A Talk with Gyborgy Lukacs

...SEARCHING FOR SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY A Talk with Gyorgy Lukacs BY DONALD SHANOR GYORGY LUKACS BUDAPEST DURING THE last weeks before his death in June, friends report, Gyorgy Lukacs cleared his desk of the stacks of books, manuscripts and papers that had cluttered it, as if calling an end to over 50 years of intellectual warfare with the guardians of Communist ideology Lukacs leafed through the works of Freud, they recall, and seemed more pessimistic than usual about Marxism's chances in the modern world Until his posthumous papers are published, the extent of his disillusionment with Communism will not be known, although his friends say it was almost complete The pessimism, if not the disillusionment, was clear in an interview I had with Lukacs a few months before he died at 86 As philosopher, critic and politician, Lukacs embodied half a century of Hungarian history He was a cabinet member in both the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic of Bela Kun and the 1956 revolutionary government of Imre Nagy At home in Budapest and from exile in Vienna, Berlin and Moscow, he influenced three generations of political thinkers through his writings and lectures He knew the mam figures m the great upheavals that shook Eastern Europe after World War I, and he discussed Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky on the basis of personal acquaintance Lukacs leceived me in his pleasant apartment on Budapest's Belgrade Rakpart, along the Danube embankment Of short stature, with thick gray-white hair, red-nmmed but clear eyes, he moved slowly, looking like one of the grand old characters in the Hungana Cafe, where actors, writers and dilettantes gathered m the '20s and '30s and now play out their years Yet his mind moved swiftly, linking the present with the past, as he discussed Marcuse's role in American society and their days together at Heidelberg, or praised the Palestine guerrillas and the Pans Commune Across the river, the Soviet liberation statue dominated Gel-lert hill, and upstream the new American Duna Intercontinental hotel loomed m the skyline As in many other small Eastern European countries, Soviet-American affairs also dominated most of the conversation In Lukacs' view, the political problems of the U S today stem from its attempt after World War II to do away with ideology Americans believed they could create a fully pragmatic society, he explained, m which science would take the place of ideology Man had turned out to be an inefficient and unreliable machine, the new computers and the techniques of systems analysis were not supposed to make mistakes "Thus it was possible for machines to predict that the Americans would be able to occupy Vietnam with so-and-so many soldiers," Lukacs said "They were splendid machines, yet it DONALD R. SHANOR, a frequent con-tributor, is now teaching at Columbia UmveisitVs Journalism School did not work, and then Americans began asking why This is the reason for the return of ideology among the students, the New Left, and the youth It is the same situation as 300 years ago, when people did things in the name of the will of God rather than the machine, then faith was lost in that system, because reality showed otherwise, and there was a crisis The crisis comes when man ceases to believe that God or the cybernetic machine is perfect "Americans used to believe in their de-ideology, thinking it would set the trend for other countries Above all, they looked on those of us who believe m Marxism as something of a curiosity, someone deserving pity Marxism, they said, was outmoded, having been devised for a capitalism that had long since ceased to exist But now the credibility of Marxism is much higher than it was 25 years ago " This was so, Lukacs stressed, despite the behavior of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, including liberal Hungary, and not because of it Marxism in the Soviet Union he considered to be as embalmed as Lenin's body "The interpretation that Stalin gave to Marxism," he said, was quite topsy-turvy In the official interpretations you can call anyone a Socialist, even Nasser, if it suits the interests of the state " He likened the contemporary situation to the Middle Ages, when scholars had a completely false conception of Greek philosophy Asked which government is realizing socialism today, Lukacs replied "No government at all In the Socialist lands, Stalinist ideology has not lost much ground In 1956, the 20th Party Congress [at which Khrushchev denounced the crimes of Stalin] took place because there was a feeling that reforms were necessary but I don't think the Congress has yet had decisive effects on any country Observing that Hungary's economic reforms have stimulated his countrymen to rethink their political system he recommended returning to the original socialist democracy This, he pointed out, has existed only briefly in the past In the Paris Commune of 1871, for example, when the city was under German siege and the ruling classes had fled, it was possible for the masses to organize and govern themselves by direct, participatory democracy It happened again in the first days of soviet power in Russia Moie than legal forms or constitutional guarantees, Lukacs main-tained, what matters is that decisions be made on the broadest basis possible, or—in the woids he often used —that "democratic self-management is extended to the most primitive level of daily life, and then is enabled to work upward ' The most primitive level is, of course, the citizen's place of work Lukacs advocated permitting workers' councils to decide on production, wages and other management decisions, and to participate in local political decisions The councils would also send delegates to the distuct, regional and finally national level HUNGARY experienced this kind ot demociacy during the revolutions ot 1919 and 1956 In both cases, worker power was short-lived, and government officials today insist that it will not be reinstated, regardless of how far the economic reforms go It is simply too threatening to the Party leadership Lukacs, however, was adamant that genuine reform cannot occur m Hungary "until there is socialist democratization of the state " He traced the decline of the Soviets after Lenin's death to a crucial debate in 1921 over the role of the trade unions "Trotsky held that the unions must be made a part of the state to make industry work Lenm said they are mass organizations with an important pioblem to solve —how to defend the workers against the aggression of a bureaucratic Socialist state Trotsky's view prevailed and, as a theorist, I dare say that as long as it does, we can't achieve anything It does no good to have great festivities tor Lenin it we ignore his words " In 1968 Lukacs had hoped that his ideas of socialist democracy would be realized in Czechoslovakia, and he wrote encouraging articles for Czech and Slovak publications before and during the Prague Spring But as the Hungarians know only too well, he declared, no sooner does a reform movement begin in a Communist system than a parallel movement arises, seeking to introduce elements of bourgeois democracy "To say that the other movement didn't exist before the Russians entered Czechoslovakia is not facing the truth While I have my criticisms of the intervention, without it there would have been great struggles between the two directions of reform It is not certain who would have won but I am convinced that, after a severe crisis, socialist democ-racy would have prevailed " Though Lukacs had been bitterly disappointed many times in his long career, those who talked to him after the 1968 invasion are convinced that it sealed his disillusionment Yet despite his pessimism about the immediate chances of refoim in the Soviet Bloc, he ended our interview with a few words of hope for Maix-ism in the distant future "The great transformations are never attained on the first try There are many historical examples of attempts at change that were defeated, but influenced events generations and even centuries later The peasant wars encouraged the English revolution in the 17th century and the French Jacobins, their effect is still being felt "After the French Revolution failed to attain socialism, 50 years passed until the Communist Manifesto appeared, and then it was another 70 years before the October Revolution That development was set back by Stalin, and it was not until the 20th Congress that it could resume The emergence of a new and genuine interpretation of Marxism will take at least another 30 years...