DANIEL BELL
545
whether those hopes will be crushed "by the sterile power of the
existent."
In 1915 Lukacs returned to Budapest, and a small Sunday
afternoon group gathered about him and his friend Bela Balazs for
discussions patterned after the gatherings of the Weber circle.
Among the younger members were Karl Mannheim, Arnold
Hauser, Frederick Antal , and Michael Polanyi , men who became
famous in the Anglo-American world , as well as a group of older and
today less well-known Hungarian intellectuals. The subject for
discussion was always chosen by Lukacs and invariably centered on
some ethical issue suggested by the writings of Dostoevsky and
Kierkegaard. Politics and social problems, as Arnold Hauser later
recalled, were never discussed . In addition the group set up a "Free
School" in 1917, and various members gave lectures on their
interests . As Mannheim remarked"in a programmatic lecture, the
cultural tradition with which the faculty wished to be identified
included "in
Weltanschauung
and attitude towards life, Dostoevski; in
our ethical convictions, Kierkegaard ...."
The Hungarian Communist Party was formed on November
24, 1918. Lukacs joined the party the next month along with his wife
Yelena Grabenko, and Bela Balazs. The "Sunday afternooners,"
who remained uncommitted, received the news with stunned belief.
As Lee Congdon reports: "They had come to know him well and had
heard him speak often of Dostoevski and Kierkegaard and of the
great universal moral problems that defined the human condition .
But they had never heard him speak of Marx or the necessity of
political involvement. "
The Communists were even more puzzled . In his autobio–
graphy , the proletarian writer Lajos Kassak recalled his surprise at
learning that Lukacs was writing for Communist magazines :
... he who a few days earlier had published an article in
Szabadgondo–
lat (Free Thought)
in which he wrote with philosophical emphasis that
the communist movement had no ethical base and was therefore inad–
equate for the creation of a new world. The day before yesterday he
wrote this , but today he sits at the table of the
VOros Ujsdag
editorial
staff.
In that article, "Bolshevism as a Moral Problem," which was
published, ironically , in the month that Lukacs joined the Party, he
questioned the view that the victory of the proletariat would end op-
