Georg Lukács was the leading Marxist philosopher and literary critic of the 20th century. After his transition to Marxism, with the intermediary of History and Class Consciousness (1923), he presented original works in many areas that enriched and renewed Marxist theory. Among them are studies on bourgeois philosophy, such as The Young Hegel and The Destruction of Reason, countless books and essays on 19th and 20th-century art, and Marxist treatises on aesthetics and social dialectics.

This book includes the most significant texts by Lukács from the 1920s, written during the period of 1922-28: the articles of literary and philosophical criticism in the Berlin magazine Rote Fahne (1922), his critique of Bukharin's Historical Materialism (1925), philosophical essays on Lassalle (1925) and Moses Hess (1926), and the Theses of Bloom (1928). In these texts, Lukács clarifies the idealistic confusions of History and Class Consciousness, while simultaneously developing its fruitful aspects and introducing key themes of his mature thought.

Taken together, these texts introduce us in a comprehensible and accessible way to the more complex pathways of his later reflection. In his introductory essay, Christos Kefalis discusses Lukács’s entire intellectual journey, from his transition to Marxism to his mature concluding works. He extensively analyzes the most important studies of Lukács, assessing his contribution to the development of Marxism.