Robert Narai
Georg Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness, published in 1923, is primarily seen as one of the great works of Marxist philosophy. But Lukács was also a commissar in the failed Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 and a political leader in the exiled Hungarian Communist Party in Vienna throughout the 1920s. Along with labour leader Jenö Landler, Lukács led a faction opposing an ultra-left sectarian orientation represented by Béla Kun (at that time also associated with Comintern chairman Zinoviev, later aligning himself with Stalin). This session explores History and Class Consciousness and his work in the 1920s through the lens of this factional struggle and the degeneration of the Comintern, examining it as an attempt to reconstruct the theory and practice of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, understand the leading role the working class must play in the struggle for democracy in Hungary, and rebuild the Hungarian Communist Party along these lines.