The end (and persistence) of subjectivity: Lukács with Adorno, Adorno with Lukács

ABSTRACT

This paper revisits Lukács’s and Adorno’s analyses of reification to articulate a diagnosis that accounts both for its tendencies towards authoritarianism and its emancipatory potentials. Despite their divergences, Lukács’s conception of the proletariat as ‘identical subject-object of history’ and Adorno’s diagnosis of ‘the end of psychology’ in the authoritarian masses seem to converge on a similar outcome. Through opposite paths, they both culminate in the elimination of the subject-object distinction, leading the critique of reification to a political impasse. However, this alternative is rooted in partial interpretations of Lukács’s and Adorno’s arguments. As I contend, one can reconstruct Lukács’s analysis in a way that portrays emancipatory subjectivity not as hostile to otherness but as driven by the material limits of reification, or what Adorno termed the non-identical. Correspondingly, in light of Lukács, Adorno’s diagnosis can be read in a way that the end of psychology, far from negating the possibility of emancipation, serves as its driving force.

KEYWORDS:

• Reification
• subjectivity
• emancipation
• authoritarianism
• psychoanalysis
• fetishism
• nature

1. Introduction

The commitment to emancipatory practice stands as a foundational principle of critical theory, simultaneously representing one of its most notable points of instability. This predicament is tied to its ambivalent relationship with Georg Lukács’s critique of reification in History and Class Consciousness, whose reception significantly shaped the intellectual trajectory of the members of the Institute for Social Research. From Lukács, they not only retained an interpretation of Marx’s critique of political economy rooted in its connections with classical German philosophy but, above all, the notion that the analysis of fetishism is central for diagnosing modern society and its forms of subjectivity. However, both the philosophical underpinnings and the political ramifications of Lukács’s book were strongly challenged by critical theorists, in particular by Adorno.

Although Adorno agreed with Lukács on the centrality of reification, he interpreted this phenomenon in a manner that led to a distinct understanding of its implications for subjectivity. To be sure, despite the nuances in their perspectives, Adorno’s characterization of the modern subject shares significant points of contact with Lukács’s depiction of bourgeois consciousness in his 1923 book. Both thinkers viewed the reified subject as striving to assert control over the world through calculation, only to find itself compelled to adapt to abstract laws it cannot entirely grasp or control. For them, the obstacles to emancipation are not only found in external social reality but also deeply embedded within the structure of our internal world. The contradictions of capitalism manifest equally as contradictions of subjectivity.

Nonetheless, their diagnosies strongly diverge on the possibility of emancipation under reified conditions. Writing soon after the Russian Revolution of 1917, Lukács argued that capitalist reification, while confining the individual to merely illusory activity, also established the potential – to be developed through the proletariat’s class consciousness – for the emergence of a collective subject capable of appropriating the objectivity it has produced. Adorno found this perspective untenable for at least two reasons. Firstly, as he argued in Negative Dialectics, Lukács’s portrayal of the proletariat as the ‘identical subject-object of history’ perpetuated a philosophical ‘subjectivism’ or ‘imperialism’ that, since Fichte, had functioned as an ideological accompaniment to the bourgeois individual (Adorno 2004 [1966], 189, 191). By conceiving the overcoming of capitalism as the annexation of the object by the subject based on the principle of identity, such an account would fail to acknowledge that which is alien to this principle, i.e. the non-identical:

‘The thinker may easily comfort himself by imagining that in the dissolution of reification, of the merchandise character, he possesses the philosophers’ stone. […] [But] If a man looks upon thingness as radical evil, if he would like to dynamize all entity into pure actuality, he tends to be hostile to otherness’ (190-91).

Moreover, changes within capitalism itself have posed further challenges to the critique of reification. As Lukács’s examination of bourgeois consciousness’s ‘contemplative attitude’ gave way to critical theory’s investigations into the authoritarian personality, the analysis of reification was not only extended in new directions but also revealed different political consequences. To be sure, Lukács’s account of the individual’s passive adaptation to capitalist structures already pointed to the rigidification of these structures in an unquestionable and thus authoritarian manner. However, Adorno went beyond Lukács by linking reification with de-individualizing dynamics that posed even greater obstacles to social transformation. From the mid-1940s onwards, Adorno emphasized the tendencies towards the dissolution of the subject amidst the crisis of the liberal order and the emergence of monopoly or state capitalism (see Adorno 2017 [1948]). As a result, while Lukács could still envisage the revolutionary overcoming of reification propelled by its internal contradictions, Adorno saw the intensification of this phenomenon under state capitalism as culminating in ‘the end of psychology itself’ (Adorno 2019 [1948], lxiv). Instead of anticipating the annexation of objectivity by a revolutionary collective subject, he suggested a tendency towards the abolition of subjectivity under the mounting pressure of powerful objective structures. In this way, his diagnosis seemed to lead to what Jessica Benjamin (1977) termed the ‘end of internalization:’ a scenario in which social domination is exercised directly, bypassing the mediation of psychic instances of internalized authority, thereby undermining the very possibility of resistance (see also Benjamin 1988; Honneth 1991; Whitebook 1995; Allen 2020).

A fundamental incompatibility thus seems to emerge between Lukács’s and Adorno’s analyses. Indeed, the contrast between the former’s revolutionary optimism and the latter’s political pessimism has marked the history of critical theory and remains a central reference in its debates to this day (Jay 1984; Habermas 1984 [1981], Honneth 2008; Hall 2011; Chari 2015). Interestingly, however, when considered in this manner, both perspectives share a common feature. Despite their divergences, Lukács’s and Adorno’s diagnoses appear to culminate in the elimination of the subject-object distinction: either through the dissolution of objectivity by the subject, or the dissolution of subjectivity by the object (Jaeggi and Stahl 2011; Gordon 2018). This leads the critique of reification to a political impasse. Either the potential for emancipatory subjectivity is nullified as psychic conflict (and thus psychology itself) dissolves, or this subjectivity is conceived as eradicating such conflict (and hence itself) by appropriating the world in its entirety.

Under these assumptions, it might seem impossible to formulate a critique of reification that simultaneously accounts for its tendency towards authoritarian desubjectivation and its emancipatory potentials. However, this impasse stems from partial readings of Lukács’s and Adorno’s arguments. Though these readings highlight tendencies present in their works, they overlook how both authors hint at limits to the dissolution of the subject-object distinction. As I will contend, Lukács’s revolutionary subject does not necessarily imply a complete appropriation of the world; neither does post-liberal capitalism for Adorno lead to a full eradication of subjectivity. If this is so, then the relationship between reified subjectivity, authoritarianism, and emancipation can be understood in a way that avoids a political deadlock. One may identify within the dynamics of authoritarianism itself, even in its most radically desubjectivizing moments, the seeds for the emergence of emancipatory struggles.

In the following, I argue that such an account can be developed by reading Lukács in light of Adorno and vice versa. This involves re-examining a tension within the critique of reification – namely, between its idealistic and romantic inclinations – which Lukács aimed to resolve through the notion of the proletariat as the identical subject-object of history (2.). Considering Adorno’s critiques of this view, I contend that revisiting the young Lukács of Soul and Form is crucial for advancing an account of the emancipatory subject that retains, rather than dissolves, this tension (3.). In line with this, I reconstruct Lukács’s analysis of the emergence of revolutionary consciousness as a process of continuous mediation rather than one culminating in the elimination of otherness (4.). Furthermore, this reinterpretation allows us to reappraise Adorno’s diagnosis of the end of psychology. By re-reading his analysis of the authoritarian mass in light of Lukács’s account of revolutionary consciousness (5.), one can envision how the abolition of psychology, far from negating the possibility of emancipatory subjectivity, may serve as its driving force (6.).

2. Lukács’s dual critique of reification

Lukács famously builds on Marx’s arguments on commodity fetishism to formulate his critique of reification.¹ According to Marx’s analysis in Capital, the commodity form has a mysterious character in that it reflects to human beings the social characteristics of their labour as intrinsic and natural characteristics of the product of labour. Correspondly, the relationship of the producers with total labour appears as a social relationship of objects that exists outside of them; their social relations take the form of relations among things. The crux of Marx’s analysis of fetishism lies in his definition of the commodity as ‘a sensuously suprasensuous thing’ (ein sinnlich übersinnliches Ding) (Marx 1990 [1873], 163). As they come to be mediated by the value-form, the products of human labour – which are always ordinary and trivial sensuous things, i.e. concrete use values – take on a ‘thingly’ (sachliche) form: they become suprasensuous things which bear abstract value. The product is split: it appears both as a sensuous ‘useful thing’ and a suprasensuous ‘value-thing’ (164).

However, ‘the fetishistic character of the world of commodities’ (165) does not solely arise from this split. Commodities are not merely things that are both sensuous and suprasensuous; they consist, in Marx’s precise formula, of sensuously suprasensuous things. While the objectivity of value is not inherent in the object itself but emerges from its relationship with other products of labour through the mediation of the value-form, it does appear as if it were contained within the object. When a product becomes a commodity, its suprasensuous facet becomes inscribed in a sensuous manner, presenting itself as its objective property. Fetishism involves an inversion, not just a split. Through the value-form, the sensuous aspects of labour take on a suprasensuous form, which, in turn, is reflected to the producers as objective or natural characteristics – sensuously suprasensuous – of the products of labour. In other words, the value-form naturalizes the abstract, making what is suprasensuous, a consequence of complicated social relations, appear sensuous, obvious and trivial.

Lukács conceives his diagnosis of reification as a comprehensive analysis of the objective and subjective implications of this ‘fundamental structural fact’ (Lukács 1971 [1923], 86), extending Marx’s critique of fetishism in two directions. Horizontally, he analyzes various social spheres as functioning in an equally fetishistic manner. Vertically, beyond the question of how the products of labour are reflected to their producers, he explores the consequences of fetishism for individuals’ relationships with their own activity and themselves. By broadening Marx’s critique of political economy in this manner, Lukács imparts two distinct emphases to the concept of reification, both of which were decisive for the later fate of this concept in critical theory.

Lukács first underscores how fetishism leads individuals to perceive their own activity as something independent from them and governed by laws of its own. When labour power becomes a commodity, the same consequences apply to it as Marx pointed out for the products of labour under capitalism. Productive activity becomes a ‘thing:’ it presents itself to producers as possessing inherent characteristics separate from its origin in social processes. The suprasensuous aspects of productive activity are, then, reflected to individuals not as arising from the specific social dynamics in which they participate but as intrinsic sensuous properties of labour itself: ‘a man’s activity objectifies itself in relation to himself, it turns into a commodity which, subject to the alien [menschenfremden] objectivity of the natural laws of society, must go its own way independently of man just like any consumer article’ (87).

The same applies, Lukács argues, to the other spheres of capitalist society. In politics and law, in knowledge and culture, both the outcomes of human actions and these actions themselves become components of ‘a world of ready-made things and relationships between things […] whose laws are gradually recognized by humans, but even in this case, they confront them as invincible, self-acting powers’ (87). While individuals can comprehend these laws and use them to their advantage, the laws themselves seemingly remain impervious to transformation. Confronted with a world established as independent of human beings, one ‘is not able to exert a transformative influence on the real process itself through his activity’ (87). Individuals have no choice but to acknowledge and adapt to these laws that govern their activities as something external to them.

However, Lukács also underscores a second facet of capitalist fetishism. This involves not just the autonomization of (productive) activities in relation to their agents but also the abstraction of human labour. The value-form allows the interchangeability of qualitatively different objects, establishing the principle of formal equality among them as products of abstract human labour. Subjectively, says Lukács, this formal equality becomes the real principle of the commodity production process. By connecting Marx and Weber, he interprets the capitalist labour process as an increasingly rationalized process, entailing a growing elimination of the qualitative properties of both the products of labour and the worker: ‘abstract, equal, comparable labour, measurable with increasing precision according to the time socialy necessary for its accomplishment […] becomes a category of society influencing decisively the objective form of things and people’ (87-88).

This has significant implications for the producer’s relationship with their own activity. As the labour process is fragmented into partial, abstractly rational operations, the worker’s connection with the finished product is disrupted, and their work is reduced to a specialized and mechanical function. Additionally, the period of socially necessary labour becomes an objectively calculable quantity, opposing the worker in the form of a ready-made objectivity. With Taylorism, this rational mechanization comes to penetrate the ‘soul’ of the worker: ‘even his psychological attributes are separated from his total personality and placed in opposition to it so as to facilitate their integration into specialised rational systems’ (Lukács 1971 [1923]: 88). Furthermore, in other spheres of capitalist society, human activity equally becomes an abstract thing, fragmented into arbitrary operations, mechanized, and detached from its concrete qualities. In this way, a realm emerges consisting of relations between things (and activities as things) abstracted from their concrete qualities.

In line with Lukács’s distinctive interpretation of Marx, the ‘contemplative attitude’ (Lukács 1971 [1923]: 100) which he views as characteristic of bourgeois consciousness can be considered from two angles. Firstly, the individual’s actions are contemplative because they are passive, amounting to a mere adaptation to seemingly insurmountable laws. Reification, in this regard, entails an inversion between subject and object: the world dominates, insofar as it becomes autonomous from, the agents who create it. Secondly, bourgeois consciousness is contemplative due to its mechanical nature: abstracted from its concrete qualities, it is reduced to fragmented and arbitrary operations, detached from the concrete needs of human agents. Reification entails here an inversion between the concrete and the abstract: abstract forms subordinate the concrete material processes on which they rely.

It is by bringing together these two aspects of the critique of reification that Lukács came to conceive of the proletariat as the identical subject-object of history. Overcoming capitalist reification is seen as involving the establishment of human actions as both truly active and truly organic. Lukács envisioned these processes in a manner where each necessarily implied the other: true activity could only be concrete, and a genuinely concrete relationship with the world could only be active. Within this framework, the proletariat emerges as the collective subject capable of asserting its autonomy by reappropriating the objectivity it has produced, thereby overcoming the heteronomy of reified conditions. Simultaneously, comprised of individuals whose concrete activities underlie (and are subordinated to) the abstract forms of capitalist society, the proletariat is uniquely positioned to restore the primacy of the former over the latter. Whereas ‘classical philosophy had nothing but these unresolved antinomies to bequeath to succeeding (bourgeois) generations’, there is a social class which is ‘able to discover within itself on the basis of its life-experience the identical subject-object, the subject of action, the “we” of genesis: the proletariat’ (148-49).

3. Adorno (and the Young Lukács) contra History and Class Consciousness

While Lukács sought to integrate the two dimensions of his critique of reification, their mutual tension have not gone unnoticed by later commentators. In his reassessment of History and Class Consciousness, Honneth discerns two versions of Lukács’s argument. In the ‘official’ stance, Lukács, drawing from Hegel and Fichte, defends ‘that we can speak of undistorted human agency only in cases where an object can be thought of as the product of a subject, and where mind and world therefore ultimately coincide with one another’ (Honneth 2008, 27). Finding this idealist conception untenable, Honneth identifies another, ‘unofficial’ notion of genuine praxis in the book, which serves as the basis for his actualization of the concept of reification. In this perspective, an undistorted praxis involves ‘experiencing the world directly or in an unmediated (miterlebend) way, as an “organic part of his personality”, and as “cooperative”, whereas objects can be experienced by the active subject as being “qualitatively unique”, “essential”, and particular in content’ (27). Others, however, have found precisely this romantic side of Lukács’s critique of reification problematic. Lucio Colletti incisively stated that Lukács ‘goes into a factory not with Capital but with [Bergson’s] Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience’ (Colletti 1979 [1969], 184). In his view, Lukács’s critique of reification targets not the power of capital over labour but rather opposes rationalization, abstraction, and quantification as such. For Lukács, says Colletti, ‘the supreme affront to Man on the assembly line is that it has eliminated … durée’ (184).

One does not need to fully agree with these views to acknowledge that they highlight important tensions within Lukács’s diagnosis. The same applies to Adorno’s comments on History and Class Consciousness, which consider the idealist and romantic tendencies of the book to be equally problematic.² In Negative Dialectics, Adorno takes issue with Lukács’s analysis of reification for not going beyond Fichte’s subjective idealism, insofar as it confuses the realization of autonomy with overcoming dependence on the object. In both Fichte’s absolute ego and Lukács’s identical subject-object, demonstrating the actuality of the autonomous subject relies on showing how the object is ultimately derived from the subject. This results in a ‘productivist’ approach lacking consideration of the subject’s heteronomy in relation to the non-identity of the object. Simultaneously, Adorno accuses Lukács of regressing from idealism to a form of romantic anti-capitalism. According to this critique, Lukács romanticizes pre-modern societies by envisioning them as oriented towards producing incommensurable use values, fostering immediate relationships between individuals without the mediation of reified objects. By vehemently opposing comparability and abstraction, Lukács would have lost sight of a central (idealist) aspect of Marx’s critique of political economy: the horizon of a just exchange given by the relationship between formally equal subjects.

Adorno thus sees an intrinsic aporia in History and Class Consciousness. On the one hand, it (idealistically) projects a subjectivity capable of dominating the world through its activity – losing sight of the otherness of the object. On the other, it (romantically) affiliates itself with the notion of an immersion of the self in the concreteness of life – neglecting the emancipatory potentials contained in the very notion of the subject. Interestingly, it is likely that the tension between these dimensions did not go unnoticed by Lukács himself. Although they are brought together in History and Class Consciousness in a unitary diagnosis, they refer to two distinct theoretical lineages that exerted an important influence on his earlier writings.

On the one hand, Lukács understood his critique of reification as being capable of carrying out a task that idealist philosophy had set itself without, however, being able to fulfil: the re-appropriation of the object by a rational (collective) subject. This task is not dissimilar to that which the young Lukács had considered, in Soul and Form, to be proper to tragic man, who seeks to give form to the world from his own self. On the other hand, in continuity with the romantic critique of modernity, Lukács saw the overcoming of reification as involving a re-establishment of the primacy of concrete life over abstract form. This perspective is similar to that which, in Soul and Form, he saw as proper to the mystic, who seeks to dissolve each and every form, including the form of its own self, in the concrete totality of life. As Lukács summarizes, ‘The miracle of tragedy is a form-creating one; its essence is selfhood, just as exclusively as, in mysticism, the essence is self-oblivion. The mystical experience is to suffer the All, the tragic one is to create the All’ (Lukács 2010 [1911]: 183).

Even before his conversion to Marxism, therefore, Lukács had noticed the conflict between these two perspectives. What is more, he had already observed the problematic nature of both. While appearing to the young Lukács as two ways out of ‘ordinary life’ – a notion that anticipates what he would later call reification (see Löwy 1979) – these two paths are seen as ultimately marked by the impossibility of realizing their horizons: they cannot be carried out without either dissolving form or annihilating life. In mysticism, ‘it is beyond all explanation how a self can absorb everything into itself, how, in a state of melting flux, it can destroy everything distinctive about itself and the whole world and yet retain a self to experience this cancellation of the self’ (Lukács 2010 [1911], 183). In tragedy something similar occurs, yet in the opposite direction: ‘The self stresses its selfhood with an all-exclusive, all-destroying force, but this extreme affirmation imparts a steely hardness and autonomous life to everything it encounters and – arriving at the ultimate peak of pure selfhood – finally cancels itself out’ (183).

Just as the mystical affirmation of life tends to self-dissolution, the tragic assertion of form tends to self-annihilation. These two stances are entirely opposite, and yet, they ultimately converge: ‘Surrender is the mystic’s way, struggle the tragic man’s way; the one, at the end of his road, is absorbed into the All, the other shattered against the All’ (Lukács 2010 [1911]: 184). Both, says Lukács, ‘mysteriously combine life and death’ (183): in one case, the total affirmation of life tends to the dissolution of every form and hence also of life itself; in the other, the total assertion of form tends to the annihilation of life and thus of form itself.

Considered in the light of the young Lukács, his later critique of reification thus appears as an attempt to bring together, through the revolutionary action of the proletariat, two perspectives that in Soul and Form had appeared to be untenable. If this seems possible to him in 1923, it is because then it is no longer a question of criticizing ‘ordinary life’ in general, but a society historically founded on the commodity form and therefore subject to change.³ The positions that in 1910 were seen as inevitably leading to an impasse are taken in 1923 as the driving force of a radical transformation of society. Even so, the arguments in Soul and the Form already hint at what would appear to Adorno and other commentators as problematic in History and Class Consciousness. As Lukács indicated in 1910, there is a point at which the two perspectives, tragic and mystical, meet: the dissolution of all otherness and, therefore, of oneself.

Similarly, the idealist and romantic dimensions of Lukács’s critique of reification seem to culminate in identity: in one case, through the (idealist) subsumption of the object into the subject; in the other, through the (romantic) dissolution of the abstract into the concrete. If this holds true, then the result is the same as indicated in Soul and Form. Interestingly, this is the view maintained by Lukács in his self-critical 1967 preface to History and Class Consciousness, where he contends that the conception of emancipation developed in 1923 leads to the dissolution of reality itself: since ‘the thing exists only as an alienation from self-consciousness, to take it back into the subject would mean the end of objective reality and thus of any reality at all’ (Lukács 1971 [1967], xxiii-xxiv).

There are compelling reasons, therefore, why critics of History and Class Consciousness have advocated for abandoning the notion of the proletariat as the identical subject-object of history. However, such criticism has often resulted in overlooking some of the book’s most crucial arguments about the struggle against capitalist fetishism. The emancipatory horizon of the critique of reification is sometimes abandoned; at other times, it becomes detached from a comprehensive diagnosis of capitalist society (see Jay 1984, 2008; Honneth 2008). We have seen the reasons for this above: the ultimate end of the revolutionary process tends to be presented as the attainment of complete immediacy. Nevertheless, when Lukács endeavours to illustrate how this end could be achieved, he does so by presenting an account of the successive mediations through which a revolutionary class could emerge. It is, then, precisely a matter of describing how reification’s contradictions could be progressively recognized and overcome in practice.⁴

This opens the possibility of interpreting History and Class Consciousness in another way. Lukács sought to avoid the tension between the idealist and romantic dimensions of his critique by affirming the tendencies towards identity present in both perspectives, uniting them in the figure of the proletariat as the identical subject-object of history. However, as indicated by the comments on his work presented above, this tension is never fully resolved. Precisely the persistence of this internal conflict opens the book to an alternative interpretation, in which the struggle against reification does not lead to the elimination of differences. This becomes especially visible in Lukács’s depiction of the emergence of revolutionary consciousness from the contradictions of bourgeois consciousness. Even if its final point is understood as a dissolution of distinctions between subject and object, and between the abstract and the concrete, what this path presents is rather the progressive articulation of these poles, without one eliminating the other. Despite Lukács’s reference to the proletariat as the identical subject-object of history, his argument can, therefore, be reconstructed in a way that avoids the problematic aspects pointed out by his critics, in particular Adorno.

4. From reified to emancipatory subjectivity

Taking into account the critiques of History and Class Consciousness is thus crucial for a reassessment of Lukács’s analysis of revolutionary consciousness. In particular, it allows for an account of emancipation that, instead of an immediate identity between subject and object, refers to a continuous and never fully completed process of mediation. The development of an emancipatory subjectivity from the contradictions of the reified subject may, then, be delineated as occurring through a series of phenomenological stages.⁵

The first consists in what Lukács calls reified or ‘immediate’ consciousness. Here, ‘the subject and object of the social process […] appear to exist in a rigidly twofold form, each external to the other’ (Lukács 1971 [1923]: 165). Reality presents itself in terms of an opposition between an active subject who attempts to dominate the world by providing it with a rational form, and a passive object expected to comply with such a process. Oriented towards the domination of external reality through the discovery of its laws, the individual does not see itself as a material being which is concretely bound to its object. Rather, the concreteness of the world remains concealed, ‘unconscious’ (Lukács 1971 [1923], 165), behind a structure of rational domination in which one stands as a calculative subject in the face of objects to be calculated. This consciousness is contemplative insofar as it restricts itself to adapting to abstract laws, and yet, it regards itself as an active, free, form-giving subject: ‘the basic structure of reification is hidden behind the façade of “mental labor”, of “responsibility”, etc. […] Even thoughts and feelings become reified’ (172).

To be sure, for Lukács this consciousness cannot avoid somehow sensing the limits of its reified experience. They are manifested as an occasional external resistance of the object to the rationalizing activity of the subject, i.e. as an ‘outermost barrier […] that cannot be crossed’ (164). The object may then appear temporarily split, i.e. both as a ‘mechanical-rational’ thing and as an ‘organic-irrational’ element that resists rationalization (182, 99). Yet at this stage those limits are perceived as surpassable, as the sign of an insufficient rationalization that shall be driven even further.

However, consciousness is led to move beyond those limits when that appearance of activity can no longer be sustained; when the external world not only occasionally resists the individual’s efforts at dominating it but comes to appear as the dominating part: ‘In every aspect of daily life in which the individual […] imagines himself to be the subject of his own life he finds this to be an illusion that is destroyed by the immediacy of his existence’ (165). At this point – which for Lukács could only be reached by the worker as someone ‘who is denied the inner scope for such illusory activity’ – the individual is compelled to acknowledge that its actions are only moments of ‘a process of abstraction […] in which he is no more than a cipher reduced to an abstract quantity, a mechanized and rationalized tool’ (165-66). What appeared before as a form-giving activity (facing occasional but surpassable external limits) is now disclosed as mere passivity. Rather than an active subject, the individual recognizes itself as ‘the pure and mere object of societal events’ (165).

The contradictory dynamic between the thrust for rationalization and the concrete resistances to this process now reaches the human being itself. What in the previous stage of consciousness applied only to external objects comes to apply to the individual itself as an object of abstraction. The limits of reification no longer arise only in the confrontation with the external world but also in relation to one’s interiority: ‘the [outward] barrier […] has become an inward barrier’ (164). That which in the human being cannot be fully rationalized appears at this point as an inner contingent, ungraspable, ‘organic-irrational’ element: ‘human qualities and idiosyncrasies […] appear […] as mere sources of error’ (88-89). Once again, the concreteness of life can only appear as an irrational, ungraspable, indeterminate element that resists rationalization.

The situation changes, however, when this concrete inner element is no longer recognized as an incomprehensible resistance to rationalization but as necessarily linked to it. Acknowledging itself both as an object of calculation and as organically resisting to it, the individual may come to fathom the connection between these two dimensions. One may perceive in one’s own life that every quantitative change (to which one is submitted) corresponds to a qualitative variation (which one experiences): ‘The quantitative differences in exploitation […] must appear to the worker as the decisive, qualitative categories of his whole physical, mental and moral existence’ (166). The individual thereby recognizes itself both as an object submitted to a process of abstraction and a living being immersed in concrete life-processes. One perceives the effects of abstraction in one’s own physical being, identifying in one’s own suffering the qualitative marks of a quantitative process beyond one’s control. One realizes that one not merely ‘has’ a body (which resists abstraction) but is a living, vulnerable body (which suffers and experiences abstraction). Testifying rationalization directly in its everyday worries and pains, consciousness is now in a position to recognize that ‘beneath the quantifying crust there was a qualitative, living core’ (169).

This allows, in turn, the limits to reification to be understood differently. Once suffering is perceived as the effect of an abstraction process onto a vulnerable body, the resistances to this process may appear accordingly as one’s own resistances, i.e. as the expression of a body’s living force. One is now able to see oneself as the bearer of a concrete (labour) power which not only resists rationalization but is also at its basis. Reifying abstraction is now shown to depend on the very concrete matter it attempts to dominate. This alters the understanding of what power is: it no longer appears as the activity of a calculating subject but as the manifestation of a living productive force that is shared with, and dependent on, other beings partaking in the same concrete life-processes. Consciousness then comes to see itself as bound to a collective power that lies beneath those abstract forms and acts as their driving force: ‘the special objective character of labor as a commodity, its “use-value” (i.e. its ability to yield surplus produce) […] now awakens and becomes social reality’ (169).

At this point, the split between the abstract and the concrete is disclosed as a product of history and therefore as something that can be transformed. In fact, one can now recognize that the reified order was already undergoing change: that collective living force comes to be recognized as such in the very process of its being collectively self-organized and set against existing reified forms, enforcing new ones. It ‘awakens and becomes social reality’ through a dynamic by which it ceases to be the ‘unacknowledged driving wheel’ (169) of capitalist reification and becomes the acknowledged driving wheel of a transformative praxis. Rational activity no longer appears as the act of an isolated calculative subject but is now mediated by a living force that is collective because grounded in a shared condition of vulnerability.

The emergence of revolutionary consciousness is therefore a process which takes place as a series of unveilings: behind the apparent activity of a calculating subject, one finds the passivity of a calculated object; behind the passivity of this abstract object, one finds the vulnerability of a living being; behind the vulnerability of such a being, one finds a living force which may then become real activity – i.e. transformative praxis – to the extent that it finds expression, via collective self-organization and struggle, in the creation of novel forms. Understood in this way, the emergence of emancipatory subjectivity does not involve the dissolution of distinctions between activity, passivity, vulnerability, and force. Rather than leading to the elimination of differences by an identical subject-object, this process relates them in a way that they continuously (and never fully) translate into each other, mediating one another.

One can, therefore, reframe Lukács’s arguments to navigate the impasses highlighted by Adorno and other commentators. Rather than amalgamating the two horizons – idealist and romantic – projected by the critique of reification into the seamless unity of an identical subject-object, this reconstruction presents the emergence of emancipatory subjectivity as an ongoing process of mediation between them. On the one hand, otherness ceases to be considered an obstacle to the subject’s emancipation; it is no longer something destined for complete appropriation. Instead, as the material limit of reification, it becomes the very driving force of this process. On the other hand, liberation of the concrete from the domination of the abstract does not manifest as an immersive dissolution of the self in organic life. It rather presents itself, precisely in its resistance to complete appropriation, as a condition for establishing a transformative, truly active collective subjectivity.

5. From reified subjectivity to the end of psychology

This reconstruction allows us to understand Lukács’s critique of reification differently than suggested by the notion of an identical subject-object of history. As previously discussed, this idea can be seen as an attempt to unify the idealist and romantic tendencies of History and Class Consciousness. However, the tension between such tendencies persists and opens the book to a different interpretation. Instead of culminating in a double immediacy – between subject and object, and between the abstract and the concrete – the process of emancipation can be seen as unfolding through their continuous mediation. Contrary to being ‘hostile to otherness’ (Adorno 2004 [1966], 191), this account presents emancipatory subjectivity as driven by, and incorporating – though never entirely – what Lukács termed the material limits of reification and Adorno referred to as the non-identical. In this sense, the interpretation of History and Class Consciousness proposed here unfolds in light of Adorno’s work, as well as the insights of the young Lukács.

From an exegetical perspective, this means that Lukács’s account of reification can be interpreted in both ways. Adorno’s criticisms are, therefore, not fully accurate. If Lukács’s analysis contains a view of emancipation as an ongoing process that never completely subsumes the object to the subject, then this nuance was overlooked by Adorno in Negative Dialectics. Still, considering the latter’s viewpoint is crucial as it helps bringing to light an alternative version of Lukács’s diagnosis. In this sense, Adorno’s perspective is both pertinent and partial: while it identifies genuinely problematic tendencies in History and Class Consciousness, it ignores Lukács’s arguments about the role of the material limits of reification in emancipatory processes.

Furthermore, the convergence between Lukács and Adorno can be productive in another sense. As I will now argue, it allows us to conceive the connection between reification and authoritarianism without leading to a dissolution of the subject by the object, and thus, to the impossibility of resistance. Once Adorno’s analyses of the authoritarian personality are considered based on the prior reconstruction of Lukács, one can see how ‘the end of psychology’ (Adorno 2019 [1948], lxiv), far from negating the possibility of emancipatory subjectivity, actually serves as its driving force.

In his inquiries into modern authoritarianism, Adorno starts from a diagnosis of the tensions of reified subjectivity. Yet unlike Lukács, he articulates his analyses in close dialogue with psychoanalysis. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, the psychic conflicts that Freud identified as typical of civilization are construed as emblematic of a reifying rationality geared toward dominating nature. This rationality gives rise to the formation of an ego which, driven by anxiety, hardens itself to dominate both the external environment and its own inner nature. In this way, Horkheimer and Adorno continue a central argument from History and Class Consciousness: capitalist reification compels individuals to embrace the role of active subjects, capable of dominating the world by imparting a rational form to concrete objects, while simultaneously subjecting them to a system of domination beyond their control. From this perspective, the development of the ego unfolds within a process in which domination becomes internalized; the ego asserts itself by repressing its inner drives. However, in this process, it empties itself of purpose and transforms into a rigid mechanism geared solely toward self-preservation. Like Odysseus, the modern reified individual ‘saves his life by making himself disappear’; their ‘self-assertion […] is self-repudiation’ (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944/47], 48, 53).

Similarly to Lukács, who pointed to the limits of this process, Adorno and Horkheimer highlight how the formation of reified subjectivity generates increasing resentment and intensifies the pressure to unleash repressed drives. Just as History and Class Consciousness identified the material resistances to the imposition of reified forms, the authors of the Dialectic of Enlightenment refer to a ‘revolt of nature.’ In a crucial regard, however, they go beyond Lukács’s analysis of the modern subject: for Adorno and Horkheimer, the very resistance to reification can be reabsorbed by the system of domination. This is what occurs in fascism as the culmination of modern authoritarianism. Its defining feature, as Adorno and Horkheimer describe, is the effort ‘to place the rebellion of oppressed nature against domination directly in the service of domination’ (152).⁶ In psychological terms, this means that the ongoing frustration of the ego’s attempts to dominate inner nature – whose resistance to supression causes heightened anxiety – results in even more fervent attempts to control it. The aggressiveness provoked by such frustration is then directed not only against others but also against oneself. The domination of outer nature through the domination of inner nature leads here to the destruction of others through the destruction of oneself.

The Dialectic of Enlightenment can thus be interpreted as a continuation of Lukács’s examination of reified subjectivity. Expanding Marx’s analysis of fetishism, Lukács points to the contradiction intrinsic to modern individuality between the self-imposition of a reified form and the material resistances to this process. In turn, Adorno and Horkheimer indicate how, in moments of crisis, reified forms can sustain themselves precisely by incorporating such material resistances. As a consequence, that contradiction intensifies to the point where, beyond the passivity of a ‘contemplative’ attitude, what emerges is one’s radical self-dissolution.

While the Dialectic of Enlightenment pointed to the self-destructive tendencies of fascism, in later publications, Adorno dedicated himself to understanding the stabilization of such tendencies in a post-liberal social order. In ‘Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda,’ he delves into understanding what renders the fascist agitators’ techniques effective in transforming people into a ‘rabble,’ making them become ‘largely de-individualized, irrational, easily influenced, prone to violent action’ (135).⁷ Following Freud, Adorno stresses that such regressive traits do not merely represent the survival of a pre-individual heritage. Rather, they must be understood as a response to ‘the characteristic modern conflict between a strongly developed rational, self-preserving ego agency and the continuous failure to satisfy their own ego demands’ (140). Consistent with the analysis of fascism in Dialectic of Enlightenment, he once again underscores how this conflict can lead to ‘a rebellion against civilization,’ the consequence of which ‘is not simply the reoccurrence of the archaic but its reproduction in and by civilization itself’ (137). This amalgamation of domination and revolt of nature is then regarded as crystallizing into two complementary psychic dynamics, each combining the maintenance of a repressive ego and its simultaneous dissolution.

Adorno’s essay explores how individuals may respond to the pressures of a society focused on dominating nature by relinquishing the very task of domination. Nature’s rebellion against its repression by a coercive ego can result in an abdication of that very ego. As Adorno emphasizes, Freud sees the bond that integrates individuals into a mass as of a libidinal nature. Dissolving one’s ego brings about a sense of liberation, creating conditions for individuals to shed the repressions of their unconscious instincts: ‘it is a pleasurable experience for those who are concerned to surrender themselves so unreservedly to their passions and thus to become merged in the group and to lose the sense of the limits of their individuality’ (Freud 1949 [1921], 27). Here, there is no longer a subject endowed with a psychic instance capable of containing one’s drives. It is as if one had become pure id – a set of disordered, incomprehensible, and irrational drives. Placing themselves on the side of nature, the members of the crowd assume a position of complete vulnerability: they are affected rather than able to affect.

Fascism then manifests itself as a revolt of nature: the individual rebels against the domination of its inner nature by relinquishing this dominating stance. At the same time, Adorno highlights how fascism reinforces the domination of nature. Not only do individuals merge into the mass through a libidinal bond, but they also establish a specific connection with the leader. Yet the sexual nature of this bond remains suppressed; ‘the “love relationship” […] remains unconscious’ (Adorno 2004 [1951], 137). This inhibition is crucial for forming a relationship with the leader marked by subordination and obedience. Adorno notes how ‘Hitler shunned the traditional role of the loving father and replaced it entirely by the negative one of threatening authority’ (137). To the extent that this primary libidinal energy is kept unconscious, it can be redirected and transformed into a source of obedience, similar to what occurs in the relationship between the hypnotist and the hypnotized:

By the measures that he takes, the hypnotist awakens in the subject a portion of his archaic inheritance which had also made him compliant towards his parents and which had experienced an individual reanimation in his relation to his father: what is thus awakened is the idea of a paramount and dangerous personality, towards whom only a passive-masochistic attitude is possible, to whom one’s will has to be surrendered, while to be alone with him, “to look him in the face”, appears a hazardous enterprise. (Freud 1949 [1921], 99)

Much like the hypnotist, the fascist leader appears to his followers as the dreaded father of the primal horde, inducing them to ‘undergo the regressions which reduce them to mere members of a group’ (Adorno 2004 [1951], 138). Confronted with the ego ideal’s pressure to dominate inner nature, the individual relinquishes this instance in favour of a group ideal embodied by the leader: ‘The primal father is the group ideal, which governs the ego in the place of the ego ideal’ (Freud 1949 [1921], 100). The task of controlling the id is entrusted to the leader, to whom the follower submits by adopting a passive-masochistic attitude. Thus, while the tendency toward the domination of nature is reinforced in the fascist crowd, this task is no longer carried out by a psychic instance internal to the individual but is instead delegated to an external figure. The repressive relationship is reiterated but now extends beyond the boundaries of the self.

Still, one’s transformation into a member of the masses goes beyond assuming a vulnerable position as a pure id and a passive-masochistic role as an object of manipulation for the leader. Casting off the repressions of unconscious instincts not only releases erotic drives that foster a bond among the followers and the leader but also triggers destructive impulses against members of the out-group. Adorno speaks of ‘crowds bent on violent action without any sensible political aim’, operating in an ‘atmosphere of irrational emotional aggressiveness’ (Adorno 2004 [1951], 132-33). The affective irrationality of the masses implies not only a position of vulnerability and passivity but also features an aggressive attitude aimed at establishing a position of omnipotence.

The simultaneous maintenance of these two positions is possible, as Adorno argues, due to the regressive nature of this reaction against the domination of nature. While adopting a passive-masochistic attitude toward the leader, members of the mass establish, through narcissistic identification, an immediate continuity between themselves and the authority figure. Adorno draws on Freud’s observation that, in many forms of love choice, the object serves as a substitute for some unattained ego ideal of our own: ‘We love it on account of the perfections which we have striven to reach for our own ego, and which we should now like to procure in this roundabout way as a means of satisfying our narcissism’ (Freud 1949 [1921], 74). By idealizing the leader and identifying with him/her, the follower ‘loves himself, as it were, but gets rid of the stains of frustration and discontent which mar his picture of his own empirical self’ (Adorno 2004 [1951], 140).

The follower surrenders to the manipulation of the leader; yet simultaneously, the leader is a part of them. This explains why the leader’s image is not only that of an all-powerful primal father but also an enlargement of the follower’s own personality – ‘a composite of King Kong and the suburban barber’ (Adorno 2004 [1951], 141). Follower and leader are one and the same; the omnipotence of the latter is also that of the former. Hence, from this perspective as well, the continual frustration of the ego’s efforts to dominate nature results in an intensified reassertion of this domination. In being in continuity with the leader, the members of the mass shares his/her position. They are not only manipulated, but also manipulators.

The member of the mass is thus de-individualized in two ways. While assuming a position of complete vulnerability and a passive-masochistic attitude towards a powerful authority, the followers simultaneously present themselves as active-sadistic and omnipotent by establishing an immediate identification with that authority. Although in opposite directions, both dynamics result in a dissolution of the boundaries of the self. In the first instance, the fascist followers undergoe desubjectification by positioning themselves to be devoured by the leader. In the second, desubjectification occurs as the followers place themselves in a position to devour the leader.⁸ They withdraw from the world, positing themselves as powerless and passive, and expand towards the world, asserting themselves as omnipotent and active.

6. The persistence of subjectivity

These dynamics not only result in a decline and weakness of the individual but, more radically, in ‘the end of psychology itself’ (Adorno 2019 [1948], lxiv; see Gordon 2018). Adorno argues that the Freudian concept of psychology is ‘essentially a negative one’, as it is defined by the prospect of its own overcoming. Freud, in this view, ‘defines the realm of psychology by the supremacy of the unconscious and postulates that what is id should become ego. The emancipation of man from the heteronomous rule of his unconscious would be tantamount to the abolition of his “psychology”’ (Adorno 2004 [1951], 151).

Understood in this way, psychology always implies some form of constraint for the individual, simultaneously presupposing freedom in the sense of a certain degree of autonomy. Psychology is not located in any specific psychic instance; instead, it is defined by the conflict between them. In terms of the reconstruction of Lukács presented earlier, one might say that what characterizes subjectivity is neither activity nor passivity, neither vulnerability nor force, but rather their persistent tension – which posits the potential for their mediation. Fascism, however, is precisely characterized by the tendency to suppress such tension, insofar as it identifies vulnerability and passivity with force and activity. In doing so, it abolishes psychology (that is, subjectivity), albeit in a direction contrary to the one envisioned by Freud.

In this way, the elements found in Lukács’s account of revolutionary consciousness – activity and passivity, vulnerability and force – resurface in Adorno’s analysis of the authoritarian mass. Nevertheless, they appear in a manner where their consequences are diametrically opposite: although the structure of subjectivity persists, it unfolds in a way that leads to desubjectivization. But where, then, can we find the potential for emancipation? Crucially, Adorno points to an aspect of ‘phoniness’ within the fascist masses:

The category of “phoniness” applies to the leaders as well as to the act of identification on the part of the masses and their supposed frenzy and hysteria. Just as little as people believe in the depth of their hearts that the Jews are the devil, do they completely believe in their leader. They do not really identify themselves with him but act this identification, perform their own enthusiasm, and thus participate in their leader’s performance. (152)

Why is this the case? As we observed, the fascist mass involves highly contradictory dynamics, making it extremely destructive but also significantly precarious. Similar to the hypnotized who maintain ‘some awareness that despite everything, hypnosis is only a game’ (Freud 1949 [1921], 99), the members of the crowd cannot help but notice, even if unconsciously, its contradictory nature. Even while trying to posit themselves as both vulnerable and passive and powerful and active, the members of the crowd cannot avoid sensing the persisting tensions between those instances. This implies that, for the mass to sustain itself, there must be a continuous effort to suppress such a perception: ‘If they would stop to reason for a second, the whole performance would go to pieces, and they would be left to panic’ (Adorno 2004 [1951], 152).

However, this also means that the abolition of psychology is never complete. For the members of the mass, ‘the historical stage of enlightenment they have reached […] cannot be revoked arbitrarily’ (152). Even if only vaguely sensed, the conflict persists, and so does the subject. There is always a remnant of psychology even amid the most radical processes of desubjectification. And so, it is precisely here that the potential for the development of emancipatory subjectivities lies: that is, in the possibility – given by the persisting tension between activity and passivity, vulnerability and force – of their mediation.

This is why, for Adorno, the very intensification of the authoritarian dynamics of post-liberal capitalism could lead to their demise. The precarious nature of such processes of regression, which already manifests itself in the relationship between hypnotist and hypnotized, becomes even greater the more the hypnotic spell is collectivized:

The collectivization and institutionalization of the spell […] have made the transference more and more indirect and precarious so that the aspect of performance, the “phoniness” of enthusiastic identification and of all the traditional dynamics of group psychology, have tremendously increased. This increase may well terminate in sudden awareness of the untruth of the spell, and eventually in its collapse. Socialized hypnosis breeds within itself the forces which will do away with the spook of regression through remote control, and in the end awaken those who keep their eyes shut though they are no longer asleep. (153).

7. Concluding remarks

Adorno’s analysis of the fascist mass concludes, somewhat surprisingly, with the horizon of overcoming regression. Instead of the gloomy prospect of an ‘end of internalization’ (Benjamin 1977; see Honneth 1991; Whitebook 1995; Gordon 2018; Allen 2020), what emerges is the possibility of emancipation arising from the very dynamics of socialized hypnosis. How can the diagnosis of a process of radical de-individualization – nothing less than the abolition of psychology – inspire such optimism? As I have contended, the answer to this question becomes clearer when we read Adorno in light of Lukács (read, in turn, in light of Adorno).

Let us revisit the main steps of the argument. First, this reconstruction highlights important continuities between Lukács’s and Adorno’s analyses of reified subjectivity. For Lukács, bourgeois consciousness is ‘contemplative’ insofar as its attempt to rationally control the materiality of the (outer and inner) world ends in meaningless adjustment to predetermined laws. For Adorno, the modern subject’s ‘self-assertion […] is self-repudiation’ insofar as its quest to dominate (outer and inner) nature results in self-negation via submission to a system of domination (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002 [1944/47], 53).

Second, the dialogue between Lukács and Adorno enables a more accurate understanding of the psychic dynamics linked to struggles for emancipation. The reconstruction of Lukács guided by Adorno makes it possible to recognize the role of the material limits to reification, i.e. the non-identical, in driving emancipatory social struggles. Instead of leading to an identical subject-object, these struggles involve a collective subjectivity driven by the continuous, and never-completed, mediation between activity, passivity, vulnerability, and force.

Third, this interpretation provides elements for a renewed understanding of Adorno’s diagnosis of the abolition of psychology within increasingly authoritarian conditions. In particular, it highlights how this abolition is constituted by two complementary, yet contradictory, desubjectification processes. On the one hand, the members of the mass see themselves as utterly passive and vulnerable in the face of an all-powerful leader; on the other, by identifying with the leader they come to view themselves as utterly active and omnipotent. Both dynamics tend to dissolve the boundaries between the self and the world: either because one is devoured by the other, or because one devours the other.

Finally, this perspective allows us to identify within this process itself the potential for overcoming it. The conjunction of two contradictory de-individualizing processes gives the authoritarian mass an enormously (self-)destructive character: it is what sustains it but also the source of its fragility. Bringing both dynamics to completion would signify, as indicated in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, a self-dissolution of individuality and thus of the mass itself. If this does not occur – if such self-destructive tendencies can take on a stable form – it is because the regression is not fully carried out, including a fictive dimension. As previously discussed, the authoritarian mass involves an attempt to establish an identity between the utmost passivity and vulnerability, on the one hand, and the utmost activity and force, on the other. However, this attempt can only be maintained artificially: ‘phoniness’ is an attempt to conceal, and thus an expression of, the persisting tensions between activity, passivity, vulnerability and force. Despite the tendential dissolution of subjectivity, there is still a (residual) subject capable of experiencing it. A subject, therefore, who can potentially participate in emancipatory processes such as those described by Lukács.

We can now see how the dialogue proposed here leads to a diagnosis of reification that accounts for both its tendencies towards authoritarianism and its emancipatory potentials. Just as reading Lukács in light of Adorno allows us to envision a process of emancipation that does not lead to the complete appropriation of the object by the subject, interpreting Adorno in light of Lukács leads to an analysis of authoritarianism that does not result in the dissolution of the subject by objectivity. Authoritarian inclinations and emancipatory potentials are both products of capitalist reification and coexist in continuous tension. Rather than being destined to become an ‘identical subject-object’ or undergo the ‘abolition of psychology,’ the reified individual is the locus of an ongoing struggle.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arthur Bueno

Arthur Bueno is Senior Lecturer at the University of Passau, External Affiliate at the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and Affiliate Professor at the University of São Paulo. His books include Critical Theory and New Materialisms (with H. Rosa and C. Henning; 2021) and De-Centering Global Sociology: The Peripheral Turn in Social Theory and Research (with M. Teixeira and D. Strecker; 2022). He is President of the Georg Simmel Gesellschaft and President of the RC35 on Conceptual Analysis of the International Sociological Association.

Notes

1 Lukács treats both terms as synonymous, stating that Marx’s characterization of fetishism already ‘describes the fundamental phenomenon of reification’ (Lukács 1971 [1923], 86).

2 I follow here Hall’s (2011) brilliant analysis of Adorno’s critique of Lukács.

3 In this sense, the target of Lukács’s 1923 critique is not rationalization or objectification per se, but the particular form they assume within capitalism (Feenberg 2014; Kavoulakos 2018). Nevertheless, as I comment in the next paragraph, if his account of emancipation points to the dissolution of all mediation, then his analysis of reification does fail to provide a view of rationalization and objectification other than a reified one. Regarding the exegesis of History and Class Consciousness, my view is that one does not need to choose one interpretation over the other. Both are present in this highly conflicted book. However, for a meaningful reconstruction of Lukács’s arguments, one does need to choose; see section 4 below.

4 ‘Reification […] can be overcome only by constant and constantly renewed efforts to disrupt the reified structure of existence by concretely relating to the concretely manifested contradictions of the total development’ (Lukács 1971 [1923], 197).

5 In this reconstruction, contrary to Lukács’s claim in History and Class Consciousness, I do not assume that the proletariat is the only class or group capable of being the bearer of an emancipatory process. Beyond the issue of subject-object identity addressed in this article, I have argued elsewhere that Lukács’s diagnosis suffers from a sociological deficit (Bueno 2022). Due to an insufficiently complex understanding of capitalist class structure, it overestimates the drivers of the proletariat’s transformation into a revolutionary subject while underestimating the obstacles to that process. Furthermore, it too quickly dismisses the possibility that emancipatory subjectivities could develop in other social classes or groups. For this reason, I reconstruct Lukács’s phenomenology of the transition from reified to revolutionary consciousness without relying on his assessment of the propensity of different social classes to undergo that process.

6 In Eclipse of Reason, Horkheimer defines fascism in similar terms: ‘In modern fascism, rationality has reached a point at which it is no longer satisfied with simply repressing nature; rationality now exploits nature by incorporating into its own system the rebellious potentialities of nature’ (Horkheimer 2004 [1947], 82).

7 For that purpose, he draws heavily not only upon Freud but also upon Lowenthal and Guterman’s Prophets of Deceit (1948). See Rensmann 2020.

8 ‘[T]he primitively narcissistic aspect of identification as an act of devouring, of making the beloved object part of oneself, may provide us with a clue to the fact that the modern leader image sometimes seems to be the enlargement of the subject’s own personality, a collective projection of himself’ (Adorno 2004 [1951], 140).