In an essay of prophetic vision, Lukacs defines a critical realism: 'anyone who wants to become more intimately acquainted with the prehistory of the important ideologies of the nineteen-] twenties and thirties ...will be helped by a critical reading of this book.'

Out of the chaos following Lenin's death and the mounting fury against Lukacs and his freshly penned History and Class Consciousness (1923), this book bears an assessment of Lenin as "the only theoretical equal to Marx." Lukacs shows, with unprecedented clarity, how Lenin's historical interventions--from his vanguard politics and repurposing of the state to his detection of a new, imperialist stage of capitalism--advanced the conjunction of theory and practice, class consciousness and class struggle. A postscript from 1967 reflects on how this picture of Lenin, which both shattered...