This paper develops Lukacs's interpretations of Marx's historical dialectic, reification, and class consciousness and relates these elements to contemporary communication theory. For Lukacs, the core of Marx's writing is the historical dialectic, the most vital interaction of which is the relation between subject and object in the historical process. This subject/object relationship occurs only in the proletariat and involves reification, whereby the individual worker is "instrumentalized" and the object of the individual's work is "naturalized." Lukacs believes that reification creates only a minimal consciousness of alienation; so the next step is the development of a class struggle, in which many workers recognize their alienation and transmit this recognition to one another. Since there remains a possibility for the proletariat to develop class consciousness, this paper expresses the need for communication theory scholars to develop a clearer understanding of the history and role of the dialectical method, in order to develop some answers to the problems of dehumanization, alienation, and reification prevalent in Western culture today. The paper concludes that a reinterpretation of Lukacs's writings offers "building blocks" with which one might develop a method for predicting and analyzing human communication. (RL)