‘Teleological positing’ means that ideas are a guiding and goal-setting dimension of work so that culture is immanent in work itself. The human brain defines goals that are conditioned by economic and social needs and for realising them guides human activities. Culture however is not the same as the economy, but is a guiding feature of the economy that created by work goes beyond the economy and takes efect in the form of collective meanings all over society. Culture is simultaneously economic and non-economic.
For Lukács, consciousness is not reality, but a form of objectivity that reproduces reality (1978c, 26). ‘Ontologically, social being divides into two heterogeneous moments, […] being and its reflection in consciousness’ (26). Human consciousness was ‘called into being in work, for work, and by work’ (52). There is no photographic copying of reality in consciousness, but reflection is ‘conditioned by the posited goals’ and ‘the social reproduction of life, originally by work’ (27). Consciousness and work have at the same time a relationship of ‘linkage and autonomy’ (52). So consciousness alone is not behaviour and work, but a foundation of both. Consciousness has an important role in society because it ‘sets goals’, masters the human body, and allows a ‘distanced and critical’ relationship of the person to him-/herself and to others (109). ‘And the origin of this mastery lies undoubtedly in work’ (109).
All work and action has an aspect of consciousness. Before engaging in work and action, humans reflect on what they want to achieve and how. Ideas and material changes of the world are therefore not independent, but inherently connected (Lukács, 1986b, 297). Lukács criticises that theorists such as Georgi Plekhanov, Karl Kautsky, Max Adler, and Stalin have separated the economy from the world of ideas in a dualist manner (298–299). He in this discussion points to the fact that human thought is not work itself, but one of its necessary preconditions and parts. Reflection precedes and enables both physical work that creates physical goods and mental work that creates informational usevalues in society.
2.2.6. Cultural Work and Ideology
Lukács says that ideology is not the same as cultural work, but can emanate from it. In making this argument, he argues for a true dialectic of the culture and economy: on the one hand, he sees all culture and ideology produced by work, i.e. there is an economic foundation of cultural work. Culture and ideology also take on an emergent quality that goes beyond the economy so that the meanings cultural work produces take efect all over society. This explains why Lukács speaks of the identity and non-identity of work and culture.
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Critical Theory of Communication