ABSTRACT
Since Georg Lukács did not explicitly write upon the sociology of knowledge, we need to inquire into the relevance of his early work, down to and including History and Class Consciousness, for the sociology of knowledge in Germany. The central task of his major work, ‘to understand the essence of Marx’s method and to apply it correctly,’ seems far removed from the concerns of the sociology of knowledge. In History and Class Consciousness, 1 Lukács provides a critique of the orthodox Marxism of the Second International whilst at the same time restoring to Marxism the dialectical dimension which lay in Hegel’s philosophy and in Marx’s own writings. Lukács aligned himself (however temporarily, in view of his rapid retraction of his views) with attempts at the development of a dialectical and historical theory of society, such as those of Korsch and Gramsci, which ran counter to the increasingly dominant mechanistic materialism. His major work also pointed towards the rejection of a simple base-superstructure theory of ideology with its attendant naive reflection theory of truth. This is important in terms of the development of the sociology of knowledge since it was this caricature of the Marxist position — one also shared by many Marxists — which was the subject of critiques by Scheler, Mannheim and others.
