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A discussion of Lukács' understanding and use of the concept of ideology cannot be properly attempted without situating it in the wider context of the evolution of this concept within Marxist theory. For although it may seem strange to those who believe that Marxism is a monolithic theory, the concept of ideology changed from the critical account Marx had conceived to the neutral version propounded by Lenin. Still, the most common error of many Marxist analyses of the concept of ideology is the failure to recognize this historical change — often coupled with a rather dogmatic attempt to prove that there is only one correct interpretation of ideology within Marxism — which leads either to dismissing one of the two versions as mistaken or to trying to reconcile and fuse them into one.¹ The main reason for the recurrence of this error is the tendency of Marxist official orthodoxy to avoid any important cleavage between Marx and Lenin. There is little doubt, though, that these two conceptions of ideology are historically successive and theoretically incompatible.²

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-2897-8_5

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