Georg Lukacs: From Romanticism to Bolshevism by Michael Löwy (Author)

On the 100th anniversary of the publication of History and Class Consciousness, a new edition of this indispensable guide to Lukacs’s thought and politics

The philosophical and political development that converted Georg Lukács from a distinguished representative of Central European aesthetic vitalism into a major Marxist theorist and Communist militant has long remained an enigma.

In this this now classic study, Michael Löwy for the first time traced and explained the extraordinary mutation that occurred in Lukács’s thought between 1909 and 1929. Utilizing many as yet unpublished sources, Löwy meticulously reconstructed the complex itinerary of Lukács’s thinking as he gradually moved towards his decisive encounter with Bolshevism.

The religious convictions of the early Lukács, the peculiar spell exercised on him and on Max Weber by Dostoyevskyan images of pre-revolutionary Russia, the nature of his friendships with Ernst Bloch and Thomas Mann, were amongst the discoveries of the book.