Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 22:27:29 -0400
Subject: Re: Lukacs (fwd from Hans Despain)


--- Forwarded mail from hans despain <hgd9230-AT-u.cc.utah.edu>

Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 20:01:16 -0600 (MDT)
From: hans despain <hgd9230-AT-u.cc.utah.edu>
To: marxism2-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: Lukacs

Recently i have been pursuing reading Lukacs and about Lukacs.  
Incidentally, i read what Meszaros has to say about Lukacs's *Destruction of 
Reason*, which is not too much (although the index is all but 
worthless).  But what he does say is that it is a work to self-clarify  
methodological commitments and especially to self-critique his  
(Lukcas's) Weberian fallacies and rid himself of his Hegelian hangover 
(Meszaros *Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition, 1995:368ff).

Also the three or four books i have been thumbing through about Lukacs i 
have been keeping my eye open for reference to Blake, which i have seen none.

Perhaps the most interesting article i have read is Janos Kelemen's 
"Philosophy of Science and Its Critique in Georg Lukacs's *History and 
Class Consciousness*" in *Georg Lukacs: Theory, Culture and Politics 
edited by J. Marcus and Z. Tarr, Transaction Publishers: New Brunswick 
(1989).

Kelemen argues that Lukacs's *History and Class Consciousness* is a gem 
for philosophy of science issues.  He places Lukacs within the 
anti-positivist tradition.

Although Kelemen himself does not point out, this is especially 
significant (i.e. Lukacs's anti-positivism), in that Lukacs is writing 
during the very emergence of Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle.  
Logical Positivism develops, not only in protest toward the Bolsheviks's 
victory in Russia -- but closer to home -- the brewing of Fascism across 
Europe.  In this sense, the Soviet Marxists, Western Leftists, and 
conservatives alike were embracing (if not directly involved in creating) 
various versions of Positivism as The method of science.

However, at the same time Lukacs has befriended Max Weber, Karl Polanyi, 
Michael Polanyi and (especially) Karl Mannheim, all of whom where 
anti-postitivist and early contributors to the conception of a sociology 
of knowledge.  All of whom not only pre-date Thomas Kuhn's book (1962), 
but are perhaps more successful and philosophically more careful than is 
the Kuhnian sociology of knowledge.

But in any event, Kelemen points out that Lukacs does in fact accept 
positivism as the method of natural science, but claims it is not 
applicable to social science.  Hence, Lukacs can be understood to be an 
early contributor to the Hermeneutic tradition (e.g. Hans-Georg 
Gadamer).  To support this Kelemen quotes Lukacs: "When the ideal of 
scientific knowledge is applied to nature it simply furthers the progress 
of science.  But when it is applied to society it turns out to be an 
ideological weapon of the bourgeoisie" (Lukacs 1971[1923]:10).  "Thus," 
claims Kelemen "the emancipation of proletarian class consciousness 
presupposes the independence of societal knowledge from natural science" 
(Kelemen 1989:43).

More specifically, Lukacs argues just before this quote the "scientific" 
method (of positivism) "rejects the idea of contradiction and antagonism 
in its suject matter" (Lukacs 1971:10).  And when contradictions do 
emerge, it is the theory that must be wrong.  For Lukacs (and the Marxist 
tradition) contradiction is part of reality itself, whereby, social 
science requires a less restrictive methodology, namely, the (Hegelian) 
dialectic.  But of course in its "out Hegeling Hegel" applicaiton (see 
Lukacs's 1967 preface:xxiii).

Or as Lukacs puts it: "in the case of social reality these contraditions 
are not a sign of the imperfect understanding of society [as positivism 
would have it]: on the contrary, they belong to *the nature of reality 
itself and to the nature of capitalism* (Lukacs 1971:10).

The last two sections of the article deals with Lukacs's emphasis of 
totality and reality (i.e. [social] ontology).  These points must wait 
for a second post.

hans despain




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