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Circular Reasoning? Thoughts on Lukacs' Notion of Class Consciousness

In his History and Class Consciousness, Georg Lukacs attempts to reemphasize Marxism's Hegelian origin and redeem dialectics from attacks of revisionism. Opposing Kantian metaphysics, which makes an arbitrary difference between thing and thing-in-itself, the dialectic is supposed to be a relative dynamic between opposite ideas; in addition, it is supposed to be praxis, or unified thoughts and action. Consciousness is a dialectical notion: it is supposed to be "practical critical activity" with the task of "changing the world" (78). Class consciousness, in addition, "approaches society from another world and leads from the false path it has followed back to the right one" (78). In order to bring historical movement, the proletariat must organize itself and realize its own class consciousness.

This reading of class consciousness, while recognizing its aim for praxis, nonetheless place it primarily in the realm of thought. Even though upon realization of class consciousness action towards revolution must be on the way, the class consciousness itself does not quite contain action yet. This reading suggests that the realization of class consciousness is the exact moment that the thought is leading towards action; and, by virtue of its transition, class consciousness contains both thoughts and action. That which comes before class consciousness is either false consciousness or political unconsciousness; that which comes after consciousness--well, I think orthodox Marxism calls it revolution.

However, an opposing interpretation challenges this reading. It states that realization of class consciousness is revolution already because the proletariat class has already recognized its condition, and changes are already made in thoughts. To this point I object: where forth is praxis, that which unites thought and action? Defenders of this reading replies that because class consciousness is already defined as "thought and action", the realization of such fulfills the dialectics of praxis. But isn't this logic circular? Class consciousness is both thought and action, hence realizing it fulfills both thought and action. This interpretation seems to reduce class consciousness into a mere game of semantics, making it no more than a play of definitions. The condition of the proletariat does not change; perhaps it can imagine its socioeconomic condition changed--but usually we call that "false consciousness".

If we are to talk about Marxism, I think it would be for the best that we stay within its historical materialist framework. And perhaps our critique of it should come from historical perspective as well. For example: why the proletariat? Reliance on this particular class by today's standard seems absurd. Even in Marx's, or perhaps later, in Lukacs' time, such a class would be unable--too uneducated to understand the meaning of alienation, of fetishism, and of class consciousness--to carry out anything on its own. It is merely a reified object to the Marxist intellectuals and politicians, whom, symbolizing thought, required an outlet for action. What of subject-object relations and praxis? Well, I believe that in Hellenic Athens a group of professionals named sophists often taught their disciples ways of deceiving and taking advantage of others through the art of speech.

Berstein, Revisionism and Hauntology

When the term "revisionism" first appeared in Eduard Bernstein's work Evolutionary Socialism, it lacked its latter stigma as any form of deviance to an arbitrarily established "orthodoxy" of Marxism. Had Bernstein lived, he would have rejected with disgust Mao's calling of Khrushchev "revisionist" and other abuses of his term.

Is Bernstein's revisionism truly "revisionist" by its later attribution? The answer is clear: Bernstein would disagree with Mao by stating that Khrushchev's thaw and destalinization was not enough. Only a genuine move away from Communist ultimate goal and violent means of achieving for parliamentary socialism would suffice the burden of the term "revisionist". Revisionism, in its philosophical grounds, further represents the move away from Hegelian dialectics for Kantianism. Bernstein undermines the theory of value that Marxist creates in Das Kapital. As an associate of Marx and a close friend (and one of the two literary trustee) of Engels, then, Bernstein had truly disowned the original foundation of Marxism.

The historical reception of Bernstein, however, is dim; he was criticized immediately by orthodox Marxists of his time--most famously by Sparticist Rosa Luxemburg, who called him the first of Marxist "opportunists". His "revisionism" was often mentioned as a label against political enemies while his positive contribution to Marxism to call for self-examination: "the further development and elaboration of the Marxist doctrine must begin with criticism of it" (Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, 25). His reception outside of Marxism fared no better. Even though European democratic socialist parties in practice followed many of Bernstein's points, they find Bernstein perhaps too tainted by his associations with Marx and Engels for orthodoxy. Had Bernstein been less practical and more capable of producing a sound theoretical work of his own, perhaps he would have found better receptions.

Of course, one must not forget that in the post-Marxist world, the specter of Marx (and his followers, critiques, friends and enemies) lives. Derrida's hauntology found its way even into Marx's prodigal son, Eduard Bernstein. When Bernstein's spirit was invoked by Xie Tao in his famed article last February in support of Chinese adoption of Democratic Socialism, would it know that through such invocation Luxemburg's criticism of Bernsteinian "opportunism" was again conjured into existence as well? Perhaps, instead of criticizing Xie Tao's citation of Bernstein as an anachronism, we can see this act in the light of huantology and accepted our fate that the haunt is long from over.

Intellectual History and the History of Ideas

While discussing potential topic of my thesis today with my tutor, Darra Mulderry, an expert of American intellectual history in the post-war period, we briefly discussed the distinction between an intellectual history and the history of ideas. It seems like that a paper primarily concerned with the development of ideas in a certain individual or a school of thought should be considered history of ideas, whereas an intellectual history has a more sociological aspect to it as it focuses on the intellectuals and their works. Hence, an intellectual history would be one that attempts to examine different aspects of a thinker, whose thoughts--central as they are--serve as a key that guides to the character of the intellectual(s). Other factors, such as his biographical information, his self-perception of his role as an intellectual, are also important. Whereas the history of ideas is a genealogy of ideas, an intellectual idea would be a lineage of people who produce these ideas. Peter Gordon, in a article titled "What is Intellectual History", makes clear of this distinction:

Intellectual History and the History of Ideas
What is intellectual history? Broadly speaking, intellectual history is the study of
intellectuals, ideas, and intellectual patterns over time. Of course, that is a terrifically
large definition and it admits of a bewildering variety of approaches. One thing to note right off is the distinction between “intellectual history” and “the history of ideas.” This can be somewhat confusing, since the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably: “history of ideas” is a rather old-fashioned phrase, and not currently in vogue (though there is an excellent journal for intellectual historians published under the title, The Journal of the History of Ideas.) But if we are worried about precise definitions rather than popular usage, there is arguably a difference: The “history of ideas” is a discipline which looks at large-scale concepts as they appear and transform over the course of history. An historian of ideas will tend to organize the historical narrative around one major idea and will then follow the development or metamorphosis of that idea as it manifests itself in different contexts and times, rather as a musicologist might trace a theme and all of its variations throughout the length of a symphony. Perhaps the most classic example is the book by Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (originally given as the William James Lectures at Harvard University in 1933). This kind of exercise has many merits—for example, it permits us to recognize commonalities in thought despite vast dissimilarities in context, thereby calling attention to the way that humanity seems always preoccupied with certain seemingly “eternal” thoughts. But this advantage can also be a disadvantage. By insisting that the idea is recognizably the same thing despite all of its contextual variations, the history of ideas approach tends to encourage a kind of Platonist attitude about thoughts, as if they somehow preexisted their contexts and merely manifested themselves in various landscapes.

Intellectual history is different from the history of ideas. It resists the Platonist
expectation that an idea can be defined in the absence of the world, and it tends instead to regard ideas as historically conditioned features of the world which are best understood within some larger context, whether it be the context of social struggle and institutional change, intellectual biography (individual or collective), or some larger context of cultural or linguistic dispositions (now often called “discourses”). To be sure, sometimes the requisite context is simply the context of other, historically conditioned ideas— intellectual history does not necessarily require that concepts be studied within a larger, non-conceptual frame. Admittedly, this last point can be controversial: some intellectual historians do adopt a purely “internalist” approach, i.e., they set thoughts in relation to other thoughts, without reference to some setting outside them. This method is usually most revealing when the relations between ideas helps us to see a previously unacknowledged connection between different realms of intellectual inquiry, e.g., the relation between theological and scientific modes of explanation, or between metaphysical and political concepts of causality. But this method tends to reproduce the Platonism which beset the older-style history of ideas approach. Even today, many intellectual historians remain—stubbornly or covertly—internalist in their method. They may pay lip-service to contextualism, but they are chiefly interested in conceptual contexts only. But because internalist styles of argumentation have in recent decades fallen out of favor amongst historians and humanists more generally, those who write intellectual history in the internalist manner often look rather tweedy and traditionalist to their more “worldly” colleagues both within and beyond of the historical discipline. Indeed, intellectual historians who practice this sort of concept-contextualism will not infrequently meet with accusations of quietism, elitism, or political naiveté. Internalism is nonetheless defensible on methodological grounds, though it is important to acknowledge its risks and its limitations.

Metahistory: A Literary Approach to Historiography

The title Metahistory may seem deceptive: I approached the book imagining that its author, Hayden White, is attempting to create another speculative philosophy of history in the lines of Hegel, Spengler, and Toynbee. Instead, White treats patterns of history in a post-structuralist perspective: he analyzes historiographies of prominent historians and philosophers of history in the nineteenth century alike and analyze their work as result of specific tropes and particular aims of these historians and philosophers. Hence, the works of Hegel, Michelet, Ranke, Tocqueville, Burckhardt, Marx, Nietzsche, and Croce are categorized within the four tropes of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony--with White himself writing in irony. In addition, explanations of historiographical works can be based on emplotment, argument, and ideological implication, roughly correlated to one another in this fashion:

Mode of Employment/ Mode of Argument/ Mode of Ideological Implication
Romantic/ Formist/ Anarchist
Tragic/ Mechanistic/ Radical
Comic/ Organicist/ Conservative
Satirical/ Contextualist/ Liberal

White's work, then, is meta-historical in the sense that he perceives language as the key, or meta-aspect, beyond all writings of historiography. A poetic and linguistic approach to history, then, is announced to introduce a post-structuralist reading of writers and interpreters of past events.

Hayden White's work, then, attempts to reject a perception of history that Collingwood sets out in his Idea of History; previous debates on the nature of history is replaced by an array of writers in history characterized by difference in style, while causality is abandoned in place of plurality. However, I am still at this point inclined to subscribe to Collingwood's view that history is the reenactment of thoughts of historians, who are but imaging the thoughts of his treated subjects. In the Collingwoodian sense, history is kept as a continuation of thought, an idea that man consciously "remembers" and attempts to reach through their own thoughts. In this sense, then, history can be kept true regardless of the format that it is kept; man can interpret the artifacts of the past regardless of its status as a historical account, a part of archive, a chronicle of events, or physical object of the past like a palace, a piece of art, or even a coin. On the other hand, the metahistorical analysis of history is itself limited by language--and especially in the form of written language. Its ability of explanation is limited by the form of historical accounts and therefore cannot be complete.

Postwar American Thought: Adorno's Authoritarian Personality and Riesman's Lonely Crowd

14 II 2008

The task of Adorno et al. in the Authoritarian Personality seems to be an attempt to explain an ideological reality, viz. fascism, as a social result of the formation of what the authors called an authoritarian personality. A fascist state is possible only because characters exhibit potentials of fascism in their character. As Adorno explains, “the major concern was with the potentially fascistic individual, one whose structure is such as to render him particularly susceptible to antidemocratic propaganda” (Adorno et al., 1). The methodology of the study, however, is rather questionable. Through surveys and interviews, Adorno et al. seeks to scientifically identify certain characters with fascist potentials similar to a psychological correlative study. The questions are indirect and never touch on the subject of fascism itself, as Adorno et al. believe that answers to some of these questions reveal certain traits of the character himself (Ibid. 5). Although Adorno et al.’s attempt initially may resemble Mill’s methodological individualism, their method is problematic because it assumes the existence of an authoritarian personality prior to the study; that is to say, from the concrete existence of a fascist society Adorno et al. attributes the problem to the transformation of character into a corresponding personality and that “it is up to the people to decide whether or not this country goes fascist” (Ibid. 10). A preconceived opposition between “democratic” and “anti-democratic” character is hence formed as a result of the authors’ belief (and personal experience). However, we must question the validity of this attempt: is the problem of fascism truly personal or psychological, or is it historical in the sense that both the material condition, in additional to psychological condition of the masses, along with the historical development of the era (urbanization and modernization), may have led to the creation of societies that ultimately are characterized as authoritarian. With this critical inquiry in mind, then, I find the reduction of fascism into a personality, and then into a person’s performance in an arbitrary test’s “fascism scale” questionable. Although it is true that liability to submit to authority, desire to strong leader, and other traits identified in the study are factors that contribute to the success of an authoritarian regime, I think that the source of totalitarianism, however, should be sought elsewhere (Ibid. 231).

However, the Authoritarian Personality, like Riesman’s Lonely Crowd, identifies an interesting historical phenomenon of post-war western thought: the attempt to find individual traits that correspond to social problems. Social conformity seems to hold an important role to both studies: individual’s submission to the general trend or an authoritarian leader’s will contributes to an authoritarian state, while an individual’s adjustment in the three types of societies that Riesman identifies create a social fact of conformity. Unlike the negative connotation in Adorno’s study, conformity in Riesman’s case is accepted as a social fact. Hence the ability to conform is noted as adjustment while the inability to do so is characterized as anomie (Riesman 239). However, such conformity is not the ideal character of human development: Riesman cherishes a more positive way of life characterized by autonomy instead. Riesman avoids the philosophical problem of identifying the exact character of the truly autonomous by characterizing it as a Weberian ideal type (Ibid. 243). It is a matter of choice: while the individual has the ability to conform, he has the choice to either follow or ignore the social norm from his individual will (Ibid. 242). Although the introduction of autonomy seems to give people in a conformist society hope of individuality—questions nonetheless should be raised against its sheer optimism: facing social norm and characterized by his social condition and historical context, how much difference can an individual truly make even if he conceives himself to be autonomous? How is an autonomous man’s will different from a simply selfish will? In this aspect, Riesman’s notion of autonomy seems to be much weaker than Kant’s definition of autonomy that cherishes each individual as the legislator of his own moral laws. Something that links Riesman’s notion to the overall development of society seems to be missing.

Anglobalization?

9 II 2008

Faithful to its function as a TV series, Niall Ferguson's Empire has a long and rather catchy but at the same time clumsy subtitle: "the Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power". Although the book does not serve as an apology for British Empire, and lack a real, cohesive argument as a result of its limitations (as a TV series), it nonetheless praises Britain's imperial past as a beneficial fact for the world--the creation of a global market and introduction of civilization ("Anglobalization") to a once fragmented world. The "lessons" part is meant for America, the current "global power", which cannot affirm its role as its British predecessors had a century ago. Ferguson states in conclusion:

And yet the empire that rules the world today is both more and less than its British begetter. It has a much bigger economy, many more people, a much larger arsenal. But it is an empire that lacks the drive to export its capital, its people and its culture to those backward regions which need them most urgently and which, if they are neglected, will breed the greatest threats to its security. It is an empire, in short, that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial (317).

Well, not much needs to be said about Ferguson's Anglo-American (or rather, just Anglo and its colonial subjects) ethnocentrism. I am not so sure that his solution to Imperium Americana's maintaining of power through a re-enactment of Anglobalization (which, of course, also serves as the title of a lecture he will give in Harvard's History 10b class) is all-together valid. Exporting capital? This sounds familiar: but has the extension of American business interest in other "backward" nations really worked? Exporting "people"? As tourists, may be--but I am afraid that the type of colonization that Ferguson envisions in 21st century is but a satirical anachronism. For this imperium to affirm its status, I am afraid that it has to fare better in its affairs in weak, chaotic countries in which it has made a presence against international and domestic protest. Certainly, its British (and Mongol, Turkish) predecessors had done a much more satisfactory job.