Lukács, "Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought", Chapters 1 - 3

Welcome back readers! By popular demand, we're continuing our journey with Lenin, this time by way of the work of the Hungarian philosopher, literary critic and battle-hardened revolutionary György Lukács.

The text is Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought, published in 1924. Find the text here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/1924/lenin/

"The following short account does not for a moment claim to deal in any way exhaustively with the theory and practice of Lenin. It is merely an attempt – in rough outline – to show the relationship between the two, written in the belief that it is precisely this relationship which is not clearly enough in evidence, even in the minds of many Communists."

Published five years after the fall of the revolutionary Hungarian Soviet Republic, in which the young Lukács took an active part as the new government's Minister for Culture, this work provides one of the most accessible overviews of Lenin's philosophy of praxis available in English. Indeed as those who joined us for our reading of State and Revolution by Lenin may already know, sometimes it's easier to get a sense of what someone's philosophy is about by reading someone else.

Lukács was writing just a few years after the dust had been to settle after the stalling-out of the attempted world revolution of 1917-1920. This revolutionary wave saw monarchies and governments toppled across the world and the beginnings of the rise of 20th-century anti-colonialism. Beginning in Russia with the October Revolution, it saw Soviet-style republics set up across Europe, from Budapest to Bavaria, with major unrest in Austria, Italy (the Bienno Rosso) Ireland, and even Glasgow's "Red Clydeside", on which tanks had to be deployed to during the Battle of George Square in 1919. Although dramatic events continued into the mid-1920s, the revolutionary period could be said to have drawn to a close with the failure of the Ruhr uprising in Germany's industrial heartland and/or the defeat of the Red Army at the Battle of Warsaw, both in 1920.

With the perspective of a few years on from the peak of this revolutionary wave, Lukács was able to pierce the veil of confusion that fast-moving events often create and develop a thorough, philosophically-grounded, empirically-rigorous case for why Lenin's understanding of revolution, and indeed his revolutionary leadership, created conditions for the success of the October Revolution, in contrast to so many of the attempts that followed it.

We'll read the full text in a pair of two consecutive meetups and discuss topics such as the relevance of Lenin's understanding of class forces and their interactions, the scope of revolutionary leadership, the role of the masses vis-a-vis the so-called vanguard party, and much more.

Take care and happy reading!