Bio: (1885-1971) Hungarian philosopher. György Lukács studied at the universities of Budapest, Berlin, and Heidelberg. During the First World War, he became a member of the Hungarian Communist Party, and after the end of the war, he was part of the government of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. When this revolutionary state fell, Lukács left Budapest and went to live in Vienna, where he continued to work within the Communist Party and write works. After that, he went to live in Moscow, where he worked at the Marx-Engels Institute. After the end of the Second World War, Lukács returned to Budapest, where he was a professor at the University. Lukács is known for his great contributions to aesthetics, sociology of art, and literature, but the most famous aspect of his work is the development of dialectical Marxism.

His most important book in the field of Marxism is History and Class Consciousness (1971, in German 1923). This book is a collection of essays exploring various aspects of Marxism. The main themes of this work are the notion of totality, the relationship between subject and object, reification, class consciousness, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of the Communist Party, and others. Lukács believes that bourgeois science constantly observes phenomena from the point of view of the individual and that such a view cannot produce knowledge of totality, but only fragmentary knowledge. That is why bourgeois science divides totality into several special sciences. The fragmentation that occurs with the subject is conditioned by the fragmentation of production, the division of labor, and the hierarchical structure of the labor market. It is the logic of capital that creates consciousness, not individual perception or understanding.

Lukács intended to create a philosophical basis for the establishment of true revolutionary class consciousness, so he wants to overcome Kant's view according to which it is not possible to achieve objective knowledge of reality. Social and historical facts gain real meaning only when they are integrated into the whole (totality). Only subjects, who are totals themselves, can understand totality, and in modern society total subjects can only be classes. The category of totality is the essence of the revolutionary principle in science. The ultimate goal of socialism is the attitude towards totality, that is, society that is understood as a process, through which every aspect of the struggle gains its revolutionary significance.

The dialectic of history as a totality realizes its self-consciousness in the class consciousness of the proletariat, while the party is the one that should be the link between people and history. The proletariat is both the subject and the object of history. As such, he understands the real nature of social relations and processes, as well as his own role in them. Marxism is a revolutionary practice through which the individual becomes a subject, not an object of historical processes. The fate of the revolution, in the age of the economic crisis of capitalism, depends on the ideology, that is, the class consciousness of the proletariat itself. The proletariat must become aware of its class consciousness, and that class consciousness is based on the historical task of the working class - the revolutionary struggle and the building of a communist society. The proletariat must not use ideology only as a means of seizing power, but as an "internal unity of theory and practice."

The revolutionary workers' council should be the means by which the proletariat will overcome the bourgeois character of the party leadership. Such a workers' council should overcome the bourgeois division of power into three branches (executive, legislative and judicial), but also achieve the unity of economy and politics in proletarian action. The proletariat must be self-critical and ready to fight against the destructive influences of capitalism on its class consciousness. Lukács warns of the danger of hierarchical structure and the cult of personality, phenomena that were present in the communist parties of that period. In addition, the threat to building a true communist party is the passivity and submissive attitude of ordinary party members. Both of these tendencies can lead to the bureaucratization and centralization of communist parties.

While in feudalism and slavery the reified relations were disguised as relations of superiority and subordination, in capitalism the commodity form of relations, that is, "reification" became the ruling form of the whole society. The phenomenon of reification is reflected in the fact that relationships between people are beginning to take the form of relationships between things. Lukács agrees with Marx that in capitalism the labor power of the worker becomes a commodity. However, the worker is an object with consciousness by which he can overcome the reified and fetishized nature of capitalism.

Lukács is also known for several books dealing with literature: The Theory of the Novel (1971, in German 1920); Aesthetics: Contributions to the History of Aesthetics (in German 1954), and Aesthetic Theory (in German 1964). In the book The Destruction of Reason (1980, in German 1955). Lukács opposes existentialism and phenomenology, believing that these two directions represent reactionary philosophies, which share irrationality with fascism and conservatism.

Main works

Die Seele und die Formen (1911);

Die Theorie des Romans (1920);

Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein (1923);

Lenin. Tanulmány Lenin gondolatainak összefüggéséről (1924);

Von Nietzsche zu Hitler oder der Irrationalismus und die deutsche Politik (1934);

Der historische Roman (1937);

Fortschritt und Reaktion in der deutschen Literatur (1947);

Goethe und seine Zeit (1947);

Existentialisme ou Marxisme (1948);

Der junge Hegel: Über die Beziehungen von Dialektik und Ökonomie (1948);

Beiträge zur Geschichte der Ästhetik (1954);

Probleme des Realismus (1955);

Die Zerstörung der Vernunft (1955);

Ästhetik (1964);

Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins (1971).

Works translated into English:

The Theory of the Novel (1971, in German 1920);

History and Class Consciousness (1971, in German 1923);

The Historical Novel (1962, in German 1937);

Lenin: A Study on the Unity of his Thought (1970, in Hungarian 1924);

The Young Hegel. (1975, in German 1848);

The Ontology of Social Being: Labour (1978);

The Culture of People's Democracy: Hungarian Essays on Literature, Art, and Democratic Transition, 1945-1948 (2014);

The Destruction of Reason (2016).