This is the first time one of the most important of Lukacs' early theoretical writings, published in Germany in 1923, has been made available in English. The book consists of a series of essays treating, among other topics, the definition of orthodox Marxism, the question of legality and illegality, Rosa Luxemburg as a Marxist, the changing function of Historic Marxism, class consciousness, and the substantiation and consciousness of the Proletariat.Writing in 1968, on the occasion of the appearance of his collected works, Lukacs evaluated the influence of this book as follows:"For the historical effect of History and Class Consciousness and also for the actuality of the present time one problem is of decisive importance: alienation, which is here treated for the first time since Marx as the central question of a revolutionary critique of capitalism, and whose historical as well as methodological origins are deeply rooted in Hegelian dialectic. It goes without saying that the problem was omnipresent. A few years after History and Class Consciousness was published, it was moved into the focus of philosophical discussion by Heidegger in his Being and Time, a place which it maintains to this day largely as a result of the position occupied by Sartre and his followers. The philologic question raised by L. Goldmann, who considered Heidegger's work partly as a polemic reply to my (admittedly unnamed) work, need not be discussed here. It suffices today to say that the problem was in the air, particularly if we analyze its background in detail in order to clarify its effect, the mixture of Marxist and Existentialist thought processes, which prevailed especially in France immediately after the Second World War. In this connection priorities, influences, and so on are not particularly significant. What is important is that the alienation of man was recognized and appreciated as the central problem of the time in which we live, by bourgeois as well as proletarian, by politically rightist and leftist thinkers. Thus, History and Class Consciousness exerted a profound effect in the circles of the youthful intelligentsia."George Lichtheim, also in 1968, writes that "...The originality of the early Lukacs lay in the assertion that the totality of history could be apprehended by adopting a particular 'class standpoint': that of the proletariat. Class consciousness;not indeed the empirical consciousness of the actual proletariat, which was hopelessly entangled with the surface aspects of objective reality, but an ideal-typical consciousness proper to a class which radically negates the existing order of reality: that was the formula which had made it possible for the Lukacs of 1923 to unify theory and practice."

《解读〈资本论〉(第1卷)》的解读，本身就具有了权威性。他精心写就的《解读〈资本论〉》，结合当代日本和世界资本主义发展的实际情况，通过人们所熟知的社会生活事例，在忠实于原著的基础上，注重把握原著的思想精华和理论精髓，逐章逐节，由表及里、由浅入深地解说了原著所揭示的各种概念、原理和规律。他的受众，是周末自愿前来听课的日本各阶层民众，他所用的语言是他们所熟悉的、所用的案例也是他们所关注却又未经深思或无力用经济理论来分析和揭示的。 马克思主义中国化，首要的是大众化、普及化。这种大众化、普及化的对象不仅是专业研究人员，更是干部、群众。宫川彰教授说：“大家学习《资本论》，不是学习完就结束，而是终生受益。就好像取得驾驶证一样会终生受用。掌握了这种力量的源泉，就可以用科学的视点去看待世界上发生的一切。”