Georg Lukacs Quotes
Only the Russian Revolution really opened a window to the future; the fall of Czarism brought a glimpse of it, and with the collapse of capitalism it appeared in full view.
Georg Lukacs, 1885-1971, Hungarian Political Philosopher, 1967
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The reason this is an important quotation is that since the end of WWII, most Americans have used the term “socialism” rather loosely. President Obama for example is often referred to as a socialist by his political enemies. Conservatives refer to Norway, Sweden and Denmark and other European nations as socialist states. But none of them would ever meet the definition of a socialist state of the major socialist state in history. After WWII, the Russians intimidated many of the Eastern European with force of arms and there were some other socialist states for a while but the all abandoned Soviet style Russian socialism, Ironically, the only state that the old Russian Communists would recognize in 2011 was Cuba. However, there are many who call themselves socialists who would never agree that the Soviet Union was remotely a socialist state—they see it as a Fascist dictatorship.
This quotation illustrates White’s favorable view of Russia. Note his use of the “it works” phrase which he picked up from Stefens’ famous quote {634892}. At the time the Soviet Union had been perceived by many economists to have been a great economic improvement over Czarist Russia. And over all, Russia which in 1917 was an economic basket case, had become one of the stronger states in Europe although the Russian people paid a horrendous price. Most historians agree that White passed classified information to the Russians. He was accused of being a Communist, but there was never any evidence of that. Some people believe that he was a spy for the Russians and committed espionage, but others disagree observing that White was very much his own man and felt that much information that was classified never should have been. White substituted his own judgment, it is believed, about what could be given to the Russians for the security system. He was an admirer of what Russian socialism had accomplished economically, educationally and medically since the 1917 revolution deposing the Czar. Russia had been a valuable military ally, which had taken the brunt of both military and civilian casualties in WWII. White’s economics were certainly not Marxist but very much Keynesian. He was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee where he was accused of being a Communist which he denied (see {634907}). He died of a heart attack 3 days later.
So many Afghans thought very differently and resisted Amin’s Government and the Russians, that the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan.
György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, critic, and aesthetician of Jewish heritage. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Marxist ideological orthodoxy of the Soviet Union. He developed the theory of reification, and contributed to Marxist theory with developments of Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. He was also a philosopher of Leninism. He ideologically developed and organised Lenin's pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution.
