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supposed to reflect. There are no uniquely adequate images of real–
ity either in the sciences or in the arts . Philosophers for whom Ger–
man idealism from Kant to Hegel is still the last Golden Age of
Philosophy claim that they can evaluate these alternative images and
arbitrate among them from a supposedly privileged standpoint.
Philosophers who have learned from the development of the sciences
and the arts since the late nineteenth-century no longer claim such a
privileged standpoint.
I did not advise my gifted student to read Lukacs. How would I
advise other students? Of course, students interested in Central
European intellectual history since the late nineteenth-century must
read him. In addition to his works, the recently published
Georg
Lukacs: Selected Correspondence, 1902-1920
edited by Judith Marcus
and Zoltan Tar (Columbia University Press , 1986) is a valuable
source of material for the period . Also, there is one book by Lukacs
that I read only after the one hundred-year anniversary celebration.
It deserves to be recommended to every doctrinaire student.
Lukacs wrote it in 1968, and it was published in 1985 under the
title
Demokratisierung heute und morgen.
This book attempts a history of
the socialist movement between the 1920s and the late 1960s. Its
author was a witness and active participant of that movement, and
what he says often provides new insights . He argued that Stalinism
was an
ad hoc
theory that grew out of practical necessities; had the
vanguard party been guided by an adequate theory rather than
building a theory on the basis of everyday needs, the horrors of
Stalinism would not have occurred. In this book as in his earlier
books he expresses boundless confidence in the powers of an ade–
quate theory. Doctrines become dogmas, if we refuse to weigh the
costs of our choices . His doctrines became dogmas, and in the end
only he could believe them. Doctrinaire readers may learn from the
cautionary tale .
Lukacs admits that the military industry is the only industry in
the Soviet Union that is efficient, because allowances are made for
the quality and quantity controls of its "consumers," the military. He
even takes a few timid steps in the direction of a reappraisal of the
master argument. The next step would be an admission that this
social system fails to satisfy needs, precisely because they are deter–
mined by administrative decisions and there is no incentive for ask–
ing others about their needs. Lukacs still hopes for the system's inter–
nal reform. But there are no reasons to believe that such a reform is
