HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS REFACE TO THE NEW EDITION(1967) theses was false. Even if this were to be proved every of that orthodox Marxist would still be able to accept all such merely of the description of that existence). On the other hand conclusions without reservation and hence dismiss every their sequence, their coherence and their interconnections must one of Marx's theses-without g compelled for minute to renounce his orthodoxy. Orthodox Marxism, therefore, physiognomy of the present. Thus the sequence and the inner does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx's investigations. It is not the belief'in this or that thesis, not the merely organised in conformity with the historical facts as they exegesis of a'sacred book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers happen to be given. "s This line of reasoning concludes, as is exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical m marx's famous study of Marxism is the road to truth and that its methods can be devel- method, made in the fifties. Passages like this one which anticipate oped, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders. It is the conviction, moreover, that all attempts to are not infrequent. surpass or improve it have led and must lead to over-simplifica If I have concentrated on my errors, there have been mainly tion, triviality and eclecticism. "7 practical reasons for it. It is a fact that History and Class Conscious And without feeling myself to be excessively immodest, I believe ness had a powerful effect on many readers and continues to that a number of equally true ideas can be found in the book. do so even today. If it is the true arguments that achieve this I need only refer to the fact that i included the early works of impact, then all is well and the author's reaction is wholly Marx in the overall picture of his world-view i did this at a uninteresting and irrelevant. Unfortunately I know it to be the time when most Marxists were unwilling to see in them more case that, owing to the way society has developed and to the than historical documents that were important only for his per political theories this development has produced, it is precisely sonal development. Moreover, History and Class Consciousness cannot those parts of the book that I regard as theoretically false that be blamed if, decades later, the relationship was reversed so that have been most influential. For this reason I see it as my duty on the early works were seen as the products of the true Marxist the occasion of a reprint after more than 40 years to pronounce philosophy, while the later works were neglected. Rightly or upon the books negative tendencies and to warn my readers wrongly, I had always treated Marx's works as having an essential against errors that were hard to avoid then, perhaps, but which have long ceased to be so nor do i wish to deny that in a number of places the attem I have already said that Histoy and Class Consciousness was. n is made to depict the real nature and the movement of the dialectical categories. This points forward to a genuine Marxist quite a definite sense the summation and conclusion of a per i ontology of existence in society. For example, the category of showed this even more clearly. above all my messianic utopian mediation is represented in this way: "Thus the category of ism lost(and was even seen to lose) its real grip on me. Lenin died mediation is a lever with which to overcome the mere immediacy in 1924. The party struggles that followed his death were con of the empirical world and as such it is not anything(subjective) centrated increasingly on the debate about whether socialism that has been foisted on to the objects from outside; it is no value could survive in one country. That it was possible in theory Lenin posed to their 'Is. It is rather the near prosp manifestation of their authentic objective structure. "8 And closely related world revolution made it appear particularly theoretical and to this is the discussion of the connection between genesis and abstract. The fact that it was now taken seriously proved that a history: " That genesis and history should coincide or orld revolution could not be held to be imminent in these years. factly, that they should be different aspects of the same (Only with the slump in 1929 did it re-emerge from time to time can only happen if two conditions are fulfilled. On the one as a possibility. ) Moreover, after 1924 the Third International all the categories in which human existence is construct correctly defined the position of the capitalist world as one of