Georg Lukács and Georges Sorel

Abstract

In his writings from the thirties and forties, Lukács several times referred to Georges Sorel as an "anti-capitalist romantic"; that is, a critic of bourgeois society inspired by past social or cultural values. This definition is very pertinent; but it must be added immediately that it can equally be applied to the young Lukács of the years 1908-1924. In reality, anti-capitalist romanticism is the key that guides the relations between Lukács and Sorel's thought. He is, in fact, the main motivation behind the passionate attraction for Sorel among so many thinkers who - like Benjamin, Korsch, Gramsci and Mariategui - sought to reinterpret Marxism in a romantic-revolutionary perspective in rupture with the evolutionary, positivist and vulgar materialist doctrine of the II and m Internationals.