György Lukács and the Sixties
Georg Lukács’ "life work" (also as a whole of "life" and "work") enjoys a high stage in 1968, but already in the sixties in general. At this high stage, the different moments unite in a whole to be difficultly dismantled analytically. A striking, aber not allowed solution for the explanation of this phenomenon would be the extreme generalization, if not just hyperbolization of the questioning. In this case, it should be said, that in Lukács’ fate the fate of a whole philosophy and of a whole political establishment is manifest as focus and symbol, so that also the dilemmas of this philosophy and of this political establishment lead far beyond the individual.
In this supergeneralization, there is undoubtedly a lot of truth, our specific problem reaching, not so much in general, rather in the concrete, does however not solve it. Therefore, we do not want to hold Lukács’ personal and philosophical fate examplarily in the sense like sometimes the fate of a poet may appear examplarily for a literary movement, like the fate of a political protagonist may appear examplarily for the fate of a country.1 Generally speaking, we can also not avoid speaking with Honoré de Balzac, in Georg Lukács’ work and fate, of the "Glory" and the "Fall" of the Marxism of the Twentieth Century and thus of the closely related political system of the real socialism.
The Leninism, as a "Dialectics" of the Marxism, the "Stalinism" as a "Dialectics" of the Leninism link together in a truly inseparable way.2
In this context, an old question can in some way be put. In 1968, many were awaiting a new concept of the Marxism on the part of Lukács, that could have been described, with the terminology used here, as the "new" Dialectics of the Marxism.3 The formerly prevailing expectation – still without the necessary philosophical distance – was necessarily oriented toward Lukács’ new Ontology. No doubt, the Ontology (with its language problems, with the many irresolute starting theses, with the visible signs of serious philosophical orientation difficulties) might by no means fulfil that extensive need of a "new" Dialectics of the Marxism. This must however again not mean, that generally a future phase of the Marxism could not have been anticipated as well from the material of the Ontology as also from Lukács’ work.
In the context always changing, Lukács appears always differently. The permanent insider of the Communist Movement and of the marxist philosophy figures also as the permanent outsider. His work and his philosophy appear in the West differently as in the East. In addition, he also permanently changes his current image with no discrete, often hardly perceptible steps.4
In the Budapest of the sixties, Lukács appeared in several forms also from the philosophizing, but also from the non-philosophizing society. The spiritual and personal presence of the philosopher was enjoyed with a recognition worthy of our respect. The presence of the great thinking is quite similar in every metropolis of the world. The everyday news, the actual publications, the city gossips led in Budapest, anyways, to an increasing interest of the emerging neo-marxism, that we anyhow approached only by virtue of the West travels becoming again possible and of the access to the western medias becoming slowly possible.5
The positive approach of the present of the great philosophy was facing from the beginning the other image which was built on Lukács' non reappraised Stalinist past. This attitude aroused the feeling of insecurity and a fragmentation of that behavior, which spread slowly from the physically tangible aura a great philosophy around itself. But also literature critical processes joined to this ambivalence. On the one hand, the pre-marxist theoretical and critical activity exercised by Lukács' was step by step well-known in Hungary, it was in the true sense of the word a new discovery of a collective learning. Who would have somewhat thought that the current spokesman of the socialist realism worked in his youth on a creative, according to Pater and Wilde envisaged artist aesthetics ? Who might have thought that the admirer of the realism of the nineteenth century before 1914, would define the critic as a "creator" or an "aesthet" that will realize through his privileged artists (in this case mainly: Béla Balázs) like through his “private” medium ? On the other hand, Lukács was, as well in his person and his works, as through his paradigms and analogies, the figure-head also of the Central European intellectual history re-emerging before the war, of the formerly deeply forgotten intellectual universe of the old brave Austria-Hungary, not only in Hungary but on the continent. It should perhaps not be especially emphasized, which self-multiplication Lukács' figure alone learnt in the Hungarian public consciousness from both these completions, without mentioning that the individual images or facets could easily come into conflict6.
To the exact reconstruction of Lukács' faces of the sixties belongs however also the long chapter of the publication- and reception history of the individual and quite weighty philosophical works. The “physical presence” of the diverse works in the different countries and languages always – like in the case of Marx itself - revealed to be an extremely problematic factor in Georg Lukács’ life. There have been hardly periods, in which all essential works have been available to the interested public at the same time and in the same languages. On the one side, it was about the fact, that the philosopher, mainly published in the German language, coming back from Stalin's Soviet Union after an exile of twenty-five years (aside of the Rumanian prison time after 1956), now lived in Hungary. It was therefore simply little likely, that his most important works could have been there experienced in a similar manner than before the Soviet, the German, or otherwise any foreign reading public did it. And then we did not yet talk of other criteria, that have referred to authors of every real socialisms also intensively. The various philosophical works have not been in every period similarly publicly praised and appropriately also spread. It was therefore almost inevitable that every important author had works in the cupboard, that it should be because of the actual “ideological” dangers better not to mention (in his case, somewhat History and Class Consciousness, from which he had also to distance himself publicly ).
On reconstructing Georg Lukács’ faces in the sixties, we must therefore realize, that his Aesthetics in the great (full), but also in the small (selecting the most important chapters) edition is available and the perfect example applies really as a profound success, even the aura of the great systematical living philosophy in the city. The new German edition of The Theory of the Novel (1963) is well-known in intellectual circles (accompanied with the actual glory of Lucien Goldmann’s sociological structuralism, but also with a new interest in the novel aesthetics in the theory of literature generally), from which the (not perceptible at once) paradox arises, that the same Lukács relativized on the way of The Theory of the Novel the still not yet openly withdrawn socialist realism rule, with whose name the more noble version of the (socialist) realism theory is still linked most officially7.
It was hardly less paradoxical in Hungary in the sixties with the History of the Development of the Modern Drama. Also here, there was no new published Hungarian version. Nevertheless, this Lukács’ pre-war work (before the Great War!) was existing in the intellectual consciousness for the reason that the version was available in the privat libraries. So, the dissonance between an tragic aesthet of the Modern Age of 1910 and the international recognized opinion leader of the "Great " (and „Socialist”) Realism was again inevitably occuring8.
The History and Class Consciousness or the Young Hegel had also exactly in this way their concrete history, quite particularly however the Destruction of the Reason, that was between the end of the forties and somewhat the middle of the sixties Lukács’ really ritual, if not canonised work in Hungary.
The Destruction of the Reason was offering a global, critical and apparently coherent interpretation of the most important question of the possibility of Hitler’s seizure of power, that then made possible the apocalyptic history of the later years. The function of this work was thus however also still completed in Hungary in the fact, that it has had an effect, in a very visible way, on the existential and political decision especially of the former young generation. The persuasive power of this work, in terms of the self-engagement for the coming communism or of the preservation of the bourgeois identity, was becoming an empirically provable factor. The Lukácsian consequence of the transition of the late bourgeois culture in the national socialism has considerably facilitated for the former young generation in many cases the choice of the communism being historically the order of the days.9
The various concrete constellations of the publication- and reception- history of the various philosophical works could almost pursue at will. Anyhow, it is here about an extreme complexity of the otherwise well entrenched hermeneutic and reception-theoretical contexts. In that respect, we can however also identify the so-called "personal” and "material" basis of the simultaneous diversity of Lukács’ images.
We can generally say, that for the seventies the most part of the most important philosophical directions – in a different, but also in the same way – have relied in Hungary on Lukács. All had another Lukács’ image and – in a country considered as hostile to the consensus – no one disputed publicly the special Lukács’s image of the others. It however did not go that way in the larger intellectual circles, or rather in the other sciences. What happened in the Institute of the Literary Siences of the Hungarian Academy of the Sciences was very typical for this sphere and situation. The Department of the Theory of Literature had been originally created with the intention, to erect a barrier against Lukács’ triumphant revisionism. But here, the realism has been defended against Lukács’ "revisionism", that the men of the science of literature took part of the avant-garde (condamned by Lukács!)…
It is always appropriate to thematize also Lukács’ relation to the Hungarian philosophy and generally also to the Hungarian culture. With a very strong generalization, we can say, that the young Lukács was regarding the Hungarian philosophical culture generally as provincial. It reveals clearly in his appraisal of Imre Madách’s philosophical play the Tragedy of Man. Although he participated relatively intensive in the seventies in Hungarian cultural processes, this attitude modifies little. It meant, that he was not recognizing some important trains of the Hungarian philosophy (especially the very important common fixation on the problems of "rationality" and "emancipation"10). From the beginning, his relation to the Hungarian Modern Age (mainly to Endre Ady and Béla Bartók) was however much more enthusiastic. At the end of the sixties, also at the apogee of his international glory, the time of the big interviews came. In these conversations, he spoke often much in detail about his relation to this field of the Hungarian culture.
In the sixties, Lukács is represented by many works and creative periods, but also by several philosophical and literary-political attitudes. As we have seen it, for some he is the rebel, for the others the oppressor. We have seen the working paper of the Working Group (beside the Central Committee of the SAP, Hungary’s Socialist Labor Party) had tried to attack together both revisionist "groups" (Garaudy-Fischer and Lukács) due to a Leninist point of view. For Lukács said: unfortunately, the working group was not right. Lukács had not struggled the great liberation of the literary life and therefore the first real victory over the closed system of the post-Stalinism, but the Kafka conference in Liblice did it. It was and remained an historical fact. Lukács was not belonging to the liberators of the literature, at the most only indirectly, through the adequate interpretation of his philosophy. His realism theory fell victim to the machinations of the socialist realism.
Franz Kafka's work revealed so as appropriate to interpret and recognize the world of the real socialism. Kafka's victory over Joseph Stalin has a dimension that had profoundly grown with the problematic of the categories of rationality and emancipation mutually constituting. This relation consisted in the fact, that the real existing socialism was already in his self-image the perfect and common realization of the most perfect rationality and also of the most perfect emancipation. The existential hermeneutics emanating from Kafka was absolutely conceived on a world, which real functionings should therefore occur as secrets, however this world defined itself as the realization of the most perfect rationality and also of the most perfect emancipation. That would be in itself certainly no secret that the real existence and functioning of the system became a secret. It was Kafka's invincible strength, that he could spread out the suggestion of the secret, without having ever stated a positive judgement specially of the real socialism.11
Whilst in the Marxist context, the task of the sixties and thus also Lukács’ one should have consisted in the renovation of the Marxism after the Stalinism, the task arose from the whole (i.e. the non-Marxist also) social context to return the credibility of the philosophy in general . This is here about a rarely perceived side of the philosophy in dictatorships.
For the fact that an entire philosophical life has been structured on a well-structured system of commands, creates an example- and unprecedented situation. The whole philosophy is true, but the whole philosophy is also holistically wrong. The establishment of the truth, discussion are largely eliminated, various philosophical opinions are declared directly as hostile and punishable. The fact that a philosophy must be accepted in general, means no true plausibility for this philosophy. Precisely because the discussion is eliminated, all can remain in their convictions and think that the privation of discussion is straight happening because their conviction is true. While the Soviet Marxism eliminates all other convictions, he accepts in the same train, like through its own legitimacy, all other convictions. This mechanism is general. The truth is that is forbidden. The official representative must be wrong. What the own news agency says must be incorrect. What the other side says, must be correct.
The "manipulation" taken in the sense of the culture industry begins in Hungary at the moment, when this code does not work any longer. The real change can be summarized in the formula, that now not even the opposite of what we say publicly from position of power is true.
Also Georg Lukács' whole philosophy was belonging to the material of the integrally (officially) accepted and therefore straight also not really plausible philosophies. It had to struggle with this situation in the sixties. This basic mechanism was also behind the problematic of the philosophical establishment of the truth. At the time of the Stalinism, the Soviet Marxism now brought out in Hungarian was applying simultaneously as (officially) very true and (therefore at the same time) very wrong.
For our subject it is of great relevance that after the defeat of the revolution in 1956 the later coordinates of the Hungarian philosophy have been new established. These coordinates showed indeed in the later years distinctive modifications, but the basic phenomenon remained the same on the long term. The power of the ideology might not be drawn directly into question, at the same time the clear line of pragmatic pluralization has however taken its start. The motives of this pluralization were also of heterogeneous nature, so for example, a certain compensation played also a role, like the new needs of the new establishment or Kádár’s determining intent, to decidedly distinguish themselves from the period preceding 1956 and to grant the society "more freedom".
It has however not to be misjudged, that the philosophy has also come off worst in this construction. The post-Stalinism as ideology might not be put in question (this would be however solely not possible through the logic of the "socialist camp", but also had a local background as well). So everything that was pragmatic and pluralistic, should in Kant's genuine sense happen as "unmündig", i.e. without its own language and public, i.e. so by no way as a "consequence" of a right interpreted ideology. The society could be more free, but if possible without any ideology.
The complex of the post-Stalinist neo-Marxism is identical to the overall problematic of the second period of the so-called East-Central European real socialism. Already it can be argued whether this real socialism - mediated through the war events and civil wars after 1945 - had an utopian character or not. If we would tend to a negative response, this complex of the neo-Marxism would be from the beginning almost irrelevant. But if we instead assume that we regard this real socialism as an authentic social system, then the neo-Marxism becomes, as vehicle of the de-Stalinization and of the eventual renewal and liberalization of communism, a problem of world-historical dimension. It means, that a world-historical role is assigned as a whole to the neo-Marxism, its success would have meant, that this real socialism could be reformed, a socialism possible with a human face.>12
Lukács intervenes in the activities of the coming or even the mature neo-Marxism with an astonishing impulse, especially if we consider that in his life between 1956 and the turn of the sixties the Romanian internment also engraved a break. In this light, the strategic approach of a text such as "Problems of the Cultural Coexistence" (1964) 13 certainly issues from a remarkably clear judgement. For the neo-Marxism of the sixties and of the year 1968 was not only a very broad range of philosophical approaches, he represented, from an historical logic, a juxtaposition and co-existence of eminently "non simultaneous" approaches.
A moment anticipating the later phenomena of Lukacs' contribution to the specific neo-Marxism is undoubtedly his strong attention to the problematic of the manipulation. The term itself at that time included a broader range of phenomena than it is the case today. Today, we would perhaps no longer call directly manipulation the extensive network of information channels, the media industry, the world of promotion and advertising, certain phenomena of functional effect, the new civilizatory networks, Lukács understood this however so. There is no denying the fact that he carried out formerly with this of his interests a considerable heuristic accomplishment. It is indeed not without interest that he contrasted the rough manipulation of the Stalinism with the fine contemporary capitalism,14 the importance of his insight in this new world of phenomena is going far beyond this confrontation.
From then on, the manipulation is not only playing in the critique of the capitalism after the Cold War,15 an important role, it is also an eminent part of the present, in which both systems are qualifying, even more, can measure themselves. The acceptable superiority of a non-manipulative socialism (it is accepted in advance by Lukács, that the traces of Stalin's "rough manipulation "of the present socialism are "expelled") points to a future, in which the humanistic and emancipatory potentialities of the socialism will transform the already existing virtual superiority in a real superiority and force of attraction. This is the competition between the both systems early envisaged and thematized by Lukács (of course in several alternative formulations).
At this point it should be (again) reminded of the deep structural contradictions that consist in the non-simultaneity between the determining elements of the emerging neo-Marxism and their direct consequences. The manipulation deeply read out and reconstructed by Lukács (also David Riesman's the Lonely Crowd is pulled up by him) worked in the real socialist society totally different than it was anticipated by Lukács. Firstly, also the ruling elites straight discovered the manipulation called "fine" or "finer" by Lukács and utilized it almost immediately in their "politics". Secondly, this insight gave a vigorous impulse to the development of empirical sociological researches in Hungary. Thirdly, a new consciousness radiated, almost a new entertaining intimacy in the perception of the Hungarian society in the direction of Western and not only Western mediatization, advertising culture, mass communication and managing of the politics. Unexpectedly, perhaps, the society experienced this expansion of the perspective of perception, not as a danger for the emancipation and the human values, but as a grey everyday life becoming interesting and colorful. The growing insight in manipulation under real socialist circumstances did not bring up emancipated workers, but well-informed petty bourgeois, that as spectators of the world sometimes also have become capable of self-judgments (about manipulation).
In any case, the problematic of the manipulation converges again with the establishment of the main determinations of the competition of the both social systems. In this context, Lukács formulates - again in sign of his turn toward the reality manifesting in the Ontology - phrases that should certainly be considered in the Marxism party as most heretical : "... would the technical and economic superiority in the Agon of the social systems break alone the decision, so the superiority of the capitalist system would have never been endangered, and its hegemony would be still today undisputed ..." 16
Against the fine and modern manipulation of the present capitalism, the cultural competition and the leisure are enhanced as the realm of freedom.17 At this point - like hardly differently expected - a deep structural contradiction appears again in the political positions represented legitimately in details by Lukács. While Lukács namely sets in the domain, at that moment, the "leisure", the unmanipulated everyday existence, the chance of education, a democratic and / or plebeian mass culture (in which preparation, the left Weimar culture has done so important preparatory work) as a fully adequate alternative, he says in the same work however also: "What is compared in the competition is the real level of living of the population, not the propagandist preaching."18 The "real level of the standard of living" is certainly a "realistic" (if we want, in the context of this work, an "ontological") argument against the voluntarist propaganda. He however does not thematize that it is however also an argument against the chances of the "leisure" and the "realm of liberty".
Especially the neo-Marxism seems to have defeated the logic of the truth seeking and truth establishment in the Stalinist period. He was no longer inaugurated through commands. Partly because straight this neo-Marxism was instinctively rejected by the ideological structure of the Soviet Marxism, we could absolutely not say, that the Soviet center of the world communism wanted to impose this complex of neo-Marxism on other philosophical cultures. The reason for its rejection was also political. Because the center became prisoner of the political structures of the Soviet real socialism, in which history more significant ideological changes occured at any time as sure signs of impending political changes... A potential victory of the neo-Marxism would have appeared to the ten - if not hundreds of thousands of representatives of the philosophical Stalinism as the first (in)direct evidence of their loss of power. In the original Soviet situation, this possible change in the philosophy revealed as a purely political, and even more, as a mere question of power (without speaking about the existential dimension sounding very prosaic)! It is another matter, that happened in the seventies always again cautious attempts to include several individual moments of the Western neo-Marxism, critically, into the post-Stalinist building structure. The irony of the history wanted, that for this time the neo-Marxism ever regarded as suspicious was already dead in the West.19
The second half of the sixties and the first half of the seventies shows, in the context of our argumentations, a very contradictory image. The real socialist societies have been facing their most important reforms until 1968. On the other side, the western new left suffered a fateful defeat afin 1968. While Kafka was then meaning the way out from the official Soviet Marxism, the Marxism experienced in the West a short high-altitude flight and a sharp fall, both, also very complex processes, being in no respect coordinated with each other.
The apogee of the neo-Marxist thinking arose however for different historical and intellectual motives. The new commencement in this period meant for Lukács, on the one hand, a new start after the Stalinism-post Stalinism and, on the other hand, also already a new start after the already existing and important tendencies of the neo-Marxist philosophical substance itself. Here, Lukács reinforces much this thought, even if the various elements appear only rarely in agreement. On the one side, it essentially goes so that the real socialism is not considered as a classical. Like it will still be in question on other places, he indeed does not withdaw the legitimation of Lenine’s revolution, he fights however the classical attribute, with which he makes clear, like all at once, the space for a new commencement. On the other side, he diagnoses a quite new phase also in the history of the capitalism (the one of the relative increase of value). This is also a reason of the new commencement. Thirdly, he also defines the new antagonism (a world of manipulation against a world of leisure and new emancipation). These three moments (even if only rarely in direct proximity to each other) give the variant of the neo-Marxism of Lukács and of the year 1968. There is a range of moments, with which the main streams of the 1968 new left are in agreement, there is as well a whole range of moments, in which it is not the case. Philosophically considered, we can state, that it is with Lukács a new formulation of the classical Marx’s paradigms (an example for that is his personal distantiation of the preference of the young Marx against an entirety of the Marxism). 20
The recommencement makes some fundamental changes as well in Lukács’ thinking, as also in the one of the Marxism. It is essentially about an ontologizing mode of thinking, that intends to build in front and beside the conceptual structures a general reality dimension. It was at least philosophically a problem with heavy consequences, that Lukács’ could not achieve this new mode of thinking. We can be indeed agree with this ontologizing tendency, maybe even also understand or approve it, however we cannot accept it methodologically. It marks however philosophically the end of the age of the totalitarian exigence of the philosophy. It clearly shows this in the attempt to implement a philosophy, from which no power-political instrumentalisable ideological consequences can derive.
This is also an end of the specifically totalitarian relation between politics and aesthetics. While the right totalitarianism aestheticizes the politics – with Walter Benjamin – the left totalitarianism politicizes the aesthetics. In the dichotomy of the politization of the aesthetics (left totalitarianism), as well in the aesthetization of the politics (right totalitarianism), the more profound difference of both totalitarianisms expresses in an excellent way. The totalitarianism was also clearly a pan-European phenomenon, that in countries where a totalitarian order was not ruling or ruling only for a short time, this phenomenon was also a central subject of the intellectual interest much debated.
The end of the totalitarianism, taken in the strict sense (also in the real socialist Hungary) offered to the Hungarian again the great possibility to formulate rationality and emancipation again, in the best case, their unity. The Hungarian philosophy has perceived this task to its utmost. The ghost of the Stalinist totalitarianism having however hardly disappeared that the Hungarian philosophy had to argue with the particularly irrational problematic of the consumer society under real socialist circumstances! Whilst the age of the totalitarianism was bringing with itself the hegemony of the politics over the aesthetics, a new situation arose in the consumer society (according to Lukács’ Ontology, a new world of the relative increased value and of the manipulation). The emergence of the consumer society built a deep clash between East and West. On the one side, while in the West the age of the consumer society was breaking out, in the East the totalitarianism can still remain preserved. On the other side, these both social variants can be defined also still as opposed worlds, that draw their own identity essentially from their reflexive hostile relationship against each other. The consumer society is as well a negation as also a consequence of the totalitarianism. It is however also a negation of these universal values (Gattungswerte), that constitute in the real socialism the intellectual and moral spine of the way of living oriented on values and which ethical force the real socialism could never totally break. For the Hungarian philosophy, this development meant, that it had to act on the basis of a society, that intended to combine real socialist dictatorship and consumer democracy. However, the "goulash " might not have really relevantly contributed to a new synthesis of rationality and emancipation.
Important moments of the Ontology do not reveal conceptually only as durable, but also still current or even forward-looking. We can however indicate the motive of the failure of this work very quickly. The motive of the failure appears already in one of the early interpretations of this work. Wilhelm Raimund Beyer demonstrates very clearly the weak point of this new conception of the late Lukács already in 1970, what is all the more a great performance, that Beyer could not yet know the whole work21.
The explicitly anti-positivistic dimension of this conception might not have been clear to him (Beyer) from the texts he knew, so that Lukács' simultaneous struggle against the positivism and hegelianism might not yet be quite clear to him. The direction of the Ontology against the academic Histo- and Diamat is also not totally become evident to him22.
What is being locked out is the Hegelian paradigm of the philosophical coherence. Together with Lukács’ other strategic decisions, this step leads to a new concept of the philosophy. The identification of this will of destruction works astonishingly, the perception of this huge turn gives to think. Finally, Hegel was just standing (also in the form of the interpretation of the Marx’s texture) at the center of the paradigmatic neo-Marxism. So considered, Lukács' attempt might then as well be regarded as a break within the neo-Marxism. That the mature Lukács remained arrested in sign of a more or less Hegelian philosophical perspective, is also generally well-known, like the fact, that the central philosophical school of the Western Marxism of the sixties and the seventies, the Frankfurt School, fights out in its Negative Dialectics against the positivism with Hegel. From Lukács’ comments it is clear, that his pre-paradigmatic ontologization is the one that revolts against the Hegelian methodology and annihilites it.
If the somewhat borderless ontologization of the philosophical perspective against Hegel revolts, it has then to be understood very generally on the basis of the different atttempts. Straight on the basis of this ontologization, the revolt against the neo-positivism is however already less understandable! Here, we see ourselves again confronted with a deep and structural contradiction.
Lukács’ anti-scientist attitude is very complex. All its facets can probably not be found, in his "borderlessness", we might have to even speak of an ontological turn of his whole philosophical vision23.
For, whilst Lukács attacks so brilliantly the new form of the positivism (perhaps the editors of the text were the ones who skipped over this problem), he often pleads for an "objectivism", i.e. for a higher respect for facts and for the reality. One of these formulations sounds for example as follows : "As I published at the end of the forties a sharp criticism of the French existentialism, I tried to derive some important sides of this philosophy from the ideological situation of the ‘resistance’. So, Fadejew saw 'objectivism' because it was an excuse for idealistic thinkers, for agents of the bourgeoisie"24.
The dichotomy of the desire of a new respect for the facts, of a new "objectivism," that stands indeed behind Lukács’ whole ontological turn, as well as the fiery fight against the scientism, neo-positivism and of the theory of knowledge must thus also be accepted in the still longer list of the profound contradictions, that can present the summarized simultaneity and non-simultaneity of the Marxism of the sixties in the person and in the work of Georg Lukács.
With an also relevant experience of the scientific and methodological backwardness and of the extent of non elaborated philosophical preparation, Lukács' basic decision should have motivated, to resign the same hegelian and marxian paradigm without any visible resistance, which has been inaugurated in no small (but even in “historical") mass by him personally.
The rejection of Marx’s paradigma dominated by Hegel is however not Lukács' only strategical decision by founding his Ontology. His second strategic decision, with heavy consequences, consists in intending to envisage neither the classical positivism, nor the neo-positivism as serious alternative to the overcome and rejected Hegelian way of thinking. Thus, the Ontology is fighting on two fronts.
In 1947, namely in the high Stalin time, he still sees the Ontology quite differently. In his work "About Lenine’s knowledge theory", he combats the ontological attempt in the philosophy with arguments, that he – of course mutatis mutandis – could have also taken to heart straight in the foundation of his late work. The new Ontology, so Lukács in 1947, alters "in the best case" in reality general forms of thinking, it identifies the representationality with the objectivity in a dogmatic way. He even attacks Heidegger, because he was not capable to give the epistemological reason of the basic categories of the social existence25.
The fate of the Ontology depends then on whether the neo-positivism apostrophized by Lukács is effectively an ontological alternative of an ontological mode of vision, that can profile, between the Hegel-Marxism and the general-positivist paradigms, the new, third (!) ontological perspective as legitimated third way. Lukács, however, proclaims the neo-positivism manipulation in the actual modern sense. He proclaims the neo-positivism manipulation. Thus, a " phantom-neopositivism" emerges. It is about that Carnap, that declares metaphysics all that is not scientical and not about the author of Der Aufbau der geistigen Welt, from which the Lukács of the Ontology, paradoxically, could have create a lot. Lukács’ most weighty argument and therefore biggest attack on the just elaborated neo-positivism is that he manipulatively destroys the "visible" world, the "concrete", the "representational", i.e. the Ontology itself. Lukács does not perceive, that his position will be critically weakened by his vehement elimination of the verification- and legitimation side. The manipulative strength of the neo-positivism cannot arise prior to the verification. This inappropriate attitude of anti-(neo)positivism widens in Lukács, like already quoted, toward a general attitude, that orientates against every theory about science, scientism and knowledge.
Now, it would be particularly difficult to Lukács to assert, for the whole history of the philosophical discipline of the Wissenschaftstheorie, that it eliminates manipulatively ontological foundations. On the other side – and this is maybe still more weighty – Lukács ignores through this suspicion the thematization of the original philosophical problem of the foundation (Begründung). A lot is said of the "ideological function" of the Wissenschaftstheorie, like as if it might be examined primarily only under such coordinates and would not have rather to be submitted to a pertinent immanent examination. Methodologically considered, he makes the mistake, that he generalizes the attributes of a critically investigated Wissenschaftstheorie. Therefore, he makes a decisive mistake by articulation of his great intuition. For the most immaculate neo-positivism can serve as instrument of the manipulation. In this case, Lukács should not have referred to the name Carnap, but to the one of Popper.
Lukács' simultaneous fight against both directions leads him – and here we anticipate one of our theses – in a methodological no-man’s land and to the impossibility to be capable to achieve his creative new ontological orientation! We do not argue typologically at this place. We do not intend to say apodictically, that the ontological turn of the social existence, after the dissipation of the "metaphysics" in Hegel-Marx’s paradigm, must necessarily lead to a positivism. Instead of that, we emphasize, that this rejection (of the both antagonistic paradigms, the Hegel-Marxism and the Positivism) leads to the fact, that after all least Lukács can legitimate the basic assumptions of his Ontology.
Lukács’ blindness for the this basic problem can be hardly explained. He often points out for example on Husserl, Scheler or Heidegger, the philosophies of ontological exigence did not inaugurate and accentuate in their manner, the basic, mainly the epistemologic problems. With the revocation of the Hegel-Marx’s paradigm, Lukács sets the everyday consciousness, through the systematization of Nicolai Hartmann’s ontology, in a determinant position, although his reasons toward a new social ontology (Gesellschaftsontologie) were much less academically motivated, as it has been the case with Hartmann. It occurs however that – whilst he leans on a citation of Engels – he outlines a "quite new ontology", which coincides according to his own interpretation, with a type of the positivist genealogy. The absolutely indefinite "concrete construction of the true reality" as ontology appears then to him (against his will and without his own consciousness) after all as a positivist genealogy!
The scientific and the theoretical as well the philosophical example, probable the most important, for Lukács' blindness for the difference of everyday consciousness and science is the intepretation of Darwin’s theory in Nicolai Hartmann. Here, Lukács states with a great pleasure how Darwin’s theory of the natural selection comes without any "speculative" constructs to a teleology, which is really no a philosophical nature theologie, i.e. the species were not the result of an inner natural teleology, but of a-teleological moments. Lukács considers Darwin’s theory building as a construction, that is not something methodically scientific, but a product of the everyday consciousness. Now, it is also not difficult to prove, at this as well logically as also historically so famous place, that Darwin’s idea about the natural selection is far from an extension of the everyday consciousness, it is a classical case of the positivist theory building of the real causality as interpretation. Darwin considers first every individual real causality, that has indeed contributed to the constitution of the species. Therefore, his activity goes already far beyond the sphere of the unreflected everyday consciousness. As an extension of this work of reflection, he comes finally to the principle of the "natural selection", that he then calls "theory", in an incredibly clear consequence. We cannot demonstrate in this work what constitutes for him the difference between the principle of the "natural selection" performed with the status of the theory and the diverse concret and singular real causalities. What is essential is that his reflection on the diverse concrete types of real causality, that is just the global moment in the genealogy of the living beings, did not emerge from simple observations of the everyday consciousness, but from an absolutely complicated interpretation process, that Lukács does not understands. He states very clearly, that in his conception the natural selection is a product of the natural activity of observation of the everyday consciousness, which on its part "leans on the science". Thus, he testifies, that he cannot identify the multiple positivist characteristics of this process and a through and through sophisticated positivism gives for him wrongly the proof of a functioning attitude of the everyday consciousness.
The previously mentioned most important characteristics of the Ontology explain the diverse trains of the Hegelian criticism of the work. It is about an Hegelian criticism, which is perfectly impregnated by the whole draft of the work. Hegel is praised (above all compared to the Erkenntnistheorie by Kant), because he thematizes philosophically the historical, process-like nature of the being/existence. The group of motives of Hegel’s rejection is as well clearly outlined: it is about the permanent transformation of ontological constellations into a logic in Hegelian sense. Finally, Lukács repeats this double Hegelian interpretation in his whole work as well. On the one side, Hegel’s anti-epistemological attitude enhances his relatively relevant position, on the other side, he rejects it, as mentioned, because of his transformation of the ontology into a new philosophical logic (with the thesis occuring, already somewhat singularly at the end of the twentieth century : "the theory of the identical subject-object is a philosophical mythos").
The characteristics of the late Lukács reconstructed on developping the Ontology – as it seems to us – occur again in his notes, entitled Democratization today and tomorrow 26 (written in 1968).
While the original German version appeared already in 1985 in Hungary in the original language, the Hungarian translation of the text is published in 1988, so that – as new example for the enormous relevance of the timing of the publication – these notes of already very old philosophers had to wait for their publication somewhat twenty years! This however does not at all mean, that the content of these notes would have remained totally unknown in the Hungarian or in the international philosophical public. Many impetus of these notes were already included in the philosophical processes of the seventies and of the early eighties. We have even often the impression, that some approaches of this work have influenced also the spiritual foundations of the Perestroika.
The old Lukács adopts an anti-stalinist point of view, in which criticism the Stalinian preference of the political tactic appears to be opposite to the (Stalinian) strategy and the (Stalinian) theory as leading thought. His anti-Stalinism, also not in principle, relativizes however practically through this insight, that he emphasizes Stalin’s role in the deployment of an as well scientifically and military strong Soviet Union, and also Stalin’s tactic aptitudes at numerous places. Lukács carefully emphasizes the differences between Lenin and Stalin, while he almost does not give any detail about the cathartic problematic of the Stalinian terror (and thus of the related possible "dialectics of the Leninism" standing possibly behind).
To substantiate the focused "democratization", Lukács rejects every similarity with the bourgeois democracy. It is all the more striking that, simultaneously he articulates a clear anti-citoyen attitude27. From his concrete options, that new image of the public (Öffentlichkeit) must be focused at this place, the one that is constructed very similarly to the glasnost.
After reading the Democratization today and tomorrow, the following question is being put : Which suggestions made these notes accessible to reform work of the socialist society at the end of the eighties ? Considered from heute, it seems that these effects have necessarily to remain limited. No question indeed, that many impulses of these notes have already formerly come into the theoretical discussion. Aside from this, the biggest problem seems to be, that the language of the "democratization" starts from a real, but principally thought socialism image, which ultimately realizes the socialism as real. It don’t start from the urgent political and economic everyday problems of the seventies and eighties. The time roulette of the publication- and reception history is also here involved. The author of the Democratization under no circumstances could foresee the economical crisis in Poland and Yugoslavia, the frozen Brezhnev period or the national and left-totalitarian Bonapartism of a Ceaucescu.
When he speaks concretely of the democratization of the socialism, then we notice, that he identifies the whole process holistically with a "restoration of the Marx’s method"28and conceives it finally as a "from above" and "centrally" directed process. A further profound structural contradiction can already be studied carefully in this attitude. For we assume, that this mode of orientation leans pragmatically on realist estimations, it must however immediately be evident, that a "from above" and "centrally" directed "democratization" cannot much progress on this route. For as conclusive it may pragmatically be in itself, the reinforcement of inner party democracy and the opening of the intra-party communication and discussion culture, the clear separation of party and state29, the avoidance of an allusion to a possible multi-party system (twelve years after 1956 and at the time of Prague Spring!) carry further this basic contradiction with themselves. The challenge of the democratization is seriously considered, also on the way of a renewal of the Marxism, rather a return to its real foundations. The conceivable concretizations of this project remain in the domain of the so-called "democratical centralism " that might be apply as a somewhat popularly more comprehensible version of the real existing Leninism. In the text itself stretches so a wide arc between the seriousness of the historical moment (the necessity and the fundamental nature of the reforms) and the caution in the practical concretization of the suggestions.
Lukács will here, even if entirely avoid, touch, so only in the "language of flowers" of insiders, the real and for every nameless citizen crucial hot issues of the exercise of the power and of other taboos of the real socialism (what amongst others leads to the consequence that the most different interpretations can be made at the same time, while we attribute to the individual known or unknown moments different meanings).
Goes together with this attitude, that Lukács does not so much immediately approaches the global and large dimensions, but the even sometimes spontaneous results of the endogenous development (so a considerable and surprising significance is attributed30 to the so called "habituation" (Gewöhnung) of the society in the real socialist space, what in itself is therefore worth to be mentioned because "usually" the consciously carried out steps of the central power and not the spontaneous social processes intend to lead to historical changes). This endogenous outcome is at a place formulated as follows : "...We must rather make every effort to seize very first socially-historically the presently real mode of being of the socialism, its present exactly-so-being (Geradesosein), and starting from there try to formulate the problems of democratization." 31 This strategy shows isomorphic trains with the new ontological turn of the whole philosophy. Beside the great change in this strategy compared to the dimensions of the world history and class struggle becoming ritually galactic, it must be noticed, that at this point, the deepest roots of Lukács’ philosophy is also probably different. It is about this basic train, that the Lukács of the sixties incessantly emphasizes as the real specificity of his philosophizing : It is about the moment of the reconciliation or of the non reconciliation with the reality.
The Lukács of the Democratization, as also the one of the Ontology intends to recognize the reality, like it is and change it only then. It seems to us, that it is the greatest change by Lukács of the sixties. The classical Mannheim’s thesis comes true sociologically in this change. For Lukács’ reconciliation course is not generally philosophical, also not anti-capitalist, it is stated from the point of view of the real existing socialism.
The problematic of the "habituation" (Gewöhnung, megszokás) preoccupied the old Lukács, like apparently, therefore continuously. He refers expressly at that time to a "theory of the habituation" in Lenin, in which sign he (Lenine) already at the time of the war communism followed and supported every social movement, in which he could perceive the embryo of a future, that helped "to realize the domination of the present over the future"32.
In this structural position, a new domain arises for the par excellence life – and conscience forms.33 The context is clear. The socialism must be reformed. According to Lukács, its chance does no longer consist in the direct debate with the opponent, but in the fruits of an endogenous process of development. The envisaged genuine socialist life- and conscience forms must be of positive nature. They constantly revealed as antipodes of a relatively adequately described Western culture of manipulation. This approach is in Hungary also reality in the politics of culture, mainly in György Aczél’s politics of culture of the "közműveltség" (somewhat : "common building"), that wanted to bring on the scene a common social, socialist colored and not manipulated culture between the old popular culture and art and the new and already professional forms of knowledge. Here, we meet again a (certainly not the first !) genuine, new contradiction in this historical age. For the society, a no further defined freedom would be compatible with a notion of democratization. A cultural universe, in which an alternative to a new manipulative Western culture would have had to be implemented, turned out not in every case to become an ally of a new intellectual democracy.34
The Democratization is related to the Ontology in that again explicitly not stated assumption, that the real socialism is’nt a product of a "classical" development, so that its current problems might not be also considered as consequent and necessary difficulties of the (classical) socialism. This does not exclude (on the contrary, this emphasizes all so more stronger), that Lenin’s takeover of power was legitimated.35
The idea of the effectively non-classical character of the real socialist development of the late Lukács is essentially dominating. Again, he heretically also states, that this development has’nt theory - nobody, not even Lenin himself, formulated such a theory!36 From there, the endless new freedom in principle and the immediately following idea, that there is no politician whom he (Lukács) could assume of, that he understands this situation.37 The thesis becoming predominant of the non-classical type of the real socialist development is a sharp criticism of the past. These moments build again a profound structural contradiction, if we confront them with those chances, which are according to Lukács philosophically contained in this situation.
A true irony of the fate (that is mutatis mutandis also of a significant importance for the interpretation of Lukács’ whole previous reception history) is that the same space of time links the draft and the publication of the Democratization work like both culminant historical points of the European intellectual history. In 1968, Lukács conceived this work (at the time of the apogee of the new Left). In 1988, it appears at the time of the apogee of the anti-communist neo-liberalism. Both apogees were complex crystallization points of the modern intellectual history. The way of the intellectuals between neo-Marxism and neo-liberalism marks this space of time, no wonder, that one and the same concept Lukács’ about democratization of the real socialism had such different receptions.38
Both 1968 and 1989 can be described (even if not exclusively) as the work of the modern intellectuals. As a true new class, it appeared in both situations as a markant sociological structure and pragmatic actor. The decisive difference between both global and historical turning points was however, that the new class of the intellectuals was 1968 looking for the realization of its (sociologically like intellectually) own concept, while in 1989 it was rather about the implementation of the other sociological function, namely of the substitution of actually non-existing other social groups.39 The mainly neo-marxist intellectual class was the porter-strata of 1989 (and the conqueror, if not just the greatest enemy of the Marxism, and not finally also of Lukács). In this respect, 1989 was a strange and reverse play back of 1968.
It can be shown that the simple question of the possible historical impact of Lukács’ Democratization evokes that whole horizon, which was for the posterity of Lukács' philosophy so determinant. In this context in the consolidated real socialism of those years a new class of intellectuals represented a multiple challenge. Initially, a new intellectual class developped in the bosom of the real socialism. Dictated by the logic of the events, the first waves and generations of the new intellectual class were essentially Left oriented (this fit also largely the processes of the sixties). The question at that time was however only, that on the basis of this new class, also intellectuals of other provenance were arriving, requiring the same intellectual and medial liberties, that the left intellectuals, supported or at least tolerated by the system, have obtained40. The new problematic circle of the birth of the new class of the intellectuals was thus also still more relevant, that this new class had become, in an astonishingly short time, the model for the socialization for the youth of that time in the West and in the East. There was hardly no problem to make this new phenomenon concur with the structural and social simplicity of a post-stalinist real socialism.41
The challenge of the new class of intellectuals has however not yet finished with these conflicts. For the new class could not have found its optimal position in the former real socialism also for other, deeper and structural reasons. For the real socialist system was facing the permanent challenge of extensive reforms. In this respect, a new class of intellectuals would have been absolutely ideal for the system. On the other side, a structural integration of this new great group would be, due to the perfectly developped power structure, an inconceivable impossibility. The real processes give a faithful image of this conflict of a new type. Because the system brought the constant intellectual innovation, could however accept a class of intellectuals in no concrete form, the establishment tried to process selectively. On the one hand, the control of the intellectuals was increased, on the other hand, the establishment tried to cooperate selectively with them and to partly privilege them also.
However even this selective politics opposite the intellectuals does not yet include the moment of the true dialectics of intellectuals in the real socialism. While on the one hand, the selective dialogue namely begins with the intellectuals, the tremendous exertion of the Nomenclatura started also to transform itself in an intellectual class (!) as well. It is there not about intellectuals, that became as graduates members of the Nomenclatura, also not about young people with academic qualification. It is there essentially about initially not academically trained members of the Nomenclatura, that have acquired in the frame of most diverse evening- and correspondence courses diplomes or second grade diplomes, and on this basis, later – after renewed courses and theses - higher and higher scientific qualifications. If we would study once thoroughly the composition of the higher party bodys and committees in the last years of the Hungarian real socialism, we would have to establish problem-free the proportion of these “new” intellectuals, eventually, with the always higher scientific qualifications.
A related concern is that Lukács’ contributions to the history and identity of the real socialism are far from being quite exhausted. From today’s perspective, his theses in many cases free themselves from the carcan of the party jargon. To end the cult of the personality, he wrote for example a definition revealing as prophetic: "It is the necessary strong guarantee of a human life in a socialist state... "42 The history of the real socialism was turning in fact around this sentence. Only the miscellaneous interpretations of the "human life" shared the emotions. It is thus however the case today as well.
Notes
1 It could be methodologically interesting, that the author has tried once already this concept at Franz Werfel’s example. S. from Gargantua-Zarathustra to Hiob-Ahasver. About Franz Werfel and about the fate of the literature in our century. In : Yearbook of the Hungarian Germanistik. Budapest, 1992. 177-184.
2 We effectively think, that we can somewhat define the Stalinism in this sense as a "dialectics of the Leninism", like Adorno and Horkheimer have determined in their famous work the national socialism as "dialiectics of the Enlightenment". We must urgently emphasize, that the analogy refers only to the term "dialectics", no other conceptual comparison has therefore to be foreseen.
3 In several contexts in this study, the fact is stated, how Lukacs has himself seen the sixties and especially 1968 as a possible new commencement.
4A young Polish colleague had for example the image of the former Lukács, "he always falls on the paw," seriously considered, this judgment is certainly incorrect. In the former decades, this perception was however far from rare.- In the document published in 1969, "the socialism as phase of radical critical reforms", his approval of Stalin’s tactical steps is cited as a long series of case studies, the Stalinism does not appear as a "dialectics " but rather as a product of the historical circumstances. Stalin's steps, to establish his power, are objectively justified as a rule. The Destruction of the Reason appears in this context as "rejection"of the undifferentiated "general prevailing content of the anti-Hitler's progaganda" (Georg Lukács, Marxism and Stalinism. Political essays. Selected writings IV. Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlt), 1970. 237).He also refers similarly to literary political questions, which tactical and political orientation he originally not yet recognized (ibid, 236). Another dimension of this constant reinterpretation of his own past in small steps is somewhat the introduction to the new edition of the History and Class Consciousness or the non-reflection of Marx-Hegel's mainstream of his own philosophizing in the middle period in the Ontology. Returned to Hungary in 1945, he establishes the intellectual continuity to the Blum theses, in which he proposed between the bourgeois society and the communist take-over a transition period (and thus provoked the anger of the sectarian Béla Kun at himself). He hardly copes with the interpretation of Stalin's infringement in Hungary, he will be followed by Rákosi himself (consequently according to the historical tendencies, given his long non-perception of the problematic dimensions somewhat surprisingly), what makes the further reflection on the past as being already itself superfluous.
5There was in the Budapest of the budding year consolidated with the events of 1956 a curious fact, that many intellectuals were not non-marxist and in the usual sense also not communist, have partly opened to a neo-left and neo-marxist philosophy, so that they reached, in this context of the modernizing aura of the sixties and of 1968, social classes, that were formerly hostile to the Marxism and the system or rejected them totally.
6It could quite happen that someone, who in the case Nietzsche criticized Lukács, while he recognized the importance of the young Lukács for the Hungarian (and for the Austrian-Hungarian) intellectual history, came to suspect that he intellectually "plays" and camouflages the public discussion through this dual attitude.
7The virtual discrepancy opens by Lukács. While through the Aesthetics the consolidation of his leading philosophical authority in the Hungarian society is clearly going ahead, on the one hand, the more or less critical-defining gestures of the official institutions are increasing, while on the other hand, for example, the growing interest ans Anerkennung of the "West" overtakes quickly the lack of qualitative recognition in Hungary. Beside Garaudy and Ernst Fischer (the Prague Kafka discussion), attacks the brochure entitled About the Socialist Realism (published by the Cultural (and) Theoretical Commission beside the Central Committee of Hungary’s Socialist Labor Party, 1965) Lukács amongst the phenomena, that can be identified "today" as "Marxist" or " Marxist-oriented" conceptions of the socialist realism" (18). Already prior to this positioning, we read in the same brochure that Lukács’ "nineteenth century idealizing insights have ‘hindered’ the deployment of the socialist-realist art and art theory not only in one domain” (14) (S. in the original : A szocialista realizmusról. Published by : Az MSZMP Központi Bizottsága mellett működő Kulturális Elméleti Munkaközösség, Budapest, 1965 (Kossuth).
8It could happen in this way, that in a seminar the aesthetic-literary philosophical conceptions of a Zsolt Beöthy, a Jenő Péterfy or a Jenő Rákosi have been discussed in common with those of the young Lukács of the Emergence of the Modern Drama in the intellectual context of the century turn, or rather of the pre-war time. Starting from this point, the significant literature historian Béla G. Németh has by the way written important works.
9In the sense that we no longer lose anything more with the inheritance of the bourgeois and late bourgeois culture, because they were leading in the Nazism. Still in the seventies, the interest of the historical clarification of the individual Lukács's interpretation was regarded as very reluctant. The general attitude prevailed, may be that Lukács was here and there wrong, the statement of the destruction should be untouchable however also independently of the truth of the various interpretations.
10The simultaneous adherence to the exigences of the rationality and of the emancipation can can really typologize the Hungarian thinking : a) the simultaneous representation of the basic conceptions of rationality and emancipation (apart from the many historical waves, like the thinkers of the so-called "reform age "), represented amongst others by the classicals of the liberalism (Széchenyi or Eötvös, as well by the so-called bourgeois-radicalist thinkings from Pikler to Jászi) ; b) the demanding back defence of the simultaneous exigence on rationality and emancipation in historical situations, in which this simultaneous exigence is abandoned (Eötvös, Erdélyi, Bibó) ; c) the positive demonstration of the simultaneous exigence on rationality and emancipation and thus the enlargement of this exigence even if it finally threatens to sink (Madách, Attila József) ; d) the representation of the exigence on rationality with the rejection of the emancipation (the stalinist marxism) ; e) the emphasis of the exigence on emancipation with the elimination of the rationality (Dezső Szabó and the intellectually adherents of the Hungarian populism). – It is a true irony of the destiny, that the simultaneous adherence to rationality and emancipation constitutes, also as absolute exigence, the most profound heart of Lukács’ philosophical personality.
11 We can only very simplistically return the complexity of the situation, that could again hardly be beaten. As we know, Kafka’s "victory" was directed against a repressive conception of the realism, and thus also against Lukács. In this way, Lukács was (not for the first time) in a camp, that should not have been his. In this unreconciled tension, only the humor can help. So the legend of the year 1956 appears, when Lukács would have said in the transport of the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest : "Kafka was however a realist !"
12 In this sentence, we obviously do not understand neo-Marxism only as philosophy, but as institution in its link with the power-political corporation.
13 „Problems of the cultural co-existence”. Georg Lukács, Marxism and Stalinism. Political essays. Selected writings IV. Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlt), 1970. 228.
14"... however serious attempts can be... sufficient, to visibly make of the Stalinist type of manipulation a strange, expellable and to be expelled element in the socialist construction". For the debate between China and the Soviet Union. Theoretical-philosophical remarks. In : Georg Lukács, Marxism and Stalinism. Political essays. Selected writings IV. Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlt), 1970. 212.
15 "The mild, formally non-violent manipulation of the capitalist system is justified ... in its economical nature" (Ibid.)
16 At issue between China and the Soviet Union. Theoretical-philosophical observations. In: Georg Lukács, Marxism and Stalinism. Political essays. Selected writings IV Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlt), 1970. 209 (blocking by Lukács).
17 Ibidem.
18At issue between China and the Soviet Union. Theoretical-philosophical observations. In: Georg Lukács, Marxism and Stalinism. Political essays. Selected writings IV Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlt), 1970. 208. The whole sentence in the original text of Lukács in italic.
19The relationship of the real socialist official ideology and politics with the neo-Marxism is obviously a long chapter. A careful examination of the publication politics can give here relevant informations. But we can also ascertain that the real socialism was also not well prepared to an eventual neo-Marxist critique.
20 S. somewhat :Hans Heinz-Holz, Leo Kofler, Wolfgang Abendroth, Conversations with Georg Lukács. Published by Theo Pinkus. Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1967. (Rowohlt), 45.
21Beyer, W.R., Four criticisms. Heidegger, Sartre, Adorno, Lukácz. Köln, PRV, 1970. 232
22Beyer attributes to Lukács the lack of knowledge theory of the Hegel-Marx conception falling over in the Leninism. The irony is that Lukács himself behaves in the forties literally somewhat opposite the phenomenology.
23The "ontological aspect" disappears in the former Lukács, the phenomena have beside their epistemological contents also their ontological face. The appraisal of the author of these lines would be different today about the possibility of this philosophizing, like formerly (s. Georg Lukács' Ontology as unsucessful, nevertheless instructive renovation attempt of the neo-Marxism – or about the Hegelianism as paradigm. In: Discourse overlappings. Georg Lukács and others. Bern – Berlin – Frankfurt/Main – New York – Paris – Vienna 1990. 127-136). The two leading arguments against this antiscientism must however also today be still kept up. Since Lukács simply forgets the grounds problem. This ontological perspective does not legitimize the semantics of a philosophical conceptuality. And secondly (although we know, that the final series of the texts has not been produced by Lukács himself), it reveals as problematic that the fervent attack of the neo-positivism fell so much at the beginning of the work, what might cause, with a certain necessity, the unpleasant impression of marginality. Unfortunately, this rejection of the neo-positivism expressed namely also the rejection of the necessity of a legitimacy of the own philosophical semantics and on this line even also the one of the knowledge theory (Wissenssoziologie) itself (what has been stated also later quite explicitly !).
24 „Problems of the cultural co-existence” (1964).in : Georg Lukács, Marxism and Stalinism. Political essays. Selected writings IV. Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlt), 1970, 227
25 Lenin ismeretelmélete és a modern filozófia problémái. in: Lenin. 1970. (Magvető) 173 (Lenine’s knowledge theory and the problems of the modern philosophy).
26 Democratization today and tomorrow. Budapest, 1985. (Akadémiai).
27 It is not without any interest, that after 1989, in some places the democratic pathos is also historically again possible.
28 Democratization today and tomorrow, 170.
29 Ibidem, 171
30 Ibidem, 172
31 Ibidem, 54
32 Lukács György, Lenin. Budapest, 1970 (Magvető).225 – He even gives much importance to the clean separation of the "quite usual " notion of the habituation and of the contents articulated by Lenine (ibidem, 223.).
33 Democratization today and tomorrow, 181.
34We imagine how an anti-consumer movement could have existed in real socialist countries, where the supplying of the population with basic consumation goods stopped !
35 An example : "The non-classical character of the revolution of 1917 leans then mainly on the fact that the socialism must be realized in a phase of development, on which the effectively available economical height of production and distribution are still far from serving as basis of a concrete preparation of the ‘empire of the freedom’."Democratization today and tomorrow, 64.
36 Lenin, 217
37 Conversations, 49,
38 S. Endre Kiss, 1968-1989-2000. Az értelmiség az új baloldal és a neoliberalizmus között. in: Értelmiség – társadalom – politika 1968-1989. Szerkesztette Kiss Endre és Dalos Rimma. Budapest, 2002. 31-40.
39Here, we understand the mechanism of the big (probably the biggest) historical transformation processes. Amongst them, there is a big quantity of social and intellectual psitions suddenly necessary, which could not fulfil the other groups included in their social formations. The indispensability of the intellectuals consists in the fact that they can deliver the social composition of the great upheavals without any apparent difficulties.
40It is noticeable only during the writing down of these thoughts, that the consequently used practice of the three T’s ((Támogatni, Tűrni, Tiltani, i.e. to support, to tolerate, to ban) had no explicite conceptual (ideological) determinations. This lack of determination had in principle surely two sides. On the one hand, the "power" had appeared, through an eventual declaration of conceptual determinations, in a dialogue-relation with the society, in which we could have raised "exigences" to the public, the mediatization and the publicity because of the agreement with the foreseen contents. On the other hand, thus the "power" had restricted its political impact space. Without the declaration of principal objectives, it was namely somewhat possible to the intellectuals’ politics "only" to "tolerate" left contents, and to "support" other contents and then to also constantly modify occasionally these main points.
41Amongst others, this process was also with a background moment for Konráds and Szelényi’s concept zbout the "way of the intellectuals toward the class power". S. Konrád György-Szelényi Iván 1979. Az értelmiség útja az osztályhatalomhoz. Budapest : Gondolat. György Konrád, Iván Szelényi : The Intelligence on the way of the class power. Frankfurt/ Main 1981. – In other words, it was no coincidence, that the new intellectuals’ problematic decisively expressed in the real socialist domain first in Hungary.
42 For the debate between China and the Soviet Union. Theoretical-philosophical comments. In : Georg Lukács, Marxism and Stalinism. Political essays. Selected writings IV. Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlt), 1970. 193