Abstract

This article aims to examining the meaning of the political in Karl Marx’s thought from the perspective of Carl Schmitt’s interpretation. While on one hand the German jurist considers that Marxism subsumes political problems under economical issues, on the other hand he stresses that Marx thought politics through the deepening of the antagonism and dictatorship of the proletariat. However, for Schmitt, these two elements of the political in Marx are built based on the Hegelian logic of history. In this paper, I discuss this Hegelian legacy in Marx’s political thought and suggest an alternative to think politics appealing to “practical materialism”, in which contingent action that stems from human coexistence is accentuated.