The centennial of History and Class Consciousness: Lukács and critical theory today

Edited by:

Mariana Teixeira, Freie Universität Berlin (m.teixeira@fu-berlin.de)

Victor Strazzeri, Universität Bern/Berliner Institut für kritische Theorie, e.V. (victor.strazzeri@unibe.ch)

The year 2023 marks the centennial of the publication of History and Class Consciousness, by Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukács. Considered a founding milestone of what Maurice Merleau-Ponty termed “Western Marxism”, the book has left deep marks in the history of critical currents in philosophy and the social sciences after successive waves of reception around the world. In this sense, if the category “Western” was already a relative one with regards to the author’s native Hungary, the impact of History and class consciousness beyond Europe – and notably in Latin America – suggests a work of true global relevance. 

It has had a turbulent trajectory: denounced in the wake of its publication as a “regression to idealism” by intellectuals of different currents within the Communist International – a criticism that Lukács contested in a text published only posthumously –, the work was eventually disavowed by the author himself. Although the book was not reprinted until 1967, “pirate” copies of the 1923 German original as well as an unauthorized French translation circulated (especially within the student movement). The belated “official” reprint was supplemented by a preface in which Lukács sharply criticized his early work. Even so, and despite the more than four decades – and enormous historical transformations – that separated the first and second editions, History and Class Consciousness continued to impact readers with its defense of “orthodox Marxism” and its contributions to the theory of reification, class consciousness, and workers’ organization. The new cycle of reception that began in the 1960s remains open. 

In this work, which bears the marks of a recent transition to Marxism, Lukács combines in an unprecedented way elements of the critique of modern instrumental rationality from emerging German sociology, e.g. the thought of Max Weber and Georg Simmel, with a Marxian theoretical-philosophical framework of strong Hegelian overtones. The originality of his critique of capitalism soon found resonance, for instance, amongst the authors gathered around the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, whose work – both indebted to and critical of Lukács – became known as “critical theory”. At the same time, the book found readers in circles of communists and young intellectuals of the Weimar Republic, in which it exerted, according to a witness of the time, “a profound impact” despite being “horribly complicated” (Hans Mayer, 1970). 

In the 1967 critical preface, Lukács states that the intention of republishing his essay collection was “precisely to emphasize their experimental character”. His early essays may “have a certain documental importance”, he conceded, but only “if one adopts a sufficiently critical attitude”. Lukács saw the work fundamentally as a  product of the 1920s and the revolutionary hopes that characterized the left at that time. Beyond the possible limits of the later Lukács’ assessment of his own work, the repeated (and enthusiastic) rediscoveries and (re)readings of History and Class Consciousness over a century of reception in the most varied contexts suggest a persistent actuality. 

On the centennial of its publication, Dissonancia: Journal of Critical Theory invites submissions that discuss the importance of History and Class Consciousness for the history of critical theory (broadly understood), for contemporary emancipatory perspectives, as well as for a critical understanding of the current phase of development of capitalist society.

Possible topics are:

  • The reception of HCC in Brazil and Latin America, or in other parts of the world
  • HCC and critical theory
  • The contemporary relevance of the concepts of “reification”, “class consciousness” and “orthodox Marxism”
  • The conceptual and categorical apparatus of HCC
  • HCC as a foundational work of “Hegelian Marxism” and “Western Marxism”?
  • Theoretical limits and outdated aspects of HCC
  • HCC and the current phase of capitalist development
  • HCC and feminist standpoint theories, critique of capitalism and intersectionality
  • The early Lukács’s (direct, indirect, imagined) dialogues with Marxist thought: Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin, Ernst Bloch, Karl Korsch, Antonio Gramsci, etc.
  • The (absent?) place of the dialectic of nature in HCC and its relevance for current environmental and eco-socialist debates
  • The resonance (or dissonance) of HCC in Lukács’ later work

The journal also welcomes critical reviews of recently published books related to the call for papers. Some suggestions of works to be reviewed:

  • Arlenice Almeida da Silva, Estética da resistência: A autonomia da arte no jovem Lukács (Boitempo, 2021)
  • Daniel Andrés López, Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute (Brill, 2020)
  • Georg Lukács, Werke 3.1 (Aisthesis, 2021)
  • Georg Lukács, Texte zum Theater (Theater der Zeit, 2021)
  • Georg Lukács, The Destruction of Reason (Verso, 2021)
  • Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker (org.), Confronting Reification: Revitalizing Georg Lukács’s Thought in Late Capitalism (Brill, 2020)
  • Konstantinos Kavoulakos, Georg Lukács’s Philosophy of Praxis: From Neo- Kantianism to Marxism (Bloomsbury, 2018)
  • Matthew Smetona, Recovering the Later Georg Lukács: A Study on the Unity of His Thought (MIT Press, 2023)
  • Michael Thompson (org.), Georg Lukács and the Possibility of Critical Social Ontology (Brill, 2019)
  • Nikos Foufas, La critique de la réification chez Lukács (Editions L'Harmattan, 2020)
  • Nikos Foufas, Les antinomies de la pensée bourgeoise chez Lukács (Editions L'Harmattan, 2020)
  • Nikos Foufas, Processualité de l'être social dans la philosophie du jeune Lukács (Editions L'Harmattan, 2021)
  • Richard Westerman, Lukács’s Phenomenology of Capitalism: Reification Revalued (Palgrave, 2019)
  • Tyrus Miller, Georg Lukács and Critical Theory: Aesthetics, History, Utopia (Edinburgh University Press, 2022)

Other book suggestions are welcome (if you would like a book to be included in this list, please write to the editors with the relevant information).

SUBMISSION DEADLINES:

- Paper proposals: 31/10/2022 (abstracts of 300-500 words)

Authors whose proposals are approved will be invited to submit the complete papers for the special issue.

- Complete papers: 15/02/2023

Papers should follow the journal’s guidelines available on https://ojs.ifch.unicamp.br/index.php/teoriacritica/info_gerais_sub and be submitted to: dissonancia@unicamp.br.