Georg Lukács - Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought

Georg Lukács was a remarkable Marxist thinker. As with so many others, the impact of the Russian Revolution turned him towards revolutionary Marxism. While his most influential work is History and Class Consciousness, this little book on Lenin demonstrates Lukács' engagement with revolutionary activism though a short and intense study of Lenin's ideas. Written in 1924 in the aftermath of Lenin's death it carries the mark of that era upon it. Reading it today it feels like a early defence of the revolutionary tradition that would be destroyed by Stalinism, though the rise of the Soviet Union's bureaucracy was in its early stages in that year.

The book begins with a definitive statement: "Historical materialism is the theory of the proletarian revolution" and proceeds to argue that understanding this is central to Lenin's theory and practice. Lukács explains that the central point for Lenin, and by extension, for all those who would follow in his footsteps, was the "actuality of revolution", the fact that revolution was a possibility in the capitalist epoch. So,

Like Marx, Lenin never generalised from parochially Russian experiences limited in time and space. He did however, with the perception of genius, immediately recognise the fundamental problem of our time - the approaching revolution - at the time and place of its first appearance. From then on he understood and explained all events, Russian as well as international, from this perspective - from the perspective of the actuality of the revolution.

This did not mean, as it's sometimes crudely understood, that Lenin (or Marx) thought the "revolution and its aims as being readily realizable at any given moment", rather it was the "actuality" that was a "touchstone for evaluating all questions of the day". In fact every question "became a fundamental problem of the revolution".

It's this political framework that helps explain why so many people see Lenin as "single minded". His devotion to revolutionary politics arose out of his understanding of the way that capitalism presented revolution as an actuality, and in particular the conditions towards the end of the First World War emphasised, this reality. Lukács points out that the "legend" of Lenin as a master political tactician is really the story of Lenin, the "theorist who consistently developed the Marxist dialectic".

Reading Lenin: A study on the unity of his thought during Russia's invasion of Ukraine also produced some other insights. Lukács notes, for instance, that "Imperialist war... creates allies for the proletariat everywhere provided it takes up a revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie". Lukács continues, in a quote that could well be watchwords for today, with imperialist clashes making World War Three a distinct possibility:

But if it remains unconscious of its position and the tasks confronting it, the war forces the proletariat to disastrous self-emasculation in the wake of the bourgeoisie. Imperialist war creates a world situation in which the proletariat can become the real leader of all the oppressed and exploited, and in which its struggle for liberation can become the signal and signpost for the liberation of all those under the capitalist yoke. At the same time, however, it creates a world situation in which millions and millions of proletarians must murder each other with the most refined cruelty in order to strengthen and extend the monopoly of their exploiters. Which of these two fates is to be that of the proletariat depends upon its insight into its own historical situation – upon its class-consciousness? For ‘men make their own history’, although ‘not in circumstances chosen by themselves but in circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’. So the choice is not whether the proletariat will or will not struggle, but in whose interest it should struggle: its own or that of the bourgeoisie. The question history places before the proletariat is not to choose between war and peace, but between imperialist war and war against this war: civil war.

Lukács concludes with two interrelated points. Firstly, the actuality of revolution makes a particular theoretical idea concrete for the proletariat. This is the question of the state. It becomes the key task for the proletarian movement to advance towards the revolution's fulfillment, just as for "opportunists of all shades" that the "real enemy" is the "proletarian revolution itself". Secondly Lukács emphasises the importance of revolutionary organisation, which must be, through its recognition of the actuality of revolution, an organisation single-mindedly committed to preparing the working class "intellectually and materially, theoretically and organizationally" for the revolution.

Lukács' book is of course polemic. Written in a unique moment of history. In his 1967 postscript, he himself points out that the first sentence "demonstrates the prejudices of the time" but crucially Lukács re-emphasises the central point about his short book:

For Lenin as a Marxist 'the concrete analysis of the concrete situation is not an opposite of 'pure' theory, but - on the contrary - it is the culmination of genuine theory, its consummation - the point where it breaks into practice'.

Thus Marxism is not a matter simply for the academic lecture hall, the library, or the conference paper - rather they are a tool for helping human liberation. As the climate crisis, nuclear war and economic crisis threaten the lives of millions, capitalism ought to be put to rest. The brilliance of Georg Lukács' short book is not just in the celebration of Lenin's ideas and practice but also in articulating the method that can hasten our liberation in the face of capitalist disaster.

Georg Lukács' Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought is available to read online here.

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