Method in the Later Marx

This chapter shows how Karl Marx developed and departed from the methodological features in his later work, and provides a clear and thorough account of Marx's method in his later writings. The Theses on Feuerbach (TOF) demonstrates Marx's philosophical materialism. Marx's comments on philosophical materialism lay the foundations for his 'materialist conception of history', which he outlines in the German Ideology (GI). An immanent critique of the religious world leads to the root of its contradictions in the contradictions of the material world, and then to practice in order to destroy the causes of the religious consciousness in the material world. Marx's method in these transitional works retains its dialectical nature from the early works, and in particular its use of the concept of contradiction. From a methodological point of view, one of the most prominent themes of the late works as a whole and of the mature works in particular is abstraction.