Quotes from book
History and Class Consciousness

György LukácsOriginal title Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein, Studien über marxistische Dialektik (German, 1923)

History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics is a 1923 book by the Hungarian philosopher György Lukács, in which the author re-emphasizes Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's influence on Karl Marx, analyses the concept of "class consciousness", and attempts a philosophical justification of Bolshevism.

György Lukács photo

“Only the dialectical conception of … reality as a social process … dissolves the fetishistic forms necessarily produced by the capitalist mode of production and enables us to see them as mere illusions which are not less illusory for being seen to be necessary.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 13

György Lukács photo

“In Marx the dialectical method aims at understanding society as a whole. Bourgeois thought concerns itself with objects that arise either from the process of studying phenomena in isolation, or from the division of labor and specialisation in the different disciplines.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 28

György Lukács photo

“Unmediated concepts … veil the relations between objects. … They are, therefore, objects of knowledge, but the object which is known through them is not the capitalist system of production itself, but the ideology of its ruling class.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), pp. 13-14

György Lukács photo

“At this point bourgeois thought must come up against an insuperable obstacle, for its starting-point and its goal are always, if not always consciously, an apologia for the existing order.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 48

György Lukács photo

“From a very early stage the ideological history of the bourgeoisie was nothing but a desperate resistance to every insight into the true nature of the society it had created.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 66

György Lukács photo

“The highest degree of consciousness, the crassest form of 'false consciousness' always manifests itself when the conscious mastery of economic phenomena appears to be at its greatest.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 64

György Lukács photo

“History does not merely unfold within the terrain mapped out by these institutions. It does not resolve itself into the evolution of contents, of men and situations, etc., while the principles of society remain eternally valid. … On the contrary, history is precisely the history of these institutions, of the changes they undergo as institutions which bring men together in societies. Such institutions start by controlling economic relations between men and go on to permeate all human relations”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

and hence also man's relations with himself and with nature
Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), pp. 47-48

György Lukács photo

“Bourgeois thought judges social phenomena conscious or unconsciously, naïvely or subtly, consistently from the standpoint of the individual. No path leads from the individual to the totality.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 28

György Lukács photo

“The function of these unmediated concepts that have been derived from the fetishistic forms of objectivity is to make the phenomena of capitalist society appear as supra-rational historical essences.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 14

György Lukács photo

“Critical philosophy implies above all historical criticism. It dissolves the rigid, unhistorical, natural appearance of social institutions; it reveals their historical origins.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), p. 47

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