Class consciousness as ideal-type

It is no accident that History and Class Consciousness begins with a discussion of the unsolved problem of the relation of Marxism to the proletariat. Philosophy of praxis depends on historical action, but what sort of action qualifies? In his first attempts to find an agent of revolution, Marx surreptitiously makes philosophy the subject of a historical change the proletariat itself would undergo rather than initiate and control. Lukács seeks an alternative to this unsatisfactory view with his theory of proletarian class consciousness. He argues that Marxism is not related in a merely accidental manner to the thought and action of proletarians, that it is not a scientific “consciousness from without” that the proletariat would serve as a “passive, material basis,” but that Marxist method is itself a reflection of proletarian class consciousness. Lukács writes, “every method is necessarily implicated in the existence of the relevant class.”¹⁹

I call such a theory–practice relation “reflexive.” Although Lukács’s version of this approach is his own, its roots lie in Marx’s early writings. Marx first develops the concept of reflexivity in considerations on the revolutionary state, discussed in Chapter 2. He is influenced by Hegel’s critique of the Jacobin experience in the French Revolution. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel claimed that the Terror was the result of an attempt to legislate a universal moral law in ignorance of the imbrication of universal and particular in actual social life. In response to Hegel’s analysis, Marx attempts to avoid political moralism, based not on real social tensions but on abstract principles in the Jacobin manner.

In the early 1840s, Marx is writing under the influence not only of Hegel, but also of Feuerbach, whose theory of religious alienation he generalized to include morality and the state. Just as Feuerbach reduced religion to its human basis in the alienated community, so Marx projects the “social” as the implicit unity of the contraries into which life is divided in alienated class society.

Thus in “Critical Notes on ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform’” he argues that communism cannot be a utopia imposed against private interests, for the very act of imposing it would reproduce the basic ill, the split between moral values and interests. The proletariat should avoid politics, except for purely negative purposes, and instead concentrate on social action toward the end of creating a wholly new type of society in which politics will be unnecessary.²⁰ A revolution that aims to bring morality down to earth, rooted in the needs of the people, could never succeed on the basis of state action. The goal is not merely to change the state by infusing it with correct moral principles, but far more radically to abolish the state.

This early critique of political moralism implies a general revision of the relation of theory to practice. If Marxism is not merely a disguised moral exigency from which the state would necessarily be reborn after the revolution, it must stand in a new relation to the class it represents. Starting from the critique of morality, Marx arrives at a concept of revolutionary theory as the “reflection” of life in thought. Reflexive subjectivity corresponds to social revolution just as abstract moral subjectivity corresponds to political revolution. The one emerges from the “social instinct” of the proletariat and articulates the inner meaning of its actions, while the other reflects the opposition of “ought” and “is” as they are experienced by the isolated individual in bourgeois society. Hence Marx writes in an early letter that his theory simply explains to the “world” “its own actions,” articulating the historically evolved content of the social movement. “We simply show it (the world) why it struggles in reality, and the consciousness of this is something which it is compelled to acquire, even if it does not want to.”²¹

Marx’s later works are ambiguous, conserving only traces of this original concept of subjectivity, as for example in the preface to Capital where he writes, “So far as such criticism represents a class, it can only represent the class whose vocation in history is the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production and the final abolition of all classes—the proletariat.”²² This passage continues to suggest that Marxism is somehow rooted in the life experiences of the working class, although unfortunately Marx never explains exactly how.

What he might have meant is suggested by a brief passage in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte:

Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven from earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drives the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.²³

Applied to the proletariat, this would mean that the “problems” the proletariat confronts are “solved” theoretically by Marxism in a way that reflects the similar practical solution to which the class is driven by its life circumstances. This could have been the basis for a theory of the essential relation of Marxist theory to proletarian practice had Marx ever developed such a theory. Instead, in his mature writings, he offers programmatic references to the “determination of thought by being” and “historical necessity.” Although this deterministic language is often seen as a concession to scientism, it serves the same purpose as the earlier reflexive theory of consciousness in blocking the regression to moralistic socialism.

Marx’s metacritique lies in the background of Lukács’s theory of class consciousness. It suggests a radical revision of the usual understanding of the relation of thought to action. Thought is usually conceived as the locus of rationality and meaning, while action is mere physical execution. But according to the metacritique, rationality and meaning can no longer be exclusively identified with individual thought, as they have been by modern philosophy since Descartes. For a reflexive theory of consciousness, they inhere not so much in thought as in acts. And these acts belong to a system of behavior that includes the beliefs of the individuals as a merely subordinate element. The consciousness of the subject relates to practice as a functional element within it, necessary for its performance but not for that matter the producer or truth of that performance. “Marx breaks with every limitation of signifying activity to the understanding alone, the true subject no longer being the subject of knowledge alone … but the real human being inserted into the concrete life of the society of which he is a member.”²⁴

This is precisely Lukács’s position. He refuses an identification of meaning and mind. Meaning and its formal structures are now detached from their usual locus and reconstructed through the concept of the form of objectivity as real social determinants. Practice is in itself teleological, meaning-bearing, and not simply the execution of a teleology and a meaning-content first disclosed to the subject in thought. Rather, that disclosure takes place later when theory raises practice to consciousness by thematizing its operative significance.

The Marxist tradition addresses these issues in terms of the theory of class consciousness. But this theory was not elaborated by 1923 much beyond the initial hints to be found in Marx and Engels. References to “subjective factors” covered over the yawning gap Lukács attempts to fill by drawing on several sources, including Weberian sociology and Hegel. His theory is best understood as an investigation into what I will call the “specific rationality” of social standpoints. It measures the epistemological credentials of different classes and on that basis their revolutionary potential.

For all classes but the proletariat, class consciousness is “false,” remains “a class-conditioned unconsciousness of one’s own socio-historical and economic condition.”²⁵ In these cases, class consciousness not only defines what the members of the class at their most lucid can know, but also sets the boundary of their understanding beyond which they cannot penetrate without shedding their class identity.

This boundary is, ultimately, the culture of capitalism. Lukács asks whether any standpoint exists inside the given culture from which that culture appears not as a transhistorical limit on consciousness but as a merely historical stage. Is there any class position within capitalist society from which its most basic presuppositions can be transcended? He answers that the proletariat can in principle achieve such a transcendence, overleaping its own age from within, in defiance of Hegel’s pessimistic restriction of wisdom to knowledge of the past.²⁶

According to Lukács the specific rationality of class behavior can be represented theoretically in a model corresponding with the rational content of class action independent of the actual thoughts of the individuals. He employs Weber’s concept of the “ideal-type” to define this model. Although not identical with the reality it describes, the ideal-type can be useful in isolating the probable causes and motives of behavior that more or less conform to it. Weber explains: “For purposes of causal imputation of empirical events, we need the rational, empirical-technical and logical constructions, which help us to answer the questions as to what a behavior pattern or thought pattern … would be like if it possessed completely rational, empirical and logical ‘correctness’ and ‘consistency.’”²⁷ Lukács constructs the concept of class consciousness as an ideal-type in this sense.

By relating consciousness to the whole of society it becomes possible to infer the thoughts and feelings which men would have in a particular life situation if they were able perfectly to assess both it and the interests arising from it in their impact on immediate action and on the whole structure of society. That is to say, it would be possible to infer the thoughts and feelings appropriate to their objective situation … Now class consciousness consists in fact in the appropriate and rational reactions “imputed” [zugerechnet] to a particular typical position available in the process of production.²⁸

Lukács explains that class consciousness is not “the sum nor the average of what is thought or felt by the single individuals who make up the class.”²⁹ With respect to this real consciousness, class consciousness would only be the horizon of rationality, the “objectively possible” beliefs that the individuals could hold at their most lucid and rational.³⁰ To the extent that the concept of class consciousness is properly constructed in each case, “plausibly motivated” in Weber’s words, it would describe the teleology of class behavior on which depends the “historically significant acts” of the class.³¹ The concept of class consciousness is tailored to the basic tendencies of class action from the outset, while the real consciousness of the individuals frequently trails behind, rationalizing the activity of the class post festum.

In his discussion of Lukács, Merleau-Ponty attempts to resolve the ambiguity of this account in which class consciousness seems neither wholly real nor merely ideal. He defines class consciousness as “the inner principle of activity, the global project which supports and animates the productions and actions of a class, which designates for it an image of the world and of its tasks in this world and which, external conditions taken into account, assigns it a history.”³² This seems a good explanation of Lukács’s intent.

Lukács constructs the model of class consciousness on the basis of three determinants: the reified form of objectivity of society, the social situation of the various classes of society, and their class interests.

1. Form of Objectivity. The reality of every society is to some extent concealed by the form of objectivity in which it appears. An adequate understanding thus cannot be based on uncritical acceptance of immediacy. For a class to attain a true consciousness of its own social world, it must be able to apprehend social appearances as dialectical moments in a comprehension that goes beyond them to their basis in social reality itself.

But not all forms of objectivity allow the transcendence of immediacy. Precapitalist forms confound nature and culture in a single seamless web, attributed to a God or gods and impenetrable to the members of society. Only reification, the form of objectivity of capitalism, can be successfully mediated by members of the society it structures. This is because reification reveals human agency in the construction of the social world, if in a distorted form.

According to Lukács, workers relativize the reified form of objectivity of capitalist society in their daily experience. They are thus potentially capable of seeing reification as a historically limited moment in a larger process that surpasses capitalism. It is this ability to transcend immediacy that exposes the entire structure of reified thought to criticism. A correct theoretical understanding of society is finally possible from this class standpoint, as a critique of the economic and epistemological premises of capitalism. Lukács argues that workers’ practical-critical response to the reification of experience is the foundation of Marxist dialectics. Marxism is thus, as theory, “adjusted” to the implicit methodological approach of proletarian class consciousness.

2. Class Situation. Lukács writes that “in capitalist society reality is—immediately—the same for both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.”³³ And again: “The proletariat shares with the bourgeoisie the reification of every aspect of its life.”³⁴ However, reification is differently experienced from different class standpoints. It is interesting that Lukács cites as evidence for this one of the few Marxian passages on alienation to which he had access:

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; it recognizes alienation as its own instrument and in 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.³⁵

Class situation determines a perspective on the form of objectivity of the society. It motivates the bourgeoisie to remain in immediacy and the proletariat to transcend it.

Class situation also determines what Lukács calls the “immediate objects” of the class, that is to say, the objects of its daily activity that are paradigmatic for it in interpreting more “distant” social spheres. To avoid confusion, I prefer to call these initial objects of class consciousness “proximate objects” to distinguish them clearly from the immediate form of objectivity of the society as a whole.

Lukács argues that these proximate objects form an inner circle of awareness, starting out from which the class strives to achieve a universal comprehension of all sectors of society. Whether it succeeds or not in transcending the limits of its own proximate objects will depend on its place in the production process. Classes engaged in secondary economic activities are unable to construct a coherent worldview. Only a class such as the bourgeoisie or proletariat, involved in the industrial economy, can encompass the entire society in thought by generalizing from its particular situation.

3. Class Interest. Every class consciousness is adjusted to the interests of the class. Where these interests are better served by a consciousness that remains in immediacy, class consciousness will be “false consciousness.” This is the case, Lukács claims, for the bourgeoisie. In a true consciousness of society it would discover the limited and partial character of its domination as a ruling class. It therefore remains in the “necessary illusion” of reification, the better to believe in its universal mission. And where the uprisings of the oppressed challenge its pretensions, the class nevertheless remains in ignorance through the “falsity of consciousness,” i.e., through the development of ideology in the pejorative sense.³⁶ The class interest of the bourgeoisie thus maintains the class in immediacy and represses comprehension of the class struggle.

Only the proletariat, the bourgeoisie’s antagonist in this struggle, has no interest in the maintenance of capitalism and therefore no need for illusions. As an industrial class it can understand the society as a whole. And it experiences reification not as a universal transhistorical horizon, but rather as a barrier to its own self-actualization, a barrier it can attempt to overcome both in practice and in theory.

Lukács claims that workers themselves are the proximate object of this initial dereification because they cannot accept immediately their own form of objectivity under capitalism as commodified labor power. They are constantly aware of the difference between their social form as commodified labor and real content as persons. Unfortunately, he has little to say about the concrete contexts in which workers more or less spontaneously dereify aspects of social reality.³⁷ The capitalist, on the contrary, receives the worker at the factory gate as a commodity and is not obliged to think beyond this immediacy for any reason of principle.

For Lukács the proletariat is always already situated beyond immediacy in the simple act of becoming (socially) self-conscious. This self-consciousness begins to shatter the reified form of its objects and penetrates to their “reality.” It can do so, Lukács argues, because the consciousness of the proletariat is “the self-consciousness of the commodity; or in other words it is the self-knowledge, the self-revelation of the capitalist society founded upon the production and exchange of commodities.”³⁸

In the commodity the worker recognizes himself and his own relation to capital. Inasmuch as he is incapable in practice of raising himself above the role of object his consciousness is the self-consciousness of the commodity; or in other words it is the self-knowledge, the self-revelation of the capitalist society founded upon the production and exchange of commodities … [W]hen the worker knows himself as a commodity his knowledge is practice. That is to say, this knowledge brings about an objective structural change in the object of knowledge.³⁹

This is the unity of theory and practice. Workers’ recognition of their own social role transforms that role. They are freed from the reified self-understanding that keeps them divided as owners of a commodity, labor power. This in itself constitutes a fundamental social change. From isolated individuals they are transformed into a rebellious collective subject: “the act of consciousness overthrows the form of objectivity of its object.”⁴⁰ The patterns of behavior that flow from and reproduce reification are altered by social self-consciousness. Instead of facing apparently solid social facts individually, workers recognize their own collective implication in these so-called facts and in so doing dereify them: the social world no longer appears as a collection of things but as a complex of processes in which the workers are always already engaged.

For example, a “thing” such as a corporation has a form supplied by law and established practice that is stabilized as a reified appearance. In normal times, the isolated individual agents confront the corporation as an overwhelming power, a “reality” to which they must adjust. But during a strike, social form and content are juxtaposed and clash. The corporation is revealed to be a complex of human relations that can be challenged, exposing it to transformation at every level: economic, social, political. The revolution is such a dereifying practice writ large, encompassing the entire society.

Dereification is not of course a pure thought process, still less a quasiphilosophical transcendence of opinion in knowledge. It is a situated knowledge, a transformation according to quite specific determinations, very different from the activity of a scientific cogito. Nor does the possibility of such a dereification imply that workers are spontaneously revolutionary. The point is rather to explain how workers can demystify reification sufficiently to act autonomously on their own behalf and in their own interests as a collective social subject. Class consciousness consists in a more or less spontaneous critique of reification to which correspond everyday practices that challenge the most fundamental premises of capitalism and its culture when deepened and systematized in the context of union and party activities. These practices usually stop far short of revolution, but they underlie the very possibility of revolution. In sum, this theory is an attempt to show in principle that the class can make a revolution that does not merely replace one set of rulers with another, but that transcends the cultural horizon and alters the foundations of society. For that possibility to be actualized specific historical conditions must be met. Those conditions include the mass strike and a revolutionary party.⁴¹