Table Of ContentGEORG LUKACS' MARXISM
GEORG LUKACS
GEORG LUKACS' MARXISM
ALIENATION, DIALECTICS,
REVOLUTION
A Study in Utopia and Ideology
by
VICTOR ZITTA (PH. n.)
Assistant Professor of Political Science
at Marquette University
Introduction by
HAROLD D. LASSWELL
rate University Law School
-
•
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA. B.V. 1964
ISBN 978-94-017-6724-8 ISBN 918-94-017-6812-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-6812-2
Copyright, 1964, by Springer Science+BHSiness Media Dordrecht
Originalfy published f?y Martinus NijhojJ, The Hague, Netherlands in 1964
S qftcorer reprint of the hardcoVI!T 1st edition 1964
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form.
In Memory cif my Father
and t1!Y brother Richard
... I never judge a writer before I have studied
him thoroughly. But, to take as a norm the
warning to be cautious, out of fear for a
possible error or because of the eventual
judgement of later epochs, - this I will not
accept ... If I have erred frequently, the
historians of the future will be right ...
Georg Lukacs to Anna Seghers, 28 July, 1938.
GEORG LUKACS' VITA
Georg Lukäcs was bom on the 13 of April, 1885 at Budapest, to parents of Jewish
origin, members of the aristocracy. (This is why his name appears with a von till
1918). He began publishing in his teens; organized the Thalia theater in 1905, and
took his doctorate in sociology under Simme1 in Berlin in 1906. He edited the famous
literary monthly, Nyugat, and co-edited the sociologica1 joumal Huszadik Szazad.
His lengthy essay "The Development of Modem Drama" received in 1908 the
Kisfaludy-Society's first prize. In 1911 he published his famous The Souland The Forms
which established his reputationbothat home and abroad. In 1912, he settled down
at Heidelberg, and frequented the Weber-aftemoons where he met with Germany's
most noted intellectuals at the time. In 1914 he was shaken by the outbreak ofWorld
War I, and he composed his Theory ofthe Novel, published in 1915-16, in book form
in 1920. The book had a great influence on literary scholars. The war tumed him
into aJacobin in 1918 while he was lecturer in Aesthetics at Heidelberg. He joined
the Hungarian Communist party. During the Hungarian Commune (1919) he was
Commissar of Culture, and after its collapse, he emigrated to Vienna where he stayed
till the 1ate thirties. In 1923 he published his famous History and Classconsciousness,
and became involved in many intellectual debates. In 1927 he was imprisoned by
the Austrians for his subversive activities, and was about to be extradited to the
Hungarians who had passed a death sentence against him. Thomas Mann intervened,
and the Austrian President refused extradition. From 1930-1931 he lived in Moscow
as Research Associate at the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Institute, but he retumed to Berlin
( 1931-1933) active in various literary societies of the extreme Left. In 1933 he emi
grated to Russia to work as Research Associate of the Philosophical Institute of the
Academy ofSciences. He edited Oj Hang, Das Wort, and Internationale Literatur, which
appealed to the United Front audience. His criticism of Sodalist art brought him
into conflict ( 1938) with his Soviet colleagues. In 1945 he retumed to Budapest as
Professor of Aesthetics and Cultural Philosophy and as member ofvarious academic
societies, plus member of Parliament. His publications followed the line he persued
in the mid-thirties on art as weil as politics which brought him into conflict with the
party and led to his comparative isolation. In 1956 he was again active in the debates
of the Petöfi Circle, and he nourished the flames of rebelliousness by criticizing the
Party. His ab1e exposition of a policy of co-existence with the West, and also with the
forces of progressive Catholicism, brought him into the Nagy Cabinet. He was the
only member to vote against neutrality from the Warsaw pact. Taking refuge into
the Yugoslav embassy, he was exiled into Roumania, but he was permitted toreturn
soon (Aprill957) and devotehistime to his work. He stilllives in relative seclusion.
His collccted works are being published in West Germany.
INTRODUCTION
Georg Lukacs is one of the rare figures in contemporary Marxism
whose influence as a theoretician has been sufficiently proclaimed,
denied and reaffirmed to justify the extended treatment he has re
ceived in the present book. At the age of twenty-six Lukacs established
an international reputation as a critic with the publication of The Soul
and the Forms. Eight years 1ater, shortly after p1unging into the politics
of active rebellion, he was Commissar of Cu1ture in the Hungarian
Commune of 1919. In 1923 he published History and Classconsciousness,
the work upon which rests his reputation as a creative theorist ofp olitics.
During recent decades Lukacs has excelled in the art ofself..preservative
discourse in the precarious rea1m of Stalin, Stalinists, and their succes
sors.
Fora few briefmonths history presented Lukacs with an opportunity
to give relatively full expression to the drastic politica1 perspectives of a
remarkab1y cu1tivated and destructively egocentric personality. Lukacs
is presented by Zitta as one ofthe chiefarchitects ofthe terror that gave
gris1y distinctiveness to the Hungarian uprising. The strategy is summa
rized in a few princip1es of manipu1ation: iso1ate every individual by a
reign of terror, panic, and distrust; arouse se1f-accusations of guilt by
administering random punishment for capricious ru1es; annihi1ate all
values ofthe previous social and po1itical order. The steam roller aims
to pu1verize individualities into a quaking mass that seeks security
through submission to totalitarian command.
Passing over the question why Lukacs became an intellectual at all,
Zitta proceeds directly to the problern of why his intellectuality took
the direction it did. Restricting hirnself 1argely to Lukacs' published
output, Zitta arrives at severa1 important findings. The first is that
Lukacs was deep1y at odds with hirnself in his ro1e as a member of the
intellectua1 dass of Hungary. He missed the most respected career,
that of poet, because he had no ta1ent for poetry. At the same time
Lukacs was insufficiently interested in, and gratified by, systematic
analysis to become reconci1ed to permanent indenture to the academic
phi1osophers of Germany.
The second finding is that Lukacs met his inner conflict by feeling
X INTRODUCTION
acutely alienated from other egos. Plagued by suicidal impulses Lukacs
nevertheless concentrated with furious intensity upon literary communi
cations which gave public form to a private predicament.
Third, Lukcics attempted to swathe his wounded ego in mysticism.
Unassuaged, Lukacs presently shifted to a dialectical perspective which
provided a "historicist, immanent, and activist orientation".
War and revolution blasted Lukcics from lifelong absorption in ego
nursing-punctuated by enigmatic public confessionals. Wrapped in
the private grandeur of superior wisdom and self-exemption from
restraint, Lukcics seized the opportunity of 1919 to terrorize his fellows.
Zitta's exposition and evaluation of History and Classconsciousness does
justice to the circumstances which account for its exceptional position
in the Iiterature ofMarxism. The publication was not a book; it is more
accurately described as a collection of related lectures, essays and
reviews. The inner agitation of the speaker-writer communicated an
undertone of excitement, prophecy and revelation to a host of suscepti
b1e readers. The plastic prose seemed to project form and substance in
the intonations of an authentic master. Under Zitta's microscope,
however, confusions and contradictions come into the open. The un
avoidable inference is that the "dialectical method" is a fraud; worse,
it licenses the homicidal mania of self-selected supermen.
It is undeniable that Zitta has established a strong case for his
analysis ofwhy Lukcics wrote and acted as he did. To recognize this is
not necessarily to concur in all the generalizations which the author
bases upon the Lukacs material, especially the "necessary" consequences
of one doctrinal position for another, or ofbelieffor behavior. The Lu
kacs case exhibits a constellation offactors which tends to account for a
sequence that began in egocentric misery, sought surcease in the
"whole truth" of mysticism, and ended in the "who1e truth" of world
revolutionary cataclysm. Contemporary knowledge of the dynamics of
ideology will be deeper when comparable studies analyze careers that
follow a different sequence, passing from misery to activism to mystic
withdrawal. Or careers unlike the Lukacs case-which conformed
behavior tobelief-that fit the more usual pattern ofbelief and partial
conformity. Scrupulous studies like the present are of permanent im
portance in illuminating the context in which private and public crises
provide scope for egocentric personalities to murder in the name ofthe
"whole truth", secular or sacred.
HAROLD D. LASSWELL
Edward ]. Phelps Professor of Law and Political Science Tale Universib'
