DEFENCE OF HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS - TAILISM AND THE DIALETIC

Georg Lukÿcs was dubbed 'the philosopher of the October Revolution' and his masterpiece History and Class Consciousness (1923) is commonly held to be the foundational text for the tradition known as 'Western Marxism' which includes the work of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. However, as the liberating energies of the Russian Revolution were sapped by Stalinism, Lukÿcs was subjected to ferocious attack for 'deviations' from the 'party line'. In the mid-1920s, Lukÿcs wrote a sustained and passionate response to this onslaught.