A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and the DialecticVerso, 2000 - 182 ˹éÒ Georg Lukács was dubbed "the philosopher of the October Revolution" and his masterpiece History and Class Consciousness (1923) is commonly held to be the foundational text for the tradition known as "Western Marxism" which includes the work of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. As the liberating energies of the Russian Revolution were sapped by Stalinism, Lukács was subjected to ferocious attack for "deviations" from the "party line" in History and Class Consciousness. In the mid-1920s, he wrote Talism and the Dialectic, a sustained and passionate response to this onslaught. Unpublished at the time, Lukács himself thought the text had been destroyed. However, a group of researchers recently found the manuscript gathering dust in the newly opened archives of the CPSU in Moscow. Now, for the first time, this fascinating, polemical and intense text is available in English, in an accomplished translation by Esther Leslie and published here with an introduction from John Rees and a postface by Slavoj Zizek. It is a crucial part of a hidden intellectual history and will transform interpretations of Lukács's oeuvre. "Some critiques of my book History and Class Consciousness have appeared (written by Comrades Rudas and Deborin) which I simply cannot let pass without a response ... It is certainly not my intention to defend the book itself. I would be only too glad if I could regard it as completely redundant, if I could see that its purpose had been full accomplished. What is this purpose? To demonstrate methodologically that the organisation and tactics of Bolshevism are the only possible consequence of Marxism; to prove that, of necessity, the problems of Bolshevism follow logically—that is to say logically in a dialectical sense—from the method of materialist dialectics as implemented by its founders. But my critics move instead in the opposite direction. They use their polemics to smuggle Menshevik elements into Marxism and Leninism. I have to retaliate. I am not defending my book. I am attacking the poen Menshevism of Deborin and the tail-ending of Rudas." |
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abstract activity agnosticism Alain Badiou appearance become conscious Bolshevik capitalism capitalist capitalist society Class Consciousness class position class struggle Comintern commodity fetishism Communist Party Comrade Rudas conception concrete contradiction correct correctly course critique Deborin decisive determined dialectics of nature dictatorship economic Engels's exchange of matter existence fact for-us forces Georg Lukács Hegel Hegelian historical materialism historical process historical role History and Class human Hungarian Ibid idealist ideology imputation in-itself Kant Kantian knowledge of nature Korsch labour process Lenin Leninist logic Lukács's Marx's Marxist materialist means MECW Menshevik moments natural sciences notion objective process opposition organisation passage peasantry peasants philosophical crotchets political possible practical praxis precisely problem production proletarian class proletariat question recognised refutation relationship revolution revolutionary Rudas's Russian sciousness simply situation Slavoj Žižek social spontaneous Stalinism Stalinist stance Tailism theoretical theory thing thing-in-itself thought tion transformation ultra-left Western Marxism workers Zinoviev