What frameworks help us name what we are seeing? What concepts and analyses illuminate the structure beneath the surface?
See the pedagogy document for what this lens does across all themes.
Marxism began as a philosophy before it was an economics or a politics, and this lens follows that formation: Hegel’s dialectic, in which history moves by contradiction toward the realization of freedom; Feuerbach’s materialist turn against religion; and the young Marx’s break from both, arriving at a method that grounds ideas in material life and practice. These are the founding moves of dialectical and historical materialism. The economics that grew from this method lives in How Capitalism Works, and the theory of the state and strategy in The State, Strategy, and Power; this lens is where the method itself is forged.
Anchor questions
- What is a dialectic? What does it mean to say history moves by contradiction?
- Marx said he turned Hegel right side up. What did he keep, and what did he invert?
- What is “materialism” here, and what does it deny? Does it leave room for ideas to matter?
- What is alienation, and does the young Marx’s account still describe your working life?
- “The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it.” Is that a theory, a slogan, or both?
Materials
All free. The primary texts are short; a session can read one aloud together.
The dialectic and its materialist turn
- G. W. F. Hegel (1770 to 1831), Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1837). History as the dialectical self-development of freedom, the idealist dialectic Marx would invert. Free: marxists.org
- Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 to 1872), The Essence of Christianity (1841). The Left-Hegelian argument that God is human nature projected outward, the hinge to materialism. Free: marxists.org
The young Marx forms the method
- Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Introduction (1844). Philosophy meets its agent, the proletariat; the “opium of the people” passage in context. Free: marxists.org
- Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Alienated labor and human self-realization, the formation of Marx’s humanism. Free: marxists.org
- Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach (1845). Eleven terse notes, the seed crystal of historical materialism. Free: marxists.org
- Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, Part I (1846). The first full statement of the materialist conception of history. Free: marxists.org
The movement systematizes the method
- Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880). The most read short statement of dialectics and historical materialism. Free: marxists.org
- Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886). The tradition’s own account of its debt to Hegel and Feuerbach. Free: marxists.org
- Georgi Plekhanov (1856 to 1918), Fundamental Problems of Marxism (1907). The influential Second International synthesis into a systematic worldview. Free: marxists.org
Video
- “Philosophize This! Hegel” (Stephen West, 2019). Roughly 20 minutes, about 28,000 views. A gentle on-ramp to the dialectic. youtube.com/watch?v=kB9X3F2f0xo
- “Hegel: Dialectical Philosophy” (Overthink, 2021). Roughly 50 minutes, about 139,000 views. A deeper academic conversation. youtube.com/watch?v=lFvY-nBJEsg
- “Political Theory: Karl Marx” (The School of Life, 2014). Roughly 9 minutes, about 10 million views. The most-seen “who was Marx” intro; note its liberal, pro-capitalist framing and use it as something to argue with. youtube.com/watch?v=fSQgCy_iIcc
- “Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach” (Acid Horizon, 2024). Roughly 60 minutes, about 4,000 views, niche. The best dedicated treatment of Feuerbach and the Young Hegelians. youtube.com/watch?v=BGyNyZ8ctQs
Status
First pass, and it may be a while before there is a second. Contributions welcome, especially a beginner-friendly guided walk-through of Hegel’s dialectic, which the current video set only partly covers.