History and class consciousness Book

I have a sense that any review of this book will be tantamount to shouting into the void. To the extent though, that Lukács' ideas, or ideas built on his ideas, have permeated our consciousness, I think it is profitable to reflect on them; to engage with them in order to determine whether or not they have any validity. To the extent that this is still required reading in certain courses in American universities, such reflection seems paramount. Thus this is not a review--it is rather some personal reflections on these ideas.

First, I think it is important to mention that I believe Marx and Engels had insights into the social structure of men and how that is tied to economic realities. Many people have felt that those insights were weighty enough to base a revolution on, though personally, I do not believe that history has borne this out. This, then, could lead to the claim that Marxism is still a work in progress, and that's where a figure like Lukacs comes in.

Lukács acts as a kind of Pauline figure to the gospels of Marx and Engels in these essays--his determination to find, in their writings, the answers to any theoretical question (it was there all along!) sticks out like a new convert's enthusiasm for a revealed truth. The end result of this was to convince me that Lukacs was going to uphold Marx and Engels as either correct or prophetic in every case, no matter how Procrustean his argument had to be.

One of the important concepts in the book is reification. A dictionary definition would be 'the process of making the abstract concrete', but in a wider sense--and the sense that Lukács gives it--is the illusion that the abstract rules of any given society are 'natural' or 'absolute'. Anyone growing up in a particular society with its particular rules will blindly believe they are the only valid way to live: irrefutable--even if they don't like those rules. Thus, such a person would be 'reified'. Presumably in all societies, but particularly in capitalist societies, people of all classes fall into the illusion that their mores, laws, taboos, etc are all bedrock, when (according to the theory), they are actually arbitrary constructs designed to reinforce the current structure of things. Capitalists (the bourgeoisie) themselves are under this illusion of irrefutability, and the fact that this class benefits from these rules prevents them from ever being the class that will change it, or awaken from the illusion (They'll always choose the blue pill).

The proletariat (the wage-slaves, the interchangeable cogs in the method of production, the workers whose time and energy is commodified) are the only ones with the capability to grasp reality as it really is--after they shake off their reification and develop a class consciousness, that is. This consciousness evolves over a period of time and is exacerbated during times of crisis (such as the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020). In other words, crises elicit the understanding that the society they live in is not natural, and that no cosmetic change (or stimulus check) is going to fix the underlying problems.

But consciousness is useless without action--specifically the action that furthers the revolutionary goal of the proletariat: to sweep capitalist methods and bourgeoisie society into the dustbin of history. This particular type of action is known as praxis. It is only when consciousness is paired with praxis that the theoretical antinomies of Kantean philosophy is superseded, as the proletariat become both movers and the moved; both the thing, and the thing-in-itself. The logic chain that Lukács uses to prove this is entirely too abstract to summarize--I don't grant him his argument, but for the sake of moving on, we'll say that he proves it.

The upshot is that the workers are given not only a theoretical basis but a logical justification for their revolution--workers who were dissatisfied (enraged) with the inherent problems and institutional unfairness of the Capitalist system are given an impeccable argument as to why it not only can be changed, but that it should be changed, in the most extreme manner possible, so that none of it remains. The very thing that they (the proletariat, the disaffected) would have liked to do anyway (assume more power in society) is given the scientific equivalent of a moral crusade.

But Lukács makes it clear that, unfortunately, Capitalism won't simply wither away in the same way that feudalism and absolutism gave way. Every crisis will propel capital to a new solution, propitiating it's soul-destroying alienation forever, or else result in a war amongst its different strata that will eventually end in barbarism. Only the proletariat, with its newly awakened consciousness can intercede and save the world from itself by destroying every vestige of capitalism. It is also unfortunate that consciousness will not arrive to all members of the proletariat at once: in fact, many will have to be steered into it by those already enlightened.

By the 1920s, Lukács is tweaking his arguments to fit the facts of the new situation in world communism--the Russian revolution was in the rear-view mirror, and not everything had unfolded as anticipated. The Changing Function of Historical Materialism and Towards a Methodology of the Problem of Organisation (sic) [of the Communist Party] should, by their very titles, indicate that theory had failed as an oracle. But such tweaking of orthodoxy, as a result of experience, would be somewhat understandable if the accompanying commentary were simply 'we were wrong and we've learned how to do it better'. Due to the forces unleashed by the revolution, it becomes, 'we were wrong when we shot your family before, but rest assured that when we shoot you now, it'll be because we've learned from our past mistakes.' To shore up the idea of 'learning as we go', Lukács quotes Trotsky (and thereby inadvertently dating the essay) to illustrate: "...the fundamental Bolshevik prejudice consists precisely in the idea that one can only learn to ride when one is sitting firmly on a horse." Perhaps--but when one encourages a disaffected mob to use violence to overthrow the established structures of society, you are not riding a horse: it's more like trying to control a car with no steering and no brakes as it careens down a mountainside.

And that raises the aspect that neither Lukács nor any other Marxist I know of confronts: Grant them all their theories, grant them all their logic, but the inescapable fact of unleashing the anger of any group as large as the working class (or any group, for that matter) will always result in one of two things--either it will be an indiscriminate mob or it will be hijacked by demagogues whose interests may or may not intersect with ideology. Empirically and anecdotally, I know of no instance where Marxist revolutions have produced any leaders who do not eventually become self-interested or dictatorial or both, subverting the original aims of those who unleashed the power of workers. That some of these leaders were Ceaușescus and some were Titos makes no difference

I freely grant that unregulated capitalism is an awful thing, but there is no solution in Lukács' brand of Marxism either. George Orwell coined the word doublethink in his book 1984. One of the examples is a motto of Oceania: "Freedom is Slavery". This passage by Lukacs comes from his last essay in the book:

"...it becomes completely clear that the forms of freedom in bourgeois organisations (sic) are nothing but a 'false consciousness' of an actual unfreedom; that is to say, a pattern of consciousness in which man contemplates from a position of formal freedom his own integration in a system of alien compulsions and confuses this formal 'freedom' of his contemplation with an authentic freedom."

Marxist theories have become so mainstream it's almost hard to see it--just as Lukács claimed it was almost impossible for those stuck in capitalist societies to see the bonds that kept them chained to it. One of the fascinating aspects of reading this book is that it becomes easier to see how many movements of the 20th century--even up to today--borrowed from these ideas. As a dilettante historian, I found reading the philosophy behind these idea especially valuable for gaining insight into both the attitudes of personalities from the past (why they might have done the things they did) and also seeing the links to today's power struggles. In that regard, it was a five-star experience. In that I categorically reject Lukács conclusions, it would rate no stars. Proceed with caution, is my advice.