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Lukács After Communism
Interviews With Contemporary Intellectuals
By Eva L. Corredor Duke University Press
Copyright © 1997 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-9720-5
CHAPTER 1
INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL LÖWY
20 May 1991, Paris
ELC My main question today concerns György Lukács's theories and what has become of them after glasnost, the collapse of communism, and the opening of the East. As here in France you have certainly been, along with Lucien Goldmann, the one who has worked most extensively on Lukács, I would like to ask you how you view Lukács's theories now, whether you see them affected by the political upheaval and, if this is the case, then how you judge their present and perhaps future critical and intellectual significance. To begin, may I ask you to recall some of the influences that Lukács's theories have had on the development of your own critical work and thinking?
ML I devoted my doctoral thesis to Lukács's political evolution; it was published a number of years ago under a pretty strange title, Toward a Sociology of Revolutionary Intellectuals: The Political Evolution of Lukács, 1909-1929 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976).
ELC Much discussed in America.
ML Oh, really? Well the title of the English version was much better: George Lukács: From Romanticism to Bolshevism (London: New Left Books, 1979). This book has been translated into English, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, and Spanish. I was inspired enough by Lucien Goldmann to devote my work almost exclusively to the young Lukács, from 1905 to 1929. There was a chapter on the post-1929 Lukács, for the most part to explain his connection with Stalinism. The main frame of my study was political, but in a more general context I tried to see how Lukács evolved from within the romantic anticapitalist culture of Central Europe (i.e., Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire). First he adopted a tragic vision of the world, then, starting with World War I and the Russian Revolution, he turned toward a Utopian vision, and from there to the discovery of Marxism and to adhesion to the Communist Party. That is the itinerary I tried to follow, but to link it to the sociocultural context, that is to say, to the romantic culture and to the situation of the intellectuals in Central Europe. I tried to provide a sociology of culture. Basically, it is a Lukácsean analysis of Lukács's work.
ELC If I remember correctly, you said that Lukács was the intellectual par excellence of his period, that he was the paradigmatic intellectual of this historical moment.
ML I said he was paradigmatic of those intellectuals who committed themselves to Marxism, because Lukács was somebody who first established himself intellectually, and it is from this very complex intellectual formation that he turns toward revolution.
ELC If I remember correctly, you have also discussed the connection between Lukács and Lenin, and to judge from several communications that I have just heard at an American convention, I am under the impression that Lenin, and thus the connection between Lukács and Lenin, interests many intellectuals today.
ML That is not one of my central themes, but I dealt with it to the extent that, in the beginning, in 1918, when Lukács was already attracted by the revolution, when he had already found in the proletariat the messiah class of history, he was still very reserved toward and distrustful of the Bolsheviks, whom he found too authoritarian. But very rapidly, at the end of a lengthy debate on ethics, he will nevertheless rally to the Bolsheviks and communism. He is going to abandon his Tolstoian and somewhat rigorous ethics to accept a general dialectic vision, and that is when he decides to join communism. All the while, he remains focused on a viewpoint which is not quite that of Leninism in the sense that this viewpoint belongs to what we used to call "leftist communism" or "ethical communism." He remains attached to anarcho-syndicalist ideas that, for instance, make him reject parliamentarianism in a pretty categorical way. Thus, he defends positions that are not those of the majority of the communist movement. This is going to provoke a critical reaction from Lenin, who attacks those whom he calls the "leftists" and, in doing so, he then refers to Lukács. This was not a very important issue for Lenin. Lukács was only a lesser representative of this tendency, and Lenin insisted that communism be present in the parliament. Well, from that moment on, around 1921, Lukács evolves toward certain positions that are closer to what we could call "revolutionary realism," and History and Class Consciousness (1923) is an attempt to reconcile Rosa Luxemburg with Lenin. After 1924 there appears Lukács's book on Lenin, which is an attempt to explain, philosophically by way of Dialectics, the significance of Lenin. This book is in complete conformity with Leninist orthodoxy but, curiously enough, immediately enters into conflict with the official interpretation of Leninism in the Soviet Union, which is that of Stalin. Let us just say that Lukács's Lenin immediately comes into total contradiction with Stalin's Lenin. Ironically, the moment at which Lukács becomes truly Leninist is also the moment at which his interpretation of Leninism enters into contradiction with the one of the primary Soviet officials (even if this is not especially obvious toeverybody at the moment, I think it can be shown in the text). These are then the last moments of what we can call the "young Lukács."
ELC Thus you concentrate exclusively on the early Lukács?
ML That is correct, but I try to observe, even though briefly, what happens later and above all how Lukács reconciles with Stalin. I try to show the philosophical foundation of this reconciliation stemming from the following idea: in the young Lukács there is a very strong Utopian tendency, a very strong ethical, moral, and Utopian element of which the nucleus is the refusal of existing reality. Lukács has been influenced in this thinking by the Hungarian poet Endre Ady, who represents this very principle of refusal in all its splendor. Yet in 1926 Lukács experiences a highly traumatic event, his biggest moral, philosophical, and personal crisis. He is confronted with the dilemma of either "reconciling with reality" by accepting the Stalinist Soviet Union or breaking with the communist movement. This is a big dilemma. So he is philosophically going to justify his attachment to the movement in a very interesting article on Moses Hess, which appears in 1926. He criticizes Moses Hess as being a thinker who is too moralistic and Utopian, who denies reality and does not understand that the principle of dialectics is the Hegelian "Versflhnung mit der Wirklichkeit," the reconciliation with reality.
ELC So he is actually criticizing himself.
ML Yes, he is criticizing himself. This is a break with his own past and a unilateral definition of dialectics as being the reconciliation with reality. In reality, dialectics are something else, they are precisely the tension between criticism and reality, between what is and what ought to be. From that moment on, he has found a philosophical legitimacy for his reconciliation with the Stalinist Soviet Union, and he will pursue it in the subsequent years while always retaining a certain autonomy and a certain distance.
ELC With regard to the methodology that he developed in History and Class Consciousness, how valid is it still today? Lukács said that even if the details and results of Marx's method were to be rejected, the Marxist scientific, analytical method would continue to retain its validity. This aspect of his theory should interest us today more than ever before.
ML I think that in History and Class Consciousness (1923) there are certain methodological, theoretical, and philosophical gains that remain useful today. And his definition of Marxism as being not just an assortment of dogmas and doctrinal systems, but as being first of all a method, is an idea which seems altogether profound to me. This is exactly what permits the assurance of the continuity of Marxism beyondthe breakdown of a series of political and ideological structures without touching the profound significance of the method. And I think that the way in which he defines his method, with help of the category of totality, historical totality, remains entirely valid as a procedure to follow toward the understanding of how to act. And then, I think that certain of his analyses, such as the one of reification, retain all of their value. So in which ways do I feel we must go beyond Lukács? But that question is not really linked to the present moment. The questions I am asking myself about Lukács and his limitations are not based on glasnost or on the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. For me, the Lukács of History and Class Consciousness and the type of institutional Marxism that existed in the USSR and the Eastern countries are two completely different things. So what happens to one bears no consequence for the other. For me there is total contradiction between the Marxist spirit as it manifests itself in History and Class Consciousness and this type of mummified system, which was the official Soviet Marxism. There is no connection between the two. So, the fact that one of them has crumbled is great, and I rejoice in it, but that does not affect in any way what could be true or false in History and Class Consciousness. So, in my opinion, the question cannot be dealt with on that level. On the other hand, I find that History and Class Consciousness is limited in certain ways. For several years, for already ten years, I have been aware of certain limitations: a vision of history that is too linear, a vision of progress as something that is inevitable, a vision that is not critical enough of what I want to call modern civilization. This is where I feel the need not to replace but to complete Lukács, because certain things are altogether irreplaceable.
ELC You do not find him critical enough of modern civilization?
ML Yes, of modern civilization, not of bourgeois society, he is critical there, but one must go beyond bourgeois society to criticize aspects of what I call modern civilization, industrial civilization. The Frankfurt School's greatest contribution consists precisely of this: they took Lukács's History and Class Consciousness as their point of departure, but then went further by criticizing, in Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectics of the Enlightenment, the instrumental reason and the logic born from modern civilizations and (above all in Walter Benjamin's work) the ideology of progress. There are a number of comments made by the Frankfurt School, and most importantly by Walter Benjamin and Marcuse, that I find extremely important. They consist of a series of critical thought developments inspired by the young Lukács that have been further enriched and given more depth by the Frankfurt School. I find these ideas very important since they allow us to tackle very current questions. I am thinking here mainly of the theme of reification but also of the combination of Marxist-Romantic criticism of capitalist civilizations, and even Ecology. Starting with the work of Benjamin, Adorno, and Marcuse, we can confront ecological problems; while starting with Lukács's work, no, this is not possible. So such are the reasons why, in my opinion, we must not reject the enormous intellectual gains that are present in Lukács's work, but we must complete, advance, and enrich them.
ELC Does this affect his methodology as well? Is his historicism dated?
ML Yes and no. Historicism, with regard to its method, which consists of understanding each fact as a historical process and not understanding the economic, cultural, and political problems outside the contradictory movements of history itself, in historicity, is not dated; on the other hand, the concept that history has meaning, that it advances inevitably toward freedom or revolution, that is the part which seems out of date to me.
ELC What about dialectics? Must we maintain and continue them?
ML The dialectical method is absolutely irreplaceable. Only the dialectical method allows us to understand reality as a movement, where nothing is set, a movement founded on contradictions in which one can understand the parts only in their relation to their totality.
ELC You cling to the idea of totality, even though most critics rejected this concept in the sixties.
ML I know, I know; this idea is not in fashion today. Well, I think that part of this critique is interesting. It is true that to approach reality through the fragment, to see everything that is broken in reality through the fragment, to take the fragment as a monad, as a starting point to understand a social and cultural conjuncture, this can also be interesting, but for me these are moments to be integrated into an overall movement, that is to say, we cannot limit ourselves to the fragment. If the fragment is not taken as part of the whole it will inevitably remain sterile.
ELC You are continuing with Marxism?
ML Oh, yes, of course! Oh, yes!
ELC You do not find that it went bankrupt, that it was even affected by the collapse of communism in the East, and by the changes in the social reality and economic systems in the Eastern countries?
ML No! What went bankrupt according to me, was a pseudo-Marxism, an empty shell, an empty bureaucratic shell; there was no authentic Marxism in it. This is what went bankrupt. In my opinion, historically, it has been bankrupt for sixty years. The political system is collapsing now, but humanly, ethically, and philosophically, it has been bankrupt for sixty years at least.
ELC Ethically as well?
ML Yes, yes ethically. Since the establishment of the Stalinist regime, it has been morally finished.
ELC Before coming to France this spring, I reviewed the program of the last MLA convention in December 1990, and I thought that I was detecting a new tendency to replace the term "Marxism" with that of "economism."
ML That [economism] has nothing to do with it [Marxism]! These are people who have not read History and Class Consciousness, because the authentic Marxist paradigm is already in there and it is not economist at all. It is true that the dominant model of vulgar Marxism has been economist, but already History and Class Consciousness reflected this, and the Frankfurt School, which hails from Marx even if it is a heterodoxical Marxism, has nothing to do with this "economism."
ELC Do you find that the Frankfurt School has maintained more rigorous ethics than other Marxists, as for example Lukács?
ML Yes, yes. I think that one of the great superiorities of the Frankfurt School over Lukács is that they did not accept a reconciliation with Stalinism nor, for that matter, with the capitalist world. They maintained a position of refusal. That is the moral strength of an Adorno or of a Marcuse. Sometimes this refusal could become somewhat abstract and cut off from reality; I am thinking mainly of Adorno's later years when absolute refusal and pure negativity resulted in a meditation over aesthetics, incapable of understanding new political developments such as the student revolt. This is not the case with Marcuse, however. Marcuse is very close to the students' sensitivity and the revolt. But I am speaking of the Frankfurt School as a whole, containing this element of refusal and negativity that gives it a moral superiority, whereas Lukács accepted the party's pillory of discipline and all that it implies.
ELC What is your attitude toward Althusser, and more recently Habermas, the critical structuralism that is not the genetic structuralism of a Goldmann?
ML I have always had a very negative opinion of Althusserism. Althusser as a person was a very honest and upright individual, but his method, in my opinion, was simply the end result of a mechanistic and objectivist vision of Marxism, completely removed from the revolutionary, dialectical sources of Marxism. For me, structuralism is a complete dead end. I have always thought that Marxism would not make any sense if it were not understood as a dialectical, historicist method, and that is precisely what structuralism has rejected. As Althusser rejected historicism and humanism, in my opinion, he also emptied out Marxism of its essential component. There is nothing left but the trace of a sterile skeleton, a kind of metallic structure that does not help the human community to understand or to act in its best interest.
ELC An asignificant structure with regard to humans. And Habermas?
ML Habermas must not be confused or identified with Althusser! I think that Habermas is heir to the Frankfurt School, but at the same time he is somebody who has distanced himself from the spirit of the Frankfurt School. He is heir in the sense that he has maintained an element of criticism of modern civilization, which is very important and the most interesting aspect of his work; but I think that Habermas represents a certain form of regression with regard to the critical theories represented by the Frankfurt School. A regression to the extent that Habermas returns to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the limits of which had been put into question by Adorno and Horkheimer. His program is simply to fulfill the Enlightenment's promise, whereas the program of the Frankfurt School is much more an auto-critique of the Enlightenment. This autocritical dimension is diluted and practically disappears with Habermas; the Habermassian Utopia is finally reduced to the idea of an ideal linguistic situation, founded on rational exchange. It omits everything that cannot be rationalized, everything that escapes the traditional rationalist framework. With regard to modernity, Habermas's position is much less critical than that of the Frankfurt School. It is more a restructuring of modern civilization than a critique that is directed toward the very foundations of this civilization, as is the case with Adorno and Benjamin.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Lukács After Communism by Eva L. Corredor. Copyright © 1997 Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
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