Towards the end of his life, Georg Lukacs (Georg Lukacs) developed a synthesis of the ideas he elaborated after his shift to Marxism in 1919, initially in literary theory and later in philosophy. The fruit of his work are his two major final works, *The Subjective of Aesthetic* (1963) and *On the Ontology of Social Being*. In *On the Ontology*, the latter, posthumously published work, the prominent Hungarian Marxist argues that Marxism contains a materialist ontology of reality, grounded in the root of social being in labor.
This edition includes two key chapters of *On the Ontology*: "The Basic Ontological Principles of Marx" and "Labor". They present the core of Lukacs's problematic. Relying on Marx, he develops his ideas about labor as a model of every creative human activity, including science and art, and as the foundation of ethical evaluations based on deontology and principles shaped during the labor process.
Lukacs's argumentation, multifaceted, systematic, and nuanced, extends to encompass the entirety of social being, both in its inherent dynamic of increasing socialization and in its alienating distortions under capitalism. *On the Ontology* represents the last word of Marxism in the 20th century and a vital starting point for its renewal in our age.
Lukacs's work, *On the Ontology of Social Being*, is depicted, viewed as a whole, as a true philosophical encyclopedia of modern Marxism. The need for a restoration and careful re-examination of the main categories of Marxist thought has long been felt, to establish their robustness, demonstrate their power for universal inclusion, and purify them from dogmatic distortions and scoriae.
A guiding idea runs through the work: although Marx himself did not formulate his method in a systematic and comprehensive form, embracing the main fields of philosophical science—from ontology and epistemology to logic—his thought contains a homogeneous and systematic set of categories, whose richness and exceptional productivity demand their utilization. This is precisely the proposed goal of Lukacs's *Ontology*.
The complete edition and translation of the work will undoubtedly stimulate numerous discussions, but at the same time, we believe, will confirm the realization of his ambitious program.
