Gordon Hull. “Marx’s Anomalous Reading of Spinoza.” Interpretation, Vol. 28 (2000), pp. 17–32.

Excerpt:

”

Spinoza and Marx were thinkers who attained sufficient notoriety to become
associated with certain, rather fixed, doctrinal positions. For this reason, the
study of Spinoza and Marx is never fully dissociable from an encounter with
Spinozism and Marxism. A study ofMarx’s reception ofSpinoza, then, is dou
bly perilous. Nonetheless, the doctrinal association of both thinkers with “mate
rialism”
suggests both its possibility and its importance. Two general points
about the context in which Marx worked, in particular the early Marx, may
serve as guidelines from which to begin. First, this context was overdetermined
by Hegel and Hegelianism. Whatever one thinks of the outcome of Marx’s
encounter with Hegel, it remains that this encounter was a decisive element in
his development. Second, one aspect ofHegel’s reading ofthe history of philos
ophy was the production of a certain Spinozism, of the integration of Spinoza
into the larger narrative structure ofHegel’s history. In what follows, I wish to
develop the thought that one constitutive element in Marx’s efforts to overcome
Hegel can be found precisely in his reading of Spinoza, against and outside of
Hegel’s Spinozism.”

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