TwentiethCentury Marxism

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Twentieth-Century Marxism

• Lecture Seven Lukács subjectivism and Marxism

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over-riding subjectivism (1967/xviii)

• confusion of alienation and objectification
• as a criticism of Hegel
• as a criticism of Lukács
• (Adornos related criticism)
• general over-emphasis on subjectivity
• voluntarism
• subjectivism itself

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methodological individualism?

• it is quite improper to talk about groups of
  individuals as if they were one subject unless
  this is an indirect or shorthand way of referring
  to the individuals themselves
• analytical Marxism espoused (at least for a
  time) by G. A. Cohen, Jon Elster and others

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Lukács

• Only the class can relate to the whole of
  reality in a practical revolutionary way. (The
  species cannot do this as it is no more than an
  individual that has been mythologised and
  stylised in a spirit of contemplation.)
  (RIII5/193)

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types of collective entity

• summative
• integrative
• hierarchical
• The F.B.I. didnt know what it did know.

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problems with Lukács position

• taking the CP to be the class as subject
• taking the CP to be a fully-fledged subject.

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Lukács solution

• tighten the integrative bonds of the party
• the renunciation of individual freedom and
  the conscious subordination of the self to that
  collective will that is destined to bring real
  freedom into being This collective will is the
  Communist Party. (MO3/315)

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the historical reality

• hierarchical entity
• contractions humanity class party leader
• messianic utopianism?

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Lukács on Marxism

• Materialist dialectic is a revolutionary
  dialectic (OM 1/2)
• the theory is essentially the intellectual
  expression of the revolutionary process itself
  (OM 1/3)

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Lukács on Marxism

• ... the essence of the method of historical
  materialism is inseparable from the practical
  and critical activity of the proletariat both
  are aspects of the same process of social
  evolution. So, too, the knowledge of reality
  provided by the dialectical method is likewise
  inseparable from the class standpoint of the
  proletariat. (OM 5/20-21)

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Lukács vs economic fatalism

• With all this it was still possible, e.g. for
  Kautsky and Hilferding, to insist on the
  generally revolutionary nature of the age and on
  the idea that the time was ripe for revolution
  without feeling the compulsion to apply this
  insight to decisions of the moment. (MO 1/302)

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Lukács vs Austro-Marxism

• Thus the essence of the method of historical
  materialism is inseparable from the practical
  and critical activity of the proletariat both
  are aspects of the same process of social
  evolution. So, too, the knowledge of reality
  provided by the dialectical method is likewise
  inseparable from the class standpoint of the
  proletariat. The question raised by the Austrian
  Marxists of the methodological ...

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Lukács vs Austro-Marxism (contd)

• ... separation of the pure science of Marxism
  from socialism is a pseudo-problem. Lukács here
  provides a footnote reference to the preface of
  Hilferdings Finance Capital, a text I discussed
  earlier in the term. For, the Marxist method,
  the dialectical materialist knowledge of reality,
  can arise only from the point of view of a class,
  from the point of view of the struggle of the
  proletariat. (OM 5/20-21)

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Lukács on the dualistic world-view

• The agent is confronted with a world governed by
  eternal laws of nature, in relation to which
  the ethical perspective remains merely normative
  and fails to be truly active but only
  prescriptive and imperative in character.
  (RL4/38-39)
• (In effect, Lukács re-runs Hegels critique of
  Kants ethics against the Austro-Marxists.)

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Lukács account of Marxism

• not a science but the self-understanding of the
  revolutionary proletariat (party)
• Two questions
• is this Marxist?
• isnt it relativist?

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Is it Marxist?

• Marx and Engels The theoretical propositions of
  the communists express in general terms the
  factual relations of an existing class struggle,
  a historical movement that is proceeding under
  our own eyes. (The Communist Manifesto (1848)
  KMSW 231/256)

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Isnt it relativist?

• Kolakowski Marxism is in this sense
  invulnerable to rational argument outsiders
  cannot understand it correctly, and therefore
  cannot criticize it effectively. (Main Currents
  of Marxism, vol. 3, p. 298)

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Zinovievs rebuke

• If we have a few more of these philosophers
  spinning Marxist theories, we shall be lost. We
  cannot tolerate such revision in the Comintern
  i.e. the Communist International.
• (Grigory Zinoviev, one of the leading
  Bolsheviks speech made at the 5th congress of
  the 3rd Communist International June 1924.)

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1920s Bolshevik cautiousness

• Lenin, Left-Wing Communism An Infantile
  Disorder (1920)
• Zinoviev The struggle against the ultra-lefts
  and theoretical revisionism

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Zinovievs rebuke in full

• I have received a letter from Comrade Rudas, who
  was one of the leaders of the faction Lukács
  belongs to. He declared that he intends to
  oppose the revisionist Lukács. Trying to silence
  him, Rudas has left the faction because he
  doesnt want to see Marxism watered down. Bravo
  Rudas! A similar tendency is evident in the
  German party. Comrade Professor Graziadei,
  professor Korsch a voice from the audience
  Lukács is also a professor This theoretical
  revision cannot be allowed to pass without
  impunity. Neither shall we tolerate our
  Hungarian comrade, Lukács, doing it in the domain
  of philosophy and sociology. If we have a few
  more of these philosophers spinning Marxist
  theories, we shall be lost. We cannot tolerate
  such revision in the Comintern.

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Further reading

• Löwy, M., Georg Lukács From Romanticism to
  Bolshevism (1979), chapter 5, Lukács and
  Stalinism also available as chapter 2 of
  Western Marxism A Critical Reader (1977)
• Kolakowski, L., Main Currents of Marxism, vol. 3,
  chapter 7
• Goldman, A., Group Knowledge versus Group
  Rationality Two Approaches to Social
  Epistemology, Episteme 1.1 (2004)