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PARTISAN REVIEW
as a Jacobin illusion Hegel shared with plebeian revolutionary politi–
cians like Robespierre.
In
The Young H egel,
Lukacs a rgued that the Jacobin revolution–
ary idea of abolishing the "positivity" of extant society by creating a
democracy based on the free self-activity of individuals liberated from
the state had been an illusion because it ignored economic realities. In
the guise of a discussion about Robespierre, Lukacs reevaluated
Lenin's program for the new society in
The State and R evo lution,
a
work instrumental in his own conversion to Marxism. Like Lenin 's
idea of reviving the Paris Commune, Robespi erre's idea of reviving the
Greek
polis
assumed that democracy depends on equality of wea lth;
like Lenin, Robespierre could achieve a partial scaling-down of
inequalities only during the per iod when the feudal es tates were first
broken down into peasant smallholdings; and like Lenin, his revolu–
tionary measures only unleashed the forces of capitalism whi ch tri–
umphed in Thermidor.
With Thermidor, capitalism became an " inexorable fate " which
could neither be fought nor evaded; and for superannuated Jacobins,
the problem was how
to
come to terms with it. Since there was no
longer any prospect of a revoluti onary reconcilia tion of reality and
morality, Hegel found that he had to dea l with the conflict between
capitalism and his moral postulates in the present and within the
bounds of society as it was. Lukacs was facing the same problem. As
Hegel sought "a mode of activity within bourgeo is society tha t would
satisfy his humanist idea ls," so Lukacs sought a mode of activity
within Soviet capitalism that would satisfy his. In his essays on
Lessing, Goethe and Schi ll er and in his aesthetic studies between 1936
and 1938, Lukacs explored attempts to reconcile love with power, and
social utopias with capitalist rea lities.
Although humanism remains the moral touchstone of Lukacs'
mature writings, he had no idea of how to transform his humanist
critical insights into political action. In the Stalinist or Napol eonic
period, the only way to come to terms with an appa rently inexorable
fate was to accept it, and
to
try to view it philosophically in the context
of "the whole historical development of humanity."
For Lukacs, as for Hegel, the contradi cti on between present evils
and humanist postulates could be rela tivized within the whole histori–
cal development of humanity by arguing that "the progress of man is
inevitably entwined with the worst impulses of human nature."
If
progress inevitably involves loss and individual tragedies, if the "cun–
ning of reason " uses self-interest, greed and the lust for power to propel
