Unlimited Reification? Lukács on Zerrissenheit and Resistance

In this paper, I would like to address the relevance for current debates not only of Georg Lukács’ characterization and critique of reification, but also of his account of the possibility of resisting it. Lukács’ 1923 book, History and Class Consciousness, is arguably one of the most important Marxist works of the 20th century and the concept of reification outlined in its main essay, “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat”, has proved to be extremely fruitful for understanding (and criticizing) the forms of subjectivity that come along with capitalist forms of objectivity. In his masterful reworking of Weberian and Simmelian themes within a Marxist framework broadly influenced by Hegel, Lukács offers his readers a vivid account of the processes that, under capitalist social relations, rob subjects of that which makes them subjects, and not objects or things, that is: their capacity for agency, for acting upon the world and transforming it, instead of only following “natural laws” that are external to and dominate them. Although reification affects everyone in modern capitalist societies, regardless of their position in the social process of production, those that are part of the proletariat experience it in a different, much more acute way. This happens, so goes Lukács’ argument, because workers experience themselves as objects in spite of the fact that they are actually the ones who are transforming the world through their work, and as a consequence, workers are torn apart (zerrissen) in the innermost layers of their physical and psychic being, which has the potentiality to fuel resistance and revolt. Members of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, do not experience this fracture (Zerrissenheit): their position as “objects” is unproblematic (and materially comfortable), which makes it extremely difficult for them to view the established social conditions as questionable in any way. In short: for Lukács, while everybody is reified under capitalism, only the proletariat suffers like it is a matter of life and death – and here lie the limits of reification. This idea was extensively discussed in the first half of the 20th century and is, for example, at the core of the first generation critical theorists’ disagreements with Lukács’ diagnoses (and prognoses). Today, however, it is not unusual for social critical theorists to draw on Lukács “phenomenology of reification” – laid out especially in the famous first part of his essay – while leaving aside the necessary counterpart of his description: namely, the analysis of the limits of reification and of the possibility of overcoming it, dealt with in the third part of the reification essay (“The Standpoint of the Proletariat”). The aim of this paper is to recover the contribution of Lukács’ account of the limits of reification for a contemporary social diagnosis that denounces oppression in capitalist societies without neglecting an analysis of how it is experienced by the oppressed nor the potentialities for resistance that are immanent – even when blocked or suppressed – to such experience.