Research On Georg Lukacs’s Reification Theory

Georg Lukacs(1885-1971), a famous Marxism philosopher, aesthetes and literary critics ofHungary, took up an important position in the evolution of Marxism in20th century. Historyand Class Consciousness is his most representative work which is honored together with KarlKorsch’s Marxism and Philosophy as the bible of Western Marxism. With reification as the keyconcept and the Reification theory as the central clue of his book, Lukacs’s Reification theoryhad become one of the common believed Paradigms of Western Marxism and the ideologybond which connected the thought of Western Marxism. Lukacs thought that materializingcauses the binary opposition between subjects and objects, freedom and necessity. Alienationexists not only in economic field but also in human beings’ mind; the overcome ofmaterialization depends on class consciousness.The paper consists of five parts:Part One:Introduction.This part briefly introduces differentopinions about Materialization Theory from scholars at home or abroad in order to explain themeaning, valueand research approach of thispaper.Part Two:The historical background and theoretical origin of the production ofMaterialization.After the October Revolution, proletarian revolution failed in differentEuropean countries successively and theorists like Lukacs and Korsch began to rethink andsummarize the failure. They put forward a slogan to regain the “original Maxist”. From thetheoretical origin, Marx’s discussion of commodity fetishism in Das Kapital is directlyborrowed from the theory of Materialization, and was also influenced by Dilthey’s “HolisticThinking”, Max Weber’s “Rationalization Thought”,Chairman Mel’s “Materialized Thought”,Hegelian’s “dialectics” and Rosa Luxemburg’s “accumulation”.Part Three:Summary of Materialization.Materialization means the relation between peopleis covered and suppressed by the relation between objects. Materialization is not only showedin economic and political fields, but also permeates deeply into people’s mind and becomereified consciousness, which can be break by the “Totality Principal”. The proletarianconsciousness is the main powerto conquerreification.Part Four:The comparison between Lukacs’s Reification Theory and Marx’s Alienation Theory.This part mainly talks about the content and concrete manifestation of Marx’sAlienationTheory, summarized the similarities and differenced between these two theories, andclarifies, from the philosophical perspective, the truth of “Alienation” as well as itsprecondition, reasons, results, sublation and so on, so as to make the conclusion that these twotheories aresimilar toeach otherin naturealthoughremains some differences.Part Five:The status of Lukacs in Western Marxist Philosophy and the contemporaryenlightenment of Reification Theory.Reification Theory not only draws a broad attention ofAlienation Theory but also criticizes it from the level of psychology and instinct which opensup a new direction of explaining Maxism and imposes a great enlightenment on ProletarianRevolution and Socialist Construction. Lukacs’s ReificationTheory reveals the key concept ofcriticism in marxist political economics and manifest the value standpoint of Marx’sAlienationTheory, which can be regarded as its further development and extension. Meanwhile,Reification Theory also has a significant practical meaning for keeping a right perspective onthe progress of science and technology and the development of the socialist market economy. Italsoplays a cautionary and enlightening roleforvarious problems in oursocial life.