Speaking Truth to Ourselves: Lukács, ‘False Consciousness’ and a Dilemma of Identity Politics in Democracy1

1. Lukács’ unhappy style and Livingstone's infelicitous translation taxed my linguistic skills to the limit; I want to thank K. P. Tauber for helping to pay that tax. D. Blocker corrected many of my errors. Thanks are also due to A. O. Rorty and G. C. Cifoletti for ancient comments which sent this work into a profitable period of hibernation from the first draft of 1986 to the second draft of 1996.

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Notes

1. Lukács’ unhappy style and Livingstone's infelicitous translation taxed my linguistic skills to the limit; I want to thank K. P. Tauber for helping to pay that tax. D. Blocker corrected many of my errors. Thanks are also due to A. O. Rorty and G. C. Cifoletti for ancient comments which sent this work into a profitable period of hibernation from the first draft of 1986 to the second draft of 1996.

2. Unless otherwise indicated, all references below are to Georg Lukács Werke: Band 2, Frühschriften II (Neuwied und Berlin: Luchterhand Verlag, 1968). The second number refers to the standard English translation of Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein by Rodney Livingstone as History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971). This translation is consistently misleading and often clearly wrong; where this is important for the present argument I have corrected the English text and indicated the change by placing a ‘c’ after the page number. My translations and interpretations were all compared with the Italian translation by Giovanni Piana to get a different reading of Lukács’ sometimes difficult texts. Some specific problems of translation are addressed in the notes below. ‘Die bloße Tatsache, daß jede proletarische Revolution—das zum Staatsorgan erwachsende Kampforgan des gesamten Proletariats, den Arbeiterrat produziert hat, ist z.B. ein Zeichen, daß das Klassenbewußtsein des Proletariats hier die Bürgerlichkeit seiner Führerschicht siegreich zu überwinden im Begriffe ist. Der revolutionäre Arbeiterrat, der mit seinen opportunistischen Karikaturen niemals verwechselt werden darf, ist eine der Formen, um die das Bewußtsein der proletarischen Klasse seit ihrem Entstehen unablässig gerungen hat. Sein Dasein, seine stetige Entwicklung zeigen, daß das Proletariat bereits an der Schwelle seines eigenen Bewußtseins und damit an der Schwelle des Sieges steht. Denn der Arbeiterrat ist die politisch-wirtschaftliche Überwindung der kapitalistischen Verdinglichung. So wie er im Zustand nach der Diktatur die bourgeoise Teilung von Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Rechtsprechung überwinden soll, so ist er im Kampfe um die Herrschaft berufen, einerseits die raumzeitliche Zersplitterung des Proletariats, anderseits Wirtschaft und Politik zur wahren Einheit des proletarischen Handelns zusammenzubringen und auf diese Weise den dialektischen Zwiespalt von unmittelbarem Interesse und Endziel versöhnen zu helfen’.

3. The family resemblance between this aspect of identity politics and one of the most fruitless anti-political spectacles of the twentieth century, the so-called political correctness debate, is grounded in the broader and crucial question of how truth work claims in political practice.

4. Lukács’ book was quickly recognized as one of the most important theoretical contributions to Marxism after Marx himself. This recognition includes its official denunciation. See Arato, Andrew & Brienes, Paul The Young Lukács and the Origins of Western Marxism (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979). Walter Benjamin included Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein with three other books written in the twentieth century in a brief essay called ‘Bücher, die lebendig geblieben sind’, and called it ‘Das gescholossenste philosophische Werk der marxistischen Literatur’. He goes on to say ‘Die Polemik, die von den Instanzen der Kommunistischen Partei unter Führung Deborins gegen dies Werk veröffentlicht wurde, bestätigt auf ihre Art dessen Tragweite’. The essay was published in Die Literarische Welt 17.5.1929, now in Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften III.169 ff. Jay (1984, pp. 246–247) misleadingly implies that Benjamin was luke-warm about Lukács, citing Sholem, who in fact suggests that the ‘enduring influence’ of Geschichte und Klassenbeußtsein (p. 127) had something to do with the beginning of his split with Benjamin (p. 123).

5. In the formation of political power, such claims usually become decisive only in how they move third parties into two way disputes. This is in part a question of the constitution of the public sphere, which I shall return to below. The general political structure of power is developed in my Dancing on a Landslide: Micro-Practical Foundations for a Political Theory of Power (work-in-progress).

6. Nota bene, for example, that N. Hartsock takes the lukácsian idea of ‘standpoint’ (Lukács 331–397/149–209) as a key concept for feminism but barely mentions Lukács at all. In a discussion of consciousness (Bewußtsein) it is easy to read this, as Hartsock does, as an epistemological notion; but this is a mistake, for Lukács is a Hegelian Marxist, and already in the previous section (II.4) he has gone beyond epistemology.

7. While Marx himself uses sparingly the term reification (Verdinglichung, Versachlichung), e.g., in Das Kapital, volume I, chapter one, and volume III, chapter XLVIII, pp. 838–839 et passim, we owe to Lukács its introduction as a marxian term of art and its subsequent importance for cultural studies.

8. ‘“Die Arbeit” sagt Marx, “hat aufgehört, als Bestimmung mit dem Individuum in einer Besonderheit verwachsen zu sein”; es müssen nur die falschen Erscheinungsformen dieses Daseins in seiner Unmittelbarkeit aufgehoben werden, damit das eigene Dasein als Klasse für das Proletariat zum Vorschein komme’.

9. ‘Es liegt ihr [der bürgerliche Klasse] aber anderseits—im unmittelbaren praktischen Handeln des täglichen Lebens—unendlich viel daran, diese ihre Art des Handelns auch dem Proletariat aufzuzwingen. In diesem Falle nämlich und nur in diesem Falle kommt ihre organisatorische usw. Überlegenheit klar zum Ausdruck, während die ganz anders geartete Organisation des Proletariats, seine Organisierbarkeit als Klasse praktisch nicht zur Geltung gelangen kann’. In this way, Lukács avoids the mistake of assuming that the ‘object’ of inquiry is either empirically present in its entirety or something complete in-itself. This is not to say that asserting the priority of ‘class consciousness’ over ‘class’ does not get him into other difficulties, but these are not my concern at this point.

10. This problem of the superficial character of bourgeois equality is developed in the section of ‘Die Verdinglichung und das Bewußtsein des Proletariats’ entitled ‘Der Standpunkt des Proletariats’ (331 ff./149 ff.)

11. ‘Es ist klar, daß wir mit dieser Fragestellung—von einer anderen Seite—wieder an die Grundfrage des bürgerlichen Denkens, an das Ding-an-sich-Problem gerührt haben’. (333) = ‘It is clear that by posing these questions we stir up once again—from another side—the fundamental question of bourgeois thought, the problem of the “thing-in-itself”’ (150c).

12. ‘Es ist die philosophische Größe Kants, daß er in beiden Fällen, statt die Unlösbarkeit des Problems durch eine willkürlich dogmatische Entscheidung in welcher Richtung immer zu verdecken, die Unlösbarkeit schroff und ungemildert herausgearbeitet hat’.=‘It is Kant's philosophical greatness to have worked through in a blunt and unexpurgated way in both instances the unresolvability of the problem, instead of covering it over by imposing some arbitrary dogmatic decision on it’. (313–14, 134C)

13. Compare Hegel's second most famous sentence: ‘Was vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig’ (Hegel, 1981, p. 25). The subtlety of this assertion is outlined in Hegel (1975, p. 6).

14. Lachterman (1992) and Funkenstein (1986) are useful sources for the problems discussed in this paragraph.

15. The first quote is from Thomas Hobbes Leviathan (p. 81). Vico's ‘The truth and the made are convertible’ can be found in ‘On The Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Taken From the Origins of the Latin Language’ Book I, Chapter One, section I. See Pompa's (1982) edition of Vico: Selected Writings (pp. 50–51). It is easy enough to trace it, like all things modern, back through Descartes and Galileo to the mores geometrico problem. Lachterman (1992) is a little-known but excellent work on a problem everyone gestures at but almost no one really understands.

16. ‘Es ist nur das bestimmte gesellschaftliche Verhältnis der Menschen selbst, welches hier für sie die phantasmagorische Form eines Verhältnisses von Dingen annimmt’. Karl Marx, (1983, Band I, p. 86).

17. For the importance of this discovery, see E. Cassirer Das Problem Jean-Jacques Rousseau. For a reinterpretation of the significance of Rousseau's formulation, see Myers (forthcoming) Abandoned to Ourselves.

18. Karl Marx The Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx & Engels (1978, p. 592).

19. Reification may be the most important topic in Marx's work, although he barely uses the term in Lukács’ sense. One may cite here the ‘Fetishism of commodities’ chapter [Das Kapital, volume I, chapter one, and volume III, chapter XLVIII, pp. 838–839 et passim], but all of Capital volume one is a more fully articulated version of the same idea. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno develop this line further in Dialektik der Aufklarung.

20. Polanyi (1944) develops this idea.

21. I deal with this general problem in Dancing on a Landslide (forthcoming).

22. Cp. the opening of Kant's Was ist Aufklärung?

23. Think of the fact that the word ‘fortune’, which originates as ‘fortuna’, or as ‘fate’, and is even related to the idea of ‘providence’, has come to be only an attribute, or an outcome, of the market. A fortune is a lot of money.

24. E.g., ‘When the ideal of scientific knowledge is applied to nature it simply furthers the progress of science. But when it is applied to society it turns out to be an ideological weapon of the bourgeoisie’ (182/10).

25. (223/50–51) The notion is adopted from Weber. See Iring Fetscher, ‘Zum Begriff der ‘Objektiven Möglichkeit’ bei Max Weber und Georg Lukács’ Revue International de Philosophie 106 (1973). On Lukács and Weber see also Merleau-Ponty (1974) and Arato and Breines (1979).

26. So much so that even ‘marxists’ tended to take this ‘appearance’ at face value. See, for example, Cohen (1978). For a strong argument against the truth of this appearance, see David Noble (1984); also Edwards (1979).

27. Even Adam Smith, in his tidewater statement of the capitalist political economy saw the truth of this. He is quite clear in his denunciations of the de-humanizing effects of the advanced division of labor. Remember, also, that in both the Wealth of Nations … and the Theory of Moral Sentiments he is referring to the cumulative effects of individual actions when he invokes his famous metaphor—that the interests of society were guided ‘as if by an invisible hand’. What is this, if not an (uncritical) notion of ‘reification’?

28. Havel's 1978 essay ‘The Power of the Powerless’ is reprinted in Living in Truth (100 ff. et passim).

29. Arato and Breines (1979) p. 106 et passim.

30. There are different ways to account for the relevant usage of ‘totality’ and its origins. Jay (1984, Chapter 1) properly discusses its relation to holism. A more thorough account would have to give more room to modern theories of history, to the rise of the idea of method with its guiding ideal of mathesis universalis, and to the fact that Lukács was a literary critic in the age of the Gesammtkunstwerk and the modernist novel. Another crucial political source for Lukács’ attachment to totality was Rosa Luxemburg, who was so thoroughly infused with the notion of totality that she wrote, at the mention of a book on bird songs, ‘for me the song of the birds is inseparable from their life as a whole; it is the whole that interests me, rather than any detached detail’ (Letter to Sophie Liebknecht from Breslau prison, August 2, 1917; Prison Letters p. 19).

31. First citation (28/155–156c), second and this paragraph (30–31/157–158c), in Die Deutsche Ideologie in Marx-Engels Werke Band 3 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1958) and Tucker, Robert (ed.) Marx-Engels Reader 2nd Edition (New York: Norton, 1978) respectively.

32. If this seems far-fetched, ask yourself how long it took you to realize that the perky consumer assistant on the phone is actually reading a script off a computer screen.

33. Cp. Kolakowski (III. 264–9). Jay (passim) uses the odd term ‘latitudinal’ for the static conception of totality and argues that it is ultimately part of a ‘longitudinal’ totality. Jameson's (1981, p. 52 ff.) view is similar to my own.

34. Lukács of course uses the word Wissenschaft, which has few of the connotations of ‘science’ in the everyday American usage of the word (see, e.g., 200/27–28). He clearly differentiates what he calls Wissenschaft from the type of science which thinks of society as an object of inquiry analogous to nature. He often scorns the application of ‘objective “scientific method”’ to society (e.g., 216/42–43) and is quite explicit concerning the consequences: ‘When the ideal of scientific knowledge is applied to nature it simply furthers the progress of science. But when it is applied to society it turns out to be an ideological weapon of the bourgeoisie’ (182/10; cp. also 175 ff./5 ff.).

35. (327/144c) The sentence, ‘Das geschichtliche Werden hebt aber diese Selbständigkeit der Momente auf’, becomes in Livingstone's rendering ‘But historical evolution annuls the autonomy of the individual factors’. While elsewhere in many instances Livingstone's translation is simply wrong (i.e., he misunderstands or drops parts of sentences), here a different and deeper problem is exemplified. Out of context, this translation might be justified. But here it expresses a misunderstanding of the philosophical context and a failure to come to grips with the vocabulary of temporality in Lukács. These matters are of fundamental importance for understanding the text. Some of the relevant concerns are as follows: The words Moment and aufheben, no matter how disputed their exact meanings, have a precise place in the philosophical discourse of which Lukács is a constitutive member. A Moment is not simply a ‘factor’, but one part of a temporal whole. To call it a factor suggests that it really can be selbständig, that is independent or ‘standing by itself’. For Lukács this independence is always and necessarily an illusion. Why? Because a Moment is always and necessarily in the temporal flow of history. That is why he calls it a Moment, for which there is a perfectly good english cognate; likewise, when he does not mean Moment Lukács is perfectly capable of using words like Element (e.g., 347/144). Livingstone vaguely acknowledges this in his ‘Notes to the English Edition’ (p.344) but does not follow through. The magical verb aufheben has three meanings: to cancel, to raise up, and to transcend. Hegel plays on all three, and the combination of them is one of the linguistic cornerstones of his philosophical project. Livingstone's consistent rendering of it as ‘to annul’ fails to capture this crucial element of the Hegelian thread running through all of Lukács. Every time something is aufgehoben it is cancelled out, but it does not for that reason disappear; the cancelling thematizes it, and by placing it in the light of a new context it becomes something new. This progressive transformation of the old into an incorporating new is crucial for Lukács (as it was for Marx). In this case, both ‘independence’ (Selbständigkeit) and ‘moments’ (Momente) are necessarily aufgehoben together in the historical shift from mere appearance to reality. Finally, Livingstone's rendering of geschichtliche Werden as ‘historical evolution’ settles by fiat a crucial question in Lukács’ work. Of course, it is literally wrong as well, for Werden is a nominalization of the verb ‘to become’. Matters are made worse by inconsistency of two sorts. First, the exact same phrase seventeen lines early comes out as ‘historical process’. Second, at other places in the text (e.g., 223/50) ‘gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung’ is translated as ‘the evolution of society’ and (e.g., 182/10) ‘gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungsprozesses’ as ‘social evolution’. How are we supposed to tell the difference? Livingstone is so tripped up by translation that ‘gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung’ at the end of the very same sentence comes out as ‘the course of history’ (182/10). Now, literally Entwicklung means development. Clearly, Livingstone made a choice. Against this choice, commentators like Kolakowski and Arato correctly point out that the whole project of the ‘young’ Lukács was aimed against the scientistic, evolutionary marxism of the turn of the century. So, the insertion of the word ‘evolution’ here is in both cases absurd. But grant for a moment that Livingstone is correct, that for Lukács ‘becoming’ and ‘development’ are ultimately identical with ‘evolution’. At the level of sentences, that is not what Lukács actually says. Livingstone's choice is not necessitated by the translation. He draws a conclusion which, given Lukács’ distinctive use of two different terms, should have been left to the reader and not imposed by the translator. Literal translation here (and throughout) would have carried over into English some of the theoretically important ambiguities of Lukács’ text. It should be added that even if ‘evolution’ were correct in one case, Werden and Entwicklung operate in two different discourses and at two different levels; to assimilate them mucks things up even more.

36. This shift away from Kant is not very different from the one made by Arendt. Lukács’ influence on her needs to be given more attention. I point to this below.

37. As discussed above, das Ganze der Gesellschaft is not a synonym for ‘totality’ but a part of it.

38. Adopting Jay's (1984) terms, we might say that there is a shift from ‘latitudinal totality’ to ‘longitudinal totality’.

39. … leaving open for the moment whether this means individual consciousness or the internally articulated process of knowledge that workers share, which might be characterized as historically specific common sense.

40. Zugerechnet, like objektiven Möglichkeit, is an important notion in Weber. Lukács implies in a footnote here that it is a ‘parallel’ development. Arato & Breines (1979: chapter IV) suggest that the relationship between Weber and Lukács did indeed run in two directions.

41. In Meyers (1989) I show that these categories fail to shed light on the nature of power.

42. Nota bene: I am not defining democratic power in this way.

43. It is important for the contemporary reader to understand that the word ‘opinion’ here has little to do with our use of the word, as in the phrase ‘public opinion’. Rather, ‘opinion’ is a synonym for ‘belief’. Hume ‘Of the First Principles of Government’ in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary (p. 32).

44. Funkenstein (1986) is helpful on this point.

45. Paine ‘Common Sense’ in The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, volume II (p. 147).

46. Marx is actually rather clearer about the ambiguity of his concept. Where there may be a question he refers to ‘der kombinierte Gesamtarbeiter’ or ‘der aus den Detailarbeitern kombinierte Gesamtarbeiter’, and specifies for the concept both a theoretical function (to calculate overall labor time) and a practical one (‘Die spezifische Maschinerie der Manufakturperiode bleibt der aus vielen Teilarbeitern kombinierte Gesamtarbeiter selbst’.) See Das Kapital ‘Teilung der Arbeit und Manufaktur’ (pp. 2–3).

47. See, e.g., Lichtheim (1971, pp. 13–20).

48. Feher hits this right on the head when he suggests that Lukács deceived himself, ‘as if any ethic departing from, and landing in, bourgeois society could overcome Kant at all’. From Heller (1983, p. 77). This is an allusion to Lukács (211/38–39), although Lukács would have found odd its application to him.

49. My translation of both sentences from Kant Grundlegung …: ‘… ich soll niemals anders verfahren als so, daß ich auch wollen könne, meine Maxime solle ein allgemeines Gesetz werden’ [p. 258]; ‘Handle so, als ob die Maxime deiner Handlung durch deinen Willen zum allgemeinen Naturgesetze werden sollte’ [279]. This last sentence is, of course, lifted almost directly out of Rousseau.

50. Paraphrasing Kant Grundlegung … (257; note 257–258). The standard translation of Achtung as ‘reverence’ covers over some very complicated considerations in Kant. Kant is sufficiently concerned that his readers might misunderstand Achtung as a passion, rather than a function of reason, that he devotes a long footnote to the matter in the Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten. This suggests its association with Descartes’ first passion, admiration (Les passions de l’âme; LIII, LXIX), although if he read it in the early German translation by Tilesio (Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1722) from Descartes’ latin version, admiratio is rendered as Verwunderung. Nonetheless, admiration in Descartes is the threshold between passion and reason, so marginally a passion that it is only related to one organ, the brain (see also LXX–LXXVIII), and the parallel suggests that Kant is operating with cartesian materials here, shifting the boundaries of his project set by Descartes to bring Achtung into his realm.

51. In the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Erster Abschnitt &15), Kant formulates the general notion this way: ‘Pflicht ist Nothwendigkeit einer Handlung aus Achtung fürs Gesetz’.

52. See, e.g., Arato and Breines (1979, p. 73).

53. See Arato and Breines (1979, chapter 7, especially references to Lukács’ ‘party myth’).

54. This approach to the critique of Kant is developed in Bittner's (1989).

55. For years Cockburn wrote a column called ‘Beat the Devil’ in The Nation

56. Arendt (1958, p. 179).

57. ‘Philosophy and Sociology’ p. 29 of Essays in Understanding. Isaac (1992, p. 82) misleadingly suggests, without evidence, that Arendt had nothing but disdain for Lukács, lumping him together with Sartre, whom she did not ‘have much use for’; see her letter to Jaspers, June 3, 1949 in Arendt (1992).

58. See Arendt (1963, p. 259 ff.) and (1983, pp. 33–56). Elizabeth Young-Bruehl hints at the fundamental importance of Luxemburg for Arendt in (1979, p. 24) and again in her biography of Arendt (1982, pp. 293–294 and 398 ff).

59. On the former, see Pateman (1970); on the latter, see Barber (1984).

60. I am of course aware that ‘strong leadership’ often meets with docility. But in the US, this docility has over time been converted into a general dismissal of politics, public discourse, and any sort of authority. Incivility is the objectively appropriate response to the arrogance of the elite. See, e.g., Benjamin DeMott ‘Seduced by Civility’ The Nation Nov. 1996.

61. Arendt (1983, p. 36).

62. Radio broadcast, March 6, 1921. Cited in IV of Alexander Berkman's (1976) The Kronstadt Rebellion, originally published in January of 1922. Two days later the rebels published a platform, writing that ‘the present overturn at last gives the toilers the opportunity to have their freely elected soviets, operating without the slightest force of party pressure, and to remake the bureaucratized trade unions into free associations of workers, peasants, and the laboring intelligentsia’. What We Are Fighting For printed in Avrich (1974, p. 243).

63. Arendt (1963, p. 261).

64. Arato and Breines (1979, chapter 7) are very good on this point.

65. She uses the German word Räte, which places her argument in a long tradition of spontaneous popular political self-rule. It comes from the verb to advise, or talk things through.

66. My translation from ‘… Nein, die sozialistische Proletarierschule braucht das alles nicht [Kautsky]. Sie werden geschult, indem sie zur Tat greifen (“Sehr richtig!”). Hier heißt es: Im Anfang war die Tat; und die Tat muß sein, daß die Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte sich berufen fühlen und es lernen, die einzige öffentliche Gewalt im ganzen Reiche zu werden …’. Politische Schriften (1968, p. 412). In (1971, p. 407).

67. Selected Political Writings ed. Dick Howard (1971, pp. 368–369; ‘What does the Spartacus League want?’)

68. ‘Wir gleichen wahrhaft den Juden, die Moses durch die Wüste führt. Aber wir sind nicht verloren, und wir werden siegen, wenn wir zu lernen nicht verlent haben. Und sollte die heutige Führerin des Proletariats, die Sozialdemokratie, nicht zu lernen verstehen, dann wird sie untergehen, “um Menschen Platz zu machen, die einer neuen Welt gewachsen sind” (1968, p. 243); (1974, p. 196). The implication is that, like the Jews in bondage, the proletariat has been infused with the habit of not learning the lessons it needs to learn to free itself, and that the leaders who grow up in the desert will be better prepared to lead them to Canaan than are the leaders who grew up in Egypt.

69. (1968, p. 411); (1971, p. 406). ‘Die Masse muß, indem sie Macht ausübt, lernen, Macht auszuüben. Es gibt kein anderes Mittel, ihr das beizubringen’.

70. See also McLellan (1979, pp. 46–50) concerning Lukács on consciousness and action.

71. Arendt (1983, p. 52). No wonder Arendt identified with Luxemburg, as Mary McCarthy reluctantly acknowledges in a letter of Oct. 11, 1966, in Arendt (1995).

72. For a more detailed account of this development, see Arato & Breines (1979). Their powerfully argued book came to my attention after the present argument was essentially complete. Where relevant, I have indicated substantial points of agreement in this and other notes.

73. McLellan (p. 170) is an example of the first sort, Kolakowski (pp. 280–283) of the second.

74. The sentences from this paragraph are re-arranged here.

75. Arato and Breines (p. 240, n. 19).

76. Quotes from G.H. Parkinson (1977, p. 5). Parkinson also notes that much of Lukács’ work in this period had to do with morality: ‘Bolshevism as a moral problem’ (1918), ‘Tactics and Ethics’ (1919), ‘The moral Basis of Communism’ (1919), ‘The Moral Mission of the Communist Party’ (1920). Arato and Breines (pp. 36–39, chapters 2&3) point to the Kierkegaardian element and the centrality of the tragic in Lukács. On the problem of terror, see especially ‘Taktik und Ethik’ in Lukács (1967) and the discussion by Arato & Breines (83 ff.).

77. Translated in Kant (1970, pp. 41–53, 54–60)

78. Young-Bruehl uses the word in Hill (1979, p. 24); see also pp. 310–311 and Young-Bruehl (1982, p. 239).

79. Arendt (1983, p. 55).

80. Kant ‘What is Enlightenment?’ in (1970, p. 55). It is not a wholly ungrounded exaggeration to say that Kant's distinction between ‘official’ reason (he calls it ‘private’) and the reason of freely formed associations (his ‘public’) is a precursor to the debate between the party and the councils.

81. Arendt (1963, p. 268).

82. Lukács’ friend from the period Anna Lesznai, cited by D. Kettler ‘Culture and Revolution: Lukács in the Hungarian Revolutions of 1918/19’ Telos no. 10, 1971 pp. 35–92. This needs to be contrasted with Arato and Breines’ convincing argument about the eccentric continuity of Lukács’ thought; see e.g., 28 ff., 51 ff., Chapter 6.

83. Arato and Breines (p. 104).

84. My translation from Marx (1953, p. 6). Marx's general picture of freedom centers around the idea of ‘rich individuality’.‘Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man's essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility … either cultivated or brought into being’ [1844 Manuscripts; Tucker 88–89]. This is possible because ‘Capital's ceaseless striving towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits of its natural paltriness, and thus creates the material elements for the development of the rich individuality which is all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared …’ [Grundrisse 231/Tucker 249]. This development is covered over by ‘estrangement’ and ‘reification’. Only when estrangement is transcended through communism is freedom possible with ‘the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man, … as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being—a return become conscious, and accomplished within the entire wealth of previous development’ [1844 Manuscripts; Tucker 84]. This homecoming of social man is autonomy in the classical political sense, for ‘only in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible … ’ [Die deutsche Ideologie in Marx-Engels Werke vol. 3, p. 74/tucker 197]. Since the ‘realm of necessity’ will always be its basis, ‘the shortening of the working day is [a] basic prerequisite’ for ‘that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom … [Kapital vol.III/Tucker 441] … in which it is possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic’ [Die deutsche Ideologie/Tucker 160].

85. Of these two sentences, the first in the original reads ‘Die Freiheit kann (ebensowenig wie etwa die Sozialisierung) einen Wert an sich darstellen’. Although the copyright notice in the English edition makes clear that we are working with the same German text [Werke: Frühschriften II, Band 2 (Neuwied und Berlin: Luchterhand, 1968)], Livingstone renders this sentence in the negative. From the context, and especially from the parenthetical clause, it is clear that Lukács intends the sentence to be negative. Thus, without noting it, Livingstone corrects in his translation a misprint in the German. At least, that is the way it seems to me.

86. Merleau-Ponty (1974, p. 31).

87. Cp. Arato and Breines (p. 49): ‘Yet precisely this remained an essential, perhaps the essential, project for Lukács: to form life, to make it essential, to overcome separations indicated in both the theory of the “tragedy of culture” and the Kantian “two worlds” (empirical and ideal)’.

88. See e.g., Tronto (1993).

89. Habermas (1979, p. 90).

90. As in ‘a universal ethics of speech?’

91. This sheds some more light on the problem of bureaucracy. Lukács mainly equates reification with bureaucracy in the context of the party. In that setting, where on-going interchange between leadership and members is crucial for political development, the short term efficacy of bureaucracy disguises its destructive effect on our long-term interests. This element in Lukács further supports my point: if class consciousness really meant having the party hacks tell us what to do, that would make it a function of bureaucracy; but Lukács equates bureaucracy with reification, and says class consciousness is the overcoming of reification, and thus it cannot be the property of bureaucrats.

92. Lukács tries to hedge his bets by saying that this is just what Luxemburg ‘overestimates’ (pp. 274, 279). But that is precisely where and why his argument breaks down.

93. First quote is from Kant ‘What is Enlightenment’ in Political Writings (p. 55); the second from J. S. Mill On Liberty (p. 20).