Abstract

Marxism understood its relationship to Hegel’s absolute idealism – following re-spective programmatical formulas in Marx, Engels, and Lenin – as the procedure of a materialistic “reversal” (“Umkehrung,” or “Umstülpung”). Taking, however, the complex structure of Hegelian idealism seriously the question arises as to how such a “reversal” – and the separation between system and method hereby implied – is systematically and methodologically possible at all, going beyond a mere meta-phor. Among the philosophically most ambitious projects intending to clarify this question and its theoretical and practical implications is the German Marxist philos-opher’s Hans Heinz Holz (1927-2011). By taking Hegel’s speculative philosophy and its systematic framework – and, along with it, the entire pre-Hegelian tradition of speculative metaphysics – as seriously as, both from part of the Marxist tradition and of non-Marxist philosophy, hardly anyone does, he puts forward that Marxism ultimately remains structurally dependent on Hegel’s entire system and should be understood, based on an elaborated understanding of the “speculative” nature of philosophy, as its “materialistic reading” or “translation.” It is the aim of the present paper to outline and – from a Hegelian perspective – critically discuss the program of this “materialistic reading.” By so doing the paper points to the relevance of this subject not only for Marxism but – as its particular focus – for interpretations of Hegel’s philosophy that are interested both in its strong systematic claims and in its – specific – metaphysical function in terms of our practical-political orientation in the world.