Conversations with Lukács

by György Lukács, Theo Pinkus (Editor)

Using the technique of prepared questions, Conversations with Lukács is a brilliant gathering of thoughts and insights covering topics as ontology, the techniques of manipulative societies, the pitfalls of combating Stalinism with Stalinist methods, and the problems of intellectuals in advanced capitalist societies. Above all, there is the restatement of Lukács's unshaken conviction that the working class, with all the changes that have occurred in its way of life and composition, is still the historical carrier of social transformation. Lukács's interlocutors in these four conversations are Hans Heinz Holz, Leo Kofler, and Wolfgang Abendroth. Each of them engages Lukács in separate dialogues, on being and consciousness (Holz), on society and the individual (Kofler), and on the elements of scientific politics (Abendroth). Lukács, Abendroth, and Holz work toward a Provisional Summary in the last conversation. The interlocutors and the editor write that quot;These conversations show very clearly the basis of abstraction in the experiences of everyday life.... This gives these conversations with Lukács a more than anecdotal value; for the unmediated way in which thought is produced in conversation corresponds exactly to that primary level of experience, the data of everyday reality, whose theoretical value Lukács emphasizes.... They aspire to bear witness to the living thought of one of the great men of our century, and to provide the opportunity to approach this thought by the simplest possible route.

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, aesthetician, literary historian and critic. He is a founder of the tradition of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Marxist ideological orthodoxy of the Soviet Union. He developed the theory of reification, and contributed to Marxist theory with developments of Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. He was also a philosopher of Leninism. He ideologically developed and organised Lenin's pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution.

His literary criticism was influential in thinking about realism and about the novel as a literary genre. He served briefly as Hungary's Minister of Culture as part of the government of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short yet theoretically dense collection of dialogues between Lukacs and three West German Marxist theorists, Conversations with Lukacs is an interesting collection of Lukacs thoughts without the coherence of a constant subject to hold it together. One wonders who it was to be published for: it is too philosophical to be a general introduction to the thought of Lukacs, and yet too introductory to bring anything truly new to the table for someone familiar with Lukacs’ oeuvre. The first conversation on “Being and Consciousness” with Hans Heinz Holz yields an interesting comment on Leibniz, in that “the study of Leibniz is one of the great omissions of Marxism” (25). There is also a critique of Stalin era socialist realism as “establishment naturalism,” but the actual theoretical content of this critique is unclear (36-37).

The second conversation on “Society and the Individual” with Leo Kofler has some interesting observations from Lukacs on late capitalism, namely the rise of relative surplus value as well as the service economy (53-54). He has an interesting comparison for the sexual revolution as “an equivalent of [Luddite] machine-wrecking in the battle for female independence,” which while harsh, is more sympathetic than many of his Marxist contemporaries (60-61). His idea that the “reform of man” should be the central task of Marxism brings him closer to Mao and the pre-1980s Chinese Revolution than he would like to admit (59). The third conversation, “Elements for Scientific Politics” with Wolfgang Abendroth, has Lukacs lamenting the lack of a truly innovative figure of tactics and theory such as Lenin, which largely devolves into Lukacs’ usual hero worship of Lenin rather than anything of substance. He critiques Togliatti as a poor theorist, and argues that the Frankfurt School is deficient through its inheritance of “German pessimism” (84, 93). He critiques the general tendency of party leaders as theorists, and instead calls for a “brains trust” model of advising intellectuals to the party in the socialist countries, which is interesting but seems prone to simply reproducing his disdained bureaucracy. (99). He shows some familiarity with C. Wright Mills, which is interesting (114-115).

The last conversation, “Provisional Summary” with Abendroth and Holz, yields very little. He sadly retains and defends the Asiatic mode of production (fashionable for the time, as Immanuel Wallerstein and Wittfogel did as well), just as he did with his critique of Stalin in “Reflections on the Cult of Stalin” and The Process of Democratization, which is one of the undoubtedly good modifications made to Marxist theory during the Stalin era (140). He reiterates his critique of the Stalin era as a subordination of theory to practice rather than a dialectical relationship between the two (153). The work isn’t bad, but it certainly isn’t necessary reading for those interested in Lukacs.

[Sergio Corchete · Rating 4 out of 5]

De dónde sacará Abendroth en el 66 el uso de capitalismo tardío. Las recurrentes acusaciones al stalinismo son gloriosas, la última por neopositivista es genial. También la idea de la recuperación de la praxis y la organización como movimiento, clave en toda la obra de Lukács, es algo sobre lo que hay que incidir. Y la insistencia del problema del capitalismo tardío como un sistema manipulatorio es interesantísima y evidencia una relación muy madura y flexible con la conceptualización política en alguien como Lukács. Una joya de conversación.