Lukács held that class consciousness itself is practical action.

Evidence

His cultural criticism of bourgeois-capitalist society evolved into a cultural-revolutionary interpretation of radical communist change. In earlier references to the proletariat and to socialism, the latest of which had appeared in Bolshevism as a Moral Problem', Lukács had criticized both the lack of a religious power capable of suffusing the whole soul’ and the merely ideological character of the objectives which the socialist world order had in ethics and in the philosophy of history. He now declared that a cultural, intellectual revolution was at the heart of the proletarian class struggle. The awakening of the proletariat to self-consciousness, to class consciousness, in his view, would bring the process of social development as a whole to consciousness; everyday life would be suffused with essential life, human beings would become active agents in true reality. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 315 (#expands, via linked claim)

With the pathos of a ‘freshly-baked Marxist’, Lukács contrasts this objectivistic approach against his own theory, according to which the worker ‘becomes aware of himself as a commodity’ insofar as he ‘recognises himself and his own relations with capital’, and in doing so becomes capable of overcoming the prevailing order. ‘The telos of world history, the redemption of humanity, is for Lukács doubtless identical with the emancipation of the proletariat in the successful world revolution’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 66 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: For Lukács, proletarian class consciousness would bring social development to self-consciousness — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 315; Classes-in-themselves become forces-for-themselves through conscious organization.; Lukács located revolutionary agency in workers’ self-awareness as commodities — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 66

Broader Connections

• For Lukács, proletarian class consciousness would bring social development to self-consciousness #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 315
• Lukács located revolutionary agency in workers’ self-awareness as commodities #expands (0.82) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 66
• Classes-in-themselves become forces-for-themselves through conscious organization. #corroborates (0.78)