Gyrgy Lukcs

1.1 Pre-Marxist period

This article is about the philosopher; for the

politician, who was Minister of Education, see
Gyrgy Lukcs (politician).

Whilst at university in Budapest, Lukcs was part of socialist intellectual circles through which he met Ervin Szab, an anarcho-syndicalist who introduced him to the
works of Georges Sorel (18471922), the French proponent of revolutionary syndicalism. In that period,
Lukcs intellectual perspectives were modernist and antipositivist. From 1904 to 1908, he was part of a theatre
troupe that produced modernist, psychologically realistic
plays by Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Gerhart
Hauptmann.

The native form of this personal name is Lukcs Gyrgy.

This article uses the Western name order.
Gyrgy Lukcs (/lukt/; Hungarian: [r lukat];
13 April 1885 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist
philosopher, aesthetician, literary historian, and critic.
He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Marxist ideological orthodoxy of the USSR. He developed the theory
of reication, and contributed to Marxist theory with developments of Karl Marxs theory of class consciousness.

Lukcs spent much time in Germany, and studied in

Berlin from 1906 to 1910, during which time he made the
acquaintance of the philosopher Georg Simmel. Later,
in 1913, whist in Heidelberg he befriended Max Weber, Ernst Bloch, and Stefan George. The idealist system
to which Lukcs subscribed was intellectually indebted
to Kantianism (then the dominant philosophy in German universities) and to Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, Sren Kierkegaard, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Fyodor
Dostoyevsky. In that period, he published Soul and Form
(1911; tr. 1974) and The Theory of the Novel (1920; tr.
1971).[5]

As a literary critic Lukcs was especially inuential, because of his theoretical developments of realism and of
the novel as a literary genre. In 1919, he was the Hungarian Minister of Culture of the government of the
short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic (MarchAugust
1919).[1]
Lukcs has been described as the preeminent Marxist intellectual of the Stalinist era, though assessing his legacy
can be dicult as Lukcs seemed to both support Stalinism as the embodiment of Marxist thought, and yet also
champion a return to pre-Stalinist Marxism.[2]

In 1915, Lukcs returned to Budapest, where he was

the leader of the Sunday Circle, an intellectual salon.
Its concerns were the cultural themes that arose from
the existential works of Dostoyevsky, which thematically
aligned with Lukcs interests in his last years at Heidelberg. As a salon, the Sunday Circle sponsored cultural
events whose participants included literary and musical
avant-garde gures, such as Karl Mannheim, the composer Bla Bartk, Bla Balzs, and Karl Polanyi; some
of them also attended the weekly salons. In 1918, the last
year of the First World War (191418), the Sunday Circle became divided. They dissolved the salon because of
their divergent politics; several of the leading members
accompanied Lukcs into the Communist Party of Hungary.

Life and politics

Georg Lukcs was born Lwinger Gyrgy Bernt,

in Budapest, Hungary, to the investment banker Jzsef
Lwinger (later Szegedi Lukcs Jzsef; 18551928) and
his wife Adele Wertheimer (Wertheimer Adl; 1860
1917), who were a wealthy Jewish family. He had
a brother and sister. Jzsef Lwinger was knighted
by the empire and received a baronial title, making
Georg Lukcs a baron as well, through inheritance.[3]
As an AustroHungarian subject, the full names of
Georg Lukcs were the German Baron Georg Bernhard Lukcs von Szegedin, and the Hungarian Szegedi
Lukcs Gyrgy Bernt"; as a writer, he published under
the names Georg Lukcs and Gyrgy Lukcs. Georg
Lukcs studied at the universities of Budapest and Berlin,
and received his doctorate in 1906 in Kolozsvr.[4]

1.2 Communist leader

In light of the First World War and the Russian Revolution of 1917, Lukcs rethought his ideas. He became a
committed Marxist in this period and joined the edgling
Communist Party of Hungary in 1918. As part of the
government of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, Lukcs was made Peoples Commissar for Education
and Culture (he was deputy to the Commissar for Educa1

LIFE AND POLITICS

rialism.
As a Hungarian exile, he remained active on the left wing
of Hungarian Communist Party, and was opposed to the
Moscow-backed programme of Bla Kun. His 'Blum
theses of 1928 called for the overthrow of the counterrevolutionary regime of Admiral Horthy in Hungary by
a strategy similar to the Popular Fronts that arose in the
1930s. He advocated a 'democratic dictatorship' of the
proletariat and peasantry as a transitional stage leading to
the dictatorship of the proletariat. After Lukcs strategy
was condemned by the Comintern, he retreated from active politics into theoretical work.

1.3 Under Stalin and Rkosi

In 1930, while residing in Vienna, Lukcs was summoned
to Moscow. This coincided with the signing of a Viennese police order for his expulsion. Leaving their children to attend their studies, Lukcs and his wife ventured
to Moscow in March 1930. Soon after his arrival, Lukcs
was prevented from leaving and assigned to work alongside David Riazanov (in the basement) at the MarxEngels Institute.

Lukcs in 1919

tion Zsigmond Kun).

Lukcs and his wife were not permitted to leave the Soviet
Union until after the Second World War. During Stalins
Great Purge, Lukacs was sent to internal exile in Tashkent
for a time, where he and Johannes Becher became friends.
Lukcs survived the purges of the "Great Terror, which
claimed the lives of an estimated 80% of the Hungarian
emigrs in the Soviet Union. There is much debate among
historians as to the extent that Lukcs accepted Stalinism.

During the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Lukcs was a

commissar of the Fifth Division of the Hungarian Red
Army, in which capacity he ordered the execution of eight After the war, Lukcs and his wife returned to Hunpersons in Poroszlo, in May 1919, after the Fifth Division gary. As a member of the Hungarian Communist Party,
were bested in battle.
he took part in establishing the new Hungarian government. From 1945 Lukcs was a member of the Hungarian
After the Hungarian Soviet Republic was defeated,
Lukcs ed from Hungary to Vienna. He was arrested Academy of Sciences. Between 1945 and 1946 he
strongly criticised non-communist philosophers and writbut was saved from extradition due to a group of writers
including Thomas and Heinrich Mann. Thomas Mann ers. Lukcs has been accused of playing an administrative (legal-bureaucratic) role in the removal of indepenlater based the character Naphta on Lukcs in his novel
The Magic Mountain. During his time in Vienna in the dent and non-communist intellectuals such as Bla Hamvas, Istvn Bib, Lajos Prohszka, and Kroly Kernyi
1920s, Lukcs befriended other Left Communists who
were working or in exile there, including Victor Serge, from Hungarian academic life. Between 1946 and 1953,
many non-communist intellectuals, including Bib, were
Adolf Joe and Antonio Gramsci.
imprisoned or forced into menial work or manual labour.
Lukcs began to develop Leninist ideas in the eld of
philosophy. His major works in this period were the es- Lukcs personal aesthetic and political position on culsays collected in his magnum opus History and Class Con- ture was always that Socialist culture would eventually
sciousness (1923). Although these essays display signs of triumph in terms of quality. He thought it should play
what Vladimir Lenin referred to as "ultra-leftism", they out in terms of competing cultures, not by administraprovided Leninism with a substantive philosophical ba- tive measures. In 194849 Lukcs position for cultural
sis. In July 1924 Grigory Zinoviev attacked this book tolerance was smashed in a Lukcs purge, when Mtys
along with the work of Karl Korsch at the Fifth Com- Rkosi turned his famous salami tactics on the Hungarian
intern Congress. In 1924, shortly after Lenins death, Communist Party.
Lukcs published the short study Lenin: A Study in the In the mid-1950s Lukcs was reintegrated into party life.
Unity of His Thought. In 1925, he published a critical The party used him to help purge the Hungarian Writreview of Nikolai Bukharin's manual of historical mate- ers Union in 195556. Tams Aczl and Tibor Mray

3
(former Secretaries of the Hungarian Writers Union)
both believe that Lukcs participated grudgingly, and cite
Lukcs leaving the presidium and the meeting at the rst
break as evidence of this reluctance.[6]

1.4

De-Stalinisation

ist.... The essence of Stalinism lies in placing tactics before strategy, practice above theory...The bureaucracy generated by Stalinism
is a tremendous evil. Society is suocated by
it. Everything becomes unreal, nominalistic.
People see no design, no strategic aim, and do
not move.... " Thus Lukcs concludes "[w]e
must learn to connect the great decisions of
popular political power with personal needs,
those of individuals. (Marcus & Zoltan 1989:
21516)

In 1956 Lukcs became a minister of the brief communist revolutionary government led by Imre Nagy, which
opposed the Soviet Union. At this time Lukcs daughter led a short-lived party of communist revolutionary
youth. Lukcs position on the 1956 revolution was that
the Hungarian Communist Party would need to retreat
2 Work
into a coalition government of socialists, and slowly rebuild its credibility with the Hungarian people. While
a minister in Nagys revolutionary government, Lukcs 2.1 History and Class Consciousness
also participated in trying to reform the Hungarian Communist Party on a new basis. This party, the Hungarian Further information: Class consciousness and Political
Socialist Workers Party, was rapidly co-opted by Jnos consciousness
Kdr after 4 November 1956.[7]
During the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Lukcs was
present at debates of the anti-party and revolutionary
communist Pet society, while remaining part of the
party apparatus. During the revolution, as mentioned in
Budapest Diary, Lukcs argued for a new Soviet-aligned
communist party. In Lukcs view, the new party could
win social leadership only by persuasion instead of force.
Lukcs envisioned an alliance between the dissident communist Party of Youth, the revolutionary Hungarian Social Democratic Party and his own Soviet-aligned party
as a very junior partner.
After 1956 Lukcs narrowly avoided execution. Due to
his role in Nagys government, he was no longer trusted
by the party apparatus. Lukcs followers were indicted
for political crimes throughout the 1960s and 70s, and a
number ed to the West. Lukcs books The Young Hegel
and The Destruction of Reason have been used to argue
that Lukcs was covertly critical of Stalinism as an irrational distortion of Hegelian-Marxism.
Following the defeat of the Revolution, Lukcs was deported to Romania with the rest of Nagys government.
Unlike Nagy, he survived the purges of 1956. He returned to Budapest in 1957. Lukcs publicly abandoned
his positions of 1956 and engaged in self-criticism. Having abandoned his earlier positions, Lukcs remained
loyal to the Communist Party until his death in 1971.
In his last years, following the uprisings in France and
Czechoslovakia in 1968, Lukcs became more publicly
critical of the Soviet Union and Hungarian Communist
Party.
In an interview just before his death, Lukcs remarked:
Without a genuine general theory of society and its movement, one does not get away
from Stalinism. Stalin was a great tactician...
But Stalin, unfortunately, was not a Marx-

Written between 1919 and 1922, History and Class Consciousness (1923) initiated Western Marxism.[8] Lukcs
emphasizes concepts such as alienation, reication and
class consciousness.[9]
Lukcs argues that methodology is the only thing that distinguishes Marxism: even if all its substantive propositions were rejected, it would remain valid because of its
distinctive method:[10]
Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not
imply the uncritical acceptance of the results
of Marxs investigations. It is not the belief
in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a sacred book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers
exclusively to method. It is the scientic conviction that dialectical materialism is the road
to truth and that its methods can be developed,
expanded and deepened only along the lines
laid down by its founders. (1)
He criticises Marxist revisionism by calling for the return to this Marxist method, which is fundamentally
dialectical materialism. Lukcs conceives revisionism
as inherent to the Marxist theory, insofar as dialectical
materialism is, according to him, the product of class
struggle:
For this reason the task of orthodox
Marxism, its victory over Revisionism and
utopianism can never mean the defeat, once
and for all, of false tendencies. It is an everrenewed struggle against the insidious eects
of bourgeois ideology on the thought of the
proletariat. Marxist orthodoxy is no guardian
of traditions, it is the eternally vigilant prophet
proclaiming the relation between the tasks of

WORK

the immediate present and the totality of the

historical process. (end of 5)

to the commodity nature of capitalist society, social relations become objectied. This precludes the spontaneous emergence of class consciousness. In this context,
According to him, The premise of dialectical material- the need for a party in the Leninist sense emerges, the
ism is, we recall: 'It is not mens consciousness that de- subjective aspect of the re-invigorated Marxian dialectic.
termines their existence, but on the contrary, their social In his later career, Lukcs repudiated the ideas of Hisexistence that determines their consciousness.'... Only tory and Class Consciousness, in particular the belief in
when the core of existence stands revealed as a social the proletariat as a "subject-object of history (1960 Postprocess can existence be seen as the product, albeit the face to French translation). As late as 1925-1926, he still
hitherto unconscious product, of human activity. (5). defended these ideas, in an unnished manuscript, which
In line with Marxs thought, he criticises the individualist he called Tailism and the Dialectic. It was not published
bourgeois philosophy of the subject, which founds it- until 1996 in Hungarian and English in 2000 under the
self on the voluntary and conscious subject. Against this title A Defence of History and Class Consciousness.
ideology, he asserts the primacy of social relations. Existence and thus the world is the product of human activity; but this can be seen only if the primacy of 2.2 Literary and aesthetic work
social process on individual consciousness is accepted.
Lukcs does not restrain human liberty for sociological In addition to his standing as a Marxist political thinker,
determinism: to the contrary, this production of existence Lukcs was an inuential literary critic of the twentieth
is the possibility of praxis.
century. His important work in literary criticism began
He conceives the problem in the relationship between the- early in his career, with The Theory of the Novel, a semory and practice. Lukcs quotes Marxs words: It is not inal work in literary theory and the theory of genre. The
enough that thought should seek to realise itself; reality book is a history of the novel as a form, and an investigamust also strive towards thought. How does the thought tion into its distinct characteristics.
of intellectuals be related to class struggle, if theory is Lukcs later repudiated The Theory of the Novel, writnot simply to lag behind history, as it is in Hegels phi- ing a lengthy introduction that described it as erroneous,
losophy of history (Minerva always comes at the dusk but nonetheless containing a romantic anti-capitalism
of night...)? Lukcs criticises Friedrich Engels' Anti- which would later develop into Marxism. (This introDhring, saying that he does not even mention the most duction also contains his famous dismissal of Theodor
vital interaction, namely the dialectical relation between Adorno and others in Western Marxism as having taken
subject and object in the historical process, let alone give up residence in the Grand Hotel Abyss.)
it the prominence it deserves. This dialectical relation
between subject and object is the basis of Lukcs critique In The Theory of the Novel, he coins the term transcenof Immanuel Kant's epistemology, according to which the dental homelessness. Dening the term as the longsubject is the exterior, universal and contemplating sub- ing of all souls for the place in which they once belonged, and the 'nostalgia for utopian perfection, a nosject, separated from the object.
talgia that feels itself and its desires to be the only true
For Lukcs, ideology is a projection of the class con- reality'".[11][12]
sciousness of the bourgeoisie, which functions to prevent
Lukcss later literary criticism includes the well-known
the proletariat from attaining consciousness of its revolutionary position. Ideology determines the form of essay Kafka or Thomas Mann?", in which Lukcs argues for the work of Thomas Mann as a superior attempt
objectivity", thus the very structure of knowledge. Acto
deal with the condition of modernity, while he critcording to Lukcs, real science must attain the concrete
icises Franz Kafka's brand of modernism. Lukcs was
totality through which only it is possible to think the current form of objectivity as a historical period. Thus, the steadfastly opposed to the formal innovations of modso-called eternal "laws" of economics are dismissed as ernist writers like Kafka, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckthe ideological illusion projected by the current form of ett, preferring the traditional aesthetic of realism.
objectivity (What is Orthodoxical Marxism?", 3). He During his time in Moscow in the 1930s, Lukcs was
also writes: It is only when the core of being has showed working on the Marxist views of aesthetics while belongitself as social becoming, that the being itself can appear ing to the group around an inuential Moscow magazine
as a product, so far unconscious, of human activity, and The Literary Critic (Literaturny Kritik)[13] The editor of
this activity, in turn, as the decisive element of the trans- this magazine, was an important Soviet author on aesthetformation of being. (What is Orthodoxical Marxism?", ics Mikhail Lifshitz. Lifshitz' views were very similar to
5) Finally, orthodoxical marxism is not dened as in- Lukcs in so far as both argued for the value of the traditerpretation of Capital as if it were the Bible or an em- tional art.
brace of marxist thesis, but as delity to the marxist Lukcs, himself, was a frequent contributor to this magmethod, dialectics.
azine that was also followed by Marxist art theoreticians
Lukcs presents the category of reication whereby, due around the world through various translations published

2.3

Realism in the Balance (1938)Lukcs defence of literary realism

by Soviet government.
The collaboration between Lifschitz and
Lukcs resulted in the formation of an informal circle of the like-minded Marxist intellectuals connected to the journal Literaturnyi Kritik [The Literary Critic], published monthly
starting in the summer of 1933 by the Organisational Committee of the Writers Union.
... A group of thinkers formed around Lifschitz, Lukcs and Andrei Platonov; they
were concerned with articulating the aesthetical views of Marx and creating a kind of Marxist aesthetics that had not yet been properly
formulated.[14]

Flauberts work marks a turning away from relevant social issues and an elevation of style over substance. Why
he does not discuss Sentimental Education, a novel much
more overtly concerned with recent historical developments, is not clear. For much of his life Lukcs promoted
a return to the realist tradition that he believed it had
reached its height with Balzac and Scott, and bemoaned
the supposed neglect of history that characterised modernism.
The Historical Novel has been hugely inuential in subsequent critical studies of historical ction, and no serious analyst of the genre fails to engage at some level with
Lukcss arguments.

2.3 Realism in the Balance (1938)

Despite the drastic diference in age (Lifschitz was much
Lukcs defence of literary realism
younger) both Lifschitz and Lukcs indicated that their
working relationship at that time was a collaboration of The initial intent of Realism in the Balance, stated at
equals.
its outset, is debunking the claims of those defending
Lukcs famously argued for the revolutionary character Expressionism as a valuable literary movement. Lukcs
addresses the discordance in the community of modernist
of the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Honor de Balzac.
Lukcs felt that both authors nostalgic, pro-aristocratic critics, whom he regarded as incapable of deciding which
politics allowed them accurate and critical stances be- writers were Expressionist and which were not, arguing
cause of their opposition (albeit reactionary) to the rising that perhaps there is no such thing as an Expressionist
bourgeoisie. This view was expressed in his later book writer.
The Historical Novel, as well as in his 1938 essay "Realism But although his aim is ostensibly to criticise what he
perceived as the over-valuation of modernist schools of
in the Balance".
The Historical Novel is probably Lukcss most inuential writing at the time the article was published, Lukcs uses
work of literary history. In it he traces the development the essay as an opportunity to advance his formulation
of the genre of historical ction. While prior to 1789, he of the desirable alternative to these schools. He rejects
argues, peoples consciousness of history was relatively the notion that modern art must necessarily manifest itunderdeveloped, the French Revolution and Napoleonic self as a litany of sequential movements, beginning with
wars that followed brought about a realisation of the con- Naturalism, and proceeding through Impressionism and
stantly changing, evolving character of human existence. Expressionism to culminate in Surrealism. For Lukcs,
This new historical consciousness was reected in the the important issue at stake was not the conict that results from the modernists evolving oppositions to classiwork of Sir Walter Scott, whose novels use 'representative' or 'typical' characters to dramatise major social con- cal forms, but rather the ability of art to confront an objective reality that exists in the world, an ability he found
icts and historical transformations, for example the dissolution of feudal society in the Scottish Highlands and almost entirely lacking in modernism.
the entrenchment of mercantile capitalism. Lukcs argues that Scotts new brand of historical realism was taken
up by Balzac and Tolstoy, and enabled novelists to depict
contemporary social life not as a static drama of xed,
universal types, but rather as a moment of history, constantly changing, open to the potential of revolutionary
transformation. For this reason he sees these authors as
progressive and their work as potentially radical, despite
their own personal conservative politics.

Lukcs believed that desirable alternative to such modernism must therefore take the form of Realism, and he
enlists the realist authors Maxim Gorky, Thomas and
Heinrich Mann, and Romain Rolland to champion his
cause. To frame the debate, Lukcs introduces the arguments of critic Ernst Bloch, a defender of Expressionism,
and the author to whom Lukcs was chiey responding.
He maintains that modernists such as Bloch are too willing to ignore the realist tradition, an ignorance that he believes derives from a modernist rejection of a crucial tenet
of Marxist theory, a rejection which he quotes Bloch as
propounding. This tenet is the belief that the system of
capitalism is an objective totality of social relations,
and it is fundamental to Lukcs arguments in favour of
realism.

For Lukcs, this historical realist tradition began to give

way after the 1848 revolutions, when the bourgeoisie
ceased to be a progressive force and their role as agents
of history was usurped by the proletariat. After this
time, historical realism begins to sicken and lose its concern with social life as inescapably historical. He illustrates this point by comparing Flauberts historical He explains that the pervasiveness of capitalism, the unity
novel Salammbo to that of the earlier realists. For him, in its economic and ideological theory, and its profound

6
inuence on social relations comprise a closed integration or totality, an objective whole that functions independent of human consciousness. Lukcs cites Marx
to bolster this historical materialist worldview: The relations of production in every society form a whole. He
further relies on Marx to argue that the bourgeoisies unabated development of the worlds markets are so farreaching as to create a unied totality, and explains that
because the increasing autonomy of elements of the capitalist system (such as the autonomy of currency) is perceived by society as crisis, there must be an underlying
unity that binds these seemingly autonomous elements of
the capitalist system together, and makes their separation
appear as crisis.

WORK

abstracted away from its place in the broader capitalist

system, and therefore appears as a subjective immediacy,
which elides its position as a crucial element of objective
totality.
Although abstraction can lead to the concealment of objective reality, it is necessary for art, and Lukcs believes
that realist authors can successfully employ it to penetrate the laws governing objective reality, and to uncover
the deeper, hidden, mediated, not immediately perceptible of relationships that go to make up society. After
a great deal of intellectual eort, Lukcs claims a successful realist can discover these objective relationships
and give them artistic shape in the form of a characters
subjective experience. Then, by employing the technique
of abstraction, the author can portray the characters experience of objective reality as the same kind of subjective, immediate experience that characterise totalitys
inuence on non-ctional individuals. The best realists,
he claims, depict the vital, but not immediately obvious
forces at work in objective reality. They do so with such
profundity and truth that the products of their imagination can potentially receive conrmation from subsequent
historical events. The true masterpieces of realism can be
appreciated as wholes which depict a wide-ranging and
exhaustive objective reality like the one that exists in the
non-ctional world.

Returning to modernist forms, Lukcs stipulates that such

theories disregard the relationship of literature to objective reality, in favour of the portrayal of subjective experience and immediacy that do little to evince the underlying capitalist totality of existence. It is clear that
Lukcs regards the representation of reality as arts chief
purposein this he is perhaps not in disagreement with
the modernistsbut he maintains that If a writer strives
to represent reality as it truly is, i.e. if he is an authentic
realist, then the question of totality plays a decisive role.
True realists demonstrate the importance of the social
context, and since the unmasking of this objective totality is a crucial element in Lukcs Marxist ideology, he After advancing his formulation of a desirable literary
privileges their authorial approach.
school, a realism that depicts objective reality, Lukcs
Lukcs then sets up a dialectical opposition between two turns once again to the proponents of modernism. Citelements he believes inherent to human experience. He ing Nietzsche, who argues that the mark of every form
maintains that this dialectical relation exists between the of literary decadence ... is that life no longer dwells in the
appearance of events as subjective, unfettered experi- totality, Lukcs strives to debunk modernist portrayals,
ences and their essence as provoked by the objective claiming they reect not on objective reality, but instead
totality of capitalism. Lukcs explains that good realists, proceed from subjectivity to create a home-made model
such as Thomas Mann, create a contrast between the con- of the contemporary world. The abstraction (and immesciousnesses of their characters (appearance) and a real- diacy) inherent in modernism portrays essences of capity independent of them (essence). According to Lukcs, italist domination divorced from their context, in a way
Mann succeeds because he creates this contrast. Con- that takes each essence in isolation, rather than taking
versely, modernist writers fail because they portray real- into account the objective totality that is the foundation
ity only as it appears to themselves and their characters for all of them. Lukcs believes that the social mission
subjectivelyand fail to pierce the surface of these im- of literature is to clarify the experience of the masses,
mediate, subjective experiences to discover the under- and in turn show these masses that their experiences are
lying essence, i.e. the real factors that relate their experi- inuenced by the objective totality of capitalism, and his
ences to the hidden social forces that produce them. The chief criticism of modernist schools of literature is that
pitfalls of relying on immediacy are manifold, accord- they fail to live up to this goal, instead proceeding inexing to Lukcs. Because the prejudices inculcated by the orably towards more immediate, more subjective, more
capitalist system are so insidious, they cannot be escaped abstracted versions of ctional reality that ignore the obwithout the abandonment of subjective experience and jective reality of the capitalist system. Realism, because
immediacy in the literary sphere. They can only be su- it creates apparently subjective experiences that demonperseded by realist authors who abandon and transcend strate the essential social realities that provoke them, is
the limits of immediacy, by scrutinising all subjective for Lukcs the only defensible or valuable literary school
experiences and measuring them against social reality; of the early twentieth century.
this is no easy task. Lukcs relies on Hegelian dialectics
to explain how the relationship between this immediacy
and abstraction eects a subtle indoctrination on the part 2.4 Ontology of social being
of capitalist totality. The circulation of money, he explains, as well as other elements of capitalism, is entirely Later in life Lukcs undertook a major exposition on the
ontology of social being, which has been partly published

7
in English in three volumes. The work is a systematic
treatment of dialectical philosophy in its materialist form.

Bibliography

Main article: Gyrgy Lukcs bibliography

[9] McLellan, David (2005). Honderich, Ted, ed. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 547. ISBN 0-19-926479-1.
[10] Wright, Erik Olin; Levine, Andrew; Sober, Elliott (1992).
Reconstructing Marxism: Essays on Explanation and the
Theory of History. London: Verso. pp. 103104. ISBN
0 86091 554 9.
[11] G. Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel, London: Merlin
Press, 1963, p. 70.

See also
Theodor Adorno
Max Horkheimer
Antonio Gramsci
Louis Althusser

[12] Young, Joyce. A Book Without Meaning: Why You Aren't

Happy With the Ending of Innite Jest. May 2009, p. 4.
[13] Gutov D., Learn, learn and learn. In: Make Everything
New - A Project on Communism. Edited by Grant Watson, Gerrie van Noord & Gavin Everall. Published by
Book Works and Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 2006 PP.
24-37.
[14] Evgeni V. Pavlov, Perepiska (Letters), Mikhail Lifschitz
and Gyrgy Lukcs. Moscow: Grundrisse, 2011

Leo Koer
Evald Ilyenkov
Istvn Mszros
Max Adler
Budapest School (Lukcs)

Notes

[1] Bents Readers Encyclopedia Third Edition (1987) p.

588.
[2] Leszek Koakowski ([1981], 2008), Main Currents of
Marxism, Vol. 3: The Breakdown, W. W. Norton &
Company, Ch VII: Gyrgy Lukcs: Reason in the Service of Dogma, W.W. Norton & Co
[3] Lunching under the Goya. Jewish Collectors in Budapest
at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, Konstantin
Akinsha, Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History
[4] Jlia Bendl " Lukcs Gyrgy lete a szzadfordultl
1918-ig, http://nyitottegyetem.phil-inst.hu/Tarsfil/ktar/
Bendl/Lukacs4.htm, 1994 (Hungarian)
[5] Bents Readers Encyclopedia Third Edition (1987) p.
588.
[6] Tams Aczl, Tibor Mray, The revolt of the mind: a
case history of intellectual resistance behind the Iron Curtain.
[7] Woroszylski, Wiktor, 1957. Diary of a revolt: Budapest
through Polish eyes. Trans. Michael Segal. [Sydney :
Outlook]. Pamphlet.
[8] Bien, Joseph (1999). Audi, Robert, ed. The Cambridge
Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 521. ISBN 0-521-63722-8.

6 References
Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His Thought. ISBN
1-85984-174-0.
History and Class Consciousness.
62020-0.

ISBN 0-262-

The Theory of the Novel. ISBN 0-262-62027-8.

A Defense of History and Class Consciousness. ISBN
1-85984-747-1.
Woroszylski, Wiktor, 1957. Diary of a revolt: Budapest through Polish eyes. Trans. Michael Segal.
[Sydney : Outlook]. Pamphlet.
Aczel, Tamas, and Meray, Tibor, 1975. Revolt of
the Mind: a case history of intellectual resistance behind the iron curtain. Greenwood Press Reprint.
Granville, Johanna. Imre Nagy aka 'Volodya' A
Dent in the Martyrs Halo?", Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 5 (Woodrow
Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington, DC), Spring, 1995, pp. 28, and 3437.
Granville, Johanna, The First Domino: International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956, Texas A & M University Press, 2004.
ISBN 1-58544-298-4
Kadvany, John, 2001. Imre Lakatos and the Guises
of Reason. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-82232659-0.
KGB Chief Kryuchkov to CC CPSU, 16 June 1989
(trans. Johanna Granville). Cold War International History Project Bulletin 5 (1995): 36 [from:
TsKhSD, F. 89, Per. 45, Dok. 82.].

8
Arato, Andrew, and Breines, Paul, 1979. The Young
Lukacs and the Origins of Western Marxism. New
York: Seabury Press.
Baldacchino, John, 1996. Post-Marxist Marxism:
Questioning the Answer: Dierence and Realism after Lukacs and Adorno. Brookeld, VT: Avebury.
Corredor, Eva L., 1987. Gyrgy Lukcs and the Literary Pretext. New York: P. Lang.
Heller, Agnes, 1983. Lukacs Revalued. Blackwell.
Kettler, David, 1970. Marxism and Culture:
Lukacs in the Hungarian Revolutions of 1918/19,
Telos, No. 10, Winter 1971, pp. 3592
Lichtheim, George, 1970. George Lukacs. Viking
Press. ISBN 978-0670019090
Lwy, Michael, 1979. Georg LukacsFrom Romanticism to Bolshevism. Trans. Patrick Chandler.
London: NLB.
Marcus, Judith and Zoltan Tarr 1989. Georg
Lukacs: Theory, Culture and Politics. New Jersey:
Transaction Inc.
Meszaros, Istvan, 1972. Lukacs Concept of Dialectic. London: The Merlin Press. ISBN 9780850361599
Muller, Jerry Z., 2002. The Mind and the Market:
Capitalism in Western Thought. Anchor Books.
Shafai, Fariborz, 1996. The Ontology of Georg
Lukcs : Studies in Materialist Dialectics. Brookeld,
USA: Avebury. ISBN 978-1859724224
Sharma, Sunil, 1999. The Structuralist Philosophy of
the Novel: a Marxist Perspective: a Critique of Georg
Luckcs [sic], Lucien Goldmann, Alan Swingewood
& Michel Zraa. Delhi: S.S. Publishers.

Gerhardt, Christina. Georg Lukcs, The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, 1500
to the Present. 8 vols. Ed. Immanuel Ness (Malden:
Blackwell, 2009). 2135-2137.
Hohendahl, Peter Uwe. The Scholar, The Intellectual, And The Essay: Weber, Lukcs, Adorno, And
Postwar Germany, German Quarterly 70.3 (1997):
217-231.
Hohendahl, Peter U. Art Work And Modernity:
The Legacy Of Georg Lukcs, New German Critique: An Interdisciplinary Journal Of German Studies 42.(1987): 33-49.
Hohendahl, Peter Uwe, and Blackwell Jeanine.
Georg Lukcs In The GDR: On Recent Developments In Literary Theory, New German Critique: An Interdisciplinary Journal Of German Studies 12.(1977): 169-174.
Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentiethcentury Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.
Stern, L. George Lukacs: An Intellectual Portrait,
Dissent, vol. 5, no. 2 (Spring 1958), pp. 162-173.

8 External links
Works by Gyrgy Lukcs at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Gyrgy Lukcs at Internet
Archive
Georg Lukcs Archive, Marxists website
Guide to Literary Theory, Johns Hopkins University
Press
Georg Lukcs, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Lukacs Biography and Overview

Snedeker, George, 2004. The Politics of Critical

Theory: Language, Discourse, Society. Lanham,
MD: University Press of America.

Bendl Jlia, Lukcs Gyrgy lete a szzadfordultl 1918-ig

Thompson, Michael J. (ed.), 2010. Georg Lukacs

Reconsidered: Essays on Politics, Philosophy, and
Aesthetics. Continuum Books.

Hungarian biography

Kadarkay, Arpad, 1991. Georg Lukcs: Life,

Thought, and Politics. Basil Blackwell.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Further reading
Georg Lukcs, translated by Jeremy Gaines, Paul
Keast, German Realists in the Nineteenth Century,
MIT Press, 2000

Lukcs and Imre Lakatos

Georg Lukcs Archive, Libertarian Communist Library]

Mlt-kor Trtnelmi portl (Past-Age Historic Portal): Lukcs Gyrgy was born 120 years ago (Hungarian)
Levee Blanc, Georg Lukcs: The Antinomies of
Melancholy, Other Voices, Vol.1 no.1, 1998.
Michael J. Thompson, Lukacs Revisited New Politics, 2001, Issue 30

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