When Spinoza Met Marx

Explores concepts that bring together the thinking of Spinoza and Marx.

When Spinoza Met Marx delves into the complex interplay between the ideas of Karl Marx and Baruch Spinoza. Karl Marx was a fiery revolutionary theorist who heralded the imminent demise of capitalism, while Spinoza was a contemplative philosopher who preached rational understanding and voiced scepticism about open rebellion.

Spinoza criticised all teleological ideas as anthropomorphic fantasies, while Marxism came to be associated expressly with teleological historical development. Yet, socialists of the nineteenth-century Germany were consistently drawn to Spinoza as their philosophical guide.

Tracie Matysik explores how the metaphorical meeting of Spinoza and Marx arose out of an intellectual conundrum about the meaning of activity. How is it, exactly, that humans can be fully determined creatures and also able to change their world? To address this paradox, many revolutionary theorists came to think of activity in the sense of Spinoza—as relating.

Matysik follows these Spinozist-socialist intellectual experiments as they unfolded across the nineteenth century, drawing lessons from them that may be meaningful for the contemporary world.