Author: George Lukacs
Publisher: Rupa
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 356
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0850361974
Description
Few books have achieved the reputation-almost legendary-of History and Class Consciousness. Lukacs, a brilliant Hungarian intellectual who had progressed from idealism to Marxism, found himself, first a commissar in the Hungarian revolutionary army, and shortly after, among the exiled leadership of the Hungarian Communist Party in Vienna.
It was here that he wrote the essays later to be collocated as History and Class Consciousness. After their appearance the author was attacked by Bukharin and Zinoviev and the book effectively suppressed. Lukacs himself joined in the criticism.
The first essay What is Orthodox Marxism? Is an attack on dogmatism; two essays praise and appraise the work of Rosa Luxemburg; there are short essays on historical materialism and the problems of party organisation. Between these are the two major essays Class consciousness and Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat which raised the whole question of alienation almost ten years before the discovery of Marx's famous 1844 Manuscripts, and commenced a historic argument.
For this edition, Lukacs wrote a long Preface, in part an autobiography, in part a critique of his own work and a mature reflection on how far contemporary criticism-and his own self-criticism-were justified.
EXPERTS FROM REVIEWS
The English publication of History and Class Consciousness is an important event, since it is with this powerful and imaginative work that any serious critical appreciation of Lukacs must begin. The most penetrating and suggestive parts of the book are concerned with the reified consciousness of men under capitalism.
-Steven Lukes in The Observer.
It is one of the indispensable works of the twentieth century.
-Raymond Williams in The Guardian
Contents
Translator's Note
Preface to the new edition (1967)
Preface
What is Orthodox Marxism?
The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg
Class Consciousness
Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat
I The Phenomenon of Reification
II The Ant