Rudi Dutschke and György Lukács on the Problems of the Bolshevik Type Socialism

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In the following analysis, we outline Rudi Dutschke’s views of social development in Russia and the Bolshevik type of revolution and reconstruct the theoretical perspective from which he created a sharp criticism against the illusions of his contemporaries about them. We assume that the study of the young György Lukács’ works mainly played an essential role in forming his critical perspective: the analysis of problems in Lukács’s historical diagnosis led Dutschke to develop his critical views.

Dutschke, one of the prominent figures of the German student movement, had realistic experience of Eastern European socialism: he was born in 1940 and was raised in East Germany as the son of a Lutheran pastor. He was thoroughly impressed by the Hungarian revolution and freedom fight in 1956. This is why he began to deal with the theoretical and practical problems of “democratic socialism.” As a young adult, he was not willing to enroll in the East German Army, so he could not apply for university either. So, he escaped to West Berlin in 1961, right before the Berlin Wall was erected. He enrolled in the Berlin-based Freie Universität, where he studied Sociology, Philosophy, History and Ethnography. Freie Universität was a university with a freer spirit than the other German universities, with a rather high proportion of students from East Berlin a few years before. By the time Dutschke began his university studies, the rate of these students had decreased to a few percent, so the earlier anti-communist atmosphere was not typical by that time. However, besides Dutschke, several other students from East Berlin had also been disillusioned with the Western world and missed the norms of equality and radical democracy from the institutions. Several of these students got to the forefront of student movements.

Dutschke joined the radical German student organization SDS in 1965, becoming an important figure in the then-emerging student organization. As a member of the organization, he organized several demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Parallel to this, he worked on his doctoral research on Karl Korsch, Antonio Gramsci, and György Lukács. In the spring of 1966, he traveled to Hungary to meet Lukács. He also got in touch with the relatively short-lived “illegal Hungarian communist cells,” with young Hungarian intellectuals who criticized the existing system from the left in a Maoist spirit [1]. He shortly committed himself to a standpoint in which neither the Western nor the Eastern European societies were regarded as examples to be followed. He was thinking in terms of a robust emancipatory process in which the transformation of Western democracies, the democratization of Eastern European societies, and the liberation of the Third World went on simultaneously.

Then there was a dramatic assassination attempt on April 11, 1968. Rudi Dutschke was shot point-blank in the head by a young unemployed, Josef Bachmann (two years later, in prison, he first became interested in Dutschke’s ideas, and then committed suicide under strange circumstances). Dutschke survived and underwent complex surgery; his powerful organism overcame the consequences of the brain wound, and he had to learn to speak and write again (which he did at the same time as his son). However, without its leader, the student socialist union (SDS) collapsed after a few months.

But Rudi Dutschke managed to find other ways to fight for changes in the society of his day. At Denmark's invitation, he became an assistant at a small university in Aarhus, wherein the local library began to write his main book, An Attempt to Get Lenin Back on His Feet. On the Semi-Asian and Western European Paths to Socialism. Lenin, Lukács and the Third International. The book was first published in Berlin in 1974 [2] and republished ten years later — our article is devoted to the analysis of this book. This work has not yet been studied in Russia, although it occupies a prominent place in the history of socialist thought in Germany.

Later, Dutschke turned out to be one of the founders of the Green Party — it was the realization of his ideas about a political force alternative to the inveterate traditional parties. However, on December 24, 1979, Dutschke died suddenly; he drowned in his bathtub as a result of an epileptic seizure caused by a consequence of head wound. He was 39 years old. Thus, Germany and the entire world left movement had lost a bright intellectual and, possibly, a new politician who could have made the Green Party the spokesman for the interests of the majority of German society (for the biography of R. Dutschke, see: [3; 4]

In the following, we will offer not just an overview of the book's main ideas by Rudi Dutschke but also their understanding from the standpoint of hermeneutic-dialectical methodology. This means that Dutschke himself will be seen as a hermeneutical mediator, i.e., as one that seeks to express the experience of the European community of left-wing intellectuals in a language understandable to the Russian community, and vice versa. As Dutschke proves, the consistent development patterns of Russian and European societies are not identical. Although they are subject to the general laws of the development of capitalism, that is the dialectical contradiction. Russian capitalism is different from European capitalism, and to comprehend it, a different categorical system is needed, consistent with the basic concepts of Marxist social philosophy but requiring a creative continuation of the latter. Therefore, this section of the article aims to analyze the main results of Dutschke’s understanding of Russian capitalism and the revolutionary movement in Russia in its specifics, not identical to European, but having the same goal — the search for a post-capitalist social form.

This goal is to be fulfilled by solving the main tasks that predetermine the article's structure. Section 1 tells about the goals and objectives of Rudi Dutschke’s book and the logic of semi-Asian stagnant capitalism in Russia; section 2 is about the essence of the Bolshevik Party and its fundamental flaws; section 3 is about the nature of Soviet power and the causes of its defeat, 4 is about on the structural and theoretical problems of the Comintern from Dutscke’s perspective. In the two last sections, we will analyze Dutschke’s criticism of Lukács’ theory about the “Bolshevik turn” and the Lenin-type party organization and examine what lessons Dutschke drew from Lukács’s theoretical problems for his critical conception.

1. On the Logic of Semi-Asian Stagnant Capitalism

The book aimed to identify the paths of transition to the realm of freedom to make the utopia concrete [2. P. 12—14]. Dutschke believes that the revolutionary struggle cannot be waged for the benefit of distant generations in the future. The main question is how the immediate and distant goals of socialism — overcoming oppression and realizing freedom — penetrate each other. According to Dutschke, Lenin and the Bolsheviks failed to make the present and future dialectical interaction. Therefore, they had to fall into the Russian dilemma, which became the dilemma of international socialists and communists: either try to achieve good for future generations at the expense of sacrifices (including self-sacrifice) in a specific historical epoch or to fight for specific interests in a given epoch without an adequate understanding of the ultimate perspective, assuming that the ultimate goal will be achieved in a natural way and by itself. In what way is it possible to solve this dilemma? — the book of Rudi Dutschke is devoted to this problem.

One of the central moments of Dutschke’s work is an analysis of the history of Russian society and the Bolshevik Revolution. He examines the evolution of Russian society prior to capitalism [2. P. 40—50] based on the ideas of Marx and Engels on the Asiatic mode of production and using their works on Russia [5]. This work is not present in the collected works of Marx and Engels. Ryazanov, in his next article published in German, cited extensive excerpts from Marx, which were then used by other researchers [6]. In Russian, it was published in a small edition only during the Perestroika period [1. P. 19; 7; 8].

As a result, it turns out that many features of the Asiatic mode of production are characteristic of Russia: the desire of the monarch for unlimited power, the absence of serious opposition by civil society (consisting of progressively oriented bourgeoisie and intelligentsia), the exploitation of the peasant economy within the framework of the peasant community on the principle of mutual responsibility. These features led to stagnation in economic life and the social order. At the same time, the inclusion of Russia in the world market, which occurred after Peter the Great, allowed the formation of a national bourgeoisie consisting of the nobility, representatives of the state bureaucracy, and merchants. Although the national bourgeoisie played a subordinate role, thanks to these processes, Russia did not become a colony of Western countries. It, therefore, offered its version of semi-Asian capitalism, not identical to purely Asian capitalism, as in India.

Dutschke begins his analysis of Russian capitalism by relying on the works of Lenin and critically rethinking them [9]. On the whole, Lenin, while sharing Marx’s position on the unlimited growth of productive forces that capitalism must accomplish, adopts it one-sidedly, emphasizing technical innovations and not understanding that behind them is a change in the very individual and society, their culture, and worldview, so that society can apply technics aright [2. P. 70—75]. Lenin unwittingly shares his approach with the state bureaucracy as the ruling class of Russia, which strove (and is still striving, we would add) to borrow Western techniques and managerial technologies without understanding that their effective development requires a very specific social environment that cannot be exported or artificially created. The complex approach of Marx, which connected the development of capitalism with the evolution of civil society, turned out to be incomprehensible for Lenin [2. P. 77]. Dutschke regards it not as his fault but as a misfortune since there was no civil society (in the Western European sense) in Russian reality at the time when Lenin wrote his works. It is here that Dutschke sees the root of Lenin’s mistake, which is the inability to develop, after coming to power, a broad discussion between the Bolshevik Party and the working masses, while the lack of institutions for this discussion led to the fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat began to degenerate into the dictatorship of the communist bureaucracy (that will be discussed later) [2. P. 75—77].

According to Dutschke, errors in theory do not preclude productive political action, which expresses Lenin's policy's extraordinary flexibility. Overall, in Dutschke’s work, Lenin appears as a brilliant tactician capable of creative understanding of the practical realities of the political struggle, as well as an analyst capable of using social processes in Russian society to achieve revolutionary goals [10; 11]. However, Lenin applied Marxism to Russia too directly, without analyzing the specifics of “semi-Asian” Russian capitalism. Dutschke seeks to correct this flaw, which is the meaning of the title of his book — An Attempt to Get Lenin Back on His Feet [2. P. 85—92].

2. On the Essence of the Bolshevik Party and its Fundamental Flaws

Let’s examine how Dutschke interpreted the problem of the organization of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party. According to Lenin, the organizational principle of the Party is democratic centralism, which can be explained in terms of the oppression of society by the tsarist bureaucracy, the lack of opportunities for legal activities to protect the rights of workers, which determines the primacy of illegal activities [12; 13. P. 28—30; 14. P. 229—235, 384—386]. In fact, according to Dutschke, it is the organizational expression of the Russian socio-economic structure.

In creating the Party, Lenin gave the main role to the socialist-oriented intelligentsia as the bearer of socialist consciousness instead of making its social position the starting point of critical materialist analysis, as well as studying its relationship with the working class to find out certain forms of solidarity between them [2. P. 107]. Herein, Dutschke sees the origins of the problem of isolation of the party apparatus from the ordinary party members and the proletarian class as a whole. This problem rose to its full height after the Bolsheviks had seized power [2. P. 107—110]. Yet, if we thoroughly implement Marx's political-economic approach, we will have to analyze the dialectics of mental and physical labor and managerial and executive activities. Neither Lenin nor his associates posed the question in this way when they reflected on the organizational principles of the Bolshevik Party [2. P. 120—127].

Lenin should have rethought the theory of the proletarian revolution to make the agricultural proletariat the backbone of revolutionary activity in the countryside. Also, the Bolsheviks should have comprehended the folk communal socio-cultural tradition to develop forms of alliance between workers and peasants that would allow the working masses to control the party and state apparatus and convey their true aspirations to it [2. P. 17— 178]. Those are the problems in Lenin’s theory of revolution that Dutschke comes across when he analyzes democratic centralism as the organizational principle of the Party.

3. On the Question of the Nature of Soviet Power

We need to consider the results of Dutschke’s analysis of Soviet society in order to understand why, as he believed, the development of genuine socialist democracy did not take place. Dutschke’s starting point is that many books have been written about the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, but there are still not enough books about the defeat of the Soviets. His thesis was that the defeat of the Soviets was closely connected with the rise of a new state apparatus (intertwined with the party apparatus) [2. P. 164].

Dutschke believes that due to the revolution, there was a transition from semi-Asian state capitalism to semi-Asian state socialism, in which the state machine restricts and exploits workers and peasants. This is the essence of Stalinism. The task of realizing the decisive concrete-utopian moment of socialism remained unresolved: the dialectical sublation (Aufhebung — not to be confused with the pure abolition) of the state apparatus, compounded with despotic tradition in Russia  [2. P. 178—181].

Dutschke identifies the following principal reasons for the defeat of Soviet power despite the victory of the Bolsheviks. First of all, there were no institutions for the control of the working masses over the party leaders. These institutions of control could grow based on the Soviets, but for this, it was necessary to expand their social basis to include peasants and agricultural proletarians. Although we know that the alliance between workers and peasants did arise during the Civil War, this alliance was one of the reasons for the victory of the Bolsheviks. Nevertheless, there were significant flaws in their theoretical doctrine that did not allow the Bolsheviks to maintain ties with the working masses of Russia after the final approval of the power of the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s. Lenin failed to substantiate the democratic side of centralism since he unequivocally considered the peasantry to be a class led by the proletariat instead of recognizing a specific socialist tradition in the communal peasant culture and, therefore, recognizing the peasantry as capable of organizing special socialist institutions (for example, see: “Objective conditions prove that the peasantry must be led; it will follow the proletariat” [15]; see also: [16. P. 26]; see about it: [2. P. 160]).

As for the institution of the Soviets, it failed to develop into the organ mediating this apparatus and the working classes (workers and peasants). The Soviets could become a channel of communication between them, help the working people realize their true interests and needs and convey them to the apparatus,  and also make them take them into account when setting managerial goals  [2. P. 174—175]. Instead, the power of the Soviets remained more of a declarative rather than a real principle of the structure of the USSR, which does not allow Dutschke to consider the society of “real socialism” of the 1970s genuinely socialist. He believed its radical reform would be required to unleash the emancipatory potential of the emerging social order designed to overcome capitalism [2. P. 6, 178—179].

4. On the Problem of the Doctrine and Organizational Structure of the Comintern

Finally, let’s try to reconstruct Dutschke’s position and theoretical criticism of the organizational structure of the Comintern and the “organizational problems” of the Bolshevik type of communist parties. The abstract goal of the Comintern, founded in March 1919, was the world revolution. To make it come true, it was necessary to use the opportunities that arose due to the world war, which could turn into a liberation civil war of the oppressed classes [2. P. 206—207].

Although Rosa Luxemburg was still skeptical about the creation of the Comintern (because, despite the commonality of goals, there were too different interests of the Bolshevik Party and the German Communists, which could lead to conflict and a struggle for dominance), even so, the Bolsheviks insisted on the founding of the Comintern in 1919¹. But why? — Dutschke asks. It expresses the old Social Democratic position, characteristic of both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks: they believed that without the support of the Russian Revolution from Western Europe (especially Germany), the inevitable consequence would be the defeat of the revolution and the restoration of the hated “Asiaticism” (by expression of G. Plekhanov, who warned V. Lenin about the danger of fulfilling  a socialist revolution before the emergence of the necessary prerequisites in the society) [2. P. 207].

The assassination of the leadership of the German Communists (K. Liebknecht and R. Luxembourg) was not only an important reason for the defeat of the German Revolution of 1918 but also highly complicated the discussion between representatives of the successful October Revolution in Russia and the impending revolution in Central Europe [2. P. 208]. For example, back in the first half of 1918, while in prison, Rosa Luxemburg wrote a criticism of the Bolshevik policy (albeit from a position of solidarity). However, then she refused to publish it for tactical reasons [17. P. 44ff]. It was a mistake, according to Dutschke.

Bolshevism is indeed a new quality of revolutionary organization. Since the Party operated in the big cities, the position of the Russian working class seemed identical to that of the proletariat in Western Europe. However, semi-Asian stagnant capitalism, as Lenin himself called it, is not identical to the dynamic capitalism of Western Europe. Therefore, the revolutionary organizations of the latter were to find their original way of planning and leading the anti-capitalist movement, which also presupposed a special organizational form based on the autonomy  of the various communist parties. Lenin’s revolutionary legacy should have  been dialectically adopted and sublated in the conditions of European social relations [2. P. 209].

This is precisely what was not done in the Comintern initially. The theoretical basis of the Communist International was Lenin’s idea of two tactics for countries of highly developed capitalism (Western Europe and America) and underdeveloped societies (colonial and semi-colonial zones). In the first case, the main thing is the involvement of the majority of the working class, and in the second, the alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry [18; 19. P. 23, 32]. However, since the socio-economic situations of Russia and Europe are fundamentally different, a universal tactic (even in its dual version) could arise only at a high level of abstraction and could not become practically effective. However, Marx suggested that the proletariat only gradually comes to a common theoretical program. At the same time, the real struggle for workers’ rights should take place in various organizational forms, determined by the specifics of the development of each country [20. P. 14]. Since Marx’s dialectical approach was not implemented, as a result, the Comintern began to perform functions similar to those of the ruling class in pre-revolutionary post-Petrine Russia: the Comintern became an organ of influence of the party-state bureaucracy that dominated Soviet Russia on Europe and the United States, and not an organization that fought for the liberation of working people all over the world [2. P. 210—211].

5. Theoretical Analysis and Misunderstanding of “Bolshevik Turn”: Young György Lukács

Beyond the novel Marxist analysis of the Bolshevik revolution and of the problems of the Leninist-type organization, Dutschke’s book’s key question is what the contemporary radical leftists could do with the heritage of Leninism and Bolshevism. He is interested in the question through which intellectual mediation the misinterpretations of the Bolshevik revolution also became important points of reference in Western Europe and how these misinterpretations became the basis of wrong strategies of the struggle against capitalism in the Western world.

This is how the works of the young György Lukács also became the focus of his research, the evolution of whose thinking between 1918 and 1923 was of interest to him. Dutschke thought that the main problem was that, in the case of Lukács, a revolution was a matter of decision and determination. If so, a decision on and determination for a revolution may be subjected to moral standards, just like everyday actions. However, this standpoint has consequences that firmly set Lukács against Marx’s original intentions. Unlike Marx, Lukács radically separates the perspectives of “revolutionary practice” and “clear ethics”: relinquishing the Bolshevik-type revolution, the new world order, and “the will for a revolution” are both judged ethically. Lukács is often accused of turning his back on his ethical conviction or choosing “historical inevitability” over ethics. However, Dutschke’s problem is, as opposed to the original Marxist concept, that Lukács renders the “sphere of clear ethics” the primary source of legitimation for practice, regardless of those norms that evolve during the historical fights [2. P. 183].

It is related to this problem that Lukács sharply distinguishes between the “sociological” and “utopistic” understandings of the Marxist theory instead of the authentic Marxist authors. Concerning the sociological aspect, Lukács accepts the standpoint of Marx, according to which history is a series of class struggles. During this time, the oppressed social classes defeat the ruling class and create a society in their image. However, Lukács unwittingly remains in the context of the  neo-Kantian tradition when he examines the political aspect of the Marxist theory. He tacitly accepts that “Sollen” never derives from “Sein”; thus, even if the regularities and findings of the Marxist social theory are true, the postulate of the Marxist utopia (a new world order without class oppression) can logically not be derived from them. Dutschke thinks there is no such schism in the Marxist theory [2. P. 184]. This means that Lukács — as a Marxist — by keeping the more complex concept of “work” or “fight” in mind, should have identified the very forms of social practice in which the following of the short-term “historically concrete” goal and the achievement of the “long-term” utopistic goal are joined again and again for the social actor in question. However, Lukács radically distinguished the utopistic perspective from the perspective of the social groups that perform everyday actions or get involved in class struggles: the new world order is something that we may passionately want or may even refuse.

Lukács thinks that during its struggles, the working class may state that it is the guarantee for a classless society. At the same time, he also thinks that the proletariat has no clear view of this new world order during these struggles. Since he sharply distinguishes between the utopistic perspective and social analysis, he subordinates the political understanding of the Marxist theory to its “sociological” understanding in the description of the potential outcome of class conflict. He reckons that the transformation of class structure results from the proletariat’s victory. In the course of this, the oppressor and the oppressed classes are “replaced” by each other; those who had been oppressed earlier become oppressors, and the familiar tactics of oppression will manifest themselves in ever newer forms in the future. In this Lukácsian interpretation, the dictatorship of the proletariat, in essence, is not different from the dictatorships that have become familiar during history. He assumes the proletariat is the last oppressed class in history; its victory is a necessary but insufficient condition for creating the new world order. He reckons that by the proletariat’'s victory, we say no to the old-world order but have not yet said yes to freedom.

How is it possible to say yes? Lukács would have liked to create a Marxist theory. However, the final message of his line of thought referred back to Fichte: you have to have a will for the new world order. Dutschke reckons that the coming into the focus of the concept of will, the “wanting of the unknown world order,” appears in a mythological and religious context in Lukács’s work. This context was unknown to Marx. On the one hand, the myth of Kairos conjures up in Lukács’ thoughts—in human history, such critical situations may occur that remove humans from the ordinary course of history. In such moments, humans are compelled to make such a weighty existential choice that determines the fate of humankind. It is even more critical that Lukács analyses the choice ahead of us in the context of a redemption story. In the case of Marx, there were no “messianic classes.” The proletariat was only “named” so by Lukács. The proletariat becomes a “messianic class” when they say yes to the new world order, going beyond their specific interests [2. P. 184].

After examining the theoretical presuppositions from Dutschke’s perspective, we should discuss how Lukács’s 1918 dilemma can be outlined. Lukács feels the “drift of Bolshevism,” but he thinks that the new world order can only be built by terror by introducing class rule and the dictatorship of the proletariat. By choosing this path, it is hoped that by, so to say, “expelling the Satan by Beelzebub,” the opportunity for eliminating class conflicts through a last, merciless, open, but transitional class rule can be created. The other option is a belief that it is possible to build the new world order in the long run, with new tools, “with the means of a true democracy.” We must wait patiently if we choose this path and do not want to act contrary to the majority’s will. We will also need a long education process from the side of the “conscious” in order to ensure that the vision of a classless society also opens up in front of the majority and that they also begin to want it. In his article on Bolshevism, Lukács draws attention to the metaphysical contradiction in Bolshevism, i.e., the mistake that good can be achieved by using bad means as well, i.e., that (by using the words of Dostoyevsky), “we can tell ourselves continuous lies until we reach the truth” [21]. In Tactics and Ethics, Lukács grows his personal existential dilemma into his “tragic historical antinomy” (Lukács’s dilemma is analyzed most perceptively in the following volume, considering the Hungarian context: [22. P. 144]): whichever way we go, it will involve tragic consequences. Commitment to Bolshevism also has a high price. However, it can be ethically justified: by rejecting the terrible consequences of Bolshevism, we will also become responsible for the victims of capitalist oppression and future imperialist wars [23].

What is the significance of Lukács’s dilemma from Dutschke’s perspective? Dutschke thinks that one of the problems underlying Lukács’s dilemma is that he paid no attention to the above-analyzed problems arising from the different evolutions of Russian and Western societies and communist movements. So, he failed to study the peculiar socio-cultural environment in which Bolshevism as the special form of revolutionary dictatorship had been formed. Thus, he also missed examining whether the “revolutionary path” of Bolshevism was, in fact, an adequate response to the emancipatory challenge of the Russian people. In Lukács’s concept, which was determined by the “pathos of wanting the new world order,” Bolshevism could finally mistakenly appear as the single path without compromises, with its mercilessness. However, the path of Bolshevism is not morally clear, as it is aggressive and dictatorial. Thus, Lukács finally arrived at a false and fatal dilemma, in which one has to choose between a democratic development of an uncertain outcome and a redemption that can be obtained through sin.

We assume that by analyzing Lukács’ false dilemma, Dutschke sharply highlighted the false dilemmas of his contemporaries as well: partly those of the radical young people involved in the student movements and partly those of the intellectuals who were seeking the possibility of emancipation in the atmosphere of the Cold War. From this aspect, it seems as if Dutschke, as a socialist young intellectual, would like to find his way out of having to choose between the Soviet path as the only allegedly possible path of socialism on the one hand, and the possibility of getting incorporated into bourgeois democracy on the other hand. He wanted to remove himself from a false dilemma where the brutality of leftist terrorist cells as the only option without compromises stands against a world of unprincipled compromises. It seems that Dutschke would like to focus on the tremendous social crises, i.e., those social problems that are not only fraught with danger but also carry the possibility of new solutions, thus potentially, the chance for “learning” for the large groups of society. Dutschke would like to focus on these large social groups' different visions and possible solutions. In this way, the different paths of emancipation would present themselves to him, and he would avoid the mistaken alternatives. This means that in his eyes, Lukács was not only an ideal but (paradoxically) also a philosopher of false dilemmas.

6. Lukács and a Possible Critique of the Leninist Party Organization

Nevertheless, Dutschke believes that Lukács laid the foundations of authentic Marxism after his involvement in the Hungarian Council Republic and at the beginning of his emigration period in Austria. However, paradoxically, he became the founder of a Marxist theory, the spirit of which was often contradicted by his political commitment to the Comintern (in whose political work he participated until 1921) and the Hungarian Communist Party. In a crucial passage of his book [2. P. 240—246], Dutschke turns again to Lukács to find the theoretical foundations of the normative criticism of the Bolshevik-type party organization. He argues that the foundations of a possible criticism can be found in Lukács’ political journalism before writing his main work, History and Class Consciousness, especially in his writing Opportunism and Putschism [24]. Lukács completed this work in 1920. His article was motivated by the — from his communist point of view — bitter experiences of the fall of the Hungarian Council Republic and the failure of the German Communist Revolution. He was looking for the answer to the question of what the cause of the internal crisis of the contemporary communist parties was.

In 1920, Lukács established sharp criticism against the so-called putschists who called themselves “conscious vanguards” but did not maintain a living relationship with the existing working class and endangered revolutionary achievements with reckless and violent actions. He also considers it dangerous that parties that are snowballing with the development of Comintern organizations are forced increasingly to incorporate the leadership members of the former “traditional party elite” and the “trade union elite,” including those who would subordinate the goal of revolution to particular group interests. Lukács calls them opportunists.

At first sight, the root of the problem seems to be the overestimation of the concept of organization in the communist movement by both opportunists and putschists. Bureaucratic problems of the organization are at the center of the opportunists’ attention. They act under the illusion that the question of the seizure of power has secondary importance compared to the problems of a well-functioning and well-integrated official organization. The putschists, on the other hand, focus on the issues of power within and without the organization: their main question is how to seize power within the organization and how the organization can realize its hegemony within a given society.

According to Dutschke, however, Lukács wants to avoid the apparent “anarchist consequences” of his critique and argue for the need for a centralized organization able to act in a revolutionary situation. For this purpose, he radicalizes the views expressed by Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. According to the view presented here, “right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby” [25. P. 531]. Lukács interprets this to mean not only the bourgeois institutional and party system but also the counter-reactions to it: the construction of adequate forms and organizations of resistance and struggle is not merely a “technical issue” or “organizational question”: their realization always depends on the state of the class conflict  [24. P. 1111].

Lukács generalizes this position from the “total viewpoint” that he adopts. He believes that a “properly understood Marxism” interprets the process of capitalist development: the unfolding of antagonisms of capitalist production and the development of forces of the proletariat as a single unified process. From this point of view, he places the emergence of a revolutionary working class in the Marxian sense in a more distant future, in which the material and intellectual conditions for collective action in class struggles are already given. According to his line of thought (which follows Rosa Luxemburg), in the current situation of capitalism and class conflict, we can only find the “solid foundations” and the “normative bases” behind the constantly changing tactics if we think of the self-conscious working class and the organization of its collective, conscious actions, not as a precondition for, but as one of the aims of the revolution. Lukács defines the criteria of revolutionary action from this perspective. In the present situation, any action that aims to reduce the enormous gap between the socio-economic situation of the working class and its future “conscious” status can be considered “revolutionary.” If this unity is established — which we are very far from — there will no longer be any need for theoretical historical-social analysis or particular tactical considerations; the emerging proletariat will see clearly the contradictions of the society and the way out to a world that seems utopian today [2. P. 241].

Dutschke highlights two vital features of the critical perspective created here from his point of view. On the one hand, he believes that we can only speak on the future revolutionary organization if the experience of the workers, who are united in trade unions and workers’ councils, and the decisions of the communist organization, which are still very far from each other, will be in harmony with each other. Lukács is usually skeptical of the position of syndicalism [2. P. 149—153]. However, he must say here that strategic decisions prepared by a “revolutionary vanguard,” contrary to the experiences of real workers’ organizations, and their realization permanently hinder the unfolding of the revolution. On the other hand, Lukács thinks that the most important prerequisites for raising the question of the condition of the existence of an organization are the analysis of the relations of production in a given society and the search for adequate forms of protest and opposition that are appropriate to the level of development within these relations. From this point of view, it could have been pointed out that, looking only at the Marxist standards of Western development, the development of the productive forces in Russia is at such a low level (even Lenin himself admitted this) that at this point it is impossible to create a revolutionary party that unifies the generalized experience of the working class and revolutionary strategy. Lukács’s theory thus originally contained a strong criticism of the Leninist party organization and its “export,” that is, of the Comintern organizations. According to Dutschke, Lukács is concerned with the question of how it is possible to demand that the representatives of the revolution insist on a perspective that sees the decline of capitalism and the development of proletarian counter-forces as one, even when everyday experience points not to development but to stagnation or regression of these forces. According to Dutschke, one problem is that Lukács increasingly discusses that question in the context of the tactics of the revolutionary party and defines the adoption of a “total perspective” as a precondition for the justification of the respective tactics. More importantly, Lukács increasingly argues that it is precisely the pressure of the choices of the moment that forces the representatives of the “revolutionary  avant-garde” to accept the “total view” from time to time [2. P. 242].

This turn in Lukács’ line of thought has serious consequences, according to Dutschke. Lukács abandons his “original” critical position. He defines the perspective of totality less and less as the result of an intellectual effort that rests on keeping in mind the complexity of the process of production and more as a spontaneously generated or given perspective of the revolutionary agent. He thus tends to the view that a tactical decision that proves to be the right one proves, in retrospect, that the revolutionary actor could grasp the historical process in its entirety.

At this point, Dutschke turns his attention to the Märzaktion of 1921, when the Comintern representatives, misjudging the situation of the workers in central Germany, took the disastrous decision to launch armed resistance, sacrificing the lives of many workers and, in the long run preventing the German revolution from unfolding. This, Dutschke argued, would have been the crucial situation at which Lukács could have most sharply articulated his critical position against his ideological opponents, based on an understanding of the real experience of workers’ organizations and the idea of “organic development” of revolution. However, Lukács identified the cause of the crisis as the problems of coordination of the workers' organizations and the lack of a strong (Soviet-style) party. According to Lukács, only such a party would have been able to raise the divergent struggles of workers on the level of “historical consciousness.” It is clear, therefore, that Lukács became an advocate of a “revolutionary realpolitik” in the wrong sense, and he gradually subordinated his theory on the necessity of a “total point of view” to the goals of justification of the Leninist party organization [2. P. 242].

Summary

In summary, Rudi Dutschke created an original work in which he proposed an analysis of the reasons for the impossibility of socialist ideals being feasible in the 20th century, despite the vast efforts of the Bolsheviks and Western revolutionaries to realize them. According to Dutschke’s analysis, the revolution occurred in a country of semi-Asian stagnating capitalism and was not supported by the European anti-capitalist revolution. As a result, after the victory of the Bolsheviks, the social system was revived with the dominance of the state bureaucracy (through fused party-and-state apparatus) over society. The absence of universal forms of social movement (Verkehr) led to the fact that socialism became local, which caused the danger of its abolition, as Dutschke prophetically warned in 1974, based on the work of Marx. Consequently, Dutschke sought to honestly consider the reasons for the failure of the first colossal attempt to achieve a post-capitalist society and tried to find original ways for a new attempt. At the same time, according to Dutschke, it is precisely an equal alliance between the progressive intelligentsia and the working masses that can open up new paths for the transition from a society of necessity to a society of freedom, provided that the intelligentsia renounces leaderism (the mistake the Bolsheviks fell into). We have also shown that Dutschke did not merely attempt to create a comprehensive socio-historical analysis. He attempted to establish a philosophical perspective from which the pathologies and illusions of Bolshevik-style socialism could be simultaneously unmasked. To formulate this philosophical perspective, Dutschke turned to Lukács’s political theory of the turn of the 1920s. However, not for the creation of a coherent “Lukácsian philosophy.” According to the concept he outlines, Lukács’s theoretical preparation and commitment to Bolshevism led to deep theoretical tensions or paradoxes. Dutschke believed their analysis might have a “therapeutic function.” He considered the more profound analysis of these problems as crucial to uncovering the false dilemmas of the contemporary socialist movements, which permanently prevent the realization of an authentic socialist alternative.

 

_{¹ Protocols of the 8th Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in March 1919. Moscow: Politizdat publ.; 1959. P. 13—136.}

About the authors

Sviatoslav V. Shachin

Author for correspondence.
Email: s_shachin@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3959-5585

PhD in Philosophy, Associated Professor, Independent Researcher

Murmansk, Russian Federation

László G. Szücs

Budapest City Archives

Email: szucslasz2023@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0514-0339

PhD, Archivist, Researcher

1139 Bp., Teve u. 3-5, Budapest, Hungarian

References