Spider and Fly: The Leninist Philosophy of Georg Lukács
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Abstract
From 1919 to 1929, the great Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács was one of the leaders of the Hungarian Communist Party, immersed not simply in theorising but also in significant practical-political work. Along with labour leader Jenö Landler, he led a faction opposing an ultra-left sectarian orientation represented by Béla Kun (at that time also associated with Comintern chairman Zinoviev, later aligning himself with Stalin).
If seen in connection with this factional struggle, key works of Lukács in this period – History and Class Consciousness (1923), Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His Thought (1924), Tailism and the Dialectic (1926) and ‘The Blum Theses’ (1929) – can be seen as forming a consistent, coherent, sophisticated variant of Leninism. Influential readings of these works interpret them as being ultra-leftist or proto-Stalinist (or, in the case of ‘The Blum Theses’, an anticipation of the Popular Front perspectives adopted by the Communist International in 1935). Such readings distort the reality. Lukács’s orientation and outlook of 1923–9 are, rather, more consistent with the orientation advanced by Lenin and Trotsky in the Third and Fourth Congresses of the Communist International.
After his decisive political defeat, Lukács concluded that it was necessary to renounce his distinctive political orientation, and completely abandon the terrain of practical revolutionary politics, if he hoped to remain inside the Communist movement. This he did, adapting to Stalinism and shifting his efforts to literary criticism and philosophy. But the theorisations connected to his revolutionary politics of the 1920s continue to have relevance for revolutionary activists of the twenty-first century.
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Aczél Tamas & Meray Tibor The Revolt of the Mind: A Case History of Intellectual Resistance Behind the Iron Curtain 1959 New York Frederick A. Praeger
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Block Russell Lenin’s Fight Against Stalinism 1975 New York Pathfinder Press
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Borkenau Franz World Communism: A History of the Communist International 1962 Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press
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Carr Edward Hallett The Interregnum, 1923–1925 1969 Harmondsworth Penguin Books
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Carr Edward Hallett Twilight of the Comintern, 1930–1935 1982 New York Pantheon Books
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Chamberlin William Henry Russia’s Iron Age 1934 Boston Little, Brown, and Co.
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Chamberlin William Henry The Russian Revolution, 1917–1921 1987 [1935] two volumes Princeton Princeton University Press
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Cohen Stephen Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888–1938 1975 New York Vintage Books
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Dimitroff Georgi The United Front: The Struggle Against Fascism and War 1938 New York International Publishers
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Fekete Eva & Karadi Eva György Lukács: His Life in Pictures and Documents 1981 Budapest Corvina Kiado
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Fischer Ernst An Opposing Man 1974 New York Liveright
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Jacobowski Franz Ideology and Superstructure in Historical Materialism 1990 London Pluto Press
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Kadarkay Arpad Georg Lukács: Life, Thought, and Politics 1991 Oxford Basil Blackwell
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Kolakowski Leszek Main Currents of Marxism 1978 Volume 3 Oxford Oxford University Press
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Le Blanc Paul Lenin and the Revolutionary Party 1993 Atlantic Highlands, NJ. Humanities Press
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Lenin Vladimir Ilyich ‘Speech in Defense of the Tactics of the Communist International’ Collected Works 1973 Volume 32 Moscow Progress Publishers
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Leviné-Meyer Rosa Leviné: The Life of a Revolutionary 1973 Farnborough Saxon House
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Lewin Moshe Lenin’s Last Struggle 1970 New York Vintage Books
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Lichtheim George George Lukács 1971 New York Viking Press
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Lih Lars T. , Naumov Oleg V. & Khlevniuk Oleg V. Stalin’s Letters to Molotov 1995 New Haven Yale University Press
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Löwy Michael Georg Lukács: From Romanticism to Bolshevism 1979 London New Left Books
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Lukács Georg Livingstone Rodney History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics 1971a [1923] Cambridge, MA. MIT Press
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Lukács Georg Jacobs Nicholas Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought 1971b [1924] Cambridge, MA. MIT Press
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Lukács Georg Livingstone Rodney Tactics and Ethics: Political Essays 1919–1929 1972 New York Harper and Row
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Lukács Georg Fernbach David The Ontology of Social Being. 2: Marx 1978 London Merlin Press
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Lukács Georg Eorsi István Record of a Life: An Autobiography 1983 London Verso
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Lukács Georg The Process of Democratization 1991 Albany State University of New York Press
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Lukács Georg Leslie Esther A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and the Dialectic 2000 [1926] London Verso
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Mandel Ernest From Stalinism to Eurocommunism 1978 London New Left Books
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Medvedev Roy Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism 1989 New York Columbia University Press
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Mészáros István Lukács’s Concept of Dialectic 1972 London Merlin Press
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Mészáros István The Power of Ideology 1989 New York New York University Press
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Mészáros István Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition 1995 New York Monthly Review Press
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Mészáros István Aspects of Class Consciousness 1971 London Routledge and Kegan Paul
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Miliband Ralph Divided Societies: Class Struggle in Contemporary Capitalism 1971 Oxford Oxford University Press
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Molnar Miklos A Short History of the Hungarian Communist Party 1978 Boulder, CO. Westview Press
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Murphy Kevin Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory 2007 Chicago Haymarket Books
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Perkins Stephen Marxism and the Proletariat: A Lukácsian Perspective 1993 London Pluto Press
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Rabinowitch Alexander The Bolsheviks Come to Power 1976 New York W.W. Norton
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Rees John The Algebra of Revolution: The Dialectic and the Classical Marxist Tradition 1998 London Routledge
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Souvarine Boris Stalin: A Critical Study of Bolshevism 1939 New York Longmans, Green and Co.
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Szabo Agnes Vass Henrik ‘The Hungarian Party of Communists on the Social Relationships of the Counter-Revolutionary Regime, 1919–1933’ Studies on the History of the Hungarian Working-Class Movement, 1867–1966 1975 Budapest Akademiai Kiado
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Therborn Goran Science, Class and Society: On the Formation of Sociology and Historical Materialism 1976 London New Left Books
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Trotsky Leon The Third International After Lenin 1970 New York Pathfinder Press
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Trotsky Leon The First Five Years of the Communist International 1972 Volume 1 New York Pathfinder Press
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Trotsky Leon Allen Naomi The Challenge of the Left Opposition, 1923–1925 1975 New York Pathfinder Press
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Ypsilon [Jules Humbert-Droz and Karl Volk] Pattern for World Revolution 1947 Chicago Ziff-Davis
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Zitta Victor Georg Lukács’s Revolution and Counter Revolution (1918–1921) 1991 Mexico Hear Talleres Grafricos
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1.
Leviné-Meyer 1973, p. 71.
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2.
Contained in Lukács 2000, which includes the text plus an informative Introduction by John Rees and a stimulating Postface by Slavoj Žižek.
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4.
Lukács 1972, p. 8.
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5.
‘Bolshevism as a Moral Problem (1918)’, in Zitta (ed.) 1991, pp. 40–1.
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7.
Rees 1998, pp. 202, 210; Mészáros 1989, p. 250. The interpretation by Rees – part of an outstanding larger study of Marxist dialectics – is consistent with that presented here.
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8.
Lukács 1983, pp. 160–1.
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9.
Borkenau 1962, p. 124, also pp. 108–33, 171–5; Lukács 1971a, p. xv; Lukács 1983, p. 75; also see Molnar 1978, pp. 10–30, and Szabo 1975, pp. 155–84.
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10.
Lukács 1983, pp. 74, 79.
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11.
Fekete and Karadi (eds.) 1981, p. 119.
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12.
Kadarkay 1991, pp. 262, 292; Fekete and Karadi (eds.) 1981, p. 141. Such a simple description was a tell-tale identification of Lukács regardless of underground precautions. He was ‘a man whose powerful intellect was matched only by his lack of physical substance’, Ernst Fischer wrote many years later. ‘It was as though his mind had constructed this tough and delicate frame with the utmost economy so that only the minimum worldly provision would have to be made for it, and all else could be requisitioned for thought.’ (Fischer 1974, p. 404.) Hungarian comrades of the 1940s and ’50s recalled: ‘György Lukács always had a cigar in his mouth. Whenever he entered the door of Party headquarters, the Academy of Sciences, the University, or the Writers’ Association, the inevitable cigar was always there, clamped between his lips . . . He was a shortish man, wrinkled and restless of face. He was over sixty, but his eyes frequently sparkled with childish pleasure and excitement – usually when he was explaining something.’ (Aczél and Meray 1959, pp. 57–8.)
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13.
Kadarkay 1991, pp. 286–7. It is bizarre that Lukács’s biographer likens efforts at gaining detailed information of working-class life to spying by the USSR’s secret police.
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14.
Lukács 1971a, p. xxviii; Kardakay 1991, p. 28.
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15.
Lukács 1983, p. 76.
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16.
Quoted in Le Blanc 1993, p. 275. For a slightly different translation, see Lenin 1973, pp. 474–5.
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17.
Lukács 1983, p. 98.
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18.
Trotsky 1972, p. 295.
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19.
Lukács 1983, pp. 79–80; Mészáros 1972, p. 136.
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20.
Carr 1982.
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21.
Dimitroff 1938, p. 110.
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23.
Lukács 1972, pp. 243–4. For a discussion of corporatism consistent with this usage, see Miliband 1971, pp. 127–30.
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24.
Lukács 1972, pp. 244–5.
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25.
Lukács 1972, pp. 248–9, 251.
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26.
Carr 1982, p. 426. The importance of Stalin’s behind-the-scenes involvement in the development of the new line is clear from his correspondence with his lieutenant V.M. Molotov, which refers – in regard to the 1935 Seventh Comintern Congress – to ‘spending a lot of time with the Comintern members’, makes positive reference to the reports by Dimitrov and Togliatti, and concludes that ‘the draft resolutions came out pretty well’. See Lih, Naumov and Khlevniuk (eds.) 1995, p. 237.
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28.
See Lewin 1970, Carr 1969, Block (ed.) 1975, and Trotsky 1975.
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29.
Löwy 1979, pp. 168–9.
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30.
Mészáros 1989, p. 312.
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31.
Lukács 2000, pp. 66–7.
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32.
Lukács 2000, pp. 66–8.
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33.
Lukács 2000, pp. 68–9, 70.
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34.
Lukács 2000, pp. 101, 50–1.
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35.
Lukács 2000, pp. 52, 55.
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36.
Lukács 2000, pp. 56–7, 58.
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37.
Lukács 2000, pp. 60–2.
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38.
Lukács 2000, pp. 71–2.
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39.
Lukács 2000, p. 72.
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40.
Lukács 2000, pp. 73–4, 77.
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41.
Kolakowski 1978, pp. 281, 282. The 1930s Lukács quote is from Lichtheim 1971, p. 104.
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42.
Lukács 2000, p. 78; Lukács 1971b, pp. 37–8.
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43.
Lukács 2000, pp. 81–2.
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44.
Lukács 2000, p. 82.
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46.
Jacobowski 1990, p. 121. For more on Marx and Engels ‘learning from the proletariat’, see Therborn 1976, pp. 326–35.
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47.
Lukács 2000, p. 83.
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48.
Lukács 2000, pp. 84–6.
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49.
Lukács 1971a, pp. 336–7.
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51.
Carr 1982, pp. vii, 427.
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52.
Lukács 1991, pp. 128–9, 131, 152. For corroboration, compare Chamberlin 1987 with Chamberlin 1934, and see Murphy 2007.
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53.
Lukács 1991, p. 158; Lukács 1978, p. 157.
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54.
Lukács 1991, pp. 68, 125.
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55.
Lukács 1991, p. 99.
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56.
Lukács 1991, p. 165.
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Spider and Fly: The Leninist Philosophy of Georg Lukács
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Paul Le Blanc in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
From 1919 to 1929, the great Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács was one of the leaders of the Hungarian Communist Party, immersed not simply in theorising but also in significant practical-political work. Along with labour leader Jenö Landler, he led a faction opposing an ultra-left sectarian orientation represented by Béla Kun (at that time also associated with Comintern chairman Zinoviev, later aligning himself with Stalin).
If seen in connection with this factional struggle, key works of Lukács in this period – History and Class Consciousness (1923), Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His Thought (1924), Tailism and the Dialectic (1926) and ‘The Blum Theses’ (1929) – can be seen as forming a consistent, coherent, sophisticated variant of Leninism. Influential readings of these works interpret them as being ultra-leftist or proto-Stalinist (or, in the case of ‘The Blum Theses’, an anticipation of the Popular Front perspectives adopted by the Communist International in 1935). Such readings distort the reality. Lukács’s orientation and outlook of 1923–9 are, rather, more consistent with the orientation advanced by Lenin and Trotsky in the Third and Fourth Congresses of the Communist International.
After his decisive political defeat, Lukács concluded that it was necessary to renounce his distinctive political orientation, and completely abandon the terrain of practical revolutionary politics, if he hoped to remain inside the Communist movement. This he did, adapting to Stalinism and shifting his efforts to literary criticism and philosophy. But the theorisations connected to his revolutionary politics of the 1920s continue to have relevance for revolutionary activists of the twenty-first century.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1228 | 170 | 11 |
| Full Text Views | 284 | 11 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 190 | 30 | 4 |
