"For only as a universal category of the whole of social being is the commodity comprehensible in its unadulterated nature. It is only in this context that the reification brought about by the commodity relation acquires a decisive significance both for the objective development of society and for people's behaviour towards it for the subjection of their consciousness to the forms in which this reification is expressed for the attempts to understand the commodity in its unadulterated nature.The attempts to understand this process or to rebel against its devastating effects, to free oneself from this bondage to the 'second nature' that has thus arisen."(Georg Lukács) The most influential work of Georg Lukács (1885-1971) is the collection of essays History and Class Consciousness, a foundational text of Western Marxism and critical theory. Published in 1923, it immediately caused heated controversy and brought Lukács much criticism: the socialist camp found it too Marxist, the Leninists not faithful enough to their line. Lukács distanced himself from these writings early on, both under the impression of their immanent theoretical contradictions and through his own development into a Stalinist cadre. However, this did not change their impact. The volume contains Lukács' essays "What is Orthodox Marxism?" and "The Reification and Consciousness of the Proletariat" from History and Class Consciousness (with the page numbers of the edition). This is what the contributions to the discussion revolve around.