Kracauer saw Lukács’s Marxism as exhausted idealism rather than genuine innovation

Evidence

Lukács seemed to be prepared to integrate himself into the Bolshevized Communist Party at all costs. Kracauer heavily criticized History and Class Consciousness both before and after his own conversion to `Marxist theory’, which for him, as for Bloch and Benjamin, amounted to an attempt to supersede theology through an analysis of outward, profane reality. According to Kracauer, exhausted idealism was not transcended in Lukács’s work but carried forward, and Marxism was not being pervaded with reality but being weakened and deprived of all its revolutionary energies by the application of an idle and exhausted philosophy. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 302

Categorization

• XREF: Kracauer’s critique of Lukács parallels the Bloch-Benjamin position that Marxism meant superseding theology through profane analysis. — connects to: Kracauer’s early critical orientation defined itself against Simmel, Weber, Scheler, and Lukács. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 267; Lukács’s route to Marx passed through an inescapable Hegelian frame; Lukács saw rationalization as reification caused by commodity fetishism — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 379 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Lukács’s route to Marx passed through an inescapable Hegelian frame #corroborates (0.82)
• Marxism’s core innovation is rejecting transcendence, not asserting materialism #corroborates (0.78)
• Lukács saw rationalization as reification caused by commodity fetishism #corroborates (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 379
• Marxism is not economic reductionism and requires attending to ideas in their own terms #corroborates (0.72)