Abstract

“So much worse for the facts.” With these words of Fichte, Lukacs closed the first draft of “What is Orthodox Marxism?” To the skeptical, and perhaps to the sympathetic, the words are outrageous. Marxism is not contradicted by the facts. The facts are duplicit or, at best, mute. To quantify, classify, categorize facts is to capitulate to them. “Truly orthodox dialectical Marxists paid little attention to the so-called facts.”

The obverse is plainer and more convincing: the facts confirm Marxism. The large events, as well as the small, prove the truth of the theory. The Russian and Chinese Revolutions, imperialism, the development of the working class, and so on, all demonstrate the continuous validity of Marxism.