SOURCE: “Can Phenomenology Accommodate Marxism?” in Telos: A Quarterly Journal of Critical Thought, No. 17, Fall, 1973, pp. 169-80.

In the following essay, Shmuelli explores the degree to which Husserl's phenomenology and Marx's dialectical analysis are and are not compatible approaches to confronting alienation and establishing social change.

In the last decades serious attempts have been made to bring together Edmund Husserl's phenomenology with Marxist dialectical materialism. Although the phenomenological strain of Marxism could already be found in the thirties, particularly in the writings of Herbert Marcuse, this trend has become more prevalent after World War II. In fact, the phenomenological approach became very strong in some communist countries, particularly in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Before the Russians occupied Prague, Karel Kosik's book, Die Dialektik des Konkreten (1967), exercised considerable influence.¹ These attempts to build a synthesis out of Husserl and Marx have broken down barriers between two major intellectual trends which...