Abstract

Both Marxism and phenomenology, in their respective historical developments, continue to struggle with their internal crises regarding their philosophical foundations. Both schools have radically revised their founding fathers’ initial positions on this matter, at times in direct contradiction to them. Can a theoretical effort at combining the two fields promise to overcome the theoretical crises of Marxism and phenomenology, or will such an undertaking only give rise to further theoretical complexities? In this essay, I investigate these questions through a critical assessment of Ian Angus’ Groundwork of Phenomenological Marxism (2021), a work that represents the latest theoretical development in the field. I argue that the disregard for the transcendental-critical character of Husserl’s phenomenology, along with the privileging of Heidegger’s existentialist approach, not only conflicts with the book’s original promise, namely, “to finish Husserl’s unfinished Crisis,” but also forecloses the potentialities within transcendental phenomenology for the theoretical reconstruction of Marxism. Through an analysis of the themes of ‘transcendental subjectivity’ and ‘nature’ in the works of Husserl, Paci, and Angus, I highlight some of these potentialities and argue that Marxism can only be consistently grounded on a phenomenological account that remains true to both the humanistic motives of Marx and the universalism of Husserl’s philosophical project.