Socialist Reading Series III: Georg Lukacs' "Class Consciousness" [Part 2]

Section 1 Part A: The Essence of Scientific Marxism

It looks like this is going to be a much bigger project than I anticipated, so instead of making one giant post for each of Lukacs’ sections, I’m just going to break things up into as many parts as I find interesting things to talk about without worrying how far we get in each section. And why not? It’s fun! Anyway, I think in this post we get through about two paragraphs into the actual text, but we cover quite a bit of important Marxist stuff that is bound to come up in other places.

Intro here; original text here.

1.

A. The Essence of Scientific Marxism

“The Personification of History Writing on the Back of Time” by Andrea Casali (1705-1784)

Let’s begin by talking about history and examining this argument from Engels that might appear as odd at first glance. Lukacs tells us that

Engels proceeds from the assumption that although the essence of history consists in the fact that “nothing happens without a conscious purpose or an intended aim,” to understand history it is necessary to go further than this. For on the one hand, “the many individual wills active in history for the most part produce results quite other than those intended—often quite the opposite; their motives, therefore, in relation to the total results are likewise of only secondary importance. On the other hand, the further question arises: what driving forces in turn stand behind these motives? What are the historical causes which transform themselves into these motives in the brains of actors?”

I’m going to go painfully slow through this argument because I think it set up some important ways about looking at history that might not be immediately obvious if we go quickly. Please bear with me.

The first thing that might strike the reader as odd is the claim that the essence of history consists in the fact that “nothing happens without a conscious purpose or an intended aim.” Strictly speaking, this is obviously an overstatement: rockslides crush cars, monsoons flood villages, fires burn down forests, etc. and none of these events require any appeal to the conscious purpose or intended aim of some agent. In some cases such an appeal may be relevant—as when a fire is started by an arsonist or a rock slide is started by someone pushing a boulder off a cliff—but it is simply false that nothing happens without attributing it to some agent. So, how can it be necessary to “go further than this” to understand history when the “this” in question appears to be a false statement?

The key to seeing what Engels means is to draw our attention to the claim that this is the foundational assumption of history. What does he mean by that?

There is one sense in which we can think of history as the complete catalog of past events. Thus, the history of the world begins with the Big Bang, followed some time later by the formation of the planets as we know them, then by the breakup of Pangea, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and so on, with the latest addition in this catalogue being the events that involve human beings and their domination of the Earth. To do history in this sense is to accurately fill in that catalog of events based on empirical evidence, and to understand history, in turn, is to know the order in which those events occurred. (Because so much of history classes in school focus on memorization of names and dates, I think this is, unfortunately, the impression that many people have of the discipline as well)

Of course, this is not the only way that one can think of history, and, in any case, this is not the sense in which Engels and Marxists in general look at the matter. Rather than thinking of history as a collection of events, Marxists look at history as a social science, meaning that, on the one hand it concerned with the events involving the actions of people or groups of people (that’s the social part of ‘social science’), and, on the other hand, because it is a science, it is a discipline interested in providing correct systemic explanations for those events. This doesn’t mean that events that weren’t done by some person or another don’t factor into historical explanations—after all, historians might very well talk about the Bubonic Plague or the eruption of Krakatoa and their impact on the people around—but such events are not the proper object of history and the fullest explanations for those events can be provided by biologists, epidemiologists, and geologists.

So, if history is primarily concerned with offering scientific explanations for events involving the actions of people, the claim that the foundational assumption of the discipline is that “nothing happens without a conscious purpose or intended aim” makes sense! In essence, the claim here is simply that people do things for reasons and that we understand why things happen by understanding those reasons. On a strong reading, to deny this would be tantamount to saying that the actions of (at least some) people are entirely disconnected from their psychology, which, in turn, is just to say that there is no explanation for what was done. This is indeed a good foundational assumption.

At this point, however, Engels cautions us that we have to go beyond such an assumption if we want to get a full understanding of history. He gives us two reasons to believe this: the first is that history is full of examples in which people do things purposefully or intentionally, but the result of which is something other than what was intended or desired.

This is quite obviously true and follows from the fact that there is no strict one-to-one relationship between what one intends and the state of the world.¹ Consequently, it is also not true that for every event that is done by someone or some group of people, that person or persons had the intention to produce that event or state of affairs. Simply put, and to our frequent dismay, the world does not unconditionally bend to our will.

More concrete examples of this sort are also easy to find in everyday life: Michael wants to pay his boss a compliment but makes a faux pas instead, landing him in hot water with HR; Janice intends to get home in time to walk the dog, but traffic keeps her from doing so; and so on and so on. Crucially, if we want to understand why Michael was fired or why Janice’s rug was soiled, we will fail to do so either by assuming that they wanted or intended for those things to happen (quite the opposite—both Michael and Janice wanted something very different to happen!), or by simply stating their actual desires or intentions (yes, I know Janice intended to get home in time and I know that Michael desired to impress his boss—that doesn’t explain why Janice’s living room stinks or why Michael is stress-eating a Big Mac and looking over his resume).

The suppressed argument that Engels is making here, then, is that what’s true about how the will operates on the micro scale also is also true on the macro scale. If we can’t explain the soiled rug by looking in Janice’s head, then we also can’t explain the Terror by looking in Robespierre’s.

Not all people find this to be immediately convincing. For instance, some people still approach history with something like “The Great Man” theory which holds that (at least some) historical events are explained by the thoughts and actions of specific individuals who assert their will on the course of history so as to alter its path. Thus, if we want to explain the Reformation, we have to look at Martin Luther; if we want to explain the American Revolution we have to look at Washington, Adams, and Jefferson; if we want to explain WWII we have to look at Hitler; and so on.

“Napoleon Crossing the Alps” by Paul Delaroche (1850) The lesser known version of the Great Man of history doing his thing

The view isn’t entirely implausible since these figures do factor largely in the events they are meant to explain and its certainly relevant to talk about what they intended or wanted to do with the actions they took. But accepting it in its strongest form does require us to take the figures in question as being rather super-human in their abilities to assert their will.² In weaker forms, such a view acknowledges the multiplicity of factors that are needed to explain some event or other, but still places a strong (perhaps the strongest) emphasis on the role of the individual and their psychology. What Engels disagrees with, then, is precisely where we place our emphasis—hence, he says that “their motives [of the actors in question], therefore, in relation to the total results are likewise of only secondary importance.” Notice, he doesn’t say that the will of individuals is not important at all, but rather, that in relation to the total results—that is, when it comes to understanding the full picture—the individuals’ psychologies are of secondary importance.

What about the second reason for turning away from individual psychology? Well, given that we’re not discounting desires and intentions entirely, there may very well be some cases in which historical events are to be properly understood by looking at the content of the individual’s will. However, claims Engels, even then, there’s a further question that we can ask: namely, why did this person’s will have this content rather than another?

Take a concrete case. Suppose, for example, that we explain why Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 by saying that he had a well documented history of stating that he thought the Slavs were an inferior race, that the Bolsheviks should be wiped off the face of the Earth, that the land they occupy should be used as living space for Germans, and that if it was up to him, Germany should conquer all of Eastern Europe.³ In other words, Hitler invades the Soviet Union because he wanted to and intended to do so (from very early on in his career). Even if all of this takes us quite far in understanding why the invasion happened, we can still ask why he had those intentions and desires. Of course, the psychological buck can be passed—he thought this way because he had certain exposures to certain ideas prior to and during WWI, because he had a certain upbringing, because he got butt-hurt about his paintings, etc. But the question still remains because, on the one hand, it’s not true that everyone who went through similar experiences or who had a similar upbringing ended up having genocidal desires and intentions⁴, and, on the other hand, it is not true that every person who has such desires and intentions is able to put them into action. God only knows how many people have intended or desired to act on their virulent racist desires without, thankfully, being able to act on them. Individual wills have certain content and degree of effectiveness only under certain conditions and a full explanation requires spelling those conditions out. Or to put the matter another way, there were no Ancient Egyptians who desired to disrupt the Pharaoh’s rule by introducing free market based reforms in financing (sorry Mark Corrigan), and the explanation for why that is the case is not going to be a psychological one.⁵

Now, why does this matter? It matters because Lukacs tells us that “the essence of scientific Marxism consists, then, in the realization that the real motor forces of history are independent of man’s (psychological) consciousness of them.” Thus, we know from the start (good God, we’re only two paragraphs in) that the whatever explanation he will give from a Marxist standpoint for what class consciousness will entail will not involve looking at what any given person or people think.

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Okay, let’s pause here and return to some discussion of the errors that bourgeois thinkers make in interpreting history next time.

1. If there were, both you and I, dear reader, would probably be doing very different things right now. Probably on board our massive yachts.

2. This bullet can be and often is bitten—the “great” men and women of history are often portrayed as having inexplicable charisma, an inexhaustible reservoir of energy, or, if all other options run out, divine guidance from God Himself.

3. He quite literally says all this in Mein Kampf

4. Although having a very different upbringing from Hitler, Ludwig Wittgenstein was a schoolmate of Hitler’s and also saw combat in WWI—indeed, he volunteered to fight in the Austrian Army. And as far as I’m aware, he didn’t think Slavs were subhuman. It is also true that there were lots of Austrian and German soldiers who didn’t become Nazis. What gives?

5. The answer isn’t “because there was just nobody who thought of that.” In fact, that’s just not an answer! If I ask “why didn’t the Aztecs think of double book accounting?” you can’t just say “because nobody thought of it.”