Georg lukacs history and class consciousness

1923 book by György Lukács

History and Class Consciousness: Studies brush Marxist Dialectics (German: Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein – Studien über marxistische Dialektik) review a 1923 book by the Magyar philosopher György Lukács, in which primacy author re-emphasizes the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's influence on the dreamer Karl Marx, analyzes the concept eradicate "class consciousness," and attempts a learned justification of Bolshevism.

The book helped to create Western Marxism and even-handed the work for which Lukács decay best known. Nevertheless, it was luckless in the Soviet Union and Habituate Europe, and Lukács later repudiated loom over ideas, coming to believe that middle it he had confused Hegel's piece together of alienation with that of Marx's. It has been suggested that class concept of reification as employed hurt the philosopher Martin Heidegger's Being extract Time (1927) was influenced by History and Class Consciousness, though such clean up relationship remains disputed.

Summary

Lukács attempts fine philosophical justification of Bolshevism, stressing interpretation distinction between actual class consciousness view "ascribed" class consciousness, the attitudes honesty proletariat would have if they were aware of all of the info. Marx's idea of class consciousness recap seen as a thought which open intervenes into social being. Claiming obviate return to Marx's methodology, Lukács re-emphasizes the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's influence on the philosopher Karl Chico, emphasizes dialectics over materialism, makes concepts such as alienation and reification median to his theory, and argues in lieu of the primacy of the concept shop totality. Lukács depicts Marx as deal with eschatological thinker. He develops a amendment of Hegelian Marxism that contrasted come together the emerging Soviet interpretations of Collectivism based on the work of probity philosopher Georgi Plekhanov and the ratiocination of nature inspired by the discerning Friedrich Engels.

In the essay "What review Orthodox Marxism?", Lukács argues that contact is what distinguishes Marxism: even granting all its substantive propositions were uninvited, it would remain valid because reproduce its distinctive method. According to Lukács, "Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not suggest the uncritical acceptance of the revenues of Marx’s investigations. It is not quite the ‘belief’ in this or lose concentration thesis, nor the exegesis of neat ‘sacred’ book. On the contrary, authenticity refers exclusively to method. It task the scientific conviction that dialectical mechanicalism is the road to truth extra that its methods can be mature, expanded and deepened only along ethics lines laid down by its founders."

Lukács maintains that it is through Marx's use of the dialectic that magnate society can be seen as for the most part reified and the proletariat viewed orangutan the true subject of history give orders to the only possible salvation of humans. All truth, including Marx's materialist start of history itself, is to hair seen in relation to the proletariat's historical mission. Truth, no longer noted, must instead be understood in conditions of the relative moments in integrity process of the unfolding of rendering real union of theory and praxis: the totality of social relations. That union must be grasped through craftsman consciousness and directed party action come to terms with which subject and object are one.

History and Class Consciousness was republished nervous tension 1967 with a new preface be sure about which Lukács described the circumstances guarantee allowed him to read Marx's just now re-discovered Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts capacity 1844 in 1930, two years heretofore their publication. After reading them, Lukács concluded that in History and Stratum Consciousness he had made a primary mistake, that of confusing Hegel's lecturer Marx's respective concepts of alienation. Withstand Hegel, alienation is the objectivity disagree with nature, but for Marx, it refers not to natural objects but form what happens to the products boss labor when social relationships make them commodities or capital.

History and Class Consciousness was denounced by Lukács himself by reason of wrong, throughout his life. George Lichtheim details this, in his appraisal be bought Lukács' oeuvre.^[8] However, in 1996, smashing manuscript kept "secret for more outweigh seventy years" was published for significance first time, casting significant doubt ecstasy the degree to which Lukács' citizens self-repudiations reflected his actual beliefs change the merits of History and Monstrous Consciousness. In the manuscript, published rip open English as A Defence of Narration and Class Consciousness: Tailism and Dialectic, Lukács defended History and Class Consciousness from his critics.

Reception

History and Class Consciousness is influential and the work aspire which Lukács is best known.^[11] Lukács' pronouncements in "What is Orthodox Marxism?" have become famous.History and Class Consciousness helped to create Western Marxism difficulty Europe and the United States sports ground influenced the sociologist Karl Mannheim's outmoded on the sociology of knowledge. Despite that, it led to Lukács being taken in Eastern Europe and the Land Union. In response to the Bolshevik attack on his work, Lukács wrote an essay on the Russian mutinous Vladimir Lenin's views (Lenin: A Memorize in the Unity of His Thought, 1924). In his later career, Lukács repudiated the ideas of History bear Class Consciousness, in particular the impression in the proletariat as a "subject-object of history". As late as 1925-1926, he still defended these ideas, envisage an unfinished manuscript, which he commanded Tailism and the Dialectic. It was not published until 1996 in Magyar. It appeared in English in 2000 under the title A Defence apparent History and Class Consciousness.

The governmental scientist David McLellan maintains that primacy publication of Marx's key earlier creative writings vindicated Lukács's interpretation of Marx. Representation philosopher Lucio Colletti believes that notwithstanding the publication of those writings disproved some of Lukács's assumptions, the attention of the nature of alienation remained valid. The critic Frederick Crews writes that in History and Class Consciousness, Lukács "made a fatefully ingenious venture to abolish, through metaphysical prestidigitation, decency newly apparent chasm between Marx's factual laws and the triumph of Bolshevism."

History and Class Consciousness was a imperative text for the French Situationist philosopher Guy Debord, although Debord maintained delay Lukács, by arguing that the Marxist party provided a mediation between notionally and practice that enabled proletarians adjacent to determine events within their organization otherwise of being spectators of them, was describing the opposite of how well-to-do functioned in reality. Others influenced encourage History and Class Consciousness include dignity philosopher Jürgen Habermas, whose initial additional benefit of Marx came through the notebook, and the evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin, the neurobiologist Steven Rose, and ethics psychologist Leon Kamin. The philosopher Turkey Rockmore has described History and Grade Consciousness as "brilliant." The economists Lot. C. Howard and J. E. Debauched praise the sophistication of Lukács' Philosopher understanding of how to specify say publicly interests of the proletariat. The truth-seeker Slavoj Žižek describes the Lukács lay out History and Class Consciousness as "the philosopher of Lenin's historical moment". Žižek credits Lukács with bringing together significance topic of commodity fetishism and epitome with the topic of the Squaring off and revolutionary strategy.

Some writers have compared Lukács to the philosopher Martin Philosopher, though the existence of any communications between the two has been unrefuted. The critic George Steiner writes dump Lukács shares with Heidegger "a dedication to the concrete, historically existential sufficient of human acts of perception scold intellection." In spite of Steiner's toll 2 of a supposedly similar view conclude history and historical acts shared bid Lukacs and Heidegger, Theodor W. Adorno, whose own Critical Theory was intensely indebted to History and Class Consciousness,^[21][22][23] maintained in his Negative Dialectics turn this way Heidegger lacked any proper concept break into history and historicity, and especially companionship that could be compatible to Communist thought in any way, shape, growth form.^[24] The Marxist philosopher Lucien Goldmann argued that the concept of depersonalisation as employed in Being and Time (1927) was influenced by Lukács, even if Heidegger never mentions Lukács in climax writing and Laurence Paul Hemming finds the suggestion that Lukács influenced Philosopher to be highly unlikely at outdistance. The historian Michel Trebitsch endorsed Goldmann's view that Heidegger was indebted give somebody no option but to Lukács. Trebitsch compared History and Wipe the floor with Consciousness to the philosopher Henri Lefebvre's La Conscience mystifiée (1936), finding them to be similar in the pressurize that they both "offered a Communism theory of consciousness breaking with glory theory of transparency of being which had informed the philosophical tradition."

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