Michael Harrison

THE ACT OF LIBERATION, ACCORDING TO GEOG LUKACS AND ANTONIO GRAMSCI

Marxism is a theory of action – whether deliberate or not. In the years since Marx’s great works

were written, thinkers have interpreted and re-interpreted Marx’s ideas, partly in response to the

occurrences in the world around them. In these debates there was usually a question of what

actions should be taken. I intend to examine the ideas of Lukacs and Gramsci and with regard to

the changes that they want see happen in society, as well as why, how, when and by whom it

should be carried out. Lukacs and Gramsci were both self-proclaimed Leninists who thought that

some kind of leadership is necessary for a successful revolution. However, they disagree on a

variety of matters relating to how and why the revolution can succeed. Lukacs pictures an

enlightened working class1, led by a communist vanguard, overthrowing a deluded bourgeoisie

and the entire system that comes with it, probably with the use of violence. Afterwards, with the

old institutions destroyed, the victors will build a new system in which a new kind of thinking

prevails among both the formerly dominant and subordinate. In a Gramscian revolution,

disparate groups will voluntarily form revolutionary coalitions, they will achieve a revolution

without violence, and in doing so they will use the existing institutions, which can then continue

to be used in a communist system. Because the existing institutions are the venue through which

a revolution occurs, a Gramscian revolution will happen differently in every nation, however

these nations will influence and assist each other, ultimately creating a global revolution.

1 I am not clear whether he and Gramsci are referring only to the proletariat or to the peasantry as well.

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Lukacs and Gramsci were both writing their most famous works in the interwar period, when

revolutions were occurring with problematic results, meanwhile fascist regimes were also arising

in reaction to popular anxiety. Lukacs’s History and Class Consciousness was written shortly

after the Soviets came to power. The problems with the Soviet system either had not yet occurred

or were not yet apparent. In fact, the Russian Revolution inspired new generations of Marxists,

including both Lukacs and Gramsci. This revolution was different in nature from what many

Marxists were anticipating. In particular, whereas the Russian Revolution was an upheaval led

(eventually) by a communist party, the “orthodox” Marxists were waiting for a revolution to

unfold on its own without political leadership. Lukacs did not consider this expectation realistic.

He thought the vanguard party would need to lead the revolution, remaining “a step in front of

the struggling masses to show them the way.” (Lukacs, 1974, p. 35) In a Lukacsian revolution,

without an effective political leadership, the working class would be utterly incompetent. His

understanding of the leader’s role is not merely practical or strategic – it is teleological.

According to Gottlieb: “Lukacs thought of the party as the moral and intellectual exemplar of the

class.” (Gottlieb, 1993, 122) The leader is a protagonist in the Hegelian story of history – a moral

(if not inevitable) necessity.

It was also important to Lukacs that there be a certain kind of leader. Lukacs does not

favor the kinds of leaders who have represented most of the triumphant “communist” movements

of the 20th century. These leaders have tended to be aloof and disconnected with the needs of the

masses once they come to power. In a Lukacsian scenario, the vanguard party would be “only

one step in front so that it always remain the leader of their struggle.” (Ibid) The leadership

cannot be effective unless it is sufficiently informed about the particular situation of the masses

at any given point in time, which requires a level of intimacy with them as a class. Moreover, as

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Lukacs realized, the masses possess an enormous wealth of knowledge and original ideas that

aloof leaders might not become aware of. This principle first entered the Marxist canon via

Engels, who observed that during battle, the infantry are often the first to invent new tactics, and

a good general staff is able to learn these tactics from them (Rees, Marxism 2009).

A Lukacsian vanguard party should be a true representative of the masses, while

simultaneously its leader. As such, it is expected to dominate over the working class during the

revolution. Gramsci also considers it important to have an institutionally-recognized leader,

however the nature of the leadership is different from a Lukacsian one. Gramsci still sees a

purpose for domination over the working class during the revolution, however domination is

expected to coexist with dirigente, a softer, more flexible form of leadership. Unlike in Lukacs’s

conception of a successful revolution, Gramsci does not envision the leader of the revolution

dominating, in the same way, his subjects who are carrying out the revolution. Rather, Gramsci

thinks the leader should exercise dirigente towards his followers, while considering domination

the appropriate means of dealing with the revolution’s adversaries. The “‘composite body’ of a

class alliance” is held together and led by consent, while “coercion is deployed against the

excluded other.” (Thomas, 163)

The “rule by consent” that Gramsci wants to employ is, in a sense, a form of cultural

rather than institutional leadership. Gramsci is always a political thinker, however he thinks

culture and politics are deeply intertwined. In order for the revolution to succeed, it will need to

involve schools, the media – institutions of culture. Gramsci has an entire theory for “trying to

think through a revolutionizing of all areas of social formation.” (Thomas, Counterforum) When

this occurs, the result will be hegemony – a tacit recognition of the leadership. Whoever the

hegemon is, it2 will become the bearer of what Gramsci called the “collective national will.”

2 It seems like the “hegemon” refers to a revolutionary faction rather than an individual.

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(Hobsbawm) A Lukacsian leader would also embody the spirit of his subjects, however Gramsci

has a different understanding of how the leader should attain this.

Gramsci not only has his own understanding of function and operations of the hegemon,

but also of who the hegemon is and what its motivations are. This is another regard in which

Gramsci’s version of a revolution is unlike Lukacs’s. Lukacs anticipates a vanguard party united

in purpose, so much so that whatever the members were before the revolution (their class,

political affiliation, etc.) becomes insignificant. Gramsci had a more nuanced understanding of

the leadership of the revolution (to a greater or lesser extent depending on where the revolution

takes place). Hobsbawm describes a scenario which is especially unlike the one in which

Gramsci expects the revolution to occur. This is the situation in South Africa during the anti-

Apartheid movement, which is a scenario more like what the orthodox Marxists had conceived

of. To those at the losing end of Apartheid, it offered nothing to them and had no legitimacy in

their minds. They accepted the system only on the basis of coercion. A struggle against apartheid

would then be a simple conflict of good versus evil in which everyone knows in advance which

side he or she will be on. By contrast, what Gramsci observed in Europe was that the bourgeoisie

became dominant on the basis of consent (Hobsbawm). There is no dichotomy like in 19th

century Marxism, or Apartheid-era South Africa, because people can revoke their consent and

transfer it elsewhere, whereas in a less consensual system they cannot choose who is governing

them by coercion. Because people can redirect their consent, their political positions are not

determined solely by their class, so there will be a plurality of parties and movements – far more

shades of gray than in a Lukacsian scenario.

Because Gramsci envisions a more pluralistic political environment, he cautions that a

successful revolutionary leadership should not be too narrow in scope. It should not represent

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only one segment of the population. It should represent the interests of more than one class. A

leader should be prepared for the volatility of people’s subjective political convictions. People of

one class might decide to identify with the interests associated with another class. Moreover,

people’s understanding of the interests and concerns of their own class will change over time. To

lead a revolution despite the elusiveness of people’s political thinking might require more than

intelligence and skill. Lukacs anticipates that the revolution will need to be led by a coalition that

is politically heterogeneous and represents the interests of more than one class (Hobsbawm).

A certain type of leadership, during and after the revolution, is expected to result from

this sort of arrangement. Although the leadership of a Gramscian revolution is based on consent,

it cannot be based entirely on consent. In Gramscian theory there is a balance between the

enlightened and unenlightened elements of socialism and revolution which need to coexist

simultaneously (i.e. force and consent, authority and hegemony). To illustrate this concept,

Gramsci employs a metaphor attributed to Machiavelli: a centaur. The human component of the

centaur represents the enlightened aspects of Gramsci’s theory, while the beast comprising the

rest of the centaur represents its more backward aspects (Thomas, 166). In a Gramscian system,

there should be a proper relationship (guisto rapporto) between force and consent (Thomas,

165). The result is “coercion by consent,” which Thomas describes as “coercion of opposed

classes, with the consent of allied social groups, crystallised as ‘public opinion.’” (ibid) This sort

of regime, in which the government mimics society and imposes its creations on the people, is

similar to the democracies in the postwar era

Lukacs’s revolutionary theory comes from a certain Hegelian tradition, according to

which any new system that comes into being contains within it the seeds of its own destruction.

There are inherent contradictions within the system that ultimately make it unsustainable. Some

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of these contradictions are physical and objective while other occur in people’s minds. In the

capitalist system, the bourgeoisie develop certain biases by virtue of their own dominance and

the needs of industry. These faulty ways of thinking include reification, commodity fetishism,

and general capitalist ideology. The inherent contradiction in this system is that oppressed

masses also believe the same delusions that allow for, or even justify, their oppression.

Conditions become ripe for revolution when the masses learn to think for themselves and

develop a more accurate understanding of the situation.

Reification allows for these delusions by atomizing people, preventing them from seeing

the “big picture.” A byproduct of capitalism is reification, by which social relations become

characteristically economic rather than human. This loss of humanity creates atomization, which

“fragments and dislocates our social experience, so that under its influence we forget that society

is a collective process and come to see it instead merely as this or that isolated object or

institution.” (Eagleton, 95) Capitalism, then, narrows our perspectives. It creates a situation that

Adam Smith had observed nearly 150 years earlier, calling it “mental mutilation,” except that in

full-blown industrial capitalism this problem is much worse. According to Starosta: “the

miserable capitalist limits within which the former [the worker] is held mutilate the individual

productive subjectivity of the worker in an even more hideous fashion than was the case” at an

earlier time (Starosta, 45). Capitalism limits people’s perspectives to what they see in their own

idiosyncratic daily routines, which has become narrower than in Smith’s time and continues to

become even narrower.

The working class transcends reification by undoing this atomization. By learning from

each other their perspectives are broadened, allowing them to see the reality of capitalism as an

unsustainable exploitation of them. When the working class is disabused of bourgeois delusions,

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they develop proletarian ideology instead. To Lukacs, working class ideology is better than

bourgeois ideology. Ideology is in everybody’s nature, however some are closer than others to

the truth. The workers’ ideology is an objective one: “Science, truth or theory … are just

‘expressions’ of a particular class ideology, the revolutionary world view of the working class.”

(Eagleton, 95) When this superior perspective is united with praxis throughout the world, all of

humanity will move forward.

Ultimately, the dominant classes will be removed from power and eventually accept

defeat in a good-natured manner. That is, they will not only accept step down from power, but

also accept that the working class ideology is correct. Their relinquishment of bourgeois

ideology is necessary for the progress of society: “a change of society can be brought about only

when the ideological belief of both the ruler and ruled can be smashed.” (Larrain, 80) The

working class will need to be the ones proselytizing the bourgeoisie. Until that happens, the

capitalist system will be reinforcing in their own minds the illusions that they create via

reification.

The abolition of capitalism is more violent in a Lukacsian revolution than in a Gramscian

one. As such, the bourgeois institutions will need to be smashed, at least in a figurative sense.

They will need to be deconstructed and reconstructed. In Lukacs’s Hegelian understanding of

history, this process is not as apocalyptic as some people are inclined to think. Lukacs sees

history as a totality in which all moments and phenomena are connected. In this notion of totality

nothing is what it appears to be, and everything is constantly changing, so no institutions should

be taken for granted. Even if the oppressed never unite and arise, society will be changing and

history will be running its course, although probably not in a way that is favorable to the working

class. Therefore, to Lukacs, the timing of the revolution is extremely important, and he thinks

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time was running out. With the conditions constantly changing, Lukacs thinks the time to launch

an optimally effective revolution is always now, because otherwise critical opportunities will be

missed.

Like Lukacs, Gramsci considers it important to seize the moment before it escapes

(Hobsbawm). Another similarity is the need to win the revolution in people’s minds before it can

be put into action. However, unlike Lukacs, Gramsci thinks this stage of the revolution is not

only about changing the thinking of the working class. Rather, it is about winning support for the

position represented by the working class. Gramsci’s version of revolution was more

conservative in the sense that it was supposed to be carried out through conventional political

processes rather than a violent upheaval. A Gramscian revolution would take place through the

preexisting government and other institutions, especially those that come under the description

“civil society.” Gramsci differs from Lukacs in his willingness to re-appropriate bourgeois

institutions in a communist system, before, during, and after the revolution. These civil and

political institutions are good for changing both policy and the people’s mode of thinking. This

process is not an imposition of proletarian ideology on the rest of society, at least not quite the

way Lukacs had conceived of. Using the nascent democratic infrastructure of early 20th century

Europe, Gramsci wants the revolution to be as democratic a process as possible. Doing so

requires making compromises, unlike in a Lukacsian revolution.

Even if the revolution thus conceived is not feasible, Gramsci has a backup plan that is

even further from a Lukacsian revolution. Gramsci has a theory of how a “passive revolution”

could occur. A passive revolution is what revolutionaries might need to resort to if the ruling

class cannot be shaken from power. The regime would stay the same, and the bourgeoisie might

even, in the short term, maintain a monopoly on power. However, by carrying out a passive

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revolution, the working class can create a system of policies that is more in their favor. Doing so

often means meeting the same needs (or perceived needs) that revolutionaries’ adversaries would

be meeting. For example, if the people demand a reduction of taxes, then a Social Democratic

party can satisfy this demand, winning supporters at the expanse of a more free-market party.

The ascent of Europe’s fascists is an example of passive revolution. They rose to power using the

institutions available, coalescing with the dominant political groups at the time (the bourgeoisie,

the clergy, etc.). In doing so, fascists borrowed policies from the leftist parties, using “enough of

the demands of the revolutionaries to disarm them.” (Hobsbawm) In these cases the results were

problematic, however according to Gramsci a passive revolution can achieved by the opponents

of those who want the revolution. If certain policies are needed, such as labor regulations, then

conservatives might be the first to respond, and they might provide essentially the same policies

that socialists would. The creation of these policies can involve left-wing revolutionaries in both

government and civil society (probably in alliance with other political factions).

Because Gramsci wants to use the existing institutions, the manner in which the

revolution occurs will depend on the location, since different nations have different institutional

structures. The differences between nations are more differences of degree than they are of type.

(Thomas, 209) In characteristically “Western” countries there is more of a civil society, and

along with it, “the complex of defensive trenches that a developed and articulated civil society

could provide the state … which helped to ‘resist’ the immediate irruption of conflicts in the

world of production into the political terrain.” (Thomas, 199) In Russia, because civil society

was lacking, the revolution went straight to the government without being mediated by civil

society. For the revolution to succeed in Western Europe it would need to take on civil society.

Gramsci therefore used different term to refer to the leadership structure necessary to lead a more

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typically Eastern revolution: rather than egemonia necessary in the West, the less “Western”

nations would require gegemoniya (Thomas, 209).

What matters is not only the sheer volume of civil society. Another factor is the

institutions within civil society. In Italy, the revolution is inhibited by the nation’s relatively high

presence of “parasitics.” In the Italian case this word refers mostly to the “traditional” social

elements such as the clergy who are “all too effective, preventing Italian civil society from

playing its properly political role.” (Thomas, 202) Gramsci observes a lack of civil society in the

United States for the opposite reason. The Fordist system of production attempts to “rationalize”

the population, making every segment of the population productive so that there would be no

parasitical elements left. In doing so, Fordists “‘base[s] the entire social life of the country on the

basis of industry,’” detracting from civil society (Thomas, 201).

Although Gramsci thinks that each country’s revolution should be tailored to its

particular circumstances, he also sees the revolution as an international project, in keeping with

to the declaration” “workers of the world, unite!” In this way his understanding of the revolution

is similar to Lukacs’s. The revolutions in each country will inspire each other. According to

Thomas: “Gramsci acknowledges a deeper unity-in-difference regarding the revolutionary

strategies appropriate to each of them, founded upon the fundamental unity of the capitalist state-

form and the necessity for a proletarian united front to oppose it.” (Thomas, 212) The

contradictions of capitalism were something that all industrial countries had in common, and a

revolution in some form or another was the only solution.3

The age of Lenin was an exciting time for people seeking social and political change.

Lukacs and Gramsci were both acutely aware of the problems with the capitalist system, but they

had different plans of action. Lukacs envisioned more of a revolution, while Lukacs called for a

3 I am not clear what Gramsci’s plan was for the countries that had not yet started industrializing.

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political struggle more like what would now be considered conventional politics. Lukacs thought

that after the revolution (if it occurs correct and at the right time) the working class would inherit

the earth, dominate over their former oppressors, and reform their thinking. Gramsci has more

conservative understanding of both the manner of the revolution and its objectives. Gramsci

wanted to use the existing institutions and wage a more “conventional” political struggle. The

working class would not be quite as solidly united in thinking as they are in a Lukacsian

revolution. The political landscape during the revolution will, in general, be more pluralistic. The

working class, having triumphed in the revolution, would be able to gradually create a system

more in their favor, although they would need to make compromises, unlike in a Lukacsian

victory. Because Gramsci wants to use the existing institutions, the issue of where the revolution

takes place is of great importance. Both, however, were inspired by what they saw in Russia and

wanted to see it occur, in some form, throughout the world.

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