The Political Itinerary of Georg Lukacs (3rd and concluding instalment)

[p026] The Political Itinerary of Georg Lukacs (Third and concluding instalment) IN OUR analysis of Lukacs’ itinerary we have arrived at his book History and Class Conscious- ness. It seems to me important to devote the whole of the present article to it. As.a preliminary, how- ever, I must reply to certain remarks made about the first two articles. Some have expressed the opinion that it is wrong to criticise points of view expressed by Lukacs a long time ago which he now repudiates. I do not agree. Marxist criticism does not content itself with a simple refutation of such and such a wrong opinion. It must take the erroneous thought in its development, follow its evolution, demonstrate its internal contradictions and links, penetrate through to its root in order to grasp its organic character, its essence. Now such a self-criticism has never been undertaken by Lukacs, a fact which allowed him to have funda- mentally the same theoretical position that he took in History and Class Consciousness whilst— later—criticising the idealist ‘aspects’ of the book. But we must go beyond the ‘aspects’ to reach the essential. In this way, criticism, from 4 single refutation or opposition which it was previously, becomes a real development. Moreover, this problem is not limited to the person of Lukacs. Against the betrayals of Stalin- ism and the painful experiences of its practice and its theoretical falsifications, numerous theoretical undertakings claim to be the bearers of ‘true Marxism’. The relative weakness of the Fourth International has allowed these attempts to be made by petty-bourgeois left intellectuals, gener- ally ‘disillusioned’ as to the role of the proletariat, and, by their nature, mistaking bladders for lanterns. Their main concern is to discover ‘real Marxism’, and their attempts find much support in the bourgeoisie: they also benefit from the benign attitude of the bureaucracy which gradually adopts these ‘theoretical’ lucubrations. Centrists of every variety then hurry, dazzled, to put their stamp of authenticity on these ‘theories’. It is on such a composite and very 24 fertile dung-heap that Lukacs’ popularity has grown. The re-publication of History and Class Con- sciousness (in France 1967, in Britain 1971) and the great amount of publicity surrounding this book have played a particularly important role in this concerted attack against Marxism. Its extent is shown by the fact that criticism of Lukacs still meets with a certain resistance even among revo- lutionaries who have been influenced by what Axelos, for instance, wrote: according to him, History and Class Consciousness is ‘one of the masterpieces of Marxist thought of the 20th century’. We must therefore give a detailed refuta- tion of this lying statement. On the Circumstances of the Book’s Birth An analysis of Lukacs’ History and Class Con- sciousness cannot consider the book as a thing in itself; we must place its birth and content in a definite historical framework. This framework is the condition of the class struggle at that time and also the theoretical essays linked to that struggle. It is only through such an analysis that Lukacs’ conception becomes comprehensible, and at the same time loses the aura of originality that his enthusiastic, but ignorant, admirers of today try to give it. The deep crisis provoked by the imperialist First World War and collapse of the Second Inter- national could not be entirely overcome by the October Revolution and the founding of the Third International. The revolutions in Germany, Hun- gary and Italy were unsuccessful; the majority of the proletariat remained under the influence of reformist social democracy. In such a situation, multiple attempts were made, politically and theoretically, to ‘palliate’ this state of affairs in the name of a demand to go ‘further’ in the struggle against social-democracy than the Third Inter- Fourth international Winter 1972/73

[p027] national had done, according to the authors of these attempts. Their roots lay in a petty-bourgeois impatience closely linked to a distrust of the proletarian masses. Politically, this tendency was expressed in ultra-leftism, or a despair which pushed its representatives openly towards the bourgeoisie. In both cases, they spoke of the in- Capacity of the proletariat to resolve the problems of humanity, or at least the crisis of the proletariat, thus identifying it with its reformist leadership. In fact, they did not set about just this leadership, but rather the whole of the labour movement, whose history and continuity they did not recog- nise. Theoretically they directed their attacks against the dogmatism of Social-Democracy that they saw essentially and above all residing in its vulgar materialism, Although this critique, along with that against Social Democracy’s political opportunism, was entirely justified, they went so far as to eliminate materialism to the benefit of various forms of the neo-Kantian theory of knowledge. We cannot here take up an analysis of ultra- leftism in. general, and Lukacs in ‘particular, which was done in my previous article. History and Class Consciousness is its theoretical corollary. As such, this book is not separate from the other books of this type, seen especially in Germany 1923, when Lukacs’ book appeared, was also the year when Marxism and Philosophy by Karl Korsch appeared, which also fought for the recognition of ‘the reality of forms of conscious- ness and intellectual life’ against ‘vulgar’ Marxism. He too wanted to ‘re-establish the theory of spiritual realities’, like Lukacs, with the help of Hegel’s philosophy, or rather Kant’s. Concretely, what was under discussion was the relationship between consciousness and being, which is also at the centre of Lukacs’ preoccupations. Korsch declared that *...on this... point, the conclusions of my book are in many ways close to George Lukacs’ dialectical studies... (and despite some differences)...J think I am objectively alongside Lukacs in a critical posi- tion with regard to the old and new Marxist orthodoxy...” (Karl Korsch, Marxisme at Philosophie, Editions de Minuit, Paris 1964 pp. 22-23, not in the English edition.) An examination of Korsch’s position would, regrettably, take us too far. It is enough to recall that later Korsch openly abandoned Marxism. On the other hand, we must stress that because some groups were advocating these positions, Zinoviev and Bukharin at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern criticised Lukacs and Korsch, character- ising their ideas as anti-Marxist and idealist. How- ever, this criticism did not go further—despite the more developed articles of Deborin and others— than a limited number of summary. statements. This fact enabled Lukacs, in quickly repudiating his book, to make an equally summary and super- ficial ‘self-criticism’ whereas an analysis would have forced him to real discussion and a real clarification; such a clarification was necessary and is still necessary today. Political Itinerary of Lukacs (part 3) For Lukacs’ aim is nothing more or less than ‘to understand the essence of Marx’ method... an interpretation, an exposition of Marx’ theory as Marx understood it.’ (History and Class Consciousness, Merlin Press, pp. xlii-xliii, Lukacs’ emphasis.) This intellectual impulse is so strong that it even drives him against ‘certain statements of Engels’. For—oh modesty! —‘the author... is defending orthodox Marxism against Engels him- self’ (Ibid xlii). In the preface, this ‘Marxist’ has already stated ‘that in Marxist theory and method the true method by which to understand society and history has finally been discovered’. It follows ‘that it must be constantly applied to itself’, for ‘its pre-eminent aim is knowledge of the present’. We can see clearly the direction this ‘interpretation’ takes—against Engels. According to Lukacs, knowledge is a category apart, con- sidered in itself, for it is the aim of the Marxist method. As if Marx had never written that the task is no longer to explain the world but to change it. Later we shall see that Lukacs does not mean it in this way, but in the sense of distinguishing the superior role of knowledge. There is nothing surprising in the fact that Lukacs takes up arms against the ‘vulgar’ materialists (it should be noted that throughout his book, materialists invariably receive the epithet ‘vulgar’ or ‘mechanical’), who believe in Marx’ own characterisation (in the preface to Capital) of his materialist relationship with Hegel. But if knowledge is considered in itself, if it must be applied to itself, and if that is the real interpre- tation of Marx, Lukacs can state that ‘it is com- mon knowledge that Marx himself conceived this idea of writing a dialectics’. For—such is Lukacs’ understanding of Marx—even if he did not con- ceive of such a plan, he would have had to do so. Fortunately and despite the ‘vulgar’ Engels, Lukacs has arrived. But he is modest. In his Preface he does not promise this ‘dialectics’. Not yet. He only Proposes to open up a discussion on the dialectical method to establish the real relationship between Marx and Hegel. Such a claim deserved more attention from the Third International. Mere refutation did not go far enough in answering so ambitious an enter- prise. It did not allow the demonstration of its organic kinship with the conception shared by various groups of communist intellectuals, but particularly with the attacks of bourgeois intellec- tuals against dialectical materialism. Of these I shall mention only Karl Mannheim, Lukacs’ former friend. Mannheim also came from the neo-Kantian circle of Berlin, Heidelburg and Freiburg, along with Lukacs and Korsch. But, as against these, he did not join the Communist Party. He remained a bourgeois. He consequently did not have to dis- guise his neo-Kantianism with ‘Marxist’ phrase- ology. He had no complex preventing him from openly developing what remained more or less hidden with the Korsch of those days and Lukacs, It is revealing that 1922 was the year he had 25 Eee CCOCt*t~C~* t

[p028] published his Structural Analysis of the Theory of Knowledge from which he developed to elabo- rate Sociology of Knowledge. This conception, proceeds, just as all of History and Class Con- sciousness and Korsch’s books do, from the prob- lem of the relationship between being and con- sciousness, object and subject. But Mannheim is more consistent: at the point where—as we shall see—Lukacs stops half-way, he goes further, so far as to raise consciousness (and with it, the intellectuals) to such a determinant position that the sociology of knowledge can take finished form. But this difference between Lukacs and Mannheim is not fundamental. It is only quantitative. Therein lies the umbilical cord which theoretically links Lukacs to Mannheim, that is to the bourgeoisie. This is a brief sketch of the framework in which Lukacs’ book must be placed. It is part of a huge attempt to take the labour movement beyond the limits of Marxist ‘dogmatism’. Exactly the same as the present attempts. This explains Lukacs’ attraction nowadays. A critique of his book is therefore as pressing as at the time of its appearance. On the Dialectics of Nature As he promised in the Preface, Lukacs straight away launches a frontal attack on Engels. Under various forms and on different subjects, this attack really constitutes the pivot of his book. His pre- tention to present Marx’s ‘real’ thought against the dogmatists thus takes the form of a separa- tion, if not an opposition, between Marx and Engels. This attempt, which in places becomes really savage, unmasks and characterizes his funda- mental position. Obviously, from this point of view, the first target is precisely the dialectic in nature, developed in particular by Engels; for it is on the rejection or recognition of the dialectics in nature that one’s conception of the essence of dialectics depends. So Lukacs writes : ‘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—extended the method to apply also to nature.’ (Op cit, note p. 24) We note in passing that Lukacs here puts Hegel in the dock alongside Engels; they are banished from the realm of those who understand dialectics. This gives us an idea of the size of the horse mounted by the real dialectician, Lukacs The problem of the dialectics of nature is of capital importance. It is no accident that an entire legion of ‘theoreticians’ has been -attack- ing, and today with redoubled effort, dialectics in nature. Particularly active in this attack are certain so-called ‘left’ intellectuals who in other fields have a rather suspect predilection for dia- lectics, The basis of the problem rests in this, that those who reject the dialectic in nature are opposed to its universality, to the fact that the dialectic and its laws are inherent in existence no matter what form it takes. They only ‘recog- nize’ it in thought, or in society made by man. What emerges clearly from this conception is that it makes the dialectic derive from man, as his creation, and thus leaves the door wide open to idealism. In fact, this is the foundation of idealism. For, at one blow, those who deny dia- lectics in nature establish a dualism: on the one hand there is society, and thought, where dialectics are valid, and on the other hand there is nature where there is no dialectic. So this dualism rejects as a principle the organic unity of the world, the universe. Hence, inevitably, we arrive at idealism, since the unity of the world, the unity of the universe, rests in its materiality, as the slandered Engels explained. The supporters of this position are particularly modest and laconic when the question is asked: if there is no dialectic in nature, what then is to be put in its place? As far as Lukacs is concerned he quite simply refuses to answer the question. This great ‘dialectician’ excludes the examination of nature from his field of investigation. Is it not surprising that the one who claims to explain the foundations of dialectics treats mature as a negligible quantity? To the decisive question, by what method must we begin to explain nature, Lukacs answers, ‘Unfortunately, it is not possible to undertake a detailed analysis of these questions here.’ (Ibid p. 24.) I must immediately add that it remained impos- sible throughout his lifetime. In other words, his position against dialectics in nature remained. fundamentally the same. Now if there is no dialectic in nature, there are not many avenues left open—only two possibili- ties: either run back to God in his theological or ‘scientific’ form, or adapt the developed concep- tion based on Newton’s mechanics, behind which, again, God can be found. Lukacs carefully avoids this pitfall by renouncing any explanation. But we shall follow him right into his last retreat. On what basis does he oppose the dialectic in nature? Because: ‘the crucial determinants of dialectics—the inter- action of subject and object, the unity of theory and practice . . . etc.—are absent from our knowledge of nature.’ (Ibid) Almost as many mistakes as there are words! Firstly because these relations are not the ‘crucial determinants’ of dialectics. They raise precisely the problem of the opposition between materialism and idealism: in themselves subject and object can have as much an idealist relationship as a materialist one.. Consequently, they can be given a crucial place in dialectics only on condition that the dialectic is envisaged only as a method of thought, born and developed in itself. Effectively this is Lukacs’ conception. He sets out his aim : ‘We must extract the practical essence of the theory, starting from the theory and from its relation to its object.’ (This passage is wrongly translated in the English edition p. 18.) Fourth International Winter 1972/73

[p029] For this reason he attacks Engels’ writings. He finds that ‘this aspect is nowhere treated in them. . . . He contrasts the ways in which concepts are formed in dialectics as opposed to metaphysics.’ (Ibid, p. 20.) If we strip this statement of its terrible neo- Kantian slang, the unfortunate thing, according to Lukacs, rests in this: Engels opposes the dialectic which is in the essence of things to a method which purports to exist within itself, Now, Lukacs continues: in the dialectical method, ‘the most vital interaction (is) the dialectical relation between subject and object in the process of history’, and Engels’ error is this, that in ‘Anti-Duhring’, this problem ‘is not even mentioned . . . let alone given the prominence it deserves’. (Ibid). But the subject- object relationship is the decisive question of materialism. Engels has a firm materialist position in this sphere, and it is this position Lukacs attacks in reproaching Engels for not diluting the materialist relationship between subject and object into an indeterminate, supposedly dialectical rela- tionship. Finally, it is false to say that these ‘determina- tions do not exist in our knowledge of nature’. Some comment is required here: Lukacs speaks of a knowledge of nature which he accuses of not being dialectical. The ignorance of the natural sciences at a time when they are bringing major discoveries definitively proving that our knowledge of nature, and consequently nature itself, can only be dialectical—such crass ignorance is rather sur- prising in a ‘corrector’ of Engels and Hegel. Probably to correct this crying ‘error’ of his youth, Lukacs later condescended to recognize the dia- lectic in the natural sciences. But as to nature itself, for him it remains non-dialectical. Finally, it is equally false to state that these reciprocal. actions do not exist in nature itself, I shall return to this problem. But I must remark here that such a statement is valid only if man is excluded from nature by mechanically opposing him to it. To give a sounder base to his hostility to the dialectics of nature, Lukacs undertakes a syste- matic attack against the natural sciences. From the fact that the sciences begin to examine facts by isolating them, this illustrious ‘dialectician’ deduces that they only busy themselves with these isolated facts. Whereas it is well known — and Lenin showed this in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism —that physicists, chemists and other ‘scholars concerned with nature can only conduct their researches as dialecticians. (It is only in the explanations or philosophical generalizations of their researches that they repudiate the dialectic). With this duplicity, characteristic of the greater part of Lukacs’ statement, he quite freely assimil- ates the sciences to capitalist society. According to Lukaes facts are, ‘... precisely in their objective structure the products of a definite historical epoch, namely capitalism. Thus when “science” maintains that the manner in which data immediately present themselves . . . is the appropriate starting point for the formation of scientific concepts, it thereby takes its stand simply and dogmatically on the basis of capitalist society.’ (Ibid, p. 7.) Political Itinerary of Lukacs (part 3) Me The method of scientific investigation is here identified with fragmented thought, a product of capitalist society, Moreover, in order to strengthen his attack, Lukacs identifies these ‘separate facts’ with physical constants, for it must be borne in mind that ‘scientific exactitude presupposes that the elements remain constant’ (Ibid, No. p. 24- 25). Here we have an extraordinary confusion, the result first of all of a preconceived hostility to the dialectic and the natural sciences, and then of ignorance. The notion of a constant in science is not at all the same as facts imagined by Lukacs to be rigid and immovable. What is more, the fundamental physical constants such as the speed of light, the elementary electric charge, Planck’s constant, etc. have, in their very essence, the eminently dialectical characteristic that they are susceptible to variation; to such a point that there are physical theories according to which, with time, there is a variation of these fundamental constants, But there is an even more important fact: all the great theories of modern physics operate with these fundamental constants, and the heart of these theories is precisely the dialectic. Thus, constants are inseparable from the dialec- tical movement shown by the invariance of these constants. It is precisely the invariation of the speed of light which has allowed us to explain the non-constant universe by the theory of relativity, in which the invariance of so fundamental a physical notion as time is abolished. Thus, by denying the dialectics of nature, Lukacs inevitably arrives at a mechanical, non-dialectical thought which separates the unity of opposites by making an absolute of one of its terms. It could be, however, that he was not thinking of fundamental constants in speaking of elements being ‘constant’. But what then does he mean by elements? Those of Mendeleev’s table or Euclidean geometry? Precision is not the strong point of this philosopher. In any event the closer we get to these ‘elements’ the more we see that their invari- ance is quite relative. For example the elements of Euclidean geometry cease to be true with that of Riehmann: in our physical universe, the latter con- forms to the curvature of space in the general theory of relativity. Lukacs’ conception of a science which sought to ‘grasp facts in their purity’, the foundation of this being ‘the way in which facts are immediately given’, is a malevolent fabrication. The whole of quantitative mechanics, for example, is a thorough- going refutation of this statement. It is precisely this theory which grasps facts as semi-facts (if such an expression may be used), and which ela- borates a mathematical symbolism to take account of facts incomprehensible in their unity. Heisen- berg’s famous ‘uncertainty principle’, which formu- lates the unity of an undulatory and at the same time corpuscular movement of particles by an uncertainty of their relations, well expresses the dialectic of nature and unmasks Lukacs. The author of History and Class Consciousness wrote his book at a time when the theory of relativity at least was known to the general public. Lukacs’ anti-dialectical manner of opposing, 27

[p030] from this point of view, society to nature appears here even more clearly; he declares that the natural sciences must eliminate contradictions, whereas contradictions in the social sciences reflect actually existing contradictions. ‘The methodology of the natural sciences .. . rejects the idea of contradiction and antagonism in its subject matter.’ (Ibid, p. 10.) In social reality, on the other hand, ‘These contradictions are not a sign of the imperfect understanding of society . .. (but) . . . belong in an insoluble manner to the nature of reality itself.’ (Ibid.) Lukacs here maintains and tends to reinforce a dualism between society and nature. According to him, with nature there is no contradiction in ‘the essence of reality itself’. He avoids stating, how- ever, his conception of a nature without contra- diction, well knowing that in that case it could only be mechanical. It would be useless to discuss such a reactionary view in the second half of the twentieth century, just as it was at the time of its formulation. What should be stressed, however, in Lukacs’ demand that the natural sciences must eliminate contradictions or at least tend towards this, is that it coincides with Einstein’s dogmatic position in his famous discussion with Niels Bohr and his school. Einstein then insisted upon the necessity to overcome the contradictions in quantitative mechanics in the sense of an absolute determin- ism, whereas Bohr and his school, in introducing the dialectical concept of ‘complementarity’ and arguing against such determinism, fell into the inverse extreme of agnosticism; Louis de Broglie tried, drawing inspiration from Einstein, to get out of the impasse with a sharpened idealism through his conception of a ‘sub-quantitative’ field. It was no accident that official soviet physics under Stalin followed de Broglie. Lukacs’ instinct, in this problem as in so many others, preceded the Stalinist bureaucracy by a long way. Moreover, nor was it an accident that Soviet scholars who tried to develop the dialectical conception of nature were witch-hunted under Stalin. *The first attempt, to my knowledge, to inte- grate the recent results and theories of science into the dialectics of nature is that developed by Robert Havemann in his work at Berlin's Hum- boldt University (Robert Havemann, Dialektik Ohne Dogma, Hamburg Rowohlt 1964) but Havemann was severely criticized and driven from the University by the Ulbricht bureaucracy. (Nevertheless, I must point out that if Havemman sets out the dialectic of nature, he ceases to be a dialectician when he discusses the problems of society, liberty, morality, etc. It is the same as Lukacs’ dualism, but in the inverse sense: dialec- tics in nature, no dialectics in society. Its basis is equally a negative relation to materialism). Once Lukacs has refused to recognize the dia- lectics of nature, once the dualism of his concept is defined, this dualism will grow throughout the book. It orientates Lukacs’ thought (and of course 28 the reader’s) towards the ‘real spheres’ of the dia- lectic, society and more particularly knowledge, human thought. Therein, again, can be seen the organic kinship binding him to Mannheim: there, the ‘dialectic’, supposed to exist only in its human determination, dialectical materialism, and even Hegel’s dialectic give way to speculation. The dia- lectic, as the general laws of motion of matter and society, and of thought inherent in these, dis- appears and in its place appear categories. Lukacs arbitrarily chooses them as fruits of knowledge, but goes very carefully in that they are appar- ently very dialectical ‘categories’. With this wretched duplicity, he uses these fixed categories as if they were the dialectic. These categories replace materialist analysis and of course, thus suppress the dialectic in the name of the dialectic. These categories of praxis, the subject-object relationship, totality, etc., give him full rein. Quite naturally, in this he clashes with Hegel who, in his Logic resolutely condemned categories in themselves : . . aS pure and simple forms distinct from the content, they (categories) are taken in a determina- tion which stamps them with the seal of finity, and renders us unable to understand the truth which is infinite in itself.’ So one of Lukacs’ greatest discoveries is the category of totality (very ‘dialectical’!) which he uses as a card-player uses the joker. From this standpoint, he condemns, for example, the sciences which only examine facts instead of looking at ‘totality’, etc. From the Rejection of Materialism to Vulgar Humanism If, unlike Lukacs, who uses this category with- out ever defining or, still less, clearly establishing what determines it, we analyse his own attitude towards this totality, we get quite a surprise. In fact, the rejection of the dialectic in nature, by establishing a dualism in the conception of the world, destroys its unity. So the famous totality demanded by Lukacs is destroyed by his own needs. The development of such a conception has its own logic. The more the natural sciences, develop, the more this dualism becomes a grow- ing gap between one thought reserved for society and another reserved for nature. In the first con- ception, there is a division and then opposition introduced into dialectical materialism, which not only prevents dialectical materialism from integrat- ing the results of the sciences into its develop- ment, but, moreover, declares its weakness aS a global conception. Such a view must inevitably be presented as anthropocentrism. Lukacs writes, ‘Hegel does perceive clearly at times that the dialectics of nature can never become anything more than a dialectics of movement witnessed by the detached observer, as the subject cannot be integrated into the dialectical process, at least not at the stage reached hitherto.’ This anthropocentrism, according to which the ‘real’ dialectic is that in which the subject is inte- Fourth International Winter 1972/73

[p031] —— grated, ie, the bearer of the dialectic is man, necessarily and ineluctably ends with the category of man in general, and founders in that flat human- ism so dear to Lukacs. From here it is but a short step to transform Marx into a vulgar humanist, one which Lukacs easily takes and was to develop later: at the end of his life he busied himself writing a ‘Marxist ontology’ (?) based on human existence, But at the very time Lukacs’ anthropocentrism appeared and developed, the sciences, Particularly astrophysics, biochemistry, and biology, liquidated anthropocentrism with supporting proof. Even if, at the time Lukacs wrote his book, the Possibility of life on other stellar systems, i.e. the organic unity of the universe, had still not been demon- strated, the deeply reactionary character of his opinion comes out quite clearly, It throws back the scientific conception of the world to that of the 19th century, and with the help of such a con- ception, transforms dialectical materialism into anthropocentrism. Lukacs’ fractious attitude towards the sciences, arts and modern literature, just as much as _ his reduction of dialectical materialism to a flat, vulgar humanism, an attitude so well known today, is thus already condensed, and not only in germ, in History and Class Con- Sciousness. One can recognize that intimate nostal- gia with regard to the bourgeoisie of the 19th century which was so great, so fine, so much less decadent. ... But in Lukacs’ Position expressed above we find yet another thing. We find the theoretical key to this viewpoint in the form of a mechanical separation, and therefore opposition, between man and nature: a man stripped of nature, and a dehumanized nature. It is absolutely wrong to abstract man from nature as Lukacs does through- out his book. It is doubly wrong then to affirm that in the movement of nature, man (the subject, as Lukacs says) is not and was not integrated. The development of the relationship between man and nature is a central problem of dialectical materialism, more Particularly of historical materialism. The birth and development of man, emerging from the animal world, passing from a State of identity with nature to a state which is distinct from nature but not breaking the unity with it, has been a long process flowing entirely from the dialectic of nature itself. In the course of this process, in which, contrary to Lukacs’ Statement, there has been an uninterrupted inter- action between man and nature, it is the second which produced the first, but not in an automatic way. And this interaction has not yet ceased. What changed with the birth and development of man is not this interaction but its content. Marx and Engels demonstrated — and modern Palaeontology confirms this analysis in its general line—that the birth of man is based at the point where man intervened in the dialectical movement of nature by his transformation of nature itself. . . 0 But the unity of man and nature does not not Cease to exist by this transformation, i.e. produc- tion. In fact a new Phase is then opened up in the history of nature in which one of the elements Political Itinerary of Lukacs (part 3) _ = 7 of nature, man, undertakes a long struggle for the domination of all the other elements, including man himself. This Struggle is itself developed in a Process of dialectical unity in which nature, changing through the action of man, constantly acts as a source, inspiration and stimulant to new developments by man himself. This dialectical interaction constitutes the whole of the develop- ment of, among other things, human knowledge, But this long process knows no ‘subject’, that ‘asexual’ (?) jargon of philosophy. Man (‘subject’) did not emerge from nature as such, but by trans- forming nature through production, Here we must Consider the meaning of Marx’s famous preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: ‘In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into social relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of pro- duction appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production.’ (1971 edition, p. 20.) Production, as the transformation of nature in a struggle towards controlling it, is therefore the decisive act by which man is born, and differenti- ates himself from nature, and certain determined social relations. Man, by his very essence, is social and the forms of society constitute the necessary mediation between him and nature. Inversely, if production is the act by which man distinguishes himself from nature, it is that same Production which links him to nature, as its element. This organic unity between man and nature is constantly reproduced, although its con- tent is in perpetual change, in the direction of the domination of nature by man. The dialectics of nature alone allow us to grasp the organic unity of the universe, the unity— not identity—between man and nature. The point at which this unity is welded is the foundation of historical materialism, conceived not ‘simply’ as an explanation of history written by man but as the materialist and dialectical conception of the development of that species of nature called man. If Lukacs rejects the dialectic of nature, he does so the better to falsify historical materialism, Lukacs Attacks Historical Materialism Abolishing the scientific foundation of his- torical materialism, Lukacs undertakes a ‘theore- tical’ explanation in which this materialist concep- tion of history is valid only for capitalist society. In a number of places in his book, he develops an argument according to which, on the one hand, historical materialism will no longer be valid, in a socialist society, and on the other hand, its ‘application’ is extremely difficult for pre- Capitalist societies; although this latter application has been ‘not without Success (and) at any rate . . . has resulted in some very interesting discoveries’, (Op cit, p. 232). Condescendingly, he gives Engels a cavalier Pat on the head: well done, son. You produced some ‘interesting results’, but all in all, you understood neither Hegel nor Marx, and even then you were misled. As the reader will 29

[p032] note, Lukacs does not attack Engels all the time: he is sometimes indulgent with him. But why ‘does this great man insist on limiting historical materialism essentially to the epoch of capitalism? Why is this method valid especially to that period? In several studies in the book, Lukacs puts forward and develops his argument. It is founded on a particular conception of what historical materialism is. To present it in the formulations of Lukacs himself, we have plenty to choose from; we could compose an ample selec- tion with his characterizations. We will begin as follows : ‘It is not the primacy of economic motives in historical explanation tt constitutes the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois thought, but the point of view of totality.’ (p. 27.) We will pass over ‘motives’ and ‘totality’, and continue. According to Lukacs, dialectics did not become the algebra of revolution simply by giving «| it a materialist twist ...In Marx, the dialec- tical method aims at understanding society as a whole’. (pp. 27-28.) Even the materialist polemics were directed against the epigones of Hegel, and less ‘than at the master who...stood much closer to Marx than Marx himself may have realised...’ (p. 34.) So it seems that Marx himself was unaware of his intimate links with Hegel. Fortunately Lukacs is here to explain that, contrary to Marx’ opinion, the materialist overthrow of dialectics was only a secondary, negligible act. For what is wrong in Hegel ‘was criticised by Marx who then extended the system...’ (p. 44.) Here we have an attempt to present Marxism as idealism. It is done by establishing a line of peaceful continuity between Hegel and Marx. From this idyll, every trace of split, every break in continuity has disappeared. More precisely, that wretched materialism is expelled from Marx- ism to allow for the reign of ‘totality’. For, ‘when confronted by the overwhelming resources ...which...the bourgeoisie possesses...the only ,effective superiority of the proletariat, its only decisive weapon, is its ability to see the social totality as a concrete historical totality’. (p. 197.) Here, in Lukacs’ conception, appears historical materialism for, according to him, ‘The most important task of historical materialism is to deliver a precise judgement on the capitalist social system, to unmask capitalist society’. (Op cit, p. 224.) Elsewhere he defines it as the ‘self-knowledge of capitalist society’. (p. 224.) So it gradually appears that, according to Lukacs, historical materialism is not the general revolutionary theory and method for the under- standing of the laws of history—past and recent— through its determination of the mode and rela- tions of production (and classes) in which, by its own internal laws, is inscribed the mission of the proletariat to bring down the bourgeois order. 30 Lukacs launches an attack on the basis of this Marxist concept. He dilutes this scientific deter- mination into a vague concept of ‘totality’. Then, when he sets about defining its meaning, this ‘totality’ is concretised as being made up of ‘interhuman relations’. On this basis he criticises (from this aspect wrongly) bourgeois historical sciences for being ‘incapable of comprehending that the real nature of socio-historical institutions is that they consist of relations between men... (which is)... the true source of historical under- standing’. (p. 48.) For Lukacs, these ‘relations between men’ appear as such, in themselves, as though they are not materialised as definite relations of production. Having done this, Lukacs then strives to put an equals sign between Marxism and bourgeois theories by speaking about the relation of his- torical materialism to comparable trends in bour- geois thought (such as Max Weber’s ‘ideal types’). (p. 81.) What is obvious is the intrinsic relationship of Lukacs’ ‘totality’ and his undefined ‘relations between men’ (undefined, hence arbitrary) and Weber’s equally arbitrary typology. Since knowledge of this ‘totality’ and its ‘rela- tions between men’ is particularly difficult within capitalism, the means of such knowledge had to be given by historical materialism. It emerged ‘only... because for the proletariat the total knowledge of its class situation was a vital necessity, a matter of life and death’. (p. 20.) So it emerged as an attempt at self-perfection by knowledge, for, with the particularly difficult conditions within capitalism, a better method of thought was required. So Lukacs thinks. From this standpoint he gives his explanation of capitalism. It appeared as a social order the essential charac- teristic of which—the one at the centre of the ‘relations between men’ which realises ‘totality’— is ‘reification’. So there we are, slap in the middle of Lukacs’ theory, adopted by all of today’s petty-bourgeois ‘theoreticians’. For page after page, Lukacs explains that ‘reification’ finds its basis in the division of labour, but forgets to qualify the definite class nature. He even adds, ‘If we do not emphasise the class character of the state in this context, this is because our aim is 0 understand reification as a general phenomenon constitutive of the whole of bourgeois society.’ (p. 210.) We are entering a particular world where everything, without exception, is ‘reified’; whereas for Marx, the propertied class delighted in alien- ation as ‘its own power’ (The Holy Family) whilst the working class ‘feel destroyed’ by it, Lukacs devotes an entire book to explaining ‘reification’ as the essence of the bourgeois order, of which everyone is equally the victim. In Lukacs’ own little world, the following are ‘reified’ in turn. State officials including of course those in high posts of authority, who suffer terribly: Lukacs the humanist therefore com- miserates over the fate of these unfortunate agents Fourth International Winter 1972/73

[p033] ~ ete of the bourgeoisie (such as Nixon today). The modern theories of a reified technocracy find their basis here. Then comes science, equally a victim of ‘reification’ and ‘debarred from understanding . . . the social character of its own material base’ (p. 105). So Lukacs does not speak of ‘educated lackeys’ of the bourgeoisie, as though Lenin had never thus characterised those reified wretches. But according to Lukacs, the characteristics of ‘reification’ are ‘most grotesque in journalism’, where prostitution and lack of conviction are the ‘apogee of capitalist reification’. (p. 100.) Jacques Fauvet, the poor devil. Let us be humanistic and understanding; he is not conscious, he is ‘reified’! We can now understand that to unravel all of this reified knowledge, to cure human knowledge of this sickness, we need a remedy. For Lukacs this remedy is historical materialism. For this reason, according to him, it is linked to Capitalist society. ‘Reification’ of knowledge as a general sickness, and historical materialism as a general cure go together and properly speaking belong to the bourgeois order, It should be considered. Even the definition is, ‘historical materialism in its classical form . . , means the self-knowledge of capitalist society’. (Op cit, p. 229.) The game is over. By means of his idealist method, raising the phenomenon of the reification of thought to the level of an abstract generality, identical with itself in all men, and endowing it with autonomy, historical materialism, now dis- torted, is presented as a theory of knowledge. Mannheim had the same Preoccupation and the same aim. If he ended up establishing a ‘sociology of knowledge’ openly declared as such, Lukacs does exactly the same thing with historical materialism, but as a falsifier and distorter, Eventually, histori- cal materialism as such will disappear from his investigations and its place will be taken by a sort of ‘sociology of literature’, Consciousness and Knowledge The content of so anti-Marxist a conception of ‘historical materialism’ as a special theory of knowledge to unravel ‘reified’ thought is clearly the dissolution of the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, Lukacs takes the bourgeoisie not as a class with its own interests, but as a group of ‘reified’ individuals: and, as it is ‘reified’, ‘bourgeois thought observes economic life consistently and necessarily from the stand- Point of the individual capitalist’. (p. 63.) This is particularly untrue for the working class faced with a very precise political economy of the bourgeois state, and a no less precise class Position of ‘economic thought’ in the bourgeoisie’s lackey scholars. Finally, with a new trick—I repeat, a characteristic of Lukacs—he mixes up two very different notions: knowledge and con- sciousness. It is well known, since the days of Marx and Engels, that the bourgeoisie, because of its class interests is incapable of an objective ‘knowledge’ of society; Lukacs naturally—and completely wrongly—then concludes that there Political Itinerary of Lukacs (part 3) ee ah are limits to its class consciousness, incarnated in its parties, states and all its institutions, which prevent the bourgeoisie from reaching objective knowledge. But according to Lukacs, the whole ideological history of the bourgeoisie is ‘a des- perate resistance ... to a real understanding of its class situation’. (p. 66.) But the opposite is true: that history is pre- cisely one of a Struggle to impose its own bourgeois class consciousness on the whole of society, on every class. Lukacs completely over- throws the real facts of the class struggle. So what does he want? Where is he going? We shall see, Since, according to him, the struggle of the bourgeoisie to reach an understanding (!) is ‘des- perate’, and since historical materialism is very good ‘theory and knowledge’, the bourgeoisie ‘is unable to dispense with the scientific method of the proletariat, admittedly in a distorted form.’ (pp. 227-228.) Admittedly . . . In this light, revisionists do not appear as ‘labour lieutenants of Capitalism’, but represent the fact of ‘the capitulation of the bourgeoisie before historical materialism’. (p. 228.) He enumerates several signs of this capitulation, such as ‘the idea of conscious organisation’ of the economy by the trusts (!), ‘planned economy (con- ceived) as a theoretical experiment’ (pp. 66-67) etc, and to conclude, ‘... the capitulation of the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie before that of the proletariat is striking’. (p. 75. I have slightly altered the published English translation to con- form to the next paragraph, Trans.) Now what is Striking, is that Lukacs regards as a gain for the proletariat, the presence, in the ranks and around the Labour Movement, of bourgeois scholars who have in no way broken with bourgeois ideology, but only concretise the Penetration of the bourgeoisie within the Labour Movement. But de te fabula narratur (this story is about you), for here is exposed the intimate meaning of Lukacs’ entire thought. He joined the Labour Movement without ever belonging to it; it looks just as if, on the plane of ideas, he could only capitulate before Marxism, which appeared to him to be a form of thought, When he discusses it, he can do so only according to his bourgeois nature. In this false consciousness, reality is over- thrown, and bourgeois Consciousness appears ‘unconsciously’, This is not psychology. Lukacs the idealist identifies consciousness with knowledge: he diagnoses its general sickness, ‘reification’: and then proposes historical materialism as a universal remedy. So there we have the great class concili- ation, and Lukacs’ bourgeois nature rests precisely in that organically conciliatory attitude. It deter- mines his views on the proletariat’s struggle. But before examining his reactionary views on the struggles of the working class, we must raise a fundamental problem of historical materialism. This is the confusion Lukacs makes of knowledge and consciousness, He identifies them, for, as a 31

[p034] perfect idealist, he regards them both as fruits of thought alone, as autonomous instances, which have no determination or material form. Now already human knowledge is closely bound to the fundamental struggle between man and nature. It is both the product and the means of that struggle, these two functions being in dialectical relation- ship throughout the development of humanity. Since this struggle can only take place in the framework of definite social relations, the so-called social or human sciences themselves have the material development of humanity for their base. Marx and Engels explained on several occasions that human knowledge is a long process and that ‘mankind ... inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will alway show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of forma- tion’. (Preface, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 21.) Class consciousness is something very different from knowledge. As a finished idealist Lukacs understands nothing whatsoever about it: himself a representative of the bourgeoisie in the workers’ ranks. He spirits away the essential. For him, class consciousness is also a product of speculative thought. In reality, however, it is by expressing its interests in and through struggle that a definite social group determined by its place in the social relations constitutes itself as a class. In a long historical process, through its struggles, the class becomes conscious of its own interests. But it does not become conscious any old way, at school or through reading. It is only through its successive struggles, necessarily giving them an organizational form more and more adapted to its interests, that a class is formed and thus becomes conscious. Its class consciousness is not some sort of cognisant thought, but the expression of its interests em- bodied in its independent organization, in its institutions. The class as such is materialized in its organization, and cannot exist if it does not have class consciousness. Thus, class consciousness only exists in its materially incarnate form, and not as thought suspended in the air like Mohammed’s coffin. For this reason the highest level of his- torical materialism, the method and theory of the mission of the proletariat, rests in the problems of organization of that class in which the whole of theory is concentrated. It is not by chance that Lukacs dissolves class consciousness into a self- knowledge of society and spirits away the decisive problem, that of organization. On the Struggle of the Proletariat for its Emancipation Bourgeois thought and consciousness are pre- sented by Lukacs as given once and for all. With- out the material base of that consciousness, without the development of the class struggle, it thus appears uniform. For Lukacs, imperialism, ‘the highest stage of capitalism’, does not exist in the evolution of bourgeois class consciousness. Thought, consciousness, are not determined by existence. The very ideas of evolution completely escape him. He then applies this conception of a class consciousness given once and for all, without development and without history, to that of the proletariat. He writes, ‘The essence of the class struggle of the pro- letariat can in fact be defined by its unity of theory and practice, so that knowledge leads to action without transition.’ (p. 225.) The necessary mediation of the organization as the embodiment of consciousness and, as such, placed at the centre of the interaction between theory and practice, is swept under the carpet. This is even clearer when he writes, ‘The relation- ship between class consciousness and class situa- tion is really very simple.’ (p. 70.) It can be seen that, in the case of the proletariat, Lukacs commits the same idealist error, but in an inverse form. Whereas for the bourgeoisie class consciousness—if it existed—was self-contained, with the proletariat it flows directly, with no mediation, from its knowledge of its own situation. The common root of these apparently opposed views is idealism. Since the bourgeoisie is incap- able of reaching an objective knowledge of reality, it is, according to Lukacs, equally incapable of class consciousness. Since the proletariat alone can have such knowledge, class consciousness comes to it quite naturally. This mechanistic idealism con- stitutes Lukacs’ general position in problems relating to the struggle and organization of the proletariat. The proletariat constituted itself as a class when, through its struggles, it defined itself in relation to all other classes by forming its independent organ- ization. This was a process of repeated, often blind struggles—going as far, for example as the destruction of machines—in the course of which the workers progressively recognized their real interests and the necessity to unite. Class con- sciousness thus appeared on the basis of workers’ struggles being materialized in organization. Class consciousness is not an autonomous thought, but is acquired in and through struggle. Moreover, it is not disembodied but is summed up in the organization. This is its necessary form of exist- ence. Reality is diametrically opposed to Lukacs’ idealist notions. The class consciousness of the proletariat is not a knowledge, it is in no way identified with knowledge conceived as a collection of notions in one’s head. From the beginning of its formation and throughout its development, it is materially determined, in the last analysis, by the relations of production, by their degree of development, as much as by the material gains of the proletariat in its struggle. It is not, however, a direct product of these relations but the result of experiences made in the class struggle itself, appearing as the generalization of them. This appearance and development of consciousness, sustained and materialized in the gains of the struggle, in workers’ conquests, is itself material and not spiritual: it is founded in organization. The evolution and analysis of proletarian class consciousness do not constitute the object of an abstract investigation of its ‘reified’ knowledge, as Lukacs pretends, but the concrete historical pro- cess of the struggle of that class against the Fourth International Winter 1972/73

[p035] bourgeoisie, through the material historical stages of its gains and organized embodiment: trade union, party, workers’ state. The working class could only be formed beginning from its immediate interests, against the exploiters, on the basis of its Position in produc- tion. Its first step towards independence was achieved with the forming of trade unions, which represent the consciousness of the proletariat with regard to its own interests against those of the bourgeoisie in the relations of production, Con- sequently if Lukacs states that the relation between its class position and its class conscious- ness with that stage of its development, i.e. with trade union. (It should be noted that the formation of the trade unions itself was a historical Process of difficult, material struggles.) He limits it to the level of trade union consciousness, in contradiction to several of his own statements. Lukacs’ mechanistic and idealist thinking here falls into its own contradictions. In fact, this trade union level of consciousness, whilst real, is still limited. It only reaches as far as the formulation of the proletariat’s interests within the bourgeois order. Left at this stage the proletariat is still Politically dependent on the bourgeoisie. The relation between its class Position and its class consciousness, contrary to what Lukacs says, is so far from ‘simple’ that a long struggle was necessary, with all its experiences, for the work- ing class to gain its political independence by the forming of a class party, the embodiment of a higher level of consciousness. To go beyond this stage of the development of consciousness, the proletariat needed something qualitatively superior to the simple direct reflec. tion of its place in the relations of production and its experience of struggles. Class consciousness is not the simple fruit of the material data of the proletariat’s position and the experiences it goes through, and the party, embodiment of this con- sciousness, is not a spontaneous product of the class, beginning with its daily experiences. Such mechanical determinism does not exist. To liberate itself from the influence of the bour- geoisie, it had to raise itself to the level of its historical mission: to defeat the bourgeois order, and establish its dictatorship in order to build a classless society, This historical mission was and is inscribed in the internal laws of capitalism it- self. But by the very fact of their existence, these laws do not produce such a raised level of con- sciousness. It was still necessary to integrate with the proletariat’s class consciousness, in a critical way, the achievements of all human knowledge by going beyond them (Hegel’s dialectics and classi- Cal political economy for example). Marx and Engels accomplished this work, by fusing the Critical elaboration of the achievements of the development of all human knowledge with the experience acquired by the proletariat, thus forg- ing Marxist theory. But on the other hand, they did not do it, and would not have been able to do it, as drawing-room scholars. It was a struggle with an intimate connection with the struggle Political Itinerary of Lukacs (part 3) and experiences of the proletariat being material- ized in organization. The German Ideology can only be understood as the programme Of the organization founded by Marx and Engels at the very moment of writing it—the Communist Correspondence Committees. The Communist Manifesto and the Communist League are inseparable from each other, and it is only thus that they were a decisive stage in the development of the proletariat’s consciousness. At the same time, they could only be born at that definite stage of the development of the relations of production and of the experiences of the pro- letariat’s struggle: whilst integrating with these the developments of human knowledge. This dia- lectical relationship of the developments of class consciousness is not given once and for all, at the birth of the party, for the development of theory itself is a function of the class struggle and its experiences. The necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat is formulated in the Manifesto, but Marx could analyse the worker’s state, and thus develop theory, only by beginning with the ex- periences of the Paris Commune. On the other hand, theory and its development are inseparable from organization and only thus do they form class consciousness, do they express the degree of its development. Marx worked out Capital whilst forging the First International, which embodied a decisive stage in the development of class con- sciousness. Now Lukacs, on the other hand, presents class consciousness as ‘self-knowledge’, some sort of thought detached from that necessary material form, organization. He also analyses it as a single phenomenon acquired once and for all through that knowledge. This view, at the same time idealist and mechanical, breaks the unity between the development of the class struggle and that of organized consciousness. Theory and practice are dissociated, their fusion in organization has dis- appeared. Lukacs writes that whether or not the final aim remains hidden depends ‘entirely upon the class consciousness of the proletariat and not on victory or defeat in isolated skirmishes’. p. 173, author’s emphasis.) But it is precisely victories and defeats which influence, in some cases for a long time, the con- sciousness of the proletariat, and it is impossible to introduce such a split between the class Struggle and proletarian class consciousness. Everyone Knows that the defeat of the German proletariat, the destruction of its Organizations and liquida- tion of militants by Hitlerism Signified the des- truction of its class consciousness. A Disembodied Class Consciousness Lukacs spirits away organization, the essential weapon of the proletariat. At the same time he completely covers up the fact that this weapon could and can only be won historically, in the development of the class struggle, through bitter battles. We can well understand why, in speaking of ‘determinations of the dialectic’, he repeats ‘totality’, carefully omitting to raise contradic- 33 EEE ee —

[p036] tion. In reality there is a continuous struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; class consciousness, embodied in the party, is the prize. This historical struggle has known its ups and downs, it has gone through a development full of contradictions and reverses with stages of pro- gressive evolution along with jumps and sharp breaks. The relationship between class situation and class consciousness is not ‘simple’, it is so complicated that after the bourgeoisie had suc- ' ceeded in corrupting class consciousness, i.e. in the Second International, Lenin devoted the rest of his life to resolving this problem through the difficult building of the Bolshevik Party. But Lukacs sweeps aside ‘What Is To Be Done’, the Bolshevik Party and the Third International with a stroke of the pen. For him they have nothing to do with class consciousness, which is a know- ledge of the class situation, disembodied like the spirit, without history-like God. Having thus accomplished a complete reversal Lukacs treats class consciousness as an immu- table ideology, floating above everything. Accord- ing to this conception, since under capitalism reifi- cation of knowledge is the dominant phenomenon, the class consciousness of the proletariat is neces- sarily contaminated. Thus, Lukacs manages to dis- cover ‘an ideological crisis of the proletariat’ of which ‘the Menshevik parties are the expression’ (p. 314). Thus for Lukacs, the phenomenon of the labour aristocracy is inadequate to explain Men- shevism (p. 305). Such a statement, apparently correct, is nevertheless duplicity on Lukacs’ part, for its purpose is to cover up the fact that the labour aristocracy is not the explanation of Men- shevism but its material basis, the foundation of its explanation as the foundation of its being. One further wonders how to explain the so-called ‘ideological capitulation’ of the bourgeoisie to a proletariat in ‘ideological crisis’. The cizcle is completed: according to Lukacs, it is not the bourgeoisie, through the intermediary of its reformist ‘lieutenants’, which attacks the labour movement. No, reformist parties are not the expression of the bourgeoisie within the pro- letariat, but of the proletariat and, what is more, of its ‘ideological crisis’. Of course, if it is an ex- pression of the proletariat itself, moreover an ideological sickness, the task to be carried out clearly cannot be the construction of the revolu- tionary party against reformism. Instead, when Lukacs asks the question: what is to be done?, or as he formulates it ‘is it possible to make the objective possibility of class consciousness into a reality’ (p. 79), he gives the following reply: “(It is) the question of the inner transformation of the proletariat, of its development to the stage of its own objective historical mission. It is an ideolo- gical crisis which must be solved before a practical solution to the world’s economic crisis can be found’. Not a single word about the party. For someone posing as a leader of a party, it would be a mistake to launch a frontal attack against the party. Lukacs never commits such an 34 error: always he advances his bourgeois concep- tions just up to a certain limit. Thus, in History and Class Consciousness, after fundamentally diluting class consciousness into idealism and liquidating the party, he returns to an analysis of party organization which is hesitant, ambiguous, formalist. The idealist nature of Lukacs’ conceptions appears under the form of spontaneity when for the first time (1921) he speaks eulogistically of Rosa Luxemburg. I quote: ‘Rosa Luxemburg grasped the spontaneous nature of revolutionary mass actions earlier and more clearly than many others . . . she was also quicker to grasp the role of the party in the revolution... Rosa Luxemburg perceived at a very early stage that the organization is much more likely to be the effect than the cause of the revolutionary process’. (p.41.) Despite its materialist appearance, this spon- taneity-ism is directly linked to an idealist and mechanistic opinion on the supposed coincidence between self-knowledge and proletarian class consciousness. Organization, as the material form of consciousness and therefore a necessary media- tion in the revolutionary process, is replaced by a fatalistic spontaneity which, contrary to Rosa Luxemburg’s conception, rejects the previously existing organization, namely the historical con- tinuity of proletarian consciousness, present in every ‘spontaneous’ mass action. It is no accident if Lukacs is fundamentally hostile to the con- tinuity of the organized labour movement. Organization thus conceived is not a weapon of struggle for him but a sort of warehouse of knowledge, storing it up in the measure in which the proletariat deposits it. So it is not surprising when he writes: ‘Class consciousness is the “ethics” of the proletariat ... the true strength of the party is moral’ (p. 42). Capitalism, with its relations of production, its state, its army and police, this real force, disappears behind ‘reification’, and the party, the organization of the strength of the proletariat and. its struggle, is presented as an ideological institu- tion. Because, ‘the strength of every society is... a spiritual strength. And from this we can only be liberated by knowledge’ (p. 262, author’s em- phasis). Lukacs continues, with regard to the revolu- tion ‘Only ideology stands in the way of such opposition’. This is the voice of the liquidator, the one who in 1919 during the dictatorship of the proletariat, wanted to dissolve the party. The one who, after the defeat of the revolution at the time this book was published, was given the responsibility, with others, of rebuilding the party. In this work he does not ‘simply’ make a total abstraction of the real problems of the reconstruction of party at that time but develops the opposite point of view: ‘theoretically’ liquidating the party, under Fourth International Winter 1972/73

[p037] the form of an attempt to transform it into an ideological circle. But like every idealist brought face to face with reality Lukacs is contradictory even in his conception of the party, alongside his liquidation- ist opinions he develops apparently opposed views of an omnipotent party. According to Lukacs, once it is founded, the revolutionary party is complete once and for all. In one place he utters a correct idea: that from day to day experience the worker becomes conscious of his situation and tasks. But in this analysis (ibid. p.317) he speaks of the worker as an individual. Whilst the process of becoming conscious effectively pro- ceeds thus, this analysis covers up the essential point. It covers up the fact that this process applies not only to the individual worker but above all to the class as such: Lukacs’ conception is that once the revolutionary party is founded, interaction between the class and its party ceases. This is the natural consequence of his conception of class consciousness which has no history but is reduced to a completed knowledge. Lukacs’ party immediately influences the action of each individual, and consciously determines develop- ment. Now the central question is precisely how it can and must do so. For Lukacs this question does not exist, whereas only the correct theoretical and practical reply to this question can allow the construction of the party. In fact the party can consciously determine de- velopment only by correctly understanding and expressing what is already given in and through that development. On the one hand it cannot ravish history, on the other it cannot make the revolution in place of the masses. The idea that the finished party is automatically destined to lead the class is typically ultra-left and bureaucratic. On the contrary, it must constantly win and win again the confidence of the majority of the class. This is the whole problem of the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International and the discussion launched by Lenin’s and Trotsky’s Third International against the ultra-left who, like Lukacs, took the party once founded as sufficient to carry through the revolution. Then again Lukacs develops such a conception at the very time the Hungarian CP is destroyed and dis- jointed, when its reconstruction is the order of the day, in conditions where social-democracy dominates the great majority of the Hungarian working class, after its great defeat. So it is more than an abstraction. It is an inverse liquidation. The Class and Its Party It takes on a clearer form when Lukacs sets out the problems of revolution and, more pre? cisely, of the transition to socialism after the revolution. According to him ‘It is certainly true that even those groups and masses whose class situation gives them a direct interest, only free themselves inwardly from the old order during (and very often only after) a revolution’ (p. 258). With a single blow he sweeps aside Marx’s Prime conclusion that ‘the emancipation of the Political Itinerary of Lukacs (part 3) working class will be the work of the workers themselves’. In fact according to Lukacs, the party accomplishes the revolution not leads it. In this connection we can.seen not only Lukacs’ ultra- leftism of that time, but also the anticipated justification of the bureaucracy, these two ele- ments being twins in a common attitude with regard to the link between party and masses. Lukacs formulates it very precisely: ‘The revolu- tion itself can only be accomplished by people... who have become intellectually and emotionally emancipated from the existing system’ (p. 257). There we have ultra-leftism quite ready to pass into the service of the bureaucracy. But he goes further still, again posing the problem of the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. He dares to say that ‘The proletariat is forced to take power at a time and in a state of mind in which it inwardly still acknowledges the bourgeois social order as the only authentic and legal one’ (p. 266, author’s emphasis). For ‘the proletariat cannot possibly gain a consciousness of its own legality through the fact of a single victory, (p. 267). Everything is contained in these insults to the working class. First, for Lukacs, the workers’ state in no way represents a new stage in the development of proletarian class consciousness. Then, this workers’ state, in its turn, will not be the revolutionary work of the workers themselves, in the course of their struggles, and therefore of a heightening of their consciousness, and the materialized product of that consciousness. It is a pragmatic projection of the Hungarian Councils Republic of 1919. True, in that case the bourgeoisie handed over power to the proletariat without a struggle. And the majority of the class remained under the influence of social democracy which through the mouth of the trade union bureaucracy effectively declared the dic- tatorship of the proletariat illegal. But Lukacs, in- stead of drawing Marxist conclusions, pragmati- cally raises these facts to the level of a generalised ‘theory’. The results are: the identification of the trade union bureaucracy (and with it all of social- democracy) with the proletariat—which ‘theoreti- cally’ prepares the later association with the Stalinist bureaucracy—and the responsibility for the defeat of its dictatorship is thrown on to the working class. In a theoretician, this impressionism can only be explained by his relationship to the bourgeoisie. In this relationship, irreconcilable antagonism, and therefore merciless struggle, disappear, giving way to an admittedly ideologi- cally opposed relationship, but which is resolved by the peaceful conquest of power, obtained through the development of knowledge. Inevitably, Lukacs manages to justify in ad- vance, although implicity, the bureaucracy and its theory ‘Socialism in one country’. For accord- ing to him ‘Despite the victory gained by the pro- letariat, its struggle with the bourgeoisie is still unequal and it will remain so until the proletariat 35

[p038] acquires the same naive confidence in the ex- clusive legality of its own system of law’ (p. 268). So it is not the world revolution which is necessary for victory, but a feeling of legality which, at the outset, is here denied to the pro- letariat as if the destruction of the bourgeois state had not been its own work. Lukacs does not deny the proletariat the possibility of gaining this feel- ing of legality, but—of course—this can be done without the world revolution and consequently in a single country. To the question: what is required for the pro- letariat to have that legality? Lukacs replies: ‘The recognition of Soviet Russia by the bourgeois powers .. . (is to) recognize the legitimacy of the world revolution’ (op. cit. pp. 269-270). So we have to ask the bourgeoisie! According to Lukacs the proletariat has to have its work sanctioned by the bourgeoisie! So the proletarian revolution becomes legitimate only with that sanction. If the world bourgeoisie was forced by the proletariat to ‘recognize’ Soviet Russia, it never looked on the proletarian revolution as being ‘legitimate’. Only a bourgeois posing as a communist, such as Lukacs, and the Stalinist bureaucracy could see things in this way. We can easily recognise not only ‘socialism in a single country’ but also ‘peaceful co-existence’. It is impossible for me critically to sieve through all of Lukacs’ statements on the problems of the class struggle and, particularly, on organization and the workers’ state. We need only say that in his analyses there is lacking the dictatorship of the proletariat and its functioning, instead we have a vague rambling about violence in general: he never speaks of the world revolution, but presents Soviet Russia as being completed when it comes to an understanding with the bourgeoisie. The basis of this whole book, History and Class Consciousness, is an attempt to reconcile materialism and idealism, proletariat and bourgeoisie. Lukacs is a born conciliator who in this book, without even realizing it, is preparing to serve the Stalinist bureaucracy in which all these reconciliations are united. He goes so far as to formulate concretely some important program- matic points for the bureaucracy before it grasps them itself. In his pamphlet written a year later, Lenin, he goes even further along this road. Some Final Remarks Without being able to develop a detailed analysis, this critique would, however, be incom- plete without a few remarks. The first concerns Lukacs’ attempt to give a philosophical basis to his idealism. It is done by an attempt to reconcile materialism and idealism, resorting to Kant. He defends Kant against the criticisms of Engels whom he accuses of misunderstanding him. Putting the subject-object relationship at the centre, and basing himself on the conception that the dialectic is de- termined by the subject, quite naturally he ends up alongside Kant against Engels. He takes a stand against ‘a rigid opposition between thought and being’ (p. 202) not quite as Kant did, finding rather a ‘solution’ worthy of Mach: ‘It is true that reality is the criterion for the correctness of thought. But reality is not, it becomes—and to become, the participation of thought is needed.’ So he tries to find the same bridge between materialism and idealism-—of course to the bene- fiit of the latter—that Lenin criticized in Mach’s theory of knowledge. The second remark concerns Lukacs’ inde- scribable attitude to Rosa Luxemburg. In his first work devoted to her, he puts Rosa Luxem- burg above everything else—for example, he puts her Accumulation of Capital in first place, not mentioning Lenin’s Imperialism. A year later he completely changed his opinion and launched a brutal, disloyal attack against her—just as Stalin did later, to which Trotsky replied that for Stalin, Rosa Luxemburg is: ‘An ever new and isolated figure about whom he must in each new situation ask the question: is she a friend or an enemy?’ (Trotsky, Ecrits, vol. 1, p.330) This evaluation applies to Lukacs too. First as a spontaneist, Lukacs could use Rosa Luxemburg by distorting her thought. Then Lukacs moved to a position which crystallized in that of the bureaucracy: from a friend, Rosa Luxemburg became an ‘enemy’, Lukacs uses Lenin's criticism of the ‘Junius Pamphlet’. But if we compare the tone used by Lenin to Lukacs, we are struck by the latter's brutal invective as against Lenin’s fraternal attitude. According to Lukacs, Rosa Luxemburg only made propaganda without organizing the pariy—whereas Lenin’s criticism, written before Rosa Luxemburg became founder of the German CP, is circumspect, characterized by this passage: ‘On the whole, the Junius pamphlet is a splendid Marxist work, and its defects are, in all probability, to a certain extent accidental.’ (Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 306.) Lukacs accuses Rosa Luxemburg of being a spontaneist, of underestimating organization, although she had been founder of the German Communist Party. Lukacs continues to pour in- sults on Luxemburg, for she ‘dared’ criticize the Russian revolution. But contrast this outraged neophyte to Trotsky’s article ‘Hands off Rosa Luxemburg’ written a long time afterwards. There Trotsky characterizes Rosa Luxemburg’s position very differently: she ‘ . incorrectly criticised very severely and in its entirety Bol- shevik policy, whilst she was in prison in 1918. But even in this work, which counts among her worst, we can still see her eagle’s wings’. Attacks against Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, sometimes against Hegel, eulogistic quotations from ‘philosophical abortions’ like a Simmel, or a Lukacs, ‘benevolent’ condescension towards Bukharin, and here and there towards Engels, an obsequious attitude towards Lenin and Trotsky— that is the style of History and Class Conscious- ness, written in the jargon of the neo-kantians. It is a milestone in the peaceful and natural pas- sage of Lukacs from the bourgeoisie—after the ‘accident’ of revolutions—into the camp of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Fourth International Winter 1972/73

[p039] FROM THE ARSENAL OF MARXISM (Reprinted ‘Fourth International’ October 1941) These three historical docu- ments date back to the year 1926, a crucial year in the struggle of the Left Opposition against the bureaucratic degeneration of the party. They have not been published before in any language, The first of these documents ays diny, te whieh tc 's lary, w! November 1926, he jotted down for future reference— in thesis form— a series of basic propositions concerning the development of the USSR. They _ provide additional irrefutable evidence that Trot- sky never cherished any illu- sions about the meaning and gravity of the struggle against the bureaucratic tendencies which had then gained the sotiiaier om a the oe. ai tus, party, an country. These November 1926 theses were later ex- panded by Trotsky in a large number of speeches, articles and. books. ere, in the most general- ized form, is Trotsky’s analysis of the most complex historical problem, namely, the mech- anics of class society as expressed in the oscillations between revolutionary epochs and events and those of reaction and counter-revolu- tion. To young Bolsheviks these supply an object lesson in the method of Marxism. Trotsky here applies the dialectic to explain how the for the emancipation of working class is con- on bollel pseu tee vast soc processes, political ebbs and flows, their effects on the psy: of the — emia posargge il mena superstructure, From this kind of analysis and synthesis is derived our pro- gramme which alone makes possible a conscious interven- tion in events. Above all, these theses teach the lesson that in our epoch the decisive struggle is the struggle for the correct inter-reiationship between the party and the The other two documents which likewise pertain to this same year (1926) cast a graphic light on the conditions cade which Trotsky con- ducted this great stru; ideological leader of t! vising jucracy was none other than Bukharin to whom these two personal letters are addressed. In a certain sense, they con- stitute an appeal to Bukharin; at the same time they sound a warning about the disastrous consequences of the course on which Bukharin had embarked, and for which he paid. with his own life, 12 years later, in the third of the Moscow frame-up trials. THE EDITORS