Editor’s Preface to the Collection of Essays
Lukacs’ History and Class Consciousness was first published exactly a hundred years ago in the spring of 1923 in Berlin by Malik Verlag, the publishing house founded by Wieland Herzfelde. This book – which was written-compiled, as the author remarks in the preface dated Christmas 1922, during his „forced spare time” (with some exaggeration) as a sort of handbook for revolutionaries[1] – is the most exciting philosophical work of post-Marxian marxism, and is a source of inspiration, and of course a topic of debate until this day. A countless number of studies have been written about the book since (rediscovering it or arguing with it; taking the ideas further or diverting from them); the studies and reviews included here which reflect on Lukács for one reason or another[2] only represent the first decade of the book’s reception; not that there weren’t any significant periods in the reception later, but because these partly forgotten writings played a crucial role in determining the fate of the work – and its author.
Our Collection of Essays is a kind of tribute to the 100-year-old book but the title – History and Class Consciousness in the Debates of the 1920s – is slightly misleading, or at least it might not be self-evident why we included some of the essays. Perhaps it requires some explanation why we chose to publish some of the reviews of Lukacs’s Lenin booklet[3] which appeared a year later, in 1924: the enthusiastic praise or passionate rejection of History and Class Consciousness have left their mark on the critical response to the Lenin pamphlet, and the sympathy or antipathy could be more readily articulated in relation to Lukács’s 1924 essay. In any case, History and Class Consciousness and the question of who agreed with it were drawn into the political debates surrounding the interpretation and canonisation of Lenin’s legacy (and the ‘Bolshevisation of the Communist parties’).
Already the opening essay in this collection calls for an explanation since Béla Fogarasi’s brochure was written before the publication of History and Class Consciousness, and even before the manuscript was finalised. But Fogarasi was already a member of Lukács’s circle in Budapest, and was also one of Lukács’s followers in Vienna, and the pamphlet, even though it is evident, also indicates that its author had read and taken to heart at least some of the earlier studies of Lukács’s book. And if we add to this that Lukács’s critics did not miss the opportunity to point out the dangers of disciples lining up behind him, perhaps the inclusion of the Introduction is not entirely unjustified. The closing essay in our collection also calls for an explanation. There is a thread that could not be left out, because it runs somewhat parallel to the history of the reception of History and Class Consciousness: that of Korsch’s writings and the writings devoted to Korsch and his Marxism and Philosophy. These are not only included here because in the afterword to Marxism and Philosophy the author expressed his agreement with History and Class Consciousness and also reviewed Lukács (the Lenin booklet), or because his book was received in a similar way to Lukács’s, but because Korsch was also an analyst of the constellation that determined this reception. In 1924, in a short article entitled Lenin und die Komintern, he exposes the problem of the hasty codification of Lenin’s legacy, reduced to a tool of political machinations, while Der gegenwärtige Stand des Problems Marximus und Philosophie written in 1930 ends the 1920s not only by the date of its creation: it diagnoses the historical unfeasibility (the rupture of a tradition, later called Western Marxism) of an interpretation of Marxism (a philosophical attitude). In the other arena, that of the Russian reception of Lukács, the 1920s are brought to a close with a lecture by Abram Deborin, who largely determined the arguments of Lukács criticism in Russia, which discusses in detail the victorious battles fought by Deborin and his followers on the ‘philosophical front’, mentioning Lukács in passing, but already sensing that he, Deborin himself, and his school (Menshevik idealism) were also soon to face ideological repression. At the time, it was just an ideological repression: Deborin survived the Stalin era – Grigory Bammel or Nikolai Karev were not so lucky, they were later killed in camps during the Great Purge.
With the excerpt from Karl Löwith’s Max Weber und Karl Marx we cross over to the 1930s, perhaps on what might seem an arbitrary consideration. Löwith’s major study, now considered a classic – apparently the first to expose what has become a commonplace in the literature of History and Class Consciousness, namely that Lukács discovered in many ways the young Marx for himself, whom he could not have known from Marx’s writings at the time – reconstructs the philosophical core of Marx’s position by drawing essentially on (and referring to) Lukács, placing Marx’s “anthropology” (and thus the problem of alienation) at the centre of his interpretation of Marx, as it became more obvious after the publication of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, although he does not refer to Marx’s Paris manuscripts (perhaps he could not, since the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts were published at about the same time as Löwith’s study, in two editions, although an extract had been published in French in 1929).[4] In this way, if you like, the Löwith study is a kind of bridge between two revolutionary developments in Marx’s interpretations, History and Class Consciousness and the publication of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts – a bridge that Lukács does not cross: although he took part in the deciphering of the Manuscripts in Moscow, he reacted to their publication only with a short review, and stated that the Moscow edition is the only reliable reconstruction of the text, the Social Democratic version cannot be considered as such.[5]
This collection of writings is an online version of an earlier 4-volume collection edited together with Tamás Krausz, published in 1984 in a joint edition of the Lukács Archive and the Philosophical Observer edited by Gyula Munkácsy, which was supplemented in one respect: in the first collection the writings appeared in the language of their publication, but included only one version of the texts which were published both in German and Russian – now they are available in both languages. However, we have omitted the Lukács writings published in Russian in the 1920s which were included in the ’84 edition. Lukács’s Russian critics might have argued crudely (“Russians act philosophically but think like uneducated dogs”, as Ernst Bloch wrote at the time[6]); and what Lukács wrote in a letter – much later, during another debate – namely that “In the Richelieu-Rudas method there are not ten lines that could not be considered a justification of the death sentence”[7] is also true of László Rudas’ criticism at the time, this is still the 1920s: not only the central essay of Lukács’s book was published in Russian (and Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy twice – in 1923 and 1924 – although the second time with a foreword by the translator Grigory Bammel, who expressed some reservations)[8], which of course was before the critical campaign against History and Class Consciousness[9], but Lukács could continue to publish in Russian newspapers – these Russian language writings of Lukács are the ones we are leaving out. Now we felt it was enough to state the fact.[10]
Consistency is certainly a virtue, but it is not easy when you are compiling a collection of essays: some of the papers here touch on Lukács and History and Class Consciousness only in passing – for illustrative purposes, among a list of other things – but we wanted to publish the texts in the collection in full, which, where studies are concerned, is self-evident: only the whole of the writings will reveal why the author refers to Lukács. But it would have probably been too much to publish Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy – which the reader can access through other channels as well – in its entirety for the sake of a few lines of afterword. However, Zinoviev’s speech at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, which is not exactly short, is published in full, although he only refers to Lukács in a few sentences – the political context is not completely irrelevant. It is not really advisable to use sentences taken out of context in academic debates, but in the case of texts with a political significance it is even less so. Our sometimes unjustifiably lenient, sometimes just as unjustifiably restrictive choices regarding the writings could be debatable, and it is not our intention to defend every decision – we merely ask for the reader’s understanding.
The editor of the online edition would like to thank Zsuzsa Hetényi, Natália Jánossy, Tamás Krausz, Nóra Szegedi, Mária Székely, Ferenc Tallár, and other colleagues who took part in shaping the text – and Ella Villax who typed those four volumes up forty years ago.
[1] This preface does not hesitate to offer advice on the order of reading to less philosophically literate readers.
[2] Hidden impacts and more intricate responses of the later stages would have called for a different approach.
[3] Georg Lukács: Lenin. Studie über den Zusammenhang seiner Gedanken, the study was published in Vienna by Verlag der Arbeiter-Buchhandlung and in Berlin by Malik Verlag, but was also published in Hungarian by Ama Verlag in Vienna, in Andor Gábor’s translation.
[4] Marcello Musto: The Myth of the „Young Marx” in the Interpretations of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.
[5] Georg Lukács: Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, Werke und Schriften von Mai 1846 bis März 1848. [Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe. Hrsg. von V. Adoratsky. I. Abt. Bd. 6. Marx-Engels -Verlag. Berlin 1933], Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 1933 Nr. 2, 280-281.
[7] Lukács’s letter to József Révai on 18th May 1950, in: A Lukács-vita, ed. János Ambrus, Múzsák, Budapest 1985, 310.
[9] Although at the publication of the third part of the alienation-essay the editors felt the need to express some reservations: „The editorial board considers comrade Lukács’s article in some places controversial and the terminology is not always Marxist.” („Редакция некоторы места в статье тов. Лукача считает дискуссионными и терминологию невсегда марксистски выдержанной.”) – Вестник Социалитической Академии, кн. 6. (oктябрь–декабрь 1923 г.), 116.
[10] Георг Люкач: Д-р Макс Адлер: „Учение марксизма о государствe” (Очерк различия между социологическим и юридическим методом). Bестник Социалистической Aкадемии, кн. 3. (февраль 1923 г.), 407–410.
Г. Лукач: Mатериализация и пролетарское сознание. Вестник Социалитической Академии, кн. 4. (апрель–июль 1923 г.), 186–222, кн. 5. (чвгуст-сентябь 1923 г.), 74–120 & кн. 6. (oктябрь–декабрь 1923 г.), 116–185.
Георг Лукач: Fritz Mautner: Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte im Abendlande. Bестник Cоциалитической Aкадемии, кн. 5. (август–сентябь 1923 г.), 233–237.
Георг Лукач: Hermann Schmalenbach: Leibniz. Bестник Cоциалитической Aкадемии, ibid., 237–240.
Георг Лукач: Friedrich Kuntze: Die Philosophie Salomon Maimons. Bестник Cоциалитической Aкадемии, ibid., 240–245.
Georg Lukacz: Литературное наследие Лассаля. Bестник Коммунистической Aкадемии, кн. 7. (1924), 402–415.
Георг Лукач: Новая биография М. Гесса. Архив К. Маркса и Ф. Энгельса. кн. 3. (1927), 440–459.
Пути творчества Гергардта Гауптмана. Вестник иностранной литературы, кн. 4 (апрель) 1928, 136–138.
Георг Лукач: Ernst Simon, Ranke und Hegel. Beiheft 15 der „Historischen Zeitschrift“, München /Berlin. R. Oldenburg, 1928, Архив К. Маркса и Ф. Энгельса. кн. 5. (1930), 478–482.Георг Люкач: Д-р Макс Адлер: „Учение марксизма о государствe” (Очерк различия между социологическим и юридическим методом). Bестник Социалистической Aкадемии, кн. 3. (февраль 1923 г.), 407–410.