History and Class Consciousness

by Georg Lukács • 1923

**History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics** (German: *Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein – Studien über marxistische Dialektik*) is a 1923 book by the Hungarian philosopher György Lukács, in which the author re-emphasizes the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s influence on the philosopher Karl Marx, analyzes the concept of "class consciousness," and attempts a philosophical justification of Bolshevism. The book helped to create Western Marxism and is the work for which Lukács is best known. Nevertheless, it was condemned in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and Lukács later repudiated its ideas, coming to believe that in it he had confused Hegel’s concept of alienation with that of Marx’s. It has been suggested that the concept of reification as employed in the philosopher Martin Heidegger’s *Being and Time* (1927) was influenced by *History and Class Consciousness*, though such a relationship remains disputed. (Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_and_Class_Consciousness))