Recovering the Later Georg Lukács: A Study on the Unity of His Thought / by Matthew J. Smetona

MIT Press, 2023. Trade paperback. VG. 

New resources for the critique of capitalism in culture from the late writings of Georg Lukacs, one of the first authors in the tradition of Western Marxism.

The Hungarian literary critic, philosopher, and Marxist social theorist Georg Lukacs is best known for his 1923 History and Class Consciousness, in which he offered an influential critique of reification from the standpoint of a dialectical conception of totality. While Lukacs's early works have been central to the study of Marxist thought, his later works have often been dismissed as political accommodations to Stalinism. In this new study, Matthew Smetona argues for a revisionist interpretation of Lukacs's later writings on topics as diverse as aesthetics, politics, and ontology.