From 1919 to 1929, the great Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács was one of the leaders of the Hungarian Communist Party, immersed not simply in theorising but also in significant practical-political work. Along with labour leader Jenö Landler, he led a faction opposing an ultra-left sectarian orientation represented by Béla Kun. If seen in connection with this factional struggle, key works of Lukács in this period – History and Class Consciousness, Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His Thought, Tailism (...) and the Dialectic and ‘The Blum Theses’ – can be seen as forming a consistent, coherent, sophisticated variant of Leninism. Influential readings of these works interpret them as being ultra-leftist or proto-Stalinist. Such readings distort the reality. Lukács’s orientation and outlook of 1923–9 are, rather, more consistent with the orientation advanced by Lenin and Trotsky in the Third and Fourth Congresses of the Communist International. After his decisive political defeat, Lukács concluded that it was necessary to renounce his distinctive political orientation, and completely abandon the terrain of practical revolutionary politics, if he hoped to remain inside the Communist movement. This he did, adapting to Stalinism and shifting his efforts to literary criticism and philosophy. But the theorisations connected to his revolutionary politics of the 1920s continue to have relevance for revolutionary activists of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

The growing field of Lenin Studies has been nurtured by the growth of crises and struggles in our own time and may contribute to present-day activists’ efforts at developing revolutionary strategy, organisation and struggle. Surveying this field, it is worth focusing on three recent studies by Antonio Negri, Tamás Krausz and Alan Shandro which give attention to the methodological core of what can be called ‘Leninism’. All three distinguish Lenin’s approach to Marxism from that of such prominent Marxists as Kautsky. (...) The result, highlighted by aspects of Lenin’s functioning in the early Communist International, provides a more consistent activist- and revolutionary edge that might have relevance for future struggles, particularly in relation to the question of organisation. (shrink)