Presentation on Lukacs History and Class Consciousness Produced by Brendan Donegan for the London Marxist Reading Group

meeting, 25 February 2010 This presentation is based on the first and second essays in History and Class Consciousness: What is Orthodox Marxism? and The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg, taken from the 1971 edition by Merlin Press, which is the version available on googlebooks, and the Lucien Goldmann essay in Aspects of History and Class Consciousness (1971), which is a collection edited by Meszaros, a student of Lukcs. Lukacs key point in HCC is the need to return to Hegels dialectics, and Goldmann gives us the historical context which made this claim both necessary and hugely controversial at the time Lukacs made it. Marx teaches us (and Lukacs reiterates) that mens intellectual life is bound up in their economic, social and political circumstances. After the bourgeois revolutions of 1845-50, the bourgeoisie became the dominant class and stabilized their rule. As a result they became conservative, and the working class movements that had come up became increasingly integrated into the existing order. This affected the thought of the latter movements, which adopted positivism. What is positivism? Goldmann: Characterisedby its assertion of the radical distinction between judgments of fact and judgments of value, between external reality which is subject to objective laws and human activity which can at most pass moral judgments on this reality or modify it by means of technical action based on the knowledge and utilization of these objective laws (67). Lukacs describes them on page 5 of HCC (more on the facts of positivist science later). [B]etween 1890 and 1923, with the exception of Rosa Luxemburg and to a large extent Trotsky, nearly all the important theorists of Marxism took up a positivist position parallel to that of academic science (66), and little attention was paid to Hegels place in Marxs analysis. Then we get new great tremors of world revolution, in Russia (1905, 1917), Germany and China, and with these events, the rebirth of dialectical thought in the work of three theorists: Lukacs, Lenin and Gramsci. Of these 3, Lukacs HCC (1923) was the first to be read in Europe, and this is why HCC is so important. Goldmann distinguishes 3 different sets of ideas in HCC (69). 1. Lukacs thinks he is writing on the eve of world revolution written between 1919 and 1922, in the midst of the revolutionary crisis of European society, after the victory of the Russian Revolution, the temporary victory and ensuing defeat of the Hungarian and Finnish revolutions, and the crushing defeat of [Rosa Luxemburgs] Spartakist movement in Germany, these articles reflect the revolutionary hope which saw in these defeats simply a temporary setback in the wider context of the final and total crisis of world capitalismone of the central ideas of the work being that, since the economic and social conditions for revolution already existed, its victory depended above all on the consciousness of the proletariat (69; see on this the end of Rosa Luxemburg essay in HCC). With hindsight, this is wrong, and therefore Lukacs social and political analyses are clearly mistaken (77). 2. Lukacs was trying to say something controversial without being expelled from Communist politics (according to his preface, he narrowly escaped doing this by publishing a self-criticism in response to the controversy caused by HCC). Why was HCC controversial? Because at that time there were 2 irreconciliable positions in the movement: a) Luxemburg and Trotskys hypothesis of the revolutionary proletariat, [which] took as its point of departure the dialectical idea of the identity of subject and object and of the spontaneous tendency of the proletariat towards an authentic, non-integrated consciousness, and called for a democratic party whose fundamental core must be the proletarian base even if its revolutionary consciousness was less developed than that of the leading cadres. It was this base which should control the party machine, made 1

up of professional revolutionaries who had more experience and a more complete political education, but who were always in danger of becoming bureaucratic, furthering their own interests rather than those of the working class and, in the Western world, gradually becoming integrated into capitalist society (69; see also end of Rosa Luxemburg essay in HCC). Both Luxemburg and Trotsky were killed for holding this view. b) Those who observed that the consciousness of the proletariat did not tend spontaneously to challenge capitalist society, but rather to become integrated with it on the democratic or trade-unionist model (70). This observation led to one of 2 conclusions: i. no revolution, as no social basis for one (revisionist) ii. revolution led by vanguard party (Bolsheviks) In HCC Lukacs favours (a), But this return to the dialectic on the level of philosophy and fundamental sociological analysis could not lead Lukacs, any more than it could lead Lenin in 1916 and later Gramsci given their perspective on the revolution and the social and political realities confronting them to call in question the experience of the preceding years, nor above all to work out a radical critique of the structure of the Bolshevik Party (the only party to have organized and led a victorious revolution) and to expose the dangers it held for both democracy and revolution. We can see therefore the dilemma whether conscious or unconscious which faced the three theorists who had rediscovered the dialectic (70). Goldmann asks: are these two positions the only choices now? No, he says, offering as justification an analysis of the historical period since Lukacs wrote the book (pages 77-84 of Goldmann); however, because Goldmann is writing in 1969-70 (on the eve of another major shift in capitalism, with the world oil crisis, rise of neoliberalism through Thatcher, Reagan and debt crisis), I wont discuss his analysis. 3. Goldmann suggests that the 2 sets of ideas outlined so far are the less important ones for our reading of HCC today. The third set of ideas is the core of the book. The hypothesis of a revolutionary proletariat makes class consciousness key: what is the process by which the proletariat class will move toward an authentic, non-integrated consciousness (Goldmann 69), i.e. a class consciousness not integrated into, and supportive of, the capitalist system? Goldmann has already identified where Lukacs stands on this: he favours the hypothesis of the revolutionary proletariat. What remains is to outline exactly how we should think of this. In his discussion of this set of ideas, Goldmann (71-6) is hard to follow (and uses an irritating example of transporting pianos), so I take only one point from him here: the distinction between individual consciousness and trans-individual consciousness, of which class consciousness is one type the most important inasmuch as they are the only trans-individual subject whose consciousness and action are directed to the organization of the sum of interhuman relationships and relationships between men and nature, with a view to either keeping them as they are [i.e. bourgeois class consciousness] or transforming them in a more or less radical manner [i.e. proletariat class consciousness] (72). Goldmann suggests that Lukacs does not focus on providing an explicit description of the relations between class consciousness and individual consciousness (71), although writers since Lukacs (especially the Frankfurt school) have done so. Now I turn from Goldmann on Lukacs to Lukacs himself. Lukacs heads the first essay of the book with a famous quote from Marx: The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. (1) This is the question of the relation between theory and practice what we need is to discover those features and definitions both of the theory and the ways of gripping the masses which convert the theory, the dialectical method, into a vehicle of revolution (2). This is only possible under certain conditions: when a historical situation has arisen in which a class must understand society if it is to assert itself; only when the fact that a class understands itself means that it understands society as a whole and when, in consequence, the class becomes both the subject and object of knowledge; in short, only when 2

these conditions are all satisfied will the unity of theory and practice, the precondition of the revolutionary function of the theory, become possible. Such a situation has in fact arisen with the entry of the proletariat into history (2-3). We will unpack this point later. To understand the function of theory is to understand the necessary basis of theory, which is Hegels dialectics it is necessary to extract dialectics, which is useful, from the rest of Hegels system of philosophy, which is mistaken. Lukacs argues that in Marxism, orthodoxy has nothing to do with accepting or rejecting Marxs individual theses; rather, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders (1). Dialectics is a continuous process of transition from one definition into the other. In consequence a one-sided and rigid causality must be replaced by interaction [between subject and object] (3). The most important such interaction is the dialectical relation between subject and object in the historical process (3). This is the key difference between metaphysics and dialectics: in all metaphysics the object remains untouched and unaltered so that thought remains contemplative and fails to become practical; while for the dialectical method the central problem is to change reality (3). Returning to the quote from Marx: the philosophers he refers to are the metaphysicians, and Lukacs is condemning his contemporary Marxist theorists who have returned to metaphysics and positivist sciencehe says it is precisely the dialectic that must be removed if one wishes to found a thorough-going opportunistic theory, a theory of evolution without revolution and of natural development into Socialism without any conflict (5). He talks about positivism (5), then how capitalism tends to produce a social structure thatencourages such views (5); it is in the nature of capitalism to process phenomena in this way (6) isolated facts, [and] separate, specialist disciplines (economics, law, etc.) (6) which are only able to examine fragments of reality without seeing them as part of a historical process; it is necessary for dialectical method to puncture the social illusion of positivist science by taking account of the historical character of the facts on which it is based (6). The facts of positivist science are precisely in their objective structure the products of a definite historical epoch, namely capitalism (7). Only in dialectics, which sees the isolated facts of social life as aspects of the historical process and integrates them in a totality, can knowledge of the facts hope to become knowledge of reality (8). Marxs dictum: The relations of production of every society form a whole is the methodological point of departure and the key to the historical understanding of social relations. (9) The methodology of the natural sciences [and the positivist social science inspired by them]rejects the idea of contradiction and antagonism in its subject matter. Ifcontradictions do spring up between particular theories, this only proves that our knowledge is as yet imperfectBut we maintain that in the case of social reality these contradictions are not a sign of the imperfect understanding of society; on the contrary they belong to the nature of reality itself and to the nature of capitalism. When the totality is known they will not be transcended and cease to be contradictions. Quite the reverse, they will be seen to be necessary contradictions arising out of the antagonisms of this system of production. When theory (as the knowledge of the whole) opens up the way to resolving these contradictions it does so by revealing the real tendencies of social evolution. For these are destined to effect a real resolution of the contradictions that have emerged in the course of history. (10) This is why positivist science is an ideological weapon of the bourgeoisie (10): because it imagines and represents capitalism as being predestined to eternal survival by the eternal laws of nature and reason (11). In such theory, history as a unified process (12) is unseen; and so the key task of theory cannot be achieved. Pages 12-13 clarify the meaning of totality and interaction. The objective forms of all social phenomena change constantly in the course of their ceaseless dialectical interactions with each other. The intelligibility of objects develops in proportion as we grasp their function in the totality to which they belong. This is why only the dialectical conception of totality can enable us to understand reality as a social process (13).

P15-18 deals with Hegels limit, namely his failure to overcome the duality of thought and being, of theory and practice, of subject and object (16); H was unable to penetrate to the real driving forces of history (17), namely the production and reproduction of real life (18) which, following what Lukacs says on page 15, I take to mean that a mode of production creates the forces that will lead to their replacement: Capitalist productionunder its aspect of continuous connected process or as a process of reproduction produces not only commodities, not only surplus value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation itself, on the one hand the capitalist and on the other, the labourer. (Marx, quoted on p 15) the second of these is that which will change the system. Recall on pages 2-3 the set of conditions required for the unity of theory and practice, the precondition of the revolutionary function of the theory, [to] become possible, and Lukacs assertion that Such a situation has in fact arisen with the entry of the proletariat into history, quoting Marx: When the proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the existing social orderit does no more than disclose the secret of its own existence, for it is the effective dissolution of that order (3). P18 takes this point further, and in doing so gets to the point of the whole book: The premise of dialectical materialism is, we recall: It is not mens consciousness that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness. Capitalism turns man into a social being for the first time, having destroyed both the spatio-temporal barriers between different lands and territories and also the legal partitions between the different estates (Stande). In its universe there is a formal equality of all menThus the recognition that society is reality becomes possible only under capitalismBut the class which carried out this revolution did so without consciousness of its function (19). The class consciousness of the proletariat is discovered only after they have already come into existence; the proletariat is a class-initself before it is a class-for-itself. Under what circumstances was the class consciousness of the proletariat discovered? This was only possible because for the proletariat the total knowledge of its class-situation was a vital necessity, a matter of life and death because its class situation becomes comprehensible only if the whole of society can be understood; and because this understanding is the inescapable precondition of its actions. Thus the unity of theory and practice is only the reverse side of the social and historical position of the proletariat. From its own point of view self-knowledge coincides with knowledge of the whole so that the proletariat is at one and the same time the subject and object of its own knowledge (20). What, then, is the relationship between the development of class consciousness and the revolutionary party? Rosa Luxemburg perceived at a very early stage that the [party] organization is much more likely to be the effect than the cause of the revolutionary processOnly when the party has fought for this trust [of the spontaneously revolutionary masses] and earned it can it become the leader of the revolution. For only then will the masses spontaneously and instinctively press forward with all their energies towards the party and towards their own class consciousness. (41-2) The unity of theory and practice exists not only in theory but also for practice. We have seen that 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. It is likewise true that the party and the individual fighter can only really take possession of their theory if they are able to bring this unity into their praxis (43) They [the opportunists, those who take position (b)] argue that if the Communists foresee defeat they must either desist from every form of action or else brand themselves as unscrupulous adventurers, catastrophe-mongers and terrorists. In their intellectual and moral degradation they are simply incapable of seeing themselves and their action as an aspect of the totality and of the process: the defeat as the necessary prelude to victory. (43)

Other useful notes from HCC In the Preface he talks about how he was influenced by Sorel who also influenced Gramsci. xvi The books most striking featre is that, contrary to the subjective intentions of its author, objectively it falls in with a tendency in the history of Marxism that has taken many different forms. All of them have one thing in commonthey strike at the very roots of Marxian ontology. I refer to the tendency to view Marxism exclusively as a theory of society, as social philosophy, and hence to ignore or repudiate as a theory of natureMy book takes up a very definite stand on this issue. I argue in a number of places that nature is a societal category and the whole drift of the book tends to show that only a knowledge of society and the men who live in it is of relevance to philosophy. xvii [ In my book] It is true that the attempt is made to explain all ideological phenomena by reference to their basis in economics but, despite this, the purview of economics is narrowed down because its basic Marxist category, labour as the mediator of the metabolic interaction between society and nature, is missingIt means that the most important real pillars of the Marxist view of the world disappear and the attempt to deduce the ultimate revolutionary implications of Marxism in as radical a fashion as possible is deprived of a genuinely economic foundation. It is self-evident that this means the disappearance of the ontological objectivity of nature upon which this process of change is based. But it also means the disappearance of the interaction between labour as seen from a genuinely materialist standpoint and the evolution of the men who labour. xxii To assess the impact of the book at that time, and also its relevance today, we must consider one problem that surpasses in its importance all questions of detail. This is the question of alienation, which, for the first time since Marx, is treated as central to the revolutionary critique of capitalism and which has its theoretical and methodological roots in the Hegelian dialecticAs to the way in which the problem was actually dealt with, it is not hard to see today that it was treated in purely Hegelian terms. In particular its ultimate philosophical foundation is the identical subject-object that realizes itself in the historical processin HCCthis process is socio-historical and it culminates when the proletariat reaches this stage in its class consciousness, thus becoming the identical subject-object of history. xxxvi In the process of reading the Marx manuscript [Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, which he read in 1930] all the idealist prejudices of History and Class Consciousness were swept to one sideI can still remember even today the overwhelming effect produced in me by Marxs statement that objectivity was the primary material attribute of all things and relations. This links up with the idea already mentioned that objectification is a natural means by which man masters the world and as such it can be either a positive or a negative fact. By contrast, alienation is a special variant of that activity that becomes operative in definite social conditions. This completely shattered the theoretical foundations of what had been the particular achievement of HCC. xxxviii When, later on, the errors enshrined in the book [HCC] were converted into fashionable notions, I resisted the attempt to identify these with my own ideas xlii It is essential that we remind ourselves constantly of Lenins importance as a theoretician for the development of Marxism. This has been obscured for many people by his overwhelming impact as a politician. The immediate practical importance of each of his utterances for the particular moment in which they are made is always so great as to blind some people to the fact that, in the last resort, he is only so effective in practice because of his greatness, profundity and fertility as a theoretician. xliv-xlvi

Marxs view of the importance of Hegels dialectic is of lesser moment here than the substantive significance of this method for Marxismthis significance had been underestimated even by Marxistsa whole series of categories of central importance and in constant use stem directly from Hegels Logica greater knowledge of Hegels writings is utterly indispensableMy aim is to stimulate discussion and, as it were, to put the issue [of Hegelian dialectics] back on the agenda from the point of view of methodto make the problem of dialectical method the focus of discussion as an urgent living problem. 1 Orthodoxy is not the belief in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a sacred book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. 2 Second para is key, especially the emergence of consciousnesspractical possibility. 3 [Engels opposes metaphysics and dialectics in Anti-Duhring] But he does not even mention the most vital interactionto change reality. the destruction of a totalizing point of viewthe ethics of pure intentions. (39) the active and practical side of class consciousness, its true essence, can only become visible in its authentic form when the historical process imperiously requires it to come into force, i.e. when an acute crisis in the economy drives it to action (40).