In a recent collection of essays, On the Reconstruction of Historical Materialism (Zur Rekonstruktion des historischen Materialismus, 1976)
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Habermas confirms what he has been hinting at for some time, namely, that his intention is to construct Marx's theory or, as he also calls it, historical materialism. Since Habermas portrays his own position as a contribution to Marx's view, it is appropriate to examine Habermas' writings in order to determine what light they throw on Marx's ideas. As an attempt to develop further a given position presupposes its interpretation, I shall consider both Habermas' understanding of Marx' view as well as his proposed revision o fit.
Although Marx was well aware of the history of philosophy and perhaps indebted to it at more .numerous points than is commonly admitted, the tendency in the literature is to study his position almost exclusively through its immediate genesis in relation to Hegel and the young Hegelians. The origin of this tendency is complex, but basically it is an expression of the belief that Marx breaks radically with the tradition in which his view emerged. Perhaps the first to formulate this idea was Engels, when he claimed that Marx's contribution was to have expelled philosophy from history. He thus implied that the view in question could not merely be another philosophy, and this implication has been drawn by a succession of important commentators, most recently by Klaus Hartman. It is this widespread belief which lends an ahistorical flavor to so much of the Marx secondary literature.
Against the grain of the usual a-historical approach to Marx, Habermas' discussion is distinguished by an attention to possible relations between Marx's position and the surrounding tradition. This approach is in principle useful as an aid in the comprehension of Marx's view, although it is to be regretted that Habermas confines his attention only to the modern period. Hannah Arendt is, I think, correct in her observation that there is almost as much Aristotle in Marx as there is Hegel. Thus Habermas could well have carried his historical inquiry further. Again one must wonder if, in his commitment to the common view that Marx's position is not just another philosophy, as evidenced in the warning against its interpretation as a naturalized form of idealism, Habermas does not undercut the study of Marx's position in its context?
Further, although the attention to Marx's relation to the tradition is