Introduction to ‘The Lukács Question’

Abstract Not for the first time, certain stakes came to the boil again in the 1950s surrounding what became referred to as the ‘Lukács question’, namely the position of Georg Lukács under the shadow of Stalinism. What follows is an interview by Patrick Tort with Henri Lefebvre on the ‘Lukács question’, arising from an earlier lecture delivered by the latter in Hungary in 1955. The interview is important for the light it sheds on the power of truth in relation to the Party, issues of proletarian science, class consciousness, and literary and aesthetic politics. Most crucially, the interview touches on the concept of the ‘socialisation of society’, or dialectical totality, in which elements are incorporated as internally related to the structure of a whole. In contesting Stalinism as a discursive complex and for its defence of Lukács, the interview is a crucial material contribution to Marxist theory.