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Five: The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought
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CHAPTER FIVE The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER DISCUSSED Lukacs's analysis of political economy in his groundbreaking essay "Reification and Class Consciousness ." His argument employs a Marxist reading of Marx's theory with Kantian and neo-Kantian elements. He comprehends Marx's theory as a form of commodity-analysis. From Kantianism he appropriates the Kantian approach to the possibility of knowledge through the examination of the relation of subjectivity to objectivity, and the neo-Kantian distinction between rationality and irrationality. He argues that only Marxist political economy is capable of comprehending the economic structure of advanced industrial society. His argument consists of two main points. First, non-Marxist political economy cannot know its object, that is, the essential structure of the social context. By implication, then, socalled bourgeois political economy is irrational, since its form of thought is adequate only to grasp a false appearance. Second, Marxian, or Marxist, political economy, more precisely the Marxian theory of commodity-analysis, is capable of knowledge of social reality, and hence rational. It is further at present capable of providing the solution to all problems of any kind. I03 Copyrighted Material CHAPTER FIVE If the Marxian commodity-analysis is valid without restriction, then its validity extends beyond political economy to philosophy as well. In the second and third parts of his essay, Lukacs applies his quasi-Kantian view of Marxism to classical German philosophy . His analysis includes two stages: a demonstration of the inability of the mainline German tradition to solve its problems, which are, however, significant as a reflection on the plane of thought of real social dilemmas; and a further demonstration that Marxism provides the required solution. The present chapter will study his discussion of classical German philosophy under the heading "The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought."! Although his perspective is Marxist, the idiom in this section is Hegelian/ and certain insights are borrowed from Fichte, the general argument is strongly Kantian. The Kantian cast to his thought is visible in his detailed restatement of the argument, earlier made with respect to non-Marxist political economy, that classical German thought is intrinsically incapable of knowledge. This is a version of the Kantian point, here mediated through German neoKantianism , that classical German thought is inadequate to know its object. The claim that the perceived object must correspond to the structure of the perceiving mind as a condition of knowledge lies at the heart of the famous Copernican Revolution.3 Kant's rejection of prior thought and his adoption of the Copernican turn presuppose the inability of prior thought to know its object, the very theme that runs throughout the neo-Kantian discussion of historical knowledge. From the Kantian perspective, the failure of previous philosophy consists in its inability to show that thought corresponds to its object if objectivity is independent of subjectivity ; and the critical philosophy bases its claims to know on the insight that objectivity is parasitic on, or derives from, subjectivity . Lukacs's demonstration of the superiority of Marxism is Kantian since he does not argue that Marxism is advantageous when compared to its alternatives, that it is a better, or more satis104 Copyrighted Material [3.15.202.214] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 22:49 GMT) ANTINOMIES OF BOURGEOIS THOUGHT factory, theory, for instance in virtue of its greater explanatory power; he rather argues that it provides the only possible source of knowledge since classical German philosophy is intrinsically incapable of knowledge. There is an obvious parallel in the form of the impossibility arguments Lukacs brings against non-Marxist political economy and non-Marxist philosophy. In each instance, he objects to the possibility of a rival form of knowledge. The difference between the two arguments concerns their respective content. The critique of non-Marxist political economy, which does not mention specific theories, is perfectly general. On the contrary, the attack on classical German philosophy is a concerted effort to utilize Kant's theory against German idealism and itself. This attack, which is simply dazzling in conception, depends on two points: The depiction of the thing-in-itself as the single problem that runs throughout Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy and the assimilation of classical German thought to the critical philosophy. The main lines of the argument against classical German philosophy can be quickly sketched as a series of points about Kant's notion of the thing-in-itself. To begin with, he argues that the thing-in-itself is so central to Kant's thought that the...