[FRA:] Lukacs revisited

[Fred Welfare]

I decided to reread 'Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat' and today I want to make a comment on Part 1 of that 1923 article in Lukacs History and Class Consciousness.

My overall impression of Lukacs' position is that he is presenting an apology for deontology, perhaps from his understanding of the effects of neo-Kantianism on world politics as related in his Destruction of Reason (some 20 years later), and a criticism of predictive-calculative consequentialism or rationalisation. I do not think it helps much to equate the measurableness of space with the measurableness of time when claiming that the commodity structure, or exchange value of goods and labor, depends on the labor-time for their production. Underlying both Lukacs and Marx's analysis of the commodity structure is the question of how primitive distribution is explained. Lukacs seems to say that the commodity structure is connected deeply with the scheduling of labor-time during production which determines the relations of production or commodity relations. This determinism of the relations between men, of the changing of use values into exchange values,
 and therefore the changing of personal relations or free labor into social relations is intensified and objectified by the conditions of production. Although Parsons would call these objective conditions 'facilities,' the social conditions of production, of work, seems to be the issue, that is, the problem of domination between workers, between men, on the basis of presumed or authorized status. Lukacs calls the effect of the production of commodities on the laborer a mystery or a secret; didn't Marx spell out the basic mechanism of capitalist economism as the addition of surplus value from the cost of production and the intensification of labor to the use-value that results in a gouging exchange value? Is Lukacs saying that the scheduling of labor time, the selling of one's time as labor, the intensification of one's labor by the process of extracting surplus value and the commodification of labor turns the person into a commodity - hence, the
 equivalence of the slave, the serf, and wage-laborer. Reification is the process of the laborer being turned into a machine, or just like a machine, and becoming dehumanised. What seems to be missing is the question of motivation: Lukacs states that every member of society is subjected to the economic process and to the system of unified laws. Apparently this means that every individual must produce the means for their self-preservation, for survival. The larger picture of reproduction and its effect on the laborer who must then earn a "family wage" is not stated - the motivation for each man is different because their needs are different, and their starting position is also different. The theme in Lukacs on the equality of each worker that is affected by the nature of the social production of the type of commodity they produce does not seem to address the differences in social domination or the social status of the various workers. Isn't is obvious
 that the bourgeoisie or the merchants are not the only causes of the dehumanizing but also the relations between the workers? So what motivates the workers to reproduce?
 

Mr. Fred G. Welfare
NYC High School Science Teacher
631-617-9939
http://about.me/fredwelfare
 
 
 


________________________________
 From: "rdumain at autodidactproject.org" <rdumain at autodidactproject.org>
To: marxistphilosophy at yahoogroups.com 
Cc: theory-frankfurt-school at srcf.ucam.org 
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 12:37 AM
Subject: [FRA:] Lukacs revisited
 
Over a month ago I started re-reading Georg Lukács History & Class Consciousness, specifically the essay “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,” which I finished this evening after a long interruption. I began by reading the 1967 preface. I got sidetracked for a few weeks with Walter Benjamin, so my memory has faded somewhat. (I need to write up my notes on his essay on Edward Fuchs. On the other hand, Margaret Cohen’s book on Benjamin and surrealism was mostly tedious, but with some usable content.)

As I recall, I pretty much agreed with Lukács 1967 self-critique, but there was something that bothered me. I can’t remember any specific points right now, but I think the overall feeling was that this was a man preoccupied with justifying himself in terms of Marxist authority, feeling the pressure of proving himself in the face of Marxist orthodoxy, as befits a man who has little room to breathe, who has never known
 freedom. 

In the Reification essay, I was particularly looking forward to section II: “Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought”. This proved to be highly rewarding, with some of the key ideas continued into section III: “The Standpoint of the Proletariat.” I can’t remember when I first read this essay, but I was not equipped to perceive its riches at the time. I might have advanced further along earlier and faster. Because Lukács was thoroughly steeped in German idealism before turning to Marxism, he was apparently the first to discern the shape of the philosophical contradictions engendered by bourgeois society. He could see beyond not only positivism but the irrationalism connected with romantic anti-capitalism. He could outline the contradictory unity of bourgeois rationalism and bourgeois irrationalism, and the duality of ahistorical, fatalistic mechanism and spiritualist voluntarism. 

I plan to go over my notes and raise specific
 points and questions. 

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