HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION(1967) larly obvious when it is remembered that I devoted all my energy and practical life's work is objectively inseparable from the at this time to the practical problems of the hungarian movement eparations of 1917 and their necessary consequences. Illumined that my contributions to theory consisted chiefly of occasional he spotlight of the twenties, this attempt to do justice to the ecific nature of such a great man makes him appear slightly The first and longest of these, an attempt to provide an intellec unfamiliar but not wholly unrecognisable. tual portrait of Lenin, is literally an occasional piece. Immediately Cverything else that I wrote in the years that followed is not fter Lenin's death my publisher asked me for a brief monograph only outwardly adventitious (it consists largely of book reviews about hi im; I complied and the little essay was completed within but also inwardly. I was spontaneously searching for anew orienta- a few weeks. It represents an advance on History and Class Conscious tion and i tried to clarify my future direction by demarcating ness inasmuch as the need to concentrate on my grei it off from the views of others. As far as substance is concerned the helped me to put the concept of praxis into a clearer, more review of Bukharin is perhaps the most weighty of these works authentic, more natural and dialectical relationship with theory I would observe in passing for the benefit of the modern reader Needless to say, my view of the world revolution was that of the that in 1925 Bukharin was, after Stalin, the most important twenties. However, partly because of my experience of the brief figure in the leadership of the Russian Party; the breach between intervening period and partly because of the need to concentrate them did not take place for another three years. ) The most on Lenins intellectual personality the most obviously sectarian positive feature of this review is the way my views on economics features of History and Class Consciousness began to fade and were become concretised. This can be seen above all in my polemic ceeded by others closer to reality. In a Postscript that I against an idea that had a wide currency among both vulgar. ecently wrote for a separate reissue of this little study i tried to materialist Communists and bourgeois positivists. This was the how in somewhat greater detail than in the original what I still notion that technology was the principle that objectively governed believe to be the healthy and relevant features of its basic argu progress in the development of the forces of production. This ment. Above all I tried to see in Lenin neither a man who simply evidently leads to historical fatalism, to the elimination of man and and straightforwardly followed in the footsteps of Marx and Engels, nor a pragmatic Realpolitikerof genius. My aim was to like a societal 'natural force'obedient to 'natural laws. My clarify the authentic quality of his mind. Briefly this image of criticism not only moved on a more concrete historical level than Lenin can be formulated as follows: his strength in theory is had been the case for most of History and Class Consciousness, but derived from the fact that however abstract a concept may be he also I made less use of voluntaristic ideological counter-weights always considers its implications for human praxis. Likewise in to oppose to this mechanistic fatalism. I tried to demonstrate that the case of every action which, as always with him, is based on the concrete analysis of the relevant situation, he always makes technology too. The same applies to my review of wittiogel's sure that his analysis can be connected organically and dialectically book, Both analyses suffer from the same theoretical defect in that with the principles of Marxism. Thus he is neither a theoretician ey both treat mechanistic vulgar-materialism and positivism nor a practitioner in the strict sense of the word. He is a profound as a single undifferentiated trend and indeed the latter is for the sopher of praxis, a man who passionately transforms theory most part assimilated into the former into practice, a man whose sharp attention is always focused Of greater importance are the much more detailed discussions on the nodal points where theory becomes practice, practic f the new editions of lassalles's letters and the works of Moses becomes theory. The fact that my old study still bears the marks Hess. Both reviews are dominated by the tendency to ground of the twenties produces false emphases in my intellectual portrait social criticism and the evolution of society more concretely ir of Lenin, especially as his critique of the present probed much conomics than i had ever been able to do in history and Class deeper in his last period than that of his biographer. However, Consciousness. At the same time I tried to make use of the critique the main features are essentially correct of idealism, of the continuation of the Hegelian dialectic for