HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION views brought me intellectually into contact with Syndicalism of capitalism became to a certain extent a positive element in and above all with the philosophy of Georges Sorel. I strove to go the new synthesis. I have never succumbed to the error that I have beyond bourgeois radicalism but found myself repelled by social often noticed in workers and petty-bourgeois intellectuals who democratic theory(and especially Kautsky's version of it). My despite everything could never free themselves entirely from their interest in Sorel was aroused by Ervin Szabo, the spiritual mento awe of the capitalist world. The hatred and contempt I had of the Hungarian left-wing opposition in Social Democracy. felt for life under capitalism ever since my childhood preserved During the war years I became acquainted with the works of me from this Rosa Luxemburg. All this produced a highly contradictory Mental confusion is not always chaos. It may strengthen the malgam of theories that was decisive for my thought t during internal contradictions for the time being but in the lons&mo it will lead to their resolution. Thus my ethics tended in th i think that I would be departing from the truth if i were to direction of praxis, action and hence towards politics. and this attempt to iron out the glaring contradictions of that period by led in turn to economics, and the need for a theoretical grounding artificially constructing an organic development and fitting it there finally brought me to the philosophy of marxism. Of course, into the correct pigeon-hole in the 'history of ideas. If Faust all these developments took place slowly and unevenly. but the could have two souls within his breast, why should not a normal direction I was taking began to become clear even during the war person unite conflicting intellectual trends within himself when fter the outbreak of the Russian Revolution. The Theory of the he finds himself changing from one class to another in the middle Novel* was written at a time when i was still in a general state of of a world crisis In so far as i am able to recall those years, despair (see my Preface to the New Edition). It is no wonder at least, find that my ideas hovered between the acquisition of then, that the present appeared in it as a Fichtean condition of Marxism and political activism on the one hand, and the constant adation and that any hop tensification of my purely idealistic ethical preoccupations on utopian mirage. Only the Russian Revolution really opened a window to the future; the fall of Czarism brought a glimpse of it, I find this confirmed when I read the articles I wrote at the and with the collapse of capitalism it appeared in full view. time. When i recall At the time our knowledge of the facts and the principles underly ant literary essays from that period I find that their aggressive and ing them was of the slightest and very unreliable. Despite this we paradoxical idealism often outdoes that of my earlier works. saw--at last! at lastI-a way for mankind to escape from war At the same time the e process of assimilating Marxism and capitalism. Of course, even when we recall this enthusiasm apace. If I now regard this disharmonious dualism as character- we must take care not to idealise the past. I myself-and I can istic of my ideas at that period it is not my intention to paint it phase: my last hesitations before making my final, irrevocable confined within the limits of a struggle between revolutionary choice, were marked by a misguided attempt at an apologia ood and the vestigial evil of bourgeois thought. The transition fortified with abstract and Philistine arguments. But the final decision could not be resisted for ever. The little essay Tactics complex business than that. Looking back at it now I see that and Ethics reveals its inner human motivations for all its romantic anti-capitalistic overtones, the ethical idealism It is not necessary to waste many words on the few essays that I took from Hegel made a number of real contributions to the were written at the time of the Hungarian Soviet Republic and picture of the world that emerged after this crisis. Of course, the period leading up to it. Intellectually we were unprepared they had to be dislodged from their position of supremacy (or pared than anyone--to come even equality)and modified fundamentally before they could with the tasks that confronted us. Our enthusiasm was a become part of a new, homogeneous outlook. Indeed, this is makeshift substitute for knowledge and experience. I need.very ent to point out that even my int An English translation of this work is in preparation