Institute for the Humanities / Contours Journal / Issue 8: Spring 2017 / Georg Lukács' Theory

of Reification and the Idea of Socialism

Georg Lukács' Theory of Reification and

the Idea of Socialism
Rüdiger Dannemann (Essen)
http://www.sfu.ca/humanities-institute/contours/issue8/theory/3.html
(acceso 19/09/19)

A. The Project of Renewing the “Idea of Socialism”

If our goal is to demonstrate the timeliness of Georg Lukács’ philosophy, it is worth

taking a look at the attempt currently being made to revitalize approaches that transcend the
system. Axel Honneth1 has pointed out that it is folly to simply dispense with the great 19th
century idea of socialism. He gives several reasons for his view. First, he notes that “there
have never been so many people outraged at the same time, about the social and political
consequences that have accompanied the globally unrestrained market economy since the
end of Word War II.”2 Quite rightly, he continues to write about the consequences of
eliminating any “idea of socialism”: “It would be the dominance of a fetishizing notion of
social conditions that would have to be held responsible for the fact that the mass outrage
about the scandalous distribution of wealth and power has currently lost any sense of an
achievable goal.”3 Because this is the case, he wants to pursue the “causes for the apparent
loss of the decisive, reification–destroying effectiveness of all the classic and formerly
influential ideals.”4

As within other contexts, the theoretical intervention of today’s most important

representative of Critical Theory is valuable and should not be subject to crude polemics.
Certain completely inappropriate responses fail to recognize that Honneth is not aiming to
rediscover some long-dead spectre. These critics fail to appreciate the profound and
widespread antipathy towards the global capitalist, economic system and the post-democratic
conditions closely connected to it. That is why the goal in our time is literally to secure the
legacy of the socialist (I would add: and the “communist”5) idea and to develop it further in
order to cultivate alternatives to the dominant political and economic conditions, which are
disliked by many and, in this sense, constitute more than just the representatives of some
leftist subcultures.

However, one might voice various misgivings about the thrust of Honneth’s
attempted reconstruction. He believes that reclaiming the attractiveness of socialism should
go hand in hand with a turning away from Marx and his philosophical legacy. Honneth gives

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three chief reasons that make such a renunciation unavoidable in his eyes. He first criticises
Marx’s Critique of Political Economy on account of its model of “progress,” which in his
eyes constitutes an unacceptable determinism in regard to historical philosophy. Second,
even when Honneth admits at times that it has become difficult to demonstrate that any
modern institution, or social subsystem, remains a sphere unaffected by the logic of
exploitation, he insists on the notion that there are several social subsystems, which are to be
examined individually and that follow their own separate logics.6 This applies in his view
particularly to the domains of politics, law, and family.7 Anyone who insists on emphasizing
the relevance and ultimate dominance of the economic, even in non-economic realms of
society, unmask themselves as prone to confusing modernity with the social conditions
during Marx’s lifetime. Lastly, Marx’s focus on the proletariat constitutes the most obvious
proof of his attachment to the social conditions of the time in industrial society, and with it,
to the antiquated conditions of the 19th century.8 Honneth thus proposes to break with Marxist
tradition as a precondition for a successful revitalizing of the “actual Idea of Socialism,”
which inherits the irreversible legacy of the French revolution by taking its ideals seriously.
At the core of this interpretation lies its emphasis on the aspect of freedom, or, in the author's
words, “the unconstrained interplay of all social freedoms in the difference of their respective
functions.”9 Accordingly, any society is to be called ‘free’ “when every member of society
can satisfy their requirements which they share with every other member, for physical and
emotional intimacy, for economic independence and political self-determination, in such a
way that they can rely on the empathy and support of their partners in any interaction.”10 The
road to this goal cannot be reached by traditional forms of class struggles, but only by
employing a mode of communication struggles among differentiated social subsystems, in
initiatives of all stripes that proceed experimentally.11

Lukács, a thinker for whom Honneth has high regard,12 and whom, in 2005, he
attempted to contemporize—albeit in a very idiosyncratic form, namely by means of
recognition theory, followed a very different path of lived thought. In the following pages, I
would like to outline this alternative path and, in the final part of my essay, consider the
question whether Honneth's way of rejecting Marx, or Lukács’ emphasis on a necessary
renaissance of Marx’s approach to the project of re-actualizing the “Idea of Socialism” in our
time, can claim greater plausibility.

Along the way, I will not be able to consider every single one of Lukács’ theoretical
stages. Instead I intend to focus on his development up to the conceptual creation of his theory
of reification, although his late works also belong in this context.13

B. Lukács’ Theory of Reification and his Project of a Renaissance of Marx

In various autobiographical sketches, the Hungarian philosopher continually reflected

on his theoretical development as “My path toward Marx.” This path began in 1918 and did
not end until Lukács’ death in 1971. The fact that this process of reception took so long and
never truly reached its conclusion—except through the biological fact of his death—calls for
an explanation. How is it possible, asks the contemporary scholar who is used to trading
paradigms in order to avoid any kind of fixation, stagnation, stigmatization, and loss of

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relevance so as to remain present in the public market of academe, for a thinker to remain so
singularly focused?

Four reasons may serve towards an explanation:

1. Lukács’ intellectual biography is complicated, and his appropriation of Marx is not

free from predispositions informed by the kind of theoretical premise characteristic
of the pre-Marxist Lukács.
2. What constitutes Marxism and Marx’s theory is in itself a subject of controversy. As
early as 1918 (Lukács joins the Hungarian Communist Party at the end of this year),
interpretations diverge, e.g. Karl Kautsky's orthodoxy, that of the revisionist Eduard
Bernstein (to whom Honneth makes positive reference14), of the Austro-Marxists, of
the syndicalists and—increasingly significant—that of the Leninists. The question of
what constitutes Marx’s “actual” teaching required and continues to require
clarification.
3. Even more important is another point: for Lukács, Marxism is practical philosophy,
that is to say, primarily a theory that is able to explain reality better than any other
approach, and one that has to make certain of its relationship to real socio-political
movements. This also means: Lukács, in his efforts to approach Marx, is continually
tasked with understanding the ever-changing social world, and with demonstrating
accordingly the adequacy of the tradition of Marxist thought. Thus his analysis of
Marx is always inseparably connected with an effort to diagnose contemporary
development and to render plausible the assertion that the pathologies of modern
society can be made transparent from a Marxist vantage point.
4. The appropriate reconstruction of Marx’s approach is exceedingly difficult. Even his
closest co-combatants and co-authors were not always able to comprehend Marx’s
theoretical revolution without truncating it. Lukács, in his central text of History and
Class Consciousness, and its central essay "Reification and the Consciousness of the
Proletariat," in particular, points out Engels’ tendency to equate natural and human
history, laws of nature, and human historical development.15

C. A Case for a Socialism in the Tradition of Lukács’ Marx

C.1. Some Remarks on the History and the Problems of Reception

It often goes unrecognized that, in 1923, Lukács was neither a Marx-philologist nor
a novice theorist, but a philosopher whose work is marked by personal experiences,
intuitions, and thematic fixations. In March 1967, Lukács thought it important to emphasize
that he had “never slipped into the error, which I have been frequently able to observe in
workers, (and) petit-bourgeois intellectuals, that they were ultimately impressed (...) by the
capitalist world.” And he adds: “My contemptuous hatred, conceived during my boyhood, of
life in capitalism saved me from this.”16 Lukács’ original experience could perhaps be
described, in compressed form, as a complex of personal rebellion by a banker’s son against
the unbearable experience of his milieu, and cultural frustration vis-à-vis the art of the Fin de
Siècle and the concomitant “transcendental homelessness” of the intellectual. This protest,
which was, at first, expressed more intuitively, against the spread of the bourgeois form of

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socialization constitutes the biographical underpinnings of the reification theory that was to
emerge later. Even in his early History of the Development of Modern Drama, the young
aesthete and aestheticist17 reflects on the problematic situation of art in modernity, a
modernity characterized by a cumulative factualization of life—what Max Weber refers to
as the disenchantment of the world. While Lukács, in Soul and Forms, sets form in contrast
to this life devoid of contours. He presents aesthetic form as an opportunity for an exodus
from the banality of quotidian life. In his Theory of The Novel, he first attempts a historical–
philosophical analysis of one of the emanations of objective reason—the novel—as an
expression of the world’s disastrous condition. It is not difficult to recognize the widely
diverse theoretical approaches Lukács borrows along the way to formulating his theory of
reification. This canny pupil from the centre of Europe makes reference to Georg Simmel’s
life-philosophy [Lebensphilosophie], in particular his Philosophy of Money [Philosophie des
Geldes], to Max Weber's theory of modern rationality, and also to Marx and Hegel. It should
also not be ignored that Neo-Kantianism, notably through Heinrich Rickert and Emil Lask,
left a lasting impression on him. During the process of his political radicalization, triggered
by his experiences during Word War I, Lukács who, unlike Simmel and Weber, had opposed
the war from the beginning, encountered other theoretical traditions in Russian authors such
as Solovyov, Ropschin, and particularly Dostoyevsky. In his Dostoyevsky-fragments, which
were written during the war but published only posthumously, Lukács develops the outline
of an anti-formalist and anti-institutional ethic.18

Lukács’ complex intellectual path, his early work on aesthetics, his borrowing from
Lebensphilosophie, but also from Slavic tradition, developed his sensibility early on for
questions that later came to be treated under the category “everyday life” [Alltagsleben], and
which focused on the relationship between the most abstract theoretical configurations within
everyday “forms of life” [Lebensformen]—a term that already appears in History and Class
Consciousness and not only represents the relationship between cultural and socio-economic
developments, but also the problematic moral situation of modernity.19 It is also evident that
Lukács' difficulty in adopting Marx’s theory is shaped by his intellectual development. One
important consequence of this early theoretical history outlined here20 is that there has always
been, and continues to be, widely divergent approaches to his idiosyncratic attempts at
synthesizing different theories. The nearly one hundred years of the reception of History and
Class Consciousness demonstrates that there are many, quite divergent modes by which one
can approach History and Class Consciousness.21

The diversity of approaches to History and Class Consciousness is no accident. It is

an expression that has already been stressed, by the nonlinear intellectual biography of its
author and the many sources from which his thinking draws, and at the same time a product
of contemporary academic life with its peculiar rules. Another aspect that needs to be
mentioned is that History and Class Consciousness is by no means a monolithic work,
conceived as a unified whole, but a collection of essays, created in different contexts, that
document their author’s ceaseless process of learning—at an exceptionally high level. Self-
critical reflection is also part of Lukács’ theoretical comportment during the 1920s. In several
places, Lukács admits, for example, that in writing certain essays, his argument was marked
by an overly optimistic revolutionary euphoria, and was not free of illusions. 22 While Lenin
plays no significant role in the reification essay, the argument in “Towards a Methodology
of the Problem of Organization” draws very heavily on the Bolshevik pioneer. Qualities such
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as these demonstrate that History and Class Consciousness is a mirror image of the rapid
changes during the years between 1919 and 1922. Not least of all, it is an experimental
attempt to address the increasingly critical situation of Marxism and the revolution by means
of a theoretical approach.

C.2. The Project for a Theory of Reification

The following is not intended to provide a comprehensive analysis of Lukács' theory

of reification. The goal is just to provide an outline of the theory project proposed in History
and Class Consciousness, in order to forestall truncated forms of reception and critique.
Firstly, it must be noted that Lukács opposes a simplified understanding of Marx’s doctrine
that was catching on during the time of the 2nd International, as well as the Comintern,
interpreting it as a positivist science along the lines of Karl Kautsky or Bukharin. Both
understood Marx as a kind of Darwin of history, or society, without sufficient reflection on
the methodological premise of his critique of political economy. Lukács undertakes the
attempt to philosophically reconstruct Marx's dialectic theory. Thus, together with Karl
Korsch, he also initiates the debate that continues until the present, about the relationship
between Marxism and philosophy. He chooses Marx’s doctrine of value form [Wertform]
developed in Volume I of Das Kapital, as a systematic point of reconstruction. He intends to
demonstrate that the chapter on fetish contains Marx’s critical philosophy in a nutshell [in
nuce]. This, in Lukács’ view, is to be understood not just as an economic theory limited in
its claims to the framework of a disciplinary field, but to contain several dimensions:

• A philosophy of contemporary society,

• A theory of ideology (which may also be drawn on for an explanation of scientific
and philosophical theories),
• A theory of history,
• A political philosophy of revolutionary kairos.

In short: the theoretical offering of a view of the totality of social being.

Lukács attempts to “systematically explain the connection between the various forms
of experiences of reification.”23 In so doing, he is very much aware of the risky and
experimental character of his project. He—and this, one will need to bear in mind during the
following remarks—considers his studies in dialectics and their practical intentions about
reification as a fresh impulse and as a large-scale research project. His diagnostic discourses
on time are sketches whose elements and dimensions were to be elaborated on and
increasingly filled with concrete content (i.e. more philosophical and interdisciplinary
studies). Indeed, in his outline of philosophy from Descartes onwards,24 he begins to
formulate a critique of a notion of rationality that is dominant to this day.

C.3. Cornerstones of Reification Theory

From my vantage point, and tailored to our context, Lukács' reification theory can be
outlined using six cornerstones or essential elements.

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1. Lukács reads Marx’s critique of political economy from the fetish chapter of Capital
as a theory of commodity production, in which exchange value is no longer a
peripheral phenomenon, but becomes the dominant factor in the framework of
capitalist production of commodities. This development includes a process of
abstraction and reduction to quantities that affects not only the products of labour in
society, but also its agents, the workers or the proletariat. Reification thus becomes
social reality and a form of life. This situation gains special volatility against the
background of capitalism. Vico’s description of history as having been “created“ by
humanity has found its first, but extremely problematic instance of realization: the
producers of the modern social world, the social subject of the socialization of
humanity is a subject only in the form of a commodity, which is compelled to take on
all the characteristics of de-subjectivization and self-objectification. Autonomy takes
place here only in the form of heteronomy.25
2. In this process, social relations become increasingly anonymous and fetishized. They
appear as relationships between objects. An ideological inversion of social
relationships takes place. To put it pointedly, capital appears to be “money generating
money” [»Geld heckendes Geld«] and, therefore, seemingly able to generate surplus
value. The relationship between wage labour and capital appears no longer as an
exploitative relationship but a legally regulated, appropriately fair exchange of
resources.
3. The capitalist production of commodities exhibits totalitarian qualities.26 If, following
Max Weber, one interprets the abstract-quantifying logic of capitalist economy as a
process of rationalization, one can demonstrate that this type of formal rationality
appropriates and transforms all aspects of modern life. That is to say: the capitalist
economy creates a social environment, a legal system, and a conforming state system
to suit its needs. Especially in domains that are removed from economic imperatives,
such as art, the totalitarian strain of capitalism becomes evident. The trend to reify
works of art as forces or objects of market activity continues well into our time.
Critical theory has concretized and contemporized Lukács’ relevant approaches from
the 1920 in this area.
4. Even the highest summits of thought have not been spared from the process we are
describing. Modern philosophy, from Descartes to Kant, develops dualist subject-
object models that are elevated to the status of unresolvable antinomies: antinomies
of the actual and the prescribed, of being and appearance, of freedom and necessity.
In order to avoid such a restrictive form of rationality, it is necessary to take recourse
in the type of dialectic thinking that, for Lukács, can be identified as a process—and
totality thinking/philosophy. He refers positively to Hegel’s dictum: “The Whole
Truth” [Das Ganze ist das Wahre] as well as to Marx’s thesis formulated in The
Poverty of Philosophy: “The conditions of production of any society constitute a
totality. [Die Produktionsverhältnisse jeder Gesellschaft bilden ein Ganzes.]”27 In
Marx’s concept of a concrete totality, Hegel’s ingenious suggestions contained in The
Phenomenology of Spirit find their full expression. It is important to note that for
Lukács, Marx’s theory, to that point, was the most highly developed, methodically
conceived apprehension of reality. That is why he puts the greatest emphasis on
uncovering the methodological foundations of Marx’s discourse.
5. Lukács—unlike critical theory later on—does not emphasize a resigned acceptance
of the universe of reification. After all, he considers his present as kairos, as a
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 potential moment of transformation from the barbaric epoch of reification to the
potential domain of autonomy, of a more than formal freedom. As is well known, he
considers the proletariat to be the most marked victim of the process of capitalist
rationalization. Virtually all humans have by now become victims of reification, but
the social condition, according to Lukács, as a rule prevents non-proletarian segments
of society from the necessary (certainly painful) process of coming to consciousness.
6. The difficulty of this process is apparent in the ideological crisis of the potential
revolutionary subject, which is virulent as early as 1918. It can be explained precisely
because the historical process for Lukács is not subject to the laws of nature. Instead,
it is valid to say: the revolution requires its protagonists to make a conscious,
unconstrained decision.28

D. More Recent Adaptions and Transformations of the Theory of Reification

External and internal problems,29 as well as the dominance of other scientific

paradigms removed from Marxism, have caused Lukács’ theory of reification to be either
ignored or received at best sporadically. An entire series of potentially influential critical
approaches has left a visible trace: in the domain of Marxist discourse, a critique in the
tradition of Backhaus, based mainly in a philology of Marx, which avails itself of the progress
in the development of the theory of value forms, the structuralist deviation of a Marxist
historicism, in particular the anti-humanism of Althusser. Bloch’s meta-critique of Lukács'
rejection of a utopian–speculative understanding of philosophy, Adorno’s supposition of
Lukács' “positive” understanding of dialectics as a legitimizing ideology, and, last but not
least, Lukács' own self-critique, which appears to confirm, at its core, allegations of excessive
proximity to Hegel and a deficient, insufficiently “materialist” ontology.30 Outside of the
discussion of Marxism, Lukács' approach is frequently interpreted as an emanation of
theoretical extremism, or is categorized in the history of philosophy in the context of 20 th
century Neo-Hegelianism.31

All the same, remarkable developments have taken place in the domain of critical
theory, notably with Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth. For the newer representatives of
Critical Theory it was evident—since Habermas’ turning away from his early “Theory and
Practice” phase—that the fundamental assumptions of Marx’s radical anti-capitalist critique
could no longer be accepted. Despite the fact that Habermas, unlike Benjamin, did not revere
the philosopher of the revolution, his respect had to do with his synthesis of Marx and Weber
in such a way “that he was able to consider the separation of the sphere of social labour from
the context of the life worlds [Lebenswelten] from two aspects simultaneously––that of
reification and that of rationalization.”32 In Habermas’ eyes Lukács became paradigmatic by
recognizing the philosophical stature and value of Marx’s value-form analysis and by
founding an entire traditional strain of Critical Theory tradition. He undertook the promising
project of describing both economic and non-economic processes of modernization as an
increase in rationality and as a passion story at the same time, respectively “dialectically.”
Nevertheless, Habermas considers the philosophical basis of Western Marxism to be
outmoded. He does not care to become a member, like Lukács, of a circle of materialist
dialecticians plumbing the innovations in a methodology developed by the critics of political
economy; Habermas takes leave the domain of so-called consciousness philosophy altogether

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and wants to clear the way for what he calls the interactionist-communicative turn in
philosophy.

Fairness demands that we point this out that Habermas does not simply reject the
reification paradigm; he makes an attempt to reformulate it. It is no coincidence that
Habermas’ project of creating a new foundation for Critical Theory “merges into a
reconstruction of the reification theorem.”33 At the core of this project lies the thesis of
uncoupling the system and the living world in the processes of modernization. The process
of objectification [Versachlichung] (the term used by Simmel and early Lukács) takes on the
character of colonization. The high degree of de-radicalization in the approach of History
and Class Consciousness, if one no longer shares its capitalism-theoretical and revolutionary
premises, becomes apparent, at the latest, when one observes Habermas as he describes the
social pathologies of our present time. It is in particular the constitutional state that he pins
his hopes on, in order to limit the colonialist tendencies of market (money) and power, and
to curtail the total mediatization of the living world, along with the tools of an enlightened
public and communicative reason. At the same time, Habermas does not believe that a
revision, let alone a revolutionizing of the economic sphere, is necessary to defend it. His
primary concern is the safeguarding of the rules of law and of civil rights. Axel Honneth, in
view of this, notes that little has remained of the early Habermas’ radicalism. Along with “his
turn toward the Kantian-dominated tradition, Habermas is in danger of losing a number of
important insights, which his early works, more oriented toward his model Hegel, still
contained. There seems to be no longer any mention of a pathology of capitalist societies,
nor as bold an idea as a systematically distorted interaction, in his recent writings.”34 The
critique quoted here leaves one curious how Honneth is hoping to regain the valuable insights
he mentions.

The Frankfurt philosopher begins by clarifying that the notion of reification is part of
the incompletely processed intellectual legacy of Critical Theory. The phenomenon of
reification, long ignored, returns while masquerading in widely varying forms of literary as
well as theoretical texts and contexts. Crass forms of reification (surrogate motherhood, the
marketization of romantic relationships, the explosive growth of the sex industry, as well as
the observable trend toward emotional management, the pervasive social atmosphere of a
cold practicality) have induced writers like Martha Nussbaum to use the term reification. The
term can also be used for critical reflection on scientific trends; an example is brain research:
we can speak of reification, for example, when we observe the attempt to explain human
feelings and actions by a mere analysis of neuronal networks in the brain. For Honneth, there
is no doubt that the term can only be reintegrated into contemporary scholarly discourse if a
definition of reification, which rejects Lukács' Fichtean extravagance of subject-object-
identification, and correspondingly his concept of a (very idealistically interpreted) “true”
praxis. Honneth considers as transferable, and more modest in scope, a definition of
reification as “the habit or custom of a merely observant behaviour, whose perspective
recognizes the natural environment, the social collective and one’s own personality’s
potential without empathy and neutral in emotional affect, as a mere object.”35 Honneth finds
the following description, cleansed of revolutionary radicalism, of Lukács’ “true praxis”: it
possesses “those qualities of participation and interest which have been destroyed by the
expansion of commodity exchange; not the creation of the object by a subject expanded to

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form a collective, but another, inter-subjective attitude of the subject constitutes the pattern
here, which serves as a contrasting foil for the definition of a reified practice.”36

If one were to completely avoid (deviating from Lukács) the totalizing critique of
commodity production, which in highly differentiated cultures is thought to have become
obsolete for reasons of efficiency, and if one were to affirm that there are spheres in which
observant, detached behaviour plays a legitimate role, one could by means of reformulating
Lukács’ reification concept from an action-theoretical approach gain a perspective that
provides a cause for illuminating speculation.37 Obviously, Honneth hopes to pave the way
toward a positive reception of Lukács, which allows for a link to contemporary debate on
theory and especially the theory of recognition—based on an uncoupling from the tradition
of Marxist theory. Only then could the weaknesses in Lukács’ conception be eliminated,
since Lukács aggressively asserted that orthodox Marxism resulted in factual and thematic
prejudices, which did not do justice to the complex differentiations of modern societies. By
this he means primarily that the preoccupation with a “through-capitalization of society”
caused domains removed from economy to be relegated to the background.38

Honneth’s recognition-theoretical reframing concentrates on two main points: the

critique of self-reifying attitudes, and on a form of inter-subjective reification, which
becomes noticeable in cases “where persuasion systems with explicit typecasting of other
groups of people are deployed.”39 Examples of this include contemporary forms of job
interviews or dating services, as well as racist or similar ideologemes. Honneth is
convinced—and in this he proves to be a loyal student of Habermas after all—that one can
elude the reifying power of commodity production that the Marxist Lukács had posited,
provided one adopts the principles of the constitutional rule of law. In Honneth’s eyes, the
economic agents are protected in at least an elementary form by the (however rudimentary)
legal character of their economic relationship. At least they guarantee each other to recognize
their status as persons.

Honneth also refers to concepts in Heidegger and Dewey that are not entirely
dissimilar to Lukács’ theory, however, and demonstrates that he is quite open to new attempts
to formulate a contemporary phenomenology of reification. However much one might
applaud this openness, suspicion remains with respect to the question of how one should react
theoretically to the fundamental impulse of History and Class Consciousness, which consists
in protesting against the totalizing of the commodity and exploitation principle as it produces
reifying effects. It is becoming increasingly difficult to protect domains of life against the
logic of commodity production. Lukács insisted, not without good reason, throughout his
entire life that such problems cannot be solved without a radical change in the system.40

It is remarkable that Honneth’s attempt to reconstruct the theory of reification, despite

its anti-Marxist impetus, has provoked astonishingly harsh reactions among the conservative
as well as the “liberal“ camp (unlike Rahel Jaeggi’s study of alienation). There is talk of a
“regression to the yearned-for authenticity of contemporary social romanticism” believed to
ontologically eclipse even Rousseau’s hypothetical return to nature.41 The anger of these
authors, especially the decidedly conservative ones, is understandable, since Honneth with
his study is opening the path to a potentially, truly contemporary debate about reification by
offering evidence and material for discussion as to what a contemporary reification theory
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might look like. He connects the discourse of alienation and reification, anchored as it is in
the contemporary living world and contemporary scientific discourses, with the lives of
contemporary humans, who are living in the realm of tension between personhood, role
identity, the striving for self-actualization, and the requirement of self-marketing. The
international attention that Honneth’s brief study Verdinglichung has commanded shows:
here we have an attentive observer of social pathologies who has hit a nerve.

Nevertheless, the Left’s critique of Honneth’s attempt has been and remains pointed:
his appropriation seeks to re-articulate Lukács' concept in such a way that it becomes
compatible with social-philosophical approaches that are recognized today. In favour of this
compatibility, however, Honneth sacrifices essential aspects of the paradigm. Following the
spirit of the Habermas school, he wants to suspend Lukacs’ Hegelianism, his methodical
grasp, and of course his—however it may be defined—orthodox Marxism. Following the
communication-theoretic turn, there is no room left for a materialist dialectic, however
sophisticated. The critique of capitalism, as the critique of a system of (naturally capitalist)
commodity production is replaced by a critique of pathological states of emergency, which
claims that these aberrations can be compensated for, or in part eradicated, by a
democratization of the family, a moralization of the economy, and of course a democratized
public sphere.42

Even more naive than Honneth’s is the transformation, by avowed Aristotelian

philosopher Martha Nussbaum, of reification theory.43 She investigates practices of
“objectification” by using examples from sexist and pornographic attitudes and depictions,
and she arrives at seven attributes of reification, which she understands to mean any form of
subjects making themselves into mere objects. These attributes are:

• Instrumentalization (subjects are made into a tool for satisfying the requirements of
other subjects)
• Denial/deprivation of a subject’s autonomy
• Subjects are deprived of their ability to act, condemned to passivity (this demonstrates
the proximity to Lukács' notion of contemplative subject’s behaviour)
• Functionalization, i.e. subjects are accorded value only on account of their function
(and thus can be exchanged for other carriers of the same function)
• Violence (subjects are denied their physical integrity, their bodies can be
manipulated, and even destroyed under certain circumstances)
• Appropriation (subjects are commodities that can be traded and sold)
• Denial of subjectivity (subjects are not recognized as persons with their own
experiences/emotions or these are deemed irrelevant)

Nussbaum’s attributions are illuminating and can certainly be used as guidelines for
an analysis of certain reification phenomena, such as demonstrating the problematic
consequences of reification tendencies for a “proper life,” or to capture the emotional culture
of capitalist modernity (including its digital variant)—a project indispensable to the
comprehension of modern subjectivity. But their reach is too limited when the goal is to
comprehend reified social conditions that elude the awareness, respectively the control, of
individual subjects. Quite rightly, Markus Wolf writes: “She misses the phenomenon of
reification because it refers to structures that are not available to individual agents, and that
10
a moral critique cannot claim as its subject.”44 Despite this justified and necessary critique it
must be noted that Nussbaum, like the previously mentioned representatives of Critical
Theory, has sharpened our gaze to the fact that reification critique does not exhaust itself in
mere philological Marxism, and that it aims at more than to a decoding of ideological
consciousness structures. The critique of reification is, at its a core, a radical critique of a
form of life that can be described as bourgeois-capitalist socialisation, according to the
definition of Hegel and Marx.45

E. The Current Relevance of Reification Theory and The “Idea of Socialism”

Even if there are good reasons to criticize the lack of radicalism in the attempted re–
articulations by Habermas and Honneth, or the moralizing narrowing of Nussbaum’s view of
the phenomenon of reification,46 the question remains how we are to treat Lukács’ critique
of reification in our “post-communist” era, with its absence of a revolutionary subject. Three
indicators might help to demonstrate that the relevance of the theorem remains undiminished,
even if one considers teleological-historical metaphysics and the historical messianism of
Lukács in the 1920 to constitute unacceptable Fichtean-Hegelian relics:

1. Humans continue to be habitually treated in everyday life not as persons but as

objects, i.e. they are being treated as something that may be instrumentalized, sold,
used, or destroyed (to paraphrase Kant’s reflections in his Metaphysik der Sitten). It
must be noted very clearly that reification is not normal, not a social-ontological fate
[fatum]. That the act of turning-oneself-into-an-object, Lukács describes, takes place
at present in forms that are sometimes consciously playful, frequently consumption
oriented and cynical, inauthentic, always masked, and impregnated by self-deception,
may complicate the matter, but does not alter the fact that it constitutes self-
alienation.47 How quickly the cheerful cynicism of a playful, allegedly controlled
“self-reification of humans”48 turns into pathological catastrophes is only too well
known to anyone working in social work, in hospitals, or in schools. The field of
working life remains a domain where reification does not appear to be diminishing,
and that holds true not only for less developed regions of the global village. While
we may currently enjoy the status of a legal subject in working life,49 we are far
removed from living autonomous subjectivity in the context of work.50 Even if some
people prefer to paint a picture of a new culture of work, allegedly marked by shallow
hierarchies, creative autonomy, etc., there certainly are social realities that lead one
to expect the opposite development: as soon as we enter the working world, we adopt
the internalized attitude of image production51 and of self-marketing,52 never to
relinquish it again in the decades that follow, regardless of whether we earn our living
as dependent employees or whether we are moving around as modern nomads.53 And
the modern manager, whom we address on a first-name basis, and who may be barely
distinguishable externally from his “co-workers” will, in a conflict situation and
especially when it comes to the bottom line, prove to be someone who exercises
power after all, even if they pose as charitable benefactors. The digital revolution, on
which some have placed great hopes for gains in autonomy, has not been able to
prevent itself from being colonized by the logic of commodity production. The rapid
development of technology and biological sciences is even likely to increase the

11
 probability that we are approaching, as Günter Anders argues, the final level of
reification; in The Obsolescence of Humanity [Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen],
Anders distinguishes three levels of reification. On the final level, now increasingly
in the process of becoming reality, where the difference between cyborg, clone, and
person is becoming blurred, humans tend to become a “device among devices,” an
appendix (or more politely: an interface) of computer-based social interaction.54
2. There is still a reification of social (especially political) practices in the sense that
participation in them is no longer being regulated collectively but appears as an
objective constraint (in the meaning of objective causal relationships) that the
participants are confronted within a position of powerlessness, in the sense of Lukács’
use of the term “contemplative”; the “contemplative attitude," which they have to
adopt toward these relationships “prevents a reflective assurance of their social
mutability, and thus undermines the autonomy of subjects.”55 It is no secret that the
more recent debate about our post-democratic society provides more than enough
material for contemporary forms of political reification. Despite ubiquitous social
networks, we are still far from the formation of a type of public sphere in which
individuals who are habituated to reifying structures can transform their heteronomy
into self-determined processes of communicative reason.
3. In the post-democratic condition, the citizen appears to become a marginalized
political object, whose participation is limited to taking part in formal democratic
procedures and in the public debate about symbolic Ersatz actions on the political
stage.56 One of the consequences of this development, lamented volubly but hardly
believably by the representatives of the political class, is the waning interest in
democratic elections,57 which is in no small measure a symptom of the daily
experience of disenfranchisement. Lukács’ lifelong sympathy for the forms of council
democracy [Rätedemokratie] sets its hopes against this undermining of democratic
procedures in a social model in which the social agents are actually given an
opportunity, in a social environment that militates against obscurity and over-
complexity, to freely make decisions aimed at practicing solidarity.58
4. As the first two points indicate, the time-diagnostic potential of the theory of
reification is not only practically unbroken, but its scholarly standing and status a
critique of ideology continue to be widely applicable. Take the debate about the
"death of the subject." To the extent that the ideological character of many concepts
of the end of subjectivity is becoming apparent, it is possible to revive Lukács’
fundamental philosophical concept. Consider further, for example, the lack of
articulation and inability to communicate between representatives of different
scientific disciplines, who can no longer find a shared language—with disastrous
consequences for a comprehensive, integrated view of reality, and the emancipatory
value of their research.59 Not least among preconditions for improving this situation
is that Marxism is allowed to reclaim its rightful place in scholarly culture. The self-
deceptions of the currently dominant directions in philosophy, as well as the social
and cultural sciences, include the belief that they are able to do without the legacy of
this school in their attempt to overcome the poor abstractions of modern rationality
that, in the 20th century, have been most effectively described by Lukács and
Heidegger.60 It is not difficult to prove that contemporary forms of scientific
rationality (in Lukács' meaning of the term) are particularized and insufficient. The
discipline of economics, for example, is still unable to eliminate economic crises (we
12
 are all aware that in our time the opposite is the case), and the number and intensity
of military conflicts, which Lukács would undoubtedly have understood in the
context of a theory of imperialism, has increased alarmingly. The mainstream of
traditional-academic philosophy shows itself to be even less prepared than
contemporary art and literature61 to react both theoretically and practically to the
global and intercultural challenges, in line with Marx’ last thesis on Feuerbach
(assuming it takes any note of it all). Scientific praxis in our time appears to be aiming
to confirm Wittgenstein’s dictum “that even when all possible scientific questions
have been answered, our living problems will not have been touched at all.”62 In his
Ontology, the late Lukács remarks, not without justification, in his assessment of “the
most influential directions of bourgeois philosophy“63 that in both philosophy and
science “the principle of manipulation“ has come to be dominant: “For if science is
not orientated towards an as adequate as possible knowledge of reality-in-itself
[ansichseiende Wirklichkeit], if it does not strive to discover these new realities by its
ever more perfected methods, which are by necessity founded ontologically as well,
and which deepen and increase ontological insights, its activities reduce themselves
in the final analysis to supporting praxis in its immediate sense. If it cannot or will
not rise above this level, then its activity transforms into a manipulation of facts which
are of practical interest to humanity.”64

If the evidence thus far presented is correct, or at least partially correct, then the
obvious conclusion seems to be that the pathological tendencies of our present time,
described temporarily as the “
"post-industrial," "knowledge-," "risk-," "adventure-," or "digital-society," require an
updating of Lukács’ phenomenology of reification, which would naturally have to take into
account the points of criticism that have been discussed in the decades since it was first made
public.65

In closing, I would like to refer back to my opening remarks once more. The
experiences of our contemporary crises—according to our initial thesis—provoke the
question whether it is feasible to simply renounce the great tradition of socialist and
revolutionary thought. The “idea of socialism”—and here we can agree with Axel Honneth—
has not become obsolete with the collapse of the traditional proletarian movements.66 It
requires, however, without doubt new theoretical efforts and rearticulations.67

No one can simply advocate a renaissance of the practical philosophy of the 1920s,
of course. That was an ambitious attempt to respond to a revolutionary situation in theoretical
terms. It is completely uncertain whether the utopian elevation of the political, which we
could observe especially in Lukács’ theory of contemporary life and of the party, can be re-
integrated into philosophical discourse. It is also indisputable that many of our
contemporaries will reject, with some outrage, the thought that they are living in an age of
reification, or respectively that they are subject to patterns of self-reification.68 But even if
“developed,” “democratic” societies do not widely practice, or consider normal,69 some
forms of reification such as direct violence (i.e. subjects are denied their physical integrity,
their bodies may be manipulated or destroyed) and appropriation (i.e. subjects are sold like
slaves as commodities), instrumentalization, functionalization, and denial of subjectivity
continue in this “age of manipulation”70 to be present at the core of social life.71 They appear,
13
however, in entirely new forms that did not yet exist during the times of the Taylorization of
the work process, or the classic cultural industry. During the final years of his life, Lukács
lamented that Marxist theory was still in its infancy with regard to the analysis of modern
capitalist theory. “Thirty years of theoretical stagnation of Marxism have created the
disgraceful situation that today, nearly a century after its coming into effect, Marxists are still
unable to at least offer a somewhat adequate economic analysis of contemporary
capitalism.”72 Similar statements can be made about reification theory: the new, “reifying
forms of life and living situations”73 in our brave new digital world need to be theoretically
worked through in their peculiar rationality and irrationality, their technical dimensions and
human particularity, at long last. It is a truly ambitious project waiting to be undertaken.

But this self-critical assessment does not mean that one should dispense with the
advantages of Marx’s approach in rearticulating a contemporary socialist theory, as Honneth
is proposing. Unlike the Marxists, he wants to base his hopes for a contemporary socialism
on modern institutions, respectively on institutional regulation, as “carriers of normative
requirements.”74 He views institutionalized progress such as co-determination and minimum
wage as the “foreshadowing of the future” [“Vorschein des Zukünftigen”] or, following Kant,
as “historical symbols,” while he believes that orientating oneself by social movement gives
rise to problems, “because that would lend far too much weight to what is fleeting and
contingent among the ever more rapid transformations.”75 The Frankfurt philosopher places
his bet on functional differentiation. Against a fixation on economics, he wants to see law
and politics considered as following their own logics and thus as spheres to be treated
separately. In concrete terms, this means he wants to take the realm of the democratic
formation of decisions much more seriously than has been the case in socialist traditions,
especially of Marxist persuasions, to date. By this he wants to emphasize the normative
foundations of a socialist alternative to existing society, instead of obscuring them in a
philosophy of history.

Indeed it cannot be denied that, in the history of the workers’ movement there have
been strong anti-democratic tendencies that produced new forms of alienation.76 Traditions
such as these, which have to be assessed as “relapses into totalitarianism and primitivism,”77
are rightly met with increasing scepticism. Lukács’ emphasis must be worked through and
replaced by an understanding of politics that recognizes democratization as an indispensable
characteristic of socialist politics. A modern socialist understanding of politics, however,
cannot ignore the fact that, in a reified world, people existing in reified forms of life are
confronted with a process of forming political will in which it is not easy for them to
recognize their own requirements and interests, to shape and articulate them in ways that are
informed by solidarity. The phenomenon of the ideological crisis of the proletariat is not a
Leninist invention, but a result of the inherent obscurity of the capitalist system, and of the
profound reification of our thinking and living.

Lukács’ path to Marx is accompanied and characterized by reflections on ethics. As

late as 1918, he rejected the Bolshevik revolution from a Kantian perspective—on the
grounds of moral considerations. And even after turning toward Marxism, his moral impulse
that humans must not be degraded to serve as means, robbed of their autonomy, and reduced
to a “trolls” (in the words of Ibsen)78 persists. Since History and Class Consciousness,
however, the Hungarian philosopher was convinced that the loss of autonomy of humans is
14
not an individual-moral phenomenon, but a structural characteristic of capitalist commodity
production. Revolutionizing the latter is a possible product of the historical process, and,
having become realizable in this context, is the moral postulate of the struggle against the
diverse forms of reification. This struggle is always susceptible to relapses—an insight that
Lukács who, ever since his notes on Dostoyevsky, had little faith in institutions and the
conformist, law-abiding behaviour they demanded, never let go off. The de-reification, de-
commodification of social relationships is substantially a matter of everyday living; a form
of life for which it holds true “that the active alienating of another person necessarily entails
one’s own alienation.”79

A critique of economism [Ökonomismus] must not overlook the realism that is

characteristic of the Marx-Lukács assessment of the political: even non-Marxist authors are
recognizing that the present is marked by a “dominance of the economic system.”80 The
economic system is—as we have emphasized above—totalitarian in tendency, it leaves its
mark on politics and private life and “will perhaps precisely because of that (because of its
ubiquity) rarely be recognized”;81 by the medium of money it secures the “social cohesion,”
precisely by invading as exchange value every social domain (of a functionally differentiated
modern society).”82 Only if a change in the system that offers hope of social control of the
economic domain and provides space for modes of praxis that serve their own purposes83 is
initiated, can a functional differentiation, in the sense that Honneth desires, therefore have a
hope of succeeding. In the process of transcending the hic et nunc, a true democratic
formation of collective will can take place, and culture and private life can find configurations
that are appropriate to their domains. Honneth’s reflections on the “democratic forms of life,”
which will at that point be on the agenda, can provide valuable suggestions for this socialist
future.84 As a set of instructions for our capitalist reality they are less useful.

Endnotes
1
Axel Honneth, Die Idee des Sozialismus. Versuch einer Aktualisierung (Frankfurt/Main:
2015).
2
Honneth 15. Similarly, Robert Castel notes as early as 2009: “The financial, economic
and social crisis which is threatening to strangle millions of people in the entire world,
makes apparent the inanity of the liberal constructs which are based on the hegemony of a
self-regulating market. The possibility of averting this catastrophe depends on the will to
draw boundaries, to enact legislation in order to tame this hubris of capital” Quoted from
Peter V. Zima, Entfremdung. Pathologien der postmodernen Gesellschaft (Tübingen: 2014)
135.
3
Honneth, Die Idee des Sozialismus, 19.
4
Honneth, Die Idee des Sozialismus, 20 (Emphasis mine).
5
As in the case of socialism, and even more thoroughly with communism, we have to
probe critically and self-critically, which forms are fit for continuation and which are to be
rejected as pernicious, inimical to enlightenment and emancipation, and even to be
combated practically. Just as the generalized identification of communism and fascism
under the category of “totalitarianism” is of little use, there must be a clear and distinct
distancing from forms of socialism and communism that are inimical to democratization.
6
Cf. Honneth's critique of the Hegel-Marx concept of “totality”, ibid. 92ff and 127ff.
7
For consistency’s sake, he would have to add art as another sub-system with its own,
15
“autonomous” logic.
8
Cf. Robert Lanning, Georg Lukács und die Organisierung von Klassenbewusstsein. Laika
Verlag (publication imminent). Lannings examples from North Africa can be accompanied
by counterparts in Europe and hereabouts. Guido Speckmann, for example, is not altogether
wrong when he writes in a review of Honneth: “The eminent Frankfurt professor overlooks
that institutional achievements don’t just drop from the sky but that they have social
carriers who attain them by engaging in social struggles. The right of co-determination is
inconceivable without the class compromise following Word War II, any more than the
institutionalization of minimum wage by the struggles of trade unions.” (Neues
Deutschland, October 28, 2015)
9
Honneth, Die Idee des Sozialismus, 166.
10
Honneth, Die Idee des Sozialismus.
11
Honneth refers to Dewey, in order to reach “an experimental understanding of historical
processes of transformation“ (ibid. 96 and 96ff as well as 150ff).
12
He is not alone in this, as he great international resonance to the closing of the Lukács
archives in Budapest demonstrated. Information about the scandal of the closing of the
archive can be found on the Facebook page of the International Georg-Lukács-Society
(www.facebook.com/lukacsgesellschaft).
13
I wish to distance myself as clearly as possible from the interpreters of Lukács who
honour his work selectively, i.e. with a focus on his early work. From my point of view, for
example, we have to re-examine whether labour, taking the term in the meaning of Lukács‘
late work Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins (cf. Georg Lukács, Zur Ontologie des
gesellschaftlichen Seins. Band II. GLW Bd. 14, Darmstadt und Neuwied 1986, 67-117), has
lost its constitutive significance in modern society and the chapter on alienation in the
Ontology contains valuable impulses for contemporary analysis.
14
Honneth, Die Idee des Sozialismus, 63f.
15
Georg Lukács, Die Verdinglichung und das Bewußtsein des Proletariats (Bielefeld: 2015)
121f and 164f.
16
Georg Lukács, Preface (1967) to Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein in GLW, Vol. II
(Taschenbuch: 2013) 13.
17
Cf. Konstantinos Kavoulakos' illuminating study Ästhetizistische Kulturkritik und
ethische Utopie. Georg Lukács' neukantianisches Frühwerk. Berlin 2014. On Kavoulakos‘
discoveries cf. Rüdiger Dannemann, Muss Georg Lukács’ Frühwerk neu gelesen werden?
In: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 63, Nr. 6 (2015), 1158–1168.
18
This is not an exhaustive list oft he sources that found their way into the discourse of
GuK. Other formative elements are classical German philosophy (especially Kant, as read
in the Neo-Kantian variant, Fichte, especially in the interpretation of Emil Lask,
increasingly Hegel, who needed to be re-discovered at the time), alongside the life
philosophy of Bergson and Simmel, Husserl’s Phaenomenology (Lucien Goldmann has
identified Die Seele und die Formen as an early existentialist work), legal theoreticians like
Kelsen and Jellinek (we must remember that Lukács had also studied law and obtained a
doctorate in political science (rer. oec.), the Weimar classics (in particular Goethe and
Schiller’s critique of Kant), but also romantic philosophy (cf. M. Löwy, From Romanticism
to Bolshevism, 1979); in addition to the increasingly dominant influence of Marx and
Lenin, that of Rosa Luxemburg (and of syndicalism).
19
The critical reception of Lukács has not infrequently taken the aforementioned theoretical
melange/melee/mashup as a cause for criticism––giving rise to accusations of eclecticism,
16
of being equivocal; later on of revisionism, of an improper synthesis of incompatible
theoretical approaches. The Neo-Kantians object to Lukács' Hegelianism, the self-
appointed orthodox Marxists to the Fichte-inspired historical philosopher, the 68 generation
to the bourgeois–son–turned–revolutionary’s reading of Weber and Simmel, or his
allegedly unreserved conversion to “orthodox” Marxism etc. Other readers, less concerned
with orthodoxy (of whatever stripe) on the other hand, have pointed to the wealth, and the
scope of his perspective: Even in the 1930s or 50s, Lukács’ singular intellectual position in
the context of the Marxist school of philosophy was remarked on by his contemporaries.
20
On the evolution of Lukács’ thinking, cf. the relevant works of Apitzsch (1977), Arato/
Breines (1979), Congdon (1983), Dannemann (1987 und 1997), Feenberg (2014), Grauer
(1985), Hermann (1985), Jung (1989 und 2001), Kadarkay (1991), Kammler (1974), Löwy
(1979).
21
At least nine different modes of access can be observed, which can of course also be
combined or may intersect. Cf. Rüdiger Dannemann, Nachwort zu Georg Lukács, Die
Verdinglichung und das Bewußtsein des Proletariats, loc. cit., 182-186.
22
Georg Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein, GLW Vol. II, 5.
23
Titus Stahl, Verdinglichung als Pathologie zweiter Ordnung, in Deutsche Zeitschrift für
Philosophie 59, Nr. 5 (2011) 734.
24
Peter Bürger, Lukács-Lektüren. Autobiographische Fragmente, in: Rüdiger Dannemann
(ed.), Lukács und 1968. Eine Spurensuche (Bielefeld: 2009) 19ff.
25
This applies primarily to the proletariat, but also to the beneficiaries of the economic
system of modernity.
26
Even in his philosophical testament, his Ontologie, Lukács reaffirms this aspect: “from
language to the motives of their actions, the process of reification suffuses all the utterances
of contemporary humans.” (Georg Lukács, Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, Vol.
II, loc. cit. 598).
27
Karl Marx, Das Elend der Philosophie. Response to Proudhons “Philosophie des Elends”,
MEW Vol. 4, 130. Even in his Bloch-critique in the context of the expressionism debate of
the 1930s, Jahre Lukács refers at a central point of his argument to this Marx-quote, in
order to legitimize his notion of totality (cf. Lukács, Es geht um Realismus (1938), in: GLW
Vol. 4, 316.)
28
Thus ends the famous reification essay in Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein (Georg
Lukács, Die Verdinglichung und das Bewußtsein des Proletariats, loc. cit. 176). In his late
writings, Lukács distanced himself equally clearly from a deterministic interpretation of
historical processes; he emphasizes that economic development merely produces a “margin
of possibility [Möglichkeitsspielraum],” “whose realization can only be enacted by humans
themselves” (Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, Bd. II, loc. cit. 629). This is not
the place for a detailed discussion of the important 7th pillar of reification theory, that of its
organizational theory, respectively its concept of “imputed” [zugerechnet] class
consciousness, since we are primarily concerned with the aspect of how realizable
reification theory is.
29
The further development and continuation of his reification project took an entirely
different form than its author had imagined. It did not take place among the circle of
recipients he had intended, that of politically engaged and even organized practical
philosophers—with the aforementioned exceptions—but among theoreticists, who would
later come to be renowned as Frankfurt School (respectively as critical theory). The more
than difficult relationship between Lukács and Adorno is a lesson in the kind of problems
17
in communication and discourse typical of left intelligentia oft he 20th century. Cf. the
dossiers “Georg Lukács und Theodor W. Adorno“ (1. und 2. Teil) in: F. Benseler/ W. Jung
(eds.), Lukács 2004. Jahrbuch der Internationalen Georg-Lukács-Gesellschaft, Bielefeld
2004, 65-180; Lukács 2005, Jahrbuch der Internationalen Georg-Lukács-Gesellschaft,
Bielefeld 2005, 55-189.
30
Cf. die Beiträge von Robert Fechner und Fabian Kettner in: Markus Bitterolf/ Denis
Meier (ed.), Verdinglichung, Marxismus, Geschichte, Freiburg 2012 ; Louis Althusser/
Etienne Balibar, Das Kapital lesen, Hamburg 1972; the essays by Hans-Ernst Schiller,
Ivan Boldyref, Werner Jung, Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Hans-Heinz Holz in: Beat Dietschy,
Doris Zeilinger, Rainer E. Zimmermann (Ed.), Bloch-Wörterbuch, Berlin/ Boston
2012; Dirk Braunstein/ Simon Duckheim, Adornos Lukács. Ein Lektürebericht, in:
Rüdiger Dannemann (ed.), Jahrbuch der Internationalen Georg-Lukács-Gesellschaft 2014/
201505, Bielefeld 2015, 55-189; Georg Lukács, Preface (1967).
31
Norbert Bolz, Auszug aus der entzauberten Welt. Philosophischer Extremismus zwischen
den Weltkriegen (Wilhelm Fink Verlag: 1991); George Lichtheim, Georg Lukács
(München: 1971); Wolfgang Röd, Der Weg der Philosophie, Vol. II (München: 1996)
417ff.
32
Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt/Main: 1981)
Volume I, 479.
33
Rahel Jaeggi, Entfremdung. Zur Aktualität eines sozialphilosophischen Problem
(Frankfurt/Main: 2005) 28.
34
Axel Honneth, Unser Kritiker. Jürgen Habermas wird siebzig: eine Ideenbiographie, in:
DIE ZEIT Nr. 25 (1999), ed. June 17, 1999.
35
Axel Honneth, Verdinglichung. Eine anerkennungstheoretische Studie (Frankfurt/Main:
2005) 24.
36
Honneth, Verdinglichung, 27.
37
Honneth, Verdinglichung, 28.
38
Honneth notes the absence of proof from the 1920s author, that there is in the family, in
the political public sphere, in the relationship between parents and children, in the culture
of recreation, an actual process of “colonisation” by the principles of the capitalist market,
of the exchange principle. The privileging of the economic sphere is claimed to have
bizarre consequences. Unchecked forms of dehumanizing reification express themselves in
racism or in human trafficking, especially of women. Ibid, p 90.
39
Honneth, Verdinglichung, 102.
40
Honneth views this quite differently, without doubt: In his reflections on the international
debate that his essay has triggered, he steps back even further (cf. Axel Honneth,
Nachbetrachtung zu “Verdinglichung”, in: Frank Benseler/Rüdiger Dannemann (Ed.),
Lukács 2012/ 2013. Jahrbuch der Internationalen Georg-Lukács-Gesellschaft, Bielefeld
2012, 67-79): Now Honneth wants to define the circle of reification phenomena even more
narrowly, and limit the term to the, in his opinion unlikely, cases where the ontological
difference between a person and a thing is consigned to permanent institutional oblivion.
41
Cf. Ralf Konersmann, Anerkennungsvergessenheit. Für Sozialromantiker: Axel Honneth
über Verdinglichung. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 21./22. Januar 2006, Nr. 17, 14. Ähnlich
Wolfgang Kersting in der FAZ vom 7.11.2005, anders Michael Schifzyk in der NZZ vom
18.10.2005. Judith Butler in her quite critical discussion of Honneth’s essay also points to a
link between his idea of a genuine praxis and Rousseau (cf. Judith Butler, Taking Another’s
View: Ambivalent Implications, in: Axel Honneth, Reification. A New Look at an Old Idea.
18
Oxford 2008, 97-119).
42
In the tradition of the Frankfurt School, there is a tendency to think of critical theory
merely as a branch of moral philosophy that is concerned solely with questions of social
equity. The original approach remains relevant precisely because Lukács does not interpret
reification morally, or reduces it like Honneth to a “set of individual attitudes” (Timothy
Hall, Returning to Lukács: Honneth’s Critical Reconstruction of Lukács' Concepts of
Reification and Praxis, in: Michael J. Thompson (ed.), Georg Lukács Reconsidered.
Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics, London/ New York 2011, 197).
Recent Anglo-American authors (like Hall) identify the search for the “good life” under the
conditions of modernity as the core of reification critique. A search that could not, in
Lukács’ eyes, be undertaken in a singular act but only “by a concrete relationship to the
concretely manifesting contradictions in the total development.” Therefore, it has to be
concerned “with the contextually specific suspending of pathological obstacles to
acquisition [Aneignungshindernisse] of every individual case.” (Titus Stahl,
Verdinglichung als Pathologie zweiter Ordnung, loc. cit., 743).
43
Martha C. Nussbaum, Verdinglichung, in: dies., Konstruktion der Liebe, des Begehrens
und der Fürsorge. Drei philosophische Aufsätze (Stuttgart: 2002) 90-162.
44
Markus Wolf, Verdinglichung kritisieren. Was. Warum und Wie?, in: Hans Friesen,
Christian Lotz, Jakob Meier, Markus Wolf (eds.), Ding und Verdinglichung. Technik- und
Sozialphilosophie nach Heidegger und der Kritischen Theorie (München: 2012) 285.
45
Nussbaum is also critical of the term reification because of its lack of focus, and even
finds positive aspects in certain “natural” forms of reification.
46
Cf. z.B. Christoph Henning, Von der Kritik warenförmiger Arbeit zur Apotheose der
Marktgesellschaft. Verdinglichung in Marxismus und Anerkennungstheorie, in: Hans
Friesen et alii (eds.), Ding und Verdinglichung loc. cit. 243-272.
47
Georg Lukács, Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, Vol. II, 682. In his Ontologie,
Lukács emphasizes the currently observable changes in capitalism as due to the “expansion
of large capital production to the entire domain of consumption and service, which causes
them to influence the everyday lives of most humans in a completely different, direct,
active, and directly intervening sense than was ever possible in earlier economic models.”
48
Lukács, Zur Ontologie, 587.
49
Both Habermas and Honneth fervently insist on this. Oppinions divide perceptibly when
it comes to the assessment of bourgeois law: Lukács insists even in Sozialismus und
Demokratisierung, his political legacy, and in the Ontologie on his critique of formal
civil/bourgeois law (human rights [die Rechte des homme] “offer humanity the full
freedom to reify themselves socially and naturally also ideologically to their hearts
content”, according to his pointedly phrased diagnosis [Zur Ontologie des
gesellschaftlichen Seins, Vol. II, loc. cit. 561), whereas Honneth accuses the (early)
socialists and their successors of “their persistent blindness to the law” (Die Idee des
Sozialismus, loc. cit. 127).
50
In the Ontologie Lukács puts it, not without a hint of pessimism, like this: “Reification
and alienation may have a greater actual power now than ever before.” (Zur Ontologie des
gesellschaftlichen Seins, Vol. II, loc. Cit. 656).
51
In his Ontologie, the late Lukács emphasized this aspect: “In that humanity subordinates
its actions in everyday life to the enlarging of its ‚image’, clearly such an elevation of the
standards of living must give rise to a new form of alienation, an alienation in and of itself”
(ibid 683, cf. as well as 627).
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52
It would be worth investigating, to what extent the forms of self-marketing in working
life find their “voluntary“ continuation in the rampant cult of beauty and physique.
53
Naturally there are significant differences between employees as to how they experience
instances of freedom/autonomy, but that changes nothing about the self-objectification
demanded by the system’s rationality.
54
Thomas Zoglauer, Zur Ontologie der Artefakte, in: Hans Friesen et alii (eds.), Ding und
Verdinglichung 26-27.
55
Titus Stahl, Verdinglichung als Pathologie zweiter Ordnung, 741.
56
The late Lukács, despite the protests of a counter-public, is convinced of the poor state of
the public in our “age of manipulation [Manipulationszeitalter]” (Zur Ontologie des
gesellschaftlichen Seins, Bd. II, loc. cit. 635).
57
If once in a while voter turnout should increase and lead to undesirable consequences, the
ruling political class likes to complain about populist trends that are to be kept outside the
political arena.
58
Georg Lukács, Sozialismus und Demokratisierung (Frankfurt/Main: 1987).
59
Georg Lukács, Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins Vol. II 598.
60
Despite all its deficits, among the strengths of the “Marburg School” formed around
Wolfgang Abendroth and Werner Hofmann, unlike the Frankfurt school’s protagonists,
counts its insistence, on the indispensable role of Marx’s theory to gain adequate insights
and to be able to address practical-political problems in contemporary society. Cf. Lothar
Peter, Marx an die Uni. Die »Marburger Schule« - Geschichte, Probleme, Akteure. Köln
2014.
61
While in bourgeois art “the revolt against the alienations (…) has remained
unextermineable” Lukács detects more tendencies towards adaptation for bourgeois
philosophy—“despite mock opposition.” (Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, Vol.
II, loc. cit. 678).
62
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, London 1955, 186 (quoted in:
Georg Lukács, Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, Vol. II, loc. cit. 374).
63
Lukács includes especially Neo-positivism, the philosophy of language succeeding
Wittgenstein and Existentialism.
64
Lukács, Zur Ontologie, 344f.
65
In more recent, as yet to be seriously investigated mass phenomena of everyday culture
[Alltagskultur] similar reification phenomena can be found. As the above examples
demonstrate, reification critique did not concern itself with “marginal practices” but with
the central practices of a form of life in which entire bundles of practices are systematically
intertwined. (Stahl, Verdinglichung als Pathologie zweiter Ordnung, loc. cit. 742).
66
The great media resonance to Honneth’s essay indicates that the author’s assessment is
correct. That professional recipients frequently respond to his work, similarly to his study
of reification, with a mixture of sympathy and (harsh) criticism, confirms that his thoughts
are inciting a relevant discussion, which is awaiting continuation.
67
It is not correct, however, that the original reification theory is unable in principle to
perform a critique of the many concrete forms of reification such as racism, repression of
women etc. On the contrary, it is an approach that places the concrete forms of reification
in the context of a social totality, and can thus explain them adequately. That is at the core
of the radical quality of this approach, which links the critique of individual phenomena
with the question of the system as a whole. To put it pointedly: The struggle against racism
and xenophobia is always justified, but it becomes comprehensive, i.e., “radical” in Marx’s
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meaning of the word, in the context of a praxis that brings about radical changes.
68
There is a new culture, a new form of life, unfortunately hardly analyzed from a Marxist
perspective until now, of unapologetic narcissistic egotism, which ignores the dimensions
of politics and human history and completely prevents the memory of possible experiences
of alienation and reification.
69
Recent customs in the treatment of the current streams of refugees give us reasons to fear
that such forms of an immensely violent, reifying treatment of humans.
70
Lukács, Zur Ontologie Vol. II, 635.
71
The diagnosis by the late Lukács is similiar, when he speaks oft he disappearance of
“cannibalistic over-work” and the fading of “perceivable [sinnfällig] brutality … only to
make way for a 'voluntarily' accepted form.” (ibid.).
72
Lukács, Zur Ontologie Vol. II, 706.
73
Lukács, Zur Ontologie Vol. II, 736.
74
Honneth, Die Idee des Sozialismus, loc. cit. 117. Despite all the criticism of Honneth, his
impetus to overcome the pure, history-philosophical negativity of Adorno is appropriate to
the facts and productive for the further development of modern critical theory. Lukács
always opposed the hyperradical gesturing of the negativity of the Minima Moralia, since
he views—with Marx and Aristotle—humans as “responding beings” (Zur Ontologie des
gesellschaftlichen Seins, Bd. II, loc. cit. 524, 573 and passim).
75
Honneth, Die Idee des Sozialismus, 116.
76
Lukács, Zur Ontologie Vol II, 551.
77
Zima, Entfremdung. Pathologien der postmodernen Gesellschaft, 134.
78
Cf. Georg Lukács, In praise oft he nineteenth century, in: ders., Essays über Realismus,
GLW Vol. 4, Neuwied and Berlin 1971, 662: “… man becomes man, by wanting to
become self; the troll rejects this should [Sollen], any should [Sollen]; it sufficient unto
itself [in its particular immediacy [Unmittelbarkeit], R.D.].”
79
Georg Lukács, Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins, Vol. II, a.a.O. 519. Cf. The
brief but exemplary abstract of a history of the relationship between the sexes ibid 517ff.
Incidentally: Mere recourse to “the remaining critical intellectuals (such as the ones
highlighted e.g. by Zima, R.D.),” who are supposed to continue to mount resistance in the
areas that remain open to them, „Science, Education, Art and—Politics” (Peter V. Zima,
Entfremdung. Pathologien der postmodernen Gesellschaft, ibid. 92) is not a convincing
option.
80
Lukács, Zur Ontologie, 101.
81
Lukács, Zur Ontologie, VII.
82
Lukács, Zur Ontologie, 101.
83
In the terminology of the Ontologie these constitute forms of praxis of the species in
itself [Gattungsmäßigkeit].
84
When human history ceases to function as if grown out of nature, spaces for individual
autonomously defined forms of law, politics, and love are created—in a new quality. (cf.
Georg Lukács, Der Funktionswechsel des historischen Materialismus, GLW Vol. II, 398-
431).

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