The harshest criticism of Lukács's theory of ideology would be that, in a series of progressive conflations, he collapses Marxist theory into proletarian ideology; ideology into the expression of some 'pure' class subject; and this class subject to the essence of the social formation. But this case demands significant qualification. Lukács is not at all blind to the ways in which the consciousness of the working class is 'contaminated' by that of its rulers, and would seem to ascribe no organic 'world-view' to it in non-revolutionary conditions. Indeed, if the proletariat in its 'normal' state is little more than the commodity incarnate, it is hard to see how it can be a subject at all -- and therefore hard to see how exactly it can make the transition to becoming a 'class for itself'. But this process of 'contamination' does not appear to work the other way round, in the sense that the dominant ideology seems in no way significantly shaped by a dialogue with its subordinates.

We have seen already that there are really two discrepant theories of ideology at work in History and Class Consciousness -- the one deriving from commodity fetishism, the other from a historicist view of ideology as the world-view of a class subject. As far as the proletariat is concerned, these two conceptions would seem to correspond respectively to its 'normal' and revolutionary states of being. In non-revolutionary conditions, working-class consciousness is passively subject to the effects of reification; we are given no clue as to how this situation is actively constituted by proletarian ideology, or of how it interacts with less obediently submissive aspects of that experience. How does the worker constitute herself as a subject on the basis of her objectification? But when the class shifts -- mysteriously -- to becoming a revolutionary subject, a historicist problematic takes over, and what was true of their rulers -- that they 'saturated' the whole social formation with their own ideological conceptions -- can now become true of them too. What is said of these rulers, however, is inconsistent: for this active notion of ideology in their case is at odds with the view that they, too, are simply victims of the structure of commodity fetishism. How can the middle class govern by virtue of its unique, unified world-view when it is simply subjected, along with other classes, to the structure of reification? Is the dominant ideology a matter of the bourgeoisie, or of bourgeois society?

It can be claimed that History and Class Consciousness is marred by a typically idealist overestimation of 'consciousness' itself. 'Only the consciousness of the proletariat', Lukács writes, 'can point to the way that leads out of the impasse of capitalism'; ¹² and while this is orthodox enough in one sense, since an unconscious proletariat is hardly likely to do the trick, its emphasis is none the less revealing. For it is not in the first place the consciousness of the working class, actual or potential, which leads Marxism to select it as the prime agency of revolutionary

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