Marxism – Budapest School

Category: Theoretical approaches

Budapest School of Marxism is named after Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, where György Lukács, the founder of the school is from. Besides Lukács most notable members of this approach to Marxism are Heller Ágnes, Ferenc Fehér, Márkus György, Márkus Maria, István Mészáros, and Vajda Mihály.

Hungarian philosopher György Lukács (1885-1971) 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 intend 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 toward totality, that is, society 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.

Hungarian philosopher and sociologist Agnes Heller (1929-2019) in her book Theory of Feelings (1979) presents philosophical anthropology based on needs and feelings, in which social action is directed and based on ethics, morality, and the autonomous, self-responsible, and reflective individual. Heller is best known for the book The Dictatorship of Needs (1983), which she co-wrote with Ferenc Fehér and György Márkus. In this book, the authors criticize real-socialism as it was installed in Eastern Europe under the influence of the Soviet Union, after the Second World War.

In the book Theory of Modernity (1999), Heller presents a critical theory of modernity. She believes that in the age of modernity, the central value is freedom. Modernity is characterized by social and individual freedom to question all previously existing norms, rules, and beliefs through the value categories of good and bad. On the other hand, what gives modernity its continuity and resistance to change is the technology and the relations of dominance that arise from differences in wealth and political power. Precisely this double bind of modernity - that, on the one hand, all values and relationships are called into question, and on the other hand, stability and resistance to change, is the key feature that distinguishes modernity from earlier periods.

Hungarian-Australian sociologist and philosopher Márkus György (1934-2016) develops Marxist anthropology in the book Marxism and Anthropology (1966) and states that human beings differ from other animals because work in humans, as their vital activity, is oriented towards satisfaction needs through the creation of tools. He also studied the topics of culture, modernity, hermeneutics, and language.

Authors: Lukács, György. Fehér, Ferenc; Heller, Ágnes; Márkus, Maria; Márkus, György; Mészáros, István; Vajda, Mihály.

Books:

Márkus, György. Culture, Science, Society: The Constitution of Cultural Modernity (2011);

Heller Ágnes. A Theory of Feelings (1979);

- A Theory of History (1982);

- Dictatorship over Needs (1983);

- A Radical Philosophy (1984);

- The Power of Shame (1985);

- Eastern Left – Western Left: Freedom, Totalitarianism, Democracy (1987);

- Beyond Justice (1988);

- General Ethics (1989);

- The Postmodern Political Condition (1989);