Download pdf - Lukacs' Later Ontology

S&S Quarterly, Inc.Guilford Press

Lukcs' Later OntologyAuthor(s): Paul BrowneSource: Science & Society, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 193-218Published by: Guilford PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40403069 .Accessed: 22/11/2013 06:46

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

S&S Quarterly, Inc. and Guilford Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toScience &Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.63.226.142 on Fri, 22 Nov 2013 06:46:48 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Science & Society, Vol. 54, No. 2, Summer 1990, 193-218

0

Lukcs' Later Ontology

PAUL BROWNE

I

THE EARLY 1930S ONWARDS, Georg Lukcs gradually began working out a new dialectical ontology, at the heart of which was the concept of labor (Lukcs, 1967,

1983). l Unable for political reasons before 1956 to develop this historical materialist ontology in a fully explicit and systematic fashion, Lukcs only undertook the task in the 1960s in The Specificity of the Aesthetic and the Ontology of Social Being. The idea of Marxism as a self-mediating, self-critical vision of the world, rooted in a dialectical ontology of social being, represented the instrument and program of Lukcs' endeavors in later life.

Lukcs' early writings have justifiably received enormous attention from scholars in recent years, to the extent that his "road to Marx" has become a well-worn path. In contrast, his final philosophical work, the 1700-page Ontology of Social Being, remains almost completely unknown. Although written in the 1960s, the original German edition was not published in full until 1986. However the full edition has been available for a number of years in translation, and three key chapters have been available in English for some ten years.2 Despite this, what had been intended

1 I would like to thank Michelle Weinroth, Chris Arthur, Douglas Moggach and Bill Livant for their help and encouragement in my work on dialectical ontology.

2 The original German edition of the Ontology was not published in full until the mid-1980s (Lukcs, 1984; 1986). However, Chapters 3, 4 and 5 of the book were published as separate volumes by Luchterhand in the early 1970s: Hegels falsche und echte Ontologie (1971), Die ontologischen Grundprinzipien von Marx (1972), Die Arbeit (1973). These three chapters were subsequently published by Merlin Press of London in an English translation by David Fernbach (Lukcs, 1978a, 1978b, 1980). These are the only parts of the Ontology to have appeared in English so far. The complete edition of the Ontology has been translated into other languages, such as Italian and Hungarian: Per l'ontologia dell'essere sociale, Roma: Editori Riuniti, I, 1976, II, 1977; A trsadalmi Ut ontolgijrl, I: T'rtneti fejezetek, II: Szistematikus fejezetek, III: Prolegomena, Budapest: Magvet, 1976.

193


194 SCIENCE f SOCIETY

as Lukcs' final synthesis of historical materialism remains virtually unread and unnoticed, nearly 20 years after his death.3 The aim of this article is to initiate discussion of the book, by outlining its purpose, its central category of labor, and some of its theoretical and political implications.

Like Karel Kosik's contemporary book, The Dialectics of the Concrete, the Ontology is above all a reflection on the conditions, structure and differentiation of human activity, and on the relation between value and history. Its essential concern is the possibility of human emancipation after the discrediting of the dogmatic Marxisms of the Second International, the Comintern and the Cominform years. Lukcs' commitment is to a radical democratization of social life, to a vision of a society free of exploitation or domination.

The current historical epoch is marked by the complementary trends of ecological disaster and reification of social relations and processes (characterized by the coexistence of narrow fields of scientific rationalization and the backdrop of an everyday life dominated by superstition - e.g., the magical belief in the om- nipotence of technology). In this context the defetishizing, enlightening mission of Lukcs' Ontology becomes clear. Three points in particular deserve mention here:

(i) in a so-called post-industrial age in which language and information have supposedly supplanted labor and production, the Ontology establishes, by categorial analysis, the ontological primacy of labor within social being;

(ii) in a time of unprecedented ecological deterioration, the Ontology places nature firmly on the agenda of historical materialism;

(iii) in a period suffering from the hangover induced by the

3 The Ontology has been virtually, but not totally ignored. A number of publications dealing with it in one way or another are available in English (Boella, 1985; Browne, 1987; Heller, 1983; HFMV, 1983; Jos, 1983; Prev, 1988; Varga, 1985). However, none of these texts attempts to provide the reader with a synoptic view of dialectical ontology as a project. With the exception of Preve, all these commentators tend to approach Lukcs' work with a very specific polemical or conceptual issue in mind and fail to address his thought in its own terms. For attempts to do this, one must turn to secondary literature in other languages (see Franco, 1986; Preve, 1986; Tertulian, 1980, 1984). But it is surely indispensable to establish what Lukcs was attempting to do before condemning the Ontology's alleged political implications as some have done (Boella, 1985; HFMV, 1983). The primary aim of this article is to draw attention to a very rich, worthwhile and unfairly neglected work by one of the greatest of Marxist philosophers.


LUKCS' LATER ONTOLOGY 195

orgiastic celebration of the "death of the subject," the Ontology soberly clarifies the constitution, attributes and limits of subjectivity, teleology and freedom.

One can sum up the guiding spirit of the Ontology in Lukcs' slogan: return to Marx! (Heller, 1983, 189). In a sense the book is no more than a commentary on several key passages in Marx's writings: the critique of Hegel in the 1844 Manuscripts; the chapter on the labor process in Capital, Volume I; the 1857 "Introduc- tion to the Critique of Political Economy"; etc. But the Ontology also offers something new and quite different. Lukcs' return to Marx is, in true dialectical fashion, a move forward into a new stage in the development of historical materialism. Lukcs draws out the implications of Marx's statements in the light of Nicolai Hartmann's insight into the need for an ontological elucidation of the complexity of reality. This enables Lukcs to make great strides in clarifying the categorial structure of being. The crucial idea is that being is complex, historical and highly differentiated: inorganic, organic and social being all have different categorial structures. Social being itself is a complex of complexes, which emerges historically from organic being, just as the latter emerged historically from inorganic being. Social being is a totality (but never an identity) made up of differently constituted, highly differentiated, historically emergent and changing spheres of human activity. The basic units of social being are themselves complex: individual humans as biological entities are subject to laws of inorganic and organic as well as social being; and the basic structure of social practice also displays a complex dialectic of categories which never achieve a final identity.

The term "ontology" is an awkward one, given its metaphysi- cal antecedents which aim at elucidating fundamental, universal categories of Being beyond history, and thus beyond the basic qualitative difference between nature and society (for a critique of attempts to construe Marxism as an ontology understood in that sense, see Schmidt, 1971, and Moggach, 1981). Lukcs uses ontology in a rather different sense, as implying a particular attitude towards reality, consisting of the discovery of "the forms of being that new movements of the complex produce" (Pinkus, 1975, 21). As such, ontology is concerned with the actually existing conditions of concrete reality, rather than the possibilities and principles of cognition of reality, and seeks to transcend this level of



immediate concreteness by elucidating the various different forms of being which converge in it. Ontology implies a historical understanding of its object, a reconstruction of complexes in their real development, rather than some logical deduction of categories. At the same time it never forgets the irreducible complexity of being: ontology can never uncover some individual element from which all others are derived historically. Lukcs is thus far removed here from the metaphysics of the Subject, the Origins and the End which haunts the imaginations of post-structuralists. For Lukcs complexity is the foundation of historicity, and totality as a complex is itself made up of complexes (Lukcs, 1978b, 27). Within society, the individual represents an irreducible complex of different forms of being (inorganic, organic, social) and society itself is always a complex of heterogeneous relations in which humans engage, through collective reproductive and transforma- tive activity, in a constant metabolism with nature (organic and inorganic being), both human and non-human.

Ontology does not just grasp reality as dialectical but is itself dialectical in its structure and development. In the final analysis, all human activity tends to proceed "ontologically," in that it must first address the "really existent," master it (moment of analysis) and transcend it (moment of synthesis). In stressing that every ontological inquiry must start from the really existent, Lukcs has in mind what Karel Kosik calls the pseudo-concrete (Kosik, 1978), the phenomenal forms of social life as they present themselves to analysis in a given concrete situation. Beginning with the most elementary forms of social activity as they appear in the everyday life of individuals, ontological analysis of immediate reality discovers more and more complex mediations until it arrives at the most fundamental structural features of its object; but it also involves the historical investigation of the emergence and becoming of categories of social being (Lukcs, 1978b, 12).4 This investigation is followed by the reconstruction of the concrete, the return to the initial starting point but now seen in the light of this odyssey of the mind. Reality now appears as the "rich totality of many determinations and relations" (Marx, 1973, 100). Marxist ontology

4 For an analysis of how Lukcs puts this method into practice in The Specificity of the Aesthetic, see Rusch, 1986, and Tertulian, 1980; for similar comments on method, see Hartmann, 1953, 29.



in Lukcs' sense generalizes the method of Marx's critique of political economy. This is no doubt why the eight chapters of the Ontology are divided into a survey of different approaches to the problem of ontology (reminiscent of Marx's Theories of Surplus Value) and a logical reconstruction of the main categories, moving from the abstract to the concrete (and reminiscent as such of Capital).

Of course this parallelism should be interpreted with caution. Lukcs no doubt intended his critique of the major currents of 20th-century philosophy - how these had enshrined reification in refined systems - to be reminiscent of Marx's critique of the theoretical codification of the phenomenal forms of capitalist society in the pseudo-concrete categories of political economy. Marx sought in Capital to uncover the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production; the Ontology appears to seek the basic structures of social being itself. However, it is worth noting that the systematic part of the Ontology is entitled "The Most Important Problems." It does not claim to expound in an ex- haustive way the categories of social being. Rather, its aim, and that of the book as a whole, is to intervene polemically and politically in the context of Eastern European politics in the era of dtente, in order to "bend the stick" forward towards a genuine "return to Marx" - a return which could not help but present a completely new understanding of Marx, if it was to be a genuine dialectical appropriation of his legacy. Although the structure of the book is reminiscent of Marx, it should be taken more as a symbol of the spirit which animates it than as evidence of an exact correspondence between it and Marx's magnum opus. Lukcs intended ontology (as a method), not Ontology (as a book) to be synonymous with Marx's Critique. In this sense, Marx and Lukcs share the objective of dialectically discovering the essence by analyzing the unfolding of the phenomena, and in this way of reconstructing in thought the structures of reality. Both Lukcs and Marx follow Hegel in rejecting Kant's contention that things- in-themselves are unknowable. They believe instead that cognition of the thing-in-itself can be achieved, by showing that reality as it is in itself is the totality which is brought to light when phenomena are grasped in the essential unity of their dialectical unfolding.

One might well ask here whether the reconstruction of the


198 SCIENCE & SOCIETY

concrete is to be achieved by the self-movement of the concept itself (as in Hegel's Logic), or whether instead it consists of "adding in" empirical facts earlier abstracted. Lukcs' and Marx's project is to reconstruct the structure of the concrete by seizing the essence within the succession of phenomena. This is not in their view a self-movement of the concept, but the a posteriori systematic conceptualization of an already existing reality. The exposition of this systematic theory presents categories in a logical rather than chro- nological order. The order of categories in Capital does not mir- ror their historical order of emergence (Browne, 1980, 254-270).

In the initial stages of the exposition only those categories are examined which in their abstract generality are directly pertinent to the presentation of the most crucial aspects of the problem; further stages of the exposition can then progressively integrate into this introductory outline ever more concrete determinations and specifications of the actual state of affairs in its full complexity. As Lukcs puts it:

Since a real isolation of individual processes by means of actual experiments is ontologically excluded in the area of social being, there can only be thought experiments of an abstractive character, which are employed to investigate theoretically how specific economic relations, connections, forces, etc. work themselves out, when all the circumstances that block, inhibit and modify their validity in its pure form are excluded. (Lukcs, 1978b, 33; Lukcs' comments are based on Marx's "1857 Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy" and on the preface to the first German edition of Capital, Volume I.)

There is no question here of some speculative self-development of the Concept, "concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself; rather, "the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind" (Marx, 1973, 101).

The orientation towards the "really existent," and therefore the insistence on the "concrete analysis of the concrete situation," is the fundamental principle Lukcs seeks to stress in the Ontology. In expounding this methodological stance, Lukcs engages in a continuous polemic against all philosophies which conflate ontology with logic and epistemology, or which subordinate the former to the latter. Lukcs goes so far in this that he seems at times to advocate the complete rejection and abandonment of epistemol-



ogy as such. Of course this is polemical over-statement. As will become clear in the course of this exposition, Lukcs' later philosophy could not possibly dispense with epistemology. However Lukcs sees Marxist ontology and the thought of its precursors from the Renaissance onwards as linked to the rise of science and thus the struggle to emancipate humanity from religious mystification and manipulation. Where the young Lukcs shared Max Weber's tragic vision of modernity as dis- enchantment and rationalization of the world, the later Lukcs adopts a more optimistic and positive assessment (Franco, 1986, 132-133), often even quoting Marx's comments on the pro- gressive character of capitalist development in world history (Lukcs, 1984, 595). In observing that philosophy has been dominated for the last few centuries by epistemology and logic, Lukcs claims that the social mission of epistemology from Car- dinal Bellarmini to Kant and to the present was to establish the scientific hegemony of natural science while at the same time preserving a space for religious or quasi-religious (irrationalist) ontologies. Thus Kantian philosophy recognizes the validity of scientific thought in the phenomenal world, but simultaneously places the world-in-itself beyond the reach of understanding, thereby making it a possible object of fideism.

Max Weber's position can be seen as typical of the development of this problematic. While giving expression to the disrepute into which religious ontology had fallen by his time, he nevertheless held to a vision of reality as essentially irrational. His theory is consequently founded on a relativist epistemology which denies the possibility of objective knowledge grasping the essence and fundamental structures of social reality. But when Lukcs uses the Weberian term "thought experiment" to describe the ontological method of abstraction, he is poles apart from Weber (Lukcs, 1984, 7-8, 325ff.; on Weber's notion of the "thought experiment" see Weber, 1968). Lukcs does not believe in the possibility of science ever exhaustively explaining all of reality once and for all; at most it can tend towards that goal, achieving ever closer ap- proximations of the real, because of the infinite richness and intrinsic historicity of the concrete. For this reason, Lukcs talks of "thought experiments." But whereas Weber concludes from the infinity of the particular that one cannot avoid nominalism, Lukcs like Marx holds to the realist position that theory can


200 SCIENCE tf SOCIETY

represent the essential laws of motion of social existence, and that the fundamental categories of social thought are categories of being.

For Lukcs the decisive categories which allowed the development of the materialist dialectic stem from Hegel, notwithstand- ing the great differences between the latter and Marx. One cannot overestimate the importance for dialectical ontology of Hegel's notion of totality as the "identity of identity and non- identity," which first begins to bring out the full meaning of the "unity of opposites." For the point of such a unity is precisely that the opposites are one and yet several, the same and yet different - a difference which is irreducible. The unity of opposites is a reflection determination (Lukcs, 1984, 527ff). Lukcs follows Hegel in grasping reflection determinations not just as constella- tions of autonomous and independently existing objects facing each other in complete opposition and mutual exclusion, but as categories whose opposed and exclusive character is simultaneously a necessary unity of mutual determination and definition.

The reflection determinations mark Hegel's supersession of mechanical materialism, subjective idealism and romanticism. Hegel's conceptualization of distinction-within-unity allowed him to avoid the Enlightenment's conflation of natural and social ontologies and to grasp history as something qualitatively new in relation to nature. Moreover Hegel conceived of distinction- within-unity as a process, as the systematic development of categories through their differentiation and supersession. In opposition to subjective idealism, he saw the dialectic not merely as the work of theory, but as the actual evolution of reality itself, and the categories as the actual components of objective reality. Other thinkers had developed views of reality as dialectical; but Lukcs sees Hegel as the first since Heraclitus to make contradiction the fundamental ontological principle and the first to grasp reality in its immanence. This clearly distinguishes Hegel from philosophers of transcendence such as Nicholas Cusanus or Schelling, who explained the world not in terms of a principle immanent to itself (which Hegel's Absolute Spirit is in Lukcs's view), but in terms of an ultimate transcendent Being or Principle, and who thus remained trapped in religious (or crypto-religious) ontology.



According to Lukcs, Hegel's dialectic provides the basis for overcoming all one-sided, dualist and reductionist forms of thought. However, despite all of these advances, it fails to satisfy Lukcs completely. He sees the central problem of Hegel's philosophy as the reconciliation of a view of the historical present as the realization of reason on the one hand, and of a recognition of the contradictory character of reality on the other. Now it is possible to discern a rationality in history and even attribute to the latter an autonomy in relation to each of the individual lives and actions it contains. An individual existence cannot direct history or consciously alter its fundamental tendencies. Rather it finds its own conditions of realization and the limits of its possibilities in it. Nevertheless historical rationality is itself the product of the activity of human individuals (Lukcs, 1984, 486).

Hegel tends, however, to grasp history not as the rational process of development of humanity in relation to nature, but as the natural and human process of development of Reason. This idealist inversion of subject and predicate implies a teleological view of history as a logical progression in which individual logical categories are identical to real ones, and their combina- tion and succession, as well as hierarchical order, are identical to the ontological genesis and structure of reality. As Marx put it, speaking of Hegel's political philosophy: "The concern of philosophy is not the logic of the subject-matter but the subject- matter of logic. Logic does not provide a proof of the state but the state provides a proof of logic" (quoted by Lukcs, 1978a, 20).

Hegel grasps the relationship between logical and ontological questions as one of simple identity. However the necessities of this logical system cause Hegel repeatedly to do violence to reality in his presentation of it, contrary to his own dialectical method which aimed at revealing the inner laws of motion of the phenomena themselves. For Lukcs, one can say that Hegel's philosophy contains two ontologies: a genuine ontology, which grasps categories as "dynamic components of reality," and reality as "universal historicity moving in contradictions"; and a false ontology, in which genuine ontological relationships are distorted through their insertion in the straightjacket of a preconceived, rigid logical hierarchy. The reflection determinations represent the core of Hegel's genuine ontology, while the identical subject-



object, and the conflation of objectification and alienation, are the vehicles of his false ontology (Lukcs, 1984, 489ff.; Lukcs, 1975, 537-567).

In making this distinction between logic and ontology, Lukcs is able to bring together the criticism of the three main faults Marx discovered in Hegel: the inversion of subject and predicate, speculative construction, and the conflation of the philosophical development of categories with their realization in reality. The first denotes Hegel's attribution of ontological primacy to consciousness over being, the second the construction of a system of categories on this basis and the third the identification of the logically ordered development of categories in philosophical presentation with their real genesis and historical development. Lukcs thus re- capitulates the Marxist critique of Hegel's idealism, but gives it a new, more comprehensive, formulation. At the same time, while Lukcs appears to accept Engels' criticism of a contradiction between system and method in Hegel, his analysis clearly indicates the limits of this approach. For the latter is primarily concerned with the closure of Hegel's system, with the problem of the "end of history." Lukcs' analysis shows that the "system/method" contradiction does not just appear in the culmination of Hegel's system, but affects it throughout, and is better described as a contradiction between a false and genuine ontology. The problem here lies not so much in the systematic as in the hierarchical nature of the categorical presentation. Hegel fits everything into the system in such a way that the "later, higher placed category [is] the 'truth' of the earlier, lower one, so that the logical relationship between those two categories constitutes the essential connection of real objective complexes" (Lukcs, 1978a, 51). Thus animal nature becomes the truth of vegetable nature, and the earth the truth of the solar system. Blatant discrepancies emerge between logic and genuine ontology in the logically hierarchical construction of systems.

The effect of Engels' only partial critique of Hegel in terms of his system and method can be seen from his failure to draw a clear distinction between the dialectics of nature and the dialectics of social being. In Anti-Dhring and elsewhere he attempted to de- fine some general laws of dialectics and demonstrate that historical dialectics have their basis in the dialectics of nature. But in doing so he attributed universal ontological validity to logical



principles which are ontologically effective only at certain levels of being or which operate differently at the various levels. He thus ended up obscuring the specificity of certain categories, while completely ignoring others or presenting them inadequately. The classic response to this position was that of Lukcs himself, in History and Class Consciousness. But while the description in the latter of nature as a social category is epistemologically correct, it is ontologically quite inadequate. Whereas Engels' fault lies in the confusion of logical and ontological questions, Lukcs' error in History and Class Consciousness can be traced to the occlusion of the ontological by the epistemological question of nature - a problem directly linked to the notion of the identical subject-object. In the Ontology, Lukcs allows for a dialectic of nature, but stresses the fact that not all categories operate or have the same function at all levels of being, or in all complexes.

II

For Lukcs the basic model for all social practice, and as such the necessary starting point for the systematic exposition of the ontology of social being, must be sought in the labor process. The latter marks the transition from nature to society, for it is the insuperable metabolism between social, organic and inorganic being without which society could not exist (Lukcs, 1980). The social theory of History and Class Consciousness brackets out nature. Lukcs' later ontology returns nature squarely to the heart of social theory by choosing labor as its starting point. To ensure its own survival, humanity must "appropriate Nature's productions in a form adapted to its own wants" (Marx, 1977, 173) on an ongoing basis; human beings must therefore constantly oppose themselves to nature as her own forces. The distinction between humanity and nature, and therefore between subject and object, emerges, and is ever posited anew, within the labor process. The subject-object dialectic cannot be found in inorganic and organic being, but is specific to social being. In constituting this dialectic, the labor process inaugurates a new realm of being characterized by its own specific structure and laws of motion. The appearance of this new realm however in no way abolishes organic and inorganic being, which retain their autonomy. The complexity and heterogeneity of being in general is insuperable. The focus on labor signals



Lukcs' abandonment of his youthful quest for an identity which would abolish an original autonomy of life in relation to form, and his espousal instead of a philosophy of non-identity directed towards the exploration of the dialectical unity-within-distinction of processes of being. Finally, labor is the founding category of social being, because it is the basic source of the latter's historicity: in changing their natural world by their labor, human beings also change their own nature.

To take the labor process as the basic model does not imply that it represents some supposed essence to which all else could be reduced, or that societies do not necessarily encompass a lot more than what is contained in the immediate metabolism between humans and nature, or that struggles over "economic" production in the narrow sense defined by the capitalist mode of production are politically necessarily more important than other sorts of conflict. In choosing to begin with the labor process Lukcs is abstracting the complex which best defines the specificity of social being in relation to nature. All other social complexes already involve labor as a constituent of their social character. Lukcs insists repeatedly on the abstract character of his discussion of the labor process and on its provisional nature, as merely one level of analysis to be superseded by other, more concrete ones, just as the analysis of value in the first volume of Capital is superseded by the analysis of prices of production in the third volume.

The central character of the concept of labor in the Ontology is grounded in the fact that the labor process displays, at least in ovo, all of the essential characteristics of social being. The labor process is not structured as a set of antinomies to be eventually sublated once and for all in an all-encompassing identity (as in History and Class Consciousness), but rather as a set of reflection determinations which ceaselessly interpenetrate and separate out again, their identity and distinctiveness abolished and reproduced in an incessant dialectic. Social being generally is characterized by a number of such series of dialectical interactions which are specific to it and which first arise in the labor process. In human nature a part of nature distinguishes itself from nature as such. Consciousness emerges as the opposite of being, as a non-being, which is nevertheless a necessary moment of being without which the dialectic of social existence could not arise. The dialectic of being and consciousness is only intelligible as the dialectic between



subject and object in material activity in which the human agent confronts the reality constituted by past activity, and in transforming it constitutes a new objectivity. The process of this transformation must be grasped as a dialectic of theory and practice, with theory consisting in the positing of an end and the discovery of the means of its realization, and practice as the attainment of the end through the setting in motion of the necessary means. The labor process thus involves a dialectic between possibility and actuality predicated on the dialectic between positing of the end and investigation of the means (the availability of the latter alone making the goal an objective possibility and allowing the actualization of the potentialities inherent in the being of objects).5

As a dialectic of subject and object, of theory and practice, of end and means, labor resolves the antinomy of teleology and causality, and reveals their unity-within-distinction as a reflection determination. All human practice consists of teleological projects setting in motion causal series. The outcome of labor is always causally determined but the causes are posited by the subject, and are thus transformed, without their nature being violated. Nature remains "a system of complexes whose law-like character persists in complete indifference to all human efforts and ideas" (Lukcs, 1980, 11-12). Investigation of the means discovers in this system various properties which in given combinations enable the subject to realize the posited goal. The stone as such contains no inherent tendency to become an axe. But certain of its properties allow the laborer to make an axe of it (Lukcs, 1980, 10-1 1). As Lukcs puts it:

The teleological positing "simply" makes use of nature's own activity, while on the other hand . . . the transformation of this activity makes it its own opposite. This natural activity is thus transformed, without a change in the natural ontology of its foundations, into something posited. . . . Without being subjected to an internal change, the natural objects and natural forces give rise to something completely different; man in his labour can fit their properties, and the laws of their motion, into completely new combinations, endowing them with com-

5 When considering the individual labor process as it relates to other social complexes, i.e., in a more concrete context, one would have to include this very relation among the conditions of actualization of its end. When we consider the labor process in abstraction from social conditions, investigation of the means refers only to discovery of the tools and materials (and the organic and inorganic conditions of their implementation) needed to carry out purposive activity.


206 SCIENCE s? SOCIETY

pletely new functions and modes of operation. But since this can only be done from amid the insuperable ontological character of natural laws, the only altera- tion in the natural categories can consist in the fact that they are posited - in the ontological sense; their positedness is the mediation of their subordination to the determining ideological positing, which is also what makes the posited in- terweaving of causality and teleology into a unitary and homogeneous object, process, etc.

Nature and labour, means and end, thus produce something that is in itself homogeneous: the labour process, and finally the product of labour. (Lukcs, 1980, 12-13.)

Practice determines specific objects by isolating, or abstracting, them from their given context and projecting them into a new complex (it makes no difference whether such objects are use- values or social relations). Determination is negation of the existing state of affairs and the positing of a new objectivity (Moggach, 1981; Lefbvre, 1968, 119ff.).

According to Lukcs the characteristic nature of negations in the realm of social being resides "in the fact that every human social activity is necessarily the product of alternatives, and presupposes a choice or decision in relation to these. The alternative thus gives rise to a bifurcation of the objective world effected by the subject on the basis of the known properties of the object, in relation to the reactions which the interactions with the world induce" (Lukcs, 1978a, 45-46). This bifurcation takes the form of a series of oppositions, ranging from that between useful and non-useful to the most highly developed and relatively autonomous values, such as good and evil. The positing of such oppositions presupposes a homogenization of heterogeneous reality by previous practice, and the act of choice gives rise to a new state of affairs. Every form of practice takes the form of a teleological positing, i.e. the setting of goals, of purpose, involving an irreducible choice between alternatives.

The subject-object relation plays itself out in every moment of the history of social being and can never achieve a final reconciliation. It must constantly go through the phases of distinction and unity which mark the growth and renewal of human nature (Lukcs, 1984, 499ff.). Labor is a phenomenological process, but not one which leads to the realization of an identical subject- object, but rather which involves a heightening and enrichment of



subjectivity within life, a metabolism in which humans constantly both unite with, and distinguish themselves from, nature and each other. For there to be a dialectical unity, the elements of the relationship must not be juxtaposed in a merely external fashion to each other, but must participate in a common unity. On a very abstract level the latter may be understood in an initial moment as the homogeneous sphere of nature in which humanity and its environment are immediately united. In a second moment the homogeneity of this sphere is disrupted by the teleological positing, setting in motion the labor process and thus a new sphere of (social) being, heterogeneous in relation to the first. Finally the unfolding of reflection determinations (substance-subject, causality-teleology, necessity-freedom) in the labor process constitutes a new homogeneous medium, a higher unity of humanity and nature in society.

This homogeneous medium is not merely the use-value pro- duced, but also the network of social relations, the new forms of practice, and the array of new means of production and forms of labor power, created by the labor process, in short all the objectifications of human activity. In the labor process and other forms of social practice, the human subject objectifies itself, in that in transforming external reality and thereby itself, it constitutes new forms of objectivity, which include both use-values and social relations. Lukcs emphasizes the need to supersede the vulgar materialist view that materiality consists only of actual physical things, while other forms of objectivity, such as social relations and products of thought, are attributed to the "supposedly autonomous activity of consciousness" (Lukcs, 1963, I, 589).

While reality, as humans confront it, is always mediated by the social totality, i.e., by human practice, it is still more than a mere product, as it is characterized by complexes and laws of organic and inorganic being which exist independently of human activity. Objectification does not represent the creation of new matter out of nothingness, but an interaction between subject and object in which a new objectivity arises. Human beings act upon the world as it is given, use the materials contained in it, and set in motion its processes in order to realize goals they have posited. "Through labour, a teleological positing is realized within material being, as the rise of a new objectivity" (Lukcs, 1980, 3; 1963, I, 552-553). The hiatus between form and matter which bedevilled Kantian-



ism and the subsequent idealist attempts to supersede it, is both affirmed and negated here. The form-giving principle - the teleological positing - is united with matter, inasmuch as, in Marx's words, "man confronts nature as one of her own forces" (Marx, 1977, 173); at the same time the teleological positing determines a portion of existing reality as matter within the medium of a new labor process, thus creating a discontinuity implying a rupture or heterogeneity between form and matter.

Looking at the issue on the more concrete plane of history, we then have to distinguish two processes: the confrontation of subject and object and its supersession, as a process of objectification in the labor process; and the opposition between subject and object as a process of alienation in the division of labor and the institution of private property. In History and Class Consciousness the first process tended to be reduced to the second one in the analysis of capitalist society, with the consequence that the abolition of alienation was seen as the abolition of objectification, of the distinction between subject and object, and thus as the identity of subject and object instead of their dialectical unity.

Under the assumption of the identical subject-object, with objectivity but the self-externalization of the subject, the latter's adequate self-consciousness (the standpoint of totality or imputed proletarian class consciousness) is the truth. Adequate knowledge must be immediately given; the opacity of immediacy would characterize a state of reification. However, the non-identity of subject and object is inevitable, because of the insuperable character of the natural boundary and the insuperable relative autonomy of individual subjectivity within collective practice. Given the dynamic unity of subject and object displayed in labor, the constant need to bridge the gap between actual and potential knowledge means that immediate consciousness remains inadequate without by that token being reified. Absolute truth is then the constantly expanding limit of knowledge traced by the extent of human objectification, and knowledge must be grasped as a process of perpetual approximation. The nature of truth, and the criterion of practice which determines epistemological validity, appear as highly differentiated. Given the postulate of the identical subject-object, proletarian revolution could appear as an in- stant of revelation and fulfillment during which all other instants could be experienced in their true essence. The rejection of



the identical subject-object leads to the definition of truth as a process. Its many moments range from the minute empirical observations made in the labor process to the all-encompassing categorial system of dialectical ontology. It is determined throughout by the entire complex of human objectifications, from the simplest activities of everyday life to the most highly developed practices, such as art, science or philosophy.

The totality of society is a complex of complexes constituted by human teleological positings and the causal series they set in motion. The processes, relationships and products which arise out of these teleological positings can crystallize into structures of objectivity which then become the material and instruments, as well as the conditioning context and medium, of further positings. Social being is thus constituted by an incessant dialectic between individual human beings, processes of objectification, objectified structures of action and thought, and society as a whole. In the entire prehistory of humanity (i.e., in all social formations up to the present, including the capitalist mode of production and "post-revolutionary" societies, in which alienation has not been abolished), human beings have no adequate grasp of the overall social process. While in precapitalist modes of production they are above all dominated by the forces of organic and inorganic nature, in the capitalist era alienated human productive capacities and social relationships become the dominant force.6 Historically, the division of labor accompanying the development of productive forces causes various complexes to acquire a relative autonomy, their own dynamic and rhythm of development, and to become self-perpetuating institutions. Such are art, science and philosophy, which have their distant roots in the investigation of means which is part of every technological project. But such complexes nevertheless are only actualized, only have social valid-

6 Of course, since there can never be an identical subject-object, total control of all social and natural processes is out of the question. The labor process for one thing constantly produces unintended and unforeseen results, which constitute the basis for further development but which also constantly present new, unresolved problems. This in itself renders illusory the idea that a "scientific management" of social development by a centralized authority would lead to the swiftest and most efficient resolution of society's problems. In fact, and this is an implication of the final chapter of History and Class Consciousness, as well as of the Ontology, socialist planning must involve the development of the greatest possible maturity of knowledge and consciousness in each member of society, an option only conceivable given the greatest possible democratization.



ity and meaning, in the context of subject-object relationships which are always structured as teleological projects. What this signifies is that thought is never a detached, neutral, value-free contemplation of reality. While it reflects and represents reality, it always does so in the context of a specific process of objectification in which it assumes a particular form and is animated by certain values. It is always therefore a projection, reproduction and creation of meaning. Even in art and science, in which the subject raises himself above everyday experience, there is always a dimen- sion of partisanship. Arising historically as autonomous spheres out of the problem of investigation of means, and actualized only in their dialectical relationship with scientific and artistic practice on the one hand, and everyday life on the other, science and art appear as laboratories producing the means to realize goals and fulfil human needs - specifically needs of consciousness and self- consciousness.

In his later works, Lukcs constantly espouses a reflection theory of knowledge, and often argues that the many possible reflections of reality leave the latter unchanged (Lukcs, 1963, I, 35). As traditionally understood, and convincingly criticized in History and Class Consciousness, the theory of reflection implies a relation of exteriority between being and consciousness, which it appears difficult to reconcile with the truly dialectical unity of theory and practice, and consciousness and being, postulated by Marxism. The elements of the solution to this problem can be found in the Ontology (a) in the crucial distinction between ontology and epistemology which allows the reconciliation (i) of the ontological primacy and original independence of being in relation to consciousness and (ii) of the construction of objectivity by the conscious subject, in other words the dialectic of sensuous objectivity and of subjective activity, in line with the first Thesis on Feuerbach; and (b) in the ontological analysis of the labor process underlying this distinction, which reveals the necessary constant interpntration between consciousness and being, between theory and practice, in the processes of teleological positing and investigation of the means of realizing posited goals. From an ontological point of view, cognition is always a reflection, in that it is always a response and a relation to a given. Lukcs in line with this defines the human being as an antwortendes Wesen, a respond- ing being, an expression strikingly reminiscent of Bakhtin (Ter-


LUKCS' LATER ONTOLOGY 2 1 1

tulian, 1984, 145; Bakhtin, 1986, 60ff.). Like Caudwell and Bakh- tin (Caudwell, 1977, 190, 192, 218-219; Bakhtin, 1985, passim; Browne, 1984), Lukcs in the Ontology never sees cognition as the neutral reproduction of a thing-in-itself , but always as a particular attitude to something, inscribed in a specific collective praxis and therefore in a specific relationship to an object.

It is in virtue of this variable relationship to reality that Lukcs rightly claims that reflection is never the photographic reproduction of the object; but he is not clear enough when he declares that different types of reflections all relate to the same reality in- dependent of consciousness. Of course, reality is unified (even in its heterogeneity) from the point of view of Marxist ontology; there can be no question of the coexistence of different realities, whether corresponding or not to different human faculties. Moreover, individual cognition cannot change the laws and structures of reality; and it is no less true that forms of consciousness do not exist independently of any material activity, and therefore could not, as pure consciousness, affect reality. But because cognition never is merely an individual act, but always part and parcel of collective material activity, it can play a role in transforming reality. Certainly the laws and structures of organic and inorganic being remain unchanged by human praxis; but the latter can certainly transform the laws and structures of social being in fundamental ways. When science and art, as highly developed forms of collective material activity, create new structures of human consciousness and self-consciousness, they not only create new attitudes to reality as a whole; they also create new forms of (artistic and scientific) praxis which become specific objects of their respective positings. Artists and scientists always intervene in specific ideological environments, confronting specific semiotic objectifications with their own specific histories and traditions of creation and reception.

Ill

There is a widespread tendency today to reject the historical materialist analysis of the role of labor in the constitution of social being, and to espouse instead some version of a theory of discourse as constitutive of society. For example some contemporary ideal- ists attempt a kind of "Kantian revolution" by shifting attention



away from the structures of a reality beyond consciousness or discourse, and focusing instead on the structures of consciousness or discourse (see for example SHLP, 1983; Ellis/Coward, 1977). Here the notion that discourse is the basic model of all (social) reality leads to the view that subjectivity and objectivity are not features of an extra-discursive reality, but grammatical structures of discourse. From a historical materialist perspective, notions of subjectivity and objectivity in language reflect the structure of human practical activity as it transforms the material environment; for some discourse theorists this view of practical activity is derived from the ideological structure of grammar, and is an uncritical acceptance of an ideological representation of a supposed thing-in-itself.

Less idealistic, J. Habermas nevertheless also rejects the ontological primacy of labor, viewing the latter (i) as involving a form of instrumental rationality predicated on the nomological model of the natural sciences, and consisting of the manipulation of its objects according to norms of technical efficiency; and (ii) as embodying a "philosophy of the cogito," of a self-sufficient subject confronting the object-world. According to Habermas, the primacy of labor marginalizes the discursive constitution of ethical values and therefore fails to achieve a non-positivistic understanding of the constitution of personality. Habermas sees Marxism (including Lukcs and Adorno) as imprisoned within philosophies of consciousness, and thus outdated in the light of what he and many others see as the paradigm shift of 20th- century thought from the philosophy of consciousness to the philosophy of language (Habermas, 1984). For Habermas, the starting point must be the "notion of a symbolically structured life-world, in which human reflexivity is constituted" (Giddens, 1985, 105).

One could say that Habermas' distinction between instrumental rationality in labor and communicative rationality in sym- bolic interaction is a modern rendition of the neo-Kantian distinction between natural and cultural sciences, and ultimately of Kant's distinction between pure and practical reason. This dualism fragments once more the unity of praxis which is the hallmark of historical materialism, and in the process throws up a number of difficult questions. The "paradigm shift" from labor to communication, in leaving aside preoccupation with the sensuous



character of human life, divorces human activity from this sensuousness, making the latter appear a passive substratum. It therefore restores the dualism of materialism and idealism criticized by Marx in the first Thesis on Feuerbach. Moving from a philosophy of consciousness to a philosophy of language does not as such entail the abandonment of idealism. An exclusive preoccupation with discourse in fact completely eliminates all ecological considerations from social theory (Aronowitz, 1986-87, 13, makes this point well) - ontologically a most inconvenient by- product of such thinking!

In order to vindicate Lukcs' emphasis on labor in the Ontolo- gy, it must be stressed that it is neither the cornerstone of a philosophy of the cogito, nor reducible to the model of instrumental rationality. In this respect one must disagree with N. Tertulianas suggestion that the Ontology is a philosophy of the subject, and that objectification and alienation are phenomenological moments of subjectivity (Ter- tulian, 1984, 136-137). As Tertulian himself has noted elsewhere, the Ontology is much more a theory of the constitution of subjectivity by practice, and in the first instance by labor (Tertulian, 1980, 189; Lukcs, 1963, 1, 85). Confusion can arise out of the fact that the first chapter of the systematic part of the Ontology consists of a discussion of the labor process in the abstract. The aim of this is the demonstration that all of the categories which are distinctive of social being are present in the labor process, and that the latter can be grasped as the foundation of the historicity of social being. Because it is portrayed in so abstract a fashion, however, the labor process appears in this chapter as the relation between an individual subject and his environment, and the conditions are not analyzed which produce the initial teleological positing which sets in motion the labor process. Taking this chapter out of context, one could then interpret labor - the model of social practice - as individual purposive activity governed by instrumental rationality. Such an approach seems at first sight similar to the model of labor criticized by Habermas. But Lukcs' comments on social reproduction which succeed those on labor immediately intro- duce the concrete discussion of social relations and language, showing that individuals' range of alternative choices is socially constituted (Lukcs, 1986, Il7ff.).

Praxis (including labor) is not generated by isolated individuals whose subjectivity is given a priori, and who then come



into contact with each other and interact. It is rather a collective dialectic, of which individuality and interaction are moments. Human beings do not first stand outside of nature and then relate to it instrumentally in their labor; rather, they are first part of nature and differentiate themselves from it within it, and it is this which makes them human, which makes them subjects. The social is natural, even if it is not identical with the organic or the inorganic. Labor is a dialogue with and within nature (a dialogue which becomes distorted due to alienation just as the dialogue between human beings does - indeed reification and ecological disaster are products of the same process), in which the in- terlocutors, subject and object, are constituted and develop in a process of endless interaction, without ever achieving the identity described in History and Class Consciousness. Historical materialist ontology is therefore neither a philosophy of the cogito, founded on a primordial, self-sufficient subject, nor a philosophy of consciousness in the style of Hegel or History and Class Consciousness.

The point of the chapter on labor is to show the insuperable character and inextricable connection between the "active" and "passive" moments, i.e., between subject and substance, teleology and causality, and freedom and necessity. At the end of his Mod- ern German Philosophy, Rdiger Bubner points out that many theorists who have set out to formulate a concept of action which goes beyond models of natural causality have ended up conflating action and meaning, thus devoting much time to debating the meaning of action, but not its structure. Bubner calls for a theory capable of going beyond the antinomy of material causality and subjective meaning (Bubner, 1981, 215). Lukcs' Ontology, build- ing on Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, does precisely this.

All objectification entails the emergence of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. As a teleological project, every labor process is the site of choices between alternatives, and every such choice in Lukcs' view necessarily involves an element of freedom (if not the immediate producer's, then that of the controller of the process), judgements of value (ranging from the most basic assess- ments of technical efficiency and economic utility to highly complex ethical and aesthetic evaluations), and (underpinning and following from value judgements) prescriptions of what ought to be (Sollen). Freedom, value and Sollen are thus constitutive categories of social being arising along with human consciousness out of the



metabolism between humanity and nature. Like consciousness, they are not epiphenomenal aspects of some inevitable objective necessity; but like consciousness, they are indissolubly linked to the material reality from which they first emerge (Lukcs, 1984, 133-137). Lukcs' concept of labor is no mere instrumental activity which would have to be supplemented by a category of communicative rationality because of its blindness to questions of value and freedom; on the contrary, his point is that freedom and value cannot be conceptualized properly except on the basis of an ontological analysis of labor. Lukcs' theory in no way excludes a theory of communication, but rather demonstrates the necessity of grasping communication in its dialectical unity with labor (Lukcs, 1984, 141n). Thus Lukcs stresses the simultaneous historical appearance of labor and language (Lukcs, 1963, I, 38; Lukcs, 1986, 118ff.). It is of course clear that if one excludes Robinsonnades, all labor is a collective social activity; and this is why Marx saw the forces and relations of production as being insepar- able aspects of the same process.

Lukcs' choice of the concept of labor as his starting point could itself be regarded as just another theoretical ideal type. And indeed it ought to be incomplete and provisional, for the unity of theory and practice renders, in Mszros' words, "all theoretical solutions strictly transient, incomplete and 'other directed' . . . subordinate ... to the overall dynamism of self-developing social praxis" (Mszros, 1982, 111-112). The point however is that Lukcs' totalizing and open-ended approach does not exclude other determinations and is also capable of accounting for its own structures and presuppositions. It offers a much more supple and subtle synthesizing principle than the alternative regulatory methodologies and disciplines (such as structuralism, semiology, cybernetics or deconstruction) to which scientific thinkers have turned in recent years (Almsi, 1984, 130-135). Even while recognizing the incomplete and provisional character of knowledge, Marxism can only prove adequate as an instrument of cognition by adhering to its original systematic, totalizing urge. As Mszros puts it:

In reality philosophy is advanced in the form of partial totalizations which of necessity constitute, at any given point in time, including the post-Hegelian phase of development, some kind of system without which the very idea of


216 SCIENCE of SOCIETY

"relative truths," would make no sense whatsoever. The alternative to the Hege- lian concept of absolute truth is not "the entire human race" as the notional possessor of some such "absolute truth" but the totalizing synthesis of attainable levels of knowledge progressively superseded in the collective enterprise of

particular systems. (Mszros, 1982, 113-114.)

Such a historical process of incessant sublation of partial systems cannot be the task of monadic cognitive subjects, but only a collective enterprise (Mszros, 1982, 112-113). Marxism is an objective, unitary and dynamic system which only exists actually within a complex dialectic in which it is raw material, instrument and product of subjects engaged in practical activity and social struggle. It is open to diverse reinterpretations and developments rooted in the divergent historical experiences of its recipients and exponents. The constant aim of the latter must however be to synthesize these different versions. One of the most important and insightful aspects of Lenin's theory of the revolutionary party was his idea that it should function as the collective memory of the proletariat, as the instrument for analyzing, synthesizing and dis- seminating the historical experience of class struggle. So long as one adheres to the contemplative attitude implied by the view- point of the "isolated individual in bourgeois society," i.e., so long as the laws and principles constituted by collective social praxis impose themselves on consciousness as unalterable human processes, one can be content either with purely epistemological or with sociological approaches to problems of social analysis for which individuals are always the objects of forces which they neither comprehend nor control. Reviving the inspiration of Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, the Lukcsian tradition points the way beyond the point of view of the isolated individual, beyond epistemology and sociology, to the ontological problem of the categorial structure of subject-object dialectics, and in doing so provides the theoretical foundation for an adequate totalizing conceptualization of the problem of the historically constituted relationships between individuals, social structures, the social totality and nature.

Universit d'Ottawa Ottawa, Ontario, Canada



REFERENCES

Almsi, Mikls. 1984. "Marx: An Open Theory." New Hungarian Quarterly, 25:96 (Winter), 130-135.

Almsi, Mikls. 1985. "Lukcs on Democracy." New Hungarian Quarterly, 26:97 (Spring).

Althusser, Louis. 1965. Pour Marx. Paris: Maspero. Aronowitz, Stanley. 1986-87. "Theory and Socialist Strategy." Social Text, 6:1

(Winter). Bakhtin, M. M. 1985. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship. A Critical Intro-

duction to Sociological Poetics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Bakhtin, M. M. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Essays. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.

Boella, Laura. 1985. "Lukcs and His Time." Telos, 63 (Spring). Browne, Paul. 1980. "Idologie et pratique thorique. Essai sur l'anti-

humanisme thorique de Louis Althusser." Unpublished M.A. thesis, Uni- versity of Ottawa.

Browne, Faul. iyo4. An Unclaimed Legacy: Caudwells Marxist Dialectics. Science fcf Society, 48:2 (Summer), 192-210.

Bubner, Rdiger. 1981. Modern German Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press.

Caudwell, Christopher. 1977 (1937). Illusion and Reality. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Ellis/Coward. 1977. Jon Ellis and Rosalind Coward. Language and Materialism, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Franco, Vittoria. 1986. "Lukcs: L'ontologie, l'thique et le renouveau du marx- isme." In Rification et utopie. Ernst Bloch & Gyrgy Lukcs un sicle aprs. Actes du colloque, Goethe Institut de Paris, 1985, Paris: Actes Sud.

Giddens, Anthony. 1985. "Reason Without Revolution? Habermas's Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns." In R. J. Bernstein, ed., Habermas and Moder- nity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Habermas, Jrgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume One: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press.

Hartmann, Nicolai. 1953. New Ways of Ontology. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co.

Heller, Agnes. 1983. "Lukcs's Later Philosophy." In A. Heller, et ai, Lukcs Reappraised. New York: Columbia University Press.

HFMV. A. Heller, F. Fehr, G. Markus, M. Vajda. 1983 (1976). "Notes on Lukcs's Ontology.'1 In A. Heller, et ai, Lukcs Reappraised. New York: Colum- bia University Press.

Jos, Ernest. 1983. Lukcs's Last Autocriticism: The Ontology. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press.

Kosik, Karel. 1978. La dialectique du concret. Pans: Maspero. Lefbvre, Henri. 1968. Dialectical Materialism. London: Jonathan Cape. Lukcs, Georg. 1963. sthetik, I. Die Eigenart des sthetischen. 2. Halbband. Werke,

Bnde 11/12. Neuwied: Luchterhand.



Lukcs, Georg. 1971 (1967). "Preface to the New Edition." In Georg Lukcs, History and Class Consciousness, London: Merlin Press.

Lukcs, Georg. 1975. The Young Hegel London: Merlin Press. Lukcs, Georg. 1978a. The Ontology of Social Being. 1. Hegel's False and His Genuine

Ontology. London: Merlin Press. Lukcs, Georg. 1978b. The Ontology of Social Being. 2. Marx's Basic Ontological

Principles. London: Merlin Press. Lukcs, Georg. 1980. The Ontology of Social Being. 3. Labour. London: Merlin

Press. Lukcs, Georg. 1983. Record of a Life. London: Verso. Lukcs, Georg. 1984. Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins. 1 . Halbband. Werke,

Band 13. Neuwied: Luchterhand. Lukcs, Georg. 1986. Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins. 2. Halbband. Werke,

Band 14. Neuwied: Luchterhand. Marx, Karl. 1973. Grundrisse. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Marx, Karl. 1977. Capital, Volume 1. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Mszros, Istvn. 1982. "Marx 'Philosopher.'" In E.J. Hobsbawm, ed., The

History of Marxism. Vol. 1: Marxism in Marx's Day. Brighton: Harvester, 103-136.

Moggach, Douglas. 1981. "Labour and Dialectical Ontology." Paper presented at the conference on "Labour, Technology and the Relation of Society to Nature" held at Sussex University, Brighton, June 6-8, 1981.

Pinkus, Theo. 1975. Conversations with Lukcs. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Preve, Costanzo. 1986. "Vers une nouvelle alliance. Actualit et possibilits de

dveloppement de l'effort ontologique de Bloch et Lukcs." In Rification et utopie. Ernst Bloch fcf Gyrgy Lukcs un sicle aprs. Actes du colloque, Goethe Institut de Paris, 1985. Paris: Actes Sud.

Preve, Costanzo. 1988. "Notes on the 'Ontological Path' of Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukcs: Philosophical Sublimation of a Historic Defeat or the 'Rea- sonable' Refounding of Modern Revolutionary Thought?" New German Cri- tique, 45 (Fall), 81-90.

Rusch, Pierre. 1986. "Argument et systme de YEsthtique de Lukcs." In Rifica- tion et utopie. Ernst Bloch fcf Gyrgy Lukcs un sicle aprs. Actes du colloque, Goethe Institut de Paris, 1985. Paris: Actes Sud.

Schmidt, Alfred. 1971. The Concept of Nature in Marx. London: NLB. SHLP. 1983. Sakari Hnninen and Leena Paldan, eds. Rethinking Ideology: A

Marxist Debate. New York: International General/I M M RC. Tertulian, Nicolas. 1980. Georges Lukcs. Etapes de sa pense esthtique. Paris: Le

Sycomore. Tertulian, Nicolas. 1984. "L' "Ontologie de Georges Lukacs. Bulletin de la

Socit franaise de philosophie, 78:4 (octobre-dcembre). Varga, Csaba. 1985. The Place of Law in Lukcs's World Concept. Budapest:

Akadmia Kiad. Weber, Max. 1968. Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tbingen: J. Winc-

kelmann.


Article Contentsp. 193p. 194p. 195p. 196p. 197p. 198p. 199p. 200p. 201p. 202p. 203p. 204p. 205p. 206p. 207p. 208p. 209p. 210p. 211p. 212p. 213p. 214p. 215p. 216p. 217p. 218

Issue Table of ContentsScience & Society, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 130-249Front MatterEditorial Perspectives [pp. 130-131]The Marxist Approach to the National Question: A Critique of Nimni's Interpretation [pp. 132-146]A Materialist Critique of Hegel's Concept of Identity of Opposites [pp. 147-166]In the Matter of "This" [pp. 167-178]Surplus Profit and Class Relations in Two Stages of Capitalism [pp. 179-192]Lukcs' Later Ontology [pp. 193-218]CommunicationsAccumulation and Accumulators: The Metaphor Marx Muffed [pp. 219-224]"Capital": A Note on Translation [pp. 224-225]

Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 226-228]Review: untitled [pp. 228-231]Review: untitled [pp. 231-233]Review: untitled [pp. 234-235]Review: untitled [pp. 235-238]Review: untitled [pp. 238-240]Review: untitled [pp. 241-244]Review: untitled [pp. 244-246]Review: untitled [pp. 246-249]

Back Matter