Left Hegelian Variations: on the Matter of Revolution in Marx. Bloch and Althusser

Abstract

Although Ernst Bloch is often understood as an abstract, aesthetic philosopher of hope, his doctrine of concrete utopia is underpinned by an idiosyncratic, vital materialist ontology. Against many of Bloch’s critics, this article explains and defends his materialism as compatible with Marx’s project. It first situates the early Marx’s materialism in the generally Left Hegelian and more specifically Feuerbachian context of articulating a concrete account of human agency and social emancipation within a naturalistic framework. Two subsequent sections offer Bloch’s “Left Aristotelian” approach to matter and the later Louis Althusser’s “aleatory” materialism, respectively, as radical and tactically different variations on this theme.