Corredor Eva L. - Lukács after Communism : interviews with contemporary intellectuals

This book was inspired by the revolutionary events in Russia and Eastern Europe that began in 1989. The political and economic turmoil that followed prompted questions about the continued validity and legacy of Gyrgy Lukcss critical theories to a world that had just experienced the apparent bankruptcy of communism, an ideology that had risen and now seemed to have died nearly simultaneously with Lukcs.

In 1991 a visit to a major bookstore in Budapest, Gyrgy Lukcss hometown, resulted in the discovery of only one book on the Hungarian philosopher and critic, Hungarys most noted intellectual in the twentieth century. In Paris a few faithful such as Nicolas Tertulian continued to teach Lukcs at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales of the Sorbonne. In New York Lukcss original disciples busied themselves at the New School for Social Research, dissecting his work, uncovering its shortcomings, while reclaiming their chairs at the University of Budapest from which they had been ousted during the communist regime, swinging back and forth between East and West, and enjoying the windfalls of the new world order.

A few years after the initial political tremor, critical aftershocks appeared on the most recent register of books in print. A two-volume Hungarian Studies on Gyrgy Lukcs (Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1993) was edited by Lukcss newly liberated countrymen, for whom it is striking to learn that Lukcss influence extends even to the United States (ix). They also felt, somewhat naively, that because of relative linguistic isolation, only Hungarian research could fully account for Lukcss thought and provide a more reliable image of Lukcs than that currently reflected in the international scholarly literature (ix). Unfortunately, little in the volumes nearly seven hundred pages would significantly affect the current understanding of Lukcss work in the West. Lukcs, in fact, wrote most of his works in German, and they had been available to the West for several decades.

The more apocalyptic and sensationalist reactions to the end of the Soviet regime in Russia and Eastern Europe have no doubt provoked must be considered to fully assess Lukcss role in the critical discourse after the debacle of communism.

If, as Francis Fukuyama suggested, history has indeed come to an end with the elimination of the East-West polarity after the cold war, a historically based criticism such as Lukcss could hardly carry its past weight into the future. Posthistorical wars, however, have shown that ethnic, tribal, and nationalist conflicts must not necessarily follow a bipartisan pattern to explode into full-blown historical catastrophes. History has never exactly repeated itself but has progressed under always changing and changed forms. History and conflict continue to live, it would seem, as long as human beings attempt to coexist in society, whether in a family, a nation, or the world.

Similarly, visions of political correctness have been in constant flux. Invented by the left, allegedly hijacked by the right, the conflicting truths espoused by left and right reflect the confusion created by willfully antagonistic and often arbitrary party politics that have left people baffled and amused about what should be considered right or wrong. The contradictions also reveal the more serious need for globally acceptable human ethics. The collapse of communism constituted yet another failure in this endeavor. The necessity and the desire to invent a more just society remain.

Proposed remedies to the current crisis abound. Among those who do not flatly reject any inferences about the future based on theories of the past are critics who simply wish to update or supplement earlier visions. They speak of new spaces to be considered. They indict Eurocentric approaches to global crises. New concepts of ethnocentrism, nationalism, ecology, racism, sexism, religious fanaticism today have exploded notions of the past that implied a harmonious human totality. While these critics wish to go beyond Marxism and expand its vision, they propose no radically new approach that would truly replace the former model.