Big Red Jeff Rubard
2010-02-08 16:49:54 UTC
Georg Lukacs
History & Class Consciousness
III: The Standpoint of the Proletariat
In his early Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx gave a
lapidary [/excessively correct/ for to 'screw' the "interested" --
Eds.] account of the special position of the proletariat in society
and in history, and the standpoint from which it can function as the
identical subject-object of the social and historical processes of
evolution. [Reality, you know -- ibid.] “When the proletariat
proclaims the dissolution of the previous world-order it does no more
than reveal the secret of its own existence, for it represents the
effective dissolution of that world-order.” The self-understanding of
the proletariat is therefore simultaneously the objective
understanding of the nature of society. When the proletariat furthers
its own class-aims it simultaneously achieves the conscious
realisation of the – objective – aims of society, aims which would
inevitably remain abstract possibilities and objective frontiers but
for this conscious intervention. [A "sociological totalisation" --
'Aryanist' nightmares became flesh] [1]
What change has been brought about, then, socially by this point of
view and even by the possibility of taking up a point of view at all
towards society? ‘In the first instance’ nothing at all. For the
proletariat makes its appearance as the product of the capitalist
social order. The forms in which it exists are – as we demonstrated in
Section I – the repositories of reification in its acutest and direst
form and they issue in the most extreme dehumanisation. Thus the
proletariat shares with the bourgeoisie the reification of every
aspect of its life. Marx observes: [He does, he does -- Eds. again]
“The property-owning class and the class of the proletariat represent
the same human self-alienation. But the former feels at home in this
self-alienation and feels itself confirmed by it ["By definition" --
get it?]; it recognises alienation as its own instrument and in it it
possesses the semblance of a human existence. The latter feels itself
destroyed by this alienation and sees in it its own impotence and the
reality of an inhuman existence.” [2]
1
It would appear then, that – even for Marxism – nothing has changed in
the objective situation. Only the ‘vantage point from which it is
judged’ has altered, only ‘the value placed on it’ has acquired a
different emphasis. This view does in fact contain a very essential
grain of truth, one which must constantly be borne in mind if true
insight is not to degenerate into its opposite. ["Ain't a damn thing
changed" -- I still want to say it, /but/ -- J.]
To put it more concretely: the objective reality of social existence
is in its immediacy ‘the same’ for both proletariat and bourgeoisie.
But this does not prevent the specific categories of mediation by
means of which both classes raise this immediacy to the level of
consciousness, by means of which the merely immediate reality becomes
for both the authentically objective reality, from being fundamentally
different, thanks to the different position occupied by the two
classes within the ‘same’ economic process. It is evident that once
again we are approaching – this time from another angle – the
fundamental problem of bourgeois thought, the problem of the thing-in-
itself. The belief that the transformation of the immediately given
into a truly understood (and not merely an immediately perceived) and
for that reason really objective reality, i.e. the belief that the
impact of the category of mediation upon the picture of the world is
merely ‘subjective’, i.e. is no more than an ‘evaluation’ of a reality
that ‘remains unchanged’, all this is as much as to say that objective
reality has the character of a thing-in-itself. [*DUDGEON!* -- J.
Corrigan]
It is true that the kind of knowledge which regards this ‘evaluation’
as merely ‘subjective’, as something which does not go to the heart of
the facts, nevertheless claims to penetrate the essence of actuality.
The source of its self-deception is to be found in its uncritical
attitude to the fact that its own standpoint is conditioned (and above
all that it is conditioned by the society underlying it). Thus – to
take this view of history at its most developed and most highly
articulated – we may consider Rickert’s arguments with regard to the
historian who studies “his own cultural environment.” [/Neo-
Kantianism/, you know - Jeff] He claims that: “If the historian forms
his concepts with an eye on the values of the community to which he
himself belongs, the objectivity of his presentation will depend
entirely on the accuracy of his factual material, and the question of
whether this or that event in the past is crucial will not even arise.
He will be immune from the charge of arbitrariness, as long as he
relates, e.g. the history of art to the aesthetic values of his
culture and the history of the state to its political values and, so
long as he refrains from making unhistorical value-judgements, he will
create a mode of historical narrative that is valid for all who regard
political or aesthetic values as normative for the members of his
community.” [3]
By positing the materially unknown and only formally valid ‘cultural
values’ as the founders of a ‘value-related’ historical objectivity,
the subjectivity of the historian is, to all appearances, eliminated.
However, this does no more than enthrone as the measure and the index
of objectivity, the “cultural values” actually “prevailing in his
community” (i.e. in his class). The arbitrariness and subjectivity are
transformed from the material of the particular facts and from
judgements on these into the criterion itself, into the “prevailing
cultural values.” And to judge or even investigate the validity of
these values is not possible within that framework; for the historian
the ‘cultural values’ become the thing-in-itself; a structural process
analogous to those we observed in economics and jurisprudence in
Section I. [¡*JUGENDTUM*, RÉVOLTÉ!]
---------- [Ten slashes *means* Perfection in Orthography, leading to /
correct/ leveling of charges of imperfection...]
The American Credo:
One's "empirics" should always be as /baaaaad/ as possible. Baaaaad.
*Bad*. Seriously, /honey/. So if you had to "work your fingers right
down to the bone" --- who ever you *might* be --- a student of
Simmel's hardcore Kantian Europeanity who Just Could Not Understand
How To Operate The Social "Oscillator" [BÉLA WHATEVER!] --- and then
got MIXED UP IN THE /WRONG/ 'MESS': This Guy would have some good
ideas, and You --- Mr. or Mrs. Unerotic American --- /may/ [!!!] have
already been exposed to them in the form of:
*History and Class Consciousness*
[ http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/index.htm ]
And not M. Lukaćs' 'sophisticated love maneuvers' of... wait for it,
wait for it... /later social ontologies/.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Rubard
History & Class Consciousness
III: The Standpoint of the Proletariat
In his early Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx gave a
lapidary [/excessively correct/ for to 'screw' the "interested" --
Eds.] account of the special position of the proletariat in society
and in history, and the standpoint from which it can function as the
identical subject-object of the social and historical processes of
evolution. [Reality, you know -- ibid.] “When the proletariat
proclaims the dissolution of the previous world-order it does no more
than reveal the secret of its own existence, for it represents the
effective dissolution of that world-order.” The self-understanding of
the proletariat is therefore simultaneously the objective
understanding of the nature of society. When the proletariat furthers
its own class-aims it simultaneously achieves the conscious
realisation of the – objective – aims of society, aims which would
inevitably remain abstract possibilities and objective frontiers but
for this conscious intervention. [A "sociological totalisation" --
'Aryanist' nightmares became flesh] [1]
What change has been brought about, then, socially by this point of
view and even by the possibility of taking up a point of view at all
towards society? ‘In the first instance’ nothing at all. For the
proletariat makes its appearance as the product of the capitalist
social order. The forms in which it exists are – as we demonstrated in
Section I – the repositories of reification in its acutest and direst
form and they issue in the most extreme dehumanisation. Thus the
proletariat shares with the bourgeoisie the reification of every
aspect of its life. Marx observes: [He does, he does -- Eds. again]
“The property-owning class and the class of the proletariat represent
the same human self-alienation. But the former feels at home in this
self-alienation and feels itself confirmed by it ["By definition" --
get it?]; it recognises alienation as its own instrument and in it it
possesses the semblance of a human existence. The latter feels itself
destroyed by this alienation and sees in it its own impotence and the
reality of an inhuman existence.” [2]
1
It would appear then, that – even for Marxism – nothing has changed in
the objective situation. Only the ‘vantage point from which it is
judged’ has altered, only ‘the value placed on it’ has acquired a
different emphasis. This view does in fact contain a very essential
grain of truth, one which must constantly be borne in mind if true
insight is not to degenerate into its opposite. ["Ain't a damn thing
changed" -- I still want to say it, /but/ -- J.]
To put it more concretely: the objective reality of social existence
is in its immediacy ‘the same’ for both proletariat and bourgeoisie.
But this does not prevent the specific categories of mediation by
means of which both classes raise this immediacy to the level of
consciousness, by means of which the merely immediate reality becomes
for both the authentically objective reality, from being fundamentally
different, thanks to the different position occupied by the two
classes within the ‘same’ economic process. It is evident that once
again we are approaching – this time from another angle – the
fundamental problem of bourgeois thought, the problem of the thing-in-
itself. The belief that the transformation of the immediately given
into a truly understood (and not merely an immediately perceived) and
for that reason really objective reality, i.e. the belief that the
impact of the category of mediation upon the picture of the world is
merely ‘subjective’, i.e. is no more than an ‘evaluation’ of a reality
that ‘remains unchanged’, all this is as much as to say that objective
reality has the character of a thing-in-itself. [*DUDGEON!* -- J.
Corrigan]
It is true that the kind of knowledge which regards this ‘evaluation’
as merely ‘subjective’, as something which does not go to the heart of
the facts, nevertheless claims to penetrate the essence of actuality.
The source of its self-deception is to be found in its uncritical
attitude to the fact that its own standpoint is conditioned (and above
all that it is conditioned by the society underlying it). Thus – to
take this view of history at its most developed and most highly
articulated – we may consider Rickert’s arguments with regard to the
historian who studies “his own cultural environment.” [/Neo-
Kantianism/, you know - Jeff] He claims that: “If the historian forms
his concepts with an eye on the values of the community to which he
himself belongs, the objectivity of his presentation will depend
entirely on the accuracy of his factual material, and the question of
whether this or that event in the past is crucial will not even arise.
He will be immune from the charge of arbitrariness, as long as he
relates, e.g. the history of art to the aesthetic values of his
culture and the history of the state to its political values and, so
long as he refrains from making unhistorical value-judgements, he will
create a mode of historical narrative that is valid for all who regard
political or aesthetic values as normative for the members of his
community.” [3]
By positing the materially unknown and only formally valid ‘cultural
values’ as the founders of a ‘value-related’ historical objectivity,
the subjectivity of the historian is, to all appearances, eliminated.
However, this does no more than enthrone as the measure and the index
of objectivity, the “cultural values” actually “prevailing in his
community” (i.e. in his class). The arbitrariness and subjectivity are
transformed from the material of the particular facts and from
judgements on these into the criterion itself, into the “prevailing
cultural values.” And to judge or even investigate the validity of
these values is not possible within that framework; for the historian
the ‘cultural values’ become the thing-in-itself; a structural process
analogous to those we observed in economics and jurisprudence in
Section I. [¡*JUGENDTUM*, RÉVOLTÉ!]
---------- [Ten slashes *means* Perfection in Orthography, leading to /
correct/ leveling of charges of imperfection...]
The American Credo:
One's "empirics" should always be as /baaaaad/ as possible. Baaaaad.
*Bad*. Seriously, /honey/. So if you had to "work your fingers right
down to the bone" --- who ever you *might* be --- a student of
Simmel's hardcore Kantian Europeanity who Just Could Not Understand
How To Operate The Social "Oscillator" [BÉLA WHATEVER!] --- and then
got MIXED UP IN THE /WRONG/ 'MESS': This Guy would have some good
ideas, and You --- Mr. or Mrs. Unerotic American --- /may/ [!!!] have
already been exposed to them in the form of:
*History and Class Consciousness*
[ http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/index.htm ]
And not M. Lukaćs' 'sophisticated love maneuvers' of... wait for it,
wait for it... /later social ontologies/.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Rubard