ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a redefinition and take a fresh look at what is best described as 'radical culture'. In the essay 'Old Culture and New Culture', Lukacs points out that bourgeois fears of revolutionary change are often voiced in terms of a fear for the safety of culture. But he claims, on the contrary, that it is precisely capitalism which has caused the disintegration of the old culture, and that revolutionary change is vitally necessary in order that a new culture can take shape. The idea of culture asserts its distance from the system in order, as it were, to offer universal security in the middle of a universal dynamic. One might expect the type of consciousness unveiled in cultural artefacts to be changed on changing the economic infrastructure of a society, but one cannot change consciousness by changing culture. It is economic specialisation and the class-nature of society which has led to the emergence of Culture.
