ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Habermas's conception of how Marx's view relates to those of Kant and Hegel. It then discusses Habermas's reconstruction of Marx's epistemology. The chapter claims that Habermas's critique of Marx is quite problematic. It fails to acknowledge the true implications of Marx's concept of labor, and it wrongly locates ideology exclusively at the communicative level. While in many ways inspired by Marx, Habermas is ultimately a liberal thinker interested in questions of reason and rationality, and how these capacities are embodied in modern institutions. Marx, by contrast, is best thought of as a theorist of human self-actualization. Marx asks questions about the essence of man and mankind. Communism, for the young Marx, is free self-actualization. It is the unimpeded self-actualization of man qua species-being. Communism thus involves reconciliation between subject and object, freedom and necessity, individual and species, such that man, in Marx's view, is able to find himself at home in the world.
