What can we learn from Lukacs’ theory of reification?
Lukacs’ innovative theory of reification may provide a clue. First introduced in his essay “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat, ” published shortly after his conversion to communism in 1918, the theory of reification is built on two of Marx’s foundational concepts: the fetishization of commodities and the alienation of labour.
What is reification of Georg Lukács?
True and deep thought, thought that opens a new epoch in history, often becomes a pole of attraction for philosophizing persons whose conceptual fancy seizes upon such thought only to cover it over with their own questionable designs. Such a questionable design is the theory of reification of Georg Lukács.
What is rationalization According to Lukacs?
Lukacs understands rationalization as the process by which one quantifies a system in order to be “able to predict with ever greater precision all the results to be achieved,” a predictive method that “is only to be acquired by the exact breakdown of every complex into its elements.”
What is Lukács’s logic of specialization?
The logic of specialization thus figures in Lukács as a fracturing force thanks to which society’s self-presentation obscures its very totality.
What did Marx mean by reification?
In Marxism, reification (German: Verdinglichung, lit. transl. "making into a thing") is the process by which social relations are perceived as inherent attributes of the people involved in them, or attributes of some product of the relation, such as a traded commodity.
Which concept of Marx was the basis for Lukács concept of reification?
With this description of capitalist society, Lukács combines Weber's theory of rationalization, Simmel's theory of modern culture and his own idea of a contradiction between form and life (see Dannemann 1987) with Marx's theory of value.
What is an example of reification?
Reification takes place when natural or social processes are misunderstood or simplified; for example, when human creations are described as "facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will".
Who came up with reification?
Marx's concept of reification is a multi-dimensional concept: his analysis addresses both the nature of the social structure and the nature of social consciousness, as well as the reciprocal relations between these two levels.
What is meant by reification?
noun. the act of treating something abstract, such as an idea, relation, system, quality, etc., as if it were a concrete object: Defining “home” as if it were just a roof over one's head, instead of the center of a web of relationships, leads in turn to the reification of homelessness.
What reify means?
Definition of reify transitive verb. : to consider or represent (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing : to give definite content and form to (a concept or idea) …
What is another word for reification?
What is another word for reification?hypostatizationobjectificationpathetic fallacythingificationpersonificationmanifestationincarnationexternalizationUSexpressionrealizationUS38 more rows
What is the opposite of reification?
We have listed all the opposite words for reification alphabetically. disorganization. anarchy. chaos. confusion.
How does reification occur?
The fallacy of reification, also known as misplaced concreteness, occurs when a conclusion is reached by assuming that an abstract entity behaves as a concrete object. Finally, reification is also used in a different sense to describe how we perceive certain objects.
What is reification in critical thinking?
Reification is the tendency for individuals to ascribe a definitive value or form to an abstract concept. It is perceiving or regarding something other than for what it was originally intended. Reification can also refer to the brain's ability to fill in the blanks when visual information is missing.
What does reification mean in psychology?
n. treating an abstraction, concept, or formulation as though it were a real object or material thing.
What does reification mean in the Gestalt theory?
Reification is a concept used in Gestalt Psychology that refers to the human mind's tendency to consider an object in its entirety before it perceives the object as the sum of individual parts. A simple example of this is when a person is trying to buy a car.
What is Gramsci's theory?
In Gramsci's view, a class cannot dominate in modern conditions by merely advancing its own narrow economic interests; neither can it dominate purely through force and coercion. Rather, it must exert intellectual and moral leadership, and make alliances and compromises with a variety of forces.
Which stage of development is the third according to Karl Marx?
communismThe third and last stage of development would be communism, a time when each person would contribute to society according to his ability and would consume according to his needs. The raise of the proletariat to the control of the means of production has to be violent.
What do you mean by Western Marxism?
Western Marxism was shaped primarily by the failure of the socialist revolution in the Western world. Western Marxists were concerned less with the actual political or economic practice of Marxism than with its philosophical interpretation, especially in relation to cultural and historical studies.
What do you mean by class consciousness?
class consciousness, the self-understanding of members of a social class. This modern sociological concept has its origins in, and is closely associated with, Marxist theory.
What did Plekhanov describe as the philosophy of action?
In the beginning was the deed. When Plekhanov described dialectical materialism as the philosophy of action, he actually only reprised Marx’s own view that he applied in the assessment of Feuerbach’s materialism in contradistinction to his emerging dialectical materialism .
What is universal exchange?
Universal exchange has formed, according to Marx, a new order such that even those things, "which till then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought—virtu e, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc.—when everything, in short, passed into commerce." ( ( Karl Marx, Poverty of Philosophy (New York: International Publishers, 1992), 27. )) That is how Marx described with classical clarity the general pervasion of exchange value through all phenomena of the social and ideological order. But at the same time we must not lose sight of the fact that Marx calls this universal reification a naked, shameless, direct and brutal exploitation. Marx considers the phenomenon of reification not as autonomous and detached, as some sort of key to all the phenomena of given society, but as a direct expression of social antagonism itself operating through the fetish appearances of the commodity form of labor. In Lukács this social moment is completely obscured by the moment of thinghood. "The journalists' lack of convictions,” says Lukács, “the prostitution of their experiences and beliefs is comprehensible only as the culminating point of capitalist reification." About what sort of journalists does Lukács speak? Of course, not about the proletarian, but about the bourgeois journalists. But prostitution of their talents is characteristic for the "graduated flunkeys of the bourgeoisie." It is characteristic, in other words, as an instrument of class struggle. The prostitution by journalists of their experiences should be considered not at all as the culminating point of capitalist reification, but as one of the forms of struggle of the capitalist class, a struggle, of course, which is not a struggle for truth, but a struggle for power, disdaining neither hypocrisy nor prostitution.
How is Marx's dialectical materialism different from Feuerbach's?
We have already seen that a fundamental difference between Marx’s dialectical materialism and the materialism of Feuerbach is that Marx considers reality not only in the form of objects, but also in the form of concrete human action, i.e., subjectively. Lenin, the brilliant master in the field of revolutionary activity, showed that revolution cannot happen if to the objective prerequisites of revolution are not added subjective prerequisites, namely an aptitude of the revolutionary class for revolutionary mass action. Opportunist objectivism always prefers to confine itself to “objective conditions,” granting them the undivided initiative in the domain of revolutionary action, proceeding by way of such objectivism to simply, politically taking the path of least resistance.
What is the dialectical view of crises?
Engels, considered crises from the dialectical viewpoint, indicating that they emerge from the very nature of capitalist production and competition: "In the present unregulated production and distribution of the means of subsistence, which is carried on not directly for the sake of supplying needs, but for profit, in the system under which every one works for himself to enrich himself, disturbances inevitably arise at every moment." ( ( Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 93-4. )) He went further, noting that since the beginning of the last century crises set in every 5-7 years. Every time the event was fraught with the greatest poverty for workers and general revolutionary excitation. Every crisis, consequently, is a great danger for the entire existing order. The dialectical interpretation of the problem of crisis is connected in Engels, on the one side, with the observed determined system of the distribution of products, the capitalist mode of production, and, on the other side, it closely connects its negative effect with that class that suffers from it directly, occasioning in it a revolutionary commotion that threatens the entire existing order. It is completely clear that bourgeois theorists’ interpretation of crises will methodologically avoid those moments that point to the revolutionary class overthrow of their social foundation, capitalist society. For them the disproportionality between production and consumption which speaks to the social class opposition of labor and capital gives way to theoretical efforts to find the source of crises in a disproportionality between elements solely of production itself. It is completely clear that in this case the determinant for bourgeois theory is not rationality, but, on the contrary, the social relations that determine its methodology. Marxism leads to different conclusions.
Is Lukács a formalism?
It will not be an exaggeration, if I say, that Lukács himself resides on the plane of formalism, which occludes from him the real nature of things. The fact is that the methodological barrier to understanding the problem of crisis is created for bourgeois economists not at all by economic rationality, because economics as a science is an application of the rational method to empirical facts, but by hatred of the rational kernel of dialectics, the application of which, for instance, to the problem of crisis, touches upon the most dangerous and deadly sores of capitalist society.
What does Lukács say about rationalization?
Lukács says ‘The Capitalist process of rationalisation based on private economic calculation requires that every manifestation shall exhibit this very interaction between details which are subject to laws and a totality ruled by chance. It presupposes a society so structured.
What is Lukács' reification and the class consciousness of the Proletariat?
L ukács’ Reification and the Class Consciousness of the Proletariat is a disorganized but masterful essay written in the aftermath of the greatest revolution ever known. 1917 shook the entire world and all over the poor and oppressed were given a powerful impetus, not least because now history could no longer appear as a phantasmagoria, a nebulous and remote myriad of wishes, desires and policies shaped in the minds of Tsars or ministers and formalized in huge, fortified buildings which exclude the vast majority of humanity.
What does Lukács say about the impossibility of comprehending the whole with the conceptual framework of?
Lukács describes how in philosophy, too, ‘the impossibility of comprehending the whole with the conceptual framework of the rational partial systems ’ expresses itself. This time it can be found in the form of the unknowable ‘thing in itself’ (Kant). Lukács concedes that ‘bourgeois thought landed in these antinomies after great mental strife’ but the ‘irrational chasm between the subject and object of knowledge’ is the inevitable resting place ‘of a theoretical approach based on unmediated contemplation’.
How long did Lukács survive?
Lukács survived until 1971. It is hard not to contrast his situation with that of Leon Trotsky who made not a single concession to Stalinism and was subsequently murdered. Trotsky’s sacrifice was infinitely more profound, but we should remember that there is something of the tragic too in the story of this brilliant Marxist theoretician who was compelled to renounce the creativity, which had once inspired him and filled him with so much hope.
Why is Lukács' essay considered idealist?
But his essay has been widely described as idealist, as over-playing the role of consciousness in the development of class struggle. The reason for this is quite clear - the essay itself is a concentrated examination of the forms of consciousness which take shape in, and affect, bourgeois society. To someone unable to penetrate the heart of this work - its methodological depth - it will appear to be idealist precisely because of its subject matter (consciousness).
How does rationalization affect the way that labor is understood and organized?
The ‘rationalisation’ of the labour process also impacts on the way that labour is understood and organized. Lukács states, ‘the time necessary for work to be accomplished…is converted, as mechanisation and rationalisation are intensified, from a merely empirical average figure, to an objectively calculable work stint that confronts the worker as a fixed and established reality’.
Which social class is forced beyond immediacy?
Lukács writes that although ‘immediacy….is the relation of bourgeois thought to the social and historical reality of bourgeois society’ the other great social class, the proletariat, is necessarily forced beyond immediacy because ‘for the worker labour-time is not merely the objective form of the commodity he has sold, i.e his labour power (for in that form the problem for him too is one of the exchange of equivalents i.e a quantative matter)'.
