{"id":7369,"date":"2019-08-28T13:44:42","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T17:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/?p=7369"},"modified":"2019-08-28T13:47:53","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T17:47:53","slug":"richard-westerman-lukacss-phenomenology-of-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/2019\/08\/28\/richard-westerman-lukacss-phenomenology-of-capitalism","title":{"rendered":"Richard Westerman, Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Phenomenology of Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Westerman, Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Phenomenology of Capitalism: Reification Revalued<\/em>. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; 325 pages. ISBN 978-3319932866.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Robert Jackson, Manchester Metropolitan University.<\/em><\/p>\n

Some thinkers\u2019 ideas have been summarized and distilled with such frequency that the prevailing image of their thought is worn smooth through repetition. The presentation of their theory acquires a familiarity that reduces its capacity to surprise us with abrasive insight. Georg Luk\u00e1cs is an example of such a thinker, and the notion of reification, elaborated in History and Class Consciousness <\/em>(1923; hereafter, HCC<\/em>), is such an idea. Building on Marx\u2019s discussion of the fetishism of commodities in his critique of political economy, Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s distinctive contribution was the extension of this phenomenon beyond the economic realm, reframing the commodity-form as the universal structuring principle of all aspects of capitalist society. As the archetypical philosopher of Western Marxism, the dominant image of the early Luk\u00e1cs is that of an intellectual shaped by a tradition of Romantic anti-capitalism, who then fashioned a Hegelian version of Marxism that emphasized the role of class consciousness in history and a mediated conception of the social totality.<\/p>\n

While acknowledged as a seminal figure in twentieth-century intellectual life, helping to inspire the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, the standard interpretation regards Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s reconstruction of Marxism as outmoded and exhausted. Despite his materialist pretensions, this reading holds that Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s philosophy of praxis<\/em> recreates a form of idealism by substituting the proletariat for the demiurge of the Hegelian Weltgeist<\/em> (or the Fichtean \u201cidentical subject-object,\u201d positing the world through a moment of practice). Even Theodor Adorno and J\u00fcrgen Habermas, who acknowledge significant inheritances from Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s thought, level the charge that Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s efforts lead him towards idealism by eliding the concepts of reification and rational objectification. Indeed, Luk\u00e1cs himself reinforces this assessment through the self-criticism he penned in 1967 as the Preface (HCC, ix\u2013xxxix) for the republication of HCC<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Richard Westerman would like us to rethink this standard interpretation of Luk\u00e1cs. In Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Phenomenology of Capitalism<\/em>, he argues that there has been an \u201cexcessive weight hitherto placed on Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s debts to classical German philosophy.\u201d (19) Reading Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Heidelberg drafts of a philosophy of art and aesthetics (1912\u201318), Westerman foregrounds the influence on his thought of a \u201cphenomenological quartet\u201d of less-discussed figures: Alois Riegl, Konrad Fiedler, Emil Lask, and Edmund Husserl. Westerman argues that a contextualized reading of the later essays in HCC<\/em>, written in Vienna in 1922 during a moment of \u201cenforced leisure\u201d (HCC, xli), presents a new and unfamiliar picture of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

To frame this reading, Westerman reconstructs Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s defence of aesthetic formalism in his early efforts at a philosophy of art. In these Heidelberg drafts, Luk\u00e1cs aims to preserve the independence of a sphere of value against the relativizing tendencies of the dominant psychologistic accounts of art in late nineteenth-century German thought. Tracing the genealogy of neo-Kantianism through Hermann Lotze\u2019s notion of \u201cdomains of validity\u201d (39), Westerman shows how Luk\u00e1cs investigated these conditions of validity in the aesthetic sphere. Inspired by Fiedler\u2019s insistence that the work of art does not simply reflect the external world, Luk\u00e1cs sought out a systematic concept to explain artistic style \u201con its own terms.\u201d He found this in Riegl\u2019s analysis of Kunstwollen<\/em>, \u201ca stylistic representation of both the nature of objective reality and the relation of the individual to that reality prevailing in a given society\u201d (47), which depersonalized the principle of form in the work of art. As Westerman explains, Luk\u00e1cs uses this concept to point to \u201cthe immanent structures that determine the forms of an artwork and at the same time define the position of the subject within the totality.\u201d (48)<\/p>\n

Drawing also on sources beyond the horizon of aesthetic philosophies, the book leads us through Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s engagement with Husserl\u2019s Logical Investigations <\/em>and Ideas<\/em>, in particular the model of intentionality and the phenomenological epoch\u00e9<\/em>. Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Heidelberg writings repurpose these Husserlian tools, originally developed for acts of consciousness, to relate to the meaning of artworks and wider social phenomena. In these writings, Luk\u00e1cs refers repeatedly to his own framework as \u201cphenomenological,\u201d albeit appropriating Husserl\u2019s concepts in a specifically neo-Kantian manner that is preoccupied \u201cwith the object<\/em> rather than with mental acts.\u201d (70) For anyone who has ever puzzled over the references to figures such as Fiedler, Riegl, and Husserl in Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s famous reification essay in HCC<\/em>, Westerman\u2019s discussions illuminate the intellectual crosscurrents clashing, fusing and informing that work.<\/p>\n

Westerman also delineates the elements of Lask\u2019s philosophy that can be seen as prefigurations of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s critique of capitalist reification. In particular, Lask\u2019s unorthodox reading of Fichte and his theory of aletheiology<\/em> (\u201can ontological theory of meaning grounded in the concept of truth\u201d [57]) deal with problems familiar to readers of Luk\u00e1cs, such as the \u201cirrational gap,\u201d and with the \u201ctheoretical-contemplative\u201d structuring of subject-object relations. (58) Crucially, we find here a conception of subjectivity that is very far from a self-positing \u201csubject-creator\u201d in the standard reading of Luk\u00e1cs, but rather one that emphasizes the \u201csecondary, derived role\u201d of the subject, which is \u201ccircumscribed by the objectively determined validity forms of its relation to the object.\u201d (59)<\/p>\n

Drawing out the key categories deployed in Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s early Heidelberg aesthetics, Westerman makes the case for the innovative combination of these neo-Kantian and phenomenological influences in the development of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s later social theory. Westerman argues that we must be attentive to how Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s experiments influence the development of key terms \u2013 such as totality, standpoint, and the relation between subject and object \u2013 in his later analysis of capitalist reification. One of the formidable strengths of this book is its fluid style and clear signposting that makes the often-difficult subject material very readable. Westerman peppers the narrative with asides and anecdotes (as well as the occasional joke about Bob Dylan).<\/p>\n

The carefully structured argument is methodically unpacked in subsequent chapters, elaborating what Westerman calls a \u201cphenomenological reading\u201d of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s work through a substantive account of HCC<\/em>. This reading locates three different levels in Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s framework, which \u2013 borrowing Heideggerian terminology \u2013 Westerman classifies as the phenomenological, the ontic, and the ontological. The first examines \u201cthe ways specific objects appear or the individual\u2019s direct relationship to the social world.\u201d (23) The forms of this \u201cphenomenological\u201d level of appearance are not understood as \u201cforms of knowledge\u201d that convey a flawed version of \u201ctrue reality,\u201d but as \u201cwhat society and social objects are<\/em>, because they govern the intentional practices that constitute objects as socially meaningful.\u201d (144)<\/p>\n

The second \u201contic\u201d level uncovers the \u201coverall structure of reality under capitalism,\u201d which deals with the \u201cinteraction between objects\u201d (23), namely the logic of the commodity structure. For Westerman, Luk\u00e1cs takes up Georg Simmel\u2019s analysis of the \u201clogic of social relationships\u201d and of the role of social form in determining the ontology of social being, while also going beyond Simmel in \u201chistorical specificity\u201d and \u201contological ambitiousness.\u201d (130) Finally, the roots of this \u201contic reality\u201d are located in a deeper ontological level, \u201cfrom which that reality coheres as a totality that makes sense on its own terms.\u201d (145) While a brief review cannot do justice to this detailed reconstruction, it is worth pointing towards the insightful analysis that Westerman provides of the precise role of key influences on Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s work. Westerman counters the common assumption that Luk\u00e1cs adopts a Hegelian theory of subjectivity, arguing that the decisive content that Luk\u00e1cs absorbs from Hegel originates in the ontological categories of the Science of Logic<\/em>, such as essence and appearance. (217)<\/p>\n

One of the particular merits of Westerman\u2019s phenomenological reading is that it undermines the established account of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s theory of reification as restricted to distortion of consciousness conceived in merely epistemic terms. Building on the work of Andrew Feenberg, Westerman reads Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s use of the term \u201cconsciousness\u201d to mean \u201csomething similar to the anthropological notion of culture<\/em>.\u201d (14) At the same time, Westerman seeks to go beyond Feenberg\u2019s understanding by including in his analysis \u201cthe idea of mental states, the concepts of subject and object as questions inherent to it, the notion of reality, the themes of experience and memory, and the problem of the first-person perspective.\u201d (15)<\/p>\n

Moreover, Westerman actively uses the distinction between the early essays in HCC<\/em> and those drafted (or re-drafted) in 1922 to argue for the \u201cjettisoning\u201d of certain problematic and misleading concepts, such as the notion of \u201cimputed\u201d or \u201cascribed\u201d class consciousness, from his \u201cphenomenological\u201d account of Luk\u00e1cs. (104f.) While this manoeuvre has the advantage of unambiguously distancing Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s conception from vulgar \u201cfalse-consciousness\u201d versions of Marxism, it also potentially defuses some of the ideological-critical capacities of his framework.<\/p>\n

Westerman makes the case for 1922 as a decisive moment in the development of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s theory of reification, contrasting the \u201cconventional\u201d epistemological<\/em> treatment of consciousness in Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s early \u201cna\u00efve\u201d and \u201cmessianic\u201d Marxist writings (1919\u201321) to the phenomenological<\/em> account found in the later essays of HCC.<\/em> While this binary characterization of positions may play a necessary analytical function in the argument, I find the discussion of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s later phenomenological conception more convincing than the philological evidence provided to show that his earlier Marxist work deployed a crudely epistemological conception. Did Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s early Marxist essays, as Westerman suggests, merely seek to add more \u201cfacts\u201d to the bourgeois perception? (101) I would suggest that the moment of transformational intensity that marks Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s life at this point merits further scrutiny. Indeed, an expanded study of the particular character of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s \u201cmessianism,\u201d and its relation to what Slavoj \u017di\u017eek described in The Puppet and the Dwarf <\/em>as the \u201ccondensed time of the Event\u201d (PD, 135), might be a fruitful encounter for Westerman\u2019s phenomenological approach.<\/p>\n

In the book, Westerman skilfully identifies different registers through which Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s thought moves during the various phases of his development. He distinguishes between the everyday experiences examined by Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s early sociological account of works of art, and the treatment of \u201cpeak\u201d or \u201cpinnacle\u201d aesthetic experiences in his formalist Heidelberg works. (60) Additional exploration of this contraposition of the everyday experience and the rarity of \u201cutopian\u201d peak experience in Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s earlier works would perhaps find echoes in his later analysis of everyday life in bourgeois society as the \u201cpermanent crisis of capitalism.\u201d (HCC, 40) Westerman touches on the theme of crisis in his discussion of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s use of Kierkegaard to think through the possibility of finding an immanent moral imperative to revolution. Further discussion of the wider role of crisis in Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s project of disrupting reification might also be illuminating for Westerman\u2019s phenomenological reading.<\/p>\n

While ultimately regarding Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s privileging of the proletariat in the project of overcoming reification as a failure, Westerman argues that his phenomenological version of Luk\u00e1cs \u201cfails in more interesting ways than is normally understood to be the case.\u201d (4) Thus, the book identifies the overlooked contribution that Luk\u00e1cs makes to our understanding of the formation of collective identity, in particular providing \u201ca non-essentializing way to speak about personal and social identity.\u201d (230) Westerman also reconstructs the often-misunderstood relationship between the social and the natural in Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s thought, in which Luk\u00e1cs proposes social relations defined by a \u201cnew form of reason\u201d that \u201cwould no longer need to impose abstract demands on material reality.\u201d (269)<\/p>\n

The final section of Westerman\u2019s book extends its reach beyond the scope of HCC<\/em>. In particular, the concluding chapter offers tantalizing indications of ways to develop this reading to deliver critical engagements with subsequent theorists, such as Habermas and Fredric Jameson. This leaves the reader hoping for extended elaborations of these promises in future, as well as further development of the reflections on figures such as Moishe Postone and Axel Honneth within the preceding chapters. Above all, Westerman\u2019s conception of the development of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s writings, not as a linear development between sociological, formalist, and Marxist phases, but as a more complex reconfiguration of unexpected sources conveys in a provocative and exciting way the enduring relevance of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s thought today.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Phenomenology of Capitalism<\/em> is a major contribution to the recent season of Luk\u00e1cs studies, and it succeeds in offering both a new and a convincing perspective on Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s thought. It complements other publications, such as Konstantinos Kavoulakos\u2019s Georg Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Philosophy of Praxis <\/em>(2018), which also foregrounds underexplored sources of Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s attempt to formulate a theory of transformative praxis<\/em>. While the recent closure of the Luk\u00e1cs Arch\u00edvum<\/em> in Budapest by the reactionary regime of Viktor Orb\u00e1n imbues this interest in Luk\u00e1cs with a direct sense of urgency, these inquiries are also essential reading for a wider audience engaged in renewed questioning of the role of critical thought in our own times.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Additional Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

Konstantinos Kavoulakos (2018), Georg Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Philosophy of Praxis<\/em> (London: Bloomsbury Academic).<\/p>\n

Georg Luk\u00e1cs (1971), History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics<\/em>, (tr.) R. Livingstone (London: Merlin Press).<\/p>\n

Slavoj \u017di\u017eek (2003), The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity<\/em> (London and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).<\/p>\n

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Richard Westerman, Luk\u00e1cs\u2019s Phenomenology of Capitalism: Reification Revalued. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; 325 pages. ISBN 978-3319932866. Reviewed by Robert Jackson, Manchester Metropolitan University. Some thinkers\u2019 ideas have been summarized and distilled with such frequency that the prevailing image of their thought is worn smooth through repetition. The presentation of their theory acquires a familiarity that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[108,125,38],"class_list":["post-7369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized","tag-capitalism","tag-lukacs","tag-phenomenology","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 10:29:28","action":"Draft","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7369"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7372,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7369\/revisions\/7372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}