There's something about Lukacs: capitalism and class consciousness

Counterfire has a very illuminating new theoretical piece about Georg Lukacs, 'Reification and the class consciousness of the proletariat', by Tony McKenna. It complements my own earlier article on Lukacs after Leninism. Here's a flavour of the new article:

'Lukács’ 'Reification and the Class Consciousness of the Proletariat' is a disorganized but masterful essay written in the aftermath of the greatest revolution ever known.

1917 shook the entire world and all over the poor and oppressed were given a powerful impetus, not least because now history could no longer appear as a phantasmagoria, a nebulous and remote myriad of wishes, desires and policies shaped in the minds of Tsars or ministers and formalized in huge, fortified buildings which exclude the vast majority of humanity.

1917 powerfully revealed to man ‘the tendencies out of whose dialectical opposition he can make the future’ and demonstrated that these tendencies exist in society’s midst. The present was revealed through consciousness as ‘a process of becoming’.'

Also, Chris Nineham's new little book on Lukacs - an introduction to his ideas - is now available, along with 'Strategy and tactics' by John Rees. See HERE for the order form.

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