In Defense of Standpoint Theory

Glossing over my TL I see that it is more and more en vogue to try and defame my beautiful boy Georg Lukacs. Indeed, much of this is oriented around The Destruction of Reason. Despite its provocative polemic, that work is not just polemical, and yet, I haven’t seen anybody meet that provocation without capitulating merely to polemics. But that’s not the crux of my beef today, but rather to defend one of Lukacs most central, enduring concepts — The standpoint of the Proletariat, or what is the same, Standpoint Theory

The Standpoint of the Proletariat is sometimes denounced as a voluntaristic assumption of an identity. Indeed, often when people attempt to critique Lukacs, they target how some respective minority groups appropriate Lukacs’ standpoint theory, which is viewed as just identity politics with the veneer and prestige of Marxist jargon. This view is, of course, uncharitable. And I would like to affirm that there is a way to appropriate this concept in ways that are illuminating while at the same time maintaining some fidelity to Lukacs.

We will get a bit into the nuts and bolts, but the long and short of it is that The Standpoint of the Proletariat is a form of consciousness that enables one to consider history and its development. Simple as that. Indeed, this implies that the Standpoint of the Proletariat is of dire necessity because we live in a Capitalist Society that has as its default outlook an ahistorical disposition to phenomenon. Thus, we can now make a straightforward distinction between a Standpoint of the Proletariat and what we can now call a Standpoint of the Bourgeious; the former can account for the emergence of its position in society as resulting from historical developments, developments which can be (and have been) effected through conscious and practical activity. In contrast, the latter cannot account for how their position in society results from historical developments nor think historically without deploying abstractions. Already, we are moving towards a critique of the idea that Standpoint theory is something that one voluntaristicly assumes. We know that this is not the case because the dominant form of existing social relations produces the conditions wherein people behave according to the standpoint of the bourgeoisie without ever consciously assuming such an outlook (if you like, we could call this standpoint, when applied to the Proletariat, false consciousness). In other words, where ever you find Capitalist relations, you will tend to find workers assuming the standpoint of the Bourgeois; this is of necessity so that such a society can preserve and reproduce itself; again, yes, reification, Standpoint of the Bourgeois (false consciousness), ahistorical outlook on social phenomena, are objective qualities of a society ruled under Capitalism.

So how is the Standpoint of the Proletariat even possible? Crucial to Lukacs’ standpoint theory is the worker selling their labor power and an analysis of the commodity form. It’s because the worker sells their labor power that they potentially have access to what underlies the commodity form, which is, of course, the worker’s activity; and yes, for these reasons, they can have access to the Totality. What false consciousness would have you believe is that your activity as a worker does not bear on the economy, nor does the economy bear on the conditions of your life. Those things are separate (or, if you like, alienated from one another). And it’s because those things are distinct that one’s condition in society cannot be analyzed without inevitably capitulating to some form of abstraction. Indeed, this is merely reproducing how the bourgeoisie sees the world; these things are not perceptible to the bourgeoise given their structural position within the economy, rather the world appears to them as reified (as a thing, the actual emergence of which can not be accounted for), and this ideology (or standpoint) is of course transmitted to the prols. In talking about reification a little bit longer, we might be reminded of Marx early on in The German Ideology when he says, “In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven.” The idea is that for the bourgeois (which has its ideological grounding in German Idealism for Marx; and, more specifically, for Lukacs, in Kant and his noumena), reality appears by way of some unknowable transcendent force and thus, crudely put, merely appears to them as a given; whereas, for the Proletariat, the appearance of social reality emerges as resulting from the activity of the worker, and from analyzing this activity we can get access to the Totality of social life. This is big because if the worker can come to grips with the objective fact that civil society and the economy both result from his activity, then they can begin to understand the process by which the economy, and their position within society, have come to be, and now we are talking about history. Economic and Civil life are always related and constantly affect one another. Every political question is also an economic question. It’s worth affirming, this amounts to a profound idea; what underlies the appearance of any commodity, to the appearance of social relaity, is what WE DO AS WORKERS; the essence of which is not some thing, but the workers’ beating heart. The Bourgeois, given their position with the structure of society, not working, not being integrated into the essence of the commodity form, are not able to properly conceptualize this.

This is a crude summary of the concept, but it summarizes the core aspects. Let’s return to how this idea might be appropriated by fields other than Marxism. From a feminist perspective, one might say that it is because of the unique position of women in both civil and economic life that they have a more penetrating analysis of the Totality of social reality, and it’s emergence and development, than those who benefit from Patriarchy. From a Queer perspective, one could say the same from a position other than the dominant heteronormative one, and so on. The ultimate object of analysis is history, and Standpoint Theory is one illuminating tool that aids in such an inquiry.

Now, we’ve talked about the conditions that enable the Standpoint of the Theory to penetrate history, but how does one arrive at a Standpoint of the Proletariat? Or Class Consciousness? This, obviously, is not an easy question, generally speaking, or even in Lukacs History and Class Consciousness. That could take up a whole blog post in itself. But suppose it’s true that false consciousness emerges given definite social relations. In that case, it might be fair to suspect that for another form of consciousness to appear, there must also be a change in the nature of our social relations. This might take the shape of joining a political party, attending school, or even participating in recreational activities like certain sports leagues. But this seems like a good place to stop.