Vico, Fichte, Hegel, Croce and Marxian Historical Materialism in Recent Anglo-American Scholarship

Abstract

The aim of my article is to reconstruct and evaluate the original non-Marxist interpretation of Marx and historical materialism proposed by Tom Rockmore, who seeks to demonstrate, contrary to the Marxist reading, the essentially anthropological and constructivist approach of Marx’s theories. In the first part, we will see what kind of links Rockmore identifies between Marx, Fichte, Hegel and German idealism. In the second part, we will see how this hypothetical constructivist approach of Marx, according to Rockmore, can also be traced back to the thought of Gian Battista Vico and, at least in part, to Kant’s epistemology. Finally, questioning Rockmore’s problematic conclusions on the definition of “materialism” and “historical materialism” in Marx, we will verify the similarity between Rockmore’s reading of Marx and that of the young Benedetto Croce**.

Keywords: Anthropology, Constructivism, Historical Materialism, Marx, Rockmore