Content area
Full Text
Introduction: Postulates for an Empirical Marx
Why does the claim that Marx is an empiricist often generate such fierce opposition? At least since Lukács, it has become something of a custom to approach Marx's philosophy as Hegelian. And while there can be no disputing Hegel's position in the development of Marx's thought, it is striking that even his earliest writings dedicated to Hegel and the Young Hegelians of his own day remain so profoundly antagonistic. Unlike Kant, the rationalists and the Greeks, whose significance for Marx cannot be underestimated, it seems that Hegel's role may be best articulated as the figure who Marx feels necessary to posit for himself, more than any other, as an adversary to confront and overcome. But perhaps more interesting than his relentless challenges to Hegel, which are now very well known, is the unequivocally empirical position to which Marx will appeal in order to establish this criticism. Rather than the emulation of Hegel, what the early texts reveal so intelligibly is a disavowal of Hegelian philosophy for a position much closer to the empirical tradition (Hudelson, 1982, p. 242).
However, beyond this early critique of Hegel, there is no question that Marx's precise relationship with empiricism throughout his authorship remains a controversial topic. Althusser famously demands that Marx would eventually come to reject his empiricism for a scientific and dialectical materialism organised by abstract concepts (Althusser, 2005). At the same time, Charles Taylor outlines the reasons - epistemological, methodological and ethical - why Marxist thought remains irreconcilable with the empirical tradition, accounting for the almost complete lack of interest in Marx's philosophy among Anglo-American schools (Taylor, 1966).1 Nevertheless, against Althusser, who finds Marx's empiricism and dialectical materialism mutually exclusive, subsequently dividing his authorship into two distinct epistemological modes; and likewise against Taylor, who finds at their very foundation empiricism and Marxism utterly contradictory, Marx himself would never abandon a certain fidelity to empirical thought. While his often accentuated proximity to Hegel has long overshadowed this integral dimension of his work, Marx's empiricism remains one of the more coherent continuities throughout his ever evolving thought.2
And yet, the more substantial discussions surrounding Marx's empiricism will be predominately circumscribed to the scientific nature of his investigation and the role of...
