ILPC 2026

 Reading Marx’s oeuvre as an ontological critique of capitalism, Lukács (1978a: 5), in his late writings, highlights that “for the first time in the history of philosophy, the categories of economics appear as those of the production and reproduction of human life, and hence make it possible to depict the social existence ontologically on a materialist basis”.

Labour is the founding category of the social being because the historical process of its development (from inorganic and organic towards social being) involved an ontological transformation: the rise of a new objectivity expressed in the teleological project as a form of material transformation of material reality. Therefore, human practice is finalistic, it is the ideal positing of an end and its consequence is objectification: it is teleological (Lukács, 1978a and 1978b). Labour – “the original phenomenon”, “the model for all social practice”, the exclusively human activity that makes “teleological positing” real – can be used to illuminate other kinds of social positing (Lukács, 1978b: 46). For him, the teleology entailed in labour is what distinguishes this specific human practice from the reproduction of other forms of being (organic and inorganic).

Central to the humanization of man through labour is also the fact that its ontological constitution forms the genetic point of departure to freedom. Labour is a casual chain transformed into a posited causality, it involves conscious decisions between alternatives. As “the original phenomenon”, it is also the model for all social practices; it is in this conscious decision that the phenomenon of freedom can be investigated in its ontological genesis. In the first place, because “the basis of freedom […] consists in a concrete decision between different concrete possibilities”; in the second, because “freedom is ultimately a desire to alter reality […] and in this connection reality must be preserved as the goal of change, even in the most far-reaching abstraction” (Lukács, 1978b: 114).

After this very brief introduction to Lukács’ ontology of social being and labour as its fundament, we can also briefly highlight some of its contributions to advance a critical knowledge of labour processes and workers struggles. Firstly, in philosophical terms, it can contribute to a renewal of critical realism – despite the lack of interest of those who work within this perspective to explore the mutual benefits of combining it with the propositions put forward by Lukács (Duayer and Medeiros, 2005). Secondly, it can advance an ontological critique of the contradiction between the centrality of labour (as a structural social category) and the progressive decrease in the need of immediate work. Thirdly, the ontological critique is also indispensable (even if not sufficient) to a transformative praxis that confronts capitalist organization of labour and creates alternatives for the emancipation of labour and humankind.[

 References

Duayer M and Medeiros JL (2005) Lukács’ critical ontology and critical realism. Journal of Critical Realism 4(2): 395-425.

Lukács G (1978a) Marx’s basic ontological principles. London: Merlin Press.

Lukács G (1978b) Labour. London: Merlin Press.