HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION (1967) ocIal a total break with every institution and mode of life in principle I could never be content just to consider the immediate stemming from the bourgeois world. This would help to foster state of affairs i would have to seek out those often-concealed an undistorted class consciousness in the vanguard, in the Com- mediations that had produced the situation and above all i would unist parties and in the Communist youth organisations. My have to strive to anticipate the factors that would probably polemical essay attacking the idea of participation in bourgeois result from them and influence future praxis. I found myself dopting an intellectual attitude dictated by life itself, that at the hands of Lenin-enabled me to take my first step away conflicted sharply with the idealism and utopianism of my from sectarianism. Lenin pointed to the vital distinction, indeed revolutionary messianism. to the paradox, that an institution may be obsolete from the was made even more acute by the fact that standpoint of world history-as e.g. the soviets had rendered opposed to me within the leadership of the Hungarian Party parliaments obsolete--but that this need not preclude participa- was the group led by Zinoviev's disciple, Bela Kun, who subscribed tion in it for tactical reasons; on the contrary. I at once saw the to a sectarianism of a modern bureaucratic type. In theory force of this criticism and it compelled me to revise my historical it would have been possible to repudiate his views as those of a perspectives and to adjust them more subtly and less directly to pseudo-leftist. In practice, however, his proposals could only be the exigencies of day-to-day tactics. In this respect it was the combated by an appeal to the highly prosaic realities of ordinary beginning of a change in my views. Nevertheless this change life that were but distantly related to the larger perspectives of took place within the framework of an essentially sectarian out- the world revolution. At this point in my life, as so often, I look. This became evident a year later when, uncritically, and a stroke of luck: the ition to bela Kun was headed by eugen in the spirit of sectarianism, i gave my approval to the march Landler. He was notable not only for his great and above al Action as a whole, even though I was critical of a number of actical errors practical intelligence but also for his understanding of theoretical problems so long as they were linked, however indirectly, with It is at this point that the objective internal contradictions the praxis of revolution. He was a man whose most deeply- in my political and philosophical views come into the open. On rooted attitudes were determined by his intimate involvement in the international scene I was able to indulge all my intellectual the life of the masses. His protest against Kun's bureaucratic assion for revolutionary messianism unhindered. But in Hungary, and adventurist projects convinced me at once, and when it ith the gradual emergence of an organised Communist move came to an open breach i was always on his side. It is not possible ment, I found myself increasingly having to face decisions whose to go into even the most important details of these inner party general and personal, long-term and immediate consequences struggles here, although there are some matters of theoretical in could not ignore and which I had to make the basis of yet terest. As far as i was concerned the breach meant that the meth- further decisions. This had already been my position in the oviet Republic in Hungary. There the need to consider other odological cleavage in my thought now developed into a division between theory and practice. while I continued to support ultra- than messianic perspectives had often forced me into realistic left tendencies on the great international problems of revolution, as decisions both in the People's Commissariat for Education and a member of the leadership of the Hungarian Party I became the in the division where I was in charge politically. Now, however, the confrontation with the facts, the compulsion to search for ost bitter enemy of Kun's sectarianism. This became particularly what Lenin called 'the next link in the chain became incompar obvious early in 1921. On the Hungarian front I followed Landler in advocating an energetic anti-sectarian line while simultaneously ably more urgent and intensive than ever before in my life. Precisely because the actual substance of such decisions seemed at the international level I gave theoretical support to the March so empirical it had far-reaching consequences for my theoretical Action. with this the tension between the conflicting tendencies reached a climax. As the divisions in the Hungarian Party became position. For this had now to be adjusted to objective situations nore acute, as the movement of the radical workers in Hungary and tendencies. If I wished to arrive at a decision that was cor began to grow, my ideas were increasingly influenced by the