posal prompted Lenin to denounce him as the“renegadeKautsky.”²¹Afterthe
October Revolution, it was leftto Georg Lukács (1885–1971), inGeschichte und
Klassenbewußtsein(1923,Historyand ClassConsciousness), to reaffirm the prole-
tariat as the true subject of history and the sole producer of the totality of society.
In fact,hedeveloped his theory of alienation and reification preciselytoaccount
for the dialectics within proletarian class consciousness.²²Lesser-known but
equallyinfluential, Karl Korsch (1886–1961), inMarxismus und Philosophie
(1923,Marxism andPhilosophy), used the notion ofaproletarian dialectic,
“the transformation of the‘natural’class viewpoint of the proletariat into theo-
retical concepts and propositions,”²³to propose new models for political action.
ThewritingsofMarx and Engels established the structure of meanings,and
of feelings,inwhich the proletariat came to occupyauniqueplace between the
critique of capitalism and the theory of revolution. The proletariat’snon-identity
with the workingclass gave rise toasurfeit of utopian fantasies, which wereas
grounded in Marxist theory as they wereinfluenced by philosophyand aesthet-
ics. This fundamental tension between two different kinds of imagination,athe-
oretical and an aesthetic one, providedaseemingly inexhaustible sourceofin-
spiration and resonated throughout the socialist lifeworld.It also established a
forcefield in which both sides could preservethe revolutionary potential embod-
ied by the proletariat.The different function of political theories and symbolic
practices (and their respective disciplines and institutions) mayaccount for
the fact that the proletarian dream as conjured by novels, poems, memoirs,
songs, and plays remained largelyunaffectedbythe theoretical controversies
that followed in the wake ofBernstein’sinitialrevisionist intervention. In fact,
this can be read as further evidence that the proletarian imaginary was reducible
neither to Marxist theory nor to social reality.
The further revisions of the proletarian dream from theWilhelmine to the
Weimaryears can be tracked with the help of SPD party programs and their
changingvoice, mood, and tone. These party programs not onlyattest to the re-
markable productivity of the proletariat asatheoretical concept forever suspend-
ed between the particularand the universal. They also confirm its overdeter-
mined status in the competingnarrativesofrevolution and reform, including
Karl Kautsky,The Dictatorship of the Proletariat,trans.H.J.Stenning(Ann Arbor:Univ ersity
of Michigan Press, 1964).ForLenin’sresponse, see“The Proletarian Revolution and the Rene-
gadeKautsky”(1918), https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/,1March2017.
GeorgLukács,Historyand Class Consciousness:Studies inMarxist Dialectics(Cambridge,MA:
MITPress,1971).
Karl Korsch,“The Marxist Dialectic (1923),”https://www.marxists.org/archive/korsch/1923/
marxist-dialectic.htm,1March2017.
Proletarian Dreams:FromMarx to Marxism 61