György Lukács

György Lukács (/ˈluːkɑːtʃ/; Hungarian: [ˌɟørɟ ˈlukaːtʃ]; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, aesthetician, literary historian, and critic. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Marxist ideological orthodoxy of the USSR. He developed the theory of reification, and contributed to Marxist theory with developments of Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. He was also the philosopher of Leninism. He ideologically developed and organised Lenin’s pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution (Leninism).

As a literary critic Lukács was especially influential, because of his theoretical developments of realism and of the novel as a literary genre. In 1919, he was the Hungarian Minister of Culture of the government of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic (March–August 1919).

Lukács has been described as the preeminent Marxist intellectual of the Stalinist era, though assessing his legacy can be difficult as Lukács seemed to both support Stalinism as the embodiment of Marxist thought, and yet also champion a return to pre-Stalinist Marxism.

György Lukács (politician)

György Lukács de Erzsébetváros (10 September 1865 – 28 September 1950) was a Hungarian politician, who served as Minister of Religion and Education between 1905 and 1906. From 1887 to 1897 he worked for the Ministry of the Interior. He suggested to nationalise the institution of parish register. He had significant role in the crush of the peasant movements. He was member of the Diet of Hungary from 1921. During the Regency he was active in the works of the Interparliamentary Union and the League of Nations Union. He served as president of the Hungarian National Fine Art Association and manager chairman of the chauvinist Hungarian Revisionist League party.

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