(Verdinglichung) Came To Lukacs Through Several Channels. He Presents Us With

LUKACS' THEORY OF REIFICATION
by
Andrew Arato
The theory of reification is an indispensable part of the dialectical theory of

society. The first large scale formulation of this theory was presented by Georg
Lukacs in 1923, in History and Class Consciousness. The concept of reification
[Verdinglichung] came to Lukacs through several channels. He presents us with
a Marxian definition. Reification [res: thing: das Ding] refers to the
phenomenon (and the resulting phenomena) of a "definite social relation
between men" appearing [emerging and seeming] in the form of a "relation
between things".1 It could be pointed out that Lukacs also uses reification as a
synonym for alienation [Entfremdung], rationalization, atomization and
deactivization. However, the various meanings appear on different levels of
analysis; indeed, the concept is genuinely dialectical because it yields a whole
series of historically determined levels. Lukacs, following Marx's discussion of
the fetishism of commodities [Warenfetischismus] forces reification to yield a
second nature of social "things" which seem to and tend to negate the
historicity of the social world. It was his intention to show that this negation
cannot be final. But, while he considered the critique of reification to be the
theoretical center of Marx's critique of political economy,2 Lukacs knew that
the completed fragment of that critique known as Capital does not provide the
"mediations" necessary for the overcoming of reification. Furthermore, one of
Lukacs' earliest theses as a Marxist was to the effect that historical materialism
must be applied to itself as well. In this context he argued that Marxism's
self-criticism would show that the reduction of politics and culture to the laws
of economic development is rigorously valid only for the era of capitalism and
that in this respect historical materialism is an ideology similar to political
economy, although the latter deals with the laws of a dogmatically (and at times
apologetically) presupposed economic equilibrium.3 Thus even before Lukacs
developed his mature theory of reification he gave the reason why Marxism in its
late 19th century form cannot transcend reification: it continues to treat all of
the history of the social world as a second nature (although a nature not without
1. Karl Marx, Capital, trans, by S. Moore and E. Aveling, ed. by Friedrich Engels
(New York: International Publishers, 1967), vol. I, p. 72. We will discuss Hegel's
theory of reification (Hegel did not use the word Verdinglichung) below. Also
cf. Georg Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes, 5th edition (Berlin, 1930 [first
edition was in 1900]), p. 532.
2. Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, trans, by R. Livingstone
(London: Merlin Press, 1971), p. 170.
3. Georg Lukacs, "A tortenelmi materializmus funkciovaltozasa,"
Internationale, VI-VII (July, 1919, Budapest), p. 15. The thesis appears in
greater detail in the second version of the essay written for History and Class
Consciousness, op. cit., p. 228.
26 TELOS
development) governed by natural laws.4 It must be added here that given the
historical stage of capitalism, Lukacs considered this naturalization both
accurate and necessary (because it reflects appearances that are necessary). He
continued to apply, e.g., Rosa Luxemburg's deterministic theory of the
automatic collapse of capitalism, even as he introduced (rather mechanically)
some voluntaristic elements into this theory. In contrast to such juggling with
freedom and necessity, Lukacs conceived the dialectics of reification on a far
more ambitious scale.
According to Marx, a commodity under capitalism is a "mysterious thing
simply because in it the social character of men's labor appears to them as an
objective character stamped upon the products of that labor, because the
relation of producers to the sum total of labor [Gesamtarbeit] is presented to
them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the
products of that labor."5 This means that the market relation of commodity to
commodity which is essentially "a definite social relation between men" (i.e., a
definite relationship among workers who are parts of the whole productive force
within the given social and economic system of production) takes on for the
producers themselves "the fantastic form of a relation between things." Or more
precisely, to avoid a subjectivist misinterpretation, workers, who are in fact
isolated from one another and meet only in the market through their products,
perceive the relationship of their work to the "totality of labor" as what it is in
fact in that society: as "material relations between persons and social relations
among things [sachliche Verhaltnisse der Personen und gesellschaftliche
Verhaltnisse der Sachen] " 6 Thus, given the fact of commodity exchange,
commodity fetishism is not a subjective illusion. This is especially true because
commodity exchange transforms (and is transformed by) the labor process. In
this context labor acquires a double character. Labor must always satisfy a
portion of the total needs of a society, and it must satisfy the whole spectrum of
the worker's own material needs. Under capitalism these two aspects are split.
To do the first labor must be qualitatively useful; to do the second (under
capitalism) it must be exchangeable. To be exchangeable, different kinds of
labor must be reduced to a common quantitative denominator: "expenditure of
human labor in the abstract" or abstract labor power measured by labor time,
bought and sold as a commodity.
A full exposition of Marx's notion of reification would also have to rely on
texts other than the famous section of Capital.7 The relationship of wage labor
to capital is itself fetishistic. And here the whole system of the production and
4. In Marx himself Lukacs correctly noticed some clues that this naturalization
refers to the historical stage of capitalism. Cf. Capital, vol. I, "Afterword to the
Second German Edition," p. 18 and also pp. 80-81 where Marx contrasts a state
of society where "the process of production has the mastery over man" with one
where men "consciously regulate" the economy.
5. Marx, Capital, vol.1, p. 72.
6. Ibid., p. 73.
7. We will not discuss the theory of alienation of the 1844 Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts, because Lukacs did not know them in 1923.
Theory of Reification 27
reproduction of capital is involved. On the labor market the wage offered

appears to equal the labor power that is bought and sold. In reality, unequals are
exchanged. Utilized labor power (i.e., human labor) equals wage plus surplus.
Labor power is a special commodity, the use of which tends to produce far more
than is needed to sustain it and its reproduction. Wages, whether they tend
toward the lower limit of the workers' subsistence in a given historical period or
the upward limit established by the worker's struggle, by rising productivity and
by a more or less constant profit rate,8 represent only a part of the worker's
output. As long as the worker believes that an equal exchange has taken place,
he misunderstands the truly creative aspect of work; he treats his labor power as
a thing (i.e., labor power) equal to another thing (i.e., his wages); and a new
system of forced labor based on domination is mystified.9
According to Marx the system of thing relations on the market under
capitalism increasingly takes on the form of n second nature. Bourgeois political
economists are the "exact scientists" uncovering the laws of this second nature,
treating these laws as if they were rooted in an eternal "human nature." The
system itself and its scientists produce the illusion that the world of
commodities is unchangeable.10 However, the historical critique of the system
and its science, i.e. the critique of political economy, cannot on its own
eliminate this ahistorical illusion, which will be constantly reproduced as long as
the social relationships underlying and producing it are not transformed.11 Here
Marx is alluding to revolutionary praxis. But to reiterate, the finished portions of
the critique of political economy do not provide the dynamic, i.e. the
"mediations", for the transformation in question.
There are well known sections of Hegel's Philosophy of Right which
anticipate the framework of Marx's discussion of the market of commodity
exchange, and the society based on that exchange. But since our concern is that
of the dialectic of the overcoming [A ufhebung] of this society, we will avoid this
particular work of Hegel because it involves an ultimately false overcoming; an
overcoming that leaves everything as it is. A consideration of the
Phenomenology should prove much more fruitful. According to Herbert
Marcuse, the first three sections of the Phenomenology of Spirit "are a critique
of positivism, and even more of reification."12 Yet, apparently a different
concept of reification is involved than in Marx's Capital Lukacs' work
accomplished a synthesis (perhaps only partial) of these two concepts, and
clearly Marcuse is reading Lukacs' notion back into Hegel. For us this reading is
8. On the problem of wages in Capital, cf. Joan Robinson, Essay on Marxian

Economics, sec. ed. (London: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 30-33, and Ernest Mandel,
The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx, trans, by B. Pearce
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), p. 147.
9. Marx, Value, Price and Profit (New York: International Publishers, 1935), p.
43.
10. Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 81.
11. Ibid., p. 74.
12. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, sec. ed. (Boston: Beacon Press,
1960), p. 113.
28 TELOS
useful because in Hegel, if we move from "Consciousness" to the Master-Slave

dialectic, we can locate an incredibly telescoped microcosm of many aspects
(not all) of the developed theory of reification.
In the opening sections of the Phenomenology, Hegel investigates three levels
of estranged confrontation between subject and object, demonstrating that
"sense certainty", "perception" and "understanding" cannot yield truth. On
none of these levels can knowledge13 be anchored in either the subjective or the
objective dimension. Following the logic of immediacy (the empirical given)
from either side, Hegel manages to "mediate" the base of certainty first to the
other side, second to both sides taken together, and finally, when all these new
immediacies break down, to a higher and more active level. But none of the
three epistemological levels (levels of "Consciousness") contain a subjectivity
that is active vis - a - vis its object in anything more than a formal sense. In this
part of the Phenomenology, the critique cannot be united to an immanent
dynamic of overcoming; it remains external because "Consciousness" yields only
a formal subject-object dialectic.14 In other words, Hegel shows that neither the
critique of positivism, the subjective science of a subjectless world, nor the
critique of the subjectless world itself can be realized on the level of
epistemology. This argument reappears (on a higher level) in Marx's claim that
theoretical criticism cannot tear the veils of commodity fetishism.
The famous master-slave dialectic of the second part of the Phenomenology
titled "Self-Consciousness," which transcends all epistemological points of view,
yields the truth of "Consciousness." For us, it presents a critique of reification
that is intimately tied to the emerging dialectic of "self-consciousness" itself.
This represents a multi-dimensional microcosm of the modern theory of
reification. According to Hegel the recognition of the subjective-creative
dimension of the object world must be preceded by the recognition of the self as
subject. The recognition of the self as subject depends on its recognition of
another self as subject. This seems to be a point out of Kant's moral philosophy.
It is so only formally, and not in terms of function. Hegel is working out in this
context the foundation of history, a dynamic moment that returns in
ever-enriched forms in all of history that is the history of struggle and of
domination. But we should proceed more slowly. Before self-consciousness, the
"subject-to-be" is mere life, in other words a mere animal. For an animal all
13. I.e., the knowledge of the developing human species, the knowledge of the
developing human individual, and the knowledge of various schools of
philosophy concerned with the "problem of knowledge". Hegel operates on all
these levels. Cf. Georg Lukacs, Der Junge Hegel, vol. VIII of his works (Berlin
and Neuweid: Luchterhand, 1968), pp. 575 ff., and Marcuse, Reason and
Revolution, pp. 112-113.
14. In the Preface of the Phenomenology we are told that Hegel's aim is
precisely in the uncovering of a subject-object dialectic: "in my view which must
be justified through the exposition of the system everything depends on grasping
and expressing the true not only as a substance but as subject as well." G.W.F.
Hegel, Phdnomenologie des Geistes, ed. by J. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner
Verlag, 1952), p. 19. Also Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans, by J.B.
Baillie (New York: Harper, 1967), p. 80. I have modified all quotes from this
translation. — A.A.
objects are only objects for immediate needs. Another potential subject first
appears to be just like any other object "thus coming forward [auftretend] in
their immediacy, they are for one another like ordinary objects." 15
The dialectical pair immediacy and mediation runs through all of Hegel's
work. These concepts, and their movement, will be especially important for
Lukacs. For Hegel immediacy, the given factuality, no matter how rich it
appears or what "it claims", is always poor, inessential, and deficient in
determination. Mediation, however, does not mean introducing a merely
external principle: "mediation is nothing else than a self-identity that moves
itself, or it is reflection into itself;" it is "simple becoming."16 Mediation is thus
the movement whose source and agent are the elements of an internal dynamic.
It involves only the structuring and realization of what was implicitly present in
the first place. Of course, mediation does mean that the cancellation of the form of
the immediate, but it has the double structure of das Aufheben: "negation and
preservation at the same time." 17 Another important point to note is that for
Hegel, methodologically at least, mediation is never final; it is always a moment
in the creation of a new immediacy.
In the master-slave dialectic the first immediacy involves the reduction of life
to ordinary objects. But a potentially self-conscious life is an sich not an
ordinary object. It is to begin w'\t\\ desire to consume all of existence. When two
desires meet the result is a primordial struggle to death. The outcome of this
struggle can be death, which involves no mediation out of the most primitive
immediacy, or it can be domination of one potentially self-conscious subject
over the other. Hegel sees this domination as the beginning of the history of
culture. (Marx notices a similar qualitative beginning point when he argues that
the social institution of slavery implies at least that a man can produce more
than he needs to consume.)
The victory and domination of one subject over the other results in two
different primitive forms of self-consciousness: a master, a "pure
self-consciousness" having only the immediate relationship of enjoyment and
consumption toward things (thanks to the service and work of the other), and a
slave, "consciousness in the shape of thing-hood" having the relationship of
work toward a world of things.18 Three points and their connection should be
stressed: (1) Hegel presents a form of reification here that is more radical than
those in the preceding sections of the Phenomenology. Instead of merely a rigid
subject-object split, in this case we have the consciousness of the slave reduced
to thinghood, i.e., the slave becomes a mere instrument, a thing. (2) Hegel ties
reification to domination: the slave is dependent, or has his "independence in
the shape of thinghood." (3) The concept of work, the practice of transforming
15. Hegel Phanomenologie, p. 143, Phenomenology, p. 231.

16. Hegel, Phanomenologie, p. 21. Baillie's translation is quite free but it is
helpful: "mediation is nothing but self-identity working itself out through an
active self-directed process." Phenomenology, p. 82.
17. Hegel Phanomenologie, p. 90. Cf. Hegel, Wissenschaft der I.ogik, ed. by G.
Lasson (Hamburg, Meiner Verlag, 1967), I., pp. 93-94.
18. Hegel Phanomenologie, pp. 145-146; Phenomenology pp. 234-235.
30 TELOS
natural things, is introduced by Hegel as the mediation of the new immediacy.

We cannot go through all the steps in what was perhaps the most important
Hegel text for Marx.19 But it must be stressed that work for Hegel is the
mediation of reified immediacy, that the transformation of natural things tends
to dissolve social things, because work is objectification [ Vergegenstdndlichung],
i.e. work is the imparting of human form to objects which can be therefore
recognized as human. Subjectivity is for the first time given a recognizable,
external form, and creative work destroys the illusion that things are stable,
uncreated, and unchangeable. Consciousness becomes self-consciousness through
the active, working recognition of the subjective, created dimension of the
object world.20
Hegel's incredibly compact presentation of reification and its overcoming does
not assign concrete historical significance (in time and space) to the various
moments of the dialectical movement. Marxian critiques always attacked the
conceptual speed and facility of his transitions, and the ultimate abstractness of
his social analysis. The Marxian critique of reification does begin with something
like Hegel's analysis of the reification (instrumentalization) of the slave (the serf,
the worker), but this critique is forced to distinguish among various levels of
work and reification.
It is a curious fact, that none of Lukacs' hostile critics, Stalinist or bourgeois,
confronted his theory of reification. But, indeed, this theory is in the center of a
whole tradition within Marxism that was always critical of both bourgeois and
Stalinist reification. What is involved here is a powerful synthesis of dialectical
theory with Max Weber's sociological analysis of "Western rationality," and it
was prudent of Rudas, Deborin, Zitta and Lichtheim to disregard it. For Lukacs
it was never a question of simply utilizing the concepts of Weber; but rather his
originality lies in showing the identity of several key categories of Marx's
critique of political economy and Weber's analysis of the development of
Western rationality. Let us recall that methodologically Weber intended to show
that historical materialism was only one powerful system of "ideal types" among
many such possible systems, and that he chose a different focus for most of his
investigations.21 The convergence of Weberian and Marxian categories is
therefore all the more dramatic. Lukacs' procedure develops Marx's treatment of
reification in the direction of an over-all social theory, forcing the economic
categories to be explicitly "Daseinsformen, Existenzbestimmungen" (forms of
being, determinations of existence),22 and it transcends Weber's analysis toward
19. Any systematic study of the 1844 Manuscripts could demonstrate this.
20. Hegel Phdnomenologie, p. 149; Phenomenology, pp. 238-239. On this level
of the Phenomenology the two concepts (reification and objectification) are
clearly distinguishable. The first is primarily a human relationship "thingified",
the second is an active interchange with nature.
21. Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Science trans, and ed. by E.A.
Shils and H.A. Finch (New York: the Free Press, 1949) p. 103.
22. Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie, (Berlin: Dietz
Verlag, 1953), pp. 26-27. The quotation comes from the one section of the
Grundrisse that was available to Lukacs in 1923. It was published by Kautsky in
1903. Cf. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1970), p. 212.
a dynamic theory that would ultimately anchor social analysis in the "objective
possibility" of the historical transformation of capitalist society.
The concept of commodity is the first economic category that Marx unfolds
in his two published analyses of capitalism. Lukacs takes this procedure to be an
important methodological clue. To understand the methodological premise
involved we must examine the specifically Marxian concept of abstract category.
In Capital Marx writes: " . . . vulgar economy feels completely at home in the
estranged form of appearance of economic conditions. .. but all scientific
knowledge would be superfluous if form of appearance and the essence of things
immediately coincided."23 Scientific knowledge thus mediates between
appearance and essence. The categories must be of a very special kind to play the
required role in this mediation. According to Marx, scientific knowledge must
not attempt to begin inquiry by intuiting the concrete (many-sided) essence of
phenomena; it must proceed from abstract (one-sided) categories to reconstruct
the concrete situation. The conceptual pair abstract-concrete plays a unique role
in dialectical theory. For Hegel the abstract is the unessential, the unstructured,
the immediate and the one-sided. Marx was seemingly less consistent on this
usage. In reality he moves between Hegel's meaning of abstract and the usual one
(i.e., that of conceptual generalization) by historicizing the concept. He says on
the one hand that "the concrete is concrete because it is the synthesis of many
particular determinants, thus representing a unity of diverse aspects." The
concrete is a result in thought, but it is the "real point of origin."24 So far Marx
is within the bounds of Hegel's meaning of abstract and concrete. What follows
from his definitions is that the abstract is the beginning point of thought and the
concrete is the result, while the concrete is the beginning point in reality and the
abstract is the result. Abstract and concrete are conceived in terms of the
dialectical movement of appearance and essence, which is thus opposite in
thought and reality. On the other hand, there are passages where Marx seems to
use the more common meanings of abstract and concrete. He writes that "the
most general abstractions" imply that "a specific quality is seen to be common
to many phenomena". However, even here abstractions (e.g., abstract labor) are
by no means mental constructs drawn from the concrete (which is never given
immediately to thought). They are rather historical products corresponding to
definite social forms, or rather to a definite social process that abstracts by
reducing particular characteristics.25 The abstract categories are"'forms of
being, determinations of existence" of a particular society, of a particular stage
of historical development.26 Some of the abstract categories, abstract labor
23. Marx, Capital III, p. 817. [trans, modified]

24. Marx, .4 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 206.
25. Ibid., but translation is very weak. Cf. the original in Marx, Crundrisse, p.
24-25. For a full exposition of this problem, cf. Enzo Paci, "Dialectic of the
Concrete and of the Abstract", Telos no. 3 (Spring 1969), pp. 6-9 and passim.
26. Herbert Marcuse, e.g., has justly drawn attention to the dialectic of essence
and appearance in Capital. He associates the abstract categories with the
description.of "the economic process in its immediate appearance as production
and distribution" and locates a "second set of concepts" that reestablish "the
antagonistic unity" of production and realization. Cf. Marcuse, "The Concept of
32 TELOS
especially, exist as moments of the existence of all societies. In their pure form,
however, they appear only in a society where the fantastic development of
productive forces depends on real abstraction from qualitative characteristics.
The "scientific" recognition of abstract as abstract takes place only in "Political
Economic Society" where the abstract becomes fact.
Thus, in the analysis of bourgeois society several abstract categories (e.g.,
commodity and abstract labor) correspond to the immediate form of appearance
of economic conditions. To be lost in these abstractions, to estrange them from
all historical ground is vulgar economy. On the other hand the appearances
necessarily exist withing a given social context. To disregard them, or to consider
them "merely subjective" is methodological nonsense.27 In History and Class
Consciousness Lukacs makes his understanding of the dialectical task quite
explicit. The aim is to find mediations that intrinsically relate appearance to
essence. But this, even on the level of theory, is a two part process consisting of
"simultaneous recognition [Anerkennung] and overcoming [A ufhebung] of
immediate appearances."28 Lukacs' analysis of reification takes this
understanding of method very seriously.
The world of commodity exchange, according to Lukacs, constitutes a
"second nature" of appearances, of the phenomena of reification. Although
illusion [Schein] has a systematic place in this world, it is not merely a world of
illusions.29 The appearances [Ersheinungen] do take on the form of illusion
when for instance they appear to be historically unchangeable, but as
appearances they are the historically necessary forms of existence in which their
likewise historical "inner core," their essence is manifested. The terminology of
"inner core" is misleading, because the essence is identical to the substratum
(the historical action of men under a given social framework) of the concrete
totality to be synthesized. In any case what is important for us is that the
dialectical moment of recognition of the world of commodities reveals to
Lukacs, reification to be not just the central problem of the economy, but "as
the central structural problem of capitalist society in all its aspects."30 As a
Essence" in Negations, trans, by J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp.

84-85. Lukacs already drew attention to this whole problematic when he argued
that Rosa Luxemburg, who stressed the "crisis of realization" returned to the
Marxian point of view of the "concrete totality". History and Class
Consciousness, pp. 31-32. Also see ibid. p. 10, where Lukacs argues that social
contradictions can emerge only to the point of view that seeks to synthesize a
concrete totality. A science that deals only with immediate appearances will not
perceive the essential contradictions of reality.
27. On this see Norman Geras, "Essence and Appearance: Aspects of Fetishism
in Marx's Capital", New Left Review, No. 65 (January-February, 1971), p. 75.
28. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, p. 8. Marcuse's two sets of
concepts described above are the same as this double process of Lukacs.
29. Lukacs reminds us that Capital uses a three part distinction of Hegel's Logic
among illusion [Schien], appearance [Erscheinung] and essence [Wesen]. This is
•completely lost in the english translation of Capital.
30. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, p. 83.
result, the moment of overcoming becomes more problematic than ever

before.31 Already in 1919 Lukacs argued that the extension of capitalist
economy reduces ail values to exchange value. But in those days Lukacs was
optimistic that the "free decision" of the proletariat can create the total
transformation commensurate with total reification.32 In History and Class
Consciousness the voluntarist moment often returns, but now the main
argument moves forward through a far more complicated dialectic. One
important reason for this is that the moment of recognition is constructed in
terms of categories drawn from the sociology of Max Weber.
Weber's categories are not mechanically utilized by Lukacs; they come into
play only when required by the unfolding of a dynamic Marxian framework. The
analysis of reification moves through the moments of "alienated labor," of the
reification of capitalist society as a whole, and of the reification of consciousness
in bourgeois science and philosophy. Because of this conceptual movement, it is
misleading to identify the concepts of alienation Entfremdung and reification
Verdinglichung.33 In the work of Marx it was in fact the notion of commodity
fetishism, and not a developed concept of alienation, that provided the insight to
Lukacs that the problematic of reification lies in the center of the Marxian
critique. From commodity fetishism, Lukacs deduced a concept that, as a
student of Simmel, he had been utilizing at least since 1910: the concept of the
alienation of labor.34 Lukacs argues that in the market of commodities the labor
of men both in the form of labor power and labor product becomes a system of
objective, independent things, commodities, whose autonomous laws control
and subjugate the laborers. According to his general procedure, Lukacs
investigates the consequences from both the objective and the subjective side.
From the objective point oj view "commodification", "reification", means the
creation of a second nature of pseudo-things, and from the subjective point of
view the estrangement or alienation of human activity and the de-activization of
the men who are forced to face and work within this second nature. 35 Thus
31. More problematic, e.g., than all theories of 19th century Marxism, and alas
more problematic than in the theory of revolution of History and Class
Consciousness itself.
32. Lukacs, "The Old Culture and the New Culture," trans, by Paul Breines and
Shierry Weber, Telos, No. 5 (Spring, 1970), pp. 29-30; also see Breines'
"Introduction," ibid., p. 15.
33. It is also, and perhaps especially, misleading to identify objectification
(Vergegenstandlichung) with alienation or reification (as History and Class
Consciousness tends to do). Here Lukacs' later self criticisms are just.
Objectification is the active formation of objects, and intersubjective (species)
methods and capabilities. Alienation is the separation of individuals from the
objective creations — from "themselves" - and reification is the form of this
separation (second nature) in the world of commodities. Yet within the
framework of capitalism alienation of individuals appears as the subjective side
of reification.
34. Cf. Simmel, I'hilosophie des Geldes, pp. 511-514. Also see Andrew Arato,
"Lukacs' Path to Marxism," Telos No. 7, (Spring, 1971), pp. 129-130.
35. Lukacs History and Class Consciousness, p. 87.
34 TELOS
Lukacs deduces from "reification" the notion of "alienation" that is prior both
in the work of the young Marx and in the history of the species.
From the alienation of labor Lukacs at once moves to the specific historical
form of this under capitalism, the abstraction of labor. The category of abstract
labor is not merely a conceptual construct, but it is a social, historical product
which is a moment of all labor, but which according to Lukacs is both required
and produced in its pure form by the increasing universality of the commodity
form. This is the case because while commodity exchange tends to guarantee its
own labor supply by attacking the bonds of all natural communities, large scale
commodity production is only possible if the abstraction of labor becomes the
principle "governing the actual production of commodities."36 That is, labor
(power) is abstracted under capitalism both in the sense of being sold as a
commodity and in the sense of being reduced to a partial, quantitative shadow
of itself in the factory. In this context, Lukacs fuses the Marxian category of
abstract labor with Weber's category of formal rationality, the reason of modern
science and of industrial modernization (capitalism) which rests on
quantification and calculability.37 Unlike substantive (material) rationality,
formal rationality, according to Weber, excludes all values. It is obvious that
mechanical, repetitive, standardized, and easily defined and isolated sets of
action are the most quantifiable and calculable. But this means (and Weber
always admitted this) that the modern trend toward industrial rationalization is
the trend toward the "progressive elimination of the qualitative human and
individual attributes of the worker."38 Lukacs sees the final culmination of this
trend in the Taylor process, a "process" Weber applauded, which means the
mechanisation of the psyche of the worker, i.e. the separation of "his
psychological attributes from his total personality" and their rational,
statistically calculable integration into the system of production.
The full rationalization for the work process means, according to Lukacs, the
fragmentation of the object of production, originally an "organic whole", into
mechanical elements each of which is the predictable result of specialized partial
operation. The subject of production, the worker is even more fragmented: one
specialized partial operation, partial skill is selected in the case of each worker;
i.e. is developed at the expense of all other actual and potential skills; and it is
set against his total personality. Marx, contrary to some famous
36. Ibid.
37. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans, by
A.M. Henderson and T. Parsons, (New York: The Free Press, 1964) p. 185.
38. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness p. 88, also cf. Weber Theory . . .
pp. 246-247, and p. 262 and From Max Weber trans, and ed. by H.H. Certh and
C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 215-216. We are
for the moment (because we are moving on the level of fetishistic appearances)
abstracting away from the fact that in Marx the quantification of labor must
presuppose a level on which labor remains qualitative. That is, labor is always
useful labor, a part of the total social labor which satisfies the totality of
qualitative social needs. In Weber, given the absence of the category of totality,
this level falls out. The reduction of quality to quantity occurs on a single level.
misinterpretations of his work, calls attention to this process, even in Capital:

"The laborer is mutilated into a fragment of a man" and "the intellectual
potentialities of the labor process are estranged from him." 39 But Lukacs goes
further here. On the one hand, he argues, the worker's activity (his practice)
becomes purely objective; on the other hand, the worker's remaining subjectivity
is reduced to "contemplation" of his own (and other workers') alienated
activity. This contemplative stance implies mechanical passivity toward a work
process that "conforms to fixed laws and is impervious to human
intervention."40
According to Lukacs, the fragmentation of the subject of production must
also be understood in a wider sense: it means not only the destruction of the
subjectivity of the individual worker, but also the atomization of workers, their
isolation from one another, Commodity production requires and stimulates the
separation of workers from natural communities, while commodity exchange
establishes social relationships among things but not among men. the historical
passage from Gemeinschaft to GesellschaJ't (Tonnies) which is itself stimulated
by early capitalist forms and commodity exchange, is the pre-requisite for the
large scale supply of free labor (labor as commodity) that is necessary for a
system of commodity production resting on abstract labor.41
While Lukacs leaves the historical analysis of the interrelated development of
free labor and commodity production to Marx,42 he means to make a
systematic point that drives the analysis beyond Marx, and implicitly beyond the
stage of capitalism that Marx confronted. He argues that free labor in itself is not
enough to allow the complete self-realization of capitalist production, or even
the total rationalization of a single factory. The culmination of capitalist
rationality is only possible when "the fate of the worker becomes the fate of
society as a whole," when the "internal organization of the factory" becomes
the microcosm of "the whole structure of capitalist society.43 Behind this
analysis lies Weber's insistence that a rational (capitalist) economy is not possible
without rational administration of law, of politics and ultimately of every day
life.44 For Weber, rational administration is bureaucracy. The bureaucratic
administration of the state and of law which he considers the inexorable fate of
Western man,45 is to him sociologically identical to the capitalist organization of
the factory, and is the prerequisite of this capitalist organization.45 This means,
39. Marx, Capital vol. I. p. 645.

41. As we have already argued, "free labor" under capitalism, the free sale of
the very special commodity labor power, should be interpreted as perhaps the
basic form of commodity fetishism, culminating in false consciousness. On the
other hand, it is interesting to see Max Weber's reasons why free labor is a
prerequisite for industrial rationalization: Theory . . . pp. 276-277.
42. Marx Capital vol. I, p. 761 ff.
43. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness pp. 90-91, and 95.
44. Cf. e.g., Weber's Introduction to The Protestant tSthic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, trans, by T. Parsons (New York: Scribner's, 1958) p. 1 3 ff.
45. From Max Weber, p. 229.
46. Weber, Gesainnielte Politische Schriften (Munich, 1921), pp. 140-142, cited
by Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, pp. 95-96.
36 TELOS
according to Lukacs, that all aspects of life are standardized, and are reduced to
their elements, i.e. to easily calculable partial systems that will obey formal laws.
Not only work, but gradually all human activity is therefore gradually alienated
and is made part of a second nature impervious to human control.47
This satisfies Lukacs' initial criterion for total capitalist rationalization. When
a whole society is dominated by a factory-like administration, when, as Weber
says, a whole civilization experiences "the absolute and complete dependence of
its existence, of the political technical and economic conditions of its life on a
specially trained organization of officials,"48 then the fate of the alienated
worker indeed becomes the typical human fate. Furthermore, the members of
the bureaucracy themselves are no exceptions here. Lukacs maintains that one
sided specialization, the intensification of one faculty at the expense of all
others, is most dehumanizing in the case of the bureaucrat. For it is a single
aspect of his mental faculties that is detached and mechanized, and under the
apologetic headings of "honor", "responsibility", and "consciousness" and
even the realm of ethics is drawn into the realm of the saleable commodity, in
this case bureaucratic service as a commodity.49
If this is the immediacy of capitalist rationalization, of reification, the most
fundamental question must ask for the limits of this immediacy, for the
mediations that release its potential (and powerfully disguised) dynamic. As a
preliminary answer, Lukacs reproduces the Marxian formulation of the
irrationality of the capitalist system as a whole. He points to the problem of
"realizing" surplus value (a problem that forcibly synthesizes the system of
production with the system of distribution) and to the crises that tend to result
from this. Yet, the underlying problem was also noticed by Max Weber: "the
maximum of formal rationality in capital accounting is possible only where the
workers are subjected to the authority of business management. This is a further
specific element of the substantive irrationality of the modern economic
order. .. " 5 0 Since substantive (material) rationality is defined in terms of
human values that are arbitrarily chosen, Weber's analysis here is only similar to
that of Lukacs. The category of totality was indeed epistemologically closed to
Weber.51 Yet from a Marxian point of view it is clear that Weber noticed the
opposition between capitalist economic rationality and the satisfaction of basic
human needs. Without the category of totality, and under the influence of
economic theories of marginal utility, he could not notice that the
non-satisfaction of basic human needs is a source of crises caused by
underconsumption, and is an element of "formal" irrationality from the point of
view of the system as a historical whole.

48. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, p. 16.
50. Weber Theory... p. 248. For an excellent discussion of the material
contents of Weber's concept of formal rationality cf. Herbert Marcuse,
"Industrialization and Capitalism in the Work of Max Weber" in Negations, op.
cit.
51. Weber, Methodology . . . p. 169.
However, as it is painfully clear from our historical experience,52 the problem

of reification that Lukacs raised from the economic level to the level of total
society cannot be answered by pointing to economic crises alone The whole
analysis of History and Class Consciousness, indeed Lukacs' whole intellectual
history to 1923, demands (though does not fully accomplish) a general critique
.of objectivistic deterministic Marxism.53 And yet, on the other hand, his
analysis of reification reveals the deep structural problem of the subjective
dimension under advanced capitalism: "Just as the capitalist system
continuously produces and reproduces itself economically on higher and higher
levels, the structure of reification sinks more deeply, more fatefully and more
definitively into the consciousness of man." 54
The reification of consciousness is the passive and contemplative intellectual
reproduction of the immediacy of reification. According to Lukacs this form of
reification also moves on the total social level. The worker becomes the passive
individualized spectator of a process in which his fragmented activity is the
object of a process that he can only observe but not control or transform.
Bureaucratic administration reproduces this scheme on the level of every day
life. The result everywhere is passivity and isolation in face of a world that is
only seen in fragments: a world that appears fundamentally unchangeable.
Marx's basic critique of the science of political economy was that it
"scientifically" reproduces these illusions of every day life. Lukacs extends this
double critique of every day consciousness and of positivistic science in the
direction of all modern science and philosophy.
It would be a mistake to seek a fully developed critique of modern science
and scientific philosophy in History and Class Consciousness. Lukacs does,
however, present several important insights (as well as some rather problematic
claims) in the direction of such a critique. On the formal level of the sociology
of science, he integrates the "set-up" of all modern sciences into his overall
framework. All of modern science is dominated by specialization, and
organizationally, by forms of increasingly bureaucratic administration. On the
level of scientific content, the sciences are first characterized by their
fragmentation of reality, and consequently by their loss of totality, and their
"ontological substratum:" the more intricate a modern science becomes and the
better it understands itself methodologically, the more resolutely it will turn its
back on the ontological problems of its own sphere of influence. . . the more it
will become a formally closed system of partial laws. It will then find that its
52. We have in mind the experience of the reconstruction of capital in the first
phase of fascism and in "neo-Capitalism." Cf. Mihaly Vajda, "A fasiszta
diktatura funkcioja" ("The function of fascist dictatorship," as essay that is part
of a book that must be translated into English) Magyar Filozofiai Szemle XIV,
No. 3-4 (1970). Aspects of the same experience were earlier discussed by
Horkheimer, Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich.
53. Cf. A. Arato, "Georg Lukacs 1910-1923: the Search for the Revolutionary
Subject" in The Unknown Dimension: European Marxism since Lenin, ed. by
K.E. Klare and D. Howard, (New York, 1972).
38 TELOS
own concrete underlying reality lies, methologically and in principle beyond its
grasp.55 Second, the sciences are characterized by their freezing of immediate
factuality of the given because the dynamic of reality is visible only from the
point of view of totality. The modern sciences are thus criticized for three
reasons: (1) loss of totality; (2) loss of ontological (historical) substratum;
(3) freezing of the given. These three criticisms which are presented by Lukacs
somewhat loosely are intrinsically related if we go back to the methodological
premises of the theory of reification. The categories of appearance and essence
supply the clue that what is involved here is the critique of the same process on
different methodological levels. The freezing of the given factuality means that
appearances are taken as ultimately irreducible and unchangeable. The structure
of facts, i.e. their historically dynamic "substratum" is not asked for - the
asking is considered unscientific. This historical dynamic lies (in the case of the
human sciences) in the conscious and unconscious actions of men within the
boundaries of the structures of a given social stage. The exact sciences must
destroy the totality of the world, because the totality cannot be synthesized
from unmediated abstractions and facts. Conversely, only a deliberate movement
toward the totality mediates and historicizes dead facts and abstractions.
Lukacs' two illustrations of the reification of scientific consciousness are the
sciences of economics and law. Here he has little difficulty demonstrating his
thesis that these sciences, and the other "human sciences", methodologically
exclude the historically changing human substratum in favor of extremely partial
and formal interests. These sciences are not open to the dialectical relationship
of man as subject, and man as object of the historical process.
At the first stage of his analysis of reification, Lukacs has not introduced his
understanding of the subject-object dialectic that was his great concern from his
pre-Marxist period. However even his analysis of immediacy is unfolded from a
double point of view: he presents the de-activization of the human subject and
the increasing "naturalization" of his objects (which are aspects of reified
subjectivity). The analysis of immediacy culminates in a total split between the
remnants of subjectivity of isolated individuals and an independent object world.
Yet, we were just forced to indirectly anticipate a stage of analysis that sees a
dialectical relationship in this context. This was necessary because otherwise
Lukacs' view of the natural sciences could not be understood at all. On the level
of formal sociology Lukacs' critique applies to all sciences. On the level of
method, furthermore, the natural sciences have become historically the models
for all the other sciences. Yet, when it comes to their method in this context we
must be more careful. Lukacs critique of the loss of ontological substratum and
totality are valid only if a method of their recapture is available, or at least
definitely possible. But it is well known that Lukacs was critical of those
Marxists (e.g., Engels) who applied the historical dialectic to nature because "the
interaction of subject and object, the unity of theory and practice, the historical
change in the reality underlying the categories as the bases of the change of
categories in thought are absent from our knowledge of nature." 56
55. Ibid. p. 104.

56. Ibid., p. 24 n. 6, translation modified. The last phrase is later qualified in
Lukacs was certain that Engels' dialectics of nature (which was the base of
Engels' understanding of dialectics in general)57 cannot overcome a purely
contemplative stance toward objects. This is why Lukacs rejected the late
Engels' (and Lenin's) copy theory of knowlege. And this is why he so strongly
attacked Engels' illusory solution of the Kantian thing in itself problem. Even if
we make the completely un-Kantian assumption that experiment and "industry"
(both purely comtemplative, according to Lukacs) make the in itself [an sich]
for us \fur uns], we will not get beyond Kant. The assumption will imply,
according to Hegel's Logic, no change in the object, which remains an in itself.58
Praxis, always involving a subject-object relationship and always implying an
interrelationship with the immanent dynamic of the object of praxis, fulfills its
claim to be praxis only if it coincides with the object becoming subject, i.e., for
itself. Thus, the critique of the copy theory, of Engel's Kant critique and of the
determinsitic and objectivistic dialectics of nature is the defense of Lukacs'
understanding of praxis. We should note that the dialects of nature and the copy
theory of knowledge are perfectly compatible with (since they only reflect) the
world of reification that tends to exclude all praxis. Thus, these theoretical
positions hardly escape the "reification of consciousness".
Most geistewissenchaftliche interpreters of Lukacs and also the
proto-Stalinists, due to their given prejudices, were unable to see the motives of
Lukacs' critique of Engels. They should have pointed to his oppositiion to
bureaucratic Social Democratic determinism. They all have pointed instead to
his background in various schools of German philosophy.59 And indeed, one can
textually trace back Lukacs' distinction between the methods of natural and
historical science to Dilthey. As early as 1911, Lukacs considered Dilthey's
achievement to be the critique (although only the negative critique) of
naturalizing sociology.60 Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to reduce the
critique of the dialectics of nature to a merely "Diltheyan" element in Lukacs.
First, the distinction is by no means Dilthey's own; it is much older. Even aside
from Vico to whom everyone refers in this context, it appears in the philosophy
of Kant where any conceivable knowledge of history synthetic a priori would
depend on human praxis.61 Fichte, operating with a more dynamic concept of
the sense that the argument is valid, at present level of our interaction with
nature. Ibid., p. 207.
57. Ibid., p. 3.
58. Ibid., pp. 131-132.
59. G. Lichtheim, Georg Lukacs (New York: Vintage, 1970), pp. 19 ff. T.B.
Bottomore, "Introduction" to Karl Marx. Early Writings (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1964), pp. xv-xvi; also L. Rudas, "Orthodoxer Marxismus?"
Arbeiterliteratur (Wien, 1924), No. 9, pp. 493-494 and passim; also A. Deborin,
"Lukacs und seiner Kritik des Marxismus", ibid., no. 10, pp. 95-96, and pp.
100-101, where Deborin decides that Lukacs is a follower of Mach and
60. Gyorgy Lukacs, "Wilhelm Dilthey," Szellem, (Budapest, 1911>, No. 2, p.
253.
61. Immanuel Kant, Werke (Frankfurt-am-Main: Insel Verlag, 1964), XI. pp.
40 TELOS
praxis but still on the ground of Kant's distinction between the practical and the
theoretical, could push this distinction much further and argue that the Ego
possesses "free power" while nature is dead and at rest. Dilthey himself refers to
Fichte in this context. 62 In Hegel the distinction between spatial nature and
temporal, historical Geist is fundamental, even if he does not remain (according
to Lukacs) consistent on this issue. Thus the distinction between nature and
history runs through the whole German intellectual tradition (there is even a
famous footnote in Capital praising Vico in this context), 63 and this makes the
question of exact source rather unimportant.
Secondly, and this argument is more essential because it touches the function
of ideas in different bodies of thought, Dilthey indeed makes an argument for
the knowledge of history involving unrestricted subjectivity - i.e. an identical
subject-object - in contradistinction to natural science that treats an alien
world, and that reduces subjectivity to an external ego which constructs
hypothetical concepts and intervenes in reality only through pragmatically
instrumental action.64 Furthermore, to elucidate his concept of sympathetic
understanding [Verstenhen] Dilthey invokes Vico's argument that we can know
history more intrinsically than nature because we make history: because the
historian is also a historical actor. 65 But Dilthey, criticizing Hegel for his
all-dominating rationalism, interprets "making" and "re-living" in terms of a
fundamentally irrational concept, life, and its psychological (or inter-subjective)
correlate, experience [Erlebnis]. Lukacs emphatically returns to Hegel's (and
Marx's) rationalism. Furthermore, and this is crucial, Dilthey's concept of
Verstenhen, although it is systematically connected to the activities of everyday
life (as the basis of all intersubjectivity in every day life),66 remains
contemplative. Dilthey's categories of praxis turn out to be merely
contemplative categories. The stress is always on reflecting, reliving and
recreating what has been already created historically. In Lukacs, however, the
very purpose of attacking the naturalization of the dialectic — i.e. the
methodological identification of the study of history and the study of
nature — is to give meaning to the Marxian insistence on the unity of theory and
praxis in terms of historicizing the present and the future, to be able to say that
the Marxian dialectic is a revolutionary dialectic that is engaged in creating
something new.67 But in this context, Lukacs' enemies were only indirectly and
partially those of Dilthey; his main thrust was directed against a Social
Democracy (and in advance: Stalinism) that relied to a large extent on aspects of
351-352, and also Kant On History ed. by L.W. Beck (New York: Library of
Liberal Arts, 1963), pp. 137-138.
62. Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aufbau der Geschichtlichen Welt in den
Geisteswissenschaften (Frankfurt-am-Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), p. 130.
63. Marx, Capital vol. I. pp. 372-373.
64. Dilthey, Aufbau, p. 103. Jiirgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests,
trans, by J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon, 1971), p. 142 ff.
65. Dilthey, A ufbau p. 180; Habermas, Knowledge, p. 149.
66. Dilthey, A ufbau, p. 255 ff; Habermas, Knowledge, pp. 147-148.
the work of the late Engels, and that lost the practical intention of Marxism
both in theory and practice.
Thus, Lukacs rejected the dialectics of nature to protect dialectical theory and
revolutionary praxis from naturalization. However, three closely connected
points must be made here, all of which arise from a rather confusing handling of
the problem of nature in History and Class Consciousness. (I) Lukacs is not and
cannot be in a position to present a critique of a natural science, or a philosophy
of natural science, that holds that the world in itself is unknowable. He cannot
do this because his foundation for this kind of critique of social science was the
existence of the historical subject-object dialectic that he explicitly excludes
from nature. (2) Therefore, the sociological reduction of "nature" cannot be
valid. That is, in spite of the close similarity between the specialized organization
of social science, and that of natural science, it cannot be maintained that both
are equally products of the reification of consciousness. As Mihaly Vajda argues:
"if we claim that the world picture of natural science (i.e., of a natural science
that tends to eliminate all anthropomorphism) is the product of fetishized
consciousness to the extent that it posits the laws of nature as purely objective,
then we implicitly understand nature also as the deed of man." 58 But Lukacs
did restrict the subject-object dialectic to history. On the other hand, he was not
consistent here and Alfred Schmidt strongly criticizes him for maintaining in
History and Class Consciousness that "nature is a social category."69 But we
must defend Lukacs. He rejects (as should be clear from the above) the notion
that Schmidt ascribes to him, namely, that the Subject (of history) creates
nature. He explicates his claim that "nature is a social category" primarily in
terms that refer to the social conditioning of our interaction with nature.
However, he does in one place identify the totality of these forms of interaction
with "nature's form, its range and its objectivity."70 And this seems to
correspond to Schmidt's criticism. But in an entirely different passage not cited
by Schmidt, Lukacs following some clues of Hegel, postulates two dialectics: a
"positive" dialectic of subject and object (and as a special case of this: theory
and praxis), the dialectic of history, and a "negative" dialectic of movement
[Bewegungsdialektik], the dialectic of nature for which theory must remain an
unparticipating spectator (even as scientific knowledge and technique participate
in this positive dialectic of history).71 This, if taken as an explication of two
levels of the statement that nature is a "social category", refutes Schmidt's claim
68. Mihaly Vajda, "Objectiv Termeszetkep es tarsadalmi praxis" (Objective view

of nature and social praxis"), Magyar I'ilozbfiui Szenile, XVI No. 2 (Budapest,
1967), p. 319. Vajda's article and Gyorgy Markus' small book Marxismus es
"antropologia" (Budapest, Akademiai Kiado, 1966) are two basic sources on the
Marxian problematic of praxis and nature. Both authors were close associates of
the old Lukacs.
69. A. Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx, trans, by B. Fowkes (London,
New Left Books, 1971), pp. 69-70.
71. Ibid., p. 206. Already in 1930, Herbert Marcuse noticed that Lukacs'
concept of nature does not involve a total sociological reduction of nature. Cf.
"Zum Problem der Dialektik", Die Cesellschaft VII, p. 30.
42 TELOS
that the objective "materiality" of nature is wholly rejected by Lukacs.

However, a Bewegungsdialektik that is merely a for us but never a for itself
remains an in itself according to the criteria of his own critique of Engels. In
other words, Lukacs' critique of the natural sciences does not and cannot
contain the basis of the construction of either a unified substratum of nature, or
of nature as totality in space and time to which the positive sciences must be
closed to according to the general critique of reification. Thus, a part of nature is
delivered to the positivists and the Marburg Neo-Kantians.
Thirdly, the most serious problem that arises for Lukacs from his troubles
with the concept of nature is that a problematic element is introduced into the
theory of reification itself. The concept of second nature has no sharpness when
nature itself seems to be presented as social. Conversely, given the identity of the
two natures, the overcoming of this second nature of refication must appear as
difficult as the overcoming of the objectivity of all of nature, and Lukacs
attacked the dialectics of nature precisely to demonstrate the possibility of
historical praxis vis a vis the second nature. Even if Lukacs reduced nature to a
social category only in the limited sense described above, or if he was confused
on this issue, as the author's later self critique of History and Class
Consciousness maintains, the theory lacks a precise distinction between
objectification (human form-giving activity mediating natural things, cultural
objects and intersubjective communication) and alienated objectification. Or
more precisely, given a three level distinction between reification (that is, the
alienated objectification of the "second nature"), objectification (that is, human
activity that always mediates pre-existing "objects"), and objective primordial
nature, the theory of reification becomes far more coherent.72 The three part
distinction clarifies the notion that objectification means the pushing back of
natural limits through a transformation of things, and that the "world of
reification" is particular social form that objectification takes on under a given
system of domination and exploitation. In this case the overcoming of
reification would hardly mean either (I) the overcoming of our technological
mastery of nature (whatever this might mean) or (2) the overcoming of the
objectivity of nature. Yet the objectivity of nature would not be conceived of as
a dead objectivity; the concept of objectification is rich enough to establish
several dynamic levels of human interaction with nature. 73 Even in History and
Class Consciousness Lukacs attempted to move in a direction of introducing,
because of the problem of nature, several heterogeneous levels into the structure
of reification. He claimed, e.g., that the levels of human inter-relationship with
nature, art, philosophy and religion (i.e., Hegel's Absolute Geist) are less affected
72. Cf. Lukacs' 1967 preface to History and Class Consciousness, pp. xxiii-xxiv.
On the Marxian problematic of nature also see the important book by Gyorgy
Markus, Mar.xizmus es "antropolgia", op. cit. Jurgen Habermas' short essay of
1965, "Knowledge and Human Interest", in the book with the same name, is
also helpful in this context.
73. The so called ontological period of the old Lukacs confronts specifically this
problem complex through a large scale investigation of the various levels of
objectification.
by reification, and by the potential overcoming of reification, than the forms of

relationship of man to man.74 Nevertheless he leaves this problematic of the
degrees of reification unresolved. (For us, the question of the levels of reification
becomes most fateful in the context of the fetishes of politics and technology.)
Thus the problem of science is hardly given an adequate solution by Lukacs in
1923. In spite of this, he extends his sociological critique of the reification of
consciousness to all the sciences and he draws a conclusion that is less convincing
given his difficulties with "nature": through the "specialization of skills" they
destroy "every image of the whole". The question that he consequently
proposes is whether or not a philosophy can sum up the results of the sciences
into a coherent whole. According to Lukacs, the summing up, the coordination
of partial formal systems, no matter how encyclopaedic, is once again the
reduplication of the process of Western rationalization. The sum of special
sciences which are formally independent of one another and which treat their
content as eternally given does not in any way approach the createdness and the
dynamic of that content. Philosophy as "sum" does treats the special sciences as
they treated their own content, as something ahistorical.75 Furthermore, such
sum again does not amount to the recapturing of the totality. Let us skip the
problem of the natural sciences. The cultural, historical sciences each represent
bodies of knowledge that rest on different methodological premisses. Some are
naturalistic formal systems. Others are purely descriptive and stress the
irrationality and irreduciblity of their facts. All of these sciences are united in
only one characteristic: they disregard the historical dialectic of their contents.
According to Lukacs, they thus disregard the only possible basis of the synthesis
of totality: the concrete becoming of man in history.76
Lukacs' critique of philosophy is the culmination of his presentation of the
immediacy of reification. The newest schools of philosophy do not rise beyond
the reification of consciousness; "the reified world appears henceforth quite
definitely as the only possible world, the only conceptually accessible,
comprehensible world vouchsafed to us humans."77 Thus, modern rationality
appears as the expanding, all encompassing reason of the capitalist world,
creating increasingly impenetrable and opaque fetishes. The price seems to be
human activity, "praxis" on all potential levels of subjectivity from work to
philosophy. Yet, it is obvious that from the outset Lukacs' methodological
claims imply that he is looking for the mediations beyond this immediacy: for
the praxis confronting and abolishing reification. Therefore, after describing the
74. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, pp. 206-207, and p. 234.
75. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, pp. 109-110.
76. Lukacs also decisively rejects a philosophy that disregards the results of the
special sciences in favor of an irrationalist principle of life. He means to make
use of many of the results of the special sciences as aspects of that immediacy
which must be the beginning point of all dialectic. The accusation that he meant
to do away (abstractly negate) with the positive results of modern science and
industry is false. Cf. Gareth S. Jones, "Marxism of the Early Lukacs," in New
Left Review, no. 70, pp. 45-46.
44 TELOS
"phenomena of reification," Lukacs turns toward the dynamic of reification.

First, he attempts to historically mediate the immediacy of the abstract concept
of rationality, to establish at least the abstract possibility of the Aufhebung, and
to generate the conceptual outlines of a dialectics of praxis. In this context, he
examines the historical structure of the concept of a completely general formal
reason, the formal rationality of Weber, as the product of an intellectual
tradition of "rationalism", German classical philosophy, the original intentions
of which where radically different than those of most modern guardians of
"reason."
It may seem strange that a Marxist should turn to the history of philosophy to
elucidate problems dealing with the dynamic of the capitalist world. Yet, in this
context, Lukacs is following some clues of Marx and Engels. "The proletariat
can only be abolished by the realization of philosophy"78 wrote Marx in 1843,
and this argument was concretized and historicized by Engels as late as 1888:
"Only among the working class does the German aptitude for theory remain
unimpaired . .. The German working-class movement is the inheritor of German
classical philosophy."79 Both of these statements (and the essays in which they
appeared) treat classical philosophy as one of the basic sources of dialectical
theory (and, therefore, praxis). On the other hand it would be possible to find
statements in Marx and Engels that refer to philosophy (in general) as a mere
epiphenomenon, statements that tend to reduce the history of philosophy to the
history of the relations of production. In general, the Marxism of the Second
International adopted the latter attitude toward philosophy.80 But the
reduction of all forms of subjectivity was for Lukacs only the reflection - and in
a revolutionary period, the defense — of capitalist reification. The conservative
political behavior of official Social Democracy in the 20th century was well
balanced by the passivity implied by its theoretical presuppositions. Lukacs (and
Korsch) were impressed that the Russian Revolution disregarded the canons of
Social Democratic praxis, and they felt justified to disregard the theoretical
presuppositions of "vulgar Marxism" (which were in many ways identical to
aspects of what Marx called mechanical materialism). Therefore, Lukacs turned
back to the dialectic of praxis worked out in the "Theses on Feuerbach", which
he was certain remained the methodological basis of the unfinished critique of
political economy.
The first thesis on Feuerbach, which contains the subject-object dialectic, is
decisive. Marx wrote: "The chief defect of all materialism up to now . . . is that
the object \C,egenstand\, reality, sensousness, is understood only in the form of
78. Marx, "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,

Introduction." in Bottomore, Karl Marx, Early Writings, p. 59.
79. Engels, "Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy,"
in L. Feuer, Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy (Garden
City: Anchor, 1959), p. 242.
80. On this see Karl Korsch, Marxismus und Philosophic, (new edition of 1923
essay: Frankfurt-am-Main: Europaische Verlaganstalt, 1966), passim. On the
basis of The German Ideology, at least, it could be argued that only alenation of
thought (mental labor separate from physical labor) is "reducible". But what
about thought which aims for the reunification of theory and praxis?
object [Objekt] of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as sensous human

activity, as praxis; not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side was
developed . . . by idealism, but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does
not know real sensuous activity as such." 81 One observation on this text is in
order. The concepts Objekt and Anschauung (translators of Kant render this as
"intuition") are used as rigidly separated yet identical an sich and fur sich
correlates as against the notion of Gegenstand, which is a richer object concept
containing (at least potentially) the subjective, created dimension of reality. But
more important than this textual explication is that Lukacs' reconstruction of
the history of German classical philosophy represents an extended commentary
on this passage. He was indeed seeking "the active side", the dialectic of praxis
disregarded by offical Marxism no less than by classical materialism. On the
other hand, Lukacs knew that the dialectic of subject-object that would emerge
from the works of Fichte and Hegel would ultimately remain a conceptual
dialectic, abstracted away from concrete historical activity. But given the
immediacy of reification involving frozen and fragmented subject-object
relationships, he believed that it was an important step to present what could be
called the subjective possibility of a dialectic of praxis. Furthermore, he regarded
German classical philosophy as a self-conscious microcosm of the problem of
reification and of its overcoming, even if the manner of this overcoming (in spite
of all practical intentions) was always fated to remain contemplative,
conceptual, abstract and hence itself ultimately reified: "classical philosophy is
able to think the deepest and most fundamental problems of the development of
bourgeois society through to the very end — on the plane of philosophy. It is
able — in thought — to complete the evolution of the class. And — in
thought - it is able to take all the paradoxes of its position to the point where
the necessity of going beyond this historical stage can at least be seen as a
problem."82
As usual, Lukacs proceeds first from the side of the object (or its correlate,
contemplation), then from the side of the subject (or rather, activity), and
finally he investigates the levels of subject-object interaction.
Part of the structure of his reconstruction of the history of German idealism
was anticipated in a much earlier (pre-Marxist) essay: "Subject and Object
Relationships in Aesthetics" which was to be a part of a systematic aesthetics.83
In that essay, Lukacs argued that subject-object relations do not exist in logic
(contemplation), the realm of boundless objectivity which reduces all aspects of
subjectivity, nor in ethics (practice), the realm of limitless subjectivity that must
keep itself free from all contact with the objective world. Subject-object
81. Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach", in Feuer, op. cit., p. 242. I modified the
translation. Cf. Marx-Engels, Werke vol III, p. 533.
83. Published in 1917 as "Subject-Object Beziehungen in der Aesthetik", Logos
VII (1917), pp. 1-39, written probably between 1916-1917. Two other chapters
of this aesthetics exist in manuscript form. Cf. Arato, "Lukacs' Path," where I
confuse (necessarily, because the separate manuscripts were only now
discovered) this work with a 1912-1913 Philosophic der Kunst.
46 TELOS
relations do exist in aesthetics, but here both the subject of a work of art and his
object are the results of a radical abstraction from all non-aesthetic
determinations. Even in this early essay there is movement between the
categories, albeit a circular movement. If an attempt is made to introduce
concrete subjectivity or objectivity into aesthetics, art is transcended toward
ethics or contemplation. On the other hand, the introduction of a subject-object
relation moves logic towards ethics, and ethics toward Utopia.84
In History and Class Consciousness the movement between categories is no
longer circular. It is again maintained that aesthetics has a more dynamic
subject-object relationship then ethics or contemplation, but now the
introduction of a subject-object relationship transcends ethics and
contemplation toward history. (In the end we will still be able to ask whether or
not this history was not a Utopia after all.)
"The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought", section II of the reification chapter
has been called the first serious treatment of modern philosophy from the point
of view of historical materialism.85 Nevertheless, Lukacs disclaims any intention
to present a systematic history of philosophy. He is concerned with a limited
number of problems, although of course he does consider these problems
historically the most significant. The Kantian problematic of the thing-in-itself
symbolizes the center of his concerns. And this is not an accident for the
theoretician of reification [Verdinglichung]. There is a general coincidence
between the problematic of human relations frozen into apparently
inpenetrable, unchangeable and opaque thing relations, and the Kantian notion
of "realm" of incomprehensible, unapproachable and yet limiting things in
themselves. This coincidence does become problematic if we remember that the
Kantian critique begins with the acceptance of existing systems of mathematics
and physics, i.e., interpretations of nature and not of a social second nature.
Lukacs' arguments, lacking the foundation of a worked out philosophy of
nature, do not amount to an adequate Kant critique. However, Lukacs is
ultimately justified in assuming a relationship between the thing in itself
problem and reification because (1) the first two Kantian antinomies have
become the bases of the exclusion of the category of totality from a whole
tradition of social science; (2) Kant's third antinomy between freedon and
necessity becomes most significant for the problem of social praxis in context of
social development, and (3) Kant's concept of creative rationality, which runs
into the resistence of das Ding an sich, is the historical antecedent of Weber's far
more limited category of rationality.86
If Weber's concept of formal rationality, renouncing the grasp of a rational
84. Cf. Arato, "Lukacs' Path " p . 135.

85. Jozsef Revai "Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein," Archiv fur die
Ceschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung vol. XI (Vienna, 1925) p.
230.
86. It is interesting to note that another modern Hegelian, Benedetto Croce,
arguing from a different point of view, asserted that the Kantian synthetic a
priori applies only to what we really synthesize, i.e., history. Croce's Kant is
connected with Vico.
totality, represents the end of the process that Lukacs is describing, this limited
notion of reason does not apply to the beginning of the process. Of course,
Lukacs could have located earlier thinkers who prefigured the aims and methods
of instrumental reason, but he is not concerned with them. Instead, he is
attempting to uncover a moment when great thinkers began with a radically
different notion of reason, thinkers who from Descartes to Kant emphasized
that rational knowledge is not merely the result of passive receptivity, but of the
synthetic, productive activity of the human mind. Furthermore, their concept of
reason involved the claim that the whole of existence is accessible to rational
categories. In Kant (but the problem is implicit in all of rationalism) this claim
of reason turns into the conflict of reason with itself, into the "dialectic of pure
reason", because of the inpenetrability the thing in itself. Kant wants to
maintain both the claim and that which makes it impossible. But, argues Lukacs,
the persistent reappearance of regions of irreducible, inpenetrable,
non-synthesizable irrationality has a destructive effect on all rational systems87.
The argument deserves to be examined in greater detail.
Lukacs' analysis of modern rationalist philosophy represents, as we have said,
an overall search for the subjective possibility of the dialectic of reification.
Nevertheless, even within this subjective dimension it is possible to speak of
subjective and objective sides. The first level of the claim of reason to subsume
all of reality is that of contemplation. This level emphasizes the side of the
object. Of course, even here the problem is posed in terms of the attempt of the
rational categories of the subject to create [erzeugen] the object world. But
contemplation can mean only formal creation. The object world is not really
acted on. Furthermore the subject of contemplation, its rational forms and
faculties (what Hegel called Kant's "soul-bag") were assumed to be given, to be
the only ones possible until at least Fichte. The dynamic of this stage of analysis
comes not from the side of the subject, but from an objective reality that again
and again refuses to be subsumed, penetrated and produced by the given rational
forms. The various functions that Lukacs assigns to the Kantian das Ding an sich
exemplify this refusal, this subsistence of irrationality. According to Lukacs the
thing in itself has two basic functions in Kant's philosophy. The first is the
representation of the ultimate inpenetrability of the sensuous contents
subsumed by the categories of the "understanding". This function signifies the
inaccesible nature of the ultimate "source" of thedata of the senses. The second
function represents the inability of the categories of the understanding to
synthesize a rational totality. 88
Hegel, in his lectures on the history of philosophy points to the conflict
between the demand of Kantian reason [Vernunft] to synthesize all of
existence, and the self-contradiction that the categories of understanding
87. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, pp. 111-114. The philosophical
foundations of this thesis on the history of western rationalism and especially of
the problem of irrationality (of "matter") as an insoluble problem of system
building was first formulated by Emil Lask. Cf. Georg Lukacs, "Emil Lask" in
Kantstudien 1918/22, pp. 353-357.
88. Ibid., pp. 114-115.
48 TELOS
[Verstehen] get involved in when they seek to satisfy this demand.89 The
distinction between reason and understanding (although it has medieval roots,
cf. the work of Nicholas Cusanus) here points to the courageous beginning of
modern rationalism and its cowardly end. Kant himself, Lukacs points out,
honestly and explicitly presented this contradiction. "The Antinomies of Pure
Reason" unfold the inability of the categories to synthesize the totality of being
in space and time, 90 to penetrate the ultimate construction of substances,91 and
to uncover the ultimate ground of casuality (and necessity).92 Furthermore
Kant himself attempts to probe beyond a mere statement of the contradictions
that result from the problem that "Reason, in the continuous advance of
empirical synthesis, is necessarily led up to them [the dialectical play of ideas]
whenever it endeavours to free from all conditions and apprehend in its
unconditioned totality that which according to the rules of experience can never
be determined save as conditioned."93 Kant probes further because, as he says,
practical reason demands ultimate answers. Lukacs will follow him, but first he
wants to make exteremly clear that the antinomies represent the dissolution of
the rationalist project on the level of contemplative system building. This was, of
course, Kant's point also. But here Lukacs' thesis about German Classical
philosophy fuses with his sociological analysis of the newest schools of
philosophy. The renunciation of the ideal of systematization did not mean the
end of the contemplative stance toward the world. On the contrary, at the end
of the process, most positivist schools of philosophy (functionalism, nominalism,
conventionalism, pragmatism etc.) explicitly renounce the metaphysical and
systematic claims of concepts, and yet find themselves much further from the
understanding of praxis in the world of men than the supposedly "speculative"
thinkers of German classical philosophy.
As we have already implied, and in contradistinction to "positivism", Kant
sought a solution to at least some of the antinomies of contemplation in the
direction and for the sake of practice. But, and this is crucial, Lukacs interprets
this attempt as a turn inward. We should recallthat Lukacs was quite familiar
with the category of "inwardness" which, he tried to combat already in his
pre-Marxist days, but which constantly reappeared in his writings as the
"solution" of the subject-object problem. Now, in a powerful critique of
Kantian ethics, Lukacs brings together the problem of "inwardness" and that or
reification. In Kant's philosophy, he argues, the quest for a new subjectivity on
the level of practice succumbs to the thing in itself. The formalism of Kantian
ethics does not allow the "internal freedom" of the individual subject to be
externalized, to confront the necessity of he external world. Even worse, the
structure of necessity penetrates the individual subject himself: his psychological
89. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans, by E.S. Haldane and
F.H, Simpson, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) v. 3, p. 448.
90. Kant, Kritik der Reinen Vernunft A 426, B 454 ff. Critique of Pure Reason,
trans, by N.K. Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965) p. 396 ff.
91. Ibid., A 434, B 462 ff; Smith trans, p. 402 ff.
92. Ibid., A 444, B 472 ff; Smith trans, p. 409 ff. and 415 ff.
93. Ibid., A 462, B 490; Smith trans, p. 422.
nature obeys external laws and the subject is split into noumenon {thing in
itself) and phenomenon according to the solution (or non-solution) of the third
antinomy.94
The overall validity and coherence of Lukacs' procedure can be easily
illustrated in this context. Through a solid interpretation of Kantian moral
philosophy he is able to show that the destruction of subjectivity in the factory,
the integration of even the worker's psychological being in an alienated
mechanism, is anticipated by the categories of an 18th century moral philosophy
that could conceive of praxis only on an individual and abstract level. This
enables Lukacs to historically examine the categories of praxis that claim to
overcome the destruction of subjectivity. That is, to be able to say something
about the possibilities of future praxis he penetrates the subjective dimension of
the past. Thus, he correctly argues that German classical philosophy did
recognize that it was not enough to discover the "freedom" of subjectivity to
transcend a purely passive, contemplative attitude toward the world. Freedom
must be externalized to become substantial freedom:95 praxis must not remain
indifferent toward the "concrete material substratum of action". 96
It is not a contradiction but a further corroboration of Lukacs' theses that
already in the work of Kant the notion of praxis becomes more concrete in
context of a consideration of history. In spite of the ultimately unresolved
character of the antinomy of internal freedom and external necessity, Kant did
not reduce the external historical world to objectivistic laws of nature. He asks
in his The Strife of the Faculties: "how is history a priori possible? " And his
answer: "if the diviner himself creates and contrives the events which he
announces in advance", is deliberately related to politics.97 In a 1926 paper on
Moses Hess Lukacs stresses the crucial relationship of the concept of praxis to
the methodological task of historicizing the future without naturalizing it. 98
There are a few passages in Kant's work where he clearly grasped this
relationship, i.e. that the future becomes knowable if we are ready to create it.
However Lukacs makes clear that Kant did not attempt to "perfect his system"
through a systematic philosophy of history, but through his philosophy of art.
According to Lukacs, Kant and more specifically Friedrich Schiller, a Kantian,
tried to delimit art as a realm where the subject of action "could be seen to be
the maker of reality in its concrete totality." 99 In Schiller this was even a
conscious attempt to conquer the fragmentation and dehumanization of the
modern era. But Lukacs repeats an earlier argument from his "Subject-Object
94. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness p. 124.

95. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans, by T.M. Knox, (New York: Oxford,
1967) paragraphs 8, 9 and especially 142-149.
97. Kant,Werke, (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1964)vol. XI, pp. 351-352;also Kant
On History trans, and ed. by L.W. Beck (New York: Library of Liberal Arts,
1963) pp. 137-138.
98. Lukacs, "Moses Hess und die Probleme der ldealistischen Dialektik" in
Werke (Neuwied und Berlin: Luchterhand Verlag, 1969) v. II. pp. 648-649.
50 TELOS
Relations in Aesthetics": vis a vis the non-aesthetic world the point of view of a
non-alienated subject-object relation in relationship in art remains abstract and
alienated. Lukacs rejects all aesthetic solutions to the problem of reification for
two fundamental reasons' (1) Within the aesthetic relationship the creation of
the subject of art, of the artist, cannot be posed. (2) Within the aesthetic
dimension the historical relationship, of subject and object is abstracted away.
In Hegelian terms, within the framework of art we cannot understand
concretely the problem of subject and the problem of substance. According to
Lukacs, the notion of the creation of the subject is first posed by Fichte; for
Kant the subject and the categories were given. But the object world as Lukacs
showed us continues to resist the eternal categories of an eternal Kantian
subject. And this means that the gulf between subject and object remains
unbridgeable. In Fichte's philosophy, claims Lukacs, there is a drastic reversal.
Fichte postulates an identical subject-object from which and by which,
according to the original claim of rationalism, all of reality, including the
empirical split between subject and object, can be synthesized. This identical
subject-object must be forged through activity.100 In Fichte this problem is
posed epistemologically and ahistorically, although he does contribute to a
historical solution by no longer limiting subjectivity to the individual ego. In his
paper on Moses Hess, Lukacs claims that "in spite of its contemplative
terminology, Hegel's Logic is more practical than Fichte's". 101 This brings to
Lukacs' consideration of Hegel's discovery of the historical dialectic.
Hegel's Logic, according to Lukacs, represents an attempt to ground the
movement of concepts in the dynamic of the concrete totality of existence.102
This dynamic was presented in Hegel's Phenomenology as substance becoming
subject. If the dialectical method is to overcome all ossified antinomies (and as
Hegel remarks: there are antinomies everywhere),103 then it must first retrace
the genesis and creation of the subject of this overcoming. But second, the
genesis of the subject becomes concrete only if the substance that is the dynamic
source of this genesis, the substance that will become the object of the subject is
uncovered. In Hegel history turns out to be this substance both as source and as
object.104 The historical process both produces and is produced by the subject.
This is how Lukacs interprets the famous demand to grasp and express "the true
not only as substance but also as subject." 105
As soon as the historical dialectic, the "dialectical identity," of subject and
object is discovered, the discovery demands further concretization: "to
comprehend this unity [the unity of subject and object] it is necessary . . . to
exhibit concretely the "we" which is the subject of history, that "we" whose
action is in fact history. 106
100. Ibid., pp. 123-124.

101. Lukacs, "Moses Hess," Werke v. II. p. 647.
103. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, v. 3. p. 448.
105. Hegel, Phdnomenologie . 19, Phenomenology, p. 80.
Lukacs considers one of Hegel's great achievements the completion and

historicization of Fichte's decisive break with the individualistic notion of
subjectivity in Kant.107 However, he states that in Hegel the attempt to
concretize the "we" of history results in a chain of false concretizations that
lead to a conceptual mythology. Hegel, in his lectures on the Philosophy of
History, indeed locates a subject-object dialectic in nations, in the spirits of
nations [Volksgeister\.l0B Lukacs is right in pointing out that this is only a
dialectic in appearance. The spirits of nations turn out to be only instruments of
one world spirit [Weltgeist]: they are "steps in the development of the one
universal Spirit, which through them elevates and completes itself to a
self-comprehending totality." 109
Now Lukacs points out that Hegel's conceptual mythology negates history
and historical praxis. If history is the work of an absolute subject, then it
remains alien to human reason and it reifies (instrumentalizes) human subjects.
To all intents and purposes the subject-object dualism is reintroduced.
Furthermore the notion that history has an end (a notion not the product of the
dialectical method, but is an epistemological result of positing an Absolute
Subject that becomes self-conscious in the philosophy of the present) negates
the historicity of the futrue. But the praxis of the present can only be directed
toward a future that is historical. Otherwise, the result is either extreme
voluntarism (praxis is completely free) or extreme determinism (there is no
praxis).
The Marxian critique of Hegel always pointed out that given the
reintroduction of alienation, of the subject object duality into all of history past,
present, and future, reconciliation becomes possible only in thought. Lukacs fits
this critique into his analysis and draws the conclusion: within the realm of
philosophy contemplation could not be transcended after all. The only aspect of
German classical philosophy that points beyond a contemplative stance visa vis
reification is the dialectical method, although the method itself could only
receive antinomic expressions in a philosophy that was ultimately not open to
the concrete historical ground of subjectivity, which is a social ground.
Nevertheless, Lukacs argues, it is possible to continue the methodological project
of German classical philosophy, outside philosophy. The continuation and
concretization of "the dialectical method was the true historical method was
reserved for a class which was able to discover within itself on the basis of its life
experience [I.ebensgrund] the identical subject-object, the subject of action, the
'we' of genesis, namely; the proletariat."110
107. Lukacs tends to disregard the Hegelian notion of the great individual (that
also reappears in Max Weber). This is not unjustified because in Hegel's
Philosophy of History the great individual is ultimately instrument. But we must
also remember that all human agencies ultimately turn out to be instruments in
Hegel. Cf. Philosophy of History, trans, by J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956),
pp. 29ff.
108. Hegel, Philosophy of History, pp. 73-74.
109. Ibid., p. 78.
52 TELOS
Thus, Lukacs reaches the proletariat by way of the analysis of German

philosophy. Even if the parallel to the development of the young Marx is
striking, two critical comments can be risked. First, Marx came to the working
class through his understanding of the concept of "needs", especially "radical
needs". The proletariat can realize radical philosophy only because it has radical
needs that transcend the order that philosophy negates only abstractly. Lukacs
did not in 1923 rediscover the Marxian theory ofneeds. Thus, he thought of the
proletariat as identical subject-object in terms of a notion of class consciousness
that was tied to a mythologizing [List der Vernunft] category of unknown
universal interest. But the question of class consciousness can be related to the
individual consciousness of members of the class only through the dialectics of
human needs and constraints.111 Secondly, Lukacs is still proceeding to find the
identical subject-object of history exclusively from the side of potential
subjectivity. In spite of this restriction he now claims success: he has found the
proletariat as the identical subject-object. The claim involves the presupposition
that the historical process has become transparent to theory. But here the
dialectical analysis of immediacy and mediation lags behind the dialectic of the
subject-object. The mere sociological existence of an exploited, dehumanized
class, and the ability of a conceptual dialectic to present this class as an identical
subject-object do not add up to revolutionary praxis. The ability of a conceptual
dialectic can easily turn into a new conceptual mythology in the face of the
opacity and density of history, 112 in the face of reification. Historical praxis
can replace conceptual mythology only if the dynamic of the historical process,
in this case the hidden dynamic of reification, produces the objective possibility
of this praxis.
The dialectic of the (identical) subject-object (the center of the philosophy of
praxis), and the dialectic of immediacy and mediation (the bases of all dialectical
social theory) seem to flow from different conceptual presuppositions.
Systematically, the first (developed by Lukacs already before History and Class
Consciousness) proceeds from the side of the subject: the problem is to find (or
create) a subject that is the identical subject-object, e.g. the absolute subject of
Hegel or the proletariat of Lukacs. (We realize that the concepts of "subject", or
"subjective side" may seem ambiguous in our presentation. They refer at times
to philosophy, the subject of thought, and at times to the active agent, the
subject of history. Hopefully, the ambiguity has already been lifted through the
historicization of the concept of praxis.) The second dialectic, that of mediation
(first investigated by Lukacs in History and Class Consciousness), proceeds from
the side of the object, i.e. the objective historical process. Both of these notions
of the dialectic can be traced to Marx. When the young Marx discovered the
proletariat as the subject-object of history, he was with some important
modifications in the tradition of Fichte and Hegel. On the other hand the
critique of political economy of the late Marx does not begin methodologically
111. I owe this point to a criticism of the first draft of this paper by Agnes
Heller. Cf. her unpublished manuscript "Theory and Praxis, and Human Needs."
112. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Pravda" (an essay translated from the 1965 Les
Aventuresde la Dialectique) Telos No. VII (Spring, 1971), p. 117.
with a prior knowledge of the subject-object of history, but with the analysis of
the abstract categories of political economy, i.e. with the critique of capitalist
immediacy. We are not denying that a concept of revolutionary praxis is implicit
in Capital, but given the problem that no theory of revolution, or of
revolutionary subjectivity emerged from the unfinished critique of political
economy, and given the transformation of Marxism into economic determinism
by an increasingly conservative Social Democracy, we can easily understand the
motivation for explicitly reintroducing the notion of praxis (and that of the
unity of theory and practice) in terms of the proletariat as the subject of history.
One can indeed legitimately derive from the immediacy of reification a
subject-object split that is the function of a given social order. But it is not so
obvious that, given this starting point, an identical subject-object of social and
political praxis c an be easily (or at all) synthesized. The conceptual dangers in
this context are serious. If one disregards the problems of concrete syntheses, of
one presupposes that the identical subject-object already exists (at least in itself),
and that it can be sociologically described, then history no longer can have
secrets for us. Indeed, as Lukacs charged against Hegel's absolute subject, history
no longer exists at the moment its agent is completely known.
The point of view just outlined has been the basis of some of the most
penetrating critiques of Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness. Jiirgen
llabermas, e.g., argues that the "Neo-Hegelian" notion of the class as such , the
class as the identical subject-object or the absolute subject of history, makes the
actual historical process impenetrable, and despite all of Lukacs' intentions,
deterministic. Or rather, Lukacs' conception of history becomes deterministic,
and this deterministic theory cannot contribute to the liberating unity of theory
and practice. The "existence" of an absolute subject all for no contingencies; the
"vision" of an absolute subject is blind to contingencies. In either case Lukacs'
concept of "objective possibility" turns into "objective necessity."113 Indeed,
Istvan Mes/aros, a defender of Lukacs' concept of class-consciousness, recently
claimed that "an objective possibility which is not formulated in terms of an
actual historical necessity is neither objective nor possible."114 Yet we don't
have to live with a deterministic argument to show that Habermas is only
partially right in his critique of History and Class Consciousness. The notion of
the identical subject-object, and that of class (self) consciousness understood as
the self-consciousness or the imputed (zugerechnet) consciousness of the
identical subject-object, remain problematic. The already suggested dangers of
positing an identical subject-object arc complemented by further conceptual
difficulties. The existence of natural resistance to historical projects, the
interpenctration of natural objects that "know no subject" with social objects,
and the continuous and necessary human process of self-objectification, all
imply that no historical subject can be fully identical to the objects of his
113. Jiirgen llabermas, Theorie und Praxis, third ed., (Berlin and Neuwied:
Luchterhand, 1969), p. 320 and p. 322.
114. Istvan Meszaros, "Contingent and Necessary Class Consciousness" in
Aspects of History and Class Consciousness, ed. by Mes/.aros, (London:
Routledgeand Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 115.
54 TELOS
actions. Furthermore the postulate of the identical subject-object tends in

principle to exclude mediations between the collective subject and all
individuals.115 Nevertheless, the subject-object dialectic remains meaningful in
spite of these objections. The comprehensive theory of objectification that is
worked out (partially on the basis of Marx' Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts} by the old Lukacs and his circle supplies many of the needed
correctives.116 Also, Lucien Goldmann's notion of the "partial identity of the
subject and object of thought and action", and his insistence that praxis is
impossible given only individual subjectivity throw the whole matter into a
proper perspective.117 Let us be certain, that without some notion of a
subject-object dialectic historical materialism must degenerate into a form of
naive (and implicitly dualistic) materialism. And Lukacs' critique of a dualistic
materialism (he calls it, after Rickert, "inverted Platonism") implying a
contemplative, "photographic" copy theory of Knowledge that passively reflects
reification,118 is even more valid after the experience of Stalinist bureaucracy
which made this form of the worship of historical necessity a primary ideological
veil and justification for its own extreme pragmatic voluntarism. And the
"Marxism" of Stalinist ideology is still around. To this extent, the preservation
of the concept of subjectivity in History and Class Consciousness remains
important. But if we are to move beyond a stark antinomy of freedom and
necessity, the whole problem of historical praxis must also be raised from the
side of its "objective possibility".
Habermas' critique (as most studies on Lukacs) disregards the dialectic of
immediacy and mediation in History and Class Consciousness, i.e., the critique
disregards Lukacs' intention to derive the objective possibility of the overcoming
of reification from the analysis of the dynamic of reification (and not from a
prior knowledge of the existence and of the social nature of an identical
subject-object.) We cannot deny that even on this objective side deterministic
elements enter the theory. But here, at least, Lukacs' determinism is contingent
on the falsifiable accuracy of one particular analysis of economic development
(namely Rosa Luxemburg's). Furthermore, we cannot claim that Lukacs
provides a satisfactory solution to the dynamics of reification. And this means
that the subject-object dialectic (in whatever modified form) and the dialectic of
immediacy and mediation remain two sides of a subject-object split within
History and Class Consciousness, a split that appears most fundamentally as a
methodological duality between philosophy of praxis and the dialectical social
115. Cf. Wilhelm Reich Was ist Klassenbewusstsein (Paris, Zurich, Copenhagen:
Verlag fiir Sexualpolitik, 1934), pp. 5ff; and Marcuse, "Zum Problem der
Dialektik," op. cit.
116. See for example Markus Marxizmus es "antropologia,"; Vajda "Objektic
term6szetkep es tarsadalmi praxis". Of course the publication of Lukacs' Zur
Ontologie des Gesellschuftlkhen Seins will be of the greatest importance in this
context.
117. Lucien Goldmann "Reflections on History and Class Consciousness" in
Aspects oj History and Class Consciousness, pp. 73 ff.
118. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, pp. 202-203, cf. Korsch,
Marxismus und Philosophie, p. 134f.
theory this philosophy of praxis is aiming at. What we do want to maintain is

that despite all of these difficulties much of the road that Lukacs has charted
remains extremely usable. To demonstrate this, we must analyse the last section
of the reification chapter: "The Point of View of the Proletariat".
Let us review the Hegelian notion of mediation. Mediation is an insight into
(or a release of) the dynamic of the given (immediacy); it is the movement that
realizes and externalizes a potential that is implicitly present in the first place.
Lukacs restates this in terms of a somewhat more active principle: "To go
beyond . . . immediacy can only mean the genesis, the 'creation' of the object.
But this assumes that the forms of mediation in and through which it becomes
possible to go beyond the immediate existence of objects as they are given can
be shown to be the structural principles and the real tendencies of the objects
themselves."119 Of course, it is implied here that an immediacy will be fully
mediated only if the objects themselves are the source of the subjective agent of
overcoming. Furthermore theory, "consciousness", is one moment of mediation
when it enters into the dynamic of its object, when it represents part of the
objective possibility of changing the object. Thus, a dialectical relationship
between subject and object is necessary for mediation, but not an identity that
negates historicity. Hegel did conceive of mediation as a recovery of historicity:
in the Logic lie stresses that "proceeding forward is going back to the
foundations". Unfortunately, in Hegel this vision of history is surrendered to the
imagery of the Absolute as circularity \Kreislauf\ .12° Lukacs reverses this
argument, instead of intellectually moving forward to recover the ground of
history, he aims to penetrate historical and structural foundations to understand
the potential historicity of the future. He formulates the task of mediation in
terms of the (already mentioned) concepts of illusion, appearance and essence:
"we must detach first of all the appearances [l:rscheinungen\ from the form in
which they arc immediately given and discover the mediations which connect
them to their core, their essence. . . . on the other hand [we must| arrive at an
understanding of the character of the appearances, i.e. illusion, as the necessary
form of the appearances."121 What Lukacs calls "essence" turns out to be the
historical process (hitherto unconscious) of creative social activity. The
appearances are the necessary forms this activity takes on given historical levels.
The illusion, or the illusory character of appearances is the ideological
misrepresentation (itself necessary on certain historical levels) of the appearances
as eternal and non-historical. Theoretical insight may demystify illusion, but it is
powerless, in itself, against appearances, which are necessary forms of a whole
mode of production and system of domination. Nevertheless, theoretical insight
becomes one moment of mediation toward the essence of phenomena when, and

120. Hegel, Wissenschaft der l.»gik,ed. byG. Lasson (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag,
1934), p. 55-56. Also see Hegel's Science of Logic, trans, by A.V. Miller
(London: Unwin, 1969), p. 71.
121. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, p. 9. The English translation had
to be modified here because it loses the distinction between appearance and
illusion.
56 TELOS
only when, it is directed toward a concrete historical totality.

Hegel wrote: "The true is the whole. The whole however is a self-realizing
essence \sich vollendete Wesen] only through its process of development. Of the
Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result. . ," 1 2 2 In Marx also, the
concrete totality appears to thought as a result of synthesis, although it is the
essential, historical core of the phenomena.123 Following Marx, Lukacs insists
that the concrete totality can never be immediately given, even though the
concrete is ontologically prior to the abstract, isolated categories required for its
synthesis. This ontological priority, as we have already argued, does not negate
the historical existence of the abstract categories. Nevertheless the abstractions,
as abstractions do not immediately reveal their source and their historicity. They
become historicized only in context of the total historical process, in context of
their relationship to social development as a whole. At every stage of analysis the
problem is that of synthesizing totalities, if not all inclusive ones, then at least
relative totalities. Furthermore, the integration of partial aspects of society into
a totality does not mean reduction to smooth uniformity. Indeed, Lukacs argues
that contradictions are only manifested to a totalizing analysis. He has in mind
Rosa Luxsmburg's analysis of the overall reproduction process of capital that
deduces the well known contradiction between productive forces and social
relations from the problems of the realization of the surplus of production in an
ultimately limited framework of consumption.
Lukacs also wants to make clear what he does not consider a mediation
toward totality. Just as no encyclopaedic sum of knowledge amounts to a
historical totality, conceptual distance from the empirical world does not in
itself represent mediation. The bourgeois sciences are, according to Lukacs, lost
in immediacy no matter what the distance is between thier concepts and the
empirical world. Their conceptualizations are not mediations.124 And without
mediations the present seems to become perpetual and history seems to freeze
into eternity. But being overcome by illusions cannot eternalize the illusions.
History continues. In Hegel's Philosophy of History "thought" is the most
profound destroyer, but time also destroys.125 In our context Lukacs expresses
the same notion when he says that "Mediation would not be possible were it not
for the fact that the empirical existence of objects is itself mediated and only
appears to be unmediated in so far as the awareness of mediation is lacking so
that the objects are torn from the complex of their true determinants and placed
in artificial isolation."126 Nevertheless history no longer has to be understood as
only unconscious development, because bourgeois thought is not the only
intellectual confrontation with the immediacy of bourgeois society. Lukacs
speaks of the methodological function of the categories of mediation as the
122. Hegel, Phdnomenologie, p. 21; Phenomenology, pp. 81-82.

123. Marx, "Introduction" to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy, p. 210.
124. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, p. 155. The same argument, of
course, applies to the copy theory of knowledge.
125. Hegel, Philosophy of History, p.11.
release of "immanent meanings" that do not appear on the level of immediacy,

and that therefore escape bourgeois thought. But even this release can be truly
important only if the meaning of history enters the consciousness of the only
possible agent of praxis Lukacs could conceive of: the proletariat. The question
is whether or not the proletariat is ready to understand history, and the
historical mission that Lukacs attributes to it. In this context, we must also
examine whether Lukacs' crucial reference to the proletariat is the product of an
implicit dogmatism that pretends to understand the totality of history before
any process of mediation, or of a methodology that is analyzing one abstract
category of historical materialism, as Marx analyzed the categories of political
economy, i.e., as the beginning point of mediation.
Lukacs' discussion of the "point of view of the proletariat" begins rather
radically. What change is brought about by a proletarian perspective? he asks.
And the answer is: "in the first instance nothing at all." The forms of proletarian
existence are (the most) reified and dehumanized. Therefore "the objective
reality of social existence in its immediacy is 'the same' for both proletariat and
bourgeoisie".127 However, Lukacs says, the categories of mediation are
fundamentally different for the two classes. This can be restated in terms that
differentiate between the dyna ics of immediacy of the two classes. The
restatement, however, can only become meaningful through the analysis of one
of the most complex arguments in History and Class Consciousness, an argument
that attempts to present some of the crucial determinations of the social
existence [Gesellschaftliche Sein\ of the proletariat.
The essay "Class Consciousness" of History and Class Consciousness, that was
basically composed in 1920, distinguished between the social existence of
bourgeois and of proletariat in terms of class interest. The reification chapter of
1922 briefly presents this argument as a possible solution to the problem of
reification. The historical concept of class implies class interest. Bourgeois class
interest and the world of reification define one another; to the bourgeoisie the
reified world appears and must appear eternal. For the preletariat, however,
reification is not a definitional but merely a historical limit, a limit that conflicts
with the historical interest of the proletariat to liberate itself. This interest is in
principle not part of the empirical consciousness of the proletariat.
Unfortunately, even for the proletariat the limits of reification are internalized,
and the dynamic conflict of immediacy and interest, of "empirical
consciousness" and "class consciousness," cannot easily be made conscious. The
essay "Class Consciousness" expects the solution from a combination of (1) the
process of the objective disintegration (collapse) of capitalism and (2) a
voluntaristic agent (the class or the party) intervening near the end of this
process to break through the reified consciousness and, finally, through the
political institutions of capitalism.128 The reification essay, however, is not
127. Ibid., pp. 149-150. Thus, at least in one context, the analysis of the
proletariat is given a critical form. It is not assumed that the proletariat in its
present is revolutionary, or that its lack of consciousness is a result of mere
deception.
128. Ibid., pp. 70, 79 and 164.
58 TELOS
quite satisfied with this solution, which however, amounts to one

philosophically adequate statement of Leninism. The notion of class
consciousness based on something wholly external to the proletariat, universal
interest, is not Lukacs' only statement about proletarian consciousness.
According to Lukacs' theory of reification, the social existence of the
proletariat, of the proletarian individual and of the class, contains the "objective
possibility" of the overcoming of reification. The first relevant aspect of this
social existence is the absence of the illusion of subjectivity. Here, Hegel's
master-slave dialectic returns on the level of the immediacy of reification. For
the bourgeoisie - the master - there is an illusion of subjectivity ("owner,"
"entrepreneur," "manager," "thinker") in face of things (worked by others)
although the bourgeoisie is ultimately subjected te the laws of nature and of the
"second nature." This illusion appears in bourgeois thought - cf. Hegel's
"consciousness" - in the form of a subject-object split. The proletariat, on the
other hand, is itself reduced to a mere object - "consciousness in the shape of
thinghood" - and its illusions of subjectivity (if such illusions ever existed for
the proletariat) are dissolved by progressive integration into the objective
mechanism of production.129 Lukacs is slowly going to introduce here the
Hegelian qualification most stressed by Marx, that the proletariat — the
slave can recognize itself in the world because of its reification in the work
process. But in History and Class Consciousness Lukacs does not stress the
creative, objectifying moment of all (even abstract) work as a crucial
determinant of this recognition. Lukacs understands the dialectics of abstract
labor primarily in terms of a dialectic of quantity and quality, and only partially
in terms of a dialectic of objectifying praxis. Historically, this can be explained
by the fact that he is seeking the dynamics of reification in Marx's Capital,
although he knew it to be a fragment. He did not then know the 1844
Manuscripts or the 1857 Grundrisse, both of which contain a fuller theory of
labor than does Capital. The latter was deliberately a theory of alienated labor,
and alienated, or abstract, labor immediately excludes praxis. Nevertheless,
Lukacs believed that abstract labor contains its negation, and this negation
appears in the life of the worker.
In Lukacs' analysis, the reduction of the proletariat to object of production is
almost total. Only the barest minimum of the contemplative subjectivity of the
mere spectator is given to the worker. His qualitative, creative activity is
alienated, mechanized, and quantified. But the relationship of quantity and
quality is dialectical. Here Lukacs is not strictly thinking of one of Engels'laws
of the dialectic. He admits that there are possible examples of quantitative
changes at a certain level passing over into a qualitative change. However, he
claims that there is a far more important aspect of the relationship of quality to
quantity. In contexts involving subject-object relations the transformation of
quantity into quality "means the emergence of a truly objective form of
existence."130 In these contexts "every change is one of quality in its innermost
129. Ibid., pp. 165-166.

130. Ibid., p. 166.
nature." 131 Thus the quality-quantity relationship turns out to be a special case
of the essence-appearance dialectic. It is worth maintaining that here Lukacs'
analysis corresponds to Husserl's defense of the phenomenological Lebenswelt
against naturalistic quantification. But in Lukacs quantification is an element of
capitalist rationalization, hence it is by no means only a scientific falsification of
reality. His analysis of labor-time makes his critical perspective clear. It is
perfectly rational for the capitalist to treat labor time, its increase and decrease,
as a merely quantitative problem. The worker too may (or even must) think of
labor time and its wage "equivalent" this way. But in all aspects of his every day
life he is affected by all changes in his labor times qualitatively. Labor time is
"the determining form of his existence and as a human being." 132 The worker's
labor time is indeed integrated into the objective side of production, but it can
never become for the worker wholly quantitative. This means that the worker
alone recognizes something qualitative on the object side. This does not change
his alienation, but it has made one aspect of it conscious. Lukacs builds the
objective possibility of a break through reification on this necessary minimal
consciousness of alienation. He argues that the worker's minimal consciousness
of a qualitative aspect of the commodity labor time represents the beginning of
the dissolution of the fetishistic forms. In this commodity the worker can
recognize himself and his being dominated by capital. This recognition is the
self-consciousness of one commodity at least; the "substance" of capitalist
society thus begins to be for itself. Lukacs furthermore argues that when
self-consciousness is added to the commodity structure, "when the worker
knows himself as a commodity," this self-consciousness, this knowledge "brings
about an objective structural change in the object of knowledge. " 1 3 3 Let us
recall Engels' argument (Lukacs clearly has this in mind) that the "laws" of
history are operative because of the unconsciousness of the historical agents. The
very plausible converse of this is that the beginning of consciousness begins to
make these laws inoperative. Lukacs also puts this another way. The addition of
self-consciousness to the commodity structure is an objective change in the
commodity structure. It is the first complete objectification of the special nature
of labor as a commodity. The abstract labor component still appears as a thing
but now the human, (qualitative) component, the source of surplus value,
appears as the beginning of consciousness.
Marx located the secret of the reproduction of capital in the "special
character" of labor power as a commodity. Labor creates more use values than is
needed to sustain the existence and reproduction of the laborer. On the other
hand, the exchange value of labor power is defined by (at least as a lower limit)
the subsistence needs of the laborer. Thus labor power, when exchanged for
wages, provides an increment of use value for social needs, and an increment of
exchange value for the buyer of labor power, the owner of capital. This is the
case even when wages are defined by an upward limit governed by the variables
of rising productivity, a more or less constant profit rate, at times a limited
131. Ibid., p. 167.

132. Ibid.
133. Ibid., pp. 168-169.
60 TELOS
supply of labor, and the class struggle of workers. Thus labor power has a
creative, qualitative use value, but under capitalism this creativity takes the form
of a quantitative value expansion (M-C-M) from the exchange value of labor
power to the exchange value of the commodities labor power produces. Marx's
discussion of the problem of the working day begins with a definition of the
value of labor power only in terms of the subsistence needs of the worker (which
is, however, defined historically). Yet, the rate of exploitation (surplus
value/wages or surplus labor/necessary labor) cannot be immediately derived
from the value of labor power. The rate of exploitation has a minimum limit at
zero - but this is impossible of course under capitalism. One maximum limit, on
the other hand, is set by the number of hours that worker is able to work. The
capitalist, wanting the maximum use value out of the commodity (labor power)
he bought, tends to demand the maximum limit. The worker, who must consider
"the healthy, normal use" of his "commodity" if he wants to be able to
maintain himself and his family over a long period of time, will tend to demand
a significantly lower rate of exploitation i.e. a shorter workday.134 Marx goes
on to argue that between these rival claims, both justified from their own points
of view, only force can decide. Thus, he deduces the class struggle from the
special nature of labor as a commodity.135
Lukacs' discussion of the problem of labor time explicitly follows the overall
structure of Marx's model. Yet, there is a crucial difference. Lukacs also wants to
get from the problem of the work day to the class struggle. However, his analysis
implies, very likely unintentionally, that from the point of view of early
twentieth century politics Marx's discussion has a tendency if taken only
abstractly and dogmatically to culminate only in a trade union struggle and not
in praxis directed at the totality of bourgeois society. Of course the problem of
labor time remains intrinsically more fundamental than that of wages. But even
from the struggle over labor time we cannot mechanically derive revolutionary
consciousness. Thus, Lukacs feels obligated to add one additional dimension to
the analysis. As we have seen, even under the veil of quantification the worker
can become (and in our minimal sense, must become) conscious of the
qualitative aspect of labor. In the absence of this consciousness, Lukacs argues,
"the special nature of labor as a commodity.. . acts as an unacknowledged
driving wheel in the economic process". But he has already explained that with
the advance of capitalist reification the total reduction of the worker to object
implies the beginning of self-consciousness. This does not yet mean that
something can be done about transforming the capitalist system. It does mean
that the objective possibility of overcoming is added to the immediacy of the
social existence of the worker as object. If the qualitative, living core of one
fetishized quantitative relationship is made conscious, is revealed, then according
to Lukacs, it becomes possible to recognize the fetish character of all
commodities, and to penetrate to the human, social foundations of all of the
reified structures of capitalist society.136 But this recognition, "the
134. Marx, Capital vol. I, pp. 232-234.

135. Ibid., p. 235.
self-consciousness of commodities," means only that the proletariat is conscious

of itself as object (and victim) of the economic process.137 Let us be more
precise. The individual worker recognizes himself as object in one commodity, in
his labor power. This implies the possibility of the recognition of social labor as
object in the commodity system, i.e. the possibility that the class recognizes
itself as the object of commodity exchange. Only this recognition means that the
rigidity of social things begins to dissolve into human processes. In the sphere of
commodity exchange nothing more is possible. In the sphere of production the
objective possibility of recognition is richer in meaning. One particular fetish
must be penetrated, must be seen as a process for the proletariat to recognize
itself as the subject (in the past unconscious) of the economic process: the fetish
of the wage-capital relationship. "If the reification of capital is dissolved into the
unbroken process of its production and reproduction, it is possible for the
proletariat to discover that it is itself the subject of this process."138 The
worker's minimal consciousness of something of his own integrated into the
objective process is now supplemented by a consciousness that precisely this
human element, living labor, is the source of the surplus value (i.e., unpaid,
surplus labor), the driving force of the production and reproduction of capital,
and capitalist society. We have shown that, in Lukacs analysis the consciousness
of the worker of himself as object is necessary, but the self-consciousness of the
class as object is only an objective possibility. Now, it must be added that the
self-consciousness of the class as subject is a possibility predicated on the
possibility that the whole system of commodities dissolves into processes.
We must make a few observations here. First, Lukacs is not speaking about
the past, the present or the future in particular. He is isolating one crucial
moment in the social existence of the proletariat that creates (and has created in
the past) an opening for class consciousness. This class consciousness is open
only from the point of view of the proletariat, but there is no mechanical stress
here on the spontaneous development of class consciousness in workers
themselves. The empirical consciousness of worker's possesses a minimal
consciousness of alienation. But this minimal consciousness "is only the
beginning of a complex process of mediation whose goal is the knowledge of
society as a historical totality", i.e., in Lukacs' terminology "class
consciousness" is this goal. 139 And even class consciousness, which first appears
as theory, is only a moment of revolutionary praxis. Secondly, the minimal
consciousness of alienation is defined by Lukacs as necessary within the
framework of reification. But class consciousness and revolutionary praxis are
only objective possibilities that presuppose this necessity. The structure of this
objective possibility needs further analysis.
In the Marxist tradition, the emergence of the proletariat as a class generally
appears as a consequence of industrial centralization, and of the reduction of all
workers to the same, standardized state of social existence. Lukacs does not
reject this model, but calls it one-sided. The isolation and atomization of
137. Ibid., p. 180.

138. Ibid., p. 181.
139. Ibid., p. 51.
62 TELOS
workers cannot be overcome without industrial concentration, but other factors

are also crucial. The "self-consciousness of commodities" represents the
recognition of the social character of labor, but even this recognition is only a
prerequisite for the abolition of the isolated individual. Common interests and a
common situation can be recognized and defined relatively early by workers
(also by other groups), but this does not immediately imply a total challenge
against the society that continually tends to reproduce atomization. On the
other hand, a total challenge is not immediately possible. Lukacs' category of
praxis attempts (but does not ultimately succeed) to provide the transition
between isolation (and empirical consciousness), and the constitution of the
revolutionary class (and class consciousness).
Lukacs' understanding of praxis is presented in the context of its objective
possibility. We can no longer avoid a discussion of the category of objective
possibility. Max Weber originally derived this category from certain theories of
criminal law. Objective necessity has no place in criminal law, because it does
not leave room for a dimension of subjective knowledge; foreknowledge and
intention. But a criminal case must be ultimately decided according to
evaluations of this subjective dimension. Thus criminal cases must be
reinterpreted according to an objective dynamic that allows for more than one
possibility, even if we know that only one of these was realized. In other words,
a man can be punished for his subjective role in an event only if the event was
influenced by this role. But that means that without that role other possible
events could have taken place instead of the event that did take place.140 Weber
adopts this principle for historical research. The adoption means, among other
things, that the interest of law to locate a subjective dimension in the past is
replaced by the (contemporary) interest of the historian. The stress on a priori
interest is important because Weber rejects the possibility of (1) the synthesis of
a historical totality in itself and (2) the presuppositionless photographic
observation of facts. The a priori interest of the historian isolates and generalizes
individual components of events to locate the possibilities within the dynamic of
the past. 141 Thus, the category of objective possibility in Weber refers
exclusively to the past, and a past structured by the more or less arbitrary
interests ("gods") of the individual historian.
Lukacs modifies Weber's category of objective possibility in decisive ways.
First, he reinstates the category of totality, or rather he returns to totalizing
analysis. Based on Weber's arbitrary, individual interests the dynamic of reality
that is uncovered by the historian must remain ideal-typical and fictional.
Lukacs repeats over and over that the contradictory dynamic of society is
revealed only when the necessary abstractions are synthesized into wholes. But
he also continually reminds us that totaltity is never immediately given. Reality
presents itself in terms of isolated, abstract units (categories). Only a
complicated process of mediations attains the whole. Theory does not deal with
a given totality; it gradually synthesizes it, and "wholes" are attained on
different levels. The scope of the totality is ultimately relative to the given stage
140. Weber, Methodology . . . , pp. 168-169.

141. Ibid., p. 177.
of our theory and praxis. This stress on totality enables Lukacs to argue that the
real, objective dynamic of history can be understood. Objective possibility is
objective only in the context of this understanding. However, in Lukacs, as in
Weber, the category of objective possibility is an attempt to deal with the
problem of the subjective dimension. History, for Lukacs, has laws ultimately
because of the unconsciousness, "false consciousness" of the historical actors.
False consciousness is the function of being lost in the immediacy of the given,
the abstract, the partial. Objective possibility means a break in the structure of
necessity, but for Lukacs this break can be meaningful only when theory and
consciousness is directed toward the totality of society: "by relating
consciousness to the whole of society it becomes possible to infer the thoughts
and feelings which men would have in a particular situation if they were able to
assess both it and the interests arising from it in their impact on immediate
action and on the whole structure of society." 142 Thus theory first understands
the dynamic of society which is implicit in the possibility of the historical actors
themselves becoming conscious of this dynamic. Dialectical theory establishes
the relationship of the historical actors to society as a whole, and because theory
arises from and interacts with the historical dynamic its mere existence already
represents the objective possibility of consciousness becoming practical. Thus,
the second crucial difference between Lukacs' and Weber's categories of
objective possibility is that Lukacs orients his category toward praxis. But this
implies the third main difference: Weber examines the possibilities of the past
for the sake of the cognitive interests of the present while Lukacs seeks to
interact with the possibilities of the present for the sake of future praxis: "As
long as man concentrates his interest contemplatively upon the past or future,
both ossify into alien existence. And between the subject and the object lies the
unbridgeable 'pernicious chasm' of the present. Man must be able to
comprehend the present as becoming. He can do this by seeing in it the
tendencies out of whose dialectical opposition he can make the future." 143
The transformation of the category of objective possibility is presented by
Lukacs in the context of a theory of praxis. But, a "theory of praxis" obviously
cannot "make" the future. It becomes a moment of praxis itself only when it
becomes a "practical theory" and this is only possible when theory "has become
part of the consciousness of the proletariat and had been made practical by it."
Objective possibility can be realized only by the praxis of the possible subject of
historical transformation. On the other hand the reverse is also true. Praxis is not
possible without theory. Lukacs identifies three necessary moments of praxis:
(1) praxis must arise from the immediacy of the given society; (2) consciousness
and praxis are inseparable in the context of any attempt to transform the
objective possibility of praxis into its reality. That is, the dynamic of immediacy
must be both comprehended and acted upon; 144 and (3) given the class struggle,
praxis must appear as force. (The immediacy of the class-struggle is derived by
142. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, p. 5 1.

143. Ibid., p. 294.
144. Ibid., p. 177.
64 TELOS
Lukacs as by Marx, from the problematic of labor time.) 145

Thus, Lukacs presents the problem of the disruption of reification in terms of
the categories of objective possibility and of praxis. The discussion presupposes
that only the social existence of the proletariat yields the objective possibility of
revolutionary praxis. Lukacs' general argument is explicitly non-deterministic.
The disruption of reification depends on (1) the constitution of a possible
collective subject of this disruption, and on (2) this subject being conscious of
the contradictions that yield the objective possibility of disruption. This
consciousness can only arise when it is directed toward the total society.
Furthermore, the consciousness that Lukacs has in mind must not be interpreted
as purely mental, contemplative consciousness. The historical subject will never
be composed of philosophers. Class consciousness, consciousness directed
toward the totaltiy, means the constitution of the proletariat into a class, and
therefore a practical change in the social existence of the proletariat and the
whole structure of capitalist society. However, none of this occurs necessarily.
The continued absence of proletarian class-consciousness is objectively possible
and this would mean that the "contradiction [of capitalism] will remain
unresolved and will be reproduced by the dialectical mechanics of history at a
higher level, in an altered form and with increased intensity." 146
We find Lukacs' philosophy of praxis reasonably adequate qua philosophy of
praxis, or rather, as the philosophy of praxis of the period of the Bolshevik
revolution. The concept of the identical subject-object, that does reoccur in the
discussion, could be modified without altering the basic structure of the
argument as relating to liberating social historical praxis. Given this premiss, the
reappearance of an antinomic relationship between freedom and necessity near
the end of the reification chapter must seem very paradoxical. But philosophy of
praxis is not yet dialectical social theory. Philosophy of praxis is the
continuation of the work of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and the yound Marx, but it
yields, as we have argued, only the abstract possibility of social transformation.
Social theory must present, according to the demands of Lukacs' philosophy of
praxis, an adequate historical analysis of the dynamic of immediacy. The
persistence of antinomies implies an inadequate analysis, in our case both an
inadequate analysis of capitalist development and an inadequate class analysis.
Lukacs' analysis of capitalist development social existence of the proletariat
yielded a minimal consciousness of alienation, and the objective possibility of
the constitution of the proletariat as a class. The analysis reveals a further
assumption: the objective contradiction of capitalism (culminating in crises) is
an automatic historical product. Thus, what is needed is both the contradiction
of capitalism on the objective side and the minimal consciousness of alienation
on the subjective side. However, the constitution of a self-conscious
revolutionary subject that can push contradiction into social transformation is
presented schematically, in terms of a chain of objective possibilities. The
dynamic that is uncovered is thus not a developmental dynamic. Historical
145. Ibid., p. 177.

146. Ibid., pp. 197-198.
analysis is replaced by a static system of the objective possibilities of the present.

An analysis of the dialectic of human needs is sorely lacking! Not satisfied with
such a solution (in a historical period that still seemed revolutionary) Lukacs
tries to better the analysis with a generous dose of voluntarism: "Any
transformation can only come about as the product of the — free — action of the
proletariat itself."147 Lukacs' theoretical development from 1919 to 1922
clearly illustrates that his illusory concretization of his theory of praxis and his
inability to overcome the antimony of freedom and necessity culminate in a
party myth. 148 The use of the category of objective possibility only exacerbates
this problem in context of a partial (or dogmatic) class analysis. Anything at all
becomes an objective possibility when we assign a class or aparty mythical
powers. The conceptual dialectic of subject-object, after all, made Lukacs
assume that the dynamic of immedicay was more or less transparent.
We must return to an earlier question: is the concept of the proletariat in
Lukacs a dogma, or is it an abstract category in the Marxian sense? Let us again
assume he does treat it as a category which will be an element of the synthesis of
totality if the dynamic of its social existence is grasped. Even in this case the
analysis must be judged to be extremely partial. A geeat many determinants are
disregarded ranging from the content of empirical consciousness to the historical
development of the (production and reproduction of the) needs of the class.149
These are fateful omissions in a historical context that is significantly different
form that of Marx. But we can no longer disregard the possibility that the whole
problem of class analysis is solved rather dogmatically by Lukacs. The industrial
proletariat is indeed identified as the identical subject-object of the capitalist
stage of history - thus the analysis of its social existence is intended to support
what the theoretician already believes, namely that the industrial proletariat in
the West can and will make a fundamental social revolution. This dogmatism is
especially problematic when we remember that no unitary class analysis emerges
from the work of Marx, and that already by 1923 the industrial proletariat in
the West seemed to have a tendency to become less rather than more
revolutionary. We cannot here analyze Lukacs' interpretation of these problems
or his conception of revolution. We can only suggest that the same problems will
be only deepened, but not solved, by the chapters of History and Class
Consciousness on the revolutionary organization.
We have claimed in the beginning of this paper that a theory of reification is
an indispensable part of the dialectical theory of society. Without presupposing
the form and content of a theory adequate to our society, in our historical era,
this could not be adequately demonstrated. Let us try to make the argument
more plausible by suggesting, in outline form, the general direction that a
reformulation of Lukacs theory should take: in the era of advanced capitalism
147. Ibid., p. 209.

148. On this see A. Arato, "Lukacs 1910-1923: The Search for the
Revolutionary Subject", op. cit.
149. The social stratification of the proletariat is discussed by Lukacs, but not
in the context of the theory of reification. In general he uses this problem only
as a support for his theory of organization.
66 TELOS
the discussion of the phenomenon of reification must be supplemented by the

unfolding of the immediacy of the fetishes of political legitimacy, technological
rationality and of everyday life (free time, "recreation", consumption, etc.). (2)
The discussion of the conceptual dialectic of the subject-object (i.e. of the
problems of the philosophy of praxis) must include not only a discussion of
classical German philosophy, but the important theoretical sources (a) of the
Marxist tradition and (b) of certain trends in the non-Marxist tradition. (3) The
analysis of the dynamic of reificaiton must presuppose the alterations above, and
must be unfolded as a new social theory. This social theory must include (a) a
new analysis of the history of advanced capitalism (b) a new (non-determinsitic)
theory of the tendencies and constraints of capitalist development, (c) a new
class analysis, and (d) a new theory of the state under advanced capitalism
analyzing institutions and political legitimacy.
The proposal for reformulation yields the thesis of this paper. Although
Lukacs' theory of reification was intended as a dialectical theory of capitalist
society, it is for us "only" a fundamental work in the history of the philosophy
of praxis.
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LUKACS' THEORY OF REIFICATION

The theory of reification is an indispensable part of the dialectical theory of

reproduction of capital is involved. On the labor market the wage offered

8. On the problem of wages in Capital, cf. Joan Robinson, Essay on Marxian

useful because in Hegel, if we move from "Consciousness" to the Master-Slave

15. Hegel Phanomenologie, p. 143, Phenomenology, p. 231.

natural things, is introduced by Hegel as the mediation of the new immediacy.

23. Marx, Capital III, p. 817. [trans, modified]

Essence" in Negations, trans, by J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp.

result, the moment of overcoming becomes more problematic than ever

misinterpretations of his work, calls attention to this process, even in Capital:

39. Marx, Capital vol. I. p. 645.

47. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, p. 98.

However, as it is painfully clear from our historical experience,52 the problem

55. Ibid. p. 104.

68. Mihaly Vajda, "Objectiv Termeszetkep es tarsadalmi praxis" (Objective view

that the objective "materiality" of nature is wholly rejected by Lukacs.

by reification, and by the potential overcoming of reification, than the forms of

"phenomena of reification," Lukacs turns toward the dynamic of reification.

78. Marx, "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,

object [Objekt] of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as sensous human

84. Cf. Arato, "Lukacs' Path " p . 135.

94. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness p. 124.

100. Ibid., pp. 123-124.

Lukacs considers one of Hegel's great achievements the completion and

Thus, Lukacs reaches the proletariat by way of the analysis of German

actions. Furthermore the postulate of the identical subject-object tends in

theory this philosophy of praxis is aiming at. What we do want to maintain is

119. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, p. 155.

only when, it is directed toward a concrete historical totality.

122. Hegel, Phdnomenologie, p. 21; Phenomenology, pp. 81-82.

release of "immanent meanings" that do not appear on the level of immediacy,

quite satisfied with this solution, which however, amounts to one

129. Ibid., pp. 165-166.

131. Ibid., p. 167.

134. Marx, Capital vol. I, pp. 232-234.

self-consciousness of commodities," means only that the proletariat is conscious

137. Ibid., p. 180.

workers cannot be overcome without industrial concentration, but other factors

140. Weber, Methodology . . . , pp. 168-169.

142. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, p. 5 1.

Lukacs as by Marx, from the problematic of labor time.) 145

145. Ibid., p. 177.

analysis is replaced by a static system of the objective possibilities of the present.

147. Ibid., p. 209.

the discussion of the phenomenon of reification must be supplemented by the

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