Recovering Georg Lukacs

I review Georg Lukacs Reconsidered and Georg Lukacs: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence from a Lukacsian point of view, informed by a close reading of his works from the 1920s. The essays in these books, despite their heterogeneity, contribute towards revivifying Lukacsian Marxism, both philosophically and literarily. Specifically, many of the contributors criticise Honneth's appropriation of the theory of reification, rejecting readings of Lukacs that hypostatise or reify aspects of his theory. They begin to explore Lukacs's labour-centred ontology and the resultant philosophy of praxis, most importantly, returning the emphasis to the mediations whereby reification is overcome as a process, in contrast to those who see him as a voluntarist or messianic thinker. This allows a deeper engagement with Lukacs's theory of politics. While I contend that the authors explore this insufficiently, I conclude that these two books signify an important rediscovery of Lukacs.