Georg Lukács (1885–1971), the Hungarian Marxist philosopher and aesthetician, is one of those ambivalent figures of twentieth-century social and political thought whose influence is widely acknowledged yet whose writings languish for the most part in a state of critical neglect. The son of a wealthy Hungarian banker, he was to become one of the most influential figures in Marxist thought in the twentieth century. His literary career spanned many generations and included writings on philosophical aesthetics, literary theory, social philosophy and politics. His political career, on the other hand, involved a brief spell as People's Commissar for Culture in the ill-starred Hungarian Workers Republic in 1919, and also a key role in the 1956 Hungarian uprising against Soviet forces. He was a principal figure in the left opposition to the emerging Soviet orthodoxy of the 1920s. The mere mention of his name today, however, suffices to summon up a host of stock debates: these range from arguments against the authoritarian tendencies of his thought as expressed in concepts like "imputed" class consciousness to claims of its sheer obsolescence in adhering to "macro" historical agencies and a teleological conception of history (see Kolakowski, 1972). At a time, however, in which there has been a marked movement towards the centre ground in critical social theory, it will perhaps be illuminating to look again at Lukács' original project and to assess where we stand in relation to it.