Abstract

Marx called his philosophical position a materialism; he was concerned, however, with social life, not with matter as the ultimate constituent of the universe. His materialism is a thesis about the relation between the forms which social life takes and the content which constitutes that life. Traditional materialisms are unable to address themselves to the particular concerns of Marx. Consequently, an alternative source must be found in order to explicate his materialism. Using Aristotle’s distinction between form and matter from the central books of the Metaphysics, I show how Marx’s materialism is a corrective to the formal determinism of Hegel.