “undoubtedly idealistic in the purest Hegelian sense” (Doyé 2005:  137). This misinterpretation obviously relies upon the identification of the “form of objectivity” with the “thing” itself, while Lukács refers only to a transformation of the first, i.e., the historicization of objectivity as the emergence of a new form of consciousness. It is remarkable that Doyé does not see the contradiction between this interpretation and her basically correct description of Lukács’s concept of reification as concealment of the social mediation of the objects (cf. Doyé 2005: 128–30).

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content and consciousness—yet preserve an aspiration towards changing the totality; [it appears] in the fact that action is directed—according to its objective meaning—towards the transformation of the whole. We pointed out earlier in the context of a purely methodological discussion on the dialectical method, that its particular moments and elements contain the structure of the whole; we see the same thing here in a more concrete form, a form more closely orientated towards the practical element. (HCC: 175; 192)

Even if it relates to particular objects, the praxis of transforming the world always aims at changing the social-historical whole. That is, it already contains the “ultimate goal” that gives it a wider meaning, the reference to a new social reality that has to be constituted—even if it fails in directly realizing it and, in this sense, it becomes “merely” a moment of the long dialectical process of social struggles that aim at this realization. From this holistic perspective, the negative experiences, the mistakes, the defeats become a part of the process of forming the correct consciousness and practice (cf. HCC, 43–4; 55–6), they become moments of the process of the collectivity’s practical self-determination.38

8.6. The dialectic of transformative praxis The collective subject’s practical self-determination or—in Marx’s words—the “practical-critical activity” of “transforming the world” (HCC: 20, 78, 262; 35, 90, 267) paves the way to overcoming the dualism of the dominant contemplative behavior. Actors may not acquire a clear consciousness from the beginning; however, even in its most elementary forms the so-called transformative praxis39 already contains a new concept of reality, not as a ready-made “thing,” but as a dynamic totality of contradictory tendencies and possibilities that can, under specific circumstances, lead to the transformation of the conditions of social life. In this sense, from an abstract point of view, transformative praxis represents a practical implementation of a new form of objectivity. If contemplative practice is based on reified calculative rationality, transformative praxis corresponds to the historicization of the given world, 38

39

Contrary to my reconstruction, Grunenberg ascribes to Lukács an idealist “mechanical, nondialectical relation” of theory and praxis allegedly based on a “primacy of theory or consciousness” (cf. Grunenberg 1976: 208–9). Her negative bias competes with that of other “orthodox” critics of Lukács such as Rudas, whom she draws upon (cf. Grunenberg 1976: 201, 209–13). “Umwälzende Praxis,” in the English translations it mostly appears as “revolutionary practice” (Lukács 1971b:  28; 1973c:  279; 2000:  56, 127–9, 132; 1996:  14, 71–2, 75). Also:  “umwälzendes Handeln” (HCC: 221, n. 61; 217, n. 1).

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the recognition of the antagonistic tendencies that permeate it and, thus, its dereification through strengthening that tendency which represents the new in history. Of course, this abstract definition of transformative praxis needs to be concretized within the respective concrete social-historical totality. No general theory of praxis can replace the concrete analysis of the class antagonisms of a specific period. Lukács articulates this dependence of praxis on concrete contents through the view that it is always the performance of the “next step” of historical development (cf. HCC: 198; 216). With this thesis, Lukács did not espouse a metaphysical notion of praxis that realizes the logical plan of a metaphysical theory of history, as Habermas reconstructs his view (cf. the introduction). From the start, the theory of praxis aims at its transformation to a “practical theory,” that is, the concretization of practical possibilities for the transformative action of the collective subject, within definite historical conditions (cf. HCC:  205; 225). It thus includes two fundamental moments, the moment of rupture, of the emergence of the new out of the contradictions of the present, and the moment of its gradual development on the basis of new contradictions occurring in the process each time. Here I briefly examine these two moments in their abstract form—that is, as far as possible, independently of the concrete contents ascribed to them by Lukács. These will preoccupy us in the next chapter. As a break with the past, with the already given, transformative praxis opposes contemplation that is always a post festum consideration of the already done. Instead, praxis displays a “foreseeing and transformative awareness” (HCC: 283; 288), as it anticipates social change, referring to a coming future. Transformative praxis recognizes and utilizes those tendencies that allow it to create the future. The appropriation of the present by men depends on cognizing it as social-historical reality that can be formed, a reality in which correct consciousness and praxis can bring about a qualitative transformation of the dominant form of objectivity and thus deeply change the social world (cf. HCC: 204; 223). The truth of transformative praxis is not grounded on “depicting” being or “corresponding” to it—these are thought-schemata that presuppose the dualism of thought and being—but on the conscious realization of the historical tendencies toward the emergence of a qualitatively new human reality (cf. HCC: 204; 223–4). Tendencies that are “more real” than the raw facts, which can, however, be realized only through the active intervention of human freedom. The holistically constituted theory and the corresponding praxis then reveal the “truth of becoming” by realizing the “new,” “the future that is to become,

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that has not yet emerged” (HCC:  204; 223). In their unity they represent the moment of rupture and discontinuity, a “new start” that interrupts the ordinary, dualistically organized routine, the continuity of the mechanical repetition of the identical. Transformative praxis relates to those “moments” (Augenblicke) of collective creation that pose new, paradigmatic forms of social coexistence which henceforth represent landmarks in the people’s movement toward the realization and expansion of their freedom. As has been pointed out, this view on praxis as a break with determinism can be analogized to the contemporary concept of the “event” in theories such as Slavoj Žižek’s and/or Alain Badiou’s (cf. Engster 2015a: 35–7). For Žižek, the perspective of the “genuinely new” (Žižek 2010: 38, n. 40) is opened up by the “act” that shows, in fact, some similarities to Lukács’s transformative praxis. Žižek’s act represents “what is unimaginable within the positivist vision of history as an ‘objective’ process which determines in advance the possible coordinates of political interventions.” It is “precisely a radical political intervention which changes these very ‘objective’ coordinates and thus, in a way, creates the conditions for its own success” (Žižek 2010: 33). In a critique similar to Lukács’s critique of the formalist understanding of history, Žižek points to the fact that “in schematized time, nothing really new can emerge—everything is always-already there” (Žižek 1999: 43). On the contrary, the act is not reducible to the given; it is a radically new beginning. It represents the “temporality of freedom,” a “radical rupture in the chain of (natural and/or social) causality” (Žižek 1999:  43), which posits a new framework of rules and causal relations. Hence, the act represents the temporality of “subjectivity irreducible to the ‘objective’ historical process, which means that things can take a messianic turn, time can become ‘dense’, at any point” (Žižek 2003: 134). In this context, Žižek refers to the “condensed time of the Event,” the “absolute Present” (Žižek 2003:  135) of the revolution. Paradoxically, this “absolute Present” is precisely something that “happens,” a “miracle,” which we cannot decide on nor bring about. Instead it determines us as a fact; it compels us to acknowledge it and to take on its realization by “drawing the consequences from it” and “remaining faithful to it” (cf. Žižek 2003: 135–6). As Žižek notes, “the paradox is thus that, in an authentic act, the highest freedom coincides with the utmost passivity, with a reduction to a lifeless automaton who blindly performs its gestures” (Žižek 1999:  375). The subject of the act becomes a passive recipient of the act itself as an “event,” which  it can only approach post festum as something external to be merely accepted. As has been pointed out, Žižek’s “acts are not consciously intended gestures of reflective agents,

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but unforeseen occurrences which take them by surprise and ‘use’ them as vehicles for their breakthrough.”40 Despite the superficial similarities between such a view and Lukács’s theory of praxis as a radical break with the given world, the latter is not led to the same paradoxical consequences, as it integrates the discontinuity of the rupture in its dialectical structure. Lukács gives equally great emphasis to considering transformative action as a dialectical moment of an open process. As such, it does not realize a mythical final “situation” of reconciliation. It realizes an immediate unity of the opposites that provides the material for a new chain of mediations, that is, for the further development of the dialectical process. Hence, there is no irreconcilable opposition but a relation of complementarity of transformative praxis as a rupture and as a process. As Lukács explains, this process comprises “a long sequence of moments” (Lukács 2000: 55; 1996: 14), which must of course be distinguished according to the degree to which the quantitative accumulation of forces is reversed into a new quality or not.41 Thus, transformative praxis takes into account the juncture: In moments in which the “qualitatively new” emerges, the further process depends on the stance of the “subjective factor” and, thus, on the level of consciousness it has reached. Hence, in moments produced by the objective development, subjectivity can acquire a relative independence and actively influence the direction the process will take: This influence is only possible in praxis, only in the present (that is why I am using the word “moment” (Augenblick)—in order to highlight this practicalcontemporary character). Once the action is completed, the subjective moment slots back into the sequence of objective moments. (Lukács 2000: 56; 1996: 14)

This means that the unity of subject and object only exists from the standpoint of praxis, while for contemplative theory the “subjective moment” appears post

40

41

Kioupkiolis (2017: 29). In this article Kioupkiolis examines similar paradoxes in relation to Alain Badiou’s concept of “event.” According to his cogent argumentation, an essential problem of Žižek’s notion of “act” and Badiou’s “event” pertains to the gap opened up between transformative praxis and the consciousness of the subjects, as well as their becoming passive, since their only possible role can be to await the occurrence of the “miracle.” On the concept of event in Badiou and contemporary French philosophy in general, cf. Jay (2013). At this point the question of the relation between quantitative development and qualitative leap is raised—these are the two dimensions of the historical process that will occupy us in the next chapter. Lukács alludes, without further explications, to Plekhanov’s reference to Hegel’s Logic and to the concept of the “knotted line of proportional relations” (Knotenlinie der Maßverhältnisse) in Plechanow (1892:  280, n.). Lukács refers to the same article at one point in History and Class Consciousness in which the question of the relation between continuity and discontinuity is raised (cf. HCC: 218, n. 19; 178, n.).

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festum as another element of objective reality that must be univocally reduced to given “factors.” Besides, even dialectical knowledge must henceforth take into account the effects of praxis as a given fact. Lukács gives the characteristic example of the ideological tradition shaped by different labor parties, according to their history. Such a tradition forms an objective precondition of any further action (cf. Lukács 2000: 56; 1996: 14). The dialectical understanding of the unity of subject and object must remain aware of the dialectically mediated, relative independence of subjectivity. It must not “simply ascribe this characteristic of praxis to theory,” thus falling back to idealist “conceptual mythology” (as Fichte did), or ignore the “specific essence of transformative praxis,” carrying over the unbridgeable antithesis of subject and object “from ‘pure’ theory into praxis” (as the determinist opponents of Lukács did). The dialectical process does not entail the identification of the moments without remainder, nor their strict separation, but “it invokes the uninterrupted process of moments becoming independent and the uninterrupted abolition of this independence” (all quotes from Lukács 2000: 56; 1996: 14). As we will see in detail in the next chapter, Lukács does not confine himself to this general abstract outline of the dialectic of praxis. He always examines it in relation to the real class struggles in the bourgeois society of his time. In the essay on the problem of organization, Lukács alludes to the “living dialectic of action,” that unfolds “on the way to proletarian revolution” (HCC:  296; 299). For the dialectic of praxis, the “facts” cease to be something merely “given,” as they are related to the dialectical-practical totality and, thus, integrated in a process, in which new contents emerge that again need to be dialecticallypractically mediated. In this open process the “issue of the dialectical relation between ‘final goal’ and ‘movement’ ” is raised and, thus, “at every crucial stage of the revolution it reappears in an increasingly more advanced form, but with permanently changing contents” (HCC: 296; 299).

9

Dereifying Capitalism

By the time it first appeared, Lukács’s revolutionary theory was considered by many critics as idealist. At first sight their arguments seem to be compelling:  Lukács “deifies” the proletariat, which he substitutes for Hegel’s world spirit, while—precisely because of the idealist orientation of his theory— he is led to a voluntarist understanding of revolution and social change that underestimates the significance of objective social reality and overestimates the importance of the “decision,” the “leap,” the sudden unforeseeable occurrence of the “radically new,” etc. Indeed, Lukács’s repeated, enthusiastic allusions to the “identical subjectobject of history” do nourish such misinterpretations that obfuscate the rational core of his argument. As I  argued earlier, Lukács’s identity of subject and object represents a formulation borrowed from idealist philosophy, which—according to its historical materialist reinterpretation— denotes that the subject and the object “are moments of one and the same real-historical dialectical process.”1 Far from representing an idealistmetaphysical anticipation of a “ready-made” revolutionary subject that awaits its self-realization on earth, Lukács’s analysis of class consciousness and the revolutionary praxis of the proletariat should rather be interpreted as a practically oriented diagnosis of historically concrete possibilities of subjectification opened up in specific social conditions. Lukács’s concretization of such possibilities relies upon the classical Marxist position that “the proletariat is at one and the same time the product of the permanent crisis in capitalism and the executor of those tendencies which drive capitalism towards crisis” (HCC: 40; 52). Its subjectification represents a

1

HCC:  204; 224. Lukács emphatically underscores this view in his defense of History and Class Consciousness against the critics of his notion of the identical subject-object (cf. Lukács 2000, 49; 1996, 8).

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precondition and simultaneously a corollary of the process of dereification of capitalist social relations. As we saw in Section 8.4, with the historical emergence of the proletariat, capitalism created the “formal objective possibility” (HCC: 22; 36) of the holistic knowledge of social reality. We also saw in Section 4.5 that the proletariat should not be viewed as a Kantian ideal subject or as a neutral observer, but as a real subject that participates in all possible ways in the socialhistorical process:  it suffers, cognizes, acts:  It suffers due to its position as an object of exploitation in the framework of capitalist social relations (Sections 9.1 and 9.2), and precisely because of this it has the ability to cognize this specific social-historical totality and to appropriately act to change the established social relations (Sections 9.3 and 9.5). Subjectification and dereification must, in any case, be thought of as moments of a permanent, open process of struggle for the transformation of the established social relations (Sections 9.4 and 9.6). At this point I would like to note in advance that the reconstruction of Lukács’s argument I offer in the present chapter in no way aims at an ahistorical, unmediated actualization of his views.2 It rather aspires to restore their genuine, historically oriented spirit, and to show their internal connection with the materialist-dialectical method presented in Chapter  4. Following Lukács’s approach, I  consider this general methodological orientation as a central aspect of his theory that retains its actuality today. Naturally, this holds far less for Lukács’s concrete, substantial views, since the current social-historical situation radically differs from that of the first half of the 1920s. Obviously, as the concrete analysis of today’s globalized capitalism cannot immediately rely upon analyses made one hundred years ago, in the same way a diagnosis on the current tendencies toward collective subjectification—an issue that nevertheless exceeds the limits of this study—should be formulated on the basis of a reconstruction of the present social totality.3

9.1. Lukács’s typology of class consciousness The emergence of objective possibility, that is, the occurrence of a class collectivity for which knowledge of “society as the reality for man” (HCC: 19; 2

3

A complex, historically informed argument for Lukács’s theory on the ascribed class consciousness and the leading role of the Communist Party in the historical process of its development is made by Lanning (2009). A good example of such an attempt to, first, historicize History and Class  Consciousness and, second, adjust its theoretical orientation to the social and political context of the 1960s was made by Goldmann (1972).

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33) becomes possible, has specific social-historical preconditions. In precapitalist societies, in which economic relations were inextricably connected with religious practices and political relations, while the economic sphere remained internally fragmented, no immediate awareness of the role of social classes could be achieved (cf. HCC: 55; 66–7). In such societies ideological forms of consciousness cannot be separated from the social structures. Therefore, strictly speaking, the social function of classes in such societies is a retrospective projection of historical materialism (cf. HCC: 58; 70). This standpoint becomes possible only in capitalist society, in which the economic sphere becomes autonomous and, thus, the class division resulting from the different positions in the process of production can be consciously discerned. Hence, “only in capitalism does economic class interest emerge in all its starkness as the motor of history” (HCC: 58; 70), since only in it did “class consciousness arrive at the point where it could become conscious” (HCC: 59; 71). For the first time in human history an analysis of the correlation between class positions and the forms of class consciousness becomes possible. Indeed, in his essay on “Class Consciousness,” Lukács offers us the general outline of a typology of class positions and the corresponding (ascribed) consciousnesses we find in capitalist society. Lukács uses as a criterion for the constitution of the types of class consciousness the relation between class interests and consciousness, since “class consciousness was defined in terms of the problems of ascribing class interests” (HCC: 61; 73). Based on this criterion, Lukács distinguishes the classes whose position determines a contradictory relation between interest and consciousness and the classes whose position facilitates a dialectical relation between them (cf. HCC: 61; 73). Under the first type fall those classes—“if, indeed, we can even speak of them as classes in the strict Marxist sense of the term” (HCC: 61; 73) —whose “existence is not based exclusively on their role in the capitalist system of production but is indissolubly linked with the vestiges of feudal society” (HCC:  59; 71). Such classes are the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie. Because their position depends on relations that have been historically overcome, those classes cannot play a central role in the conservation nor in the transformation of existing social structures, while the contradictory relation between their interests and their consciousness leads them to a loss of contact with reality:  “A full consciousness of their situation would reveal to them the hopelessness of their particularistic strivings in the face of the inevitable course of events” (HCC:  61; 73). Therefore, these classes succumb to unhistorical,

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utopian views or adapt their overall orientation and strivings to the situation of the wider class struggles.4 Things are different in the case of the dialectical contradiction between interests and consciousness, as it propels awareness of reality in the “pure classes of bourgeois society” (HCC: 59; 71), the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. For precisely this reason, these are the only classes, from whose standpoint an organization of the whole of modern society is at least intelligible (cf. HCC: 59; 71). Let us briefly examine what this means and also how the bourgeoisie and the proletariat differ. Although the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie is a typical case of dialectically developing consciousness, it is characterized by its inability to resolve its contradictions, for example, the one between liberation from the irrational social bonds of the old regime and the oppression exercised by the bourgeoisie after the consolidation of its domination, or between bourgeois individualism and reification, theory and practice, etc. (cf. HCC: 61–4; 73–7). The social position and the corresponding interests of the bourgeoisie propel the development of its consciousness: Due to its central role within the unitary structure of capitalist economy, “the bourgeoisie should be able to . . . possess an (ascribed) consciousness of the whole system of production” (HCC: 62; 74). Nonetheless, the development of bourgeois class consciousness cannot be completed. The main reason for this is the opposition between the principle of individual interest and the objective social function of capital in the whole productive process (HCC: 62–3; 75). In spite of the high level of awareness of the economically acting individual capitalist, for the bourgeoisie the social process must appear as a product of uncontrollable, objective laws. The revelation of the social character of the latter would equate to recognizing the fact that—as Lukács notes by using Marx’s words—“the true barrier of capitalist production is capital itself.”5 4

5

Cf. HCC: 59–61; 71–3. Stedman Jones’s critique that for Lukács these classes act “unconsciously” since their consciousness is never pure but always represents a mixture of different ideological elements is totally misplaced (cf. Stedman Jones 1971: 50). Lukács had precisely this ideological confusion in mind and naturally not an alleged “unconsciousness.” However, to define something as a mixture one needs the concept of the “pure.” Even Stedman Jones is—probably involuntarily—subjected to this necessity, when he describes the consciousness of the dominated classes as a mixture of “genuine proletarian ideology” and “contaminations from allied, rather than enemy, classes” (Stedman Jones 1971: 50). The same misplaced critique was formulated by Rudas in 1924 (see Chapter 8, n. 20). HCC:  64; 76. Beiersdörfer aptly notes that the case of the bourgeoisie shows that the ascribed consciousness does not necessarily coincide with the correct consciousness, but can correspond to the Marxian category of the “necessarily false consciousness” (cf. Beiersdörfer 1986: 145), i.e., the consciousness formed according to necessary-structural and not only contingent restrictions (cf. Beiersdörfer 1986: 151). The construction of the typology of class consciousness in capitalism based upon the ideal type of ascribed consciousness aims at precisely locating such structural restrictions or possibilities.

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Due to its inability to overcome the reification of capitalist economic relations the bourgeois consciousness enters a “tragic situation” (HCC:  61; 73):  From the first moment of its prevalence it is accompanied by the emergence of the proletariat as a rival force. At the same time, the sharpening of its internal contradiction and crisis is tantamount to the subjectification and empowerment of its proletarian adversary (cf. HCC:  64–5; 77). This means that neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat represent unaltered substances—they are the two poles of a dialectical opposition and are objectively and subjectively defined through their rivalry.6 The first issue at stake in the struggle around consciousness is the recognition of class struggle itself, the existence of which the bourgeoisie is now doomed to negate, although it had acknowledged it at the time of its rise. Thus, the social crisis further exacerbates the “ideological crisis” of the bourgeoisie (cf. HCC: 67; 80). Through the empowerment of the proletariat the bourgeoisie is pushed to a defensive position—it is obliged to present its domination as the realization of general interests, while it actually represents the prevalence of a minority and its particularistic interests. The bourgeoisie can only opt to close its eyes in front of reality or to become morally indifferent and cynical in respect of the effects of its social domination. However, such cynicism weakens the ability of a class to impose its domination, while the attempts to “scientifically” conceal reality are finally doomed to fail (HCC: 66–7; 78–80). At the dawn of the twentieth century the retreat of bourgeois consciousness was already so serious that ideas of the adversary—for example, the idea of a planned economy—had begun to be adopted, even as thought experiments, by representatives of the bourgeoisie. Thus, Lukács refers to the “capitulation of the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie before that of the proletariat” (HCC: 67; 79). As a result of this capitulation, “however aggressive the means of its struggle might be,” the bourgeoisie “is fighting for self-preservation,” and thus “its power to dominate has vanished beyond recall” (HCC: 67; 80). While the bourgeoisie retreats, the proletariat gains ground (cf. HCC:  68; 80). As I have noted in Section 8.5, for the proletariat true consciousness is a decisive weapon in its struggle. Its power relies precisely in the fact that from the standpoint of its position and only this, is the application of the category of totality possible and necessary (cf. HCC: 68–9; 81). Although the immediate reality is 6

Erich Hahn points out the methodological significance of the fact that “Lukács derives the antagonism between bourgeois and proletarian ideology from the dialectic of the whole socio-economic, political and intellectual development of this society” (Hahn 2004: 111). Patrick Eiden-Offe emphasizes the relational character of Lukács’s typology of social classes (cf. Eiden-Offe 2011: 66–70).

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the “same” for the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, since “the proletariat shares with the bourgeoisie the reification of every aspect of its life” (HCC: 149; 165), the mechanism of class interests drives the two classes in different directions in respect to the knowledge of social reality.7

9.2. Proletarian subjectification as a corollary of a natural principle A central trait of bourgeois consciousness is its internal split:  As a subject of theory the member of the bourgeoisie is content with the knowledge and passive acknowledgment of the laws of an alien, given reality, while as a subject of practice he always remains a rational individual actively pursuing its interests. For the bourgeois consciousness, the two poles of the social process, the subject and the objectivity remain separated. On the contrary, the proletarian firstly represents only an object of the social process, since she does not control any of its aspects but is rather totally controlled by it. As we saw in Section 6.1, the capitalist form of objectivity—quantification and rational calculability—is implemented on her very personality and life, forcing her to rationally objectify her labor power in order to sell it as a commodity. However, because of the fact that the tendency toward a quantitative escalation of the exploitation of workers by the bourgeoisie inheres in the logic of capitalist development, as soon as capitalist relations of production are established a social conflict around the regulation of “normal” labor-time breaks out. As I pointed out in Section 6.1, Lukács found in Marx a social-historical explication of the Bergsonian distinction between the mechanical-quantified time and time as experienced “duration,” with which he was familiarized in his pre-Marxist period. In his eyes, the struggle for the regulation of labor-time Marx describes in Capital (see Marx 1976:  340–416; 1963:  245–320) is nothing but the fight for the reappropriation of “duration,” that is, the qualitatively defined life of the worker. Therefore, every quantitative increase of labor-time does not only provoke a “blind reaction” by the workers, but rather directly opens up the possibility of a new quality of proletarian consciousness that points beyond the immediacy of the capitalist organization of production.8 7

8

Cf. HCC:  164–5; 180–81. Lukács defended the distinction between contradictory and dialectical class consciousness as well as his analysis of the differences between proletarian and bourgeois dialectical consciousness in Lukács (2000: 88–91; 1996: 40–42). This possibility does not automatically entail the elevation to “revolutionary consciousness” as Antonia Grunenberg contends in order to present Lukács as an “idealist” who replaces the

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For the bourgeois entrepreneur, increasing the labor-time of the workers of his company represents nothing but an improvement of the quantitative figures on its balance sheets. For the worker, the same increase is automatically “translated” into a loss of the time he has to live, that is, it represents an irreducible, qualitative aspect of his existence. In the case of the bourgeois there is nothing that would drive his consciousness to overcome the formalist, fetishist, rationalist categories that underpin his business activity. On the contrary, from the worker’s standpoint, even a small quantitative change in the process of capitalist exploitation immediately acquires a qualitative significance that refers to his very human existence:9 [Τhis] dual form of appearance obviously has its origin in the fact that for the worker labour-time is not merely the objective form of the commodity he has sold, i.e. his labour-power (for in that form the problem for him, too, is one of the exchange of equivalents, i.e. a quantitative matter). But in addition, it is the determining form of his existence as subject, as a human being. (HCC: 167; 184)

This is why Lukács characterizes the awareness of the reifying effect of the quantitative-calculative form of objectivity as a “vital need” and an “existential issue” (HCC:  20; 34). Indeed, the possibility of proletarian consciousness and the corresponding liberating action is connected with the worker’s inability to identify with himself in the role of a mere object of the productive process.10 Paradoxically, due to its unfavorable social position, the proletariat meets the demand Hegel addressed to people of world-historical significance: The demand that they take the respectively necessary historical step forward as a consequence of the “immediate, natural principles” of their life (HCC: 20; 34). The first, “spontaneous” form of consciousness the proletariat tends to form as a corollary of the “natural principle” of its life expresses its resistance to its immediate economic exploitation. Therefore, as Merleau-Ponty notes, “it is not the philosopher who looks for the criteria of a judgment of capitalism in a conception of the ‘reign of freedom’. It is capitalism which gives rise to a class

9

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“immediate oppression in the factory and the organized struggles of the working class against it” with a philosophical construction (cf. Grunenberg 1976: 205, 213). For Lukács the split between form and content of time only represents the point from which understanding the inadequacy of the modern form of objectivity as the form of social life becomes possible—a theoretical aspect Grunenberg does not even mention in her interpretation. Cf. HCC: 166; 182–3. Lukács explains here that this is the reason why, for the worker, the quantitative increase or decrease of labor-time does not appear—as it does for the capitalist—as a “knotted line of proportional relations” (Knotenlinie der Maßverhältnisse) in the sense of Hegelian Logic (cf. HCC: 167; 183–4). Cf. HCC:  164–5; 181. Jean Grondin stresses the significance of this position which has been questioned by Horkheimer (and Adorno) by 1937 on (cf. Grondin 1988: 93–4).

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of men who cannot stay alive without repudiating the status of commodity imposed upon them” (Merleau-Ponty 1973:  44). Through this spontaneous repudiation an early form of the workers’ self-knowledge emerges, which Lukács calls the “self-consciousness of the commodity” (HCC: 168; 185). This paradox expression denotes nothing but the worker’s awareness of the fact that he—more exactly: his rationally objectified labor power—is a commodity sold in the capitalist labor market.11 Therefore, this consciousness represents the “self-knowledge, the self-revelation of the capitalist society founded upon the production and exchange of commodities.”12 However, this knowledge acquired through pain does not univocally point to resistance and subversive political action, because it does not yet correspond to a developed form of class consciousness: “The unmediated consciousness of the commodity is, in conformity with the simple form in which it manifests itself, precisely an awareness of the abstract isolation of the individual and of the merely abstract relationship—external to the consciousness—to those moments that make it social” (HCC:  173; 190). As long as the empirical consciousness of the proletariat remains separated from its ascribed class consciousness, the members of the class will stagger as isolated individuals between the fatalisticcynical self-consciousness of a man driven by the social conditions and the abstract, utopian-voluntarist aspiration to get rid of the established social bonds. Then, how should Lukács’s frequent allusions to the “world-historical mission” (HCC: 325; 327), which “history has imposed” (HCC: 53, 71; 65, 84) on the proletariat, be interpreted? Is it not self-evident that he thought in terms of a messianic philosophy of history, the motor of which is economic necessity and the “absolutely imperious dictates of [the workers’] misery” (HCC: 20; 34) that forces the proletariat to rebel against the established social conditions? When Lukács talks about that which “history has imposed” he refers to the proletariat’s situation of economic and existential misery. This situation together with the spontaneous acts of proletarian resistance, which are always

11

12

Arato and Breines refer to the “minimal consciousness of alienation” that “represents the beginning of the dissolution of fetishistic forms,” since through it “the worker can recognize himself and his domination by capital” (Arato and Breines 1979: 134). HCC:  168; 185. Frank Engster is right to discern a kind of “existential” understanding of the “subjective factor” here. He is also right in pointing out the continuity to Lukács’s pre-Marxist views, especially in The Soul and the Forms and in his ethico-philosophical reflections on revolutionary action—with the reservation of course that in History and Class  Consciousness he refers to a collective and not an individual subject. However, Engster mistakenly attributes to the “act of selfknowledge” corresponding to the self-consciousness of the commodity the ability to immediately overcome “the dualism of bourgeois society together with the contemplative, reflective cognitive standpoint that . . . corroborates the division in classes” (Engster 2015a: 51; 2015b: 270–72).

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a possible, even if not immediate, consequence of the self-consciousness of the commodity, only open up the way to class consciousness and political action for the transformation of society—they do not mechanically effectuate it. The existential experience of the contradiction between the needs of life and the social forms of their organization makes dereification possible through becoming aware of the fact that labor does not only produce commodities, but it produces and reproduces the social relation that keeps the worker in constraint and deprives him of his very human substance.13 The objective position of the working class in the process of production and the mechanism of capitalist development are thus necessary but not sufficient conditions of the constitution of true knowledge (cf. HCC: 173; 189– 90). It is characteristic that in its greatest part the pre-revolutionary actions of the proletariat rely on incomplete forms of class consciousness. They are “spontaneous” in the sense of being “determined by pure economic laws” and therefore, they represent “a defense against an economic and more rarely, a political thrust by the bourgeoisie.” For precisely this reason they “come to a halt no less spontaneously, they peter out when their immediate goals are achieved or seem unattainable” (HCC: 306–7; 309). As Lukács points out referring to Marx’s relevant critical remark, it is a mistake to consider the proletarians “as gods” (HCC:  20; 34). The formation of their class consciousness, of the “standpoint” from which “self-knowledge and the knowledge of totality coincide,”14 can only be thought of as a dialectical tendency, brought about by the fact that, due to “the split between subjectivity and objectivity induced in man by the compulsion to objectify himself as a commodity, the situation becomes one that can be made conscious” (HCC: 168; 184).

9.3. The constitution of class consciousness as a leap to the radically new For the time being then, the distance between the empirical and the ascribed class consciousness is retained. To overcome it a leap is needed—a leap from the 13

14

“The capitalist process of production therefore, seen as a total, connected process, i.e., a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus-value, but it also produces and reproduces the capital-relation itself; on the one hand the capitalist, on the other the wage-labourer” (Marx 1976: 724; 1962: 604). Given the fact that the proletariat is, in this case, “at one and the same time the subject and object of its own knowledge” (all quotes HCC: 20; 34).

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immediate awareness of economic need to the holistic theory of the position of the proletariat within the social whole. The problem of the constitution of the ascribed consciousness is precisely the problem of the emergence of a radically new form of consciousness, beyond the one that corresponds to the economic position of the proletariat and its subsequent demand for its improvement within the given social context: This consciousness would instead demand the transformation of social relations and the abolishment of the proletarian class in a classless society. This is why Lukács calls the proletarian class consciousness the “last class consciousness” (HCC: 70, 71–2; 82, 84) and views the proletariat as the “last oppressed class” in history (HCC: 224; 230). The rational core of these metaphysically misinterpretable formulations is connected with the rational construction of the type of proletarian class consciousness.15 Indeed, Lukács founds the objective possibility of transcending the merely given, empirical consciousness on the “inner dialectic of the class position” of the proletariat (HCC:  72; 84). Among the classes that competed for social domination, the proletariat shows a significant peculiarity: While the hitherto leading classes fought for and defended their domination to secure their already given way of life, the proletariat is the first class in history whose domination would entail the abrogation of its class position in the given system of production and allocation of social wealth. Its true interest lies beyond its current way of life (cf. HCC: 71–2; 83–4). In other words, the establishment of the economic and political domination of the working people is logically identical with the abolition of the oppressed classes as oppressed, the abolition of the oppressive social relation itself.16 However, because this abolition cannot be the automatic effect of economic struggle that is confined to improving the position of workers’ layers within the established social relations, the transformation of the social whole must become a conscious scope of political action of the working class: “Thus the revolutionary

15

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Eiden-Offe also sees the close relation between the proletariat as a type and the “ultimate goal” of its self-abrogation. However, he suggests another genealogy of this view: He connects Lukács’s type of the proletariat and its consciousness with the Christian theological tradition of typology and, consequently, with messianism. This daring reading may be fascinating, but much more philological evidence would be needed for it to become truly convincing (cf. Eiden-Offe 2011: 74–7). Postone totally ignores this—for Lukács, self-evident—radicalism of the “standpoint of the proletariat” when he interprets Lukács’s position as a reduction of labor to a “transhistorical source of social wealth” and a “substance of the Subject” which “constitutes reality.” For Postone, then, “the standpoint of the critique becomes the totality, as it is constituted by ‘labor,’ ” since “any theory that posits the proletariat or the species as Subject implies that the activity constituting the Subject is to be fulfilled rather than overcome.” Such a theory must thus remain imprisoned in the historically given totality (Postone 1993: 82–3). From my reconstruction it follows that Lukács’s theory does not fall under this category of theories.

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victory of the proletariat does not imply, as with former classes, the immediate realization of the socially given existence of the class, but . . . its self-annihilation” (HCC: 71; 84). The “utopia” of classless society and true democratic politics is inherently connected with proletarian class consciousness and the practical aims of proletarian political action. Precisely because of the logical necessity of this goal that transcends the given reality, the class consciousness of the proletariat splits into the awareness of particular everyday goals and that of the “ultimate goal” that must be realized as such by the proletariat. Thus, the great philosophical problem raised here is how we can think of a non-mechanical emergence of a radically (i.e., qualitatively) new form of consciousness and the corresponding social practice as an immediate realization of human freedom in given objective conditions. As we saw in Section 8.5, for Lukács proletarian class consciousness is formed in dialectical interrelation to the practice of the proletariat itself. Through this interrelation, the proletariat enlightens itself. However, if consciousness depends on practice and vice versa, a “leap” from the reified conditions to practical selfenlightenment seems to be necessary. Nevertheless, commentators who onesidedly stress the “chasm” between the self-consciousness of the commodity and the developed class consciousness of the proletariat ignore the procedural nature of the transition from the former to the latter.17 The chasm and its transcendence have to be thought of as moments of a dialectical process.

9.4. Subjectification as a historical process The claim that the ascribed consciousness and the relevant practice of the proletariat represent an objective possibility obviously implies that for the time being they do not represent a reality. Indeed, nothing precludes that the proletariat will stay for long periods of time in a state of lacking awareness or that it will regress to capitalist immediacy after periods of highly developed awareness. Thus, achieving class consciousness is a process unfolding through

17

The reading of Arato and Breines is characteristic:  As they do not acknowledge the procedural character of the dialectical mediation of consciousness, they impute to Lukács the idealist view that the gap between empirical and ascribed consciousness can only be bridged through theoretical knowledge (cf. Arato and Breines 1979:  135–9). In Engster’s “existentialist” reading (see n.  12), the role ascribed by Arato and Breines to knowledge is taken over by a “decision” to perform the “leap,” independently of the objective conditions (Engster 2015a:  51–7). Engster also ignores the procedural-dialectical nature of class consciousness and transformative praxis (to which I refer in Sections 9.4 and 9.6).

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“more or less chaotic ups and downs,” through “the alternation of outbreaks which reveal a maturity of class consciousness far superior to anything foreseen by theory with half-lethargic conditions of stasis, of passivity, of a merely subterranean progress” (HCC: 328; 330). Despite the fundamental optimism of his viewpoint, Lukács was in no way blind to the possibility of difficulties, failures and regressions in the dialectic development of the correct consciousness. In History and Class Consciousness he often repeats, in different ways, his position that the proletariat as a conscious class can only be constituted through a long, torturous, dialectical process, full of conflicts and crises. As we saw in Section 9.2, the objectification of the workers in the process of production is an objective precondition of the genesis of the proletariat as a class. However, in the first phase of its constitution, the proletariat is a mere object that only forms—at best—the “self-consciousness of commodity.” The social and economic crisis triggers and propels the development of its class consciousness, which would otherwise remain “theoretical and latent,” posing only ideal demands vis-à-vis the problems and practices of the day (cf. HCC: 40– 41; 53). In the course that starts in this way, the knowledge of social reality and the constitution of a collective subject are “two different sides of the same real process” (HCC: 21; 35). Thus, the proletariat “can constitute itself as a class only in and through the process” (HCC: 41; 53), that is, the process of its self-formation up to the level of achieving a “highly advanced consciousness . . . of its own position” (HCC: 22; 36). Lukács describes it as the “path” that “leads from utopia to the knowledge of reality,” that is, to the awareness of the “meaning of history . . . found in the process of history itself ” in opposition to the invention of a “transcendent, mythological or ethical meaning” (HCC:  22; 36). Class consciousness—in Hegelian terms:  “the truth of the process ‘as subject’ ”—is nothing but the “consciousness of the dialectical process itself,” and therefore “it is likewise a dialectical concept” (HCC: 40; 52–3). The dialectical nature of class consciousness is manifested in the fact that it appears to be split into the empirical and the ascribed class consciousness. Its development is the process of progressive mediation between the particular, immediately given goals of the workers’ everyday struggle and the “ultimate goal” of the self-annihilation of the proletariat as a class (cf. HCC:  71–2; 83– 4). The opposition bridged in this way is a variation of the split between the individual and the general social interest that is characteristic of bourgeois society (see Section 9.1).

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As in bourgeois society in general, in the consciousness of the proletariat this split takes on the form of a separation of the economic and the political sphere, the economic and the political struggle (cf. HCC: 70–71; 83). However, as Lukács points out, the very “inner dialectic” (HCC:  72; 84) of proletarian class consciousness entails a different function even of the elements of false consciousness compared to the class consciousness of other classes. Even the proletarian consciousness that remains entrapped in the immediacy of the economic struggle contains an “objective aspiration towards truth” (HCC:  72; 85), as in this case the opposition of the economic and the political struggle becomes an internal aspect of the consciousness (cf. HCC: 73; 85–6), instead of defining an external limit of its development. Although for the proletariat the mediation between economic everyday resistance and ultimate goal is in principle possible, as it corresponds to the objective possibility of the ascribed class consciousness, neither the theoretical nor the practical transcendence of reification can be achieved “at a single stroke” (HCC: 78; 91). The ultimate goal cannot be separated from the process, from the movement that leads to it (cf. HCC: 312–13; 315). In the final analysis, as Lukács notes, “the ultimate goal is not a situation awaiting the proletariat somewhere at the end of the movement as a “future state,” nor is it “an ‘ought,’ an ‘idea’ that would regulate the ‘real’ process” (HCC: 22; 36). The ultimate goal already inheres in every particular action, every particular movement. However, “historically significant and socially revolutionary knowledge” can only be achieved by “the potentiating of consciousness, by conscious action and conscious self-criticism” (HCC: 73; 85). Hence, social change can only be the result of a long process of developing consciousness and the relevant political and social practice of the subject, as “we must never overlook the distance that separates the consciousness of even the most revolutionary worker from the authentic class consciousness of the proletariat” (HCC:  80; 93). Therefore, the struggle for another society “is not just a battle waged against an external enemy, the bourgeoisie, but it is equally the struggle of the proletariat against itself” (HCC: 80; 93), that is, against those ideological currents that keep it bound to the capitalist system. Hence, the development of its consciousness is essentially a process of self-criticism (cf. HCC:  72–3, 80–81; 85, 93). After all, the proletariat is itself a product of the reified world; reification is its “form of existence” (HCC: 76; 89) and it remains under its spell as long as its criticism is only economic, that is, still not holistic enough (cf. HCC: 76; 89).

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Therefore, Lukács discerns “gradations” of class consciousness that demarcate the course of its dialectic:  From the awareness of economic necessity governing capitalist relations of production to the awareness of the interrelation of economy and politics and understanding the close connection even between the problems of culture and the interests of the working class—that is, the conceptualization of culture from the standpoint of the totality (cf. HCC: 78–9; 91–2). The first overcoming of the immediacy of the quantitative-calculative form of objectivity launches a long series of cognitive-practical mediations that follow the tendencies toward a change of the social totality and reveal the “authentic, objective structure” of the objects (HCC: 162; 178–9) in a way that significantly determines transformative action.

9.5. Revolutionary juncture and the problem of violence The theory of the dialectical development of class consciousness could be misinterpreted as the explanatory fundament of a theory of “organic” social evolution. In this case the aspect of discontinuity, of the rupture and the radically new would be erased. However, in Lukács the dialectic between continuity and discontinuity is retained through the fact that the dialectic of consciousness is supplemented by a theory of the revolutionary juncture. This theory conceptualizes the retained double indeterminacy of the objective conditions and the intervention of the subjective factor, of praxis. This dual indeterminacy rules out the explanation of social change in terms of a gradual, organic transition. It is captured in the description of the revolutionary action as the result of a “decision”—an expression that we must take as metaphoric, since Lukács simultaneously distanced himself from viewing revolution as a “merely subjective decision” doomed to “be shattered by the power of uncomprehended facts acting automatically ‘according to laws’ ” (HCC: 23; 37). The success of political practice, especially of revolutionary praxis, depends on the “match” between the indeterminacy of the juncture, which consists in the emergence of new situations that cannot be mechanically foreseen, and the likewise indeterminate intervention of the subjective factor that depends on the level of awareness and practical readiness it has achieved or is about to achieve.18 Tim Hall has correctly pointed out that Lukács’s concept of praxis is formed as 18

This dimension appears in a negative way in Bermbach’s critique of the “structural openness” of Lukács’s concept of totality, i.e., the fact that the “determination of its ‘moments’ is not accurately formulated.” As a political scientist Bermbach connects this indeterminacy with Lukács’s alleged “politico-theoretical deficit” (cf. Bermbach 1987: 159). On the contrary, from the standpoint of my reconstruction, this “structural openness” of the totality is necessary in view of the fundamental

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the antipode of ethical action guided by strict rules: It has an “improvised and spontaneous character” that “links it to the Aristotelian concept of phronesis, on the one hand, and Leninist Vangardism on the other.”19 Hall is right to stress the fact that Lukács’s ontological notion of the radically new is impossible without the “risk” of such an improvised praxis, as the practice that applies given rules is destined to repeat the identical (cf. Hall 2011c: 202). On the contrary, because of the proletariat’s confrontation with the given rules, its praxis is forced to overcome the established categories and principles to express new experiences and to create new rules that “do not pre-exist practical activity but emerge out of it.”20 As Merleau-Ponty notes, “since the revolutionary politics is to be invented, not being already there, implicit in the existing proletariat,” it “cannot bypass this moment when it dares to step into the unknown” (Merleau-Ponty 1973: 52). Of course Lukács gives us a more concrete description of this movement toward the radically new when he refers to the revolutionary conditions of his epoch: As the social crisis and the questioning of the social order are sharpened, we enter the period of the “actuality of the revolution”21 in which the “unity of the overall process moves within reach” (HCC: 75; 87). The crucial element is then whether “the ‘greatest productive force’ of the capitalist productive order, the proletariat, experiences the crisis as a mere object or as the subject of decision” (HCC: 244; 250). The decision of the revolutionary subject acquires central importance because in the period of social crisis the only thing that can “save mankind from a catastrophe” is the “conscious will of the proletariat.”22 This is precisely the case because the “natural” laws of capitalism do not lead to its “organic,” gradual change, but to crisis and barbarism.23 Then, the aversion of barbarism and the revolutionary way out of the crisis depend on the stance of the proletariat. Contrary to previous revolutions which had

19

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21

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23

indeterminacy of the respective politically significant juncture and the creative character of praxis in it. Both aspects cannot be exhaustively theoretically conceptualized. Hall (2011c:  201). Hall calls on us to reflect on the connection between the “fundamentally improvised” character of praxis and a “nonauthoritarian conception of political Vangardism” (Hall 2011c: 209, n. 27). Hall (2011c:  203). Hall aptly notes that the new rules created by praxis can be hermeneutically reconstructed, but only “retrospectively,” after their creation (cf. Hall 2011c:  203). He briefly develops the same interpretation of Lukács’s notion of praxis in Hall (2011b: 132–3). See Lukács (2009:  11, 12, 26, 29; 1967:  9, 11, 24, 27). In History and Class  Consciousness Lukács noted that “the world situation is—objectively—consistently and increasingly revolutionary” (HCC: 289; 293). HCC: 70; 82. According to another formulation, “the fate of the proletariat, and hence of the whole future of humanity, hangs on whether or not it will take the step that has now become objectively possible” (HCC: 75; 87). See also Lukács (2009: 33–4, 48–9; 1967: 31–2, 47). HCC: 282, 305–6; 286, 308–9. Also cf. Lukács (2009: 48–51; 1967: 47–50), where Lukács examines the dilemma “world war or civil war” as it is formulated at the peak of the crisis that opens up the way to revolution.

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only to establish an existing economic system, the proletarian revolution is called on to create a new economic order through internally transcending capitalism (cf. HCC: 282; 285–6). Thus, the “qualitative difference of the decisive, the ‘last’ crisis of capitalism” is precisely the open and consciously performed “conflict of the socialized productive forces and their individual-anarchic forms,” the transition of the organized proletariat from defense to “activity” (HCC:  244; 251) and its confrontation with the bourgeois state mechanism (cf. HCC: 257–8; 262–3). Even if the laws of capitalist economy continue to hold long after the proletariat’s first great victory, now the proletariat “has the opportunity, by consciously taking advantage of the given trends of evolution, to give it another direction” (HCC: 313; 316). This direction is “the conscious regulation of the productive forces of society,” the “first conscious step towards” the “realm of freedom” (HCC:  313–14; 316). Adopting Rosa Luxemburg’s dictum, Lukács notes that the first revolutionary leap, the seizure of state power is always “premature” (HCC: 43, 266; 56, 271), since it never “corresponds” to the existing conditions—another formulation that denotes the revolutionary rupture of the existent. Precisely because radical social change cannot be the result of the “natural” laws of bourgeois society, as the reformist theory of gradual, “organic” transition to socialism would like to have it (cf. HCC: 5, 277, 310–11; 17, 281, 313), it is clear that the revolution cannot be performed without the exercise of violence. Violence is then nothing but the expression of the conscious will of the revolutionary class to change reality. The significance of violence at the moment of rupturing the laws of capitalist economy is also stressed in Lukács’s evaluation of Luxemburg’s critique of the Russian revolution and Bolshevik policy. Although Luxemburg correctly critiqued reformism’s “organic” theory, for Lukács she was led to a revolutionary version of the organic transition.24 In his opinion, the reason for this is that Luxemburg overestimated the “organic character of historical development” (HCC: 277; 281) and, consequently, the ideological maturity of the proletariat (cf. HCC:  274–5, 303–4; 278, 306–7). Therefore she finally downgraded the importance of the active intervention of the conscious vanguard of the working class in the revolutionary process (cf. HCC:  275; 278–9). Luxemburg’s stance is clearly reflected in her understating the role of violence in revolution as crystallized in her critique of the restraints on freedom and the “terrorism” in the Russian revolution (cf. HCC: 277; 281). For better or worse, the “beginning of the abolition of the pure ‘natural laws’ of economism” (HCC: 240; 246) is a situation “which can only be resolved by violence” 24

Cf. HCC: 277, 303; 281, 306; Lukács (2009: 24–5; 1967: 22–3).

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(HCC: 240; 247). This is the case because violence never ceased to be a precondition of the bourgeois relations of production, even in periods of social peace and “normal” functioning of the laws of market economy. In such “normal” periods it is simply concealed by the reification of social relations (cf. HCC: 241; 247–8). Economic relations are then inextricably intertwined with the system of legally organized violence, the effectiveness of which heavily relies upon the domination of the ideology of the inescapable “natural forces”—that is, the capitalist economic structure and the state (cf. HCC: 257; 262). A sustained use of physical violence is not necessary for the consolidation of social order. But when it begins to be necessary we enter into a period of crisis that also affects the ideological fundaments of the system. Then, the possibility of revolution is opened up, during which legally organized violence is confronted with popular antiviolence (cf. HCC:  257; 262). Antiviolence aims at changing the capitalist social relation which “is not a ‘purely’ economic relation . . . but a social-economic relation in the true sense of the word” (HCC:  249; 256). Therefore, violence cannot be restricted to the negative function of removing the obstacles in the organic development of a new, socialist economy and society out of the crisis-laden capitalism, but must also refer to the imposition of “positive” measures of its construction for “quite a long” period of time (cf. HCC: 278–9; 281–3). In any case, the revolutionary subversion of the quasi “natural” capitalist laws, the transition to socialism “signifies something fundamentally and qualitatively new when compared to earlier transitions” in history (HCC:  246; 253). From now on the dialectical method must be applied to an unprecedented material. This fact necessarily effectuates a modification of theory, such as the one qualitatively “new material” must entail “for any unschematic method and, thus, first and foremost for the dialectic” (HCC: 247; 254). The new material is the unprecedented leap to the “realm of freedom,” a situation in which for the first time in history the present reigns upon the past, instead of the past dominating the present as is the case in bourgeois society (cf. HCC: 248; 255). The socialization of production deprives the bourgeoisie of its power to conduct living labor. Thus, the confrontation of the working class with its own objectified labor ceases (cf. HCC:  248; 255). However, one must avoid misinterpreting revolution as a rupture and an abolition of reification “at one stroke,” as an anti-dialectic, sudden change of everything.25 For Lukács,

25

Such readings imply the messianic orientation of Lukács’s theory of revolution. See, e.g., Honneth’s relevant remarks (1999: 87–8).

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the imposition of the dictatorship of the proletariat is only the “beginning” (HCC: 240; 246) of a long process of transferring the power of “reified relations between men” to men themselves. This beginning is the “moment” (Augenblick) in which the “automatic” functioning of the “natural,” reified “laws” of the social process is ruptured (cf. HCC: 69–70; 82). Thus, the leap is rather a lengthy, arduous process. Its character as a leap is expressed in the fact that on every occasion it denotes a turning in the direction of something qualitatively new; that it expresses the conscious action directed towards the comprehended totality of society; and therefore in the fact that it belongs—in its intention and fundament—to the realm of freedom. (HCC: 250; 257)

The “leap,” the “category of the radically new” does not correspond to a “unique act” that would “with lightening speed and without a transition” bring about “the greatest transformation in the history of mankind” (HCC: 250; 256). Nor is it the result of an accumulation of events which take place independently of the consciousness of men, as this would only entail the repetition of the external relation between intentions and effects that characterizes the reified world. The leap refers to the mediated totality of dialectical theory; this is precisely the  meaning of Lukács’s thesis that the leap “merges in form and content with the slow process of social change; indeed, it can only genuinely preserve the character of a leap if it becomes fully identified with this process, if it is nothing more than the conscious meaning of every moment, its relation to the whole elevated to consciousness” (HCC: 250; 257). The leap as a rupture functions as a dialectical moment of the long process of social change, to which we must now turn our attention.

9.6. Dereification as a historical process As we saw earlier, the crucial factor on which the victorious action of the proletariat in the revolutionary juncture depends is the previous enlightenment and intellectual liberation of men. Therefore, for Lukács, the reform of consciousness develops parallel to the revolutionary process that unfolds slowly, through long and heavy crises (cf. HCC: 259; 264). This process does not cease after the seizure of power, but takes on a new form. As I have already mentioned, Lukács adopts Luxemburg’s thesis that the seizure of power is always premature; it comes before the breakdown of bourgeois authority. Thus, the political victory of the proletariat does not automatically entail the abolition of the ideological

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domination of the bourgeoisie,26 but it inaugurates a new, equally difficult and long phase of the struggle against the bourgeois way of life. In this phase the bourgeois influence on the intermediary social strata, even on the proletariat itself, must be blocked and the bourgeois forces hoping for a restoration of the regime must be crippled; people must eradicate their petty bourgeois tendencies and be educated in freely acting and, last but not least, the idea of the legitimacy of the new proletarian power must be consolidated (cf. HCC:  266–70; 271–4). The success of the struggle for liberation from capitalism presupposes above all the espousal of an “impartial,” detached stance vis-à-vis the bourgeois institutions of law and the legally regulated execution of violence—an attitude that is blocked by the ideological power of the bourgeois institutions.27 From the standpoint of the revolution the bourgeois state must be viewed “impartially,” as a mere external obstacle to social change.28 This attitude can be cultivated through the awareness of the historicality of the social world (cf. HCC: 262; 267), the tactical flexibility of the revolutionary organization that disdains the capitalist legal order (cf. HCC: 265–6; 270–71) and through the long process of the self-education of the proletariat that reinforces its tendency to repudiate bourgeois authority.29 Lukács points out the fact that coordinating the duties of the day with the ultimate goal would demand a kind of ingenuity that can be replaced by the organizational flexibility of the party (cf. HCC:  333; 335–6). Such flexibility overcomes the dogmatic schematizations and theoretical ossifications resulting from the reified consciousness of the bourgeois subject (cf. HCC: 333–4; 336). Therefore, the “practical dialectic” of the revolutionary vanguard represents a battle against reification that still affects the members of the party, even after the revolution. The tendency toward theoretical dogmatism, mechanical division of duties, atomization, etc., increases greed, vanity and egoism, as the members of the party have also been formed through capitalist reification (cf. HCC: 335;

26 27 28

29

Cf. HCC: 257–8; 263; Lukács (2009: 66–7; 1967: 66). Cf. HCC: 262; 267; Lukács (2009: 60; 1967: 59). Cf. HCC:  262, 264; 267, 269. Another aspect of this detached attitude toward state power is reflected in the lack of hypocrisy in respect to the repressive nature of the post-revolutionary state itself: “The proletarian state is the first class state in history which acknowledges quite openly and unhypocritically that it is a class state, a repressive apparatus, and an instrument of class struggle. This relentless honesty and lack of hypocrisy is what makes a real understanding between the proletariat and the other social strata possible in the first place” (Lukács 2009: 66; 1967: 66). Cf. HCC:  264; 269. For Lukács, the fetishism of illegal acts betrays a negative recognition of authority—a dimension Lukács knew well from his early preoccupation with the Russian socialrevolutionaries and particularly Boris Savinkov, to whom he refers in this context (cf. HCC: 263–4; 269). Savinkov described his experiences from participating in terrorist attacks in his novels which Lukács read in 1915 (see Kavoulakos 2014a: 198–9).

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337–8). Thus, “the struggle against the effects of reified consciousness is itself a lengthy process full of stubborn battles and it would be a mistake to assume that the form of those effects or the contents of particular phenomena could be determined in advance” (HCC: 334; 336). Hence, the demand to adapt to the permanently changing conditions is connected with the constant tendency toward the restoration of reification, even where it has been temporarily overcome. Lukács warns us that the transcended “delusion” of the “eternal,” “rational” and “natural” bourgeois institutions could be replaced by the “communist arrogance” (HCC: 334; 336). The only remedy against the danger of a renewed concealment of the historical character of every reality, even the post-revolutionary one, is the awareness of the lesson of historical materialism that “the social evolution constantly produces new phenomena, i.e. new in a qualitative sense.”30 Therefore, the Communist Party must develop its receptivity toward the new, its ability “to learn from every aspect of history” (HCC: 334; 337), to change and adjust itself to the permanent transformations of reality, without losing its orientation toward the ultimate goal. In the post-revolutionary period, new possibilities of transformative action appear. As the necessity determining men continues to exist, freedom signifies the struggle to “push it back step by step” (cf. HCC: 250–51; 257–8). In the course of this struggle, the functions of the state and politics qualitatively change: First, as elements of the superstructure, they become fields of the active formation of economic and social life (cf. HCC: 283–4; 287–8). Through “hard battles” a new “economy” is pursued that will not represent a separate field of life with its own laws any longer, but “the servant of a consciously directed society” (HCC: 251; 258). Luxemburg was not able to see the “leap” in this process, because she did not consider the new form of the state, the soviet system, as a “form of struggle” (Kampfform), but only as the superstructure of the new economic base created by the revolution (cf. HCC: 280; 284). As the natural laws of capitalism are not canceled out “at one stroke” by the revolution, their abolition is a long process full of conflicts that reveal the limits of a conscious regulation of the economy. In this process of the gradual imposition of a new economic form the soviet state is—as is the case in every dialectical process—simultaneously a means and a goal (cf. HCC: 280–82; 284–6). Also, ideas that hitherto belonged to the ideological “superstructure,” ideas relating to “human development” now acquire primacy over “economy” (cf. HCC: 252; 258–9). 30

HCC: 334; 336–7; also cf. Lukács (2009: 35; 1967: 33).

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In every new phase of the struggle new contents and problems emerge that need to be theoretically mediated. The process of social transformation cannot be schematized, nor can it be “completed” by reaching a “final situation.” It rather signifies an open project that permanently needs adjustment. The thesis that the ultimate goal cannot be separated from the issues of the day also implies that it is impossible to “rescue the ‘ultimate goal’ or the ‘essence’ of the proletariat from every impure contact with—capitalist—existence” without falling back into the “dualism of subject and object, theory and praxis” (HCC: 22; 37). This means that the dialectical process of revolutionary subjectification always presupposes what it negates, that is, capitalist reification. Its openness is internally connected with this dialectical structure.

10

Limits of Dereification

The interpretation of Lukács’s theory of dereification as an idealist philosophy of praxis that eliminates the otherness of the object by postulating its identity with the subject ignores that the notion of the identical subject-object in fact refers to the historical process of their mediation and to those particular moments, in which the radically new in the ontological sense of the word emerges.1 It also overlooks the openness of the dialectical mediation that rules out all rigid systematization of holistic knowledge, since such knowledge must always be considered as a moment of the unsystematizable, lively practical interaction of man and the world. In opposition to what the standard critique of Lukács’s philosophy of praxis contends, in Lukács this openness is connected with the retention of the independence of the object, the independence of the material content of knowledge. The real risk, then, for him was not retreating to an idealist philosophy of identity, but rather falling back to Kantian dualism.2 In fact, in the theory of dereification one can discern this tendency at the points where its limits are revealed. First, this holds for the internal limit of dereification that is connected with the relative indeterminacy of the dialectic of transformative praxis:  Praxis always presupposes objective factors it does not control, while it is simultaneously compelled to strive for the concrete bridging of the activities of the day with the ultimate goal, the empirical with the ascribed consciousness. The limit of transformative praxis can be in principle overcome, if the concrete mediation of man and history is achieved. But even such mediation never ensures a final “solution” to the problem of indeterminacy in some mythical state of “reconciliation” and complete unity of the opposites.

1

2

Hall rightly points out that the basic motive of Lukács’s theory is not reaching identity, but negating the given social forms and searching for the ontological novelty (cf. Hall 2011b: 130–32). Kammler explicitly points to “the danger of an unmediated dualism of the speculative concept and the social reference, the idea and the reality” in Lukács (Kammler 1974: 172). The argument in the present study which highlights the neo-Kantian influence on the young Lukács offers an explanation of the origin of such a “danger.”

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In the present chapter, I, on the one hand, describe this inability of emancipative politics as the internal limit of the process of dereification in the form it is revealed in the politics of the Communist Party (Section 10.3). For Lukács, the latter represents the road of “practical dialectic,” that is, the conscious mediation of the activities of the day and the ultimate goal of emancipatory social change (cf. HCC, 333; 335–6; and Sections 10.1 and 10.2). On the other hand, for Lukács a form of dualism remains fundamentally insuperable in respect to the cognitive and practical relation of man to nature that thus represents the external limit of the process of dereification. It is no surprise, then, that the critics of Lukács focused a significant part of their critiques on his thesis that nature is a social category (Section 10.4), giving it, however, antipodean interpretations:  They discerned in it now a tendency toward equating nature’s otherness with the categories of the thinking subject, now the unacceptable for a Marxist exclusion of nature from the unitary dialectical development of nature and society. These two critiques agree on the alleged idealist character of Lukács’s theory. However, in reality, as we will see in Section 10.5, Lukács’s thesis points to the materialist retention of nature’s otherness and, at the same time, it renders man’s relation to it dialectical.

10.1. The party as a “real form of mediation” The ordinary reading of Lukács’s position on the problems of the organization of the labor movement presents it as a necessary, politically unpalatable effect of the alleged idealist deification of the proletariat and its class consciousness.3 According to this interpretation, the philosopher disdains the empirical class consciousness of the workers and replaces it with the ideal construction of the ascribed class consciousness. Then, he finds in the Communist Party a political subject and bearer of the correct consciousness who undertakes the realization of the correct theory in history. Thus, he intentionally mythologizes the party as the exclusive bearer of the correct proletarian theory and, consequently, as the substitute for those actions not carried out by the proletariat itself due to its lack of correct awareness.4 In this way, Lukács supposedly justified and strengthened 3

4

According to Stedman Jones, in Lukács the “mystical belief in the ideological efficacy of the party” correlates the similar faith in the proletariat, as long as the latter’s empirical consciousness does not yet correspond to its ascribed consciousness (Stedman Jones 1971: 51). See also Leszek Kolakowski’s similar judgment on that issue, in Kolakowski (1978: 300). There is agreement with this thesis among commentators ranging from the wider field of critical theory (cf., e.g., Piccone 1972: 123–4; Arato and Breines 1979: 151, 155, 160) to their Althusserian

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a dogmatic, authoritarian, anti-democratic political practice,5 even before it was established as the dominant trend in the communist movement through its Stalinist shift.6 However, Lukács’s views on the problem of organization were far more complex and subtle—which does not mean that they were unproblematic. Instead of quickly rejecting them as dogmatic and having failed in praxis, it is preferable to cautiously connect them with the philosophical problem they were designed to respond to by finding a balance between the two main leading intellectual figures of the European revolutions of the time.7 My own reconstruction here does not aim to defend Lukács’s proposal, but rather to restore its meaning, in order to point out more soberly in what sense it represents a problematic handling of real problems of transformative praxis. As I  have already mentioned, although Lukács defended the Bolshevik model of the vanguard-party, the guardians of communist orthodoxy of his time critiqued his book in a particularly harsh way, although they were rather unprepared to understand the philosophical problems raised in it. Insisting on the line of thought inaugurated in History and Class  Consciousness, in his unpublished defence of it entitled Tailism and the Dialectic (written in 1925 or 1926) Lukács developed a series of arguments supporting Lenin’s views on the necessity of forms of organization of the proletariat on its way to revolution and social change. Opposing Luxemburg’s relative downgrading of the significance of such forms, he emphasized that they represent “real forms of mediation, in which and through which the consciousness that corresponds to the social being of the proletariat develops and is developed” (Lukács 2000: 78; 1996: 32).

5

6

7

opponents (cf., e.g., Stedman Jones 1971:  51) and liberal social democrats (cf., e.g., Fetscher 1973:  521–3). Such one-sided interpretations stress the connection between the organizational problem and the so-called ideological crisis of the proletariat and ignore Lukács’s hints on positive indications of the possibility of a revolutionary leap to the radically new (cf., e.g., Arato and Breines 1979: 144, 147–9; Stedman Jones 1971: 51). In my opinion, this trend can be connected with the anachronistic projection of the post-war question on the “postponement” or the “cancelation” of the revolution onto the very different conditions of the 1920s. Habermas’s critique of the “politically dangerous” effects of Lukács’s philosophy of history we examined in the introduction points in this direction. Paradoxically, it meets Grunenberg’s orthodox Marxist–Leninist critique of the idealist character of Lukács’s organizational proposal (cf. Grunenberg 1976: 235–6). Cf., e.g., Bredtmann (2015: 265–6). Although he critiques the standard connection of Lukács’s theory of the party with his alleged idealism (cf. Breuer 1982:  74–5), Stefan Breuer is essentially led to the very same view when he interprets political authoritarianism as the necessary outcome of the “illusion of politics,” i.e., the (ultimately pre-modern) faith in its formative force, we supposedly meet in Lukács (as well as in Max Weber, cf. Breuer 1982: 75–9). As Feenberg puts it, Lukács poses the question on the relation between “spontaneity” and “consciousness” in revolutionary conditions and attempts “a synthesis of ideas drawn from both Luxemburg and Lenin” (Feenberg 1988: 128), the two most important theorists of the communist labor movement (see also Feenberg 2002).

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In his opinion, the party is the “third term” between the “psychological” or “mass-psychological” consciousness of the proletariat and its correct class consciousness (cf. Lukács 2000: 74; 1996: 28). It is not a mere theoretical concept but a real existing link in the dialectic between empirical and ascribed class consciousness (cf. Lukács 2000: 79–81; 1996: 33–4). The party undertakes the task to mediate between form and content, knowledge and reality, theory and praxis.8 For a Kantian-dualist conceptualization of this relation, the role of the party seems to equate that of God, who in this case represents the principle of a humanly impossible unity. What for dualists appears as a metaphysical principle, for Lukács’s historicaldialectical understanding of social change it is a necessary, real moment of the struggle that bridges the gap between man and his own reality. It is the bearer of class consciousness not as a transcendent, but as a concrete concept (cf. Lukács 2000:  74–6, 84; 1996:  28–30, 36). As Merleau-Ponty ascertains, “class consciousness is not an absolute knowledge of which the proletarians are miraculously the trustees”; it has “to be formed and straightened out” and, finally, it must become convincing (Merleau-Ponty 1973: 51). This is precisely the task of a “critical elaboration” and “rectification” assigned to the “praxis of superior degree,” that is, to the party that retains an open dialogue with the working class (Merleau-Ponty 1973: 50–51). In History and Class  Consciousness one finds two models of the relation between party and class. The first is Luxemburg’s model which Lukács reconstructs in the essay “Rosa Luxemburg as a Marxist” (1921). According to this model, the party is the solution to the problem of developing the correct class consciousness over time through a process of struggles, which entails the fact that class consciousness retains the character of a postulate for quite a long period. During that period reality can only be assigned to class consciousness through the party as the “bearer of the class consciousness of the proletariat and the conscience of its historical vocation” (HCC:  41; 53). Of course, the party cannot substitute for the class in revolution; it can only propel the unity of theory and praxis by fulfilling its “ethical” task of safeguarding the correct class consciousness from its opportunistic distortion (cf. HCC: 42–3; 54–5). The second model leaves the core of this view intact, but signifies Lukács’s distanciation from Luxemburg’s position on the retention of the unity of the 8

According to Hans-Jürgen Krahl’s reconstruction, “the organization is the element of praxis that stands closer to theory” (Krahl 2009:  278), therefore “the problem of organization is  .  .  . that of the ‘realization’ of theory in political consciousness” (284), the problem of “the concrete mediation between man and history” (291).

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working class party and his decisive shift toward the Bolshevik idea of the organizational independency of the revolutionary party. This model is formed in the essays “Critical Observations on Rosa Luxemburg’s ‘Critique of Russian Revolution’ (1922) and “Methodological Remarks on the Issue of Organization” (1922). It is easy to discern the fact that Lukács’s “Leninist” critique of Luxemburg has a concrete-historical and not a formal-ahistorical character. Lukács himself explicitly points out that the issue of organization becomes theoretically urgent precisely because of the “actuality of the revolution” in those days.9 The nationalist retreat of social democracy after the eruption of the First World War10 left no doubt about the reactionary role of the right, “opportunist” wing of the party. For Lukács, the internal split of the proletariat then became ineluctable (cf. Lukács 2009:  52–3; 1967:  51). As the crisis of capitalism does not leave the proletariat intact but rather triggers its so-called ideological crisis, boosted by the influence of the opportunist parties,11 the battle with opportunism becomes a crucial part of the battle against the domination of the bourgeoisie. It must thus also take the form of an organizational divide (cf. HCC: 288–90; 292–4). In the conditions of the destabilization of the bourgeois regime, the intervention of the “subjective factor,” the “free act” of the proletariat can redirect the historical process (cf. HCC: 310–11; 312–13). For Lukács, the victory of the Russian proletariat shows the importance of the correct consciousness and the relevant political will in the crucial moment of the revolutionary juncture (cf. HCC: 311–12; 314). However, it seems that, for Lukács, espousing the Leninist model of the vanguard-party was not enough. As Feenberg works out, Lukács saw, although he did not explicitly state, that the Leninist approach to the problem of organization  had a scientific-technicist orientation it shared with the orthodoxy of the Second International. Lenin merely turned the reformist into a revolutionary Marxist “science”: He scorned the “trade-unionist” consciousness of the proletariat and opted in favor of a scientific theory that had to be brought to the working class “from without.” Lenin’s technicist political practice applied on the proletariat as a mere object implied the paradox, non-Marxist view that

9 10

11

This connection is particularly evident in HCC: 297; 300; Lukács (2009: 11–13, 26; 1967: 9–11, 24). Lukács refers to the consent of the Social Democratic Party to the war budget on the 4th of August 1914 as the “betrayal” of the opportunists, the ideological causes of which have to be investigated (HCC: 288; 292). Lukács uses the concept of “ideological crisis” to describe the underdevelopment of proletarian consciousness in relation to the acuteness of the capitalist crisis mainly in the essay on the problem of organization, in which it is also connected with the ideological influence of opportunism (cf. HCC: 304–5, 310–11, 314–15; 307–8, 312–13, 317).

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the proletariat is not capable of forming its own revolutionary ideology (cf. Feenberg 1988: 140–43). In opposition to this implication of Leninist vanguardism, Lukács emphasizes the fact that the problem of organization is not “merely a technical issue” but “one of the most important intellectual questions of the revolution” (HCC: 295; 298). Hence, by stressing this intellectual character of the problem, Lukács undertook the task of finding a non-techicist, philosophical justification of the Leninist party. To achieve his goal, he combined his theory of ascribed consciousness with a historical examination of the relations between the working class and its party (cf. Feenberg 1988:  143–50). Through this synthesis he was able to conclude that “the ideas the party brings to the class are both ‘from without’, in the sense that they arise from theory, and ‘from within’, in the sense that they reflect the truth of class action” (Feenberg 1988: 147). The success of the party as a real form of mediation then depends on the coordination and the unity of its external and internal life (cf. HCC: 320–21; 323–4).

10.2. The dialectic of the party’s external and internal life The party’s external life is successful when it manages to represent the interests of the whole working class, independently of the particular gradations and differentiations of its empirical consciousness. It can achieve this precisely because it articulates the standpoint of ascribed class consciousness, the standpoint of the social totality (cf. HCC: 325–6; 328). In this sense, the party aims at forging the unity of the class, of its consciousness and goals, fighting against those forces that systematically undermine this unity. This aim can be accomplished, because the gradations of proletarian consciousness presuppose its objective unity, although this may not yet be realized (cf. HCC:  323–6; 326–8). Contrary to the claim that in Lukács the Communist Party “acts in the place of the class” (Grunenberg 1976:  234), it is clear that in the essay on the problem  of organization Lukács does not abandon his previous, Luxemburgian position that the party does not substitute for the class in its struggle for its interests (cf. HCC:  326; 328; Lukács 2009:  26; 1967:  23–4). The main goal of its fight remains “to advance or accelerate the development of class consciousness,” since it is aware of the fact that “in the long run” the objective goals of the class “can only be won or retained by the class itself ” (HCC: 326; 329). Then, “the party’s organizational independence is necessary

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so that the proletariat may be able to see its own class consciousness given historical shape” (HCC:  326; 329). Hence, the Communist Party is “the visible form of proletarian class consciousness” (Lukács 2009: 27; 1967: 25), an “independent form of proletarian class consciousness” (HCC: 330; 333). As Feenberg points out, “although he lacks the term, Lukács has clearly grasped the concept of exemplary action,” through which he attempted a synthesis of Luxemburg and Lenin, the primacy of class and the autonomy of its party (Feenberg 1988: 150). Although the party “must represent the highest objective possibility of proletariat action” (HCC:  327; 329), it is always compelled to address this objective possibility to the working class if it wishes to avoid sectarianism. However, to handle the gradations of the empirical consciousness and to confront the “procedural and fluid” character of its development the party needs a form of permanent self-critique, through which “the procedural, the dialectical character of class consciousness becomes, in the theory of the party, a dialectic that is consciously deployed” (HCC: 328; 330). At the same time, the theoretically guided acts of the party function as an occasion for self-criticism and self-correction. Thus, the concretization and further development of theoretical views depend on the “productive self-criticism of their implementation in praxis” (HCC: 302; 305)—a goal that can only be attained by the organization as “the form of mediation of theory and praxis.”12 For Lukács, the party’s ability to orient itself according to the constantly changing juncture and, thus, to permanently redefine its theory and tactics dialectically depends on its internal life. Lukács’s specifications for the internal constitution of the party are equally demanding: Its first, fundamental organizational principle is freedom. However, this is not in the sense of the formal, individual, egoistic freedom of bourgeois society, which must be totally abolished within the Communist Party (cf. HCC:  314–16; 317–18). In it freedom is internally linked to solidarity and takes on the form of the conscious subjugation of the individual to the collective will.13 As “this conscious collective will is the Communist Party” (HCC: 315; 318), the sought unity of freedom and solidarity is discipline—the “first step to the freedom that is already possible even though it is freedom of a very primitive sort” (HCC: 316; 319). 12

13

Cf. HCC:  299; 302. Krahl emphasizes this aspect of self-criticism by paraphrasing Lukács:  “The organization is a critical mediation of theory and praxis” (Krahl 2009: 286). Many commentators parallelize this thesis with Rousseau’s concept of general will. See Grunenberg (1976: 235–6); Bermbach (1987: 170); Fetscher (1973: 519–20); Krahl (2009: 275, 290–91).

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In Lukács’s view, discipline and centralization enhance the party’s receptivity toward the constantly emerging new, its adaptability and tactical flexibility in the uncertain, fluid conditions of the social-political crisis (cf. HCC: 330–33; 333–5; Lukács 2009: 35–6; 1967: 33–4). However they are not just technical measures that could be met independently of their intellectual presuppositions (cf. HCC: 320; 323). As we have seen in Section 8.6, the dialectic of transformative praxis entails a permanent struggle against reification that constantly tends to be restored, even after revolution. Coping with this problem implies taking the appropriate organizational measures within the Communist Party, so that the  influence of the “capitalist inheritance” on its members may be reduced. The risk that they could regress to bourgeois egoism and theoretical dogmatism is visible, since “the requirements of purposeful action also compel the party to introduce an objective division of labour to a considerable degree and this inevitably invokes the dangers of ossification, bureaucratization, corruption etc.” (HCC: 335; 338). If falling back to the reified structure of bourgeois parties, the members of which function as passive, atomized spectators of an independent, external process,14 is to be avoided, the basis of the party’s internal life should not be the attribution of formal rights and duties and the domination of hierarchical relations. The remedy to these maladies is the “active, personal participation” (HCC: 316; 319) of every member in revolutionary work, its active engagement with its whole personality.15 The Communist Party must be constituted as the antipode to bourgeois parties. It must forge the discipline of its members through the struggles and personal experiences of every one of them, that is, combine discipline with spontaneity and thus overcome bourgeois passivity through the active theoretical and practical anticipation of the future (cf. HCC: 316–18; 319–20). Organizational measures that can facilitate this shift include the avoidance of specialization, the grounding of hierarchy on personal capabilities and not on offices, even the periodic “purging” of party members that remain trapped within the bourgeois inheritance (cf. HCC:  335–8; 338–41). Furthermore, Lukács clearly acknowledges the fact that, if the decisions of the party are going to be executed by every member with its whole “physical and moral existence” (HCC: 336; 339), it must be in a position to immediately critique them, to bring its own experiences, reservations and wishes to the fore. Thus, the leaders are

14

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Cf. HCC: 318–19; 321–2. Lukács describes the separation of the active leadership from the passive members by referring to a relevant quote from Max Weber’s work (cf. HCC: 318; 321). Cf. HCC: 319–20; 322–3; Lukács (2009: 25; 1967: 23).

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obliged to justify their decisions and persuade the members of their feasibility, even to rectify their content and the form of their implementation (cf. HCC: 336– 7; 339–40). Lukács discerned the danger that the discipline of the members could cease relying upon its necessary “intellectual preconditions” (cf. HCC:  320; 323). Without these preconditions the centralist party could easily be transformed into a bureaucratized, reified system of rights and duties, as the one we meet in bourgeois parties (cf. HCC: 320; 323). Furthermore, “intellectual preconditions” are also necessary to avoid the transformation of the party into a utopianrevolutionary sect. A  sect relies on the total devotion of its members to its internal life, but without ensuring its correct reference to the social totality. In opposition to such a party, the Communist Party aspires to simultaneously retain the devotion of its members, its intensive relation to the masses and correct political steering (cf. HCC: 320–22; 323–5).

10.3. Party politics and the internal limit of dereification In the relevant bibliography, one often meets the view that with his organizational model Lukács idealized the image of the Communist Party. However, the essay on the problem of organization  does not have an apologetic orientation.16 It is rather a contribution to an important discussion of that time: The discussion on the practical-organizational conditions of the realization of a world-historical change in the chaotic peak of capitalist crisis. By assigning a demanding role to the Communist Party Lukács did not want to conceal the weaknesses of the existing Communist Parties, but to point out the challenges to which they had to respond. Lukács’s theory of revolutionary party politics must be understood in the framework of his theory of the social-political juncture. In his eyes, the multifaceted capitalist crisis can lead to a disintegration of the alliance between the bourgeoisie and the intermediary social strata that do not have an own class consciousness (cf. HCC:  307–8; 310–11). In this juncture the victory of the proletariat and the “leap” to the “realm of freedom” through “the first conscious step towards its realization” (HCC:  313–14; 316) becomes possible. In this context the Communist Party is, then, “the organizational form for the

16

Although Cerutti takes his cues from the standard interpretation of Lukács’s “philosophical hymn of praise” to the Leninist party, he consequently relativizes it and points out its dialectical elements that rescue its anti-bureaucratic, critical orientation (cf. Cerutti 1970: 204–6).

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conscious attempt at this leap” (HCC:  314; 317). However, precisely the same indeterminacy of the social-political context that opens up the possibility of the radically new, poses unprecedented demands on party politics. As the tactics of the party cannot be schematized, the conscious activity of the revolutionary vanguard becomes the most crucial factor in the attempt to bridge the gap between man and history (cf. HCC: 328–30; 331–2). At this point the internal limits of the process of dereification become abundantly clear. These limits are connected with the fact that the fundamental postulate of Lukács’s organizational model, the unification of freedom and solidarity in party discipline, cannot be ensured merely by taking organizational measures. The communication channels between the members and the leadership remain informal, while Lukács’s view that their “interaction increases in proportion to the degree of centralization and discipline” (HCC:  337; 340) is more than paradox. Even if we take discipline in the ideal sense of a voluntary-conscious consent to the leadership’s decisions, it remains unclear why centralization would strengthen such a tendency instead of giving birth to the opposite: The tendency toward the autonomization of the leadership, the passivation and the  manipulation of the ordinary members.17 Given the fact that for the members the only way to develop their ability to persistently criticize the party’s decisions is to practice such criticism within the party itself, one wonders how centralization will contribute to their democratic education in the direction of facilitating a “constant and active critique ‘from below’ ”?18 At this point, Lukács’s elevation of discipline from a functional prerequisite to an “intellectual issue” becomes problematic. A demoralization of discipline would have left more free space for a reflection on the institutional regulation of democratic will-formation within the party and the effective control of decisions from below.19 At the same time it would facilitate a more realistic awareness of the demands for effective action posed in the conditions of crisis and revolution, in which oppressive measures can represent a necessary evil that must, however, be soon replaced by new political institutions of popular participation and grassroots democracy.

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Dannemann aptly points out that “especially when one considers, together with Lukács, the capitalist subjective behavior as essentially ‘contemplative’ . . . it is a mystery how ‘iron discipline’ can abolish the domination of reified forms of subjectivity” (Dannemann 1987: 107). Dannemann (1987:  108). Dannemann is right to question the hypothesis that the personal engagement of all party members in the life of the party will automatically lead to “responsible, ‘antiauthoritarian’ actions” (Dannemann 1987: 107). Even favorably disposed commentators like Paul Le Blanc are compelled to acknowledge these “ultimately fatal gaps in Lukács’s discussion of the ‘forms of organisation’ ” (Le Blanc 2013: 70–71).

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The beginning of the process of dereification is owed to the match of the indeterminate juncture and the preparedness and flexibility of the subjective factor. But this beginning is immediately exposed to the danger of falling back to ossification and bureaucratic reification. The post-revolutionary creation of institutions that would be open to the permanent emergence of the radically new then represents a historical demand. Without its radical transformation, the centralist party of the disciplined members was far more likely to prevent rather than facilitate the realization of this demand.20 As Feenberg notes, “once the party’s acts become acts of state, the informal popular controls under which it developed no longer suffice to insure its subordination to the class and yet Lukács proposes no new controls capable of preventing a regression to Jacobin voluntarism” (Feenberg 1988: 150). With no such controls in sight, after the victory of the revolution the party is no longer “forced to find compromises between the instrumental requirements of effective strategic action and the communicative conditions of maintaining a leading relationship to class consciousness” (Feenberg 1988: 152). In these conditions its bureaucratization and identification with the state apparatus was probably inevitable and, although Lukács saw the danger, he was not able to think of possible institutional counterbalances to democratically armor the postrevolutionary socialist democracy. Without such institutional armor, the reification effectuated by the commodity form could only be replaced by an unprecedented exclusive domination of the bureaucratic form of objectivity. The theory of reification points out the fact that these two forms have a common root. Further complications are implied by the fact that the post-revolutionary process of dereification must not only embrace the economic and political spheres, but also be extended and simultaneously deepened to transform those fields of social life that are more “remote” from economy, such as family relations, ethics, scientific and philosophical thought, art, etc.21 Such relatively independent fields must also be democratized through the implementation of a new form of objectivity of a genuinely democratic society.

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Eiden-Offe offers an interesting examination of Lukács’s political theory as an attempt to find an answer to the modern question on the constitution of an “open,” “de-hypostatized” and “dynamic” notion of form (cf. Eiden-Offe 2015:  85–96), although the connection between Lukács and romanticism he constructs is questionable. In any case, Eiden-Offe comes to the “uneasy” conclusion that Lukács’s search for the modern form results in an “apology of the party purges” (Eiden-Offe 2015: 97). As Ernst Bloch notes in his review on History and Class Consciousness, “history is . . . a polyrythmic formation,” that cannot be homogenized through sociological reduction (Bloch 1977: 178).

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10.4. Nature as a social category As we will see in the next section, for Lukács the process of dereification also meets an external limit, namely nature. It is characteristic that, in this case too, Lukács’s position provoked opposing interpretations and critiques which arrive at the same conclusion that his theory is idealistic:  Adorno’s critique I  reconstructed in the introduction does not directly address the problem of nature, but it can easily be said that it contains it. In fact, inspired by Adorno, Martin Jay contends that “Lukács’ inability to move beyond idealism was even more blatantly obvious in his treatment of nature.”22 Earlier, at the time of the first edition of History and Class Consciousness, in their highly polemical critiques, both “orthodox” critics of Lukács, László Rudas and Abram Deborin, focused on Lukács’s repudiation of Engels’s dialectic of nature. They connected it with his alleged espousal of subjective idealism and agnosticism (see Rudas 1977a), with his rejection of materialism and his retreat to the dualism of bourgeois theory of knowledge and/or to Hegel’s philosophy of identity.23 The elaboration of Lukács’s position can, in this case too, be facilitated by drawing on his neo-Kantian origins and locating the elements of continuity with his early Marxist work. As in History and Class Consciousness, in his youthful works the issue of nature is only marginally raised. There is, however, a point in The Theory of the Novel, in which Lukács’s attitude toward it is outlined. Here the emphasis lies on the mediation between nature and the subject in a social-historical framework. The antinomies of this social context are related to different, even opposing conceptualizations of nature. Thus, two notions of nature correspond to the fragmented modern “world of convention”: The nature of natural science as the sum of laws governing the object of knowledge and nature as an object for the expression of sentiments in an aesthetic relation to it. What is striking is that Lukács considers this split of the notion of nature as an effect of modern alienation, of the fact that—as we saw in Section 5.5—social formations, alien to the soul, constitute a “second nature” (Lukács 1978:  62; 1920: 52–3). This second nature is governed by laws that are externally imposed on man’s soul. The inability of the soul to give meaning to these laws of the

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Jay (1984a: 115); similarly Jay (1977: 124–5). Jay’s justification of this thesis is, in my opinion, in many ways problematic, as he does not acknowledge the complex relation between nature and Lukács’s dialectic of society. See Deborin (1969). Thinking exclusively in terms of the opposition of materialism and idealism, Deborin was obviously unable to discern the contradiction between his critique for dualism and the criticism for succumbing to the Hegelian identity of being and thought.

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second nature is even more problematic than in the case of the “first nature” (cf. Lukács 1978: 64; 1920: 55), which can at least be integrated into art as a symbol of a psychological mood (cf. Lukács 1978: 63; 1920: 53–4). However, because of the radical heterogeneity between the first nature and the realm of meaning, the soul vacillates between a purely cognitive and a sentimental attitude toward it. As the only alternative to the dual alienation from the first and the second nature Lukács proposes the model of the ethical-practical relation between the subject and its formations. Of course in The Theory of the Novel it remains totally unclear what a non-alienated relation to nature would be. What is clear is that nature is understood as a social category, dependent upon the social totality and the antinomies that permeate it. In spite of the methodological differences between The Theory of the Novel and Lukács’s early Marxist theory, in respect to its content it is, as we will immediately see, the same position he explicitly formulates in History and Class Consciousness: Nature is a social category. This means that whatever is held to be natural at any given stage of social development, however this nature is related to man and whatever form his confrontation with it takes, i.e. what nature means in respect to its form, its content, its range and its objectivity are all socially conditioned. (HCC: 234; 240)

This all too often misinterpreted position needs to be explicated from the standpoint of the present study. The claim that nature is a “social category” firstly means that all natural objects are socially mediated by the fundamental form of objectivity that dominates in a particular society. Thus, in his unpublished defense of History and Class  Consciousness against the attacks of Rudas and Deborin, Lukács stressed the dependence of the knowledge of nature on “social being,” its mediation by the historical process and its internal contradictions (cf. Lukács 2000: 96–8; 1996: 46–7). Discussing Marxian quotes, Lukács points out that “our consciousness of nature, in other words our knowledge of nature, is determined by our social being” (Lukács 2000: 100; 1996: 49). In no way does this mean, of course, that the content of our knowledge of nature is exhausted in the social form of its mediation, rather the opposite: The very material of the form retains a remainder that resists its total assimilation with it. Feenberg clearly discerns this dimension of Lukács’s early Marxist theory on nature, namely his tendency toward retaining a kind of dualism “between knowledge and ‘nature itself ’ ” that could be interpreted as a “regression to Kantianism” and a retention of the “old thing-in-itself ” (Feenberg 2014: 132).

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He is also right to underline the fact that this dualism of society and nature represents a “saving inconsistency” (Feenberg 2014:  123, similarly 135)  of Lukács’s approach that thus escapes the danger of retreating to the idealism of the subjective production of nature’s otherness. This interpretation totally cancels the critique of the “orthodox” and “unorthodox” critics of Lukács’s alleged idealism.24 For Lukács it is clear that the “quasi-independent status” (Feenberg 2014: 123) of nature is emphatically revealed in the case of the modern form of objectivity which in the field of the relation of man to (external and internal) nature also demands the total subsumtion of the content to the system of rational forms. Since “finite human subjects cannot constitute nature as they have history” (Feenberg 2014:  123), one must expect that the antinomies of formalist rationalism arising in the field of the knowledge of society and history must be repeated in intensified form in the field of the knowledge of nature. Form and material, reason and sensibility, subject and object are violently separated—a fact clearly reflected in the division of the unitary concept of nature into a logical-scientific-mechanist and an aesthetic-artistic-teleological version of it. Indeed, in History and Class Consciousness Lukács reformulates the view we met in The Theory of the Novel in terms of the theory of reification: To the reified social relations of the capitalist epoch correspond “the two concepts of nature created by capitalist economic development, i.e. nature as the ‘sum of the laws of nature’ (the nature of modern mathematical science) and nature as a mood, as the model for a humanity ‘ruined’ by society (the nature of Rousseau and the Kantian ethics),” behind the opposition of which hides “their social unity, namely capitalist society” (HCC: 237; 243). Lukács avoids taking a stand on the dilemma between the mechanical and teleological understanding of nature— this dilemma belongs to bourgeois society and will probably be raised in new terms in a social context beyond capitalism. For the reconstruction I  attempt here it is essential to emphasize the fact that Lukács discerns a limit for all knowledge of nature, even that of a liberated society. This limit is nature as a material of any formation. Espousing a formulation of Marx, Lukács describes the confrontation of man and nature as a historical process of a gradual “receding of the natural barrier” (HCC: 233; 240) 24

The sharpest among the “heterodox” critiques of Lukács’s views on nature is that of Alfred Schmidt. Schmidt interprets the thesis that “nature is a social category” as a total disdain of its material otherness, as its complete assimilation with the subject that “produces” it (cf. Schmidt 1993: 66–7). Arato is right to reject this unfounded interpretation. However, his interpretative indulgence does not suffice to acquit Lukács of the charge that his attitude toward nature is problematic (cf. Arato 1972: 41–3).

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that leads to substituting the “social, historically created element” in modern time for the “natural relations” of traditional societies (HCC: 233; 239). Thus, Lukács considers, in a Marxist fashion, the expansion of the control over nature as a precondition of the possibility opened up in modern times to constitute “the true, concrete self-knowledge of man as a social being” (HCC: 237; 243)— after overcoming the reified social relations of course. It is however significant that Lukács speaks about the “receding of the natural barrier” and not about its abolition.

10.5. The dialectic of nature and the external limit of dereification This retention—in spite of all mediation—of the awareness of dualism in the relation between man and nature is further elaborated through Lukács’s views on the dialectic of nature. As is well known, Lukács rejected Engels’s dialectic of nature. A great part of the attacks on History and Class Consciousness by the “orthodox” Leninists of the 1920s were directed against this rejection (see, e.g., Rudas 1977a; Deborin 1969). A comprehensive reconstruction of Lukács’s thesis must distinguish his critique of Engels from his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of nature which he interrelates in a much-commented footnote in his essay “What is Orthodox Marxism?” In this note, Lukács underlines the significance of restricting the application of dialectical method to the social-historical reality, as the misunderstandings that arise from Engels’ account of dialectics can in the main be put down to the fact that Engels—following Hegel’s mistaken lead—extends the dialectical method to also apply to the knowledge of nature. However, the crucial determinants of dialectics: the interaction of subject and object, the unity of theory and praxis, the historical changes in the substratum of the categories as the basis of their alteration in thought, etc., are absent from our knowledge of nature. (HCC: 24, n. 6; 17, n. 1)

Lukács does not mean that Engels was influenced by Hegel, but that he was led for his own reasons to the same idealist stance toward nature we find in Hegel’s “official” philosophy of nature. In the case of Engels it was a peculiar kind of scientism that drove him in this direction. Indeed, according to Lukács, this tendency is not detected in Engels’s entire work, but reflects precisely those “flaws” that were “enthusiastically” adopted by theorists like Rudas and Deborin to be “raised up to the system of Marxism” and, thus, “to liquidate the dialectic”

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or “to turn historical materialism into a ‘science’ in the bourgeois sense.”25 In this framework the dialectic is abstractly considered as the sum of universal “dialectical laws” capable of being applied to any material. In fact, by adopting a one-sided “dialectical” objectivism, Rudas and Deborin understand “dialectic . . . to be merely a principle of knowledge, a type of higher logic” (Lukács 2000: 107– 8; 1996: 55). They thus reproduce the fundamental formalist orientation of bourgeois thought and science, the very same one that occasionally led Engels to distance himself from the “practical essence” of historical materialism. Therefore, in his critique of Engels’s theory of knowledge, Lukács highlights precisely the transformation of praxis into a contemplative practice (experimentation, industrial production) which relies upon the knowledge of abstract laws externally governing the natural object. As Lukács points out, the industry and the experiment represent “contemplative behaviour at its purest,” insofar as they rely upon the reduction of the material substratum of reality to the categories of the subject.26 The same does not hold, of course, for Hegel. In his case Lukács discerns an “official” philosophy of nature to which he attributes a methodologically necessary trend toward “frequently forced constructs” (HCC:  207; 226). Here the specific problem lies in the fact that in the case of nature Hegel did not deploy his own distinction between “merely negative and positive dialectics.”27 On the contrary, Hegel attributed positive dialectics, that is, the one that “must be understood as the emergence of a determined content, the elucidation of a concrete totality” (HCC: 207; 226), to nature without paying attention to the fact that his own “concept of nature as ‘otherness’, as the idea ‘being external to itself ’, directly precludes a positive dialectics” (HCC: 207; 226). In other words, it precludes the dialectic of concrete totality as we know it from human history, in which we have “the interaction of subject and object, the unity of theory and praxis, the historical changes in the substratum of

25

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Lukács (2000:  137; 1996:  79). Lukács thus discerned, fairly early on, the tendency of the new “orthodoxy” that was being formed at that time to adopt a “semi-positivist and non-dialectical standpoint” (Löwy 2011: 67). His criticism anticipates the subsequent connection of the scientism of “dialectical laws” of nature and history formulated in the framework of “dialectical materialism” with the political phenomenon of Stalinism (see Jameson 2002: 131). Cf. HCC: 132; 146. Lukács defended this critique in Lukács (2000: 126–34; 1996: 70–76). Indeed, in his defence he repeats the critique of Engels’s flawed understanding of fundamental concepts of German Idealism (such as the “thing in itself ” or Hegel’s “being in itself and for itself ” etc., cf. HCC: 131–2; 145–7; Lukács (2000: 120–25; 1996: 65–9)—an issue I cannot discuss here. HCC: 207; 226. On the fundamental distinction between the “dialectical-negatively reasonable” and the “speculative-positively reasonable,” cf. Hegel (1975b: §§ 81–2).

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the categories as the basis of their alteration in thought, etc.” (HCC: 24, n. 6; 17, n. 1). Precisely because the subject, “at least at the stage hitherto reached” (HCC:  207; 226), cannot be included in the dialectical process, it remains a “detached observer” of the objective dialectic of the movement of nature. As Lukács points out elsewhere, the “knowledge of nature is played out in the form of the correlate in-itself–for-us” (Lukács 2000: 119; 1996: 65). In other words, it can only develop the awareness of the independent from the subject, objective dialectic, and thus it is unable to reach the level of the Hegelian “for itself ” that is typical for the knowledge of the social-historical. According to Lukács, Hegel saw this external relation to nature, beyond which it is impossible to advance, when he discussed, for example, Zeno’s antinomies in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, linking them to the notion of the merely objective dialectic that remains incomplete and negative (cf. Hegel 1995: 261–78). At exactly this point one can locate the difference between the dialectic of nature and the social-historical dialectic that can be positive. Besides, this is the reason for which Lukács stresses the importance of working out Hegel’s distinction between negative and positive dialectics (cf. HCC:  207; 227). In other words, as has been aptly pointed out (Löwy 1979: 170–71), it is abundantly clear that Lukács does not reject the dialectic of nature, as his opponents accuse him of doing, but considers it as fundamentally negative and incomplete. As he explicitly notes, it must be assumed that the objective dialectic of nature existed before the social dialectic, but it cannot be cognized independently of it.28 The thesis that in respect to nature we must be content with negative dialectics is strengthened by Lukács’s explicit repudiation of the possibility of its “dereification,” since it belongs to those objects that “seem to remain more or less unaffected by the process” of dereification.29 As Lukács remarks, in the present stage of social development—and it is self-evident that I  reject getting into disputes over utopian future possibilities—I deny a socially unmediated i.e. an immediate relationship of man to nature and consequently,

28

29

Cf. Lukács (2000: 102–3, 107; 1996: 51, 55). As the case of Paul Burkett’s interpretation and critique of Lukács’s “human/nature dichotomy” shows, ignoring the distinction between positive and negative dialectics in this context can easily lead to rather misleading conclusions:  According to Burkett, Lukács ascribes “more objectivity” to nature than to society, and is thus, purportedly led to a positivist understanding of the natural sciences (cf. Burkett 2013). What Burkett cannot see is that his own conventional concept of objectivity is not identical to Lukács’s dialectical notion of it. Cf. HCC:  206; 225. A  similar, although much more limited independence can be attributed to the phenomena of the “absolute spirit” such as art, religion etc. (cf. HCC:  234–7; 241–3; Lukács 2000: 108; 1996: 55).

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I am of the opinion that our knowledge of nature is socially mediated, because its material foundation is socially mediated. (2000: 106; 1996: 53–4)

Lukács resists the fascination of the utopian vision of a socially unmediated knowledge of nature and insists that at least “for the time being” we must be content with our ordinary, external-contemplative relation to nature that he understands as socially constructed.30 Simultaneously, as a social product, mediated with the social totality, the knowledge of nature is “to be included in the second type of dialectics” (HCC:  207; 227), that is, the positive dialectic of the concrete totality. Even if nature is never immediately given, it is possible to reconstruct the mediation of its knowledge with social totality, given the formation of the adequate class standpoint. From this standpoint, the correlation of the object “in itself ” and the object “for us,” which is characteristic of the rational knowledge of nature, can find its correct place within the wider framework of the “for itself ” of the socialhistorical totality as the knowledge of nature that corresponds to a specific level of social development (cf. Lukács 2000:  113–16, 125, 129–31; 1996:  60–62, 69, 72–4). As a result of all this, the only true sublation of the problem of the Kantian thing in itself becomes possible through transformative praxis guided by a holistic knowledge of the social-historical (Lukács 2000:  127–9; 1996:  71–2). The “inconsistency” of retaining the dualism between society and nature would expose Lukács’s edifice to the risk of collapsing only if his thought was aimed at the constitution of a complete theoretical system. In previous chapters I repeatedly argued that such an interpretation of Lukács’s early Marxist work is flawed and that he never lost sight of the “practical” and therefore, dialectical “essence” of his theory. For Lukács, only a change in the wider social framework of the “exchange of matter” with nature would eventually lead to a transformation of the knowledge of nature. This is why he insists that, at least in the first phase of the socialist transformation of modern society, we should neither expect an essential change in the material-technical forces of the confrontation of man with nature, nor any alteration of the structure of our knowledge about it. Only the creation of a communist society could signify a change

30

Feenberg is at this point right to stress the constructivist character of the “contemplative consciousness” of the modern subject (cf. Feenberg 2014:  135). Obviously, the contemplation of natural objects does not mean their immediate perception but their formally determined “cognitive construction.”

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in this field. However, as we have already seen, Lukács refuses to discuss utopian possibilities and confines himself to remarking that the crisis of the natural science of his time could be interpreted as a sign of an imminent change (cf. Lukács 2000:  116–17; 1996:  62–3). At the same time he notes that the integration of natural sciences in a holistic theory of history would demand the concrete demonstration of their genetic dependence upon the material reproduction of society, something for which present conditions are premature (cf. Lukács 2000: 117–18; 1996: 63–4). It seems thus that in a future, dereified society the dereification of the modern concepts of nature—nature as the sum of abstract natural laws and nature as material for the aesthetic expression of moods—would be possible in principle. Dereification of nature would then only mean the abolition of the reification of its social-historical representation, the dereification of its concept and its knowledge. It would thus be ridiculous to attempt to interpret Lukács’s view as an idealist negation of nature as something independent from the subject. Besides, for him, the independence of nature is the “correct Marxist understanding” of its “objectivity” (Lukács 2000: 101; 1996: 50). As Feenberg points out, “Lukács seems to be arguing two apparently contradictory points:  .  .  . The conceptual framework in terms of which we identify nature is socially contingent but knowledge of nature refers to objects independent of us, that is, to presuppositions and not results of our practices” (Feenberg 2014:  141–2). Feenberg offers an explication of Lukács’s paradox thesis through a fruitful interpretation of Lukács’s distinction of society and nature: This distinction is not “ontological” in the traditional way but refers to two different types of relation between objectivity and human agency. Lukács “is not telling us what kind of being nature is but on what terms it can be changed, on what terms the proletariat as subject can interact with this object” (Feenberg 2014: 135). Toward nature only an external, contemplative and technical attitude and practice is attainable, while toward society a transformative consciousness and praxis is also possible (see also Feenberg 1999). On the basis of this criterion of the possible human attitudes toward objectivity it is possible to formulate a “sliding ontological scale” that “includes aspects of the objective world that are more or less resistant to dereification” (Feenberg 2014: 137). Nature belongs to the objects most impermeable by transformative praxis. This is why, despite the social dependence of the “form of objectivity of nature,” scientific research seems to establish “the transcendence of particular facts and theories, at least while they prevail” (Feenberg 2014: 141). Because of this dual determination of the natural sciences, social critique and social change

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may effectuate unforeseeable transformations of the socially mediated exchange of matter with nature and through it, changes in scientific knowledge itself. If we momentarily forget Lukács’s reluctance to talk about abstract utopian possibilities, maybe we could assume that comprehending the historically determined character of the bourgeois notion of nature could lead to a new attitude: The subject’s self-limitation of its dominative stance toward a material it cannot permeate with its rational forms. Such a stance could further strengthen a radical critique (not of science but) of scientism as the one that has already been formulated in the framework of the socialist and ecological questioning of the effects of the predominance of modern formalist-instrumental rationality. This critique would not abolish the conceptual formation of the natural sciences31 but would probably further cultivate the consciousness of the radical independence of the material from any rational objectification—an independence that allows and requires the open historicality of our knowledge of it. It is characteristic that this consciousness is constituted negatively, through comprehending the distortion of “nature” by the dominant form of objectivity, through the indirect indication not of what nature is, but of what it is not— namely, a mere material to be theoretically and practically manipulated. In the essay on reification, Lukács refers in passing to the “qualitative and material,” the “immediate character of all things as things” (HCC:  92; 104). This is not really a positive definition of the nature of things, as he makes immediately clear that what can be ascertained is only the loss of “their original, authentic thingness” due to their social-historical determination, the social distortion of their “objectivity.”32 Nature thus remains independent and external to our understanding of it; a limit even for a collective subjectivity—a barrier, the social mediation and receding of which could never coincide with its total abolition.

31

32

Besides, Lukács himself admits that, despite the superiority of dialectically constituted knowledge, it is not necessary that every knowledge of nature is presented as dialectically constituted. (cf. Lukács 2000: 108–9; 1996: 56). Thus, the formalistically constituted natural sciences will in any case remain a moment of a future dialectical knowledge of nature that would include the reflection on its historical dimension. HCC: 92; 104. Lukács refers here to Marx’s examples of the relation between earth and ground-rent, machine and profit.

11

Epilogue: The Significance of Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis Today

Since its publication, History and Class  Consciousness has for the most part been harshly criticized, even if in contradictory ways that indirectly indicate the complexity and unconventionality of its argument. Few commentators were prepared for a more charitable reading—among the most renowned are Lucien Goldmann, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and, more recently, Michael Löwy and Andrew Feenberg. Although they offered significant arguments and hints for an alternative interpretation and an actualization of Lukács’s early Marxist philosophy, the dominant trend in its reception remained its classification among the classic texts that retain only a historical significance. At the end of the 1970s, Martin Jay eloquently summarized what would be henceforth established as the standard opinion:  Ascertaining the agreement between Adorno and his structuralist opponent Althusser in respect to the critique of Lukács, he inferred the “exhaustion of the problematic introduced into Marxist theory by History and Class Consciousness,” while simultaneously welcoming the positions of the two renowned theorists as “the Marxism of a more sober and disillusioned time” (Jay 1977:  136). Shortly hereafter the predicate “exhausted” would also be assigned to the old Frankfurt School, the theories of which could easily be considered as an extension—despite all modifications— of the basic theoretical core of History and Class  Consciousness, that is, the combination of the theory of reification with a theory of the constitution (or the failure of the constitution) of proletarian class consciousness, to conclude the impasse of this approach in general. Such a reconstruction of the history of critical theory corroborated the need to distance oneself from the dialectical conceptualization of the social-historical and to turn to Habermas’s emerging neo-Kantian formalism.1 1

Applying Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolution, in a dense article published in 1983, Hauke

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Of course, this is not the place to evaluate this theoretical current that has more or less dominated the field of critical theory during the last thirty years for historical reasons we now begin to understand.2 I can only repeat the thesis I formulated in the introduction to the present book that the transformation of the world system under the pressure of neoliberal globalization and neoliberal policies tends to completely abolish the social and political substratum of the formalist communicative critical theory. As a result, even theorists belonging to that school discern the inadequacy of formalist theory in the current socialhistorical conditions and turn their eye toward more radical versions of critical theory.3 The need for a reradicalization of critical theory today is a given fact; the question is, however, through which conceptual means it should be attempted. In this study I indicated that the classic arguments against Lukács’s philosophy of praxis are not as convincing as they should be for the theoretical path opened up by Lukács in the 1920s to be closed off once and for all. The reason is that, in a more thorough examination, it becomes clear that, far from merely representing an idealist metaphysics of history, Lukács’s approach was from the beginning characterized by an extraordinarily subtle philosophical understanding of the epistemological and socio-philosophical problems of otherness. Very briefly, in the first part of this book I emphasized the neo-Kantian origins of Lukács’s analysis of modern philosophy, on the basis of which Lukács put at the center of his reflections the problem of content and the relevant problem of historical individuality, which he internally connected with the question of the radically new in history. Lukács attempted to find a way to overcome the so-called antinomies of bourgeois thought through his shift to the dialectical mediation of subject and object in history. However, he conceptualized this mediation in terms of the primacy of the content over the form, as well as the primacy of praxis over theory. Thus, Lukács thought of the field of this mediation

2 3

Bunkhorst reconstructed Lukács’s theory of the 1920s as the core of the theoretical paradigm that determined the old Frankfurt School. On his analysis, the crisis and “exhaustion” of this paradigm motivated Habermas’s so-called paradigm shift toward a communicative critical theory (cf. Brunkhorst 1983). I attempted an appraisal of Habermas’s version of critical theory in Kavoulakos (1996). A characteristic case is Albrecht Wellmer, who clearly sees the problem of the inadequacy of Habermas’s theory of democracy, given the dynamic developed by the global capitalist system today (cf. Wellmer 2009: 51–2). Taking his cues from the acknowledgment of this problem, he turns his attention to Adorno’s old critical theory (cf. Wellmer 2007: 147–52) or to other representatives of contemporary critical theory (Rancière, Balibar, Negri and Hardt, Žižek, etc.) to critically discuss them (cf. Wellmer 2014).

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par excellence, the field of the dialectic of historical praxis, as intrinsically not systematizable and open. In the second part we saw that the above-mentioned dual primacy of the content and the radically new laid the fundament for Lukács’s theoretical diagnosis on modern society. According to this diagnosis, in modern times an instrumental-calculative form of mediation or form of objectivity prevails that oppresses the content of life. Its domination effectuates the phenomenon of reification as the actual ossification of the dominant social relations and, simultaneously, the ideological obfuscation of their historicality, that is, the concealment of the permanent emergence of the radically new in history. The aim of the theory of reification was, thus, to reveal the social consequences of the domination of an identitary reason and to criticize it from the standpoint of the oppressed content and the emerging radically new. Finally, in the third part, we saw that nor in respect to the practical process of dereification would it ever be possible for Lukács’s philosophy of praxis to aim at that identity of form and content which it had previously revealed as the origin of alienation and reification. Examining the text more carefully I showed that the “identity of subject and object,” to which Lukács repeatedly refers, must be interpreted as their dialectical unity in the historical process which, in its alienated modern version, takes on the form of their total separation. From Lukács’s viewpoint, the goal of emancipatory praxis could never be the establishment of a metaphysical realm of the achieved identity of subject and object—an idea from which he explicitly distanced himself—but on the one hand breaking their false identity and, on the other hand, consciously-practically liquidizing their relation. In this case too, I highlighted the primacy of the content in Lukács’s thought. For him, praxis always represents the radically new, while its dialectic relies upon the permanent adaptation of practical thought to the transformations of historical objectivity. Thus, the only plausible interpretation of the idea of overcoming the antinomies through transformative praxis implies its dual understanding as a breaking up with the established identitary logic and as a (momentary) adjustment of the practical form to the otherness of the given content. Given the fact that Lukács used the language of classical German philosophy, what else could the practical transcendence of formalism and, consequently, of the  repetition of the identical according to rational laws represent other than the materialist “adjustment” of the form and the content, the emergence of the “absolute” as the radically new? And this novelty, what else could it be but a new

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beginning, the practical creation of that which is not predetermined by rigid laws that externally govern human-made reality? It may be true that Lukács’s terminology needs to be updated. But this does not mean that the dilemmas he encountered have ceased to exist. Quite the opposite. Naturally, because of the great historical distance that separates us from his time, the element that can regain significance for us today is rather Lukács’s road and much less the solutions to problems he proposed. This road is, as Lukács wanted it in History and Class Consciousness, the method of a dialectical theory of social totality, formulated from the standpoint of transformative praxis and its collective subject.4 If we wish to reopen this road, we must first start from the conclusion of the critique of its criticism I  formulated in these pages, that is, from the ascertainment that the theoretical perspective of Lukács’s philosophy of praxis does not necessarily lead to idealism or to a metaphysics of history.5 On the contrary, it can constitute a hermeneutical standpoint capable of articulating the self-understanding of the fragmented social resistances that continue to erupt at the points where the dominant formalist rationality meets its limits, since it forces the material, the life, human and non-human, to rise against the oppressive social form that regulates it.6 Whether a unitary conceptualization of the phenomena of crisis that permeate the contemporary, globalized, postmodern and neoliberal capitalism can connect with oppositional political forces today is a question that cannot be answered by theory alone. It is rather—conversely—theory that must search its only possible, precarious “foundation” in practices and “events” of resistance and attempt to have an enhancing effect upon them. Lukács considered precisely this primacy of praxis as the hallmark of a revolution, not only in the political-social but also the intellectual field of consciousness.7 Thus, the shift he postulated in the field of the theory of praxis entailed the constitution of a radically new philosophical perspective that we must rediscover

4

5

6

7

Fred Dallmayr’s positive assessment of Lukács’s focusing on the method of a practically oriented, dialectical theory of social change remains valid today (cf. Dallmayr 1970). In an early article “On the Problem of the Dialectic” (1930), Herbert Marcuse praised Siegfried Marck because in a book on dialectics he had published at that time he “puts an end to that primitive ‘critique’ that believes Lukács’ analysis can be dispensed with by calling it ‘metaphysics’, and which has been reiterated in the worst way by communist authors” (Marcuse 1976: 24). For Erich Hahn this is an important advantage of Lukács’s perspective in comparison to Adorno’s theory (cf. Hahn 2004). Merleau-Ponty explains that, for Lukács, “the essential and most innovative notion of Marxism” is the introduction of “a new mode of historical existence and of meaning:  praxis” (Merleau-Ponty 1973: 47).

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and take seriously. For Lukács, the theorist—every theorist—has to take a fundamental decision: Must history be considered as something mechanically determined or does the new arise in it in the essential sense of the emergence of radical otherness?8 When Lukács poses this question, he does not have the dilemma between determinism and indeterminism, determinateness and indeterminacy in mind—indeterminacy that could be simply interpreted as a contingent deviation from that which is inevitable anyway (cf. HCC: 194–5; 212– 13). The problem for Lukács is not the identical and its simple difference, but the otherness that emerges as a possibility out of the breach between them. It is not the norm and its infringement, but the possibility of creating new norms at the moment when the given system begins to tremble due to its inner inconsistency and its inherent instability. The theory of reification is often read as an attempt to explain a deficit: The inability of the proletarian revolution after the First World War to come to a completion.9 However, after everything said above, it is clear that it can also be read as an attempt to positively indicate the turning point, at which the inadequacy of the established social forms of life can provoke the activation of human freedom in the direction of throwing off the yoke of these forms and changing them. The ambiguity of Lukács’s position reflects the intrinsic, manifold possibilities opened up by the respective social and political juncture. It corresponds to the essentially open character of human praxis and history, to the very nature of human freedom. Experiencing this ambiguity in his own epoch, Lukács strived to theoretically point out the decisive role of human freedom in moments of destabilization of the dominant system, actively combating determinism that eliminates the creativity of human praxis, as it one-sidedly stresses its determination by mechanical, objective laws. Therefore, he underlined the fact that social change can never be the effect of such laws; that it is not something, the advent of which we can just patiently await. Practical theory has a meaning only for those who want to act,10 even if objective conditions currently seem to be unfavorable. In 8

9

10

Criticizing Engels’s merely objective dialectic for its contemplative character, Lukács pointed out the fact that its acceptance or rejection end up being “a purely ‘scientific’ matter” that does not make any change “to one’s basic attitudes towards reality, to the question of whether it is conceived as changeable or unchangeable” (HCC: 4; 16). A recent reformulation of this thesis is offered by Joseph Fracchia (2013) who comes to a—typical for this reading—renunciation of Lukács’s Leninist theory of the Communist Party. For a critical comment on Fracchia’s analysis, see Feenberg (2015b: 229–32). Commenting on Lukács book, Ernst Bloch remarked that “only the one who acts understands here. And exactly to the extent that he wants to act” (Bloch 1977:  165). No wonder that for a dualist theorist such as Kolakowski, Lukács’s approach remains insuperably “mythological,” “irrational,” and “antiscientific” (cf. Kolakowski 1978: 297–300).

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fact, dereification through transformative praxis has reification as its dialectical rival pole, which indeed seems to become stronger as crisis becomes harsher.11 In such moments of triumph of the seemingly irremovable “raw reality” a counterbalance is needed:  The decisive projection of the reasonable-practical awareness of the historicality of human existence, of the possibility of concrete human freedom. This freedom is concrete because it is the determinate negation of the existent. This means it is compelled in every historical period to readjust its categories, by which it understands itself, the world and its relation with it. For Lukács, as for classical German philosophy, the central category of social and political thought, the concept of “true freedom” represents “something practical, an activity” (HCC: 337; 340). During the last two hundred years, the investigation of the conditions of its realization in the political and social sphere has taken on the form of a search for “true democracy.” The hypocrisy of the bourgeois democracy of Lukács’s time already manifested itself in the fact that it relied precisely on the opposite of activity, on the passivity of the “mass,” its restriction to the rights and duties delimiting a “spectator-role.” Thus, men must oppose the “necessity of the uncomprehended course of events and its ideological form, the formal freedom of bourgeois democracy” by attempting to constitute “true democracy,” which is “no formal freedom but the activity of the members of a collective will, closely integrated and collaborating in a spirit of solidarity” (HCC: 337; 340). What is at stake has not changed since that time. Maybe in new ways, in contemporary “post-democracies” the consciousness of passive viewers of TV shows is overwhelmed by the “necessity of the uncomprehended course of events,” while the phantasmagoria of the rigid, inescapable economic necessity, of the inexistence of alternatives to what is already happening, duly supplements the physical coercion exercised by the stifling framework of life, especially from the global economic crisis of 2008 on. As such passive spectators we sometimes perceive and observe the spread of conflict and warfare, the growing social and political tensions in the world, the increase in antagonism to the exploitation of the natural resources of the planet and its rapid ecological breakdown in all fields. All too often, we react as if everything that is happening is nothing but a bad dream or as if it did not concern our own life. After all, the dominant thought

11

Lukács characteristically notes that when the “moment of transition to the ‘realm of freedom’ arrives . . . the blind forces push really blindly, with permanently increasing, seemingly irresistible energy towards the abyss” (HCC: 70; 82).

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and science, but also the established political discourse and social and political practices keep repeating the same story: What is happening is inevitable, it is the result of objective necessities, there have always been difficulties or even: we have already seen worse. Then the problem is only how to stay calm, rational, moderate, tolerant and optimistic—above all, how to remain skeptical toward any radical rejection of the established system. After all, why should one bother, if there is nothing that could change the objective “course of events”? At least this is the direction toward which the established system drives us, although meanwhile it has some apparent difficulties achieving this goal. They are manifested in the proliferation of phenomena of disintegration of even post-democratic politics, but also of economic life, which for the greater part of the population has nothing more to promise than additional deprivation and destitution. This is why the failures of the scientific manipulation of public opinion, the “errors” in public opinion polls, the “surprises” in elections or referendums also proliferate. At the same time the ultra-right “anti-systemic” forces around the world utilize the growing discontent to enter the power-game with expectations unprecedented in the period after the Second World War. For those who keep their ears and thinking open, reality gives a clear message— what still prevents us from deciphering it are the reified categories by which the current establishment interprets the world. A contemporary critical theory cannot be anything else but a critical theory of economic, social, political and cultural democracy—besides, this is also what it was for Lukács. Dannemann aptly remarks: “If we reflect upon Lukács’s interpretation of Marx’s implicit philosophy, it becomes obvious that—turned to politics—the theory of reification is in its core a theory of regaining autonomy; in other words [it is] an emphatic theory of democratization” (Dannemann 2002: 85). It is characteristic that the most recent attempts to actualize Lukács’s theory of reification move in the direction of a theory of democratic repoliticisation of economic and social relations in post-democratic societies.12 From the viewpoint of world history, the “consciousness of the proletariat,” for which so much ink was used in older times, radically transformed our world and to a certain extent it has become a self-evident part of our selfunderstanding as modern men and democratic citizens—at least in the form of the awareness of the fact that a regulation of the social issue is a necessary precondition of a modern democracy. It has been further enriched through

12

See, e.g., Dannemann (2002: 88–95); Chari (2010); Jütten (2011); Stahl (2011); Feenberg (2014: 117– 19; 2015a).

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dimensions that were not central or even present at the time of the first great socialist revolutions: ecological demands for the preservation of the biosphere, feminist and antiracist initiatives, antiwar movements and groups for the defense of otherness in all its forms that acquire new significance in view of the unprecedented immigration currents etc. However, at the same time it is contemporary reality itself, the fast decrease in popular liberties and rights under the pressure of attack by the dominant elites that brings to the fore the dilemmas of a political domestication or even abolition of the blind laws of global capitalist markets. These issues stand de facto on the political agenda. It is meaningless for theory to pretend to be the neutral guardian of the rational, “democratic procedures,” when these are increasingly used as an alibi for an increasingly more violent imposition of particular class interests. The critical theory of the last twenty five years delivered the theory of democracy it was able to produce. It ranged from Habermas’s formalist political theory (see Habermas 1996, 1998) and its rival theory of agonistic democracy (see Laclau 1990; Mouffe 2000, 2005) to Rancière’s anarchist notion of politics and democracy (see Rancière 1999, 2009). A common trait of these approaches is their apparent or hidden formalist character which has, in the final analysis, the same origin: The repudiation of the dialectical theory of social-historical totality because of the fear that it necessarily leads to totalitarian political practices. However, in this way an absolutely necessary critical tool is abandoned, namely the adjustment of the concepts to the actual contents. Thus, the theorist confines himself, as long as he is a rationalist, to listing formal normative principles or, if he deviates from rationalism, to pointing out the significance of the indeterminate decision, the conflict, the struggle, the negativity. Hence, theory results in an unfruitful oscillation between utopian normativity and realistic decisionism. As a Marxist neophyte, Lukács was aware of the fact that the proletarian politics he was striving for could not simply rely upon a continuation or “deepening” of formal democratization, but had to include all means that would secure the power of the proletariat and its interests. However, this emphasis on the real power relations, on the political imposition of specific interests is not blind; it refers to these contents of life that are oppressed by the reified forms of the given society (cf. HCC: 291–3; 295–7). In fact, Lukács conceived popular sovereignty in terms of content—in terms of the political imposition of specific, universalizable interests—and not exclusively in the formal terms of individual rights and democratic procedures, nor simply in the descriptive terms of a realistic analysis of power relations.

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A renewal of critical theory today depends on theoretically working out the contents of present life that are jeopardized by the particularist social interests that are imposed against them. As our long historical experience, but also the continuing global crisis show, the dynamic of the imposition of such interests— as the dynamic of the rationalization of the world—is not limitless; its unfolding cannot go on ad infinitum without the eruption of new crises and the recourse to violence for the stabilization of the trembling regime. Therefore—despite the illusions of the neoliberal era about the alleged “end of history”—the emergence of barbarism in a modernized form has never ceased, even for a moment, to represent an open possibility and, to a certain degree, an already realized fact. The return of the classic dilemma “socialism or barbarism” is not part of an epic narration on historical progress, nor is it part of the dramatic scenario of an alleged “eternal human tragedy.” It is rather a reminiscence of the fact that every practical opportunity for the transformation of the world that is being lost in the persistent dialectical confrontation of reification and dereification signifies a step back before the self-destructive trend of an essentially irrational will for “rational domination.” However small such a step might seem, it further opens the crack of history, through which the unthinkable can arise and, thus, be repeated. Repudiating the comforting lullaby of the “iron necessities” or—in more “critical” terms—of the “tragic fate” of an eternal repetition of the same, Lukács pointed to the theoretical and practical lead of the relentless struggle against such regressions. The suspicion that we have to rediscover this path to renew democratic politics is not unjustified.

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Index Adler, Max 165 Adorno, Theodor W. x, xiv, 3–9, 69, 81, 132, 134, 142, 146, 165, 183, 210, 219, 220, 222 Althusser, Louis x, 3, 88, 165, 219 Anderson, Perry 1 Arato, Andrew 35, 87, 102, 115, 118, 133, 141, 155–6, 159, 184, 187, 200–1, 212 Badiou, Alain 174, 175 Beiersdörfer, Kurt 81, 83, 84–5, 86, 87, 92, 98, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 133, 134, 135, 141, 155, 157, 163, 164, 167, 180 Bergson, Henri 96, 104, 120, 182 Bernstein, Eduard 79 Bernstein, Jay 2, 35, 79, 86, 135, 138–9, 170 Bewes, Timothy 130, 131, 132 Bloch, Ernst 125, 209, 223 Breines, Paul 35, 87, 102, 115, 118, 133, 141, 155–6, 159, 184, 187, 200–1 Castoriadis, Cornelius 83 Cerutti, Furio 84, 85, 92, 119, 124, 167, 207 Cohen, Hermann 27, 30–1, 33 Dannemann, Rüdiger 1, 9, 95, 115, 119, 120, 121, 122, 131–2, 133, 146, 156, 157, 208, 225 Deborin, Abram 3, 4, 210–11, 213–14 Dilthey, Wilhelm 97, 101, 104, 105 Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich 153–5, 158, 160 Engels, Friedrich 33, 48, 84, 165, 210, 213–14, 223 Feenberg, Andrew 3, 79, 86, 88, 90, 118, 131, 133, 142, 144, 147, 148, 201,

203–4, 205, 209, 210, 212, 216, 217, 219, 223, 225 Féher, Ferenc 1, 95, 98, 155–6 Féher, István 1, 27–8, 67, 69 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 4, 16, 27–8, 31, 39–45, 47–8, 58–9, 71, 81, 111, 153, 165, 176 Goldmann, Lucien 1–2, 3, 126, 136, 143, 164, 178, 219 Grondin, Jean 133, 142, 183 Habermas, Jürgen x, xiv, 3, 6–8, 57, 79, 88, 124, 140, 141, 142, 146, 148, 164, 173, 201, 219–20, 226 Hall, Timothy 6, 79, 119, 147, 148, 190–1, 199 Hauser, Arnold 158 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich xi, xiii, 4, 7, 9, 19, 28, 39, 42–3, 52, 55, 58–69, 71–2, 81–4, 87, 88, 109, 133, 146, 153, 155, 162, 164–6, 175, 177, 183, 210, 213–15 Heller, Ágnes 134 Helvétius, Claude Adrien 73 Hess, Moses 47, 66 Holbach, Baron d’ 73 Honneth, Axel 85, 118, 130, 140, 141–50, 193 Horkheimer, Max xiv, 5, 8, 125, 134, 183 Jameson, Frederick 214 Jay, Martin 1, 3, 134, 166, 175, 210, 219 Jung, Werner 2, 95, 97, 158 Kant, Immanuel xi, xii, 3, 19, 20, 23, 28–33, 35–6, 38–47, 52, 56–60, 64, 69, 71, 84, 110, 124 Kautsky, Karl 79, 98 Kolakowski, Leszek 200, 223 Krahl, Hans-Jürgen 202, 205

248

Index

Laclau, Ernesto 226 Lask, Emil xiii, 13–14, 18–34, 35, 38–9, 41–3, 44, 48, 58–64, 67, 69, 75, 83, 88, 90, 97, 103, 105, 106, 107, 110–11 Lassalle, Ferdinand 47, 78 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 201, 203–4, 205 Livingstone, Rodney xi Löwy, Michael 99, 154, 156, 159, 166, 169, 214, 215, 219 Luxemburg, Rosa 168, 192, 194, 196, 201–3, 205 Maimon, Salomon 38, 39 Marck, Siegfried 3, 87, 164–5, 222 Marcuse, Herbert x, xiv, 222 Márkus, György 2, 53, 101, 131, 135 Marx, Karl xi, xiii, 5, 6, 9, 13, 28, 35, 44, 59, 66, 71–2, 77, 79, 82–4, 86, 87, 89, 91, 92, 99, 113, 116–20, 122, 124, 126, 130–2, 134–5, 137, 142, 146, 157, 161–2, 163, 166, 172, 180, 182, 185, 212, 218, 225 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 87, 149, 166, 168, 170, 183–4, 191, 202, 219, 222 Mészáros, István 85, 88 Mouffe, Chantal 226 Piccone, Paul 200 Plekhanov, Georgi 73–4, 175 Postone, Moishe 165, 186

Rancière, Jacques 226 Révai, Josef 87 Rickert, Heinrich xiii, 13–20, 22, 26, 27, 29, 34, 38, 41, 42, 49, 74–6, 89, 103, 105–6, 165 Rockmore, Tom 33, 35, 81, 134 Rose, Gillian 83 Rudas, László 3, 4, 162, 164, 165–6, 170, 172, 180, 210–11, 213–14 Schmidt, Alfred 159, 212 Simmel, Georg 95–102, 104, 119, 122, 130–1, 139 Sombart, Werner 99 Sommerhäuser, Hanspeter 13, 22, 23, 24 Spinoza, Baruch 88 Stedman Jones, Gareth 132, 134, 162–3, 167, 180, 200, 201 Weber, Max xiii, 36, 98–9, 116, 121–3, 157, 163–4, 165, 166–7, 201, 207 Wellmer, Albrecht 7, 88, 220 Windelband, Wilhelm 15, 18, 19, 22, 27, 31, 34, 74 Zeno of Elea 215 Zinoviev, Grigori 4 Žižek, Slavoj 174–5, 220