From Marx to Hegel and Back: Capitalism, Critique, and Utopia offers an ambitious philosophical reassessment of the enduring relationship between two towering figures in modern thought—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx. In the area of both philosophical inquiry and socio-political critique, where Marxism continues to be reinterpreted and revitalized, the editors, Victoria Fareld and Hannes Kuch, provide a fresh, dialectical journey that traverses the theoretical divide between Hegel’s idealist dialectics and Marx’s materialist critique of political economy, and returns back to Hegel with a richer and more nuanced understanding of both thinkers. The book posits not merely a progressive or linear reading of Marx’s appropriation of Hegelian dialectics, but instead advocates for what the editors describe as a “helical” movement—an ongoing interpretive spiral in which one thinker is seen through the critical lens of the other, recontextualized for today’s world.
This volume challenges conventional readings in Marxist and Hegelian traditions, where Marx’s inversion of Hegel’s dialectic is often depicted as a necessary leap from idealism to materialism, effectively leaving Hegel behind as a relic of pre-Marxian thought. While many schools of Marxism assert that Marx advanced beyond Hegel, either by a progressive transformation or a complete break, From Marx to Hegel and Back complicates this narrative, arguing for a more complex interrelationship. The book treats Hegel not merely as a historical antecedent to Marx, but as a thinker whose empirical insights into political, social, and economic realities have contemporary relevance. Far from being a pure metaphysician lost in abstractions, Hegel emerges here as a theorist deeply engaged with the material conditions of human existence. This re-reading underscores the necessity of revisiting Hegel in light of Marx’s critiques, and, perhaps more provocatively, the need to re-read Marx with Hegel’s ethical and philosophical concerns in mind.
One of the key philosophical interventions of the book is its focus on essential concepts such as recognition, alienation, freedom, love, revolution, and critique—categories that are typically associated with one thinker more than the other, but which here are explored in their shared and contested terrains. Through the lens of “recognition,” for example, the volume revisits Hegel’s famous Master-Slave dialectic, exploring how it not only prefigures Marx’s theory of alienation but also offers key insights into social relations in capitalist societies that Marx may have only partially realized. Hegel’s notion of mutual recognition as foundational to freedom and subjectivity is placed alongside Marx’s analysis of the estrangement of labor under capitalism, suggesting that both thinkers converge in their critique of the dehumanizing effects of alienated labor, albeit from different starting points. This suggests not a simple inversion, but an enriched dialogue between idealism and materialism.
The book’s title is more than a description of a methodological approach, it signals an overarching theme—the necessity of moving “from Marx to Hegel and back” in order to understand the complexity of both the world as it is and as it could be. By positioning Hegel and Marx as dialectical interlocutors, Fareld and Kuch invite readers to explore the ways in which Hegel’s idealist framework continues to offer critical resources for diagnosing contemporary social and political contradictions, while Marx’s materialist critique reveals the limitations of Hegel’s vision in the age of global capitalism. Crucially, this movement between the two thinkers allows the authors to transcend simplistic binaries—idealism versus materialism, state versus communality, or recognition versus revolution—and instead focus on the productive tensions that arise when these categories are held together in a dynamic interplay.
This dynamic, as the editors argue, becomes most evident when we examine their shared commitment to a form of freedom that is communal rather than abstract. Hegel’s concept of “social freedom,” where individuals realize their freedom not in isolation but through participation in ethical life (Sittlichkeit), is juxtaposed with Marx’s revolutionary vision of a classless society in which true freedom can only be achieved through the abolition of private property and capitalist exploitation. This juxtaposition forces a reconsideration of both the role of the state and the nature of individual rights. Hegel, who sees the state as the highest realization of freedom, is in sharp tension with Marx’s call for the dismantling of state structures, yet this tension, the book argues, does not preclude mutual enrichment. By bringing Hegel’s account of social institutions and Marx’s critique of the state together, the authors propose new ways of thinking about democratic self-determination and social freedom in a post-capitalist future.
The book also takes on the pressing task of situating the Hegel-Marx dialogue within the broader history of Critical Theory. Drawing on a rich tradition of Hegelian Marxism—from figures like Georg Lukács, who famously argued that Marx completed Hegel by revealing the proletariat as the true subject of history, to contemporary theorists like Slavoj Žižek and Axel Honneth—the book offers both a historical and a philosophical overview of the ways in which this dialogue has shaped and continues to shape radical thought. What emerges is a picture of two philosophers whose legacies cannot be fully understood in isolation from one another. The editors suggest that the full diagnostic power of Marx’s critique of capitalism is only realized when we account for the ethical dimensions of Hegel’s philosophy, particularly his critique of liberalism and his emphasis on human needs and sociality. Conversely, Hegel’s philosophy gains new relevance when we read it through the lens of Marx’s critique of political economy, as it allows us to address the shortcomings of Hegel’s idealism while preserving its ethical core.
From Marx to Hegel and Back is not merely a historical reconstruction, but a philosophical intervention aimed at rethinking the foundations of critique in the face of the crises of contemporary capitalism, from financial inequality to the erosion of democratic institutions. In doing so, the volume proposes that the Hegelian-Marxist tradition offers not only a critique of the present but also a utopian vision for the future—one in which the struggles for recognition and social freedom are not abandoned but reinvigorated by Marx’s revolutionary insight into the structures of exploitation. By uniting the ethical richness of Hegel’s philosophy with the materialist rigor of Marx’s analysis, the editors chart a course for critical theory that remains committed to the radical transformation of society while being grounded in the lived experiences and struggles of human beings.
In this sense, the book is both a theoretical and practical guide for those who seek to understand not just the abstract relations between these two thinkers, but the ways in which their philosophies continue to shape our understanding of freedom, justice, and the possibility of a more just and humane world. From Marx to Hegel and Back is thus an essential text for anyone interested in the future of critical theory, offering a sophisticated and nuanced approach to two of philosophy’s greatest figures in a way that speaks directly to the political and social concerns of our time.
Simon Gros 
Leave a comment