Lukacs
‘Dialectics of Nature’ and the ‘free creation of history’
Lukacs was an important influence on what is called 'western Marxism '. This was seen as a 'humanist ' substitute to the central Stalinist orthodoxy of the inter-War period and later. One of Lukacs most significant arguments was that there can be no dialectics of nature. We will examine the debate and go into the contradictory relationship between Lukacs ' interpretation of Marxism and Stalinism.
The ‘Dialectical Laws of History and Nature ' is a confusing and often discouraging concept for new socialists to get their head around. In reading about this, people are often put off by the determinism of these ideas. Out of this misunderstanding, a whole school of pseudo-Marxist thought has developed, which plays a harmful role in planting ideas alien to the labour movement by seeking to dumb-down or restrict Marxism. The name of Georg Lukacs crop up as the hero of this petit-bourgeois reformism and cultural-criticism of ex-Marxists for having apparently restricted Marxism and taken it down a more limited, easier-to-swallow and somewhat less revolutionary juncture.
Lukacs ' claim that the dialectical laws of human society and thought cannot be applied to nature is strange - it has no precedent in dialectical thought. Dialectics was originally developed by Ancient Greeks who thought, in a brilliant stroke of immature intuition, that the forms of the natural world must be similar to those of their own thought; this tradition was continued by Hegel, who attempted to show that dialectics and science were compatible. This idea naturally sat well with Marx and Engels, who attempted to extract the ‘rational kernel ' from Hegel 's mysticism, to the extent that Engels wrote an entire book on this theme (Dialectics of Nature). The idea that dialectical laws have no reference to the objective world is therefore external to the history of dialectics itself.
Because Lukacs and others wish to turn Marxism down a
Lukacs was an important influence on what is called 'western Marxism '. This was seen as a 'humanist ' substitute to the central Stalinist orthodoxy of the inter-War period and later. One of Lukacs most significant arguments was that there can be no dialectics of nature. We will examine the debate and go into the contradictory relationship between Lukacs ' interpretation of Marxism and Stalinism.
The ‘Dialectical Laws of History and Nature ' is a confusing and often discouraging concept for new socialists to get their head around. In reading about this, people are often put off by the determinism of these ideas. Out of this misunderstanding, a whole school of pseudo-Marxist thought has developed, which plays a harmful role in planting ideas alien to the labour movement by seeking to dumb-down or restrict Marxism. The name of Georg Lukacs crop up as the hero of this petit-bourgeois reformism and cultural-criticism of ex-Marxists for having apparently restricted Marxism and taken it down a more limited, easier-to-swallow and somewhat less revolutionary juncture.
Lukacs ' claim that the dialectical laws of human society and thought cannot be applied to nature is strange - it has no precedent in dialectical thought. Dialectics was originally developed by Ancient Greeks who thought, in a brilliant stroke of immature intuition, that the forms of the natural world must be similar to those of their own thought; this tradition was continued by Hegel, who attempted to show that dialectics and science were compatible. This idea naturally sat well with Marx and Engels, who attempted to extract the ‘rational kernel ' from Hegel 's mysticism, to the extent that Engels wrote an entire book on this theme (Dialectics of Nature). The idea that dialectical laws have no reference to the objective world is therefore external to the history of dialectics itself.
Because Lukacs and others wish to turn Marxism down a
References: Morley, Daniel. “Web Page Title.” http://www.marxist.com/georg-lukacs.htm (accessed April 29, 2013). * Granville, Johanna, "The First Domino: International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956", Texas A & M University Press, 2004. ISBN 1-58544-298-4 * Kadvany, John, 2001. Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-2659-0. * KGB Chief Kryuchkov to CC CPSU, 16 June 1989 (trans. Johanna Granville). Cold War International History Project Bulletin 5 (1995): 36 [from: TsKhSD, F. 89, Per. 45, Dok. 82.]