Marx without Himself: Benefits of a Historically Indeterminate Materialism

This article considers the historical tension in conceptualising Marx's materialism (dialectical and historical) as either a break from, or a fidelity to, Hegelian dialectics, and the methods by which this tension is itself subsumed under an insistence on vindicating the radical irreducibility of Marxist thought. Ultimately, however, it is argued that the question of whether Marx should or should not be framed alongside Hegel is the wrong question. It is not a question of 'Marx by himself' or 'Marx and... [Hegel]', but rather of 'Marx without himself': as with any radical event in the history of ideas, it is a benefit to Marx's innovativeness that he can be retrospectively articulated according to historical traditions whilst simultaneously breaking from them.